09900K* 
 PACIFIC AVftNUB 
 10 BEACH. CALfP.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE 
 
 BY 
 
 EDGAR FAWCETT 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE HOUSE AT HIGH BRIDGE," "SOCIAL SILHOUETTES, 
 "TINKLING CYMBALS," "THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD," "AN 
 AMBITIOUS WOMAN," " RUTHERFORD," ETC. 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 TICKNOR AND COMPANY 
 
 2U UTremont Stmi 
 
 1888
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1887, 
 BY B. T. BUSH AND SON, 
 
 AND 1888, 
 BY TIC KNOB AND COMPANY. 
 
 All Rights Reserved. 
 
 ELECTROTYPED BY 
 C. J. PETERS & SON, BOSTON. 
 
 U.S.A.
 
 2T0 mg Jrfentr, 
 J. V. FBI CHARD, 
 
 I AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATE THIS CHRONICLE 
 OF 
 
 CONTEMPORAKY LIFE. 
 
 2061844
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 i. 
 
 THE funeral was over. Olivia had got home from 
 Greenwood about an hour ago. The house was still, 
 now, as the dead burden that had so lately been borne 
 from it. After a while the girl had stolen to a window 
 and looked out at the nude, creaking trees in Wash- 
 ington Square, and the black blotches made on the 
 pavements by the drying rain. May had come in raw 
 and petulant, this year ; the morning had begun show- 
 ery and savage with gusts, but toward afternoon a 
 fitful sun had pierced transient fissures in the bluish 
 rolling clouds. 
 
 Olivia soon withdrew from the window and pulled 
 down its shade again, with a sense of having violated 
 one of the dreary formulas of usage on such occasions 
 by lifting it at all. Her sorrow, that would have 
 been anguish a few years ago, was now inseparable 
 from a grateful relief. For months her father had 
 suffered harshly ; her own tireless nursing of him had 
 taught her to be more of a woman than her maidenly 
 blue eyes, the pink, fresh curves of her face and the 
 sunny floss of hair over her forehead at all plainly 
 showed ; for Olivia had the kind of looks that a care- 
 less gazer can easily pronounce as commonplace as 
 
 7
 
 8 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 they are pretty. It was only when you gave her a 
 little observant heed that you saw how her youth had 
 sweetly misrepresented her, and how her evident nine- 
 teen years or so had cast about the real womanly 
 potency of her demeanor an undue girlish glamour. 
 
 She dropped into an easy-chair, after darkening the 
 window at which she had committed her late rather 
 reckless indiscretion ; and just as she fell into the list- 
 less posture which the tufted seat induced, a lady 
 appeared within the room. 
 
 The new-comer went straight to Olivia and took 
 her hand. The girl scarcely moved, looking up at 
 her companion with a sad, placid smile, and at the 
 same time allowing her extended hand to be patted in 
 the most softly sympathetic way. 
 
 "It was a dreadfully cold funeral, wasn't it?" 
 Olivia said, with an intonation that seemed half to 
 imply soliloquy. 
 
 " Cold?" returned the lady, who was her aunt, Mrs. 
 Ottarson, the sister of her mother, dead years ago. 
 " Of course it was cold, with all those stuck-up folks 
 going to it ! Gracious me ! There wasn't one of 'em, 
 Olivia, that went to Greenwood for any reason on 
 earth except because he was a Van Rensselaer." 
 
 Olivia gave a little weary shake of the head. " I 
 am a Van Rensselaer, too, Aunt Thyrza,"she said, 
 still smiling. 
 
 " Who said you wasn't ? " cried the lady, clasping 
 tighter the hand that she held and patting it with 
 added zest. "That's just what I mean. But they 
 didn't care a bit about it all. They only went be- 
 cause they're clannish, and thought it was respectable 
 to flock round one of their own blood like that."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 9 
 
 " Yes, I suppose you're right." 
 
 " I think I kind o' scared 'em," pursued Mrs. Ottar- 
 son, with her leaping staccato laugh that one might 
 believe no solemnity short of her own burial could 
 quite destroy. "I'm different from anybody they're 
 accustomed to see. I ain't what's the word? 
 swell. To be swell you've got to put on airs, and I 
 never could do that. Whenever I tried I always felt 
 as if somebody was giggling and making faces at me 
 behind my back." 
 
 " I doubt if you ever did try," said Olivia. " It's 
 altogether too artificial a part for any one to play who 
 has your natural honesty." 
 
 " Oh, pooh ! I ain't half the saint you seem to 
 think me," said Mrs. Ottarson, putting her head side- 
 ways, and rolling her handsome black eyes at Olivia, 
 in mock mutiny and challenge. 
 
 " If you had been a saint," Olivia answered, with 
 the smile that has such a light of pathos in it when 
 the face from which it gleams does not turn a whit 
 less sombre, " I should not have liked you half as well 
 as I do." 
 
 Mrs. Ottarson stooped and kissed her. " I'm glad, 
 then, that I'm a sinner instead," she exclaimed jo- 
 vially. And now she sat down beside Olivia, still 
 retaining her hand. 
 
 One might think that aunt and niece had never 
 been more dissimilar than these two. It would have 
 seemed as absurd not to concede that Mrs. Ottarson 
 was vulgar as to declare that the peony is not gaudy. 
 She had a face as dark as a gypsy's, which had per- 
 haps been seemly enough before it became touched 
 by those merciless lines and wrinkles that might col-
 
 10 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 lectively be termed one of Time's many war charts ; 
 for alas ! the old campaigner never shows himself 
 more destructive than when he uses the human 
 countenance for a map of his future hostile inten- 
 tions ! Mrs. Ottarson's figure, however, was admi- 
 rably youthful. It seemed almost buxomly to refute 
 the fifty years which her swart, self-reliant, amiable 
 face asserted. She clad it in attire that clung to its 
 arches and slopes with a nice flexibility of adhesion. 
 She was what we must have pronounced a stylish 
 woman ; she would have liked to be thought 
 " stylish ; " she would never have held it the half- 
 vagabond word it has grown. To-day she wore 
 mourning for the husband of her dead sister ; it 
 was jauntily patterned and shot through with fur- 
 tive purples in the way of embellishment. It was 
 quite too ornamental to be called mourning at all ; 
 but then Mrs. Ottarson placed a deep faith in orna- 
 ment. All that was sterling about her lay somehow 
 beneath the surface. Continually misjudged as flip- 
 pant and superficial, she managed to keep healthfully 
 beating a heart of great tenderness and sincerity under 
 her befurbelowed bodices. It is not meant that those 
 who knew her well misunderstood her native kindness 
 and charity. Only the indifferent gaze failed to 
 detect either, and most certainly Olivia Van Rensse- 
 laer's was not of this tendency. 
 
 Olivia had always heard her late father mention 
 Mrs. Ottarson, if he mentioned her at all, with a 
 half-repressed sneer. A good many years of Hous- 
 ton Van Rensselaer's life with his daughter had 
 been lived abroad. The wide basement-house, with 
 its dormer windows, its spider-like iron stoop-trellises
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 11 
 
 and its antique Colonial doorway, had been visited by 
 him four or five times during the past twelve or fif- 
 teen years. He brought Olivia across the ocean 
 with him whenever such visits were paid to his 
 native land. The little girl delighted in these trips ; 
 she held it rare fun to be taken to America, and the 
 elm-trees and poplars verging South Washington 
 Square would rise afterward through her retrospec- 
 tive visions of New York during the humdrum dis- 
 ciplines of her pension oversea. On such occasions 
 Olivia was always permitted to see her aunt. She 
 did not know then that Mrs. Ottarson kept a board- 
 ing-house somewhere up-town, and that the appear- 
 ance of this lady at all in South Washington Square 
 was solely a tribute paid by her punctilious parent to 
 the memory of his deceased wife. He had loved that 
 wife loyally ; he was Houston Van Rensselaer, and 
 when he had married her, a blooming girl of nineteen, 
 all his relations had held up their hands at the odious 
 and impolitic match. The bridegroom had not been 
 of democratic views. He possessed many of those 
 New World prejudices regarding " family " and 
 "birth" which are at the present time a source 
 of irony for European comment. He considered 
 his stock exceedingly important ; he had quite as 
 much veneration for it as the aristocracies of trans- 
 atlantic countries had ignorance of it. But he had, 
 nevertheless, married a Miss Jenks. He had privately 
 looked upon his marriage as a very imprudent and 
 even ridiculous step. But he had taken the step 
 because love, with a hymeneal torch grasped in its 
 rosy hand, had too potently lured him toward what 
 lay beyond. Miss Jenks had been poor. Her people
 
 12 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 dwelt in Macdougal Street, only a step from the Van 
 Rensselaer home in which he had been reared as a 
 boy. The Jenkses were a race which his own kindred 
 roundly affirmed to be of " low extraction." If they 
 had had money it might have made a striking differ- 
 ence; for there is one point about our American pa- 
 trician in which he may be relied upon never to differ 
 from that foreign model whereof he stands nearly 
 always the patient imitator: he is invariably ap- 
 peased by what he rates a misalliance when it is a 
 true mariage cFargent. But the Jenkses were not 
 only poor ; they were destitute of the least caste ; the 
 father and his two daughters, in wholesome domestic 
 conspiracy, managed to make the combined profits of 
 carpentry and dressmaking yield them a fairly thrifty 
 income. They had not even education, ran the wail 
 of the Auchinclosses and the Satterthwaites, both 
 families being near relatives of Mr. Van Rensselaer. 
 It was all quite too horrible. "We shall not visit 
 her," rose the austere feminine chorus. " We are 
 extremely sorry ; but Houston has brought it upon 
 himself. No, we shall not visit her." And the 
 Auchinclosses and Satterthwaites did not. 
 
 Mr. Van Rensselaer had no intention that they 
 should at least, not for a considerable time to 
 come. He married his young wife in the quietest 
 way. The wedding took place in the back parlor 
 of the little Macdougal Street house. The season 
 was early June, and the windows were open, so 
 that you could see the interior of Mr. Abner Jenks's 
 carpenter-shop, which was reached by a short alley at 
 the side of the house proper. But some big pink 
 roses were blowing in an intermediate court-yard
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 13 
 
 between walls of mellow brickwork that gleamed 
 richer because of the summer blue above it, and a 
 bird was singing from a cage not far away. The 
 blitheness of that bird's matins would not have led 
 you to dream that anything so dreadful was going on 
 a little distance below them as the nuptials of a true- 
 blooded Knickerbocker with the daughter of a car- 
 penter. Inside it seemed a little sadder. Red- 
 handed, shining-faced and somewhat moist-eyed as 
 well, Abner Jenks stood watching his daughter. 
 Thyrza, the bride's sister, made no effort to keep 
 back her tears. She disapproved the marriage 
 quite as much from her point of view as did the 
 Auchinclosses and Satterthwaites from theirs; she 
 thought Houston Van Rensselaer a stiff, sour person, 
 and she trembled at the severities of tutelage to which 
 Rosalie must be hereafter subjected. For the rest, 
 Rosalie herself looked appositely contented. Her 
 awkward veil, her ill-fitting gown, and the general 
 air of commonness about her entire bridal gear, did 
 not prevent her from being, nevertheless, an extremely 
 lovely bride. 
 
 It was the smallest of weddings. No kin of 
 Houston Van Rensselaer's had been bidden to it; 
 he had merely asked his business-partner, Mr. 
 Spencer Delaplaine, to act as his best man. Mr. 
 Delaplaine was seven or eight years the senior 
 of his friend ; he had then reached perhaps his 
 fortieth year, but Thyrza fancied that he must be 
 older, his aquiline face, his light, gray, shrewd eyes 
 and his spare, tall, neatly-garbed figure somehow 
 combined to express so much serene worldly experi- 
 ence. He observed the minister perform the cere-
 
 14 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 mony with an air of composure that narrowly missed 
 betraying the disgust it concealed. This union 
 appeared to him a piece of the purest folly. The 
 banking-house of Delaplaine and Van Rensselaer 
 was still somewhat new in Wall Street. There was 
 every reason to fear that such an insane step might 
 be detrimental as regarded its future prosperity. Mr. 
 Delaplaine had always prided himself on being a per- 
 sonage of the highest position ; a short time ago he 
 had taken pleasure in the reflection that even his mer- 
 cantile life was to be elevated by association with one 
 whose descent not only rivalled but surpassed his own. 
 And now Houston must go and do this headlong, sen- 
 timental thing ! He, who could have walked connu- 
 bially up the aisle of Trinity Church or Grace Church 
 with Miss Van Peekskill, the heiress, worth three 
 hundred thousand, if a dime, in her own unrestricted 
 right ! 
 
 Houston Van Rensselaer's first act, after marrying 
 Rosalie Jenks, was to separate her inflexibly from her 
 father and sister. He took her abroad within the next 
 fortnight, and remained there with her five good years. 
 His name still continued over the doorway of the 
 banking-house, which throve capably with Delaplaine 
 as its active working partner. People said that he 
 would never bring Mrs. Van Rensselaer back until he 
 had educated her so that she could hold her own as 
 veritable grande dame among those whom his matri- 
 monial escapade had horrified. Meanwhile Abner 
 Jenks, the carpenter, died, and Thyrza, his other 
 daughter, married a worthless, plausible scamp named 
 Ottarson, who drank himself to death three years 
 later. But Mrs. Ottarson, full of pluck and energy,
 
 OLIVIA LELAPLAINE. 15 
 
 succeeded in making herself the head of an establish- 
 ment for boarders, and in securing thereby an easy, if 
 not a plethoric annuity. 
 
 When Mrs. Van Rensselaer returned to New York 
 with her husband, she bore the traces of a most telling 
 change. Her girlish loveliness had completely van- 
 ished; she was pale, tired-looking, timidly reserved, 
 and no more like her former merry, spontaneous self 
 than is a lily with its cut stalk kept in a vase for many 
 hours like the balmy-chaliced bloom that drank nur- 
 ture from its vital root. She had wedded into a 
 world that had chilled and wilted her. Houston Van 
 Rensselaer was still, in his stately, high-bred way, a 
 fond husband. But he had made her breathe the air 
 of perpetual disappointment, and she showed the 
 result with a pathetic plainness of disclosure. 
 
 Proudly and undemonstratively her husband waited 
 the acknowledgment of his return. He issued no 
 cards of invitation to the house in South Washington 
 Square. If he had done so the polite summons would 
 no doubt have been heeded. Curiosity could ill have 
 withstood the temptation of opportunity when it be- 
 came a question of seeing how forceful had been the 
 alterative of those five educational years. But Hous- 
 ton Van Rensselaer merely said to Delaplaine, his 
 friend and partner : " They know that we are at home. 
 Let them come if they choose. Letitia Auchincloss 
 used to be a woman fond of talking about her duty. 
 As my elder sister, she might rank it her duty to call 
 upon my wife." 
 
 The Auchinclosses and the Satterthwaites met in 
 august council to consider this most exacting question. 
 The feminine head of either family had been a Van
 
 16 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 Rensselaer; they were Houston's sisters, and each had 
 been considered in the days of her virginity to have 
 made a match that was notably brilliant. Letitia 
 Auchincloss and Augusta Satterthwaite were women 
 near of an age, and both were among the few undis- 
 puted leaders of social New York. The result of the 
 council was that no unsolicited visit should be paid 
 upon the wife of their brother. The lse majeste of 
 such a proceeding was not to be lightly esteemed. 
 
 But Thyrza Ottarson did not remain away from her 
 sister. It was a meeting that Mrs. Ottarson never 
 forgot; and years afterwards, when she and her niece 
 became the good friends that we have already seen 
 them, she described the meeting to Olivia in her 
 volatile and colloquially homespun manner: 
 
 " There was your ma, my dear, and there was me. 
 I can see it all just as plain this minute as if it was no 
 more'n yesterday. Your pa'd met me in the hall, and 
 gone into the libr'y down stairs. ' She expects you,' 
 says your pa. 'She'll be down soon.' An' then I 
 guess he saw I felt queer, so he said something 'bout 
 seein' to the furnace, as it was growin' chilly, or some 
 such kind o' humbugging thing as that, to get himself 
 out of the room, and went. An' then I heard a step 
 near the other door, and the door opened, and there 
 was your ma. Well, as I told you, 'Livia, I stood an' 
 she stood. It seemed's if the sight of her jus' scooped 
 all the breath right out o' my chest. She was so 
 altered that I felt like screech in' to her: 'You ain't 
 my Rose ; you can't be, and you ain't ! ' But I knew 
 all the while that she was, and this made it harder to 
 bear. They'd turned her into a high-toned, first-class 
 lady ; no mistake about that, 'Livia. But it had just
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 17 
 
 pulled all the shine out of her eyes and all the pink 
 out of her cheeks." 
 
 Houston Van Rensselaer took his wife to Europe 
 again. Only one person knew in how haughty and 
 disdainful a state of temper he had recrossed the 
 ocean, and that person was his partner, Spencer Dela- 
 plaine. He had found out that the banking-house was 
 in a finely flourishing condition ; there were unantici- 
 pated thousands placed to his credit. "I mean to 
 show some of these American snobs here," he said to 
 his single confidant, " how Parisian society will receive 
 my wife." 
 
 "But, Houston," urged his partner, "you should 
 remember that you didn't make the least formal an- 
 nouncement of your return." 
 
 " That has nothing to do with the affair," replied 
 Van Rensselaer unpropitiatedly. " At least it has not 
 so far as my blood relations are concerned." 
 
 "But your blood relations " began Spencer Dela- 
 plaine. 
 
 "I understand," shot in the other, cutting him 
 short, " New York isn't quite the universe yet, Spen- 
 cer. The next time that I bring my wife back to her 
 native country, I'll warrant you that the de haut en 
 bas attitude will be hers to assume." 
 
 But Rosalie Van Rensselaer soon had crossed the 
 Atlantic for the third and last time in her young and 
 by no means cloudless life. Five more years were 
 still allotted her, and these she passed amid fashion 
 and luxury in Paris and various watering-places of 
 Europe. She and her husband became much discussed 
 both by foreigners and resident Americans. It un- 
 doubtedly reached the ears of the Auchinclosses and
 
 18 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 the Satterthwaites that she had become a decided 
 somebody on the other side of the ocean. They heard 
 of the balls and fetes which she gave and attended; of 
 the royal patronage which lifted her several prominent 
 inches above her most aspiring countrywomen ; of the 
 elegance and originality that marked her costumes ; of 
 this or that princely Highness who had graced her 
 costly entertainments ; and at last, suddenly, they 
 heard of her death. 
 
 She had died in giving birth to a daughter, the only 
 child she had borne during the ten years that had 
 succeeded her marriage. Whatever grief Houston 
 Van Rensselaer may have felt, he shrouded from 
 publicity by the most guarded seclusion. When he 
 once more took steamer for America little Olivia was 
 five years old. His relations flocked to meet him, 
 then, with their sympathetic welcomings. He re- 
 ceived them courteously but frigidly. But there was, 
 nevertheless, a distinct reconciliation. Till Olivia had 
 reached her eighteenth year he had kept up a series of 
 occasional visits to New York, making Paris his real 
 place of abode. It was affirmed that these trips were 
 taken purely for financial reasons; and then again 
 such reports were stoutly contradicted. What did 
 Spencer Delaplaine want him for? He had long ago 
 become a mere silent partner in the banking-house. 
 He still lived handsomely abroad, it was true ; but the 
 business had gone on prospering under Delaplaine's 
 keen and able superintendence. 
 
 The last time that Van Rensselaer came home he 
 came a sick and death-threatened man. It was then 
 that Olivia's aunt, Mrs. Ottarson, revealed how much 
 depth of humane goodness may co-exist with the
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 19 
 
 most disorderly syntax. Olivia had till now shrunk 
 from her as from a personality offensively unpolished, 
 and there was no dilettante daintiness, either, in 
 Olivia's composition. Perhaps if there had been she 
 would not, even now, have so indulgently overlooked 
 all her aunt's glaring solecisms. As it was, to remem- 
 ber the dogged fortitude of Mrs. Ottarson's late minis- 
 
 O 
 
 trations at her father's bedside was to love her in 
 spite of every barrier that breeding could interpose. 
 Nature seemed to have dowered her with the sleepless 
 eye, the unechoing step, the feathery touch and the 
 clairvoyant perception of the instinctive nurse. Van 
 Rensselaer had been subject to periods of intense 
 pain ; and as if by a satirical punishment wreaked 
 upon his former pride, the woman whom he had pro- 
 fessed himself while in health as hardly capable of 
 enduring, now became the chief agent of alleviation 
 for his physical torments. The dying man could not 
 understand the wherefore of it all himself ; but so it 
 was ; that very random bluntness of speech which had 
 formerly set his teeth on edge in Thyrza Ottarson, 
 touched his tingling nerves now with a cheery sincer- 
 ity of intonation. When a sick-room has grown the 
 ante-chamber of a certain dark king, it is wonderful 
 how class-distinctions tend to shrivel away in its 
 atmosphere; for the grim royalty that waits a new 
 courtier somewhere off in the shadow beyond, appears 
 to be throwing a continuous intangible sarcasm upon 
 all grades of earthly rank. Through those weary 
 weeks of self-forgetful surveillance the boarding estab- 
 lishment naturally missed its proprietress. Neglect 
 took the place of attention, and several vacant rooms 
 were the result. But on Olivia's remonstrance, Mrs.
 
 20 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 Ottarson simply put an arm round her niece's neck, 
 and sai< 1 : 
 
 "Now, 'Livia, you jus' be still. I mean to stick 
 right here, if every soul in the house leaves it. 
 There's others in plenty, the minute I choose to 
 advertise for 'em. La, sakes, yes! Besides, dear, it 
 can't be very long, now, before we see some change in 
 your poor pa, one way or another." 
 
 And it was not long. During their kinsman's ill- 
 ness the Auchinclosses, the Satterthwaites, and people 
 whose relationship was much more distant than theirs, 
 behaved duteously enough. And when all was over, 
 and Brown, the corpulent sexton of Grace Church, 
 came to conduct the funeral, which took place in the 
 old Washington Square mansion, it was admirable to 
 see what a throng pressed through the antique front 
 doorway on that inclement May morning. There 
 were the De Lancey Van Rensselaers, whom one 
 knew on the instant by their red hair and freckles; 
 and the Suydam Van Rensselaers, who all had arched 
 noses which they held as though a breath from their 
 family vault up at Spuytenduyvil had passed alarm- 
 ingly near their nostrils; and the Brinkerhoff Van 
 Rensselaers, who really were heads of their line but 
 bore themselves with such jovial simplicity that they 
 might have been Smiths from nowhere. All these, 
 and many more, came to the funeral, but Olivia had 
 been quite right in calling it cold. No one had 
 seemed really to care. And why should any one 
 have cared, for that matter? Even her father's late 
 partner, Spencer Delaplaine, had only seen the dead 
 man at intervals during a space of nearly thirty years. 
 He had been markedly attentive all through the ill-
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 21 
 
 ness ; he had called again and again personally to 
 inquire concerning the state of the invalid ; he had 
 both sent and brought Olivia envelopes full of bank- 
 notes, which she had accepted as her fathei-'s and her 
 own rightful due, without a hint of more than digni- 
 fied' civility as she did so. He had struck the girl as 
 an elderly gentleman (for his age must have been 
 undoubtedly sixty) with just the loveless demeanor 
 and the dry, semi-ironical repose that you might have 
 expected from one who had passed so long a term of 
 preferred bachelorhood. It had evidently been pre- 
 ferred, Olivia told herself more than once during their 
 conversations together. He was a gentleman ; you 
 could see that by a glance; and then, of course, he 
 had had, and he still had, a good deal of money, just 
 as her papa had had, and still had. There was a 
 smouldering memento of the beau in him, too; he 
 must have been gallant and winsome before he grew 
 so lean and gaunt, with those yellow, hard ridges, like 
 folds of parchment, just where the collar met his 
 throat, and that little limp of one spare leg, which he 
 said was his old foe, the gout. He had sent a superb 
 souvenir in the way of flowers that morning lilies 
 and violets blended. Others had sent like tributes, 
 but none was half as beautiful as Mr. Delaplaine's. 
 Olivia mentioned this gift as she now sat with her 
 aunt in the still house and "talked it all over." The 
 weeks of certainty that her father's agony must end 
 in death had left her not only pardonably but most 
 explainably resigned ; loss had come with an infinite 
 relief, and youth was already speeding, for this reason, 
 the merciful consolatory work which sooner or later 
 reaches all such pain.
 
 22 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 "I whispered a few words of thanks to Mr. Dela- 
 plaine this morning, Aunt Thyrza," she said, "for 
 those lovely flowers. It seemed almost rude of me 
 not to do so. But I somehow fancied he looked 
 shocked that I should remember even to thank him at 
 such a time." 
 
 "I guess he thought it was awful," replied Mrs. 
 Ottarson. "I guess, 'Li via, that's he's a man who's 
 always drilled himself by rule in ev'rything, whether 
 it's been grief or business, and 's got his real feelings 
 just about down to an oyster's. . . . My ! to think 
 how he's changed since your poor dear ma was mar- 
 ried ! I can see him then, just as distinct! He was 
 pale and thin, even then not my style o' man a bit; 
 I always fancied a man with some flesh about him, 
 and a look as if he eat his three square meals a day 
 you know what I mean?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," murmured Olivia. She had long since 
 grown to translate Mrs. Ottarson's coarseness, fondly 
 and forgivingly, into a more cultured idiom. The 
 mental process was not difficult now; affection had 
 indeed made it singularly facile. 
 
 " But, my! " continued her aunt, " he's so dried up, 
 ain't he ? He was 'ristocratic then, an' I guess a good 
 many girls in the upper class where he's always 
 moved must have took to him if he'd only wanted 
 them to." 
 
 " I suppose he never did want them to," smiled 
 Olivia, "and now he's lost every chance." 
 
 " Well, I should say so ! Still, with his money I 
 reckon there's some that just would. You can't tell. 
 It's such a world ! 'Livia, when I think that there's 
 people in it as different as me and your aunt Letitia
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 23 
 
 Auchincloss, f r instance, I can scarcely b'lieve what I 
 
 see 
 
 i " 
 
 "You don't like Aunt Letitia," said Olivia, shaking 
 her head, dreamily, with another smile. "Well, nei- 
 ther do I." 
 
 " She was mad to-day," went on Mrs. Ottarson, with 
 a kind of sudden guttural tone and a significant tight- 
 ening of the lips. " Oh, I could see she was, and so 
 was her sister your aunt Augusta Satterthwaite. 
 They expected to go in the same carriage with you. 
 An' they would 'a gone if they hadn't seen you and I 
 stick so close together. They took the next carriage 
 the minute they saw I wasn't goin' to leave you. Oh, 
 that was it! They looked at you, but you didn't see 
 'em ; you was cry in' under your veil, poor deary. But 
 I saw 'em. An' I jus' give your aunt Letitia one 
 look. She turned away, and nudged her sister after I 
 gave it." Here Mrs. Ottarson laughed with the glee 
 of scorn, but it was not a laugh that jarred upon 
 Olivia in the least; she knew too well the infinite 
 good in the heart it welled from. " Wy, Livvy, they 
 think me, those two aunts o' yours, reg'lar scum o' the 
 earth yes, they do ! " 
 
 " No, no ; I hope not ; I am sure not ! " said Olivia, 
 reaching out a hand and clasping with it one of the 
 speaker's. She would doubtless have said more, but 
 just then a ring at the lower hall-door made herself 
 and her companion start a little. 
 
 " That's them, now, I guess," exclaimed Mrs. Ottar- 
 son, as she rose. " Or, no ; p'haps it's 7ra." 
 
 " They ? He ? " asked Olivia, also rising. Whom 
 do you mean ? " 
 
 " Your aunts, or else Mr. Delaplaine. They've got
 
 24 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 to come back before long, you know ; it wouldn't be 
 decent if they didn't ? " 
 
 "It wouldn't be conventional," said Olivia; "I'm 
 afraid a good deal of decency means just that, with 
 certain people." 
 
 Mrs. Ottarson went out into the hall and leaned 
 over the banisters cautiously. "It's your two aunts, 
 dear," she at length informed her niece. 
 
 "I will see them up here," said Olivia. "Tell 
 Susan to show them up, please." 
 
 The big drawing-room in which Olivia stood as she 
 thus spoke was full of antiquated and cumbrous 
 effects. The heavy mahogany doors beamed like 
 glass; the marble-topped "centre-table," as it used to 
 be called, had the nether parts of dolphins for its 
 ornate legs, and bore upon its veiny slab a porphyry 
 card-receiver, and a large tarnished copy of Lord 
 Byron's poems. On the massively carved mantel rose 
 a basket of clammy-looking wax-flowers, with a glass 
 case over them, reconciled, as it might be said, to its 
 pedestal, by an ellipse of dense scarlet chenille. Still 
 farther above the fire-place hung one of those portraits 
 in oil which must always painfully remind the impres- 
 sionable American of his immature country. The 
 ceiling was florid with execrable frescoes, and both 
 groined and corniced with ponderous gilded plaster- 
 work. Here and there you saw a rug, a stool, a fall 
 of decorative stuff, that betrayed the more modern 
 spirit of appointment. But as a rule the visits of the 
 Van Rensselaers to South Washington Square had 
 been temporary sojourns, with all their family splen- 
 dor, as it were, left abroad to speedily lure them back 
 again. It would be hard to tell how many times
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 25 
 
 Houston Van Rensselaer had looked at the portrait 
 over the fire-place and the case of wax-flowers just 
 below it, and uttered "damnable!" But he somehow 
 never actually had time to remove either. As it 
 seemed to him, he was always either coming home to 
 this country or going away from it. And then, 
 finally, he had come home to die. It is so often just 
 like that with the most diligent or dilatory of mortals. 
 If the lists of the deeds, good or bad, that we have 
 been intending to accomplish, could be put into our 
 coffins after death, they might often make a scroll of 
 somewhat uncouth bulk for the calculations of the 
 undertaker. 
 
 " I'll run upstairs after I've told Susan that you'll 
 see 'em here," said Mrs. Ottarson. 
 
 " No, no," swiftly objected Olivia, " I want you to 
 stay with me, Aunt Thyrza." 
 
 "Stay with you, 'Livia! Mercy me! and be 
 snubbed by 'em to their hearts' content? I guess 
 not ! " 
 
 Mrs. Ottarson was hurrying off. Olivia darted 
 after. " Aunt Thyrza ! " she exclaimed. The lady, 
 hearing her reproachful voice, instantly turned and 
 faced her. "How could you think I would let them 
 do anything of that sort?" Olivia pursued, with an 
 indignant little flash. " Stay ! please stay ! " she went 
 on, with her tones promptly altered to pleading. " I 
 I shall feel so lonely with them just at this time, 
 unless you are near ! " She suddenly flung both arms 
 about Mrs. Ottarson's neck, and let her soft young lips 
 rest for a moment on her companion's cheek. " You've 
 been so good ! Please don't leave me now ! " 
 
 " Very well," acquiesced Mrs. Ottarson. She gave
 
 26 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 a laugh with an unwonteclly hoarse note in it, as she 
 returned her niece's kiss. "I'll stay, then, Liv, no 
 matter what they do to me." She drew back and 
 tossed her head defiantly; as she did so a faintly 
 tearful light gleamed from her black eyes. " I'd put 
 myself out a lot more'n that to do you a good turn ! " 
 she exclaimed. "But you must let me fight 'em if 
 they try any o' their impudent nonsense over me!" 
 
 Olivia's acceding nod followed so rapidly that her 
 aunt had only to turn again, partially descend the 
 staircase, and meet Susan, the maid-servant, midway 
 in her ascent. 
 
 " They have come to gener me with their tire- 
 some condolences," thought Olivia, standing, a sweet, 
 mournful-robed figure, at the threshold of the old- 
 fashioned drawing-room. "They have come to vex 
 me with their expressions of stupid, insincere sym- 
 pathy. How I wish it was all over and done with!" 
 
 But Olivia was mistaken. Her aunts had come to 
 acquit themselves in quite a different way.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 27 
 
 II. 
 
 OLIVIA shook hands composedly with Mrs. Auchin- 
 closs and Mrs. Satterthwaite, as these two ladies pres- 
 ently entered the drawing-room where she awaited 
 them. Mrs. Ottarson stood a good deal in the back- 
 ground. But Olivia very soon veered about in the 
 direction of the latter, and said with a self-possession 
 assuredly rare in a girl of her years and her foreign 
 rearing : 
 
 "Let me present you to my aunt Thyrza, Mrs. 
 Auchincloss, and Mrs. Satterthwaite my other aunt, 
 you know ; my mother's sister." 
 
 There was a brief but dead silence as Mrs. Ottarson 
 came forward. Bows were exchanged, all three of 
 them as repressed and lifeless as salutations of this 
 purely ceremonial sort could be made. And then the 
 four sank into chairs, Mrs. Ottarson still keeping a 
 little in the background. 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite broke the pause that ensued. 
 She was a person qualified to break pauses ; she had 
 the art of saying nothing when nothing was expected 
 to be said, and of delivering it with just the requisite 
 air of responsibility. 
 
 "This drawing-room has so familiar a look; has it 
 not, Letitia ? " 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss lifted a pair of tortoise-shell eye- 
 glasses by means of their long rectangular handle, 
 and held them to her eyes while she gazed all 
 
 27
 
 28 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 about her with a kind of majestic finicality. She 
 had managed to avoid letting her cool gray eye, 
 however, light even for a second upon Mrs. Ottnr- 
 son ; and her sister had indeed done the same. 
 
 " Yes, yes, Augusta, very familiar. We used to 
 play here as children, you remember . . . here in 
 this very room." 
 
 "I was married in this room," said Mrs. Satter- 
 thwaite to Olivia. " And your poor papa, my dear, 
 was one of my groomsmen." 
 
 "I knew it was a very old house," murmured 
 Olivia, " but " And then she stopped short, 
 coloring, very regretful of the inopportune speech. 
 But Mrs. Auchincloss and her sister were women 
 of the world trained to their finger-tips. They 
 swiftly saw that Olivia had lapsed into one of 
 those infelicitous phrases for which her youth must 
 supply the ready excuse. 
 
 "Ah, sister!" softly exclaimed Mrs. Auchincloss, 
 with just the dim smile of partial amusement that 
 seemed to suit the sober occasion, "Olivia is per- 
 fectly right. The house is very old, and we are 
 growing shockingly old as well." 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite nodded. She was never quite 
 as exquisitely receptive as her sister to all the nicest 
 requisitions of deportment ; she had even said and 
 done rude things, it was avowed of her by her ene- 
 mies, for so great a lady. Still, she answered with 
 just a shade less of amiability than she might have 
 shown, and with a touch of that rather cynical humor 
 for which she and the especial set in which she chose 
 to move were occasionally quoted : 
 
 " Dear Letitia, I think we've an advantage over the
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 29 
 
 house we were almost born in ; we're not quite so 
 much out of repair, don't you know?" 
 
 This little glint of wit struck Mrs. Auchincloss as 
 ill-timed ; she did not even pay it the notice of a 
 smile." But Olivia did, and quickly afterwards she 
 said, glad to find a new theme of talk : 
 
 " The house is out of repair. If poor papa had 
 lived a little longer he would have done a great deal 
 for it, I am sure. That is, unless he had concluded to 
 move farther up-town. For we meant to stay in New 
 York this time." 
 
 "I think he would have concluded to move," said 
 Mrs. Auchincloss, in her modulated, flute-like tones. 
 " South Washington Square is no longer what it was." 
 
 " It is getting to be really dreadful, you know, my 
 dear," said Mrs. Sattei'thwaite. 
 
 "Dreadful?" faltered Olivia, with an involuntary 
 look at Mrs. Ottarson. 
 
 "It isn't as uppish as it was," declared Mrs. 
 Ottarson, chiefly addressing her niece. She had no 
 intention of remaining silent ; /silence, under any 
 circumstances, had never stood high among either 
 her virtues or her graces. >> " At least, that's what 
 they tell me. You see, 'Livia, Thompson Street's 
 close by, an' it's pretty much filled with colored 
 folks; and then there's some other queer neighbor- 
 hoods nearer still, and I guess some of 'em are really 
 awful, 'specially after dark. And I see there's one or 
 two lager-beer saloons an' billiard-halls crep' in on 
 this very block. It's a shame, but it's so. The 
 city will push up-town, what's best of it. Wy, my! 
 it's funny to see how the respectable class do go gal- 
 lopin' away from the lower end."
 
 30 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 She finished this little series of remarks with a com- 
 plete understanding that both of Olivia's guests would 
 receive it chillingly. She was prepared for their 
 drooped eyelids and the furtive glance that passed 
 between them. They thought her beneath them ; 
 of course they did. She didn't care for that, though. 
 She wasn't going to be "put down." She hadn't 
 wanted to stay in the room ; she had done so only 
 on "'Livia's" account. But now that she had staid, 
 she wouldn't sit with her tongue between her teeth, 
 like a fool. She had never done it since she was 
 born, and she guessed it was pretty late in the day 
 for a woman of her age to begin. 
 
 "Ah, well," said Olivia, shaking her head regret- 
 fully, " I suppose that is the way with all large cities, 
 Aunt Thyrza ; they outgrow themselves and leave a 
 kind of living past behind them. It is so with 
 Paris, I'm sure. Still, what I hear about this being 
 an undesirable quarter surprises me." (Here she 
 looked at her two other kinswomen.) "I've been 
 out so little since poor papa was first taken ill 
 and that, you know, was very soon after we got 
 home." 
 
 " But you can't be attached to the house, can you, 
 my dear Olivia?" said Mrs. Auchincloss, in her 
 suave, cooing tones. 
 
 "You have really lived here so little," supple* 
 mented Mrs. Satterthwaite. 
 
 "But it it somehow means New York to me," 
 stammered Olivia. "When here I have not once 
 lived anywhere else." 
 
 "Oh, never you mind, 'Livia," now broke in Mrs. 
 Ottarson. "A person that's got your means can find
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 31 
 
 other houses just as comftable and a good sight styl- 
 isher. I presume, ladies, you 'gree with me?" 
 
 The last sentence was lightly thrown, as it were, at 
 Mrs. Auchineloss and her sister. It cannot be said to 
 have taken them by surprise ; very little had ever done 
 that. But it made them both decide rather rapidly 
 to show its deliverer a freezing disregard. $ In all 
 the aristocratic circles of Christendom there are 
 women whom you could not more keenly insult 
 than by telling them they were not ladies, and yet 
 who unhesitatingly violate, in just this bloodless fash- 
 ion, the sweet and sane laws on which they would base 
 half their own title to superior respect. .,$ 
 
 But in the case of Mrs. Auchineloss and Mrs. Sat- 
 terthwaite the provocation to be crushingly uncivil 
 was not solely engendered by contact with a fellow- 
 creature held less cultured than themselves. I do 
 not deny their capability of dealing discountenance 
 for that and no more cogent reason. Still, they had 
 another greivance, just now, and one which had long 
 before loomed to them grimly formidable. 
 
 Their brother's marriage had always affected them 
 as a most execrable and even disgraceful proceeding. 
 They had been young wives when he had contracted 
 it ; they had thought it a shame then and they had 
 continued to think it so ever since. Of course the 
 position Olivia's mother had secured abroad was pal- 
 liating to their distress; but the connection remained. 
 They could not exactly have defined to you just what 
 they meant by the "connection," now that Abner 
 Jenks was dead and the Macdougal Street carpen- 
 ter-shop had vanished agreeably from its previous 
 detested site. They must have explained their pal-
 
 32 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 pable antipathy to the surviving ignominy of the 
 whole affair by reference to Mrs. Ottarson. There 
 were no other Jenks relatives whom they knew of. 
 But they knew of her ; they had forever kept her in 
 mind as a potential bugbear. She was a trial, so to 
 speak, that might befall them any day in the week, 
 any week in the month. They both stood before the 
 eyes of " society " in the colors of a magnificent 
 assumption. Naturally the misstep of their brother 
 was no social secret. But his madness had now be- 
 come a matter of the past ; his ill-born spouse was 
 dead ; time had in a sense dimmed that blot on the 
 Van Rensselaer 'scutcheon. Meanwhile they rose tout 
 en deliors to the world in which they shone as rulers. 
 Every concomitant of their mundane lives had for 
 years helped to swell the prestige of their splendid 
 exclusiveness. Their husbands, their children, their 
 households, their servants, their entertainments, their 
 equipages, their gowns, their very bonnets and boots, 
 had all contributed honorably, effectively, enviably and 
 modishly to the brilliancy of their urban elan. And 
 yet that woman, who could declare herself a kind of 
 sister-in-law, was keeping a boarding-house in the 
 same town with themselves. They could not forget 
 her; she haunted them. Once she had got into the 
 papers through a lawsuit between herself and an 
 abusive, insolent lodger. They had read the accounts 
 of her prosecution with guilty dread ; she was the rose- 
 leaf under their mattresses, and when one sleeps on 
 down, one probably pays the penalty of such nice 
 accommodation to a degree undreamed of by those 
 who stretch contented limbs on life's commoner 
 pallets of repose. We read of princesses and duch-
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 33 
 
 esses who pass their time in perfumed ease, without 
 pausing to think now and then that our own so-named 
 republican land can parallel these useless feminine 
 types. Still there was a disparity between the sis- 
 ters in their separate modes of asserting and preserv- 
 ing pre-eminence, and one worthy of the chronicler's 
 record. 
 
 Mrs. Archibald Auchincloss had never prided her- 
 self on being a beauty. But now, when past middle 
 life, she was tall, blonde, symmetrical, and of that vis- 
 age and complexion to which the fading wear of time 
 brings a false attractiveness. Those who had never 
 met her when she was a plain young woman now took 
 it for granted that she was a prettily dilapidated 
 elderly one ; for age became her, and its stealthy 
 ravages left only what seemed the memento of a face 
 that might easily have once been beautiful. It must 
 be allowed that she grew old with an extreme grace- 
 fulness. She had married unexceptionably well even 
 for a Van Rensselaer. Her husband was a lawyer of 
 such prominence that his intimacy with a certain 
 President now out of office had made his appoint- 
 ment to the Secretaryship of State seem at one time 
 highly probable. As it was, he remained a personage 
 of much distinction. He had never even joined any 
 New York club but the Centennial, a club that 
 assumed to be literary, artistic and intellectual, and 
 to treat with great scorn the Metropolitan, the Gram- 
 ercy and all other contemporaneous bodies of a like 
 character. Mrs. Auchincloss had borne her husband 
 two children, a son and a daughter, both still unmar- 
 ried. She always declared that she was not by any 
 means a fashionable woman ; her church and her
 
 34 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 church duties trenched too greatly on her time for 
 gay dissipations. And yet she kept upon her visiting- 
 book an eye of the closest attention. Her rigid con- 
 servatisms would have no concern with " new people." 
 It was for this reason that she had pleaded the 
 demands of her religion when asked to permit her 
 name to be placed among those of the lady patron- 
 esses of the Assembly balls. She could not endure 
 the idea of associating herself with the nobodies of 
 yesterday turned the nabobs of to-day. She went to 
 the Patriarchs and the Assemblies and the Cotillions, 
 with her svelte figure magnificently apparelled, and 
 her big, renowned pearls casting the lustre of delicate 
 illusion over a neck no worse for such adornment. 
 She took her daughter, Madeleine, to these and other 
 festivities, but it was somehow an accepted fact that 
 this young lady could not be made acquainted with 
 everybody. Of course no presentations were de- 
 clined ; that would have been a piece of lamentable 
 manners ; but there are variations of welcome, all the 
 way from one d, bras ouverts to one of the lifted eye- 
 brows and the pursed lips. In brief, Mrs. Auchincloss 
 was that rarity of rarities, a leader who maintained 
 supreme ascendency by refusing to lead. 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite lived in much greater splendor, 
 occupied a larger house, and having considerably more 
 wealth to spend, spent it with unrestricted extrava- 
 gance. Her husband, Bleecker Satterthwaite, was 
 one of the few thoroughly indolent men of fashion 
 whom the possession of from four to five millions 
 cannot succeed in making either a drunkard or a 
 gamester. Satterthwaite thought his brother-in-law, 
 Auchincloss, an unspeakable bore and prig. He did
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 35 
 
 not belong to the Centennial Club not he; it was 
 quite too full of those seedy fellows like artists and 
 authors to please his taste. He was a member of the 
 Metropolitan and Gramercy (and devilish respectable 
 clubs he thought them, too! ) besides the Jockey Club 
 and Coaching Club, in whose annual, slavishly Anglo- 
 maniacal parade he drove regularly each May. The 
 Satterthwaite progeny numbered five, three daughters 
 and two sons. Their great Fifth Avenue mansion 
 had been the scene of successive lavish and sumpt- 
 uous entertainments ever since the eldest girl, Emme- 
 line, had come out in society, and that was four 
 years ago. Each year they had given one ball, with 
 dinners and dances weeks before and after. It would 
 be impossible for any family to live in a greater whirl 
 of fashion. Even their youngest child, little Lulu, 
 aged ten, belonged to a dancing-class from which she 
 would return as late as nine o'clock in the evening, 
 
 O' 
 
 laden with flowers and favors from her juvenile Ger- 
 mans. Mrs. Satterthwaite was a leader who led in 
 good earnest. She had no "church duties," like her 
 sister. She would have been horrified if you had 
 called her irreligious ; she thought it abominable form 
 not to go to church as often as one could. As for 
 " new people," she accepted them unhesitatingly 
 whenever they were really lances and went about to 
 places. If they were not, and did not go, and wanted 
 her to help them, she would have a talk with her hus- 
 band on the subject and debate cold-bloodedly the 
 question of their wealth and the possibility of their 
 not casting disrepute on the Satterthwaite endorse- 
 ment. She was still young enough or estimated 
 herself so to dance at assemblages where there was
 
 36 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 not too overwhelming a horde of fresh debutantes. 
 She was still held to be passably nice-looking, too, 
 and gossip had not spared her its covert innuendo 
 while never touching her with the unsheathed sting of 
 its accusation. All in all, the two sistei'S mutually 
 disapproved of each other. But it was a rather peace- 
 ful contest, in which either family joined and in which 
 the Auchinclosses gained a silent perpetual victory. 
 The Satterthwaites knew very well that they had a 
 remarkably good tone ; but somehow the Auchin- 
 closses, who gave no large balls, and one dinner party 
 to their five, had distinctively a better tone. No open 
 enmity existed, and yet there was a certain bitter feel- 
 ing on both sides. 
 
 As regarded this abhorred relationship of Mrs. 
 Ottarson's, however, they met on warmly congenial 
 grounds. The sisters, in discussion together, had 
 called her "that horrible boarding-house woman" and 
 the fact that she had nursed their brother in his dying: 
 
 / O 
 
 hours had been to them a misery over which they 
 could mourn in faultlessly congenial unison. 
 
 " I presume, ladies, you agree with me," delivered 
 from so unpleasant a source as that of Mrs. Ottarson, 
 decided them in showing their most glacial uncon- 
 cern. They liked Olivia; they considered her excel- 
 lent style for so young a girl, and were prepared to 
 help her and stand by her as one of their blood and 
 race. They were deeply sorry that it had become 
 necessary to bear her a certain very miserable piece of 
 tidings. They had concluded, however, that she 
 must be summarily though discreetly told, and there- 
 fore the presence of Mrs. Ottarson doubtless kindled 
 the animosity which surely needed no additional fuel.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 37 
 
 Olivia saw the premeditated impertinence of their 
 demeanor. She did not intend that it should hurt her 
 aunt Thyrza by any prolonged sanction. " Oh, yes," 
 she soon said, " I am certain that I can find other 
 quarters, if this dear old house should prove unsatis- 
 factory. Why should I not do so ? " 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss stole a glance at her sister. This 
 kind of self-possession rang more like that of the typical 
 American girl than of the demoiselle reared as Olivia 
 had been among European surroundings. But they 
 had yet to learn how Ameiican their niece had man- 
 aged to keep herself, despite a life-time spent so largely 
 abroad. 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss coughed rather meaningly at this 
 point. " My dear Olivia,'' she said, " you touch upon 
 a matter that interests both your aunt Augusta and 
 myself." Then she coughed again, lower than before, 
 and proceeded : " I must say something to you now 
 which would perhaps seem a little brusque unless 
 unless the full necessity of its disclosure were kept in 
 mind. Your aunt Augusta and I have desired to speak 
 with you alone. We have thought it necessary to 
 do so. We have " 
 
 Here Mrs. Ottarson rose precipitately and brist- 
 lingly. "Alone, eh?" she broke forth. "W'y, there 
 can't be the least objection to that. I'll retire, 'Livia." 
 She was close at her niece's side now, and her cheeks 
 had taken a little flush that matched the excited glit- 
 tering of her eyes. 
 
 The next instant Olivia had risen too. She caught 
 her aunt's arm and exhorted very persuasively: "I 
 beg that you will remain ! I prefer you to hear what- 
 ever is said."
 
 38 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 " Olivia ! " broke from the lips of her two other 
 relatives, and not only in spontaneous exclamation, but 
 with an inflection of equal dismay on the part of both. 
 
 " Mrs. Ottarson Aunt Thyrza would be sure to 
 hear what you told me, whether you told it me alone 
 or in her company. She is my dear friend, and I am 
 more grateful to her than my heart can express." The 
 girl stood with one arm about Mrs. Ottarson's waist 
 now, and one hand clasping hers. In her black dross, 
 and with her wistful face and bright hair, she made a 
 picture of clinging tenderness and trust. But it was a 
 picture that apparently failed to charm the two ladies 
 who sat fronting it. 
 
 Mrs, Auchincloss never permitted herself to be 
 angry. She looked upon the loss of one's temper as 
 though it were something not wholly unlike the loss of 
 one's conscience. She always smiled when she con- 
 sidered herself justified in showing indignation ; it 
 was part of her self-disciplining creed to do so ; and 
 besides a smile broke up and softened certain hard, 
 tense-looking lines that would show themselves at 
 periods of mental disturbance on either side of her 
 slim, pink nose, slanting downward to the region of her 
 thin and rather frosty lips. 
 
 "Either I am mistaken, my dear," she said, "or 
 your gratitude is just now somewhat of a drawback to 
 your civility." Here Mrs. Satterthwaite gave a little 
 shrug of the shoulders and a satirical titter of laughter. 
 
 Mrs. Ottarson's face flushed deeper, till two spots of 
 color bloomed quite richly in the olive dusk of either 
 cheek ; you saw what a comely young creature she must 
 have been when her reprobate of a husband had fooled 
 her into marrying him years ago.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 39 
 
 " I guess you are mistaken," declared Mrs. Ottarson, 
 gazing straight at the superb eldest daughter of the 
 Van Rensselaer dynasty. "'Livia don't want to be 
 uncivil, ma'am. But if you'll excuse my sayin' so, it 
 looks a good deal more as if you wanted to be. I 
 jnean to me. You understand." 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss fluttered her eyelids and turned 
 with a gently despairing expression toward her sister, 
 as much as to ask, " How shall I deal with this barba- 
 rian?" 
 
 But immediately afterward Mrs. Ottarson went on : 
 " I'd ever so much rather leave this room. I haven't 
 got any curiosity to hear what you ladies are a-goin' to 
 say. But I'll stay if 'Livia wishes I should. I staid 
 when her father was sick to death for jus' that reason 
 she wished me to. I hadn't got as good a right to 
 nurse him, an' help him die easy, as you two very 
 el'gant folks had. But somehow or other I must 
 say it you wasn't on hand when you might 'a been. 
 You're his blood, and I ain't; I s'pose I'm what you'd 
 call no blood at all. But you didn't step up when the 
 time came. You called, an' you sent calve's-foot jelly, 
 an' grapes, an' things, and you looked mel'nc'olly when 
 you heard how bad he was, an' said ' oh,' an' ' ah,' an' 
 that was 'bout the whole o' what you did do. I s'pose 
 you ladies know your duty; I ain't tellin' you what it 
 ought to be. But my duty was near my dead sister's 
 child, an' I just stuck there. An' if I stick there now 
 'cause she asks me, I'd thank you to remember that it 
 is on that account an' no other. Our spWes, yours 
 an' mine, are pretty wide apart. I do' want to move 
 in yours any more 'n you want, I guess, to belong to 
 iiriue. But I ain't to be sat on, for all that."
 
 40 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 " Aunt Thyrza ! " cried Olivia, at this point, with a 
 very plain distress in her mien and voice, " it's of no 
 use to be angry. Sit down here beside me." She put 
 both arms about Mrs. Ottarson while she thus spoke, 
 and pushed the lady into a chair near the one from 
 which she herself had lately risen. Then she took a 
 seat close at her side. " Nobody has thought of treat- 
 ing you rudely." Her blue eyes were swimming in 
 tears now, as she turned toward her two visitors. 
 "Aunt Letitia, Aunt Augusta," she went on, tremu- 
 lously, " please blame me for everything. I know you 
 didn't mean to show this dear, kind friend of mine the 
 least impoliteness. I know . . ." 
 
 And then Olivia paused. Mrs. Auchincloss's face, 
 in its serene austerity, smote her, for it had quite for- 
 gotten its formulated smile ; and on the face of Mrs. 
 Satterthwaite, plumper, a trifle redder than her sister's, 
 and never without its claim to a kind of blemished but 
 assertive charm, had appeared the signs of languid, 
 sneering amusement. 
 
 "All this is really so very extraordinary," Mrs. 
 Satterthwaite now laughed, touching her long gloves 
 with either hand, as if to see that they were still 
 blamelessly adjusted. 
 
 "Extraordinary?" echoed her sister, and speaking 
 as if the words burnt her lips a little. " It is prepos- 
 terous ! " 
 
 In a certain way they were both quite right. If to 
 be angry is to be wrong, Mrs. Ottarson had wretch- 
 edly committed herself. Mrs. Auchincloss had the 
 power to defend her cause if she could be conceived 
 of as deigning to do so by the announcement that 
 she had taken the only admissible means of seeking a
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 41 
 
 private talk with her niece. Mrs. Ottarson's attack 
 was really the accumulated spleen of years and not 
 half or a quarter of ^it yet, either. She knew that 
 these women had scorned her sister and loathed the 
 tie which bound her to their brother. There had 
 never been any circumstance relating to this Van Rens- 
 selaer marriage that had not wakened either her regret 
 or her detestation, except one. That was Olivia. As 
 she looked now into the girl's worried, moistened eyes, 
 a thrill of repentance passed through her. "I was 
 mad," she whispered. " I kind o' lost my head. She 
 made me, 'Livia. I'll try not to again. But you 
 better let me leave. I'll just wait f you upstairs." 
 
 " No ; stay," said Olivia, also whispering. There 
 was something in the countenances of her two guests 
 
 O O 
 
 now that filled her with dread to remain alone beside 
 them. It would not have been so at all times; she 
 had inherent coolness, nerve, and courage, in ample 
 share ; but to-day her young soul had been brought 
 downward into that valley of the shadow whose gloom 
 must ever prove as keenly the repugnance of youth as 
 it is sometimes the refuge and relief of age. 
 
 " My dear child," began Mrs. Auchincloss, with a 
 douceur that seemed (as a witty Englishman once re- 
 marked of a contemporary's geniality) to be enam- 
 elled on iron, "we shall perhaps take a much wiser 
 course, your aunt Augusta and I, if we say nothing 
 whatever on the subject we had decided to discuss. 
 For myself, Olivia, I confess that I have possibly been 
 too hasty in alluding to it at all. And now let me ask your 
 pardon for doing so." It somehow did not appear as 
 if Mrs. Auchincloss were asking Olivia's pardon, or that 
 of any one else, while she thus spoke ; her last sen-
 
 42 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 tence implied nothing but the most superficial cere- 
 mony of phrasing. " It is an important question ; but 
 let it pass for the present." 
 
 Here Mrs. Satterthwaite rose, a little bustlingly and 
 imperiously, while her black draperies (in all respects 
 the kind of mourning which decorous millinery would 
 exact from a bereaved sister) disposed themselves to 
 advantage about her neat-moulded person. 
 
 " Yes," said that lady ; " let it pass for the present. 
 We will come and see you some other time, my dear, 
 when you are less engaged with your rather explosive 
 acquaintance there." 
 
 " Augusta ! " murmured Mrs. Auchincloss, with 
 great dignity, and a chiding intonation. 
 
 " I'm not an acquaintance, if you please," sped from 
 Mrs. Ottarson, even while Olivia was pressing her hand 
 as if in dumb entreaty to curb all irate repartee. " I'm 
 her mother's sister, an' quite as much her aunt as you 
 are. I'm a Jenks, or was, an' so was you a Van Rens- 
 selaer. You mustn't forget, though, that a Jenks once 
 married a Van Rensselaer. I dare say you'd like to, 
 ma'am, but you'll excuse me for remind in' you that 
 you mustn't. I ain't here as an acquaintance ; I'm 
 here as a blood-relation, just as you are." 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite looked at Mrs. Ottarson with a 
 plain curl of the lip now. She had not her sister's 
 equipoise. She had lost her temper a good many times 
 in her life, and she lost it then. 
 
 " What an insupportable person you are ! " she said, 
 with a drawl and a sneer. "You succeed in doing one 
 thing, and very successfully. You make me regret 
 more than I ever have regretted (and that is saying con- 
 siderable) that a Jenks did marry a Van Rensselaer."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 43 
 
 r 
 
 Olivia flung both arms round Mrs. Ottarson's neck. 
 " Don't don't answer, Aunt Tliyrza ! " she cried sup- 
 plicatingly. And Mrs. Ottarson did not. 
 
 "All right, 'Livia," she whispered. "Oh, pooh! 
 she don't rile me half as much as the other. I don't 
 mind spunk half as much as I do that s'castical, up-in- 
 the-clouds talk. I guess I can sit still ; I guess I can ; 
 I'll try, any way, for your sake. It'll be hard, but I'll 
 jus' grit my teeth an' try!" 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss had now risen. Both ladies went 
 toward the door, as if in act of departure. Olivia 
 gave Mrs. Ottarson one final pressure of the hand, and 
 then rose herself. 
 
 "Are you going?" she said flurriedly. "You 
 you spoke, Aunt Letitia, of of something impor- 
 tant. I I hope it does not concern poor papa, in 
 any manner." 
 
 " My dear," said Mrs. Auchincloss, " it concerns only 
 yourself, now." 
 
 "Myself?" repeated Olivia. "How?" 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss gave a sort of despairing sigh. 
 "We meant to put it all to you as gently as possible. 
 We meant, my dear, to tell you that we would always 
 be your helpers, your supporters, as far as we were 
 able. We only thought of mentioning it, on this most 
 sorrowful of days, because Mr. Delaplaine, your 
 father's late partner, urged and advised us to do so." 
 
 " I wouldn't say anything more, if I were you, just 
 now, Letitia," struck in Mrs. Satterthwaite, with a 
 haughty sidelong glance at Mrs. Ottarson, who still 
 remained seated. 
 
 Mrs. Ottarson had heard everything thus far. She 
 returned Mrs. Satterthwaite's glance with one that was
 
 44 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 comically hostile, because she so instantly dropped her 
 black, enkindled eyes after giving it, as if in forcedly 
 penitent recollection of her promise to Olivia. And 
 then she heard Mrs. Auchincloss continue speaking 
 with her niece, but could make out nothing of what 
 that lady said, for the reason that the latter spoke in 
 so low a tone. The converse seemed to last quite a 
 while ; occasionally Mrs. Satterthwaite would put in 
 a word, but her voice was equally inaudible. 
 
 Mrs. Ottarson made no attempt to listen. Her anger 
 had died, as it always did die, rapidly. But her curi- 
 osity was now aflame. She sat wondering what this 
 mysteiious converse meant. But she would have lost 
 a finger rather than show the slightest sign of any- 
 thing but placid indifference to its progress or sig- 
 nificance. 
 
 Presently the ladies withdrew from Olivia. Thus 
 far she had not seen her niece's face ; but now, as Mrs. 
 Auchincloss and Mrs. Satterthwaite swept quietly 
 across the threshold of the drawing-room, Olivia turned 
 and hurried in her own direction. 
 
 In an instant she saw how terribly pale the girl had 
 grown. 
 
 " 'Livia ! " she cried, starting up from her chair. 
 " What is it ? What have they said to you ? " 
 
 But Olivia, too evidently, could not answer in the 
 desired way. " Oh, Aunt Thyrza," she exclaimed, " it 
 is too horrible ! " And then with a white, forlorn, 
 stricken look, she flung herself upon the breast of her 
 companion, bursting into a torrent of woful sobs.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 45 
 
 m. 
 
 IT was some little time before Olivia regained 
 her self-control. Meanwhile Mrs. Ottarson had drawn 
 her to a sofa and had used upon her arts of so volu- 
 bly and naturally soothing a sort that if her wretched- 
 ness had not been severe as it was, the girl might have 
 broken into laughter at some of the endearing diminu- 
 tives by which she now heard herself addressed. 
 When her tears had ceased to flow she sat with quiv- 
 ering underlip and stared straight before her. She 
 seemed to be asking some silent question of the future's 
 very silence. Mrs. Ottarson, stirred more by this 
 mood than by the stormier one, at length showed her 
 own suspenseful alarm. 
 
 " My sakes alive, 'Livia ! if you don't jus' want to 
 drive me clean out o' my seven senses you'll let me 
 know what is the matter." 
 
 And then Olivia gave a start, turning again to her 
 aunt, " I must have frightened you so, Aunt Thyrza," 
 she said tremulously. "It was selfish of me. I should 
 recollect how your nerves and strength have been tried 
 far more than mine, with those many nights of 
 watching." 
 
 " O, bosh," said Mrs. Ottarson, roughly intolerant of 
 being over-valued. "I'm as strong as a horse, and 
 never had a nerve in my life. Now do tell me what 
 the trouble is. It's something those two said, of 
 course."
 
 46 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 "Yes," answered Olivia. 
 
 There was a little more silence, and then she impet- 
 uously cried : " Think of it, Aunt Thyrza ! Papa has 
 left nothing or it's even less than that ! Mr. Dela- 
 plaine had for years been warning him, they say, that 
 he was over-spending his income. And finally his 
 partner had written him a letter, very direct and plain, 
 which brought us back to America for the last time. 
 I recollect the letter. It came to us last August when 
 we were at Zermatt. It made papa almost ill ; his dis- 
 ease was beginning then, and he could no longer bear 
 a shock without showing it. He said it was not the 
 letter, but I always had my doubts. In October we 
 crossed again, coming to this house as usual. There 
 was a very long interview, I cleai'ly recall, between Mr. 
 Delaplaine and my father on the first evening after our 
 arrival ; but I am nearly sure there was no quarrel. 
 Still a coldness, I think, sprang up between them from 
 that time. And I suspected so little what the real 
 difficulty was! Through three months or so, until he 
 was taken ill, papa went very often to his office in 
 Wall Street. Sometimes he would look miserably 
 weary and disturbed when he came back. Everything 
 was lost, Aunt Thyrza everything! And I never 
 dreamed he was in the midst of such misfortune. I 
 believe this will be my chief sorrow hereafter that 
 he suffered so without my knowing it. Of course, 
 just now, it almost takes my breath away to think of 
 myself of what I am going to do of the little I 
 actually can do. It has come so suddenly. They 
 assure me there is nothing left papa has spent it all. 
 He kept over-drawing and over-drawing. He never 
 had the least regard for money I had often noticed
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 47 
 
 that in him. My aunts say that for years he continued 
 to answer Mr. Delaplaine in the most hopeful terms. 
 He had spent great sums while mamma was alive ; he 
 had thrown thousands away. But he insisted that 
 the success of the banking-house would hereafter mend 
 his fortunes. Then he began to borrow of his partner. 
 All might have gone well, even then, if he had not 
 taken to gambling." 
 
 "Gambling?" echoed Mrs. Ottarson. Her idea 
 of a man who gambles was essentially a New York 
 one. She swiftly had a vision of personages with 
 dyed black moustaches and exorbitant gold watch- 
 chains, who haunted the stoops of certain semi-repu- 
 table hotels, who drove in "sulkies" behind fast 
 trotting-horses, who hung about the gilded bar-room 
 of the old St. Nicholas, on what was once central 
 Broadway, and who prowled at night to clandestine 
 gaming-dens in the gloom of Crosby Street and similar 
 uncanny purlieus, where they swindled credulous vic- 
 tims at poker or faro. " Gambling ! " she repeated. 
 "Oh, no, 'Livia. It can't be true of your father, 
 dear ! He was always too high-toned for that kind o' 
 thing!" 
 
 Olivia gave a dreary smile. " So many gentlemen 
 gamble abroad," she said, "and papa did it. It all 
 comes back to me now. I was with him for several 
 weeks, three years ago, at Monaco and Monte Cai-lo. 
 I never thought it even strange, then, that he should 
 play; hundreds of others played, his friends and ac- 
 quaintances. But I realize now that it was a vice 
 with him." She drooped her head, for an instant, and 
 pressed both hands against her eyes. They were quite 
 tearless eyes when she again revealed them, but they
 
 48 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 shone with a dry, hard light from her sweet, pale face. 
 " Oh, there is no use, Aunt Thyrza," she went on, " of 
 my disguising the truth to myself. Aunt Letitia and 
 Aunt Augusta came with a kindly enough motive. 
 You don't like them neither do I. But they meant 
 to prepare me for the very worst as gently as they 
 could. Perhaps they'd have done it more gently still, 
 if you hadn't . . . But never mind. Don't think that 
 I blame you, for I do not. Mr. Delaplaine is corning 
 to see me this evening, and they would have me meet 
 him with some knowledge of what he would say. They 
 were quite right; give them their due, Aunt Thyrza.'' 
 
 "And he's a rich man, ain't he, 'Livia?" 
 
 " Oh, I suppose so. Papa is in his debt for I don't 
 know how much." 
 
 " Well, he won't mind that now, of course. He'll 
 make some proposal about . . . settling matters ; of 
 course he will. He'll tell you just how things are, 
 and then " 
 
 Olivia gave an interrupting laugh, so sharp and 
 bitter that it sounded like the travesty of mirth. 
 "And then?" she exclaimed. "What then, if you 
 please? This very house we are in belongs to him, 
 my aunts say. How can there be any settling of 
 matters? If he chooses to help me for a little while 
 until I've something to do for my own living, that is 
 his own affair. But to accept permanent help from 
 him or from anybody!" Here Olivia rose, and a 
 great pride, at work in her young spirit, gave new 
 firmness to the line of her delicate lips. "As long as 
 my health lasts I shall never be a burden like that." 
 She shivered suddenly, as though a rush of cold air 
 had struck her, and looked to right and left with the
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 49 
 
 mixed bewilderment and rebellion of a bird that for 
 the first time finds itself caged. That new, captive 
 sense was upon her that feeling of having been 
 abruptly tripped into a pitfall by destiny which may 
 rouse just such an involuntary gesture of would-be 
 escape. " Oh," she burst forth, " how can I ever get 
 familiar with the change of it all! Aunt Thyrza, I 
 think I know something, now, of the way people feel 
 in an earthquake. The one support goes to pieces 
 that they've forgotten even to trust ; trusting it has 
 grown like breathing. I never could conceive of my- 
 self as poor, somehow. I've pitied others often enough, 
 but there seemed always a great gulf between their 
 calamity and my secure state. Want and I seemed 
 not born to meet in this world. Ah, how differently 
 it has turned out ! " 
 
 "If I only had a home fit for one like you are to come 
 to it ! " Mrs. Ottarson sighed. " But I'm 'fraid things 
 would never suit you, 'Livia, up there to my boarding- 
 house." Here a very perturbed frown appeared on 
 the speaker's forehead. "La's a-mercy me! What 
 can you do for a livin', dear? You ain't handy at 
 your needle, much ; besides, that's a dog's life. And 
 teachin'? Well, that isn't much better, I guess." 
 
 "That must be my fate, I suppose," said Olivia, 
 solemnly. "I shall have to teach. Some of those 
 fine relations of mine ought to assist me, there. If it 
 were only giving French lessons! I'm sure I could 
 do that ; I know the language so thoroughly ; it 
 would be strange if I didn't. Just before I left 
 boarding-school, one of the principal teachers said to 
 me that there was no difference between my accent 
 and that of the French pupils."
 
 50 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 Never was the marvellous buoyancy of the youthful 
 mind and heart more abundantly evidenced than now. 
 Indeed, it would sometimes seem as if youth and 
 health, when once fairly commingled, might make a 
 talisman wherewith to resist the fiercest assaults of 
 disaster. Already Olivia's eyes harbored a gleeful 
 sparkle as she slipped back to the side of her aunt. 
 
 " I can't bear to hear you talk so ! " cried the latter. 
 " Th' idea, 'Livia, of you teachin' ! W'y, the Auchin- 
 closses and Satterthwaites, an' all the rest of 'em, 
 ought to feel proud " 
 
 "I know what you're going to say," broke in Olivia, 
 and not with the meekest of tones. " And I pray 
 you'll not even suggest it." . 
 
 " Well, then, there's Mr. Delaplaine, deary. He 
 was always a friend o' your pa's, bein' his pardner. 
 He ought to do something. Oh, I guess he will." 
 
 " I don't know what he will have it in his power to 
 do, Aunt Thyrza." 
 
 " Oh, in these cases I dare say there's pretty much 
 always some money sort o' layin' 'round. I mean 
 something might be his takin's or your pa's leavin's, 
 whichever way he chose to fix it." 
 
 Olivia looked at her aunt as though this rather curi- 
 ous view indicated a subtlety of monetary arrange- 
 ment quite baffling to her own perceptions. 
 
 "If Mr. Delaplaine offered to give me any money," 
 she said, " I should refuse it ; for that would mean 
 simply charity, and I will not live on anybody's char- 
 ity except my own." She meant the words with such a 
 splendid sincerity, then ! Already the first unnerved 
 and stunned sensation had passed, with her. 
 
 The world had not tamed her yet, and she even felt
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAISE. 51 
 
 at this early hour a faint thrill of that challenge to its 
 taming tendencies which few but the really strong 
 natures ever feel. Olivia had been thought a marvel 
 of determination and character while at school. It 
 was indeed strange to see how her American brain 
 and temperament told there. Not that she was un- 
 conventional. The niceties and elegancies, in her 
 case, had rather to be nourished than acquired. Her 
 poor dead mother may have been the daughter of a 
 carpenter, but she had died between costlier panellings 
 than Abner Jenks would have known how to con- 
 struct, and all the child's infancy had drifted through 
 experiences clement and soothing as the most faithful 
 attendance could make them. From whatever source 
 the money came whether from the gaming-tables of 
 European watering-places or from the indulgent con- 
 cession of Spencer Delaplaine's coffers, Olivia had 
 been reared by its magical assistance with as much 
 quiet fastidiousness as though she had been a little 
 princess of the blood. 
 
 But some hereditary trait of independence and self- 
 reliance had early revealed itself as her dower. At 
 the pension she was never like the other girls; she 
 would sometimes laughingly say to her teachers that 
 the lack of reserve and repose for which they chided 
 her was a result of certain influences exerted by her 
 first governess, who had been an American lady hotly 
 resenting an enforced expatriation. But this lady, 
 who adored her own country and never had enough 
 scorn to pour upon what she denounced as the shame- 
 ful restrictions and repressions brought to bear upon 
 all foreign damsels, could not have done more than 
 encourage and vivify in Olivia attributes which
 
 52 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 merely waited the summons of her tuition and coun- 
 sel. Those repeated visits to New York with her 
 father had strenuously influenced, as well, the mould- 
 ing of a personality destined for what alien censors 
 of etiquette esteemed over-assertive and even un- 
 maidenly. Olivia had always insisted upon the un- 
 manageable posture of having personal opinions. She 
 revolted against any compulsory retirement into back- 
 grounds. There had never been the least use in tell- 
 ing her that she spoke with too loud a tone, that she 
 was guilty of indecorous enthusiasms, that she violated 
 this or that dictum of recognized restraint. For 
 seven or eight years before her final trip to America 
 she had resented the slightest slur cast upon the 
 country which she exulted in calling her own. She 
 inflexibly championized the United States,^and not 
 seldom with an ardor that roused enmity and dislike 
 in her classmates. 
 
 It would be hard to explain what this proclivity 
 meant if heredity were not really at the root of it. 
 Her father's distinct patriotism may have largely 
 helped its development. There is often a kind of odd 
 pathos in the love cherished for their native land by 
 exiled Americans who have deliberately concluded to 
 dwell elsewhere. Houston Van Rensselaer not seldom 
 talked in a loving strain about the superior govern- 
 ment and institutions of " the other side " which his 
 close preferred proximity to the Arc de Triomphe or 
 to the Nelson monument in Trafalgar Square might 
 have caused a bloodless listener to condemn as rather 
 triflingly sentimental. No doubt Olivia, from the 
 most plastic periods of her childhood, had been im- 
 pressed by just this inconsistent fervor of discourse.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLA1NE. 53 
 
 But whether or no her father and the chronicled 
 Europe-hating governess both proved, in a measure, 
 sti'ong incident forces upon her younger life, it is 
 certain that her Americanism continued permanent 
 and paramount. Altogether, she was by no means 
 unpopular among her classmates. She had the gift of 
 swaying them by her advice or suggestion, and just 
 before she left for these shores, crowned with no mean 
 academic honors, both instructors and co-disciples 
 equally conceded of her that she bore the mental 
 birth-mark of a vivid though perhaps dangerous origi- 
 nality. 
 
 She was a girl of whom those who knew her best, 
 in her days of pupilage, and at the same time cared 
 most for her welfare, would prophesy not a few of the 
 future miseries that one's own error and weakness will 
 engender. She had a monitory conscience enough ; 
 her moral atmosphere was visited by no misleading 
 twilights ; wrong was detestable to her from every 
 abstract mode of regarding it. But there had been 
 occasions in her brief life when the imp of the per- 
 verse had successfully prevailed with her. By esca- 
 pades of mischievous audacity she had made the 
 tranquil pension quake to its very centime ; but these 
 contumacious freaks had always ended in moods of 
 passionate repentance, and in eager ascetic craving for 
 punishment more rigorous than that which she re- 
 ceived. " She has in her the stuff for a true devote" 
 
 would muse Madame Z , her principal instructress, 
 
 who was herself a fervent Catholic. " If she once 
 gained the mastery over those wicked inclinations, 
 there would be a penitential surrender of self that 
 means just the right state of soul for the real zealot."
 
 54 OLIVIA DELAPLAINK 
 
 But Olivia lacked what is called the religious disposi- 
 tion. She would never have made an exemplary nun, 
 any more than she would have made a confirmed 
 scoffer. Reverence was as little a part of her being 
 as impiety. The dubious and questioning bent of this 
 remarkable century had not escaped her expanding 
 intellect, since all the orthodoxy of her boarding- 
 school encompassment had been constantly antago- 
 nized, so to speak, by long talks during vacations 
 with her father, never a man to treat deferentially the 
 "accepted" theologic codes. "I sometimes think, 
 papa," Olivia had said to him during one of their con- 
 versations, " that I must have had a thoroughly evil 
 person for an ancestor. He or she belonged either to 
 mamma's people or to yours ; I can't, of course, even 
 speculate on that point. But I've had the conviction 
 that there's some such reason for my occasional bad 
 seizures." 
 
 Houston Van Rensselaer laughed at this theory as 
 something prettily droll in a girl of sixteen. He 
 had judged what Ids daughter had remorsefully con- 
 fided to him as her diablerie to be the amusing com- 
 punction of an over-sensitive young casuist. He 
 forgot how much her very mannerisms of speech 
 had been borrowed from his own carelessly clever 
 way of putting things, and he was wholly ignorant 
 of how unconsciously but accurately she reproduced 
 many of his indolent, daring views when once more 
 reinstated among guardians whom these could not fail 
 to shock. 
 
 "I've no doubt, my dear," he had answered, "that 
 you could go back on both sides to all sorts of repro- 
 bates, male and female. But it's quite idle to think
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 55 
 
 about that. When you get older, you'll wake up to 
 the fact of how blen elevee you really are. Then it 
 will be high time to Aveigh the advisability of never 
 forsaking your present standard." 
 
 " But, papa, you don't understand," Olivia had ob- 
 jected. " I'm not speaking of what I've been taught. 
 I mean a kind of headstrong wish, now and then', to 
 do what I've been taught is awfully wrong." 
 
 Her father laughed away this protest as the merest 
 bagatelle of -hair-splitting scrupulosity. " Girls of your 
 age," he told his daughter, " often get morbidly moral. 
 It never does much harm, I suppose. It's like the 
 stir of the sap in the virgin bud. They fancy them- 
 selves possible sinners because they begin to realize 
 what a sinful world they've been born into. If a 
 snow-flake, dropping from the sky into a dirty city, 
 like this huge Paris we're in at present, could think 
 and speak, I've no doubt it would express itself very 
 much as you are doing now." 
 
 But Olivia was not at all satisfied with this light 
 dismissal of her confession. She insisted on gauging 
 her own faultiness at just what she estimated its true 
 range of demerit. There were times when she grew 
 to consider her acknowledged demon as a very trac- 
 table persecutor; he would lie so pleasantly dormant 
 for days at a time. It was not that her wrong-doing 
 ever greatly passed the bounds of roguery and prank- 
 someness, though it was not always exempt from the 
 ire and spite of vengeful intention. What troubled 
 Olivia about her own peccadilloes had far less to do 
 with an exaggeration of their importance than with 
 the fact that she committed them while cleai'ly con- 
 scious of just what dagger-points of coming remorse
 
 56 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 she was sharpening for herself by the process. " There 
 comes a kind of vogue-la-galre feeling with me," she 
 once explained to a fellow-scholar. " I resist it, and 
 then well, then I don't resist it, and that's all. But 
 I could if I wanted ; there's always this painful arri&re 
 pensee : I could and I didn't." 
 
 "But do you really try with all your might and 
 main, Olivia?" asked her companion, who was a tall, 
 lithe, overgrown lily of an English girl, with a face 
 like St. Cecilia's, and big brown, pleading eyes. 
 
 "I do till the last moment," said Olivia dryly. 
 " It's that last moment that makes me knock under," 
 she added, with a rueful shake of the head, having 
 borrowed unawai-e one of her father's pet phrases. 
 
 Absolute " young-ladyhood " dropped the mantle of 
 dignity over her before she left the pension, and mis- 
 chief of every sort became a diversion vetoed by 
 pride. Olivia would now and then have a chilly little 
 presentiment lest the vicious part of her composition 
 were not so successfully tranquillized as it seemed. If 
 the demon ever should rise again, he would have other 
 weightier misdeeds to concern himself with than 
 schoolgirlish capers. " Well," Olivia meditated once, 
 not long after she had been graduated into freedom 
 and leisure, "I can only hope that now I am old and 
 grown-up, I shall be lucky enough to escape tempta- 
 tion. Without temptation as an assailant, it would be 
 pretty hard for a girl like me, I should say, not to 
 keep her self-respect unblemished." 
 
 Later on, this question of temptation assumed for 
 her a strange and gloomy attractiveness. Her father 
 had rarely exercised any heedful supervision over her 
 reading. During the intervals of relaxation from
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAIXE. 57 
 
 study he had not precisely let her read what she 
 chose, but he had been much less restrictive on this 
 point than many less loving parents might have 
 proved. And now, when her stay at the seminary was 
 ended, he conceded a still wider latitude of choice. 
 It was then that she found herself selecting books 
 (whenever she could light on them) which dealt with 
 the careers of those who had disappointed high ex- 
 pectations entertained by their friends and admirers, 
 who had forsaken their own ideals of conduct either 
 feebly or wantonly, who had fallen from grace, who 
 had bartered for a mess of pottage the golden birth- 
 right allotted by circumstance. She incessantly put 
 herself in the places of these unfortunate human fail- 
 ures. "How would I have behaved," she ceaselessly 
 asked herself, " if I had been situated just as this or 
 that character was ? " 
 
 The world that she was to dwell in, and that she 
 hoped to shine in, spread before her like a delightful 
 un ventured country before a traveller who has just 
 reached it along not a few wearisome preparatory 
 leagues. She wanted to live her life duteously and 
 nobly. She had said this again and again to her half- 
 amused, half-admiring father during the last healthful 
 
 ' ~ O 
 
 months of his existence ; she had said it more than 
 once, while he lay ill in Washington Square, to the 
 aunt whose unforeseen kindliness and fortitude had 
 waked in her such a warmth of thankful love. Mrs. 
 Ottarson had thought it just such a desire and resolve 
 as a girl of her fine calibre would be visited by. But 
 Olivia had not at all meant it in that way. She soon 
 decided that her aunt Thyrza was incapable of follow- 
 ing her lines of reflection and analysis. The fears
 
 58 OLIVIA VELAPLAINE. 
 
 that she perpetually fostered regarding herself would 
 have seemed ludicrous to a nature at once as strong and 
 as simple as Mrs. Ottarson's. She would have thought 
 this whole matter of self-distrust quite as nonsensical 
 as Van Rensselaer had done ; but she would have 
 lacked her brother-in-law's acumen and mental training 
 in the discussion of it. 
 
 And so, during those dreary days that preceded her 
 father's death, while she watched for the shadow that 
 had entered the still old house to gradually grow 
 blacker and more portentous, Olivia fell to brooding 
 upon all the chances which might await her of wisely, 
 honorably and capably husbanding what was truest, 
 sweetest and most wholesome in her own discerned 
 individuality. And it was now, when the dolorous 
 task which engaged her made this introspective office 
 take a more appropriate coloring, that she assured 
 herself how fecund were the opportunities within her 
 reach. She would be rich ; she was what a good 
 many of her countrypeople would insist upon calling 
 an aristocrat by birth ; she had been carefully educa- 
 ted ; she could not fail of holding an influential 
 position. How would she use these rare advantages ? 
 Ah, how preciously could she use them ! The types 
 already presented to her by Mrs. Auchincloss and 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite were despicable for their narrow- 
 ness and egotism. Would not she do more and be 
 more than these two servile devotees of sham and 
 aiTogance had done and been? 
 
 The sudden blow that had fallen upon her produced 
 a disarray far stronger in meaning than that mere 
 ebullition of hopeful vivacity with which we have last 
 seen her rally under so distressing a threat. Mrs.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 59 
 
 Ottavson's bluff and homely sympathies were welcome 
 because of their invaluably genuine quality. But after 
 an hour or two Olivia fled even from those, and locked 
 herself in her own room upstairs, to try, as she told 
 her aunt, if she could not get a little sleep before Mr. 
 Delaplaine called upon her. She got no sleep, how- 
 ever, and courted none. She lay down, and the rest 
 of body composed her quivering nerves, perhaps, while 
 she grew almost unexplainably anxious to hear what 
 her father's late partner would really have to say. 
 Her aunts had told her that he felt the greatest hesita- 
 tion about personally mentioning to her the subject of 
 her dead parent's financial ruin. But it had somehow 
 been one of the traditions of her childhood that he 
 was an exceedingly able person. Her father had 
 always led her to believe this, and her first thrill of 
 irreverent disrespect for him had occurred during those 
 meetings of theirs after the miserable days of death- 
 bed anxiety had begun, when his frigid self-continence, 
 his impenetrable stolidity had repelled and disillu- 
 sioned her. Still, she now forlornly argued, he might 
 come with the suggestion of some grateful and memo- 
 rable expedient. Why not? He might have recog- 
 nized that in spite of shattered patrimony, she was 
 not one of those who would accept the tame concilia- 
 tion, the galling peace-treaty of a proffered assistance. 
 There might be likelihood that he would arrive 
 equipped, as it were, with some proposition at once 
 uncondescending and feasible. 
 
 " It will not be fair to let you remain here after 
 to-night," Olivia told Mrs. Ottarson, while they were 
 seated at dinner, that same evening, in the large, bleak 
 dining-room below stairs.
 
 60 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 "Oh, you jus' hush, 'Livia," retorted her aunt; "I'll 
 stay 's long 's ever I want to ; there ! 'Taint a soul's 
 business but mine ; 'taint even yours." 
 
 "It's your boarders' business," murmured Olivia, 
 looking round at thi'ee more family portraits, all of 
 them with colorless faces that gleamed from a density 
 of dark paint, and all bordered by tarnished gilt 
 frames hardly a finger wide. " I hate to think of your 
 goodness bringing any loss to you. I fear it has done 
 so already. But, aunt," the girl went on, "I will 
 promise, if you go to-morrow, to go with you. Yes, I 
 will promise to go." 
 
 "An' stay?" faltered Mrs. Ottarson. Nothing 
 could have given her greater delight, now that the 
 tremendous change in her niece's prospects had pre- 
 sented itself, than to retain Olivia under her protec- 
 tion till death (or only marriage, perhaps) dissolved 
 this desirable arrangement. " You don't mean to 
 stay, do you, 'Livia?" 
 
 " For a little while," said the girl, smiling. " Until I 
 can begin my fight with fortune, you know." 
 
 Her smile had the light of tears in it ; at least, 
 Mrs. Ottarson saw it thus. But she shrugged her 
 plump shoulders, and tried to speak cheerfully. 
 " Well, if you should go into any such fight, dear, an' 
 get regular beat at it, y' know, there'll always be me, 
 openin' my arms to take you in." . . . Here Mrs. 
 Ottarson gave a most spirited start, dropping both 
 knife and fork on her plate with a resonant clash. 
 " W'y, 'Liv i a!" she slowly gasped, staring across 
 the little round table at which they sat opposite one 
 another. " Th' idea of my not thinkin' of 't 'fore now ! 
 Th'i deal"
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 61 
 
 "Well?" said Olivia. She perfectly understood 
 that this violent yet unsolved consternation on her 
 aunt's part meant no trivial fancy. A concept of 
 moment must underlie it, or she would never have 
 dedicated to it so asthmatic an intonation or so be- 
 wildered a grimace. " Well, Aunt Thyrza, what dis- 
 covery have you made ? " 
 
 " Discov'ry, 'Livia ? W'y, it's just bursted on me! 
 'Xcuse the word 'bursted'; it isn't extra s'lect, I 
 know ; but I can't help it." 
 
 "I don't object to it," said Olivia. She felt confi- 
 dent enough that there was to be no groaning of a 
 mountain over the birth of a mouse. She knew how 
 unexplosively her friend could act when firmness and 
 serenity were required of her, and she had the fullest 
 certainty that no trifling disclosure, at this hour of her 
 own mingled bereavement and perplexity, would be 
 invested with idle pretensions. " But I should like 
 to know," she proceeded, "why you are so im- 
 mensely concerned without a minute's warning 
 really I should." 
 
 " Well, dear, you shall know." Mrs. Ottarson now 
 spoke with an emphatic deliberation. " It's this. 
 There's Ida Strang. You've often heard me talk 'bout 
 Ida. 'Course you have." 
 
 "Ida Strang? Oh, yes. I've seen her, too, once 
 or twice. She came here to speak with you about 
 matters that related to " 
 
 " My establishment," broke in Mrs. Ottarson. She 
 looked round to see if the waitress had left the dining- 
 room, and found that this was the case. If she and 
 her niece had not been alone together, she would have 
 preferred that Bridget should hear the word " estab-
 
 62 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 lishment" instead of " boarding-house." But she 
 satisfied herself that Bridget was gone a fact whose 
 weight had until now quite escaped her consideration. 
 " Or my boardin'-house, if you please," she added 
 lightly, as if ashamed of her recent obvious feint. 
 "Yes, I rec'lect you have seen Ida. Well, as I've 
 told you, she's a kind of upper help, an' yet she holds 
 herself higher than any help I've got, by a good sight. 
 She 'tends to things I can't 'tend to. She sees that 
 the girls fix the rooms jus' so, an' she mends a little, 
 an' she keep an eye on the bed-clo'es an' piller-cases, 
 an' she stays in an' kind o' bosses things when I go t' 
 market, an' oh, dear, 'Livia, I can't begin to 'numer- 
 ate what that girl does do. But mind, she ain't really 
 help, nor never was. Her folks are very genteel ; they 
 live East ; it ain't far from Boston. She always eats 
 her meals with me. She's been good as gold while 
 I've been away. She 'pears to suit splendid. Of 
 course the boarders 's missed my cfeserts. But they've 
 et what Ida an' Cook together could knock up f'r 'em, 
 an' no grumblin' that Pve heard of. Oh, Ida 'd 'a 
 told me if there had been. An' now she's goin' to be 
 married. Yes, I got her letter yesterday. If 't 
 'a come 't any other time I'd 'a been in a fluster 
 'bout it. But yesterday ! Why, you, know ! . . . 
 She'd first met him East. He's got a place here 
 in a clothin' store, ready-made, but first-class of its 
 kind. They're goin' to live in a flat, somewheres up- 
 town, an' . . . well, it all 'mounts to this Ida's got 
 to go." Here the solemnity of Mrs. Ottarson's face 
 became tragic. "'Livia!" she exclaimed, in a voice 
 that rang with the deepest and truest feeling, "I'm 
 givin' Ida Strang twenty dollars a month, Of course
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 63 
 
 that means board, an' well, I was goin' to speak 
 'bout her appetite, but now 's no time f that kind o' 
 talk; is it? Still, eat! I never did see a girl that 
 put away like . . . But, oh, 'Livia, if any one had 
 told me this mornin' I should be makin' such a pro- 
 posal t' you, I'd 'a laughed in their face f'r a fool o' the 
 first water. An' yet you say you will get your own 
 livin', an' you say yes, you have said that you 
 love y'r aunt Thyrzy, faults an' all, an' w'y isn't it 
 better t' come to me like that than t' go as gov'ness in 
 some stuck-up family that would chuckle behind your 
 back jus' t' see one o' your kind brought down. 'T 
 isn't bein' a servant, 'Livia, mind. Don't look like 
 that ! 's if you wanted t' scold me. I'll take it all 
 back if it bothers you. I'll " 
 
 "You sha'n't take a word of it back, you darling!" 
 cried Olivia, as she sprang from her chair, rounded 
 the slio-ht curve of the dining-table, and threw both 
 
 O O ' 
 
 arms about her aunt's neck. " I'll go to you gladly 
 that way ! I'll take Ida Strang's place with all my 
 heart. If you made me your servant, I shouldn't care, 
 so long as you paid me my wages for honest work ! " 
 
 "'Livia! Don't!" 
 
 " Yes, I will ! You know I'm proud, aunt, but I'd 
 hate myself if I dreamed of being proud to you ! " 
 She kissed her aunt's olive cheek again and again, and 
 her tears began to flow as she did so, and no doubt 
 they mixed with Mrs. Ottarson's, which had surely 
 started too. " I'll meet Mr. Delaplaine (when he 
 comes this evening), oh, so bravely now ! After all 
 you've done for papa and me, I should hate myself if 
 I thought there was the least shame in earning my 
 living in your house and at your side ! "
 
 64 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 Here Olivia drew backward from her aunt, who was 
 still seated. She let a hand remain on either of that 
 lady's shoulders. " Oh," cried the girl, with untold 
 thankfulness in her breaking voice, " you've you've 
 taken such a load from me ! I'll stay with you always ! 
 I'll be Ida Strang I'll try very hard to be more I 
 I will, truly ! " 
 
 " Pooh ! " cried Mrs. Ottarson, springing from her 
 chair and snatching Olivia again to her breast. " 'S if 
 you, my dead sister's only child, couldn't be a million 
 times more ! I jus' guess you could ! "
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 65 
 
 IV. 
 
 MR. SPENCER DELAPLAINE made his appearance at 
 about eight o'clock that same evening. Olivia was in 
 perfect readiness to receive him. She looked pale as 
 she entered the spacious, uncompanionable drawing- 
 room, which had the doleful feature of somehow never 
 seeming as if it were thoroughly lighted, no matter 
 how many of the gas-jets in its cumbrous chandelier 
 were made to shoot forth flame from the pinkish 
 tulip-like shades. Perhaps the girl's black robe caused 
 her to appear paler than she really was, but it brought 
 out, at the same time, a cameo-like refinement of profile 
 which might otherwise have eluded the more listless 
 gaze. Mr. Delaplaine's gaze did not show any listless 
 sign as he shook hands with her, gray and cold though 
 his eye gleamed to the rather timid glance that now 
 met it. 
 
 Olivia had her opening speech, as it were, prepared. 
 She felt so reassured and placidly exultant since the 
 recent conference with her aunt that possibly no real 
 timidity possessed her ; and certainly she revealed 
 none, as she now said, sinking into a chair while her 
 visitor reseated himself : 
 
 "The flowers you sent this morning were very 
 beautiful, Mr. Delaplaine ! Poor papa always loved 
 flowers. It was most kind and thoughtful of you to 
 send him such charming ones." 
 
 Mr. Delaplaine had dropped his eyes toward the car- 
 pet. He gave a little husky cough, and then said :
 
 66 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 "Oh ah yes. I'm glad they pleased yon. 
 Those observances help, in their way, at such sad 
 times." 
 
 " Indeed they do ! " Olivia replied, with an earnest- 
 ness abrupt as it was undisguised. "I hear that in 
 Ne\v York some people dislike flowers at funerals. 
 But I can't think why. Can you? " 
 
 He lifted his eyes again, and drew out a pair of 
 gold-rimmed glasses, rubbing them with a white silk 
 handkerchief before he put them on, and speaking 
 before he had finished this brief preparatory process. 
 
 " Oh, people hate the humbug that is so apt to go 
 with the custom." 
 
 "The humbug?" repeated Olivia, opening her blue 
 eyes in a tender amazement. 
 
 "Yes. The crosses and wreaths and things that 
 come from Heaven knows whom, and are sometimes 
 almost an impudence, considering the comparative 
 strangers who send them." He shifted in his seat, 
 crossed his legs with a quick, nervous motion, and 
 leaned backward a little. The glasses that now 
 shone above his aquiline bend of nose became him ; 
 they gave him a more senile air, and yet one in per- 
 fect keeping with his high bald forehead, the little 
 bushes of grayish hair at each temple, and the shoul- 
 ders just stooping enough to show what a flexible, 
 martial sort of figure they had once less weakly sur- 
 mounted. "But of course," he went on, "you would 
 not be apt to have any such experiences, Miss Olivia; 
 you have met, naturally, so few New Yorkers." 
 
 "And they try to get into the good graces of peo- 
 ple by sending flowers to their dead," murmured 
 Olivia, musingly. " Well, if there were anything
 
 OLIVIA DEL A PLAINS. 67 
 
 sincere about such an attempt," she decided, with 
 a gentle little touch of positiveness, " I should say 
 that it was a very human and even lovely way of 
 expressing sympathy." 
 
 "But there lay the trouble," said Mr. Delaplaine, 
 with a crisp, smileless little laugh. "It was very 
 often quite the reverse of sincere. Some member of 
 a conspicuous Xew York family died of a family 
 whose future kettledrums, dinners or balls certain 
 energetic strugglers wanted to attend, and lo, the 
 most costly floral emblems, with cards attached, 
 would appear on the day of the funeral. Such 
 offerings couldn't very well be returned to the 
 senders, but being accepted, a kind of obligation 
 was accepted with them ; and so, in many instances, 
 an abusive system of social pushing grew out of the 
 practice. Then somebody set the fashion of append- 
 ing to the death-notices in newspapers 'It is par- 
 ticularly requested that no flowers be sent.' This 
 kind of a thing was of course a clincher. It effect- 
 ually headed off the wariest tacticians. And then 
 came the droll part of the innovation." 
 
 " The droll part ! " echoed Olivia, in sad surprise. 
 
 "Yes; everything .has its funny side, you know. I 
 recall several cases in which that little addendum was 
 made to the death-notice of relatives where very few 
 flowers would have been sent by anybody under any 
 circumstances ; and yet there it was, staring you in 
 the face, just the same. They thought it the right 
 thing to do, and they did it. They wanted the inter- 
 ment to be comme il faut. After all, there's only a 
 slight step from wishing to live that way and to be 
 put into the grave so."
 
 68 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 The cynic undercurrent in these words hurt Olivia. 
 " There's only the difference between life and death ! " 
 she said. " And that is such a wide one." 
 
 " It must be to you, at your age." 
 
 "I believe it is to everybody!" she affirmed most 
 seriously. 
 
 "Ah, that's because you're still young. You 
 wouldn't be young and in good health if you didn't 
 cling to life." 
 
 Olivia made a negative gesture. " I have seen old 
 people who clung to life," she said. 
 
 Mr. Delaplaine smiled. "You mean they were 
 afraid," he answered, with a languid mutter. 
 
 "Awed, perhaps," she said, as if half assenting. 
 
 " Oh, it's the same thing. They call it awe, but it's 
 only fear. And fear takes many forms. Religion is 
 often' one of them." He laughed his low yet sharp 
 laugh again, which was not unlike the faint tinkle 
 wrought by meeting metals. 
 
 "Not the right sort of religion ! " exclaimed Olivia. 
 
 o o 
 
 " The right sort ? My dear Miss Olivia, who that is 
 devout does not feel sure he possesses that ? It's an 
 affair o,f temperament and sentiment. I'm not quar- 
 relling with it wherever it exists. I should as soon 
 think of quarrelling with the mercury in a thermom- 
 eter." He began to smooth one of his knees with the 
 fingers of one hand, whose pink well-tended nails the 
 light struck, giving out from them dim, pearly flashes. 
 Everything about his person bespoke the most careful 
 nicety; his evening dress was the perfection of sub- 
 dued taste; his linen was spotless; he wore but one 
 ring, with an antique stone set in it, of far more value 
 than it looked. "I take things as I find them," he
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 69 
 
 continued placidly, " and I find them best to endure 
 when they are taken that way." His composed face 
 underwent a slight change of expression, now ; the 
 furtive blending of fatigue and satire seemed to die 
 from it and leave a deepened gravity behind. "I al- 
 ways did that with your poor father. But I grant, 
 now, that it might have been wiser if I had spoken 
 more plainly and harshly to him when he was so care- 
 lessly shutting his eyes to your future. . . . You 
 Bee, I assume that your aunts have made a certain 
 state of affairs more or less clear to you." 
 
 Olivia had dropped her head during these last two 
 or three sentences. But she raised it as the speaker's 
 collected voice died away. 
 
 "Yes," she answered, with a direct glance straight 
 at her companion. " They have told me that I 
 have nothing that all has gone during papa's life- 
 time." 
 
 He nodded slowly and confirmingly while she 
 watched him. " Yes that is but too true. I sup- 
 pose it shocked you. But you seem to have borne it 
 with philosophy. I feared you would not. I'm glad 
 to see that you do." 
 
 She had astonished him, but he was not one to let 
 her perceive that. He sat observing her with much 
 intentness, now ; she could not see how keen his 
 gray eyes were behind the lucid but obscuring lenses 
 they 'wore. 
 
 "It has been a great blow for me," she replied, 
 tremors coming into her voice but no hint of tears 
 ensuing. " I'm not over it yet ; I shall feel it for 
 many a long day. And why should I not ? It alters 
 my whole life ; it changes me from an independent
 
 70 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 being to an enslaved one. For poverty is slavery 
 I'm quite old enough to have learned that." 
 
 " You're right," he said ; " and there's no slavery 
 so bitter as that which has once tasted freedom. . . . 
 I used rather direct speech to your father. Twice I 
 went over and saw him in Paris while you were at 
 your boarding-school. Each time I went prepared 
 for an altercation, and each time he welcomed me 
 so cordially and made me have such an agreeable 
 sojourn in the enchanting city that I sailed home 
 again feeling as if I'd left something behind me ; I 
 suppose it was my scolding. Still, he heard from me 
 expressions of opinion regarding which he couldn't 
 have been greatly in doubt. But they never made 
 any difference with him. Of course he could not 
 have gone on borrowing much longer ..." 
 
 "And he borrowed a great deal, did he not?" the 
 girl broke in here, with her cheeks turning paler. 
 Debt seemed to her something so onerous, danger- 
 ous, disgraceful. 
 
 "No; only a few thousands. I think there are 
 outstanding sums that will cover the whole liability 
 when his affairs are finally settled." 
 
 "Oh, I am very glad to hear that!" declared Olivia, 
 a bloom stealing back to her cheeks. The rich liquid 
 sparkle that secret excitement had lent her blue eyes 
 contrasted captivatingly with this damask tint; cer- 
 tain evenings in spring, when the first glitter of stars 
 tremulously begins above the rose-hued west, with 
 fresh winds fragrant from new leaves and grasses, 
 bear a lovely mystic analogy, in light and color, to 
 just such pure young faces as Olivia's now appeared. 
 " She's a wonderfully sweet-looking creature," Spencer
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 71 
 
 Delaplaine said to his own thoughts. " I have always 
 held her to be so, but just now I feel more certain of 
 it than ever." 
 
 "My poor child," he said aloud, "don't bother 
 yourself about any indebtedness. Of course I made 
 my loans with my eyes open ..." 
 
 " But that is no excuse for me," struck in Olivia. 
 " No excuse whatever." 
 
 "No excuse?" he repeated, leaning foward in his 
 chair and playing with the slim gold cord of his eye- 
 glasses. "I don't understand." 
 
 " The debt, I mean, is the same, if any should re- 
 main, after his affairs as you yourself have put it 
 are finally settled." 
 
 "The debt is the same?" he once more repeated, 
 and with undisguised bewilderment. 
 
 " Yes, I mean, it will be my debt. At least, I shall 
 look on it so. I suppose the law would not, but that 
 will be of no consequence to me. Whatever it turns 
 out that papa owed you I shall continue to owe 
 you." 
 
 He leaned back in his chair again. He was smiling, 
 
 O O' 
 
 and the lines made by his lips at this moment had for 
 Olivia an effect almost sardonically cruel. 
 
 " You ! " he exclaimed. " You ! Delightful ! " 
 The girl felt herself crimsoning with annoyance. 
 At the same time her spirit rose. "Ah," she softly 
 cried, with a ring of rebuke in her tones that was 
 womanlike enough to make, for at least that brief 
 interval, her tender age seem incredible, "I cannot 
 allow you, sir, to receive in sarcasm what I advance 
 very seriously. If I am poor now I may not always 
 be. To recognize the debt will not, I am well aware,
 
 72 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 be to discharge it. But I intend to discharge it if I 
 can ; I shall always bear in mind that I I have in- 
 herited it." 
 
 He had ceased to smile. He had begun to rock the 
 uppermost of his crossed legs in a deliberate manner 
 that implied both diversion and condescension for the 
 alert sensibilities of her who watched him. And his 
 next words caused her to start and bite her lips, they 
 so humiliutingly confirmed her expectations. 
 
 " Do you know, you simply fascinate me by your 
 originality your naturalness? That is rather a 
 strong bit of enthusiasm for me, my dear Miss 
 Olivia. I usually deal in the sober grays both of 
 statement and emotion. I've never had many enthu- 
 siasms in my life don't look indignant at me be- 
 cause I haven't. I couldn't help it. I must have 
 been born on a foggy morning, when there was a raw, 
 lazy east wind that didn't promise the slightest ray of 
 sun for certainly twenty-four hours. But I'm not so 
 benighted that I can't appreciate intensity in others. 
 I said you were original, and I meant it. You're just 
 the sort of daughter your father might have had ; he 
 was original in many ways ; I remember once telling 
 him that he was a free-thinking nonconformist in a 
 shell of conventionalism. He frowned and didn't like 
 it ; so few of us like to hear anything that approaches 
 being the real truth about ourselves. I've no doubt 
 you will resent being told that you amuse me exceed- 
 ingly. You can't see why you should. Of course you 
 can't. If you did, my poor young lady, you wouldn't 
 be half as amusing as you are. . . . You assert can- 
 didly and innocently that you have inherited your 
 father's debt to me, whatever may prove its amount.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 73 
 
 And you make this assertion only a very short time 
 after learning that you have not a dollar in the world. 
 Your confidence in the possibilities of your own opu- 
 lent future is what so particularly charms me. It has 
 the very dew of maidenhood upon it, if you'll pardon 
 such a poetic burst from an old fellow as steeped in 
 cold prose as I am. Some day, thirty or forty years 
 from now when you are steeped in cold prose, too 
 you'll be able to comprehend all this much better 
 than now." 
 
 Two bright spots were burning in Olivia's cheeks as 
 he ended, but otherwise she bore herself calmly. 
 "You turn what I have said into quiet ridicule, 
 Mr. Delaplaine," she responded. " It may seem to 
 you very entertaining; it is to me without the flavor 
 of comedy you detect in it. But I am not quite so 
 helpless, even now, as you judge me. I have a kind 
 friend in my aunt Thyrza, Mrs. Ottarson indeed an 
 invaluable friend. I am going to begin at once earn- 
 ing my own living with her." 
 
 " Good heavens, my dear child ! You can't mean 
 that you are going into that boarding-house they say 
 she keeps ! And what on earth do you propose doing 
 there ? " 
 
 "Getting honest employment." 
 
 He took off his glasses again and began to polish 
 them ruminatively. " Did the ... er ... the lady 
 herself propose this to you?" 
 
 " I induced her to propose it." 
 
 " Ah . . . indeed ? And you intend to be a sort of 
 upper servant there ? Is that the idea?" 
 
 " I should say it was. Except that Aunt Thyrza is 
 so fond of me as probably to become the most indul-
 
 74 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 gent of mistresses. But I sha'n't let her indulge me 
 too much ; I shall constantly oppose that." 
 
 "But your other aunts . . . Mrs. Auchincloss and 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite ? They assure me they are will- 
 ing . . ." 
 
 " To support me ? I have so understood. It is 
 very kind of them. But I prefer to support my- 
 self." 
 
 There was a silence. Mr. Delaplaine readjusted his 
 glasses above the somewhat severe curve of his nose. 
 "You say that Mrs. Ottarson is your dear friend. 
 She has undoubtedly nursed your father in a very 
 capable way. I surmise that she must have made a 
 most comforting associate for you in the sick-room, 
 and your having become fond of her is not at all 
 remarkable. But, my child, to go and live with her is 
 quite a different thing. It is worse than burying 
 yourself alive ; for to bury oneself suggests at least 
 silence, and you will have about you, instead of 
 silence, a clatter of vulgarity which the American 
 boarding-house can alone perpetrate." 
 
 "Very possibly I shall. But I shall be busy. You 
 mind little troubles petites mis&res like that so 
 much less when you are busy." 
 
 She saw the icy smile edge his lips as he replied 
 loiteringly: "What shall you do? Darn towels? 
 Dole forth the tea and sugar? Keep the mice out 
 of the strawberry jam ? Haggle with the grocer and 
 battle with the butcher? You were simply not 
 brought up for such a life, and you may as well real- 
 ize it now as a year from now when retraction is 
 too late." 
 
 " Retraction ? " said Olivia, lifting her brows. " You
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 75 
 
 refer to my seeking the Auchincloss or Satterthwaite 
 protection, after all." A dolorous little laugh fell 
 from her, at this point. " There must be a good deal 
 of haggling with the grocer and battling with the 
 butcher before I do so." 
 
 "You don't like those ladies, then?" 
 
 " I don't like the plan of living with them ! " 
 
 " It is not unusual in New York for people to try 
 rather hard to cross their thresholds. How have they 
 displeased you?" 
 
 " Not at all. I hope that we shall always be bonnes 
 connaissances, but . . ." 
 
 "My dear, don't for an instant imagine that you 
 will be," interrupted Mr. Delaplaine, lifting both 
 hands for an instant and then letting them fall, " pro- 
 vided you sink so low as to live with that dreadful 
 Mrs. Ottarson." 
 
 Olivia's eyes flashed. "You presume to tell me it 
 is sinking low ! " she began. " Now will you be kind 
 enough to hear me tell you " 
 
 "Nothing rude, I hope?" he again broke in. He 
 was tranquillity itself ; he could no more have become 
 angry with her than with a June rose, bending and 
 swaying in the wind, because one of its tiny thorns 
 had made a spiteful lunge at his flesh. " I don't 
 deserve to have you call me names, or anything of 
 that sort. My dear young lady, I don't presume to 
 tell you it is sinking low, or that Mrs. Ottarson is a 
 dreadful person. I was merely making an imaginary 
 quotation, as it were. I am positive that this is just 
 what your aunts would say. Of course it is no con- 
 cern of mine, except in so far as you are the child 
 of an old friend."
 
 76 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 "Forgive me if I misunderstood you," said Olivia, 
 softening. "I know that Aunt Letitia and Aunt 
 Augusta hold Mrs. Ottarson in great disfavor. She 
 doesn't outwardly meet their approval, and so they 
 never stop to consider what a heart of gold she has." 
 
 " Oh, I'm perfectly willing to admit that it's a heart 
 of gold," he briskly returned. He had set himself to 
 beating a little tattoo with the finger-tips of one hand 
 on the marble-topped table near which he sat. "But 
 hearts of gold have the misfortune to be invisible." 
 
 "Hers is not at least not to me. I have seen it 
 more than once for weeks past. She has shown it to 
 me." 
 
 "Ah, Miss Olivia, are you entirely sure that it's 
 eighteen carat ? Pardon my atrocious flippancy. I 
 sha'n't dare to go on if you wither me with another of 
 those indignant looks that you gave me a little while 
 ago. And you ought to be merciful; you ought to 
 recollect how time has withered me already." 
 
 The banter in his voice was mockery itself to his 
 listener; yet she felt it to be so discriminated, so 
 modified, that her resentment of it could only make 
 her appear ridiculous. 
 
 " Candidly," she said, " I would rather you would 
 not go on, Mr. Delaplaine in the strain you have 
 adopted." 
 
 She saw his gray eyebrows elevate themselves over 
 his luminous glasses. "Bless me! what strain ? I've 
 been admiring your championship of somebody you're 
 fond of. I'm a good deal afraid of you when you 
 look so tempestuous, but that doesn't prevent me 
 from admiring you, all the same. We're very apt to 
 be impressed that way by performances we're incapa-
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 77 
 
 ble of ourselves. I don't believe I've ever been so 
 honestly angry as you just were, in all my life. I 
 may have scowled and wanted to strike somebody ; 
 that's only the common, coarse style of procedure, 
 with the raw Adam in it, the selfish personal thrill of 
 retaliation. But your anger had a nice little touch of 
 sublimity. If my nerves were a trifle stronger I 
 should be tempted to beg that you would do it again ; 
 for, upon my word, it's deucedly I should say mag- 
 nificently becoming ! " 
 
 All this was delivered with so much measured, 
 inscrutable repose of utterance that Olivia lost power 
 to judge whether it were really meant for satire or 
 sincerity. But if the latter, it stung her none the less 
 keenly. 
 
 " It appears," she said, with the bitterness of uncon- 
 cealed reproach, " that I must come back to my own 
 country and undergo a great misfortune here, only to 
 discover how lightly my unhappiness is looked upon. 
 I am not sure whether you wish to jest with me or 
 no." And now she rose, standing placid and sorrow- 
 ful, in the large, cheerless room. "But it seems to 
 me that you do wish to jest. This may be no more 
 than your habitual mode of treating every subject in 
 life, petty or the opposite. But it is not my mode, 
 and this evening, of all others, I am averse to playing 
 a part with which I have no sympathy. . . . Thei-e- 
 fore you must excuse me for saying that I would 
 rather not remain here with you any longer. Let us 
 talk together, if you will, at some other time. You 
 know what this day has been to me. ... As for the 
 course I shall take hereafter, I think I have fully 
 explained that. I love Aunt Thyrza dearly, and I
 
 78 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 am going to live with her you know on what 
 terras." 
 
 He had risen by the time that she finished speaking. 
 " So, I am dismissed," he said grimly. 
 
 She gave a slight smile, inclining her head with a 
 grace that she did not dream of. " Only for to-night. 
 I am tired distraite, if you will. I ..." 
 
 He took several steps toward her. As she raised 
 her eyes to his face she discerned a new look upon it. 
 His glasses dropped, and he caught them by their 
 thin chain, swaying them to and fro while he now 
 spoke. 
 
 " Olivia," he said, " I hope you're not too tired for 
 one thing." 
 
 She stared at him questioningly, and he drew still 
 nearer. 
 
 "Well?" she queried. 
 
 If he had been some one else she might have con- 
 cluded that he was embarrassed ; but embarrassment 
 and he had no appreciable relations in the conception 
 she had thus far formed of him. 
 
 "There's a means of saving yourself from stooping 
 like this," he began. He still swung his glasses, and 
 he glanced down at them fitfully while he continued 
 to address her, scanning her face for an instant and 
 then averting his gaze. " For it is stooping, and 
 you'll be horribly sorry you did it. As for the means 
 I mentioned it's here; it's I, myself. I offer it." 
 
 She had not the faintest perception of his true 
 meaning. "Thanks, no," she said. "You are kind 
 to propose it. Please don't think me ungrateful. 
 But I can't accept. I should be miserable if I 
 did."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 79 
 
 " You don't understand me," he replied, looking at 
 her very steadily. 
 
 " Oh, yes, I do. It's to be your protegee, your " 
 
 "Not at all, if you please. . . . Olivia, it's to be 
 something much much nearer than that." He took 
 her hand, and she let him take it. She still had no 
 idea what he meant. Her girlish thoughts had al- 
 ready swiftly shaped the question " What can I be 
 nearer to him than his protegee than the daughter 
 of his old partner, adopted by him?" 
 
 He still held her hand, fondling it. This revelation 
 of tenderness in him was quite unforeseen to her ; she 
 had a qualm of self-rebuke for having pronounced him 
 so thoroughly mundane and hardened. 
 
 " Ah ! " she exclaimed, smiling. " You mean that 
 I shall take in your household some such place as that 
 which I have agreed to take in Aunt Thyrza's ! " 
 
 He clasped her hand still tighter. " That isn't at 
 all my meaning," he said. 
 
 "No?" she murmured, wonderingly. What could 
 it be, then, if it was not that ? He evidently wished 
 to help her ; it was unmistakable that he so wished. 
 His eyes had almost an amiable light in their greenish- 
 gray pupils ; that indolent, derisive method of speak- 
 ing had left him that suggestion of being a person 
 who treated life, death and the human soul as if they 
 were a compound, yet forceless joke, a trinity of triv- 
 iality. 
 
 " No," he said, seeming to echo her own monosyl- 
 lable, while he watched the sweet, bold interrogation 
 in her guileless eyes. " That is not my meaning. 
 Can't you guess what it is?" His tones had become 
 almost musical ; they were so unlike those in which he
 
 80 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 was wont to speak, that for an instant the odd fancy 
 crossed her as to the possibility of his having employed 
 some whimsical trick of elocution. " Try to guess," 
 he went on. " Try." 
 
 "But I have tried," she returned, shaking her head 
 hopelessly. 
 
 " Try again," he persisted. 
 
 "Is he really making sport of me?" Olivia asked 
 herself. The child is never quite dead, in a girl of 
 her years, and for a little interval she was beset by 
 that displeasure a child will feel when suspecting the 
 presence of raillery in others. But no, she soon con- 
 cluded ; such a supposition was unjust; and then, 
 almost immediately, she exclaimed : 
 
 "I really am not equal to anymore guessing, Mr. 
 Delaplaine. You say that you would like me to be 
 nearer than your protegee, and yet that you are not 
 asking me to take any salaried position. . . ." 
 
 " Ah, it's a salaried position, in its way. There's a 
 very handsome allowance attached to it. I shouldn't 
 dream of supposing you'd take it, my dear, except for 
 that saving clause, as it were. ... I see that I shall 
 have to blurt the truth right out. But it's wofully 
 discouraging. . . ." 
 
 " What is discouraging ? " asked Olivia. She looked 
 alarmed, now ; perhaps the first ray of real divination 
 was entering her mind. 
 
 "That you should not guess without my telling 
 you," he said. . . . And here he sought to retain her 
 hand, while she made a little effort to draw it away. 
 After that effort she let him keep it. Her eyes were 
 full of doubt and her brow had clouded. She was 
 not at all sure, yet ; but it seemed to her as if each 
 fresh minute rendered her more sure.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 81 
 
 "How should this be discouraging?" she faltered. 
 
 " It makes me fear that you've no conception of me 
 in the character I'd like to assume ... as your hus- 
 band, I mean, Olivia." 
 
 She snatched her hand away from him then, recoil- 
 ing several paces. 
 
 " My husband you ! " 
 
 The words broke from her unawares. In another 
 second she had regretted them, but it was too late for 
 her to dispel the effect of repulsion, even of repug- 
 nance, which they must have produced. 
 
 "Am I so horribly old?" he asked. "A little past 
 sixty ? Is that so very old ? It seems Methuselah- 
 like to you, I don't doubt, because you are so young." 
 
 Olivia had drooped her head ; her cheeks were burn- 
 ing so that they gave her actual pain. "You must 
 forgive me," she stammered, " if if I seemed to 
 show you that I I thought you were too too old. 
 It has taken me greatly by surprise. I I was com- 
 pletely unprepared for it." 
 
 A little silence followed. To the girl it was truly 
 agonizing. In all her life she had never known such 
 crucial embarrassment as now. Spencer Delaplaine in 
 a trice, as it were, had roused her pity where before 
 he had evoked merely her tepid and indifferent dis- 
 taste. He had in a manner bored her ; he now 
 promptly became interesting. It must be so frightful, 
 Olivia had hurriedly told herself, to want to marry 
 any one, and waken the mildly horrified sensations he 
 had just wakened in her, simply because you asked the 
 matrimonial question. 
 
 "Please do not think this proposal of mine," she 
 heard him say, "the result of any suddenly-formed
 
 82 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 resolve. It is very remote from being so, I assure 
 you. Ever since you came back for the last time 
 and that is months ago I have been sensible of a 
 ... a deepening attachment. This sort of visitation 
 comes to only a few men as late in life as it has come 
 to me. I had reached an age when I was justified in 
 expecting that it would never come. What mortal 
 can have lived as long as I have lived without more 
 than one so-called affair of the heart ? But I speak as 
 white truth, Olivia, as was ever spoken by human lips, 
 Avhen I affirm that you are the first woman I ever saw 
 whom I longed to make my wife." 
 
 She raised her head and showed what seemed to 
 herself her blazing face. But it was only a face dyed 
 with a brilliance excitement had lit there, and fairer 
 now to him who saw it (fair as he had already silently 
 estimated it) than it had ever glowed before. 
 
 " You have paid me an honor," she said, catching 
 her breath, and putting one hand clingingly just above 
 her bosom, as women will do when they are in straits 
 of agitation. "I thank you for the honor. It springs, 
 I am sure, from the warmest generosity. I I shall 
 never forget it I shall never forget that you gave 
 me the privilege of declining it." 
 
 " Ah," he cried, with an imperious rigor in his voice 
 that made her start back from him alarmedly 
 " there's not a trace of generosity about my conduct ! " 
 He appeared to marvel, a second later, at his own 
 betrayal of something so intimately similar to passion ; 
 he stood with a kind of self-astonished look in his 
 eyes and with a hand pressed against one temple, as 
 though he were asking himself in his own worldly- 
 wise vernacular what the devil he meant by such
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 83 
 
 queer behavior. And when next he spoke it was with 
 all his old control. 
 
 " I had but one motive," he said, " in asking you to 
 be my wife. I'm fond of you. I love you. I want 
 to marry you for that reason, and for none other in 
 the world." 
 
 Olivia clasped both hands together as she stood 
 facing him. "I don't love you!" she exclaimed, 
 using the naked fact because her poor disturbed wits 
 could just then seize upon no other. " I don't love 
 you, and I never could." 
 
 "I'm perfectly aware of that," he began, seeming 
 to present himself before her, as the words fell from 
 him, in precisely the same attitude of well-bred 
 aplomb by which she had long since measured his 
 individuality. " I don't expect you to love me. I'm 
 not such a fool. But I " 
 
 Here Olivia stopped him, with both uplifted hands. 
 " No, no," she cried, beseechingly and yet forbid- 
 dingly. 
 
 Then a new thought appeared to strike her. But 
 as it did so she plainly shuddered ; and then, as if 
 feeling that she had been rudely merciless in thus 
 betraying aversion, she stretched forth one hand to 
 him. 
 
 Instantly afterward, however, she withdrew her 
 hand. He had meanwhile advanced toward her as if 
 to clasp it. ... 
 
 With precipitation, and with the sound of a re- 
 pressed sob, she now turned from him, hurrying to the 
 doorway and leaving him alone in the solemn, dull, 
 ugly drawing-room. 
 
 He did not quit the house for some little time after
 
 84 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 that. He had folded his arms and was staring down 
 at the uncouth scroll-work of the carpet. . . . But at 
 last he roused himself and went downstairs to the 
 lower hall, where he had left his hat and coat.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 85 
 
 V. 
 
 OLIVIA heard the front door clang as she stood in 
 one of the upper rooms beside Mrs. Ottarson. 
 
 " There he's gone ! " she said. 
 
 " 'Livia, you look so scared an' funny ! " exclaimed 
 her aunt. "For mercy's sake, what did happen ?" 
 
 "I'll tell you," said Olivia. And with a burst of 
 real hysterical laughter and a preliminary gasp or two, 
 she began the narrative. . . . 
 
 Spencer Delaplaine walked quietly up-town from 
 Washington Square. His gouty ailment had not 
 discommoded him quite so much as usual, of late. 
 Otherwise his health was nearly as good at a little 
 past sixty as it had been all those years ago, when he 
 stood beside his friend Houston Van Rensselaer in the 
 little Macdougal Street house and saw him commit the 
 absolutely tragical faux pas of marrying Rosalie Jenks. 
 Delaplaine had always lived well, but with discretion. 
 He used to say that if it were true every man at the 
 age of forty was either a fool or his own physician, 
 then he intended to take enough care of himself to . 
 prove an exceptional case : he would not be a fool, 
 and he would be much too healthy for the need of his 
 own medical services. Excess was not so distasteful 
 to him as that the fine clarity of his common-sense 
 forever taught him its peril. If he had been less 
 selfish he might have ended disasti'ously as a drunkard, 
 or met some like fate, born of his own trespassing
 
 86 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 indulgences ; for he had many traits belonging to the 
 confirmed voluptuary, yet did not possess the head- 
 long and improvident ones too often uppermost in 
 such a nature. The evil jvas with Delaplaine never 
 sufficient for the day in such matters ; he could not 
 rid himself of the to-morrow, with its attendant pros- 
 tration, inertia, penance. He had serenely calculated 
 that just so much pleasure of a certain physical kind 
 would be safe for him, and no more. Prudence reared 
 her defensive paling at this boundary, and he never 
 passed beyond it. The world accepted his reluctance 
 as excellent decorum ; it was in reality one of those 
 valiant exhibitions of egotism which are lucky enough 
 to lie within strict conventional limits. 
 
 He had always been an inordinately selfish man, 
 and he had contrived never to let his selfishness tran- 
 spire. Long ago he would have broken all connection 
 with Houston Van Rensselaer if it would have repaid 
 him to do so. But there was a magic of caste about 
 "Delaplaine and Van Rensselaer" which mere "De- 
 laplaine and Company " would never have been able 
 to preserve. His own people, the Delaplaines, were 
 all dead now, except a few cousins, whom he ignored 
 as tiresome, and not of the class to which he belonged. 
 He secretly laughed at there being any such class 
 whatever in a republic whose very existence was a 
 protest against all aristocratic principles. But what 
 did he care for the inconsistencies and self-contradic- 
 tions of the foolish throngs about him? His object 
 was to ride securely on the topmost crest of the wave, 
 success. He could not understand how any rational 
 being could endorse any other system of philosophy. 
 But he was by no means a shallow and uureflective
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 87 
 
 egotist ; false, and indeed disrespectful, judgment of 
 his aims and tenets would spring from such a belief 
 regarding him. He had not only studied men thor- 
 oughly, and pronounced them for the most part fools, 
 with a sprinkling of intellectual zealots and enthusi- 
 asts; lie had also studied books, guided by an early 
 education, fairly complete when we consider that he 
 had been graduated from such an institution as was 
 Columbia College nearly a half century ago. A mem- 
 ber of fashionable clubs, a diner-out, a conceded sup- 
 porter of social dignities and formalities, he had 
 nevertheless found not a little leisure through entire 
 freedom from those vices that give the jaded palate, 
 the fatigued brain, or the rebuking digestion to read 
 with zest, lucidity and mental satisfaction. He had 
 followed most carefully what is called the modern 
 movement in thought. He had marked many a pas- 
 sage in Mr. Herbert Spencer's great series of works ; 
 he had become so interested in the purely mathemati- 
 cal portion of the " Psychology " that he had set him- 
 self to the study of higher mathematics in order that 
 no page of this wonderful work should remain dark to 
 him. He delighted in the hypothesis of Darwin and 
 its powerfully convincing deductions ; he had no more 
 doubt that the intelligent ape was our primeval parent 
 than he had assurance as to' the mythic origin of Adnm 
 and Eve. He took regularly, and perused searchingly, 
 the Popular Science Monthly, and kept wary watch, 
 as well, upon the English Nineteenth Century and 
 Fortnightly Review. He prided himself upon being 
 an exact thinker, and abhorred metaphysics, which he 
 contemptuously classed with poetry as among the 
 solid stumblin<r-bloeks to civilization.
 
 88 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 The writings of Emerson impressed him, when in 
 particular moods, but he always covertly resented the 
 spells of that unique sorcerer, whom he looked on 
 as "spoiled" by the influences of an overgrown imag- 
 ination. He had been fascinated by the essays of so 
 supreme an idealist and moralist, but rebelled against 
 the very charm they exerted. " They're fine," he had 
 once declared aloud, late at night, amid the silence of 
 his library, after having yielded himself for an hour or 
 so to the piercing qualities of their epigram; "but 
 they're bricks without mortar ; the ideas in them don't 
 hang together. No wonder they've begotten so many 
 gushing transcendentalists ! " 
 
 Mentally furnished as he was with all that is best in 
 the scientific discovery and speculation of this unpar- 
 alleled century, he had still reaped from his voluntary 
 and even fond studies nothing except the most bar- 
 ren materialism. The splendid standard of conduct 
 pointed to by Herbert Spencer's priceless philosophy 
 had not stirred in him a pulse' of admiration. All 
 that Huxley or Buckle or Lecky had taught him had 
 been a deference to the brain-powers that could thus 
 tear the husk of superstition and humbug from preg- 
 nant, irrefutable truth. It was all very well for a few 
 men to live up to humanitarian theories, if so dis- 
 posed. It was right ; he admitted that it was right. 
 But now, at sixty or thereabouts, he would probably 
 have only ten or fifteen years more to live, and he 
 meant to pass through those years in comfortable ob- 
 servance of accepted formulas. He had made a Will, 
 bequeathing all his large fortune to well-known and 
 trusted charities. That concession (surprising as it 
 would prove for the poor cousins who had already
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 89 
 
 fixed expectant eyes upon his money) he was willing 
 to grant the enlightenment of the time. But there his 
 altruism stopped short. He was the kind of agnostic 
 who might have supplied unnumbered texts for denun- 
 ciators of reigning rationalism. The glorious future 
 possibilities that evolution offers to our race had failed 
 spiritually to move him. What has been called the 
 "new religion " struck him as being full of practical 
 wisdom apart from its exalted philanthropy. But he 
 still remained an unruffled idolater of self. He some- 
 times inwardly wondered that the men with whom he 
 talked in Wall Street or at the club did not guess of 
 what irresponsive marble he was made. He often 
 suspected that some of the women, least frivolous 
 and hollow, did guess ; but then he usually chose, if 
 permissible, the company of women in whose fair 
 bosoms no hearts beat for the loftier ethical needs. 
 He had long ago assured himself that all except hand- 
 some women were repellent to him. Unless theii' 
 lineaments pleased him, their conversation irritated 
 him. It was different, of course, with great female 
 personages like Mrs. Auchincloss and Mrs. Satter- 
 thvvaite. They were not merely women ; they were 
 majestic portresses at a palatial gateway ; give a 
 woman distinction, prerogative, and plainness or ma- 
 turity can be endured in her. That was why marriage 
 had such a ghastly side to it ; two people swore at the 
 altar that they would calmly watch one another decay. 
 Delaplaine had congratulated himself again and again 
 that he had permanently escaped the making of so 
 foolish a vow. As it was, he had gone along through 
 this vale of tears, he felt inclined to think, at a very 
 prosperous pace, and he meant to take the rest of the
 
 90 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 journey in equal comfort. He might have done a 
 great deal more good than he had done; but there 
 would have been the concomitant trouble in doing the 
 good and that he chose to avoid. Besides, if he 
 spent his money that way, it would cease to roll up 
 like a gigantic pecuniary snowball. And he wanted it 
 so to roll up. There was far less of avarice in this de- 
 sire than of inflexible ambition. Wealth meant such 
 domination, precedence, and supremacy nowadays; 
 the having it in great quantities implied a vast deal 
 more than the spending it in comparatively small 
 ones. 
 
 A blunder that above all others Delaplaine never 
 wanted to commit was the revelation of his own real 
 bloodless nature to those with whom he associated. 
 He had no friends, and desired none ; he held all 
 friendship to be wrought of sentimentality a mere 
 frangible air-bridge swung between the two massive 
 and calculable passions, hate and love. But he had 
 hosts of acquaintances, and these he was quite willing 
 to let believe him remarkably cold, though not abnor- 
 mally so. When they laughed at his astute or shrewd 
 sayings about men and things, it pleased him to have 
 them laugh. But the draughts of penetrative com- 
 ment he drew for them must not be too bitter; he 
 liked at least a tincture of sunshine to blend with the 
 waters, so that they should not taste too acridly of 
 the dark earthy cistern whence they had been taken. 
 He liked to bear the reputation of a rather caustic wit, 
 but it did not at all suit him to rend that inner veil 
 which concealed his unrelenting pessimism, his con- 
 tempt for the spirit of righteous Jaw filmed over by 
 politic obedience to its letter, his inveterate distrust of
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 91 
 
 mortality at large, his innate faith as to the void noth- 
 ingness which lay behind our whole sublunar scheme. 
 He clung very stoutly to the outward seeming of daily 
 behavior. We were all mere puppets ; the entire ter- 
 restrial proceeding was farcical as a Punchinello-show; 
 but, meanwhile, being in and of the show, he pro- 
 posed that he should play there as one of those pup- 
 pets which make a victorious bow to the spectators at 
 the fall of the pretty miniature curtain. Such arid 
 chaff as this he had reaped from contact with the most 
 fecund and stimulating minds of an epoch like the 
 present. They, the lineal heirs of Locke and Bacon, 
 of Spinoza and Comte, had taught him only the big- 
 otry of self-worship ! But aggravating and pitiful as 
 it may sound, he had passed years of sleek content- 
 ment with his garner of scoff and lip-service, his har- 
 vest of despair and hypocrisy. "No one knows much 
 about me," he had more than once triumphantly med- 
 itated, "except that I am a flourishing banker, say 
 rather sharp things now and then, drop into my pew 
 at Grace Church every other Sunday or so, have the 
 entree to all the best houses in town, and generally de- 
 port myself like a gentleman. If I live fifteen years 
 longer and I ought to live twenty, considering the 
 care I've taken of myself it will be going down 
 hill all that time. This infernal gout is sure to grow 
 worse as I grow older, and each attack nowadays, I 
 find, lays me up for a longer period. But what of 
 that? I shall have had more sweet juice from the 
 orange of life, and less of the harsh tang its rind can 
 mingle there, than nine-tenths of even the fortunate 
 fruit-gatherers. I'll go to my grave as one man out of 
 ten thousand goes bah! it would be truer to say
 
 92 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 twenty! My plot is bought in Woodlawn, and the 
 order for, a handsome monument in the middle of it is 
 snugly appended to my charitable Will. All that re- 
 mains for me, now, is to slide as gracefully and becom- 
 ingly out of the nonsensical worry and fluster as I've 
 acquitted myself respectably and commendably while 
 one of its participants." 
 
 So ran the reflections of this confident manipulator 
 with destiny, and so they continued to run, till a 
 special day, not long before the beginning of these 
 pages that faithfully expose them, brought him a 
 novel and unanticipated experience. 
 
 One name may stand for this experience. It was 
 Olivia Van Rensselaer. 
 
 He had made jest, at first, of his own curious emo- 
 tional flutter. More than once, in former days, he 
 had seriously entertained the idea of marriage, but 
 had dismissed it before the least compromising step 
 had been taken. In one instance the lady had been 
 young, of radiant beauty, and the possessor of a copi- 
 ous fortune. If report spoke fact she had been devot- 
 edly attached to Spencer Delaplaine. But all this had 
 happened when he was just turning forty, and perhaps 
 as brilliantly eligible as any man in the metropolis. 
 He had cautiously reviewed the advantages and draw- 
 backs, then, of a union with so delectable a bride, and 
 had affirmed the latter to preponderate. It would all 
 be very distinguished and noteworthy, he concluded, 
 but it would most dictatorially interfere with the 
 comforts of bachelorhood. He could not see the use 
 in contracting new ties. Family ties, above all others, 
 were mere sugared pills. A so-called pleasant respon- 
 sibility was none the less burdensome because you
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 93 
 
 tried to persuade yourself that you were not bowing 
 your back under it. No ; lie would stay single. An 
 eminent marriage would be of no consequence to a 
 man like himself. Let the real stragglers mount on 
 that kind of stepping-stone; he liad gone up too high 
 for the necessity of any such assistance. 
 
 Now, having met Olivia two or three times after 
 her final return, and when the illness of his partner 
 had made direct intercourse between himself and her 
 a requisite occurrence, his own possible marriage 
 dawned upon him in a totally new light. Since he 
 had been fifty it had indeed not dawned upon him at 
 all ; it had been relegated to that limbo of unconcern 
 where lay not a few abandoned projects in similar 
 desuetude. 
 
 But the presence of Olivia, the light of her blue 
 eyes, the appealing melody of her voice, the indefin- 
 able allurement of her chaste simplicity, had touched 
 fibres in his being that he had long ago deemed either 
 to be dead or never actually living. He had aired 
 some grossly pungent opinions upon the love of the 
 sexes, in former hours, when his tongue tripped more 
 glib at smart jeux cTesprit than now ; but he had 
 never spoken half the contemptuous innuendo that 
 slept hidden behind these open disparagements. Of 
 all the calamities that could befall him he had failed 
 to prophesy any positive seizure by a sentiment. But 
 here, he soon realized, was malady of more poignant 
 bane. If it did not closely resemble a passion, then all 
 his past acute observation of his fellow creatures 
 amounted to little. And at his age ! Pah ! it was 
 clear burlesque ! 
 
 To his keen dismay he found himself deriding it
 
 94 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 with the laughter Mephistopheles might have inaudibly 
 bestowed on the infatuation of Faust. And yet, by 
 some puzzling enigma of circumstance, lie enacted 
 both these roles in the strangely unexpected drama. 
 It was in vain that he called upon all the grimmest 
 resources of a humor at no time genial. He likened 
 himself with no avail to a gouty and superannuated 
 Romeo. Self-scorn would not serve him. The sun in 
 Olivia's tresses beamed to him no less vividly; nor 
 did the elusive dimple in her roseleaf of a cheek obey 
 less flexibly her awaited smile. 
 
 He was in love at last he, who had asserted love 
 to be a folly of the senses, rampant in youth and 
 extinct a decade or two after it. The very bodily 
 preservation in which he had exulted, now cohf routed 
 him as a jeering excuse for his fond transport ; this 
 delightful malady would never have presumed to at- 
 tack him, at his age, if he had not gone on judiciously 
 husbanding enough prime vitality for its maintenance. 
 There were two or three women in New York society 
 whom for some time it had amused him to make the 
 recipients of his loyal, though harmless gallantries. 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite was one of these. He would be 
 sure, a few years ago, either to seat himself in her 
 box at the opera during some portion of the evening, 
 or to hover near it if it were too full for entrance 
 as those old boxes in the horseshoe of the Academy 
 of Music were easily rendered. At many a ball, 
 reception or dinner, lie would exchange with her 
 words of gayety, gossip, or a certain sort of flirtation 
 in whose art he was the supplest of adepts, and she 
 was very far from inefficient. The world knew him 
 as one of Mrs. Satterthwaite's unfailing devotees; and
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 95 
 
 matrons of her years, even when they are the chdte- 
 laines of superb establishments and give banquets 
 where the wines defy detraction, are rarely troubled 
 by a plethora of devotees. After a rather prolonged 
 battle with the new feelings that possessed him, Dela- 
 plaine determined to seek the advice of Mrs. Satter- 
 thwaite. He selected a particular evening when he 
 was almost confident she would be at home, and he 
 went early in order to anticipate other visitors. But 
 almost the first ray that shot from her steely eyes 
 weakened his resolution. And when her smile came, 
 seeming to give her lips a cruel curl that he had never 
 noticed until now, he abandoned his purpose alto- 
 gether. How that smile would change into pitiless 
 ironic laughter if she knew the truth ! And what a 
 fool he had been to dream of telling her ! " I'll put 
 the Atlantic between me and that girl ! " he swore to 
 himself, later in the evening. " This is just the season 
 for the Riviera, and I've never seen half enough of it." 
 But he did not go to the Riviera. He stayed in 
 New York, and felt the clutch of this astounding pas- 
 sion tighten about his heart, and so tell him that a 
 heart was really there. His self-humiliation was, 
 meanwhile, proportionate to his enchantment. Dur- 
 ing the interviews that he held with Olivia previous to 
 that final meeting which has been described in detail, 
 he battled silently against the impulse to disclose his 
 secret, as though it involved rank disgrace. Like 
 nearly all in whom love of self is paramount, he was 
 acutely sensitive to ridicule. There is no doubt that 
 he underwent severe suffering while he pictured the 
 amazement, quickly succeeded by repulsion, which his 
 amatory confession might cause. He mutely groaned
 
 96 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 beneath the curse of his gray hairs and wrinkles as 
 perhaps few of his sex have ever groaned before. And 
 here was just the girl to show him, with all the unvar- 
 nished frankness of maidenhood, how delicious an old 
 fool he had made of himself ! 
 
 Still, all this time his worldliness was counselling 
 hope to him. Old as he was, he was not too old to 
 marry a blooming young bride. Men had done it 
 before, when their purses were as well-lined as his own. 
 There was no young suitor in the field, either, and 
 that counted for much. Then, if her father died (as 
 die he must, said the doctors), she would be left to 
 face the intelligence of his past ruinous disbursements. 
 In her alarm, her bewilderment, why should she not 
 grasp at the first strong hand of help proffered her? 
 He found himself ardently wishing that she were a 
 few years older, and that he yet cared for her as he did 
 now. She would be sure not to hesitate then. No 
 full-grown woman, who had outlived the early roman- 
 tic quivers and illusions, ever did hesitate to marry 
 where lay her best vantage of wealth and position. 
 They were all alike ; the lover with the languishing 
 eyes and the slim bank account was sent off begging, 
 and the plain-featured or elderly wooer with the fat 
 income carried his point. Oh, yes, he had seen it 
 work like this a hundred times. But Olivia was not a 
 full-grown woman ; there seemed to rise the dreaded 
 impediment. That devilish romanticism which per- 
 petually went with girls of her age might put up a 
 barrier as powerful as if she were some demoiselle of 
 the sang azur and he merely the American gentleman 
 of means that he rated himself. 
 
 He had chosen to let his friend, Mrs. Satter-
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 97 
 
 thwaite, and her ultra-patrician sister, be the emissa- 
 ries who should' first impart the unpalatable tidings. 
 That was unquestionably the neater plan. He would 
 appear a little later as we are aware that he did 
 appear. He had not been at all sure that he would 
 then make to Olivia the disclosure he longed to make. 
 No palpitating lover of one-and-twenty could have 
 been more uncertain as to the exact moment favorable 
 for " speaking out " than this grizzly veteran of untold 
 tact and duplicity. But the time had arrived when 
 Olivia had announncd to him her intention of earning 
 her own livelihood and with that abominable per- 
 son, Mrs. Ottarson ! He had met the girl's affirmation 
 with a little rush of cynicism at first; that had been 
 irreversible with him ; he could no more have helped 
 it than he could have helped his baldness or his attenu- 
 ation. But afterward the chance for unreserved 
 avowal had seemed to lie just here. It hardly ap- 
 peared conceivable that Olivia would prefer paid ser- 
 vitude under Mi's. Ottarson to driving in her own 
 
 O 
 
 carriage as Mrs. Spencer Delaplaine. 
 
 That she had treated him precisely as she had done 
 he did not think at all surprising. It would have been 
 highly improbable that such a girl should do anything 
 else. A week perhaps even a day might change 
 her rnood, her point of view. Besides, that unutter- 
 able Mrs. Ottarson, with all her villanies against the 
 Queen's English, was not qxiite dunce enough to 
 advise the discountenancing of a match like this. 
 And yet, who could tell? The woman might be one 
 of those who read the Weekly Wake-Me-Up, or some 
 similar harrowing sheet, where they printed stories of 
 how Luella wedded the penniless young painter and
 
 98 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 drew herself up to her full height, and smiled haughtily, 
 when his wealthy but wrinkled rival begged for her 
 lily hand. 
 
 He would not by any means retire from the contest. 
 He would simply silence his guns and watch the ene- 
 my's movements as best he might. Thus he decided, 
 that same evening, as he crossed the big, lonely, dusky 
 square, and moved up along the lower portion of 
 Fifth Avenue. It is always quiet here, with no rattle 
 of omnibus- wheels or jingle of car-bells. Delaplaine's 
 residence was not far away, in West Tenth Street. 
 He owned and occupied a rather spacious house there ; 
 he had done so for years, not liking to dine regularly 
 at his club, bachelor though he was. There were too 
 few men of the very first grade, he had long ago made 
 up his mind, Avho lived in this way on our side of the 
 ocean. Besides, he dined out a great deal all through 
 the season, and he liked to return those dinners in 
 kind, with the mark on them of his own menage and 
 his own chef. Occasionally he would give an evening 
 reception, at which every appointment was perfect, 
 with some reigning lady of fashion to welcome the 
 guests in his company. The year that Emmeline Sat- 
 terthwaite came out he issued cards for a brilliant ball 
 in her honor a signal of such profound civility to the 
 young lady's mamma and herself that envy seized the 
 weapon of gossip, as it so often does when it can find 
 one within reach. It asserted that "Of course the ball 
 was beautiful, and a success, and all that, but then one 
 couldn't refrain from asking whether it wn&just in the 
 nicest taste or no." Delaplaine and Mrs. Satter- 
 thwaite heard some of these affectionate hints, and 
 laughed together over them. The lady herself was
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 99 
 
 not at all bored, but not half so much amused as she 
 would have liked to be. She was too many rungs of 
 the social ladder above nearly all these jealous beings 
 to care for whatever spiteful pellets they might fling 
 from ambush. But the ball had conferred great joy 
 upon her for one conspicuous reason : the Auchin- 
 closses had never had a like honor bestowed on their 
 Madeleine ; and they would have thought it an unde- 
 niable honor. Severely as Letitia Auchincloss 
 " weeded " her list, she had never dreamed of suppos- 
 ing that her brother's partner could hold any but an 
 honorable place there. 
 
 Delaplaine ascended the soft-carpeted stairs of his 
 commodious home to-night, and felt what a rich frame 
 it would make for the living picture which he was 
 bent upon surrounding by it. And she was of the 
 Van Rensselaer blood, too. If he had believed in a 
 Providence, he would have been strongly inclined to 
 thank it for that agreeable fact. The entire mansion 
 w.as already most suitably prepared for the entrance of 
 a bride. The drawing-rooms were a nonpareil of ele- 
 gance and comfort. The upper chambers, divided one 
 from another by silken porti&res, needed no fresh 
 grace of decoration. Costly paintings and engravings 
 lined every wall, for Delaplaine loved Art, as many 
 men of just his temperament do ; he had purchased a 
 Bouguereau and a Gerome, a Toulmouche and a De 
 Jonghe, and a little Meissonier at some huge price. 
 No Corot, however, was to be found in his dwelling ; 
 he considered Corot a humbug, and Daubigny, Rous- 
 seau, Dupre, humbugs as well. They were quite too 
 idealistic to gratify him. He execrated artists who 
 strove to paint the unpaintable. There was enough
 
 100 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 reality to put on canvas ; why strive to put impossi- 
 ble dreams there ? 
 
 His great tufted easy-chair was waiting for him in 
 his library at the rear of the house, on its second story. 
 The lamp of Japanese bronze on his reading-table 
 beamed to him its old suave welcome behind a rosy 
 shade. A genial flame writhed and sparkled from two 
 burly logs on the low hearth, with its gleaming and- 
 irons and its glassy tilework. A valet was within 
 easy call. To touch the little silver bell on the book- 
 loaded table and summon him was no more difficult 
 than to reach out a hand and take up the last copy of a 
 noted English review, and find out what new Ameri- 
 can author it had vented its insular spleen upon. 
 
 " She would like all this," he said to himself, sur- 
 veying the apartment, with its low book-cases, its 
 precious bits of sculpture and bric-a-brac picked up 
 abroad, its prostrate gorgeousness of Turkish rugs, its 
 tapestries, its tasteful and luxurious air of faultless 
 bien etre. At the same time he recalled the exquisite 
 arrangement of other rooms, visited perhaps but once 
 a foi-tnight or still more seldom, yet always kept in 
 the most irreproachable order by.a body of trained 
 servants. His entire establishment was an ornate 
 monumental tribute to his own selfishness. 
 
 He lit a cigar. He never smoked more than two 
 cigars during the twenty-four hours ; one after dining 
 and one a little before bed-time. As he sank into the 
 big cushioned chair and puffed forth the first blue 
 clouds from a Cuban tobacco imported by himself, he 
 faintly repeated, half aloud, the reflection which had 
 before been a silent one : 
 
 " She would like all this."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 101 
 
 He meant that she should not only like it, but 
 marry to get it. He had not by any means done with 
 Olivia Van Rensselaer yet. Indeed, the longer that 
 he sat musing and smoking there in his library, the 
 more convinced he felt that now the ice had been 
 once fairly broken, the true line of action had begun. 
 
 Meanwhile, at this same hour, Olivia was saying, 
 very earnestly yet sedately, to Mrs. Ottarson : 
 
 " I don't think it possible that he really could care for 
 me an old man like that. Do you, Aunt Thyrza?" 
 
 " Oh, I s'pose so ! " cried Mrs. Ottarson, in her galvanic 
 style; " they sometimes do, 'Livia. But it's too awful 
 to think of you goin' that way ! Mercy sakes ! I don't 
 see how you kep' a straight face. I couldn't, 'f I'd 
 been twenty years 'r so younger, and he'd said it to me." 
 
 " It would have been dreadful to laugh," answered 
 Olivia. " It would have been insulting, you know." 
 
 " Oh, yes. Of course it would." . . . Mrs. Ottarson 
 wore a meditative look for a moment. "'Livia," she 
 presently murmured, all the celerity and levity gone 
 from her tones, " I dare say there's plenty that would 
 call it an el'gant thing f you. There's mothers that 
 would almost drag a girl o' theirs to the altar if she 
 got such a chance o' goin' there. Oh, yes. I know 
 this world, if any one does." Here she paused again, 
 and a curious, drawn, pei-plexed, irritated look showed 
 itself about the corners of her mouth. " I mus' say, 
 'Livia, that I would like t' see you his widoic" 
 
 " Oh, Aunt Thyrza ! " 
 
 "I'd like if you'd been all through the hateful part 
 of it an' come to the part worth havin'." 
 
 " Oh, Aunt Thyrza," still pleaded the girl ; " don't ! "
 
 102 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 "I can't help it when I think o' that sumpshus 
 house o' his there in Tenth Street, an' the carriage I've 
 seen him ridin' along the Fifth Av'nu' in. Nobody 
 dis'proves of 't more'n I do when 't comes to a girl 
 downright sellin'' herself. No, indeed! But when I 
 think o' that carriage, 'Livia, with two men up on the 
 box in bottle-green liv'ry, and nobody inside but just 
 him, w'y, 't seems to me 't if some girl wasn't han- 
 kerin' partic'lar after young comp'ny, she might kind 
 o' jus' shut her eyes an' take the jump ! " 
 
 Olivia broke into a laugh, but at the same time she 
 went up to her aunt and playfully put one hand over 
 the lady's mouth, as if to forbid further volubility in 
 at least a single direction. 
 
 "I'm not going to shut my eyes and take any such 
 jump," she exclaimed. " And I know very well that 
 you wouldn't either wish or advise it. ... But what 
 I propose, with your permission, to do very soon, 
 Aunt Thyrza, is to move myself and my few posses- 
 sions out of this house. Your people need you I'm 
 certain of it. Before very long I hope to make them 
 feel as if they needed me too. I only hope I can get on 
 half as well there as Ida Strang did. It's just as if she 
 left you to give me a chance, but I shall never leave 
 you for any such reason as hers. I intend never to 
 marry, Aunt Thyrza, as long as I live. . . . Perhaps 
 we can manage to start for Twenty-Third Street by 
 to-morrow afternoon. Don't you believe it will be 
 possible? I want to go as soon as that. If my aunts 
 come again, or if he should come, I want them to find 
 me there with you. That will simply settle every- 
 thing. Now let us try if we can't get away by to- 
 morrow ! "
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 103 
 
 VI. 
 
 THEY did try, and succeeded. That next day, with 
 its hurry of packing, cost Olivia a good many pangs. 
 But she consoled herself somewhat by thinking that 
 possibly, if the day were less busy, she would have had 
 time to suffer much more poignantly. Not the least 
 of her trials came in the discharge of her French 
 maid, a girl to whom she had become attached while 
 abroad, and to whom the necessity of imparting full 
 reasons for their sudden separation was trying enough. 
 In the hasty collection of all those possessions to 
 which she knew that she had a personal right, Olivia 
 came inevitably upon not a few tokens that brimmed 
 her eyes with filial tears. The bitter thought was al- 
 ready at work within her soul that the father she 
 mourned had treated her with heedless cruelty. She 
 strove against the distressing influences of such a re- 
 flection, however, and in a spirit of courage no less 
 dutiful than pathetic, we have heard her tell Mrs. 
 Ottarson that she believed it would form her chief 
 sorrow hereafter, in thinking of her father, to recall 
 how he must have suffered when monetary perplexi- 
 ties assailed him. But now, already, she could feel the 
 impulse of reproach and blame cloud and mar for her 
 the tender brightness of his memory. Her clear com- 
 prehension of moral obliquity, whenever and wherever 
 met, compelled her to pass condemning judgment 
 upon his actions. And she disliked to have his image
 
 104 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 in succeeding time rise before her with this blur across 
 it of unconquerable resentment. It would be so un- 
 happy a thing to go on seeking excuses for him, and 
 perhaps never lighting on one that was truly adequate ! 
 He had so long been her ideal of gentlemen that it 
 was like putting out the sacred tripod-flames in a tem- 
 ple to discontinue accrediting him with virtue above 
 the reach of condonation ! 
 
 She had, as yet, no conception of how mordant 
 were to be the changes in her life. Eager to avoid 
 dependence where a girl of weaker parts would have al- 
 most thankfully grasped the chance of securing it, she 
 had wholly miscalculated her own strength to enter 
 among surroundings new in the sense of an unimag- 
 ined novelty. The dismissal of her French maid was 
 but a faintly unpleasant pi'elude to graver sacrifices. 
 Stepping, the self-supposed heiress of a large property, 
 down from a home which but yesterday she had 
 looked on as inalienably her own, into a boarding- 
 house full of people with whose types and charactei-- 
 istics she was entirely unacquainted and quickly 
 prepared to disagree, meant a great deal more than 
 fancy at its ablest flight could have informed her. It 
 needed considerable effort for Mrs. Ottarson and her- 
 self to get away from the Washington Square resi- 
 dence, in the meaning of an absolute and final 
 departure, before about half-past three o'clock that 
 afternoon. But they accomplished the feat, and 
 Olivia left with a certainty that she should find her 
 baggage deposited at the abode of her aunt some time 
 before she herself arrived there. 
 
 It was one of those thoroughly prosaic red-brick, 
 high-stooped houses in the west portion of Twenty-
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 105 
 
 Third Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, 
 for which that momentous locality deserves anything 
 but celebrating mention ! There is probably no large 
 city within the present ken of those versed in the 
 topography of such progression, that has grown as un- 
 picturesquely as New York has done. For years it 
 increased the number of its streets with, an attention 
 to quiet ugliness of outline that gave no promise of 
 the lovely Central Park destined as a sort of metro- 
 politan repentance for past misdeeds. From North 
 River to East the hideous avenues have swept, one 
 after another, across town. Smartness of exterior has 
 now and then ci'opped out in the brown-stone front 
 and the plate-glass window-pane, but except for the 
 expression of a certain high-stepping, dapper gentility, 
 there is not much relief from prevalent uncouthness 
 anywhere between Waverley Place and Fifty-Seventh 
 Street. Here the true architectural fire leaps into 
 creditable blaze, and a half-suburban stroll up through 
 Harlem, and even beyond it, will easily make us ready 
 to prophesy how beautiful, how imperial a city New 
 York may one day become, when all the eyes that 
 now mark the domain of its growing grandeur have 
 long ago been sightless ! 
 
 Mrs. Ottarson's boarding-house might just as well 
 have been either of its next-door neighbors, for any 
 outward individuality presented by it. But inside, it 
 was probably cleaner than a good many of its fellow 
 boarding-houses. Its proprietress endeavored to keep 
 it so, and not without fair success. But the dinginess, 
 the shabbiness, the wear and tear, the out-at-elbows 
 and down-at-the-heel look of nearly everything, she 
 would have found it hard enough to rectify. She had
 
 106 OLIVIA DELAPLAIXE. 
 
 always managed to hold her own with her boarders, 
 while never attempting to overawe them by the slight- 
 est assumption of undue majesty ; it was extraordinary 
 how skilfully she contrived to steer between austerity 
 on the one hand and over-humility on the other. 
 Such a position as hers it is not easy to assert and 
 maintain ; but she had done both for a number of 
 years with excellent success. Her boarders were for 
 the most part fond of her, and three or four of them 
 had followed her to these ampler quarters from a nar- 
 row and much inferior house in Greenwich Avenue. 
 Others were the result of her improved facilities of ac- 
 commodation, and one or two of these latter she re- 
 garded with pride as the living evidence of her rise in 
 the world. The day of her home-coming was indeed 
 an eventful day for the boarders. Hearing that it was 
 near and probable, they had " clubbed together," as 
 they called the operation, and purchased a water- 
 pitcher of sufficient splendor to glare down the' 
 idea of its not being silver, though in reality but 
 " warranted " plate whatever that epithet may 
 mean. Considering that every boarder in the house 
 would most probably make use of this pitcher quite 
 as often as Mrs. Ottarson would do, there was an 
 apparent lack of self-forgetfulness in the nature of 
 the gift that might wickedly have tempted a humor- 
 ist. It was to be formally presented at the first din- 
 ner over which their returned landlady (who had so 
 nobly devoted herself to the dying hours of an aristo- 
 cratic brother-in-law) should hereafter preside. 
 
 " Here's your room, 'Livia," said Mrs. Ottarson, 
 after she and her niece had ascended two flights 
 of stairs together, and entered a well-furnished, thor-
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 107 
 
 onghly comfortable-looking chamber in the rear of the 
 house. "It's southern exposure, you know, an' there's 
 a fire-place f'r a fire whenever you want one. I'm so 
 glad, dear, that I can see my way to lettin' you have 
 it. It was Mr. Ab'nethy's an' I'm glad he went while 
 I was to your poor pa's. He's one o' the mos* tryin' 
 boarders, Mr. Ab'nethy, I've ever had since I've been 
 in this line o' liviri'. Towels! He used seven a day! 
 He was English, an' had a tub that he flounced round 
 in so ev'ry mornin' it woke Miss Pank, who's got the 
 hall bedroom jus' next to this (you see, I've stuffed up 
 all the cracks o' the door), an' brought on her neural- 
 lerga that she gets bein' a gov'ness, poor thing; she 
 can only afford me eight dollars a week though she 
 pays it ev'ry Saturday so reg'lar! An' then Ab'- 
 nethy's airs! Why, I pride myself on givin' hearty 
 breakfasts to 's many as wants 'em ; but he called him. 
 self an inv'lid, an' yet he'd ring his bell 's late as 'leven 
 o'clock over-night to find out w'ether ther 'd be grid- 
 dle-cakes or not the next mornin'. An' eggs ! Wy, 
 if an egg was too yeller to suit him he'd say 't was 
 green, an' if 't wasn't yeller enough he 'd say there 
 was the commencement of a chicken in it, an' . . ." 
 
 "Does Ida Strang have as large a room as this?" 
 asked Olivia, while she looked about her, uncon- 
 sciously breaking in upon the details of Mr. Aber- 
 nethy's peculiarities. 
 
 " Oh, about" answered Mrs. Ottarson, suddenly, at 
 her wit's end for a beneficent and pacifying falsehood. 
 "Let's see . . . hers hasn't got jus' the same closet 
 'commodations, p'rhaps, but I guess yours an' hers 
 would pretty much tally. Wy do you ask t/tat } 
 'Livia ? "
 
 108 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 " Oh, nothing," was the reply. This apartment 
 struck Olivia as being rather beyond the deserts of 
 her new position and prospective salary. But she 
 knew so little concerning such matters; it was easy 
 enough to deceive her. 
 
 Mrs. Ottarson meanwhile hurried on, with great 
 hidden desire to change the subject: "You'll come 
 to dinner, 'Livia ? you needn't if you don't feel 
 'xactly up to it. You can have it here jus' 's 
 well 's not. Now, do tell me w'ich you'd rather 
 do." 
 
 "Oh, I'll appear at dinner," said Olivia. She 
 glanced at her trunks, already deposited in the room. 
 "I shall unpack a little, and then I shall be quite 
 ready. Dinner is at six o'clock, isn't it ? " 
 
 Mrs. Ottarson's boarders dined in the basement. 
 When she first took possession of the house she had 
 pondered the question of whether it would be prefer- 
 able to have one large table in this room or small ones 
 scattered about. The latter arrangement was more 
 advisable from the standpoint of pure fashion, but 
 there was a sociability in the former for which no 
 amount of elegance could compensate. " Oh, it's 
 tonier to have 'em I allow that" Mrs. Ottarson 
 had said of the small tables to a friend who coun- 
 selled her adoption of them. " But I've been so 'cus- 
 tomed, somehow, t' look on my boarders 's if they 
 were friends an' relations. B'sides, I like to sit at 
 the head o' my own table an' do the soup-helpin' an' 
 the carvin'. There's something kind o' human about 
 that ; but I can't see as there is when the lady o' the 
 house takes her victuals off somewheres alone an' 
 leaves her boarders to sep'rate in comp'nies, one
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 109 
 
 table pnttin' on airs, to the next an' another gos- 
 sipin' about 'em both." 
 
 There was not a single vacant seat at the long table 
 this evening, by a quarter past six o'clock. Such a 
 full attendance was rare in the extreme. Even young 
 Tredgett, who worked so hard " down town " and 
 would often appear as late as seven, or possibly a 
 quarter past, giving Ann and Bridget the trouble of 
 keeping three or four plates hot for him (and, it must 
 be added, now and then smelling of something very 
 like whiskey cocktails, in a manner that suggested 
 more pleasurable detaining causes than those of a 
 mercantile character) even young Tredgett man- 
 aged to be present on this highly memorable occasion. 
 Olivia had slipped into the place which Mrs. Ottarson 
 had provided, on her own right. The girl had sup- 
 posed that her presence would hardly be more than 
 just noticed ; but here she speedily found herself to 
 be quite wrong. This was the aristocratic niece at 
 whose father's death-bed their landlady had been 
 performing her ministrant offices. Only yesterday 
 morning the society column in the N~ew York As- 
 teroid had mentioned his death, and added feelingly 
 that it would throw some of our first families into 
 mourning. Of course Olivia must not merely be 
 stared at, but pulled to pieces in a visual sense by 
 the little soulless corporation of the dinner-table. 
 She soon became sorry that she had not dined up- 
 stairs in her own room, after all. Still, the general 
 growing babble of conversation served her, before 
 long, like a friendly agent. If not forgotten by the 
 small community all about her, she was at least tem- 
 porarily ignored. She had asked her aunt to present
 
 110 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 her to nobody for that evening, and Mrs. Ottarson, 
 readily perceptive and congenial as to the motive of 
 such request, had freely granted it. Meanwhile she 
 listened, with sensations in which alarm had begun to 
 play a stealthy part. Her aunt's errors and short- 
 comings, both of grammar and taste, had weeks ago 
 ceased to disconcert her; they were the mistakes of 
 one whose heart was nobility and fidelity, however 
 deep a few flaws of the surface might seem to a 
 casual eye. But thus far her acquaintanceship with 
 Mrs. Ottarson had stood for the girl's one encounter 
 with meagre and feeble human culture. What she now 
 listened to would not, \mder different circumstances, 
 have proved uninteresting ; she was naturally fond of 
 watching various bents or oddities in the dispositions 
 and temperaments of her fellows ; to shrink from an 
 attentive scrutiny of the unrefined lay wholly outside 
 of her antipathies. She might have enjoyed listening 
 and observing at present with the zest that all novelty 
 of this description brings to a healthy and robust 
 young mind, were it not for the furtive but insistent 
 thought that she had undertaken to dwell among these 
 people and accept them as her future companions and 
 associates. 
 
 The talk had grown merrily jocose. A certain Mr. 
 Spillington was speaking a good deal, by this time, 
 and his pleasantries provoked great applausive mirth. 
 He was one of the important boarders ; he and his 
 wife paid thirty-five dollars a week for a second-story 
 room. He was a large, portly man, with nebulous, 
 bulging, flaxen whiskers, and a prominent nose that 
 shone with a waxy pinkness above his wide, ever- 
 smiling lips. He held a position of superintendence
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. Ill 
 
 in a noted Eighth Avenue dry-goods emporium, not 
 far away. Some of the ladies who now sat at meat 
 with him had received the honor of his most impres- 
 sive civilities when "shopping" within his august 
 radius. He had a little, pale, narrow-chested wife 
 at his side, who thought him a prince of wits and a 
 flower of manliness, and whom he could have taken 
 in his arms and tossed like a baby without the least 
 muscular effort. She pretended to be shocked at 
 nearly everything he said, but kept her eyes inces- 
 santly rolling to left and right whenever he aired his 
 humorous powers, for the evident purpose of ascer- 
 taining what risible havoc they created. Now and 
 then she would exclaim, in a tenuous, piping treble : 
 " Sam, do stop ! " But there was a world of shy, 
 covert pride in this remonstrance, which had become 
 as habitual with the poor, devotedly uxorious lady as 
 the sleepy trill of a sick bird to its more vigorous and 
 songful mate. 
 
 " Oh, yes, we've been kicking up our heels here in a 
 tremendous way while you've been gone, Mrs. Ottar- 
 son," Mr. Spillington was sonorously exclaiming. He 
 had a bass voice of untold capacity, and he now made 
 this organ felt in its full volume. "Drowle, don't 
 you remember that night I got you so drunk on lager- 
 beer that you opened one of the parlor windows and 
 called in an organ-grinder to give us a Virginia-reel?" 
 
 This flight of invention was hailed with noisy laugh- 
 ter. The young gentleman thus daringly addressed 
 would soon be ordained as a minister, and the scandal- 
 ous fiction caused blushes to bathe his timid, beardless 
 face. 
 
 " I guess I don't remember," he burst forth, with a
 
 112 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 nervous titter, the moment that silence had been re- 
 stored, " and I guess you don't, either." 
 
 This was not strong as repartee. Everybody saw 
 that Mr. Drowle was painfully embarrassed. Miss 
 Pank, the visiting governess, who sat next him, leaned 
 her head in his direction till one of her pendent front 
 curls (which it had been spitefully said of her that she 
 wore in defiance of the reigning mode because there 
 
 O O 
 
 was a large amber wart on one of her cheeks, close to 
 the ear) almost dipped its hyacinthine end into the 
 gravy on her neighbor's plate. 
 
 "There's such a thing, I think, as carrying jokes a 
 little too far," whispered Miss Pank, and the soon- 
 to-be Reverend Mr. Drowle shot her a grateful glance 
 over one of his burning cheeks. 
 
 " Mercy sakes ! " now hurried Mrs. Ottarson ; " you 
 don't s'pose, Mr. Spillington, that I'm goin' to b'lieve' 
 you left poor Mr. Drowle ''nough beer to get intoxi- 
 cated on ? Not you, sir ! I've seen you toss off too 
 many pitcherf uls to be gammoned that way." 
 
 There was a certain Mr. Sti'uthers, who had given 
 a wild guffaw of delight at the end of Mr. Spilling- 
 ton's last speech, and he gave another wild guffaw 
 now. He was much pitted with small-pox, and had 
 beady black eyes and the slimmest of necks, with an 
 " Adam's-apple " that looked like a ligneous excres- 
 cence on a slender tree. Every time that he gave his 
 hilarious laugh, the "Adam's-apple" would take a 
 little upward bound, as though it were some sort of 
 curious machine for measuring the degrees of humor 
 reached by any occupant of Mrs. Ottarson's boarding- 
 house. 
 
 A plump, cherubic maiden, with a mouth like a
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE 113 
 
 rosebud and two dimples looking like tiny bees that 
 had come to sip honey from so tempting a flower, sat 
 next to Mr. Struthers. This was his betrothed, 
 Serena Sugby, the daughter of the well-known author- 
 ess, Aurelia Sugby, who detested the jocund Mr. 
 Spillington, and prided herself on having more than 
 once disastrously worsted him in a battle of tongues. 
 Serena, a very lambkin of pranksomeness beside her 
 dignified and almost funereal mother, lifted one fat 
 little hand and began to slap her laughter-convulsed 
 lover between his shoulder-blades. 
 
 " Serena ! " remonstrated her mother, in severest 
 undertone, " when will you learn the simplest rudi- 
 ments of lady-like deportment?" And then, while 
 Serena giggled penitently and smoothed her canary- 
 colored bang, Mrs. Sugby exchanged a glance of 
 mutual disgust across the table with her friend, Miss 
 Pank. 
 
 " Oh, yes, yes," continued Mr. Spillington, rumina- 
 tive and incorrigible ; " we've had some famous old 
 times, Mrs. Ottarson, while we've been running the 
 house ourselves. I suppose I'd better not say any- 
 thing about the surprise-party we gave Mrs. Sugby, 
 one night, in her own room." 
 
 " Sam, do stop ! " twittered his wife, rolling her eyes 
 to this side and that, as if determined on seeing just 
 who appreciatively laughed and who did not. 
 
 Mrs. Aurelia Sugby stiffened herself. She abomi- 
 nated Mi\ Spillington, but she had always regarded 
 him as a person to be " put down " without much 
 difficulty. She was the well-known Aurelia Sugby, 
 author of "Beryline, the Babe of Sorrow;" "Bertha, 
 or the Bride of an Afternoon ; " " Teresa, the Type-
 
 114 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 writing Girl," and many other fictional works of an 
 astounding popularity, as the editors of the weekly 
 journals in which they had run serially for the delight 
 of innumerable avid readers, could plainly testify. 
 She bore no resemblance whatever to her blonde, 
 mettlesome little daughter. She was dark, emaci- 
 ated, with a lantern jaw and a thin-lipped, disputa- 
 tious mouth. She had a great opinion of herself. 
 The editor of the New York Fireside Friend had 
 made a contract with her to furnish him two con- 
 tinued stories a year, one sprightly sketch (" with 
 plenty of love in it") every week, and a fortnightly 
 poem " thrown in," for a remarkably handsome annual 
 sum. The poem was to be as much as possible like 
 that piece of lyrical work which she had once written, 
 and made such an immense hit by writing, entitled 
 " Only the Baby's Empty Shoe." She had followed 
 up this classic stroke of success by "Only a Mother's 
 Tear," "Only a Cradle Void," and "Only a Wee 
 White Sock ; " but somehow none of these latter cre- 
 ations had achieved the wide vogue of the first. Her 
 verse was said to touch the popular heart, and like 
 certain other verse of the same reputed efficacy, it was 
 quite remorseless in rhyming "sound " with "brown," 
 or "slumber" with "under." But the popular heart 
 had beaten no less responsively to it on that account. 
 
 Bold Mr. Spillington was not to be dismayed. In 
 previous conflicts with Mrs. Sugby he had always pre- 
 served his temper, which is considerably more than she 
 had done. For this reason, if for no other, he had 
 believed himself repeatedly to have been the victor. 
 He now said, with his broadest smile, looking at Mrs. 
 Ottarson :
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 115 
 
 " Oh, it was a very fine affair very, indeed. It 
 was a masquerade." 
 
 Up darted Mr. Struthers's " Adam's-apple," and a 
 roar left his lips, followed by a choking sound. His 
 fiancee^ forgetful of all past injunctions, gleefully lifted 
 her clenched rosy fist, and pounded him five or six 
 times on the back, as though the performance were 
 great sport, and at the same time a matter of distinct 
 duty. Her mother was too absorbed for the usual ad- 
 monitory " Serena ! " this time. She was indeed bent 
 upon the overthrow of the audacious Mr. Spillington. 
 
 " Ah ? " she said, with a sepulchral blandness. " A 
 masquerade in my apartment, sir ? And, pray, what 
 sort of a masquerade ? " 
 
 This was precisely the opportunity by which Mr. 
 Spillington's diabolic fun-poking was balefully stimu- 
 lated. As he prepared to answer, Mrs. Ottarson 
 struck in, with joviality, but with a vocal note of seri- 
 ousness also : 
 
 " Now jus' look here, Sam Spillington (you limb, 
 you !), stop this tomfool'ry ! Try your nonsense on 
 somebody that enjoys it. Do 's I tell you ! " 
 
 "Mrs. Sugby seemed to enjoy it very much," as- 
 serted Mr. Spillington, as he gave one of his big, 
 vapory whiskers a swift twirling stroke. " That is, if 
 you mean our surprise-masquerade. The costumes 
 were all so well-chosen. You've heard of Charles 
 Dickens parties, of course. This was an Aurelia J. 
 Sugby party. We all dressed like characters from our 
 esteemed friend's favorite works of fiction. Struthers, 
 there, he went as Del Monte, the heavy Spanish vil- 
 lain in ... what is the name of that most exciting 
 romance? And Drowle, poor fellow, he was Claribel,
 
 116 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 the Sewing-Macbine Girl. His figure was just slender 
 enough to suit the female get-up, and then we curled 
 his hair, and parted it in the middle, so that. ..." 
 
 But Mr. Spillington's voice was now drowned by 
 tumultuous peals of laughter. Olivia sat and won- 
 dered what they had heard to plunge them in such 
 ecstasies of mirth. She felt, on her own side, merely 
 the discordant condemnation of one who sees the 
 shafts fly from an insolent personality, reckless how 
 deep they pierce. She had not been prepossessed by 
 Mrs. Aurelia Sugby; few people ever were. But she 
 now became conscious of a kind of sympathy with that 
 lady's grimness and acidity, as the latter, having waited 
 for a pause in the prevailing clamor, somewhat 
 hoarsely said : 
 
 *' You exhibit, sir, a most exact familiarity with my 
 published works, truly ! " 
 
 " Oh, yes," exclaimed Mr. Spillington, with that 
 temerity by which the over-indulged humorist will tell 
 how dizzying an elixir applause can brew him, " I as- 
 sure you, madam, that I read the Blood-and- Thunder 
 Gazette every Saturday night." 
 
 " Sam, do stop ! " bleated his wife. . . . But her roll- 
 ing eyes could now detect few signs of amusement on 
 the various faces they swept. Mr. Spillington, like all 
 jokers who serve the capricious approval of the min- 
 ute, had for once over-shot his mark. His last sally 
 had fallen pointlessly flat. Mrs. Sugby's admiring 
 readers were not in the minority this evening. It was 
 well enough playfully to antagonize her, but to hurl 
 scorn at her luminous talent was quite another posture. 
 Even Mr. Struthers, oblivious of his guffaw, refrained 
 from a smile, and if the up-springing of his " Adam's-
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 117 
 
 apple " was to be calculated on as an indication of Mr. 
 Spillington's triumph or defeat, its fixity now conveyed 
 but a single sombre meaning. 
 
 Mrs. Sugby's field of attack was ready for the mar- 
 shalling of her forces. She made no delay ; her sober 
 eyes kindled with an uncompromising spark, and the 
 smile that touched her lips had the gleam in it of a 
 naked blade. 
 
 " I do not write for the journal you have mentioned, 
 sir," she said, amid the silence which had ensued. " I 
 haven't ever even perused that periodical, as I'm aware 
 of. I presume you find time to do so, sir, but if you'll 
 allow me to express myself free on that point, I think 
 it would be much more suitable if you perused, instead, 
 a book on the manners of good society." 
 
 " How scorchingly sarcastic ! " whispered Miss Pank 
 to Mr. Drowle, as a stillness followed these inimical 
 words. 
 
 Mr. Spillington did not appear to think so, however. 
 " Are you the author of such a book, madam ? " he in- 
 quired. " I didn't know you went into good society." 
 Here he gave a voluminous cough, and added, as soon 
 as its accompanying throat spasm would permit : " That 
 is ... a ... of course, in your writings, I should 
 say. I supposed you confined yourself mostly to low 
 life." 
 
 Even the amiable Serena had by this time become 
 incensed. " LOAV life ! " she exclaimed, looking at her 
 mother, as though shocked by a charge so grievous. 
 "Why, ma, your Coralie Talbot Montmorency in 
 ' Bertha, or the Bride of an Afternoon,' is one of the 
 greatest heiresses in England." 
 
 " My dear," said her mother, throwing a glance of
 
 118 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 untold contumely upon Mr. Spillington, " the gentle- 
 man doesn't read my works. He hasn't time. He's 
 too busy among the other man-milliners and counter- 
 jumpers at Bigsbee and Company's, in Eighth 
 Avenue." 
 
 Abusiveness could hardly go further than this. But 
 so far Mrs. Sugby had, nevertheless, won the day. 
 The suppressed murmur that greeted her bludgeon- 
 flinging sentence was one chiefly of approbation. She 
 had defended her intellectual offspring, the treasured 
 produce of her brain-labor. More than one lady or 
 gentleman present had flushed over the perils of Bery- 
 line or of Bertha. 
 
 But Mrs. Ottarson here dashed in between the com- 
 batants. She showed herself the most belligerent of 
 peace-makers. Her black eyes flashed savagely at Mr. 
 Spillington. "You're served jus' right!" she cried. 
 " You began it all, an' you've only got your dues." 
 Then to Mrs. Sugby : " But don't you say 'nother 
 word, ma'am. We've had 'nough wranglin', I guess, 
 for one evening." Then, finally, to both : " If either 
 of you does begin again, Pll up 'n leave the room, an' 
 take my niece, here, along with me. A pretty piece 
 of goin's-on for my first night home and her first 'pear- 
 ance 't my table ! " 
 
 Olivia, coloring, bit her lip. This allusion to herself 
 fired in her a new pride, and made an inward voice 
 sound to her, as if saying that she had no place among 
 men and women stamped with such coarseness as she 
 had already witnessed here. But self-reproach quickly 
 overcame that impetuous little secret vaunt ; it seemed 
 like disloyalty to the aunt who had saved her from a 
 far worse indignity that of becoming a pensioner, a
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 119 
 
 dependent, a recipient of doled-out alms from others. 
 The greater and worthier pride in her sped to destroy 
 the lesser and meaner one. 
 
 But still she remained keenly discomforted. It 
 rushed through her anxious mind, while the battle be- 
 tween Mrs. Sugby and Mr. Spillington threatened at 
 any instant to break the bounds of their landlady's au- 
 thoritative reprimand : 
 
 " How can I endure living among people like this ? 
 Are not their world and my world thousands of miles 
 apart ? What would poor papa say if he could know 
 now that I have drifted into these surroundings ? And 
 how can I bear myself among them ? Even if I go 
 on, with as much bravery and control as I can possibly 
 muster, shall I not in the end make the dreariest fail- 
 ure of it all ? " 
 
 Meanwhile, whether betokening an enforced armis- 
 tice, or only the ominous calm that precedes a more 
 desperate engagement, there had fallen over, the entire 
 dinner-table that lull which is so much more significant 
 when it comes after the flurry and turmoil of a heated 
 skirmish.
 
 120 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 VII. 
 
 BUT Mrs. Ottarson had carried her point. With a 
 rather embarrassed giggle, which bespoke coercive 
 surrender, Mr. Spillington subsided beneath the last 
 scathing coup de grace of Mrs. Sugby. A buzz of talk 
 now succeeded, from whose complex web could no 
 doubt have been unravelled many different opinions 
 concerning the recent passage-at-arms. But the gen- 
 eral decision went against Mr. Spillington. 
 
 " Your husband will have to apologize to Mrs. 
 Sugby," said a certain Mrs. Disosway, who sat next to 
 the wife of Mr. Spillington and now addressed that 
 lady. Mrs. Disosway abhorred the late assailant of 
 the celebrated authoress ; he was always cracking his 
 inane jokes at somebody's expense ; he had once pre- 
 sumed to crack one of them at hers. She was a sort 
 of concert-singer and had been an operatic prima 
 donna before that, and he had asked her, one day, 
 when she spoke with fervor of how deep and fond 
 were her hopes of heaven, whether she expected to 
 meet her lost voice there. This was a view of celes- 
 tial benignancy which Mrs. Disosway had not felt at 
 all inclined to take. She did not by any means regard 
 her vocal proficiency in the light of a departed bless- 
 ing. She was a stout, sallow woman, with an apocry- 
 phal look about the lustrous black of her fancifully dis- 
 posed tresses, and a pair of eyebrows that had the 
 appearance of having been ruthlessly burnt off at their
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 121 
 
 roots, leaving only two pale, smoke-colored arches to 
 contrast with the copious coiffure above them. She 
 was undoubtedly very decayed and artificial to con- 
 template, and it did not require much imagination on 
 the part of any one who cai-efully observed her to 
 decide that perhaps an organ of the most worn and 
 precarious quality might lie below her tallowy and 
 sagging lips. 
 
 ~~ O L 
 
 "My husband will have to apologize?" appealed 
 Mrs. Spill'mgton, with her wan face drawn into lines 
 of the most incredulous disdain. " Dear me ! I'd 
 like to know why ! " 
 
 " Oh, I'll tell you why," retoi'ted Mrs. Disosway, 
 grandly, " if you really would like to know. He spoke 
 most insultingly to Mrs. Sugby." 
 
 " Pshaw ! " fumed Mrs. Spillington. " I guess you 
 don't know my Sam, if you think he'd bemean himself 
 like that, when it was only a joke, and she understood 
 it was only one. . . . And to insinuate that my Sam 
 was a man-milliner and a counter-jumper ! She might 
 better apologize ! " 
 
 " She didn't insinuate it at all," said Mrs. Disosway. 
 " She stated it, in just so many words, Mrs. Spil- 
 lington." 
 
 "Yes, she did" struck in a gentleman with a dense 
 fall of long iron-gray hair that surged quite imparted 
 from a bloodless face, and who sat on Mrs. Disosway's 
 other side. He was a spiritualist, and his ardent 
 faith in the materializations wrought by Katy Convoy, 
 the last mediumistic idol of the hour, had been smitten 
 by the jeers of Mr. Spillington. "It seems to me, 
 ma'am, begging your pardon, that I never saw any- 
 body as well laid out as your husband was a few
 
 122 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 minutes ago. And you may tell him that, with my 
 compliments." 
 
 Mrs. Spillington showed two rows of large and not 
 flawless teeth, which her small, wilted face, with its 
 unhealthy tints, did not make less unfortunate as the 
 kind of disclosure brought about by her bantering 
 and twitting smile. 
 
 " Oh, I guess I won't tell my Sam anything with 
 your compliments, Mr. Smear. If there's any talk 
 about laying anybody out you might recollect what 
 quick work he once made with your ghosts and spirits 
 and things." 
 
 Mrs. Disosway and Mr. Smear put their heads to- 
 gether in low laughter of vast irony. " Quick work ! " 
 whispered Mrs. Disosway in the large ear of her 
 companion, with its big cartilaginous flange, that kept 
 the torrent of gray locks from breaking bounds and 
 inundating the clean-shorn, bluish cheek. "Oh, to 
 think, Mr. Smear, of that midget trifling so with the 
 great truths of Eliphalet K. Tomlinson and Cynthia 
 Jarvis Duryea, as we know them! Isn't it too pitiful?" 
 
 Mr. Smear looked as if he thought it was quite too 
 pitiful. Mrs. Disosway had "assisted" at several 
 seances held by both the just-named mediums, in 
 Mr. Smear's company, and she had also heard Mrs. 
 Cynthia Jarvis Duryea in a trance-lecture. The ex- 
 prima-donna thought it really unfortunate that Mr. 
 Smear, on such occasions, should wear that gray 
 shawl, fastened at one shoulder by that tarnished- 
 looking buckle, instead of the more conventional over- 
 coat. Still, his acquaintance had been a source of 
 such comfort to her ! Had he not been the means of 
 opening her soul to the marvels of spiritualism and of
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 123 
 
 bringing her into contact with her deceased second 
 husband ? The late Mr. Disosway had not, it is true, 
 proved a model spouse; still, communications from him 
 in a dark room under conditions of a truly awful 
 solemnity, had cast an idealizing glamour over the 
 hard fact of his having conducted himself like a 
 reprobate for several years previous to his entrance 
 into the summer land. 
 
 But Mr. Spillington, like all persons who volunteer 
 amusement of a mercilessly disrespectful kind, had se- 
 cured adherents and supporters. There were toes under 
 Mrs. Ottarson's mahogany, this evening, on which the 
 coltish hoof of his so-termed humor had not yet trod- 
 den. Hence a certain share of the loquacious bustle 
 that now prevailed was not adverse to him ; it excused 
 him on the ground of *' not meaning anything but his 
 fun, you know," and of " only wanting to wake us all up." 
 
 Mrs. Ottarson, having laid the tempest, tried to 
 diffuse forgetfulness of its ended rage. Of necessity, 
 her efforts were restricted to a minor audience, and it 
 is possible that overheard semi-tones of criticism might 
 have spurred the quieted contestants into a fresh duel 
 of wits, had not the arrival of dessert brought with it 
 the time for presenting that fond testimonial of the 
 silver-plated pitcher which was to terminate this ex- 
 ceptional repast. 
 
 It was a most unsuitable hour for such presentation. 
 Mr. Spillington, as the only inmate of the boarding 
 house who possessed the least oratorio talent, had been 
 chosen to offer the gift, with some kind of apt accom- 
 panying speech. Meanwhile the pitcher itself had 
 been placed in charge of a Mrs. Tingle, a little wiry 
 lady, with a tiny pair of glasses forever on her tiny
 
 124 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 near-sighted eyes, and a gown that always looked as 
 if it were about actually to touch the floor, but never 
 did so, swinging nimbly clear of any such contact 
 with an oscillation that suggested unforsaken crino- 
 line. Mrs. Tingle had a passion for economy, and it 
 was agony for her to hear of any article having been 
 purchased at a dime lower than she could herself 
 obtain it elsewhere. Hence, when the question of the 
 pitcher arose, she sturdily fought against its being 
 procured up-town. She knew a shop in Maiden Lane 
 where you could get plated ware so cheap that it was 
 a positive sin not to go there. She had got her own 
 water-pitcher there ; you could see it engirt with 
 bric-a-brac on the adjustable bedstead in her apart- 
 ment, when that harmless incarnation of domestic 
 hypocrisy was trying to pass itself off as the most 
 undeceitful of side-boards. She had carried her point, 
 and a pitcher almost the duplicate of her own had 
 been found in Maiden Lane. As the servants were 
 beginning to pass round the oranges, Mr. Spillington 
 made a sign to her, and she slipped away from the 
 table, hurrying upstairs. She had been a good deal 
 flustered by the late disturbance, thinking it in horri- 
 ble taste on both sides, but having a partisan feeling 
 of indulgence for Mr. Spillington, whom she con- 
 sidered such a "comical, funning gentleman," and 
 "the life of the house." When she had regained her 
 seat, with a very tell-tale bulge in the shawl that she 
 had thrown over her slim shoulders, Mrs. Ottarson, 
 whose attention had been roused by her xinwonted 
 proceedings, would probably have addressed her con- 
 cerning them, if Mr. Spillington, sensationally clearing 
 his throat, had not now risen.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 125 
 
 He commenced an address to Mrs. Ottarson, in 
 which rhetoric was called upon for her most flowery 
 and prismatic tributes. He spoke of their landlady's 
 beaming visage having dawned once more upon the 
 expectant gaze of her boarders like a long-clouded 
 sun through envious but relenting vapors. He com- 
 pared her genial spirits to the blandness of a spring 
 morning, and her matronly charms of person to the 
 mellow richness of a midsummer afternoon. At this 
 stage in the complimentary harangue, his wife's eyes 
 rolled from one face to another with a magnificent 
 pride in the sonorous periods of her lord. Once or 
 twice the poor little lady's lips moved as though she 
 were about to utter her time-honored remonstrance of 
 " Sam, do stop ! " But she was saved from the dire 
 un fitness of such ejaculation by an opportune access 
 of common-sense, and went on rolling her eyes instead 
 of indulging in the old playful comment. And now 
 Mr. Spillington waxed still more picturesque, blending 
 pathos with his florid imageries. Mrs. Ottarson, the 
 well-beloved custodian of their daily comforts, had 
 gracefully, and almost at a moment's notice, exchanged 
 the horn of hospitable plenty, whose contents had been 
 so freely poured upon these, her admiring friends 
 for the ... for the (he cleared his throat a great 
 deal just here, as even the noblest orators will occa- 
 sionally do when they find themselves in the presence 
 of a dangerously inexact metaphor) for the . . . ahem ! 
 sombre apparel of the sick-nurse, and the ... er ... 
 gloom of the ... er ... chamber of ... er ... 
 dissolution. "Death" seemed a rather strong word 
 to use before Olivia, and "dissolution" answered de- 
 cidedly better. And then Mr. Spillington turned
 
 126 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 toward Mrs. Tingle, who was only a short distance 
 away from him, and who instantly handed up the 
 pitcher she had been concealing, which was passed 
 onward until it reached the spokesman's grasp. 
 
 " Accept, my dear Mrs. Ottarson," he now said, lifting 
 the pitcher in both hands as though he were about to 
 consecrate it by some impressive ceremonial, " this in- 
 sufficient and yet warmly affectionate proof of our . . ." 
 
 But here occurred a sudden most unforeseen inter- 
 ruption. It was made by Mrs. Tingle. She probably 
 meant to whisper, but what she accomplished was 
 nearer to a plaintive scream. 
 
 " Oh, dear ! " she broke forth, " I've made a mis- 
 take. I'm so near-sighted, and and my room was 
 dim. Yes, I I've made a mistake." 
 
 Mr. Spillington, with the pitcher still raised aloft 
 in an attitude that seemed to him particularly fine as 
 an idea and was majestic enough to be called sacerdo- 
 tal as a performance, here turned somewhat scowl- 
 ingly to the agitated speaker. 
 
 " A mistake ? " he said, in low, gruff voice. " What 
 do you mean, ma'am?" Seeing that every eye was 
 now turned upon her, Mrs. Tingle palpably shivered. 
 She drooped her eyes, and then raised them again 
 with an expression of acute despair. " The pitcher,' 
 she gasped. " Don't ! It it isn't it" 
 
 "Isn't it?" cried several voices in amazed concert. 
 
 "No," stammered Mrs. Tingle. Agitation always 
 produced in her the painfnl effect of completely 
 depressing her lower lip, till it dropped below her 
 under teeth in flaccid limpness. "I mean it's the 
 wrong pitcher! It's it's my old one, and not her 
 new one ! Oh, I'm so sorry."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 127 
 
 There was a momentary silence, and then came a 
 roar of laughter. But all the while Mr. Spillington 
 preserved his consequential posture, and when calm 
 was restored he said severely to Mrs. Tingle : " Oh 
 very well, madam. Then your blunder will compel 
 me to present this pitcher, so to speak, by proxy for 
 the other that's all. ... Be sure," he added, while 
 he now gave the piece of plated ware into Mrs. Ottar- 
 son's outstretched hands, " that you don't allow your- 
 self to be bamboozled out of the pitcher that really 
 belongs to you." And then they all roared again 
 except Aurelia Sugby, and a very few others. Mrs. 
 Sugby would not have done more than smile now, no 
 matter what had been the terms of her acquaintance- 
 ship with Mr. Spillington ; for slang was deeply dis- 
 tressing to her, whenever and wherever lighted on, 
 and she rejoiced in making her newsboys, her boot- 
 blacks, her street waifs and even her thieves and des- 
 peradoes talk with an elegance and correctness of 
 diction that might stingingly reproach certain other 
 contemporary novelists for their over-realistic methods. 
 
 Olivia, when it was all over," and she had left the 
 dinner-table for that most pleasurable privacy which 
 her own room afforded, felt as if she had been violat- 
 ing the requisitions of retirement due her deep mourn- 
 ing, and had witnessed a theatrical display in the 
 teeth of opposite inclinations. An environment like 
 this, as she clearly realized, must hereafter bristle with 
 vexatious trials. But she meant to be most brave, 
 and to hide as well as she possibly could from her 
 aunt's detection the very effort of fortitude that she 
 exerted. On next meeting Mrs. Ottarson, she per- 
 mitted no semblance of complaint or of adverse criti-
 
 128 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 cism to evidence the weightsome discouragement that 
 oppressed her. And the next few days of residence 
 in Twenty-Third Street had the effect of brightening 
 her gloomy outlook. Inexperience prevented her 
 from comprehending how light, and in a manner 
 nominal, were the duties assigned her. She soon dis- 
 covered herself possessed of a far more liberal leisure 
 than she "supposed would be at all compatible with her 
 new position. But the tact of Mrs. Ottarson in con- 
 cealing just to what real extent Ida Strang's discon- 
 tinued employments had been made like those of a 
 comparative sinecure, quite evaded Olivia's untrained 
 discernment. She failed to suspect that very little in 
 the way of household aid was asked of her, and that 
 this very little had been dexterously adapted to her 
 novitiate as a bread-winner. 
 
 Still, the people whom she must now not merely 
 meet and know, but meet and know on conditions of 
 thorough equality, incessantly dealt her wounds as 
 sharp as they were unconscious. No high-strung 
 daintiness had to do with her inward revolt against 
 them. It was simply, as she more than once told her 
 own thoughts, that she felt dedassee and ill at ease 
 among them. In education she was the superior of 
 most of them, and where others were as mentally 
 cultured as herself, their errors from the line of man- 
 nerly usage to which she had conformed for so long 
 without even recognizing her own implanted acqui- 
 escence, were a source of continual aversion. She 
 began to perceive that there were innumerable devia- 
 tions from the code of good breeding with which she 
 had never before met the rough-and-ready means of 
 acquainting her own antipathies. She had had until
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 129 
 
 now no lucid idea of how many different ways there 
 were of not being a gentleman or a gentlewoman. 
 
 That she should have gone to live with Mrs. Ott ar- 
 son had struck her other two aunts, when they first 
 heard of it, as an act grossly unpardonable. Olivia 
 had found time to write each of the ladies a civil 
 little note, saying that she had preferred this course 
 to any other which might be recommended. Mrs. 
 Satterthwaite, a half-hour after receiving the news 
 that her brother's child would become a species of 
 upper servant in a boarding-house, jumped into her 
 carriage, accompanied by her eldest daughter, Emme. 
 line, and had herself driven to the home of her sister, 
 Mrs. Auchincloss. The latter received her kindred 
 with a mournful smile ; she was holding in her hand 
 her own letter from Olivia, recently received. And 
 then, a little later, while the sisters were lamenting 
 together, Madeleine Auchincloss came into the room 
 and joined her cousin, Emmeline. 
 
 These two young ladies cordially disliked one an- 
 other. Though they were nearly of the same age, 
 Emmeline had been out four seasons and Madeleine 
 only two. Madeleine was jealous of her cousin for 
 being the sort of personally attractive girl who would 
 have shone as an indubitable belle even if she were 
 not a Satterthwaite; whereas Madeleine, with her 
 thinnish figure and dark, small-featured face, would 
 never have shone the least in the world as a belle if 
 she had not been an Auchincloss besides. Emmeline 
 was large, and had been irreverently called (perhaps 
 from the springy, mercurial style of her walk and of 
 her step in the dance) " bouncing." But she had the 
 low, broad brow, the lustrous eyes, the brilliant smile,
 
 130 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 and the full, deep bosom of a young Roman girl. 
 Men were sure to flock about her wherever she went, 
 and her cold, daring, imperious air both fascinated 
 and repelled. She thought Madeleine " slow," prud- 
 ish and affected, just as Miss Auchincloss thought her 
 "fast," romping and indecorous. But Emmeline was 
 jealous of her cousin for the atmosphere of extreme 
 propriety and selectness always floating about her like 
 some rare scent impossible to secure. The Satter- 
 thwaite name was talismanic in society, but the 
 Auchincloss name was a degree or two more so, and 
 Madeleine appeared forever to be covertly pluming 
 herself on this delicate yet distinct grade of ascend- 
 ency. Emmeline always had a sense of being objected 
 to when in her cousin's company, and at such times 
 Madeleine felt that her own placid bienseance was an 
 object of intangible satire. Since they had been little 
 girls together, these relations, influenced only by their 
 respective ages, had endured between them, and it 
 was safe to assert that they would be modified or 
 destroyed by no fresh force but that resulting from 
 the future rise or fall which marriage would effect for 
 either. Madeleine had long ago resolved never to 
 marry unless she gave her slender, milky little hand 
 to a man of much greater wealth than her own and a 
 position quite on a level with that of the Auchin- 
 closses. Emmeline had resolved to marry as well as 
 she could, but she had reached that cooler state of 
 matrimonial exploration Avhen the loftier peaks begin 
 to loom a trifle insurmountable and the lesser ones 
 offer chances consolatory if not inspiriting. 
 
 " You are looking so very well," said Madeleine to 
 her cousin, in the calm, smooth voice which was
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 131 
 
 almost a counterfeit of her mother's, and while the 
 two elder ladies were holding converse but a short 
 distance away. "You always manage to keep your 
 fine color, my dear ; don't you ? " 
 
 Emmeline had never cared to have her color re- 
 marked ; Madeleine knew it, and the other was well 
 aware that Madeleine did know it. Miss Satterthwaite 
 put her handsome, firm-throated head a little on one 
 side, and answered with a note or two of laughter : 
 " I don't manage ; good health manages for me. It's 
 a source of immense vanity to me, my perfect health ; 
 I'm always enchanted to be complimented on it ... 
 Do you still have your wretched headaches, my dear 
 Lina?" 
 
 " We are so quiet now, since poor uncle's death," 
 said Madeleine, with a faint, flickering smile. " That 
 makes a difference with me, don't you know? . . . By 
 the way, Lily Ten Eyck told me that she saw yon 
 out, somewhere, quite recently . . . where was it? 
 She also told me that . . . but I forget." 
 
 Emmeline shook her head in serene negation. " Saw 
 me! Why, there's nothing going on so late as this, 
 you know. Lily is always imagining things. Besides, 
 uncle's death has the same effect on us, naturally, as 
 on your family. Of course, there are still dinners. 
 But we refuse them, just as you do." 
 
 " I remember, now," said Madeleine, with dove-like 
 gentleness. " It was at the new exhibition of the 
 Academy of Design ; it was last night, I believe." 
 
 Emmeline started, and laughed somewhat nervously. 
 "Was Lily Ten Eyck there?" she Hurriedly ques- 
 tioned. Then growing composed again, she continued: 
 " I went, but mamma did not."
 
 132 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 "Ah! you went?" said Madeleine. Those three 
 quiet words conveyed a volume of soft reproach. She 
 had had no move regard for her dead uncle than for 
 any one whose demise had lately been chronicled in 
 the newspapers ; but " a death in the family " meant a 
 sacred obligation to refrain from everything that 
 resembled festivity and especially when that death 
 concerned a Van Rensselaer, for which name (not- 
 withstanding the misalliance that had begotten her 
 cousin Olivia) she entertained deep reverence. 
 
 " Yes, I went," declared Emmeline, with a sudden 
 show of that empire sur soi-meme for which she had 
 already become noted among friends and foes. " Mamma 
 did not go, however." 
 
 " Surely not ! " murmured Madeleine. 
 
 "The Plunketts took me," said Emmeline, thor- 
 oughly composed now. 
 
 " The . . . Plunketts ? " queried Madeleine, with a 
 sudden titter. " Excuse me, but it's such an odd 
 name ! " And she tittered again. 
 
 "Yes," said Emmeline, "it is, rather, isn't it? 
 They're very nice people; you wouldn't be likely 
 to know them, however . . . they're fond of art 
 and books and such matters." (Emmeline had 
 probably read twenty books herself in the past four 
 years, and those were novels of a not very elevated 
 type.) 
 
 " I have met people of that sort," said Madeleine, a 
 little stiffly. "They didn't have extraordinary names, 
 as far as I can recollect, but I found them very nice, 
 notwithstanding. They were all men, though. Papa 
 brought them from the Centennial Club." 
 
 Here Emmeline laughed a little.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE, 133 
 
 " Oh, you mean the club that papa thinks so dread- 
 fully rowdy?" 
 
 "Rowdy?" echoed Madeleine. "Did your father 
 really say that?" 
 
 "Why, yes, my dear; I heard him say it to your 
 father's face. Wasn't it perfectly atrocious of him ? " 
 
 " Papa thinks his club, the Metropolitan, full of the 
 most objectionable members," Madeleine now said. 
 
 " Oh, I suppose that's true enough," answered Ern- 
 meline; "but then you know, my dear, they're not 
 shabby and Bohemian members, like painters and 
 writers." 
 
 "Are the Plunketts shabby and Bohemian?" asked 
 Madeleine, in her very sweetest tones. 
 
 " Oh, no ... The eldest son, Arthur Plunkett, goes 
 out sometimes in society. I dare say you have seen 
 him." 
 
 "Never, to my knowledge," said Madeleine coldly. 
 A vague, self-conscious touch about her cousin's 
 reply had made her wonder if there could be any 
 chance of Emmeline taking up, at a future day, with 
 some such person as this Arthur Plunkett. " And 
 you are very good friends, you and he?" she added. 
 
 " Passably good friends. His mother has quiet 
 little dinners, that rest one after the big whirl of 
 things." 
 
 "Oh, I see," said Madeleine, leaning her small head, 
 with its bands of glossy dark hair, a little backward, 
 and giving to her upper lip the faintest curl. "You 
 mean that they are people at the outskirts who are 
 trying to push themselves farther in. I think it is so 
 very good of you to treat such people civilly. I con- 
 fess that I never can."
 
 134 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 "Ah, my dear," returned Emrneline, looking pen- 
 sively down at the smai't freshness of her semi- 
 mourning apparel ; " I am afraid it will never do for 
 you and me to hold ourselves so much above the 
 outsiders hereafter." 
 
 " Hereafter?" questioned Madeleine, with the curl of 
 her lip increasing. " Why, pray, what do you mean ? " 
 
 " Oh, I refer to this absurd action on Cousin Olivia's 
 part. Of course you've learned of it, as your mother 
 has been notified." 
 
 And just then Mrs. Auchincloss was heard, softly 
 exclaiming: "It seems as if that unpleasant woman 
 must have tempted her to do it. And yet Olivia 
 writes that she does it of her own free will." 
 
 " Very well, then," retorted Mrs. Satterthwaite, 
 with the clear nip of spite in her accent ; " Olivia 
 shall take the consequences as far as Bleecker and 
 myself and the children are concerned. I know it's 
 wretched form to disown your relations ; but we are 
 not going to follow the girl there. If she comes to us, 
 that is another matter." 
 
 "I suppose we ought to remember who she is," said 
 Mrs. Auchincloss, with a musing shake of the head. 
 
 "It appears to me, Aunt Letitia," exclaimed Emme- 
 line, " that she has taken pains to remind us she's the 
 niece of Mrs. Ottarson." 
 
 "Yes, I know, my dear," responded Mrs. Auchin- 
 closs, who thought her sister's eldest daughter shock- 
 ingly forward, even for a girl in her fourth season, 
 and gave almost daily thanks that her Madeleine had 
 not that curt American way; "but blood is blood, 
 and we, who come from a very old and honorable 
 race, cannot afford to forget this."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 135 
 
 "I don't forget it," said Emraeline, tossing her 
 prettily bonneted head. " But Olivia's behavior 
 makes me very sorry indeed that Uncle Houston 
 forgot it a good many years ago." 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss gave her sister a look that seemed 
 to say : " Shall you not rebuke this unmannerly pert- 
 ness?" 
 
 But Mrs. Satterthwaite did not rebuke it. She 
 merely remarked, with a careless glance in her 
 daughter's direction : " Oh, that's one of the ancient 
 bygones, Em. There's no use of raking it up nowa- 
 days." 
 
 "I'm not, mamma," said Emmeline. "It's Olivia 
 who is raking it up and very disagreeably, I should 
 say " 
 
 "What a loud, rude, married style that girl, Em- 
 meline, has!" declared Mrs. Auchincloss, after the 
 Satterthwaites had departed. " We must always 
 bear in mind, Madeleine, that as a family we are 
 entirely ourselves, and quite distinctly, separated from 
 all other branches of it." 
 
 " Of course, mamma," assented Madeleine, who had 
 heard this kind of pronunciamiento, in various modes 
 of utterance, almost from her cradle. " But do you 
 think of going to see Olivia, really, after the way she 
 has conducted herself? Do you actually think of go- 
 ing to see her, mamma, in that house?" 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss heaved a sigh. " My dear Made- 
 leine," she answered, " I have not yet clearly made up 
 my mind. I must consuh) with your father. There 
 are duties in life which we must not shirk. Olivia is 
 very young. If I do go it will be an ordeal. Per- 
 haps I ought to go. I will reflect, and as I said, I
 
 136 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 will talk it all over with your father. His advice will 
 of course be precious to me, as it always is. In any 
 case, we will not jump to conclusions, after the style 
 of the Satterthwaites." 
 
 Madeleine went up to her mother and kissed her on 
 one of her chilly little cheeks as if she were going 
 through some long-revered domestic rite. " You will 
 certainly do what is proper, mamma," she said ; " you 
 never fail to do that." 
 
 "Thank you, my dear," replied Mrs. Auchincloss, 
 accepting the kiss, but not returning it. ... 
 
 Three or four evenings later, Mrs. Satterthwaite, in 
 her showy and almost gorgeous Fifth Avenue draw- 
 ing-room was the recipient of a visit from her old and 
 valued friend, Mr. Spencer Delaplaine. 
 
 "How good of you!" she said, as she shook hands 
 with him. "You needn't tell me that your horrid 
 gout is worse. I know about its being so." 
 
 Delaplaine made a sad little motion. " I suppose 
 you saw me limp as I came in," he answered. 
 
 "Oh, not that. Suydarn Desbrosses told you'd 
 spoken of it at the club the other evening. I was so 
 sorry for you! Take a more comfortable chair 
 do!" 
 
 " No, thanks. This is a Sleepy Hollow for comfort. 
 All your chairs always are. I am a trifle under the 
 weather." . He looked about him, as if some other 
 occupant of the great room might be discoverable 
 amid its rich assortment of sofas, fauteuils and 
 screens. He rubbed a hand, against one of his knees 
 as he went on speaking. "Yes, my devil has broken 
 loose again. But the doctor is doing everything to 
 quiet him. You stare at me as if you thought I ought
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINK 137 
 
 to be home in bed. Well, I shan't attempt to contra- 
 dict you if that is your opinion." 
 
 "Pshaw, I've seen you when you looked better," 
 said Mrs. Satterthwaite, who did not recall ever having 
 seen him when he looked worse. "But you're not 
 seriously ill. It's very plain to me that you're not, 
 Spencer." 
 
 "Not yet," he returned grimly. "As it is," he 
 went on, fixing a regard upon her that she, who 
 knew him so well, instantly knew to betoken some 
 matter of moment, " I should not have ventured out 
 at all this evening." 
 
 "Perhaps you're right there, inhospitable though it 
 may sound in me. I never recollect such a ghastly 
 May ; do you ? " 
 
 "Oh, there's never any May in this country. I 
 thought you'd learned that long ago." 
 
 "We occasionally get a few hours of sunshine, 
 though, and a wind not altogether easterly. I've 
 known nice days when the Coaching Club paraded, 
 for instance." 
 
 "Yes which it didn't deserve to have. Provi- 
 dence should conspire, every year, with the American 
 Eagle to drench it through for being such a piece of 
 Anglomaniacal brummagem." 
 
 "Oli, don't!" Mrs. Satterthwaite pleaded; "you 
 make me think of what might have happened to my 
 Emmeline. She was invited to go next Thursday in 
 Tom Forsythe's coach. She was to have the box seat, 
 poor girl ! " 
 
 "And isn't she going?" 
 
 "Oh, dear, no. Houston was her own blood-uncle, 
 you know. One must draw a line somewhere, as I
 
 138 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 told Em. And that reminds me, Spencer Have you 
 heard of Olivia's delightful caper ? " 
 
 "You mean her going to live with her maternal 
 aunt?" 
 
 "'Maternal aunt 'has a highly misleading sound," 
 said Mrs. Satterthwaite, with a bitter smile. " It puts 
 that dire Mrs. Ott arson in quite too respectable a 
 light." She looked extremely wrathful now ; she 
 bit her lip, folded her arms for a few seconds, and 
 leaned back in her chair, watching her companion 
 between half-shut eyelids. "Olivia is old enough to 
 know better, and my side of the family, from Bleecker 
 to little Lulu, shall give her to understand that we 
 think so. Why, Letitia and I both said to her the 
 day we told her about the state of her father's affairs, 
 that our homes would be hers from now till she mar- 
 ried ! And then to prefer that woman's house ! And 
 they say that a foreign education has a refining influ- 
 ence ! My Elaine, you remember, was crazy to go 
 abroad with Lucy Van Ness when she was sent there 
 to school a few years ago. I'm glad enough, now, that 
 I kept her at home." 
 
 There was a silence. Delaplaine was slowly smooth- 
 ing his lame knee again. His keen gray eyes were 
 downcast while he did so, but he now lifted them to 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite's face as he said : 
 
 "It was about Olivia that I came here to speak 
 with you. Indeed, if it had not been for her I would 
 not have come, I can assure you ; for I am ill very 
 ill, and at this moment " 
 
 He paused abruptly. He had grown strangely pale, 
 and his lips twitched as if from some fierce attack of 
 pain. Mrs. Satterthwaite sprang to her feet in sharp 
 alarm. 

 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 139 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " No, no ; it is nothing," he said, in answer to her 
 anxious look. Already, during a few seconds, his 
 cheeks had won a less ghastly tint, and the signs of 
 distress had fled from his mouth and eyes. " I'm bet- 
 ter. . . . The doctor warned me I might have one or 
 two visitations like these confound" them ! I ought 
 not to have come out to-night ; my hateful malady 
 must be nursed for some little time, or it will get 
 beyond the powers of nursing." He took her hand, 
 pressing it, and watching her solicitous face with a 
 smile that was nearer to being tender than any like 
 expression she had seen there more than once or twice 
 in all her long acquaintance with him. " Sit down 
 again, I beg, and listen to me. I've something that I 
 want to tell you." 
 
 She obeyed him, but wheeled her chair closer to his 
 before she again seated herself. "I knew you had 
 some important thing to say," she answered, leaning 
 forward and fixing her gaze upon him very earnestly. 
 "I somehow saw it in your face when I first met 
 you." 
 
 "I didn't know I carried my heart on my sleeve 
 like that." 
 
 " Your heart ! you haven't I mean you've always 
 tried to make people believe you hadn't one." 
 
 He set bis lips rather sourly together, and shook his 
 gray head. "I sha'n't have one long, if this gout con-
 
 140 OLIVIA VELAPLAINE. 
 
 eludes to fly to it. ... But that doesn't concern the 
 present question." 
 
 "Well, and pray what is the present question? 
 It's so odd, don't you know, my good friend, to find 
 you very deeply interested in any" 
 
 He made a gesture of mock sober contradiction, and 
 began to put on his eyeglasses. " That kind of talk, 
 when I have been interested in you for a century ! " 
 
 " A century ! How scorching of you! " 
 
 "Not to a woman like yourself a woman who has 
 managed to have so pretty a quarrel with time that 
 she couldn't grow old if she tried." 
 
 "Oh, I like that much better. You pass a sly 
 powder-puff across my wrinkles." 
 
 " I haven't yet perceived them. You manage to 
 hide them till their existence, like that of your faults, 
 becomes a myth to your many admirers." 
 
 She laughed. This dexterity of compliment was a 
 kind of balm to her, as it is to all women of her age, 
 and her persistence in the evasion of life's larger and 
 stronger appeals. "But what is your great secret? 
 I'm dying of curiosity to learn it." 
 
 He looked once more about the room, with its 
 shadowy corners, where the gloss of satin tapestry or 
 the drowsy lustre of bronzes, or the pale gleam of 
 marble, was to be richly glimpsed. " Where is every- 
 body to-night ? " he inquired. 
 
 " Oh, don't be afraid of listeners. Emmeline and 
 Elaine have gone to a sewing-class. Very dreadful of 
 them, isn't it, considering ? But they would go, and I 
 only hope there isn't the least bit of a German after- 
 ward. The Schenectadys, who chaperoned them, 
 vowed it was to be nothing but tea and con versa-
 
 OLIVIA LELAPLAINE. 141 
 
 tion. . . . Bleecker's playing cards at the club, I sup- 
 pose. He usually is, at this hour if he isn't doing 
 worse. And as for young Aspinwall well, he's got 
 his latch-key at last, after fighting his father about it 
 all winter, and I don't know where he is ; I dare say 
 he's smoking cigarettes in the cafe at Delmonico's, 
 instead of studying for his next Columbia examina- 
 tion, which takes place rather soon. . . . Peyster, the 
 dear stupid boy, and Lulu, the strange little vixen, 
 are both asleep in bed. Lulu danced herself almost 
 sick this afternoon at a child's affair the Stuyvesant 
 Smiths gave ; she begged so hard that I let her go ; 
 for how can a child like that be expected to feel sad 
 about the death of an uncle whom she's scarcely 
 seen ? . . . There, Spencer, you have a full account 
 of just how the entire family are occupied at present, 
 so far as I'm able to inform you. . . . Come, let me 
 hear your secret." 
 
 " It will surprise you very much," he said, slowly 
 and with an unwonted air of implicitly meaning each 
 word. "Perhaps you'll be inclined to ask yourself 
 whether this last illness of mine hasn't put me a little 
 out of my head." 
 
 " It's a very wise and prudent head," she replied ; 
 " at least I've always found it so." 
 
 "Ah, what if I should tell you that I had lost it 
 or that it had been turned ? " Their eyes met, and he 
 went on: "I tried to stop Olivia from going to live at 
 her aunt Ottarson's the other day. I tried to stop her 
 by asking her to come and live with me. ... As my 
 wife, I mean." 
 
 "Ah! " exclaimed Mrs. Satterthwaite, looking as if 
 she were powerless to speak another word.
 
 142 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 " She would not come," Delaplaine pursued, staring 
 straight before him, now. " But I think she can be 
 prevailed upon to come. I think you can help me in 
 prevailing upon her. You've always stood my friend, 
 as I've stood yours. I am afraid I can't act for 
 myself very capably during the next week or so. . . ." 
 There was a pause, and as yet Mrs. Satterthwaite did 
 not seem to have recovered from her amazement ; her 
 startled eyes were riveted upon Delaplaine's visage, 
 while about the corners of her mouth lurked an in- 
 credulous expression that seemed to belie the conster- 
 nation above it; she looked, indeed, as though she 
 were prepared at a moment's warning to be informed 
 that this whole queer bit of tidings meant nothing less 
 trivial than a mere humorous deception. 
 
 " I want you to help me, if you will," Delaplaine 
 soon continued, "I am nearly sure that you can, and 
 importantly, too. I don't mean that you can quicken 
 or even touch in the girl any impulse of sentiment. 
 But if you speak with discretion you may appeal to 
 her reason yes, her reason alone, Augusta. I de- 
 spair of your doing anything else. For that matter, 
 how can I fitly use the word 'despair,' which signifies 
 an ended hope? And I have never had a ray of hope. 
 You must understand that." 
 
 "Despair? .... hope?" she exclaimed. "Good 
 heavens, Spencer Delaplaine ! Do you actually mean 
 that you, at your time of life, care for the girl in that 
 way?" 
 
 "I mean that I am in love with her," he responded. 
 And then, after having spoken these few words in 
 what sounded to their listener like a voice borrowed 
 from another being (she had been so long accustomed
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 143 
 
 to the lambent play of his ironies over almost every 
 conceivable subject!) he employed a tone much more 
 familiar to her, and added, with the tart, laconic, gelid 
 phrasing that she had heard hundreds of times before : 
 "Yes, I'm downright in love at last. It's sad but it's 
 true. I'm in love, gray hair, baldness, wrinkles, 
 worldly experience, sixty odd years and gout, all 
 included." 
 
 She was about to break into a laugh as he thus ter- 
 minated his droll confession. But something re- 
 strained her from doing so. She was to a great 
 extent a scoffer like himself. If he had been almost 
 anybody else among the many men whom she knew, 
 and had made an admission at once so unexpected 
 and so incongruous, she would not have spared him 
 the mischievous cut-and-thrust of her amusement. But 
 as it was, she contented herself with this quiet answer, 
 while she stretched forth one hand until it rested 
 lightly yet decisively on his arm : 
 
 "I'll help you of course, I will, in any manner 
 that you think best. Just tell me how you would 
 like me to act, and I will promise faithfully to follow 
 your instructions." 
 
 Meanwhile it shot through her brain : What a god- 
 send for Olivia, and what a happy stroke for us! 
 She changes " Van Rensselaer " for " Delaplaine " 
 not at all a bad change. And she changes that horri- 
 ble boarding-house for an establishment any woman in 
 the country might be pi-oud of. She shall marry him, 
 if I've the power to show her how great a fool she 
 would be in refusing him ! . . . 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss had meanwhile consulted with her 
 husband on the question of paying a visit to Olivia in
 
 144 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 the foolish retreat which that rash young girl had 
 chosen. She had permitted Madeleine and her brother, 
 Chichester, to be present at the discussion, and had 
 selected the hour of dessert for commencing it, after 
 the coffee had been served and the butler had been 
 dismissed. 
 
 It was one of those evenings when the Auchin- 
 closses dined en famille. They had so solid and pro- 
 found a respect for one another that occasions like the 
 present, happening two or three times every week, 
 were looked upon as refreshing and priceless relaxa- 
 tions from the ritualistic worry of social duty. The 
 whole Auchincloss family might be said to accept 
 every event of life either in this light or in no other 
 that was worth the smallest real consideration. They 
 moved all four of them (a most august quadrilateral !), 
 in the sole unswerving and punctilious groove of duty. 
 Mr. Archibald Auchincloss, as head of the great house 
 and a lawyer of unimpeachable standing, had long 
 ago secured the reputation of making duty his inflexi- 
 ble watchword. How, as a lawyer of any standing 
 whatever, he had managed to reconcile his ideals with 
 his practical operations, is a question which melts 
 away from the art of the annalist into that reverend 
 obscurity known as this gentleman's well-ordered and 
 irreproachable conscience. But he effected such a 
 truce without the least apparent difficulty. Of his 
 wife's dutiful proclivities we have already enjoyed a 
 glimpse. Madeleine, their only daughter, bowed to 
 her own private little lar of duty with the calm fervor 
 of a nun to her crucifix. Chichester, who was not 
 very much older than his cousin, Aspinwall Satter- 
 thwaite, had long been a pride and a gladness to both
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 145 
 
 his parents. He had gone to Harvard, not Columbia, 
 and had been graduated three or four from the head 
 of his class. Yon could not have induced him to sit 
 and smoke cigarettes in the cafe of Delmonico's, after 
 the fashion of his cousin. For that matter, he never 
 smoked at all, secretly detesting the practice, in 
 common with his father. He was now one of the 
 most creditable disciples of the Columbia Law School, 
 and looked forward with eager joy to being made at 
 some future time a member of that unsullied legal 
 house, Chichester, Auchincloss and Gibbes. There 
 were some people who thought the heir of the Auchin- 
 closs family an insupportable young prig; his cousin, 
 Aspinwall, was one of these ; the latter always puffed 
 his cigarette-smoke a little more recklessly through 
 his nose, and assumed a larger amount of swagger, 
 profanity and piercing knowledge of the whole vain 
 and worthless female sex, whenever Chichester and he 
 encountered one another. In consequence Chichester 
 would speak of his cousin with shudders, at home, as 
 the very worst type of " dude " the " dude " that 
 rolls a vicious eyeball toward unlawful pleasures. 
 Aspinwall, on the other hand, would mention lazily to 
 his father having met " that confounded young ass of 
 a Chichester," and having ached to kick him. Either 
 young kinsman doubtless exaggerated the faults of 
 the other, but it is possible that a great deal of perti- 
 nent and veracious criticism lurked beneath their 
 mutual disesteem. 
 
 "Of course Olivia has done a miserably foolish 
 thing," Mrs. Auchincloss now said, looking across the 
 table at her husband's clean-shorn, statuesque face, with 
 its big, curvilinear nose and its square-molded jaw.
 
 146 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 " But the great point is that we might pardon it be- 
 cause of her youth.'' 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Auchincloss, as though he were 
 thinking of the pros and cons in some professional 
 " case." " Youth certainly is an excuse for such acts 
 of rashness. It may not have occurred to Olivia how 
 direct a slur she was casting upon you and her Aunt 
 Augusta, since you had both expressed your willing- 
 ness to protect her." 
 
 Chichester coughed deliberately. "I can't under- 
 tand," he said, " how she is less to be blamed for the 
 affront because she is still under twenty years old. I 
 would not have done any such thing as that when I 
 was nineteen, and I am sure Madeleine would not, 
 either." 
 
 " We have had peculiar advantages of home-train- 
 ing," said Madeleine, in her precise, demure way. 
 " We have been taught what duty means, Chichey, 
 thanks to mamma and papa." 
 
 "My dear child!" said Mrs. Auchincloss, giving 
 Madeleine the most benign of motherly smiles. And 
 then she glanced at her husband, as if to say : " What 
 a rich reward we are reaping for our parental devo- 
 tions of the past ? " 
 
 " Even duty has its limitations, however," remarked 
 Chichester, very much as though he were stating that 
 the square of the hypothenuse of a right-angled tri- 
 angle was equal to the sum of the squares of its other 
 two sides. 
 
 "True, my son," applauded his father. "But to 
 err generously from the restrictions of a dutiful stand- 
 ard is often to show a humane and ... a ... er 
 . . . commendable mercy." He gave forth this plati-
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 147 
 
 tude as though it were a bit of wisdom ripe with the 
 meditation of years. 
 
 " Oh, certainly, sir," acknowledged Chichester, who 
 considered his father one of the leading minds of the 
 time. " I suppose mamma means to forgive Olivia 
 and go to see her in those objectionable surroundings. 
 I don't think I coftld do so, urrder the circumstances; 
 but then I do not lay claim to mamma's truly Christian 
 spirit." 
 
 He looked, while speaking these words with his 
 orderly, measured manner of saying everything, as 
 though he possessed no spirit whatever except one of 
 a petit maitre in all the conventionalisms (not to name 
 the bigotries) of polite conduct. He still had a boyish 
 appearance, with only those pimply premonitions on 
 lips and chin which betoken the coming virile growth 
 there; but his face was in every feature a living 
 reproduction of his father's, notwithstanding its imma- 
 ture expression. 
 
 And surely there was no one beneath the visiting 
 moon whom he would have preferred to resemble 
 more than this very father, upon whose countenance 
 he sometimes gazed as though it were a magic mirror, 
 showing him his own future physiognomy improved 
 by mellowing manhood. Being entirely satisfied with 
 himself, Chichester was no less satisfied with his 
 father. He could not perceive how any career could 
 be more delightfully distinguished than that of Mr. 
 Archibald Auchincloss. To marry aristocratically, to 
 acquire fortune and reputation at the bar, to accept 
 fashion and patronize talent, to avoid all vulgar ex- 
 tremes, and never to leave one conservative strong- 
 hold until you could slip safely from it into another
 
 148 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 capable of protecting you against the horrid pest of 
 the unorthodox and the radical ; having done things 
 like these, or going on brilliantly doing them from 
 year to year, was Chichester Auchincloss's idea of a 
 noble and profitable life. It all meant "duty" to 
 him, and there was no more sacred word than that in 
 his gilt-edged dictionary, from which a great deal of 
 naughty verbiage had been exiled. 
 
 His mother's Christian spirit triumphed in its an- 
 gelic desire to pardon Olivia. Mrs. Auchincloss was 
 indeed on the point of ordering her carriage, two or 
 three days later, and having herself driven to the 
 abominated doorway of Mrs. Ottarson, when her 
 sister Augusta appeared, brimming with the most 
 unexpected news. 
 
 "I hope, my dear Letitia," said Mrs. Satterthwaite, 
 after she had made her first astonishing announcement, 
 "that you will keep this a profound secret even from 
 Archibald." 
 
 "Oh, certainly," agreed Mrs. Auchincloss. It had 
 speedily become her intention, however, to tell her 
 husband all about it ; and Mrs. Satterthwaite, proud 
 of Delaplaine's intimacy with herself, privately wanted 
 Mr. Auchincloss as well as his wife to know of the 
 confidence the banker had reposed in her. For 
 Spencer Delaplaine held just that unassailable place 
 in society toward which the Auchinclosses loved to 
 show homage. He had been a person of importance 
 when hundreds of the present regnant dignitaries were 
 struggling to mass together the dollars which had 
 paid for their subsequent "positions." Mrs. Auchin- 
 closs remembered him as one of the leading beaux, 
 more than twenty years back, at the old Fourteenth
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 149 
 
 Street Delmonico Assemblies, or, a little more re- 
 cently, at those most enjoyable "Cheap and Hungry" 
 dancing classes, in Dodworth's Hall, on Fifth Avenue 
 and Twenty-Sixth Street. Of course a Delaplaine was 
 not a Van Rensselaer no, nor even a Ten Eyck, nor 
 yet a Van Peekskill. She even recollected hearing, a 
 long time ago, when there had been some talk of 
 Spencer Delaplaine going into partnership with her 
 brother, that there had never existed any family of 
 that name to speak of, and that this gentleman (the 
 ambitious, clever, and moderately well-off) only de- 
 served to rank as the first of his line. But years and 
 events had so multiplied since then! No one ever 
 presumed to hint, at this late hour, that the wealthy 
 proprietor, dwelling in West Tenth Street so luxuri- 
 ously and entertaining with so much blended grace 
 and discrimination, was not born to the rare and fine 
 name which he now held. It is notably true of New 
 York that some of her present social leaders are those 
 whose early youth was a strife to win what they now 
 wear as if it were hereditary ermine. 
 
 "This would make an admirable match for Olivia 
 admirable?" Mrs. Auchincloss now proceeded, as 
 it were, to muse aloud. "There is no drawback but 
 age . . . none whatever." 
 
 " I should call that more of a drawback for him" 
 said Mrs. Satterthwaite, with the cold, hard, loud- 
 voiced manner to which her sister objected as being 
 painfully underbred and which she thought on the in- 
 crease, lately, because Augusta would choose her 
 friends from among so many new people. "Very 
 few men of his age decide to marry at all ; still fewer, 
 when they are also men of much means. As he offers
 
 150 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 to make a handsome settlement on Olivia, I should 
 say that she has everything her own way or nearly 
 so provided she takes him." 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss drooped her eyes. 
 
 "I hate to invest anything so ... so holy as mar 
 riage, Augusta, with views like these." 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite gave a stealthy smile of amuse 
 ment ; she knew her sister so well! "Oh," she said, 
 primly, "then you think it's our duty to dissuade 
 Olivia from the marriage?" 
 
 The other lady started. " Dissuade Olivia ? " she 
 faltered. " Oh, no ! I I mean, my dear sister, 
 that it would not be fair to the girl if we did not 
 let her clearly see all the ... er ... the mere 
 worldly advantages which would result from such 
 a marriage. And I am nearly sure that Archibald 
 will sanction this mode of regarding the matter, 
 when " 
 
 "Oh, but you mustn't tell Archibald," struck in 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite. 
 
 " Ah . . . yes ; I remember." 
 
 "And now, my dear Letitia," Mrs. Satterthwaite 
 went on, "since you have these feelings, and since 
 mine agree with them, we had best pay Olivia a 
 visit. I think we shall somehow be safer if we go 
 together ; there's no telling about the barbaric be- 
 havior of that Ottarson woman ; it may break out 
 at any moment." 
 
 " We will not ask for her," said Mrs. AuchinclosSj 
 "and perhaps by this means we shall be able to get it 
 through her head that we do not wish to see her." 
 
 They went that very day, and saw only Olivia. As 
 they drove together to the Twenty-Third Street
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 151 
 
 boarding-house, Mrs. Satterthwaite informed her sis- 
 ter of Delaplaiue's illness. He had not left his home 
 for some little time, now. The doctors did not yet 
 think it a dangerous attack, but it might become dan- 
 gerous at very short notice. 
 
 "It will be advisable, I think, to tell Olivia this," 
 said Mrs. Auchincloss meditatively. 
 
 They did tell her. After Olivia appeared before 
 them, entering the shabby parlor, with its air of 
 being lounge'd in, romped in and generally both used 
 and abused, they met her with no rebukes whatever. 
 They sat and talked quietly with her in tones that she 
 could not help feeling were like music beside the shrill 
 and harsh organs of speech to which she had been 
 listening of late. While they thus spoke, a smell of 
 cookery, pungent as the broiling pork-chop or the 
 browning potato can render it, filled all the lower 
 portion of the house ; for it chanced to be lunch-time 
 at Mrs. Ottarson's, and as we know, her meals were 
 expected to feed many mouths. As Olivia now ob- 
 served her aunts, it was to remark what figures of ele- 
 gance and distinction they both looked; that smell 
 from below-stairs had somehow accentuated their 
 own delicate aroma of gentility. The boarders were 
 descending to luncheon from their various upper 
 rooms, and presently the peacock-like voice of Mrs. 
 Spillington was heard, as if it called from the middle 
 of the outside staircase to some one above : 
 
 " Oh! . . . I presume I must have left my red 
 worsted shawl laying across the back of your rock- 
 ing-chair. Will you just bring it down when you 
 come, please ? " 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss and Mrs. Satterthwaite seemed
 
 152 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 like two ladies who had never worn red worsted 
 shawls in their lives and had never been called upon, 
 for that matter, to inflict their nerves with the kinds 
 of people who do wear them. It was of course easier 
 to talk with Olivia on the subject of Mr. Delaplaine's 
 offer now that it had been made to the girl in person a 
 few days before. But, notwithstanding this fact, it 
 was still by no means easy. Olivia soon flushed and 
 grew sadly embarrassed. 
 
 "I I would so much rather not speak about that 
 affair," she said, biting her lips. " I told Mr. Dela- 
 plaine that it it wouldn't be possible." She now 
 looked from one to the other of her aunts, with her 
 eyes widening a little and a wave of surprise begin- 
 ning to sweep over her face. " Oh," she exclaimed, 
 putting her hands together with what had half the 
 semblance of a tender supplication, " if you've thought 
 that you could persuade me to take any such step as 
 this, I beg that you will at once receive my positive 
 answer. It is no, no ; it's a hundred noes, if you like," 
 with a roguishly obstinate sparkle showing in her blue 
 eyes, which were then beaming above cheeks that 
 shame had hurriedly reddened. 
 
 The two sisters exchanged glances. 
 
 " My dear," said Mrs. Auchincloss, with her suave, 
 trainante voice, " I think Mr. Delaplaine should make 
 you very happy as his wife. Very happy, indeed." 
 
 " Very ? " iterated Mrs. Satterthwaite more briskly. 
 " Pray don't suppose that he is thought to be an old 
 man, here in New York society. He has always 
 lived a most exemplary life ; he has taken great 
 care of himself ; aud now, when men of half his age 
 find themselves broken down, he is full of youth
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 153 
 
 absolute youth." The recollection that this belauded 
 lad of sixty was just now a severe sufferer from gout 
 had wholly escaped the speaker, who went energeti- 
 cally on : " And then, my dear, his exquisite little 
 palace in West Tenth Street, and the perfect air of 
 everything connected with it ! Ah ! what a charm- 
 ing frame for so pretty a picture as yourself ! " 
 
 " But there is another side a far more . . . more 
 moral side to the question," now exclaimed Mrs. 
 Auchincloss, " which your Aunt Augusta, my dear, 
 seems to overlook." 
 
 Olivia burst out laughing. "A moral side!" she 
 ejaculated, and then her face quickly grew serious 
 again, as though she had heard something it were 
 sacrilege to make light of. " I don't see how such a 
 mere buying-and-selljng marriage as this," she said, 
 "can possibly be spoken of as having a moral side." 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss grew a little pinker in each cheek, 
 and her small head moved somewhat farther back on 
 the support of her slender neck. "Oh, my dear/" 
 she reproached offendedly. "As if I could recom- 
 mend what you call a buying-and-selling marriage ! 
 No, indeed, Olivia! I was thinking of the really 
 beautiful protection which he would bestow on you, 
 now that your poor father is gone, and you are left so 
 unexpectedly without a home of your own. And 
 then his having been your papa's friend and partner 
 that gives the Avhole matter so engaging a little 
 touch of romance ! " 
 
 "I see no touch of romance," said Olivia, as her 
 mouth hardened. " I see no touch at all except a 
 commercial one." 
 
 " My dear ! " cried Mrs. Auchincloss.
 
 154 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 " I'm sorry to shock you, Aunt Letitia, but that is 
 the only view I can take of the whole proposition. I 
 saw a good deal of this kind of marrying while I was 
 abroad or rather I heard of a good deal. But I never 
 became in the least used to it, I assure you. And I 
 must also state, if you've no objection, that you are 
 the first person whom I have ever heard make even 
 the faintest attempt to invest it with anything resem- 
 bling sentiment." 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss was about to offer some reply, but 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite spoke before she had time. 
 
 " Mr. Delaplaine," said the latter lady, " hasn't 
 expected you to look at it from any sentimental point 
 of view. He instructed me to say that he would very 
 gladly settle three hundred thousand dollars on you, 
 Olivia, the day that you and he are married." 
 
 This monetary disclosure affected the girl like a 
 piece of sheer brutality. . . . Her two aunts left her, 
 that afternoon, without having accomplished the least 
 satisfactory results. 
 
 It was only a few hours later that Mrs. Ottarson 
 keenly irritated Olivia by a speech in which her niece 
 failed to recognize just the desired amount of sympa- 
 thetic repugnance for-this anomalous marriage. 
 
 "Upon my word, Aunt Thyrza," cried the girl, 
 almost flaring up at her prized friend and kinswoman, 
 "I'm half tempted to believe that you doitt think 
 Mrs. Auchincloss and Mrs. Satterthwaite ought to be 
 ashamed of themselves to endorse such a proceeding! " 
 
 " Well," came the answer, given with uncharacter- 
 istic delay, " I can't really say, 'Livia, that they're t' 
 blame 't all. You see, they know jus' how splendid 
 you'd be fixed, deary, 'f you did consent, and "
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 155 
 
 Olivia hurried from the room, in high annoyance. 
 It made her feel so alone and deserted by everybody, 
 when even her Aunt Thyrza began to share these pro- 
 saically hard-grained opinions. Still, she knew that in 
 her case only the warmest personal love inspired them. 
 There was, at least, comforting afterthought in this 
 reflection. Aunt Thyrza was incapable of any save 
 affectionate motives toward her. 
 
 It was about eleven o'clock that same evening, and 
 just as Olivia was on the verge of retiring for the 
 night, that she sought Mrs. Ottarson once more. She 
 held a note in her hand, hastily written by Mrs. Sat- 
 terthwaite, and despatched thither by a messenger. 
 
 "He he is very ill," she stammered. "They fear 
 he is dying. Isn't it dreadful ? And so sudden ! 
 Neither of my aunts even spoke of his being ill while 
 they were here this afternoon." 
 
 " Who on earth do you mean, 'Livia ? " asked Mrs. 
 Ottarson, staring at her niece. "Who's Ae?" 
 
 " Mr. Delaplaine," answered Olivia, showing the 
 note she had just received. " Think of it ! The doc- 
 tors say there is hardly more than a hope for his life. 
 He may not live even two days longer?"
 
 156 OLIVIA DELAPLAIXE. 
 
 IX. 
 
 OLIVJA'S aunts had purposely refrained from men- 
 tioning to her the illness of Mr. Delaplaine. They 
 had decided that such information could carry with it 
 no force of inducement. Besides gout was such a 
 volatile sort of complaint ; it pounced upon you to-day 
 and darted away from you to-morrow. In a short 
 time Mr. Delaplaine might be well, and able to con- 
 tinue whatever work they, the coadjutors in his cause, 
 might successfully have started. 
 
 But Olivia's reception of their advances had been 
 worse than merely unfavorable. She would not marry 
 her late father's partner, as she bluntly but rather 
 picturesquely said, though he should promise to clothe 
 her in cloth-of-gold and to hang her all over with 
 diamonds. Mrs. Auchincloss's most dexterous quib- 
 bles and Jesuitries were effete as implements for un- 
 dermining a prejudice like Olivia's, founded upon 
 youth, health and nature, and similar to the enclasping 
 outgrowth of all three. As for Mrs. Satterthwaite, 
 she left the house considerably more hopeful than her 
 sister. 
 
 "Only give him another chance or two," she said, 
 with an oracular nod, as the carriage rolled away, 
 through that section of Twenty-Third Street where 
 the boarding-houses are, so to speak, epidemic. " He's 
 an extremely attractive man, is Spencer, and I don't
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 157 
 
 believe many girls could resist him, even at his pres- 
 ent age, if he really made up his mind that they must 
 surrender." 
 
 "I knew you always thought him remarkably fasci- 
 nating," replied Mrs. Auchincloss. There had been 
 those bitter little breezes of scandal in other days, and 
 perhaps the elder lady had now made some stealthy 
 allusion to the fact of their having once blown. Still, 
 if this were the case, she gave her very insinuation a 
 sort of non-committal harmlessness by immediately 
 adding: "But don't you think he caw plead his own 
 cause in a little while ? Is this last attack so serious a 
 one, after all ? " 
 
 " I am afraid it's the worst he has ever had," said 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite, "and he has had two or three 
 rather bad ones. I sent to his house early this morn- 
 ing to inquire how he was, and the answer came that 
 he had passed a painful night." 
 
 That evening at dinner the Satterthwaite family 
 freely discussed Mr. Delaplaine's offer of marriage to 
 Olivia. Mrs. Satterthwaite had neither the conscience 
 nor the temperament of one who keeps a secret well ; 
 she had found herself unable to refrain from "just tell- 
 ing Emmeline," after holding a rather long talk with her 
 husband on the subject of their friend's infatuation. 
 Emmeline had soon afterward found her sister, Elaine* 
 and with a little scream of excitement had seized the 
 latter by each of her shoulders, exclaiming : " Oh, such 
 a piece of news ! Mamma says I musn't breathe it 
 yet ; but I can't help letting you know what it is. 
 Elly ..." And after that, in a very short time, 
 nearly the whole Satterthwaite household proper had 
 become aware of it, and before the dinner-hour this
 
 158 OLIVIA LELAPLAINE. 
 
 same day one of the French maids had succinctly and 
 exhaustively conveyed it to one of the footmen. 
 
 The Satterthwaites always talked in the most un- 
 restricted manner before their servants. " Oh, d it," 
 Bleecker Satterthwaite had once said, with that mix- 
 ture of a yawn and a sneer which his son Aspinwall 
 had tried zealously to imitate eyer since the great 
 territory of dudedom had found in him one of its 
 most loyal denizens, " if our servants like listening, let 
 them listen. It's about the only real pastime they 
 have that and pilfering the sherry or the cigars. 
 There are certain acts of mischief that I expect from a 
 servant in my employ ; but what I can not and will 
 not stand is their having the impudence to allow me 
 to find them out." 
 
 Sentiments of this kind had more than once wakened 
 a disgusted shudder in Archibald Auchincloss ; but 
 then between the large-nosed, judicial, moralistic law- 
 yer and his red-haired, red-moustached, jaunty, world- 
 worn, devil-may-care brother-in-law lay a big, tossing 
 channel of uncongeniality. 
 
 The Satterthwaite dinner had nearly reached its 
 completion, but the two youngest members of the 
 family, Peyster, aged twelve, and Lulu, aged ten, had 
 been detained by the gayeties of an afternoon dan- 
 cing-class, and had not yet appeared. Their continued 
 absence had just been referred to by their mother; 
 and Elaine, who would have been pretty in a placid, 
 creamy style if her eyes had not had so much languid 
 superciliousness in them, had drawlingly said: 
 
 "It's a perfect luxury to have those two children 
 away. I always dread the evenings when we dine 
 alone and they don't have to stay upstairs."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 159 
 
 "You'd belter hurry, then, El," said her father, 
 reaching out for an olive, "Lulu will be coining down 
 for good and sending you to the background, as sure 
 as you're born." 
 
 "I declare," pouted Elaine, "it makes one nervous 
 the way you and mamma are forever talking marriage 
 to us girls. Doesn't it you, Em ? " 
 
 "No; not a bit," said Einmeline, cracking an al- 
 mond too thoroughly, and then hunting for its edible 
 fragments amid the chaos of tawny shells on her 
 plate. "It the worst comes to the worst I can always 
 get somebody. So can you, Elly. Marriage is a good 
 deal like the German, ./find. No girl, if she plays her 
 cards right, need go home from a ball without a partner. 
 There's always somebody you can hint to at the very 
 last minute, even if you've snubbed him for twenty 
 evenings before, and who'll be willing to dance with 
 you if you only hint hard enough. My last minute 
 hasn't come, though, when it's a question of marrying. 
 And if it had . . . why, look at Olivia." 
 
 Aspinwall here giggled. He sat superb in evening- 
 dress, with collar so high that you could scarcely 
 imagine his wearing it without much physical pain, 
 and so glossy and stiff-looking that it appeared to be 
 made from some new material, like a snow-white tin. 
 
 "'Pon my word, Em," scoffed her brother, "I like 
 your conceit. I wonder what Spencer Delaplaine 
 would say if he heard you underrate him like that. 
 For my part, I don't see how Olivia could do much 
 better or how any girl could." 
 
 "Neither do I," declared Elaine, who prided her- 
 self on regarding marriage with a freezing philosophy 
 in whose air the most hardy spray of sentiment needs
 
 160 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 must perish. "And what an idiot she'll be if she 
 doesn't take him ! " 
 
 " There's only one objection to it all," mused Em- 
 meline, as she cracked another almond. 
 
 "What is that?" said her mother, a little sharply. 
 If any one in their most undomestic of domestic 
 circles ever became guilty of stupid sentimentality 
 it was sure to be Emrneline. But the daughter of 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite agreeably disappointed her, this 
 time, as she now went on, between her spasms of 
 squirrel-like munching. 
 
 "I don't know why, but there's always something 
 about a young widow that isn't precisely good style. 
 Yes, young widows are somehow vulgar. Their 
 mourning is so apt to give them a fast look." 
 
 Elaine replied with a recognizing nod. " I under- 
 stand that feeling," she said ; " I've had it myself 
 about young widows, without just being able to 
 explain it." 
 
 "Oh, children/" cried Mrs. Satterthwaite, throwing 
 back her head in laughter. " What will you say next ? " 
 
 " I shouldn't be surprised," said Mr. Satterthwaite, 
 "if Delaplaine lived twenty years yet. He can count 
 on his fingers every cocktail he ever drank before din- 
 ner, no doubt; and he never drew into his lungs those 
 vile cigarettes that Aspy's killing himself with." 
 
 "It's a pleasant way of dying," smiled Aspinwall, 
 above the pale acclivity of collar. 
 
 " Oh, of course Olivia will," exclaimed Elaine, as 
 though the improbability of a permanently negative 
 side of the question had just struck her in a fresh 
 convincing light. " Common-sense will come to her 
 rescue."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 161 
 
 "She hasn't much common-sense," said Emineline. 
 "Just see how she behaved in going ." 
 
 " Em ! " broke in her mother chidingly ; and Emme- 
 line stopped short. 
 
 There was, after all, a rien ne ta plus to the topics 
 which the Satterthwaites aired before their servants. 
 They did not desire that quite everything should be 
 heedlessly spoken of. It was well enough that their 
 majestic, white-cravatted butler and his decorous, 
 white-cravatted assistant should hear them say gos- 
 sipy, daring, heartless, or even ill-bred things ; but it 
 was wholly another affair that these functionaries 
 should learn a syllable from their employers' own 
 lips about that horrible Mrs. Ottarson. The Satter- 
 thwaites certainly lived with a quiet commingled ease 
 and splendor which few of the " new people " whom 
 Mrs. Auchincloss tabooed could effectually have imi- 
 tated, even in these days of plentiful upholsterers and 
 eager caterers. Their money was very probably at 
 the root of all their tastefulness, but they had the art 
 of spending it, somehow, as if it were drawn from no 
 brand-new pocket-book. And yet there was the tone 
 of a certain hard, crude Americanism about their 
 household which might have taxed the severest con- 
 demnation of foreign critics. They lived in the midst 
 of beautiful statues, tapestries and pictures ; they ate 
 off glittering silver and costly china; on every side 
 of them was refinement, grace, elegance, dignity ; and 
 yet as personalities, characters, human beings, they all 
 seemed to delight in a sort of mechanical, dispassion- 
 ate, semi-wooden indifference. Almost the only thing 
 which any of them appeared to do with much real 
 earnestness was to ridicule the people forming his or
 
 162 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 her acquaintance. It should not be forgotten how- 
 ever, that out-of-door sports roused them. Tobog- 
 ganing and skating at Tuxedo during the recent 
 winter had pricked the younger members of the 
 family into a positive enthusiasm. The girls would 
 sometimes drive their father out while in town, and 
 at Newport they incessantly drove with merely a 
 coachman at the rear of the vehicle. Down to little 
 Lulu they were all devotedly fond of horseflesh. 
 Aspinwall was a noted polo-player, and his younger 
 brother, Peyster, only twelve years old, longed for 
 that hour when the paternal veto should be with- 
 drawn from a clipped pony and a mallet. 
 
 Lulu and Peyster came into the room soon after- 
 ward, and were at once rather tartly reprimanded by 
 their mother for being so late home from the dancing- 
 class. They need not have stayed so long, ran the 
 maternal expostulation; they knew perfectly well the 
 hour for dinner, and that to-day was one of their days 
 to dine with the family. Mamma announced that she 
 had a great mind, as it was, to make them both dine 
 upstairs. 
 
 Meanwhile the two men-servants were waiting on 
 
 O 
 
 them, there in the big, stately, ornate dining-room, 
 as if they had been a little prince and princess. Pey- 
 ster was an awkward, sluggish-looking boy, with a 
 pair of salient, fan-shaped ears; but Lulu had a 
 bewitching, elfin little face that seemed to be set 
 within the centre of a golden cloud of hair as the 
 disc of the sunflower is set midmost its yellow 
 leaves. 
 
 "I know it was dreadfully wrong of us to stay so 
 late," Lulu said, taking a cautious spoonful of the hot
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 163 
 
 soup which had just been handed her; "but oh, I was 
 having such a glorious time ! " 
 
 o o 
 
 "Now, she kep' me," blurted Peyster, who swal- 
 lowed his soup like a young ploughboy, and with 
 whom the word "now" was ubiquitous in his dis- 
 course, like the "yap" of Homeric text. "Now, I 
 wanted to come sooner. Ask Fran9oise if I didn't. 
 Now, it ain't fair to blame me. Is it, Lulu." 
 
 " Oh, how tiresome you are, Peystey ! " exclaimed 
 Lulu, with the manner of a girl twice her years. Em- 
 meline, Elaine and their parents exchanged glances as 
 the quaint, old-young little creature continued : 
 "Please have the goodness to let me explain to 
 mamma." 
 
 " Go ahead," sanctioned Peyster, stolidly, putting 
 the point of his spoon into his mouth, although he 
 had been told a hundred times that he must not com- 
 mit this illicit act. 
 
 The whole family, including young Peyster, thought 
 little Lulu capital fun. Her precocity was a source of 
 endless entertainment to them, but their feelings ap- 
 peared definitely to stop just there. They never 
 petted Lulu, or showed her the least spark of tender- 
 ness. But then tenderness, or the slightest exhibition 
 of anything that resembled it, had no place whatever 
 among any of their home relationships. None of them 
 ever seemed to have time enough for a revelation of 
 brotherly, sisterly, or even conjugal fondness, provided 
 he or she had the faintest desire to indulge it. They 
 all appeared to be rather fairly pleased with one an- 
 other, not to be by any means bored with one another, 
 to like one another's society moderately well when noth- 
 ing of a more exciting quality offered ; and there it
 
 1G4 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 stopped. Affection was a word of obsolete meaning 
 with them. Emmeline had given signs of possessing 
 a certain warmth and sensibility that corresponded to 
 it, but long ago these had been discountenanced and 
 slighted by her kindred. 
 
 " You see, mamma," re-commenced Lulu, " I had a 
 perfectly splendid partner for the German Charlton 
 Van Dam. He is awfully old, you know he's four- 
 teen and a half, and he never dances with any girl 
 under eleven ; he makes a point of it. To-day every- 
 body was surprised when he asked me. And we 
 danced second couple Beekman Van Horn led, 
 and oh, it was all just too lovely! I was taken out 
 twelve times. Carrie Livingston, who danced next us 
 with Willie Winthrop, said ten. But she told a story, 
 and she knew she told it. She was jealous of Charity 
 Oh, what do you think? He asked me to call him 
 Charity f I laughed, and I said: 'Oh, no, sir; I 
 guess I won't do anything so bold as that. 1 And he 
 said, ' What makes you think it bold ? ' And I said, 
 ' Why, you seemed to think it so the other day when 
 you snubbed Lily Van Vechten for calling you 
 Charity.' And he got just as red as ever he could 
 get, and says he, 'Lily Van Vechten and Miss Lulu 
 Satterthwaite are two very different persons.' And 
 oh, during the German he was just too sweet, and I 
 had to wait till it was over, because if I hadn't I 
 know he'd have been angry, arid would never have 
 asked me again." 
 
 " All of which I think a rather lame excuse, Lulu," 
 said her mother. " It's getting worse and worse, the 
 way that children like you imitate the manners of 
 their elders. I don't know where it will stop. If
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 165 
 
 Charity Van Dam is a conceited little boy (and his 
 mother told me a few days ago that he was getting 
 so conceited she didn't know what to do with him) 
 that is no reason why you shouldn't find plenty of 
 other partners." 
 
 " Now, I always get partners," here asserted Pey- 
 ster, having finished his soup and begun to attack 
 his fish. "And (now) I don't beg for 'em, either. 
 Only (now) I fight shy of the old girls that put on 
 fearful airs, and (now) think themselves to be such 
 mighty big swells." 
 
 "Oh, Peystey's contented with any sort of trash!" 
 exclaimed Lulu, tossing her head, with its fleece of 
 nebulous gold, in fine disdain. 
 
 They all laughed at this, and Elaine said, soon after- 
 ward, in her frigidly critical way, to her little sister: 
 
 "Lulu, you're thinking of these matters quite too 
 soon. They'll give you heartburnings enough when 
 you get older." She turned to her mother : " Mam- 
 ma, you must make that child go to bed earlier and 
 have less excitement. She's dark rings round her 
 eyes at this moment." 
 
 "Perhaps they're engagement rings; coming events 
 cast their shadows before," said Aspinwall, who prided 
 himself on smartness of this nature, and had won, by 
 reason of it, the repute of being witty among a little 
 band of rosebud maidens whom it plunged into gig- 
 gling ecstasies. 
 
 " So much excitement is killing to the child," said 
 Emmeline, but in a lazy tone, as if she rather thought 
 her statement open to contradiction. 
 
 "I'm no longer a child," bristled Lulu, quite haugh- 
 tily. " Some girls of my age are children, it's true.
 
 166 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 But I'm extremely advanced; I heard mamma say so 
 to Mrs. Arcularius, the other day at school, and of 
 course it's true ; everybody thinks it of me. I don't 
 kno\v how many times I've been complimented on it 
 during the past few months." 
 
 " Lord Scarletcoat says that he hasn't seen any 
 children since he has been in America," said Elaine, 
 " and I'm almost inclined to think he's right." 
 
 Lulu made a wry face. " I should like to have Lord 
 Scarletcoat presented to me" she said, with that look 
 as of a wise little fairy which so often overspread her 
 features. "7" could show him a great many children. 
 Poor Peystey, there, for instance. Why, I sometimes 
 think Peystey doesn't know enough to come in when 
 it rains." 
 
 " You knoic enough," said her father, " but I think 
 that in most cases you'd rather stay out and have the 
 fun of getting wet." 
 
 "That depends on who staid out with me," mur- 
 mured Lulu, drooping her eyes and shaking her nim- 
 bu.--clad head. " If it were only Charity Van Dam I 
 think I could stand a good deal of wetting, papa, and 
 not feel it." 
 
 This created more laughter, in which Mrs. Satter- 
 thwaite did not join ; for just a minute or two pre- 
 vious a note had been brought her, which she was now 
 intently reading. Her face presently wore a most 
 troubled look as she said across the table to her hus- 
 band : 
 
 " Ddaplaine's a good deal worse." 
 
 " You don't mean it," was the answer. " Seriously 
 ill ? " 
 
 " They're afraid so."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 167 
 
 " Who writes ? " 
 
 "That young Adrian his secretary, or valet, or 
 whatever he calls him. Don't you remember whom 
 I mean ? " 
 
 " No ; but that's of no consequence. What is it 
 that he writes ? " 
 
 "He sends word, at Delaplaine's dictation, that 
 pneumonia is feared, and a bad night is expected 
 much worse than last night was." 
 
 "Pneumonia, and at Mr. Delaplaine's age?" broke 
 in Lulu, as if she spoke to her own thoughts. " That 
 certainly is serious." 
 
 There was irresistible comedy in these grave words 
 as the tiny child uttered them, and they were quickly 
 answered by a burst of laughter to which possibly the 
 servants contributed their involuntary share. 
 
 "Lulu!" exclaimed Emmeline. "I declare there's 
 something about you positively uncanny, at times. 
 You make me afraid of you, with that queer-looking 
 little face of yours under its fluffy hair as if you 
 knew ten times more than you've any business to 
 know." 
 
 The little face looked, indeed, as if some feverish, 
 unwholesome influence might be at work in the frail 
 body below it. Two touches of color nearly always 
 burned vivid in its cheeks, and its hazel eyes had con- 
 stantly that dry sparkle which betokens in a child of 
 Lulu's years an overplus of perilous mental activity. 
 There are some children to whom surroundings of 
 continual gayety are like the effects of a daily nervine. 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite would have been offended and 
 wounded if any one had told her that she was bring- 
 ing up her little daughter with the most imprudent
 
 168 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 disregard of a nervous system curiously sensitive and 
 an intellect exceptionally premature. She was really 
 not bringing up Lulu at all, but letting the clever, 
 wayward, brightly-gifted creature breathe just the 
 luxurious, fashionable atmosphere on which Emmeline 
 and Elaine had flourished well enough in their juve- 
 nile clays. Often for a full twenty-four hours she 
 would not even see Lulu at all. But she had perfect 
 trust in the French bonne who was appointed to guard 
 the child. Of course Fran9oise would instantly notify 
 her if there should be anything the matter with Lulu. 
 But Franoise never brought any ill-reports of a sani- 
 tary kind. Sometimes the nurse would come to her 
 with sad tales of Lulu's rebellion and contumacy. 
 Then a maternal scolding would occur, severe or light, 
 as the derelict behavior demanded. But no bodily 
 ailment was ever spoken of, and Mrs. Arcularius, prin- 
 cipal of the very select school where Lulu had lately 
 been enrolled as a pupil, had no accounts to render 
 except of the dear pet's highly amusing speeches and 
 her occasional mischievous proclivities. Mrs. Arcu- 
 larius was that kind of school-disciplinarian who never 
 bored the parents of her scholars (especially when 
 they were persons of great social importance like the 
 Satterthwaites) by depressing tales about either the 
 moral or physical condition of their offspring. She 
 was a lady who had long ago found this course of 
 action militant against her widely-conceded vogue as 
 a successful instructress of aristocratic younger New 
 York. 
 
 A short time after dinner, that same evening, and 
 while her husband was smoking a cigar and playing a 
 game of billiards downstairs in the billiard-room with
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 169 
 
 his son, Aspinwnll, Mrs. Satterthwaite, cloaked and 
 bonneted, sought her easy-going lord, and said : 
 
 " Bleecker, I'm going to see Delaplaine. I suppose 
 there's no impropriety in it, as he's so ill. But of 
 course you can go too, if you like." 
 
 "Thanks, Augusta. I don't think I will go." He 
 stood with his cigar between two fingers and his back 
 against the billiard-table, while Aspinwall, who was 
 bored at being interrupted in the game, had dropped, 
 with a simulation of dreary exhaustion, upon one of 
 the lounges that lined the apartment. "I've an en- 
 gagement at half-past nine and " (he took out his 
 watch, giving it a glance) "it's not long from that 
 time now." 
 
 "Oh, very well," said Mrs. Satterthwaite. She did 
 not ask what the engagement was. She had expected 
 to find her husband unwilling to go with her. If he 
 had expressed a desire to do so she would have been 
 somewhat annoyed. She had no concern whatever 
 with his engagements. He might go or come as he 
 chose. Pie was the father of her children, but she 
 had never loved him as a wife should love a husband. 
 She had married him because he was Bleecker Satter- 
 thwaite and a "catch." The engagement to which 
 he had referred might or might not concern an infi- 
 delity. It caused her no thrill of jealousy to think on 
 this unsavory conjugal subject. She did not want to 
 gener herself with Bleecker's private affairs. Every 
 man had them, and so long as he kept himself out of a 
 scandal publique she was perfectly contented that he 
 should follow in the beaten footsteps of all the other 
 men who resembled him. 
 
 She entered her coupe a little later, and had herself
 
 170 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE, 
 
 driven to the house of Spencer Delaplaine. In a short 
 time after crossing the threshold of the Tenth Street 
 house, she stood at Delaplaine's bedside. The sick 
 man received her with a cordial clasp of the hand. 
 He looked ill ; his face was nearly colorless. 
 
 " It's you, Augusta ?" he faintly said. "How good 
 of you to come ! " 
 
 " Not good at all, my friend," said Mrs. Satter- 
 thwaite. " And so you're not as well as when we last 
 saw each other?" 
 
 "No. The fact is I'm pretty ill. Dr. Clancey and 
 Dr. Robeson have just been here together. I don't 
 think they're at all sure that I am going to pull 
 through. It's this right lung now, with the other 
 threatened." 
 
 Mi-s. Satterthwaite had by this time seated herself 
 near the bed. " You must not dream of giving up," 
 she exclaimed. "There is so much in that not giv- 
 ing up. Have you a nurse ? " 
 
 "Adrian has gone to fetch a nurse. Meanwhile 
 I've one of my servants; she's there in the next room. 
 But I want to speak with you before Adrian comes 
 back." 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite had a chilled, nervous feeling, 
 now. She dreaded lest she should be made the 
 recipient of something funereally moribund, and she 
 was not at all the sort of woman to whom any confi- 
 dence of this character would be endurable even on 
 grounds of charity. 
 
 To be intimate with Spencer Delaplaine while a 
 flourishing and popular millionaire was a decidedly 
 different position from that of sitting at his bedside 
 and hearing him breathe forth some farewell charge
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 171 
 
 that would have about it the very odor of the grave. 
 She had never precisely believed Delaplaine's story 
 that this handsome young Adrian was no closer to 
 him than being the son of a distant relative who had 
 died as a clerk in his employ ; it might prove (why 
 not?) a horrible little history that would bring the 
 two into much nearer relations. Besides Augusta 
 Satterthwaite was not the woman to "put herself 
 out " in any way whatever for a friend. If it came to 
 a question of whether or no she cared to have friends 
 at all, she might, under cover of secrecy, have con- 
 fessed to you that successful, accomplished or fasci- 
 nating acquaintances continually stood for her in the 
 place of them. She was prepared to make no amica- 
 ble sacrifices, and she demanded none from others. 
 What so many critics have condemned as the super- 
 ficiality of social life pleased and satisfied her. She 
 wanted nothing truer or deeper. Nor did she wish it 
 to appear, after the way of her sister, that she wanted 
 anything truer or deeper. In her callous worldliness, 
 at least she was not hypocritical. She now keenly 
 regretted having come this evening. It might turn 
 out a visit with odiously compromising results ; for 
 she could not in decency refuse to grant him almost 
 whatever he might ask, provided he asked it as a 
 dying man. There were things one might hate most 
 heartily to do, but having the courage to risk its 
 getting abroad that one had refused them was chal- 
 lenging a still stronger disinclination. 
 
 " What is it you would like to say, Spencer,' " she 
 asked, and without the least ring in her voice of the 
 selfish anxiety she felt. 
 
 He was silent for some time, staring, as it seemed,
 
 172 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE, 
 
 at one of the rare engravings which lined the walls of 
 his charmingly tasteful chamber. A clock on the 
 
 O r 
 
 velvet-draped mantel ticked audibly in the stillness, 
 and shaped, with its brisk, sharp vibrations, imaginary 
 words of foreboding to her who sat and waited there 
 at the bedside. Her relief was excessive when she at 
 length heard Delaplaine answer : 
 
 " I want to speak to you about . . . Olivia." 
 "Olivia?" she repeated, trying not to let him see 
 how glad that one name had made her. There were 
 no unpleasant revelations that he could utter concera- 
 ing her niece ; she was well enough aware of his in- 
 ability here. But he might say, on the other hand, 
 what it would prove very welcome to learn. He 
 might say that he had altered his will (or had had one 
 drawn up for the first time) in favor of his old part- 
 ner's only child. Then Olivia would perhaps dis- 
 continue casting shame upon her father's people by 
 dwelling with that horrid aunt on her mother's side, 
 and the abased Van Rensselaer standard would be 
 reared again from the dust. 
 
 "Yes," Delaplaine went on, very slowly at first. 
 " You've seen her by this time, I suppose, and you've 
 done as well as you could." 
 " Oh, yes ; I've done my best." 
 " Well, what was your best ? " 
 " I'm sorry to tell you it was a failure." 
 "Failure?" He gave a low laugh as he repeated 
 the word. But the rattle that went with this laugh 
 showed the congested state of his lungs, and set him 
 coughing in a wheezy, senile, though not violent 
 way. " She wouldn't marry me, eh ? " he at length 
 went on. " I thought not I feared not. She
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 173 
 
 hushed you right up, I suppose, and wouldn't hear 
 of it." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " She grew angry, eh ? " 
 
 "Yes and it became plain, also, that she was 
 deeply wounded. Finally, she refused to listen, and I 
 thought she would be rude enough to leave the room. 
 No doubt she would have done so, too, if the whole 
 question of the marriage had not been abandoned." 
 
 Another silence now followed, and Mrs. Satter- 
 thwaite began to assure herself that her friend had 
 no dying act of beneficence to perform toward Olivia. 
 He had merely wanted a report of his ambassadress's 
 proceedings. As for his dying at all, now that his 
 watcher had become moi*e used to the dim light in 
 which his face had first dawned upon her, she began 
 to have solid doubts of any such demise. Of course 
 pneumonia must go hard with one of his years. But 
 then, on the other hand, why should there not be an 
 excellent chance that he might recover and marry 
 her niece yet ? Meanwhile it was very nice to reflect 
 that on his recovery he would certainly bear in mind 
 her own friendly endeavor, not to speak of visits like 
 the present one. (Twenty horse-power could not 
 have dragged her near him if it had been anything 
 catching, like typhoid or scarlet fever; but then he 
 need never dream of this.) Possibly, at the opening 
 of next season, he might give a ball for Elaine, just 
 as he had given one for Emmeline. And in that 
 case how very fit and chic it would look for Elaine to 
 receive at the side of her young cousin, Mrs. Spencer 
 Delaplaine, n&e Van Rensselaer ! 
 
 She had time for these musings amid the pause
 
 174 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 which had followed her last sentence addressed to the 
 invalid. But they did not require many seconds. The 
 pleasurable tingle of the egotist takes no longer than 
 the philanthropist's most heroic one. 
 
 "If I should get well, Augusta," the sick man pres- 
 ently said, " I should want to have that girl for my 
 wife, just the same." 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite bowed. " So I should imagine," 
 she acceded. 
 
 " But I have been thinking. . . ." Here he came 
 to a dead stop, letting his voice fall suddenly. 
 
 " You mean that you may not get well ? Oh, don't 
 allow your mind to brood upon that subject in the 
 least. I must say that so far you've disappointed me 
 very agreeably. You don't seem to be half as ill as I 
 first thought you." 
 
 A sparkle crept into his dull eyes as he fixed them 
 on her over-bending face. 
 
 " Suppose she were to come here and . . . and bid 
 me good-bye. Her father's old friend, you know. I 
 don't believe she'd refuse it, do you?" 
 
 "Refuse it? No; how could she? You mean. . ." 
 
 "Oh, I mean a genuine death-bed farewell. Don't 
 fancy that I don't. I admit I'm not yet past hope, 
 but that doesn't prevent me from being very sick 
 very sick indeed with internal gout and pneumonia 
 in complication. . . . Well, now, suppose Olivia came 
 here to-morrow and found me a little worse . . . 
 we'll say not exactly dying yet, but nearer to it than I 
 am to-night, and . . . and a proposition were made 
 to her . . .?" 
 
 "A proposition? Yes? Well? What proposi- 
 tion?"
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 175 
 
 The sparkle in those gray eyes of his, which she had 
 so often seen lit by the crafty, algid humor peculiar to 
 the man, grew more keen now as he murmured : 
 
 " A proposition of marriage." 
 
 " Marriage ? " 
 
 He stared up at her from the white pillow. " Can't 
 you guess, Augusta, what I'm driving at ? " he said. 
 
 " No," she answered, with a blank look. 
 
 "Then I'll tell you." . . . And long before she 
 left him he had given her a thorough explanation. 
 Once or twice she repressed a shudder while she lis- 
 tened, for it all struck her as not merely novel, but 
 even ghastly as well.
 
 176 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 X. 
 
 THE note which Olivia received that same evening 
 had been written by Mrs. Satterthwaite herself at the 
 residence of Delaplairie. It conveyed the tidings that 
 the latter was exceedingly ill, but it bore no request 
 that Olivia should pay a visit on the friend of her 
 dead father. 
 
 The next morning, however, by about eleven o'clock, 
 came a second note. As Olivia read this the blood 
 rushed to her face and her eyes filled with tears. 
 
 It also was written by Mrs. Satterthwaite, and ran 
 as follows: 
 
 No. West Tenth Street, 
 
 May, 188. 
 
 MY DEAR OLIVIA : I have just been holding a very sad 
 talk with poor Mr. Delaplaine. The doctors think there is still 
 less hope of his living now, as the pneumonic symptoms are 
 worse instead of better. This morning he has been in great 
 pain, and yet he would hold a few words with me, and they 
 have been words which have had you for their subject. Mr. 
 Delaplaine feels that his end has almost come. He had made a 
 will several years ago, leaving all his fortune to charities of vari- 
 ous kinds. But now he has determined to alter the will in your 
 favor. He says that there is no earthly reason why he should 
 not do this act of helpfulness to the child of his oldest and 
 dearest friend. His few distant relations will not suffer from 
 the change of the plan, for in any case they would not have 
 received a dollar of his money. Mr. Delaplaine begs that you 
 will come to him, at the above address, by two o'clock this 
 afternoon. I will be here to meet you. My dear child, al- 
 though I am losing a devoted friend in Spencer Delaplaiue, I
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 177 
 
 cannot but congratulate you because of the immense windfall 
 of good luck that promises to become yours. My loss will be 
 your gain, but is it not thus in all the events of life ? Pray do 
 not refuse to come. But I know that I need not make this 
 petition of you, Olivia, since your natural humanity will not 
 permit you to remain away. 
 
 Your loving aunt, 
 
 AUGUSTA SATTERTHWAITE. 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite had seen one of the attending 
 physicians privately just before she wrote this note to 
 her niece. Dr. Clancey was a man of extraordinary 
 medical position, and he gave an opinion of Dela- 
 plaine's case as unhesitating as it was discouraging. 
 He apprehended a failure of the heart in his patient, 
 though the lungs might resist even the severe con- 
 gestion burdening them. They were remarkably strong 
 lungs, but the diagnosis revealed a cardiac weakness 
 from which it might be difficult for the patient to 
 rally. Two sinking turns had already occurred ; there 
 was reason to believe that the patient would not resist 
 a third. Mr. Delaplaine had held a conversation with 
 his lawyer between ten and eleven that morning, in 
 obstinate contradiction to the orders of his physicians. 
 No bad result had yet shown itself, but now at any 
 moment the invalid might again collapse. His tenac- 
 ity was admirable, but he had already trifled with it 
 most recklessly. 
 
 " If he is conscious at two o'clock," said Mrs. Satter- 
 thwaite, " he will, I know, desire to see Miss Van 
 Rensselaer, the daughter of my brother, his former 
 partner, whose recent death you are of course aware 
 of." 
 
 Dr. Clancey gravely nodded. " He will see the
 
 178 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 young lady, or any one except his nurse, Mrs. Sat- 
 terthwaite," was the answer, " at his own imminent 
 danger." 
 
 Soon after this, Mrs. Satterthwaite wrote to her 
 sister, imperatively urging that she should come at 
 once to West Tenth Street. Mrs. Auchincloss obeyed 
 the summons. The two sisters met in Delaplaine's 
 exquisite lower drawing-room. 
 
 " My dear Letitia," began Mrs. Satterthwaite," I fear 
 you may think that I have been behaving imprudently." 
 
 "Imprudently, Augusta?" As Mrs. Auchincloss 
 thus spoke she shook her head in apparent deprecation 
 and looked down at the black-gloved hands which she 
 had folded in her lap. 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite gave a little agitated preliminary 
 cough, and then softly plunged into the subject. 
 " Spencer Delaplaine, rny dear, sent for me last 
 evening. We had a long talk together. He is 
 possessed with the idea of settling all his money upon 
 Olivia." 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss abruptly started up. "Upon 
 Olivia!" she exclaimed. "Before he dies? He is 
 then so sure of death?" 
 
 " Not so perfectly sure." 
 
 The eyes of the two sisters met. Mrs. Auchincloss 
 perceived that something was being withheld from 
 her. But she made no reply ; she waited, with her 
 most composed expression, for some further announce- 
 ment. At last it came. 
 
 " He is bent upon asking Olivia to marry him to 
 have the ceremony performed at once. But ..." 
 Here Mrs. Satterthwaite averted her eyes, and bit her 
 lips very worriedly. " Well, Letitia, he does not wish
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 179 
 
 that Olivia, when she comes, should know there is any 
 chance whatever of his recovery." 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss started again. "And pray on 
 what account, Augusta ? Does he . . . ? " The lady 
 rose, with a fluttered, appalled air, and then reseated 
 herself. "You can't mean that he wants to to trick 
 the girl into marrying him! " 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite threw up both hands toward the 
 ceiling, and lifted her eyes at the same time. " That 
 is what I have heen so terribly afraid of, Letitia ! " 
 And then the sisters looked at one another quite 
 steadily again. Each had her own special kind of 
 worldliness, of artificiality, perhaps of real evil as 
 well. But each also had her own method of conceal- 
 ment. If, just at present, there were to be anything 
 culpable done, no such neat policy could be adopted, 
 the younger sister had reasoned with herself, as that 
 of a mutual masquerade. If Letitia chose to approve 
 the whole odd business and lend a hand to its further- 
 ing, let her take the cue offered. And so Mrs. Satter- 
 thwaite, with the skill of one adroit in all such tactics, 
 offered the cue. 
 
 "It would be perfectly fearful, would it not," she 
 now went on, " if he should conclude to get well after 
 such a marriage ? I suppose he has a kind of hope 
 that he will ; and loving Olivia, as he undoubtedly 
 does, he wants to ... to ... (dear me, Letitia ! 
 how shall I express it?) to give himself the . . . 
 benefit of ..." 
 
 " I see," Mrs. Auchincloss here interrupted the 
 speaker, in the midst of this intentional stumbling. 
 " You spoke a minute ago, sister, of his concluding to 
 get well. People do not usually accomplish such ends
 
 180 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 as that by their own volition. . . . And you say that 
 the doctors give him up ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Still, he may live?" 
 
 " Oh, it wouldn't by any means be a miracle if he 
 did." 
 
 "I see," again murmured Mrs. Auchincloss, gazing 
 fixedly at the floor ; " I see." 
 
 Her sister felt that she saw and very lucidly, by 
 this time. It looked as if she were going to slip into 
 the little plot that should raise, if it were successful, 
 her niece out of pauperism and dependence. Her 
 next words, Mrs. Satterthwaite knew, would decide 
 what part she would take whether one of non-com- 
 pliance or of cooperation. And her next words did so 
 decide, as they fell with lingering delay from her lips 
 those lips that could press together their pink rims 
 with such untold prudishness when occasion made it 
 seem desirable. 
 
 " My dear Augusta, I think that if Mr. Delaplaine 
 chooses to believe there is a hope for him, in spite of 
 all that the doctors have said, it is quite his affair and 
 not ours. Naturally the intelligence of any one so ill 
 as he is must be weakened. I should advise that we 
 grant . . . his little . . . stipulation, or ... er ... 
 request, regarding Olivia being told there is ... er ... 
 any chance of his recovery. Humor him in this . . . 
 why not? And as for Olivia herself, I only hope that 
 she may see the spiritual sweetness in such an act as 
 that which he shall ask of her, besides the more . . . 
 er . . . more material aspect it will present." 
 
 Augusta Satterthwaite rose from her chair with a 
 short nod. " I hope so," she said, with cold laconism.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 181 
 
 It was very pleasing to secure her sister as a confed- 
 erate in this proposed little enterprise, but she could 
 not help a pang or two of aggravation at Letitia when 
 the latter threw on her puritanic, not to say hypocritic, 
 mantle, and began mincing about in it; for she had 
 long ago assured herself that Letitia was never so apt 
 to do this as when she was on bad terms with her own, 
 vaunted conscience. 
 
 " The great point is here," Mrs. Satterthwaite now 
 went coolly on, in matter-of-fact tones that contrasted 
 noticeably with her former perturbed and insecure 
 ones; "Will Olivia consent to such a marriage? You 
 and I, Letitia, have already had rather full proof of 
 just how obstinate she can be." 
 
 " Yes indeed, yes ! " 
 
 "But the girl, I think, has her fair share both of 
 pity and gratitude. These must be appealed to. 
 She must see Delaplaine. I shall make a point of 
 that ; we both must. If anything should be said 
 afterward, you know, we must have it in our power to 
 vindicate ourselves thoroughly." 
 
 " Oh, thoroughly." struck in Mrs. Auchincloss. Both 
 sisters at length understood exactly how to conduct 
 themselves to one another; their roles were to be 
 those of the most blameless apparent innocence. And 
 now Mrs. Auchincloss continued : "We want to 
 stand hereafter, if anything should happen, in the 
 very clearest colors before that girl. For she is hasty- 
 tempei-ed (we've seen that) and she would not hesitate 
 to bring an accusation of some sort against us, embar- 
 rassing enough, however undeserved." 
 
 The masquerade, as Mrs. Satterthwaite now realized, 
 was being most skilfully conducted on the part of her
 
 182 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 sister. She, in turn, proceeded to enact her own due 
 share of it. 
 
 "Yes, Letitia; we cannot be too mindful of how 
 delicate a position we will occupy. If Olivia should 
 consent to this marriage, and if he should get better 
 after it, the girl will of course pour blame on us for 
 not having distressed poor Delaplaine by making her 
 aware of one little remote probability that he might 
 get well." 
 
 "And yet," answered Mrs. Auchincloss, with a 
 dainty upward gesture of the black-gloved hands, 
 "at least there, Augusta, we shall be justified in 
 using actual deceit. We need not let Olivia know 
 that we ever knew of that remote little probability 
 . . . Still, her consent to the marriage looks very un- 
 certain, I should say." Here the lady grew visibly 
 excited, as she drew forth a tiny crystal vinaigrette 
 and placed it at either thin pink nostril. "Oh, no, 
 no," she proceeded, with sidelong dips of the head 
 toward her restorative salts till the sprays of jet on her 
 black mourning bonnet sensitively tinkled, " I'm sure 
 she'll never do it. Don't depend on her, Augusta. 
 She would simply fly from the house in amazement if 
 we made her any such proposition. And I doubt if 
 she will even come here, unless you ask her in the 
 most cautious way." 
 
 "I've done that. I did not mention in my note 
 that Delaplaine desired to do anything except alter 
 his will in her favor. Oh, she will come ; it would 
 be despicable in her if she remained away at the hour 
 I appointed two o'clock this afternoon. She cer- 
 tainly could not refuse to stand at the bedside of a 
 dying man and that man so old and prized a friend 
 of her father."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 183 
 
 " No ... as you have put your request she will of 
 course accede to it. But this change in the will . . . 
 has it been made already ? " 
 
 "I think so. His lawyer was with him for some 
 time this morning and against his two doctors' posi- 
 tive orders." 
 
 "The will is no doubt altered, then," said Mrs. 
 Auchincloss. She was inwardly very much exercised 
 about the whole affair. Had she been too reckless in 
 her late tacit little compact? Ought she not to have 
 waited and discussed the advisability of it with her 
 reverenced Archibald? And yet could she do more 
 than fancy that this oracle of tranquil wisdom would 
 fail to commend the course she had taken? Such a 
 marriage as this one for Olivia might savor of sensa- 
 tionalism and of theatric coarseness. But then, how 
 ameliorating it might prove to the girl's future ! 
 
 Singular enough was the diversity between these 
 two sisters when their congeniality was also fairly 
 regarded. Both were astute, both lacking in that 
 guidance of disinterested principle which makes the 
 honor and creditable hope of all human progression. 
 Both were selfish women, enswathed in supercilious- 
 ness, degraded by ambitions of shallow and idle reach. 
 And yet a gulf separated them, since Mrs. Auchin- 
 closs's paltry ideal of conduct was to worship some 
 perfectly meretricious god that she named good-taste, 
 and the morale of Mrs. Satterthwaite was to worship 
 an ideal, just as paltry, of temporal eminence, and 
 glittering though tawdry power. Neither woman 
 had the least vital valuation of abstract right; neither 
 would have scrupled to sell her finer self-respect for 
 that mess of pottage which the unsoiled spirit defines
 
 184 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 by mere external and circumstantiaf acquirement. 
 But the elder sister wanted her mess of pottage in 
 a silver dish, with a cover that hid from all prying 
 glances the homely quality of the viand ; while the 
 younger sister, willing enough that it should be set 
 before her in earthenware, clung to the desire of hav- 
 ing it brought by a livened domestic and in a frescoed 
 dining-hall. They were both snobs to their finger-tips, 
 but one was the scandal-fearing and one the scandal- 
 daring snob. Mrs. Auchincloss dreaded to risk a 
 speck of odium upon her scarf-skin of respectability ; 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite jauntily snapped her fingers at the 
 infliction of any such petty soilure, so long as she 
 maintained the gracious prerogative of going every- 
 where, knowing everybody, and of putting every- 
 where that she went and everybody whom she knew 
 in the rose-tinted light of concession rather than of 
 recipiency. All things considered, Mrs. Satterthwaite 
 undeniably had the best hand in the cheap, trifling, 
 fleeting game. To place the parallel much lower, it 
 is the reprobate with a vestige or two of decency who 
 picks a pocket under conditions of smaller individual 
 gusto. 
 
 At two o'clock that afternoon Olivia punctually ap- 
 peared. She disliked coming with as much strength 
 as that by which she had felt herself urged to come. 
 
 There had been no evading the necessity of present- 
 ing herself at Delaplaine's side; she would have 
 despised her own shadow for months afterwards if 
 she had refused so simple a boon. But the bequest of 
 his fortune to her on the part of her father's old friend 
 that had placed her in a kind of dizzying dilemma. 
 Her pride revolted at once ; for was it not a deed of
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 185 
 
 charity which she would have refused without hesita- 
 tion if the donor's hand had been a living and not a 
 dying one? But self-rebuke struck an immediate 
 blow at such pride, and bade her hold at its rightful 
 worth the kindliness, beneficence and devotion of so 
 magnificent a legacy. Perhaps the enthusiastic gratu- 
 lations of Mrs. Ottarson had not a little to do with 
 the final calming of her bewildered mind, which had 
 almost lost the power to think coherently amid the 
 rush of unaccustomed thoughts that besieged its facul- 
 ties. 
 
 " 'Livia ! " quivered her aunt, in a voice between 
 laughing and weeping, "I 'clare t' goodness it jus' 
 can't be true ! It can't be, an' 'tairtt! I'm dream in' ; 
 I've got one o' those spells o' dreamin' I sometimes 
 get from layin' flat on my back . . . Oh, no, I ain't, 
 though ! It's all true 's it can be ! " 
 
 And here the benignant if unsyntactical being 
 caught Olivia to her breast and kissed her. "Of 
 course it's awful to think of him dyin' so sudden ; 
 but then, as your Aunt Satterthwaite says in her 
 letter (an' the Lord knows she's 'cute 'nough 'bout 
 all such things ! ) it's an ill-wind, deary ... or some- 
 thing kind o' like that. 'T seems a reg'lar sin to 
 laugh, don't it ? An' 't seems a sin to cry 's well, 
 seem' 't I cry on'y from joy, jus' 's I laugh . . . Oh, 
 my sakes! To think o' you havin' w'at you was born 
 and brought up to, after all ! . . ." 
 
 Generalities now gave place to particulars, and in a 
 trice Mrs. Ottarson was viewing the whole recent 
 event with practical vision. "I s'pose 't won't be 
 very pleasant to go all alone. I wish I could be 
 there too, an' kind o' stay somewheres round so 's
 
 186 OLIVIA DELAPLAINK 
 
 you knew I was near while he kep' you talkin' in the 
 sick-room. You've just come from so much sufferin', 
 Liv, it don't seem right you should see any more, f'r 
 ever so long ; does it ! Wat you goin' to wear ? I'd 
 put on, 'f I was you, the black dress with the ruffles 
 up the sleeves; it suits you to a jiffy . . . an' then, 
 you know, if the room's warm you can slip your 
 sacque off, an' even if the old gent'man is goin' fast 
 't won't make him go any quicker 'f he sees you 
 lookin' 's pretty 's possible." 
 
 Olivia wore the dress with the ruffled sleeves, but, 
 as it turned out, she slipped off her sacque, with Mrs. 
 Satterthwaite's assistance, very soon after she had en- 
 tered the house. She felt excited, and knew that her 
 cheeks were glowing hotter as her aunt kissed her; 
 but she did not know how sparklingly blue her eyes 
 had become. She was not even aware that she had 
 shaped the question " How is Mr. Delaplaine ? " until 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite answered it by saying : 
 
 " He's easier now, and ready to speak with you." 
 
 Then Olivia looked full into her aunt's eyes. "It's 
 a great kindness on his part, Aunt Augusta," she said 
 a little brokenly. "I I hardly know how I ought 
 to receive it or whether I I ought to receive it at 
 all." 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite put her hand on Olivia's shoul- 
 der. " Receive it all, Olivia ! " she softly exclaimed. 
 
 Just then a young man entered the room. It was 
 Adrian, of whom we have heard mention before. 
 During four or five years he had held a subordinate 
 position in Delaplaine's household, not exactly ex- 
 plainable as to the question of its being secretaryship 
 or servantship. His full name was Adrian Etherege.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 187 
 
 He sometimes would spend an hour or two with Dela- 
 plaine at the bank. He lived here in the West Tenth 
 Street house, and had a room beyond any of the ser- 
 vants' rooms in appointment and preference of loca- 
 tion. He could not have been more than twenty years 
 old ; perhaps he was still younger, though there was a 
 certain mature look about his large, velvety brown 
 eyes. They were feminine eyes, and his extremely 
 slender and graceful figure, just tall enough to surpass 
 that 6f most women, made an imaginative observer 
 regret the unpicturesque limitations of our modern 
 male costume; for Adrian Etherege, this boyish young 
 beauty, with his smooth, oval face just touched about 
 its upper lip by the downy growth of a blond mous- 
 tache, and with the clustering mass of yellow curls 
 lying negligent and too profuse above a broad, sculpt- 
 urally white forehead, would have acquitted himself so 
 admirably as a page of earlier romantic times ! What 
 gave him the appearance of being perhaps a little 
 older than twenty years, was a pensive expression 
 that instantly revealed itself when you squarely con- 
 fronted the lovely delicacy of his countenance. 
 
 Olivia was at once won by him as he paused before 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite. It swiftly struck her that he was 
 one of the most beautiful youths whom she had ever 
 seen. His dress, quite out of the prevailing fashion 
 and yet as modestly inconspicuous as any garb of 
 to-day could well be cut or worn, heightened the 
 sweet, adolescent charm of his bearing. It darted 
 through Olivia's mind, in spite of her anxiety and 
 perplexity, "What a wonderfully winning and fasci- 
 nating presence he has!" But he roused in her only 
 the delight we bestow upon some thrifty and splendid
 
 188 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 plant, with its knots of bloom lifted clear and perfect 
 to the view. He caused her almost to forget the mel- 
 ancholy mission on which she had entered this abode 
 of her dead father's friend, while she heard him 
 address Mrs. Satterthwaite in these few, low-toned 
 words : 
 
 " Mr. Delaplaine wishes to know if the young lady 
 is here yet." 
 
 " Yes," answered Mrs. Satterthwaite. She turned 
 away from the speaker and put a hand on either of 
 Olivia's arms, while she scanned the girl's flushed face. 
 " You are ready to go up and see Mr. Delaplaine now, 
 are you not?" she asked. 
 
 " Yes," said Olivia. Her gaze wandered to the 
 young man while she thus replied. It seemed as if 
 she made her reply to him rather than to her aunt. 
 A moment afterward, having transiently fixed his 
 superb brown eyes upon Olivia's face, he passed from 
 the room. 
 
 " Who is he ? " quickly whispered Olivia, her look 
 following him as he receded. 
 
 "His name is Etherege Adrian Etherege," re- 
 sponded Mrs. Satterthwaite. 
 
 "Adrian Etherege," Olivia repeated. "How hand- 
 some he is! What a charming face he has! It makes 
 me think of faces in pictures that I saw somewhere 
 abroad ... in Dresden, Venice, Florence, some- 
 where among the galleries I used now and then to 
 visit with poor papa." 
 
 "Isn't he just too enchanting," cried Mrs. Satter- 
 thwaite. " I'm so glad to hear some one say he is, for 
 I've thought so a perfect age . . . I've only seen him 
 once or twice before," she went on self-correctively.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 189 
 
 "Mr. Delaplaine has now and then sent him with a 
 message to me since . . . since he engaged him about 
 three or four years ago. He lives here, you know 
 he's a sort of servant." 
 
 "A servant he?" murmured Olivia. 
 
 " Yes. A sort of servant. . . . You wouldn't be- 
 lieve it, would you ? Neither would I at first. But 
 he's educated ; he's not a real servant." 
 
 " I should suppose not." 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite laughed. "You've fallen in 
 love with Adrian. So have I. He's adorable. And 
 yet Mr. Delaplaine thinks him dull and rather stupid. 
 But men don't see with our eyes, do they? I'm so 
 glad you're eprise with Adrian, poor little fellow . . . 
 But we mustn't talk of him. We must talk of doing 
 what he told us to do." 
 
 "Going up to ... to see Mr. Delaplaine," fal- 
 tered Olivia. 
 
 "Yes. You're not afraid to go, are you?" 
 
 Olivia drew backward a few steps. "Afraid?" she 
 repeated. "No. But this great act of kindness he 
 wants me to benefit by. . . . That makes me almost 
 afraid." 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite was looking steadily into her 
 eyes. " You know, Olivia, that he was in love with 
 you before he was taken ill. You know that. He 
 told you so." 
 
 "Yes ... he told me that he wanted me to marry 
 him." 
 
 " He told you that he was in love with you," per- 
 sisted her aunt. "Yes, he did, Olivia. And we 
 your Aunt Augusta and I assured you of it after- 
 ward.'*
 
 190 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE, 
 
 " Well . . . yes," replied Olivia. 
 
 "Now, my dear girl," suddenly broke forth Mrs. 
 Satterthwaite, "he wants you to accept this great 
 favor at his hands." 
 
 "I know. You wrote me." 
 
 " But I did not write you all" 
 
 "Not all?" 
 
 "No. He has changed his will. The lawyer was 
 here this morning. But there . . . well, there is 
 something else." 
 
 " Something else ? " 
 
 " Yes. Don't look so startled. How can I tell you 
 if you look so startled ? . . . He is dying you know." 
 
 " I do know. You wrote me that." 
 
 " But, my dear girl, there was something I did not 
 write you." 
 
 "No?" said Olivia, with a child's innocence of sur- 
 prise. " What was it ? " 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite shrugged her square, firm shoul- 
 ders (so different from the drooping, fragile shoulders 
 of her sister, Mrs. Auchincloss) and half turned away. 
 "You shall soon know, my dear. He will tell you. 
 It's . . . it's something he will want you to do." 
 Suddenly Mrs. Satterthwaite veered about and caught 
 both Olivia's hands in both her own. " I won't tell 
 you, my dear. It's a dying request of his. Remem- 
 ber that." 
 
 "A dying request?" Olivia said, in a dazed way. 
 She felt as if some weird trap were about to be sprung 
 upon her. She had always distrusted these two aris- 
 tocratic aunts of hers. Now one of them seemed to 
 her brimming with guile and stratagem. She silently 
 regretted that she had not allowed the staunch and
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 191 
 
 incorruptible Mrs. Ottarson to accompany her hither, 
 as that doughty lady had proposed, if not insisted. 
 
 " A dying request ? " she repeated. " Tell me what 
 it is." 
 
 But Mrs. Satterthwaite went up to the girl and put 
 one of her arms within her own, drawing her reso- 
 lutely and determinedly toward the door. " Now, 
 don't be frightened," Mrs. Satterthwaite admonished. 
 " You've nothing on earth to be frightened about . . . 
 
 O . O 
 
 Come . . . What he asks of you, my dear, you can 
 refuse or accept, just as you choose." 
 
 Olivia allowed herself to be led. The staircase in 
 the outer hall was broad enough for them to ascend it 
 two abreast. When they had readied the second hall 
 and paused before a closed door, the first that they 
 met, Mrs. Satterthwaite said: 
 
 "Now go in. You'll find him very gentle and 
 sweet. And, recollect he's dying." 
 
 The next moment Mrs. Satterthwaite opened the 
 door before which they both stood. She pushed Olivia 
 into the chamber. Then she closed the door, leaving 
 her niece alone with the sick man who was himself 
 alone amid an artificial gloom, waiting for her, having 
 dismissed every attendant. Whatever was the com- 
 munication which he desired to impart, he had made 
 up his mind that it should be for one pair of ears 
 only. 
 
 Olivia, seeing the bed and the dim face outlined 
 against its pillows, drew quietly forward. 
 
 " Olivia," called a faint voice. " Is that you?" 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Delaplaine." 
 
 " Come, nearer." 
 
 She went nearer. He stretched out his hand, and
 
 192 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 she took it, standing at his bedside. She looked 
 down at his face. It seemed wan and drawn and 
 changed to her. 
 
 " Olivia," said the sick man, " you have come to me 
 like the dear, good girl that you are. . . . They say I 
 can't last very many hours longer." 
 
 " I hope it isn't true, Mr. Delaplaine." 
 
 "I know you hope that, Olivia. But if I really 
 must go, I've arranged that you shall have all I leave 
 behind me. I've arranged it. Did they tell you?" 
 
 "They said you had done me this goodness," she 
 answered. "But" . . . And then she paused, while 
 the hand that he clasped trembled and he felt it 
 tremble . . . "are there no others, Mr. Delaplaine, 
 whom . . . ?" 
 
 "No others no," he interrupted her, with a fev- 
 erish, peevish ring in his husky voice. "But there 
 are others relations of mine whom I don't care for 
 whom I've helped now and then, but not even seen 
 since I was a man of forty or thereabouts, and these 
 might dispute my will." He paused, and gasped a 
 little for breath, with a rattling in his throat that 
 made Olivia's heart throb for pity. "Now, Olivia," 
 he presently resumed, speaking with difficulty, "I 
 want to make your claim sure. Sure, do you under- 
 stand?" 
 
 " Yes ... I understand." 
 
 She felt his fingers grow tenser about the hand that 
 still lay within his own. " No, you don't understand. 
 There's only one sure way of making all their future 
 litigation useless. Only one sure way." 
 
 He closed his eyes and drew a long, stertorous 
 breath, still clasping her hand.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 193 
 
 She watched him. She did not know just what to 
 answer, except to ask him concerning the avoidant 
 way to which he had alluded. So, presently, she said : 
 
 "What 'is that way, Mr. Delaplaine?" 
 
 He unclosed his eyes and fixed them upon her 
 
 attentive face. "By marrying you here, inside the 
 
 next hour. You'll only be my wife for a little while 
 
 . . . I'll die soon afterward. I'll there, don't try 
 
 to drag your hand away like that. Listen ! " 
 
 She let her hand stay in the clasp of his. But if 
 the room had not been so dusky he could have seen 
 what a pallor had overswept her face. 
 
 "I I will listen," she managed to answer: "but I 
 I can't do what you ask." 
 
 He raised himself in bed, taking her hand, now, in 
 both his own. A new effect of light showed her how 
 haggard he was. "Olivia," he cried hoarsely, "do 
 this for me ! No not for me for yourself ! It 
 isn't only that I love you it's far more it's that 
 they'll try to take the money away from you if you 
 won't consent! Don't be foolish, Olivia. You'll 
 be my wife only for for a few hours. But . . ." 
 
 " No ! no ! no ! " she cried, dragging her hand away 
 from both his clinging hands. She stood for a mo- 
 ment, watching him as he sank back upon the pillows. 
 "No! no! no!" she repeated. And then, with her 
 heart beating so that it seemed almost as if it would 
 . leap out of her breast, she hurried toward the door of 
 the dim chamber, opened it, and fled into the hall 
 beyond.
 
 194 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 XI. 
 
 THE day on which Olivia made that unsuspicious 
 little pilgrimage to Delaplaine's abode proved the first 
 by which the reigning May had asserted her somewhat 
 slender right even to be called vernal. A sharpness 
 yet lingered in the breeze, but it was at least southerly 
 strong concession from so bad-tempered a month as 
 this had shown itself and you could easily imagine 
 over what radiant wavelets it swept while it passed 
 northward through the narrows into New York Bay. 
 Fifth Avenue looked cheerful enough almost to de- 
 serve the name of a handsome thoroughfare, since its 
 miles of deplorable brown-stone spruceness are never 
 so far from being a shock to artistic nerves as when 
 they cumbrously scowl at us through a merry golden 
 veil of sunshine. 
 
 The Satterthwaites' house was of that usual sulky 
 sobriety in the way of design which its locality loves 
 to perpetuate for ill-starred future generations, and 
 which, if the best speech of architecture may be called 
 eloquence, might well deserve the name of platitude. 
 But this large family-mansion, with its two windows 
 on one side of the high stoop and one window on the 
 other, was of brick, with stone copings, and had been 
 decoratively and improvingly touched by a clever 
 architect after the Satterthwaites purchased it. Being 
 on a corner, it ran a good distance down along the 
 transverse street, and showed glimpses of lace and
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 195 
 
 silken tapestries, of statuary and of other costly orna- 
 mentation within, from its two large embayed windows 
 and its many other smaller ones. 
 
 To a young man, of calm, dark, serene face and 
 rather foreign air, who had just ascended the stoop 
 and pulled the bronze door-bell, it seemed a strikingly 
 brilliant sort of residence. Though an American by 
 birth, he had not been in this country for over ten 
 years, and many changes were now evident to him in 
 the great city which he had last observed as a boy of 
 sixteen or thereabout. The footman who presently 
 admitted him into a marbled and richly upholstered 
 hall, was like a living memento of Parisian sojourns ; 
 the new-comer had seen in Paris just such clean-shorn, 
 intelligent, quick-moving fellows, among the salons, 
 the best cafes. About ten minutes afterwards, while 
 he sat with Emmeline and Elaine Satterthwaite in the 
 grand gilded drawing-rooms, he expressed a similar 
 opinion regarding New York itself. 
 
 " It all has grown to wear a more foreign look," he 
 said, in his even, composed, unassertive voice, which 
 somehow always carried the latent suggestion of his 
 being ready to weigh most carefully and respectfully 
 any opposite opinion that you, on your part, might 
 care to advance against his own. " At least all that I 
 have yet seen of the huge town." 
 
 "We don't see much change," replied Emmeline, 
 looking at her sister for a moment ; " do we, Elly ? I 
 suppose that is because we hardly ever give it a 
 thought ; we've become so used to it, you know." 
 
 "Yes," Elaine struck in, at this point, "you must 
 remember, Jasper, that it will very soon be four years 
 since we all met you in London." Here the younger
 
 196 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 sister cast down her eyes and sighed. She had been 
 told that the broad, creamy-white effect of her drooped 
 eyelids at such times became her quite effectively. 
 " How often Em and I have thought about the lovely 
 way in which you treated us ! " 
 
 "I?" exclaimed the young man, surprisedly looking 
 at her with his dark, sweet, serious eyes. And then 
 came his throaty, mellow, English-sounding laugh. "I 
 have no idea, Elaine, really, in what my loveliness 
 consisted." 
 
 " Oh, Elly means that you devoted yourself to us in 
 a more than cousinly manner during those pleasant Lon- 
 don days of latter May and early June! " answered Em- 
 meline. " You took us every where to the National 
 Gallery, the Kensington Museum, the British Museum, 
 the Grosvenor Gallery, the Tower, the ' Zoo,' Madame 
 Tussaud's, Richmond, Greenwich, Windsor . . . where 
 Jasper, did you not take us?" 
 
 "And now, " hurried Elaine, as if she were deter- 
 mined not to be out-done in the grace of gratitude by 
 her elder sister, "you've come to New York at so dull 
 a season that we have no means of repaying you for 
 all that past kindness. There's never anything going 
 on now in New York ; and besides, as you see, we're 
 in mourning." 
 
 " In mourning ? " repeated their guest, with that 
 nice, prompt sympathy of tone which was all the 
 more welcome because it partook of his intrinsic 
 spontaneity and naturalness. He never appeared to 
 be other than he really was ; his perfect breeding be- 
 spoke some chivalrous origin to which the everyday 
 skin-deep civilities bore little true resemblance; no 
 kindly words ever escaped him without making his
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 197 
 
 listener somehow feel that they would not have been 
 uttered at all if they had had to be delivered hypo- 
 critically. 
 
 " Our uncle, Mr. Houston Van Rensselaer, died a 
 few days ago," said Emmeline. "We never knew 
 him well, but then of course it can't be forgotten 
 that he was mamma's own brother." 
 
 "You remember Uncle Houston, don't you, Jas- 
 per?" said Elaine. "He crossed over to London 
 from Paris, that spring, with his daughter." 
 
 "One very warm Sunday we all went together to 
 Hampton Court," said Emmeline. " Don't you re- 
 member now ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes, indeed ! " suddenly declared the young 
 man, as though memory had not until that instant 
 obeyed his call. "And Mr. Van Rensselaer had such 
 a sweet little daughter, with big blue eyes. Pray, 
 what has become of her?" 
 
 " She is here," answered Emmeline, stealing a fleet 
 look at Elaine. 
 
 "Ah? You mean that she is stopping here with 
 you in this house ? " asked the young man. 
 
 " Oh, no Em only means that she's here in New 
 York," hastened Elaine, " She's . . . staying with 
 ... er ... some other relations of hers." 
 
 "Indeed?" said their guest. "I shall get you to 
 give me her address, if you will be so good. I should 
 like to see her again. She promised to become a most 
 delightful creature ; I shouldn't like to miss my oppor- 
 tunity of finding out whether the bud belied the rose. 
 But of course I don't mean that I should think of pay- 
 ing her a visit for a long time yet." 
 
 It is difficult to say which of his two hearers re-
 
 198 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 gavded with more profound disgust the idea of his 
 going to see Olivia Van Rensselaer at all in her 
 present highly plebeian abode. He was their cousin, 
 though several times removed, and if he had not been 
 Jasper Massereene or some one of equal notability 
 they would perhaps have shown a very limited con- 
 cern for the relationship. As it was, they held his 
 visit to be impressively complimentary. Even in 
 London he had not shone to them in the colors of 
 a compatriot, but in those of an Englishman whose 
 American birth was but dimly recollected, as if it had 
 been some sort of early juvenile escapade. 
 
 He had left Cambridge with high honors ; he was 
 handsome, singularly amiable, and endowed with an 
 address of the most gentleman-like fascination. 
 "Mamma and papa "had been so proud and glad 
 to meet him, and then it was easy to see that he 
 had friends everywhere in the best London circles. 
 Mr. Bleecker Satterthwaite's first cousin had been his 
 mother ; she had married his father, Trevor Masser- 
 eene, in New York, and it had been regarded as a 
 very advantageous match. The young lady was a 
 beauty, and a belle in society. Trevor Massereene 
 was a near relative of the Earl of Meath, and had 
 come to New York, years ago, to enter a banking- 
 house of greater importance than that of Delaplaine 
 & Van Rensselaer. He had acquired a fortune and 
 afterward married one, the Satterthwaite estate being 
 divided between Bleecker and his cousin, with a su- 
 perb share for each. When his father had become a 
 widower he had retired from Wall Street and taken 
 his only child, Jasper, to live with him in England. 
 The Earl of Meath had cordially received his kinsman,
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 199 
 
 and at his father's death young Jasper, with a really 
 great inheritance, had found himself by no means 
 neglected or ignored. 
 
 He had come to America, after his long residence 
 in England, with uncertain views as to how long he 
 should remain here. He had passionately loved his 
 mother, and she had died in New York. This formed 
 a certain reason, rooted in sentiment, why he should 
 wish to see once more the city of her birth and death. 
 But there were other reasons for his corning. He 
 had been a sincere student of many questions which 
 he believed that this transatlantic trip could, perhaps, 
 render more clear to him. He was a young man who 
 could intellectually repress himself with so ready an 
 adaptability that he possessed scores of acquaintances 
 quite unconscious of any striking trait in him apart 
 from that of his being a good fellow of the most con- 
 vivial proficiences. But he never with intention shut 
 to one acquaintance particular doors or windows of 
 his individuality, and opened them to others. This 
 process, which went on with him as often as he bade 
 farewell to Tom, spoke a greeting word to Dick, or 
 shook hands with Harry, was no less undeliberate 
 than it was authentic. He had, in marked degree, 
 the social gift, the rapid insight that measures and 
 gauges character, the power to enjoy various phases 
 of human society for what they were, apart from what 
 they had failed in becoming. He was a student of his 
 fellow-creatures, a philosopher who not seldom gazed 
 upon the world with eyes of melancholy astonishment. 
 But only those who knew him best ever perceived in 
 him this occult spiritual distress, and even they found 
 it to be transitory as a piece of gloomy emotion ; for
 
 200 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 Massereene did not have it in him to repine ; his was 
 that order of optimism which sees a line of light at 
 the verge of the stormiest horizon, and deafens itself 
 to all the grumbles of thunder that may lurk below. 
 You could never have persuaded him that life was 
 not worth living, though he fairly and unflinchingly 
 faced every modern reason which the scientific pessi- 
 mists presented for its being altogether vain and fu- 
 tile. He could not with justice have been called 
 other than agnostic, and yet that kind of grisly men- 
 tal twilight which the consistent agnostic usually 
 prides himself upon preserving, was lighted, in the 
 case of Massereene, as one might easily imagine, by 
 more than a single lonely trembling star. 
 
 So long as it was a question of seeking to explain the 
 universe, he tried to possess his soul in patience ; but 
 his hopes and dreams that all was well, and that hu- 
 manity would hereafter confront the explanation of its 
 worst agony these were like white birds that inces- 
 santly hovered about him, while making with the 
 tender palpitations of their wings a harmony that 
 drowned many harsher noises. Cheerfulness always 
 flung its rose-light over his bearing and converse ; but 
 there was something more than mere cheerfulness in 
 this, the companionable and gregarious part of the 
 man's nature ; it bore a closer resemblance to charity, 
 expending and diffusing choice possessions with the 
 freedom of copious alms. " I don't believe you have 
 an enemy in the world, Jasper," one of his English 
 friends had said to him once. And he had replied, 
 with a little start and a troubled frown on his thought- 
 ful face: "I hope that I don't deserve an enemy. .I'd 
 rather have ten than feel that I deserved one."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 201 
 
 He did not specially admire either Emmeline Satter- 
 thwaite or her sister, Elaine. They both affected him 
 repellingly by their hardness, just as certain landscapes 
 did in painting, ingenious though he might have found 
 not a few of their minor details. But notwithstanding 
 that he had brought here a number of letters, the Sat- 
 terthwaite family made a first appeal to him through 
 the memory of his dead mother, whose maiden name 
 they bore. Emmeline and Elaine, on the other hand, 
 considered him a most adorable young gentleman. 
 They had learned from their father just how many 
 thousands combined to form his annual income ; they 
 had duly weighed the fact of his being an earl's near, 
 relative ; they had observed his good looks, his manly 
 and tastefully-garbed shape, his polished manners, his 
 unfailing geniality. To meet him again like this, quite 
 unexpectedly in their own drawing-rooms, produced 
 for them both a mild, pleasing shock. And then had 
 come the exasperating reflection that the lateness of 
 the season and their own mourning-attire stood in the 
 way of their having him accompany them among fash- 
 ionable metropolitan gayeties. It would have been 
 such a grand coup to have entered drawing-rooms at his 
 side to have had it transpire that he was their kins- 
 man, and yet the cousin of a distinguished nobleman 
 as well ! The Auchinclosses would have felt it. It 
 was something that would have pierced Madeleine's 
 haughty little soul with envy ! Ah ! did not they 
 know ? If there was anything on earth that could 
 make Madeleine, with her prodigious veneration for 
 herself and her parents and her priggish brother, bend 
 that slim neck of hers cringingly, it was proximity to 
 the British peerage ! . . . Jasper Massereene had mean-
 
 202 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 while no shadow of suspicion what thoughts were 
 passing through the minds of his two young hostesses 
 as he said, in response to a second lament on Emme- 
 line's part that New York was at present so " dread- 
 fully quiet " : "I didn't care much for going to dances 
 and five o'clock teas, I assure you. One has so many 
 of those across the water. I merely wanted to look 
 about rne and observe how the town has really altered 
 since I last saw it. And then I thought something of 
 going into the West. Now there's Chicago, for exam- 
 ple. I want to see that. I hear it has become so 
 enormous and so handsome." 
 
 Emmeline broke into a mocking laugh, which Elaine 
 echoed. " Oh, don't think of going to Chicago ! " 
 exclaimed the latter. " Nobody ever does, except on 
 business." 
 
 " Well," smiled Massereene, " I shall go on business. 
 I want to make a business of observation." 
 
 "But it won't interest you," said Emmeline. 
 "There's nothing in the world to see there. All 
 those Western cities are so tiresome. The Rocky 
 Mountains are probably stupendous, and that sort 
 of thing; but our entire West is fearfully monotonous 
 and full of semi-barbarians. We always pity people 
 who are obliged to go out into those half-civilized 
 regions. If it were not for the Englishmen who land 
 
 o *--? 
 
 here with a wild desire to shoot buffaloes, we would 
 never bother ourselves that such dreary stretches of 
 country exist." 
 
 Emmeline spoke with an arrogance of which she 
 was completely unconscious. She represented a class 
 of New Yorkers who hold our splendid American 
 interior in a contempt as unjust as it is ridiculous.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 203 
 
 Only the foreigner who enters New York for the first 
 time and associates with the cliques and clans that 
 base all their noteworthiness upon a smart imitation of 
 habits, deportment, verbal accent, and personal vesture 
 practised reverentially three thousand miles eastward, 
 can appreciate how much typical partisanship this 
 young lady had just exhibited. 
 
 " I don't want to shoot buffaloes," said Massereene ; 
 " but I confess that I entertain respect of the riiost 
 substantial kind for anything that resembles a prairie." 
 
 " Oh," comically wailed Elaine, " that is the way all 
 you Englishmen feel as soon as you get over here." 
 
 "Please don't call mean Englishman," Massereene 
 admonished. "I'm a born American, you know. I've 
 never forgotten it ; I should be sorry to do so, for I'm 
 proud of it." 
 
 "Oh, of course," assented Emmeline, with a shrug 
 of her solid, symmetrical shoulders. "It's all very 
 well for you to say that you, who've been through 
 Cambridge, and go wherever you please in London, 
 and can take the steamer home again as soon as you're 
 thoroughly bored hei-e." She looked incredulously at 
 Elaine, who returned her look in the same way ; and 
 then both the girls laughed in concert, as though they 
 understood very well what an easy bit of harmless 
 posing it was for such an adopted Englishman as this 
 to air a little dainty patriotism. 
 
 But Massereene at once answered, in a voice which 
 he had lowered and otherwise changed, and which 
 instantly made both his hearers comprehend his ex- 
 treme earnestness as clearly as if he had used no small 
 amount of ardor and emphasis. 
 
 " All that I say I mean. And I regard this country,
 
 204 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 not England, as my real home. I've no right to do 
 otherwise, and if I had the right I should not possess 
 the inclination. I'm a good deal of a traveller ; I've 
 been in many other lands ; during those three years or 
 so since I last met you young ladies, I've seen a large 
 part of the Orient, besides some rather out-of-the-way 
 places in Europe; and I come to America to these 
 United States, in fact with a belief that I shall be 
 less disappointed here than I have ever been elsewhere, 
 and that I shall find more true civilization, more healthy 
 national greatness, than all my former experiences will 
 be able to offer me." 
 
 He spoke these words with so much gentle serenity 
 that they quite lost the form of disagreement and con- 
 tradiction, while retaining the significance of each. 
 Possibly Elaine failed to perceive either their full drift 
 or force ; for almost immediately after he had ended 
 she broke in, with much lightness : " I begin to think 
 that nothing makes one such a good American as to 
 dwell outside of one's country." 
 
 " Wait till you've been here a few months, Jasper," 
 said Emmeline. 
 
 " I hope to wait that long," replied Massereene, with 
 the implication (as often was noticeable in some of 
 his most placid speeches) of meaning more than he 
 said. 
 
 " Oh," suddenly cried Elaine, as her brother Aspin- 
 wall now entered the room ; " here's a young gentleman 
 who would be very glad to change New York with you 
 for London ! . . . Aspy, I hope you haven't forgotten 
 our cousin, Jasper Massereene." 
 
 Forgotten Jasper Massereene ! Elaine might as well 
 have asked her brother if he had forgotten the Houses
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAIXE. 205 
 
 of Parliament or the Thames Embankment. He was 
 indeed a mere boy then, though it was only three years 
 ago. But during that London May had first budded 
 in his soul the eager desire to be what he had since 
 unf alterably and inflexibly become a dude. The 
 very word had not then shaped its quaint monosyllable 
 out of that etymologic mist whence it has so phantas- 
 mally drifted to us, but it now expresses to perfection, 
 nevertheless, just what Master Aspinwall Satterthwaite 
 found himself yearning to become. Massereene was 
 wholly unconscious of the secret reverence with which 
 the young New Yorker watched every fresh pair of 
 trousers, coat, or waistcoat in which he appeared. He 
 dressed, like most Londoners of his age and position, 
 somewhat smartly and carefully. But to Aspinwall 
 he was the silent preacher of a new and precious creed. 
 The unnumbered refinements, delights, intoxications 
 of dress were now for the first time revealed to this 
 noble-minded boy's expanding intellect. Aspinwall 
 had since bloomed forth as the kind of young gentle- 
 man who is considerably more exercised about the 
 spotlessness of his gloves than of his moral character, 
 and who would humiliate himself to an amazing degree 
 rather than wear a hat which had not come out of 
 Piccadilly. He shook hands with Massereene, actually 
 daring to pass upon the latter's clothes a rapid mental 
 criticism, and not a thoroughly favorable one at that. 
 So does the past perish, and the influence of memory 
 and tradition grow even as the dust that we sprinkle 
 upon the wind ! Still, success and achievement have 
 their stimulating retrospections. "By Jove," thought 
 Aspinwall, while he buttoned one of his gloves, " the 
 man isn't as well dressed as I am ! " And poor Mas-
 
 206 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 sereene, equally ignorant of either this most virile 
 creature's former worship or hia present alienation, 
 looked as amiable as usual, and tried to crush a doubt 
 lest his visit on the Satterthwaites that afternoon might 
 not prove a trifle fatiguing. 
 
 " Where are you going, Aspy ? " Emmeline presently 
 asked of her brother, who carried his hat besides wear- 
 ing his gloves. " Or have you just come in ?" 
 
 " I'm going to see the coaches parade," returned 
 Aspinwall ; and before he could add something sul- 
 lenly regi-etful about his father's coach (for reasons 
 explainable on the ground of family bereavement) not 
 being to-day in the general line of the forthcoming 
 procession, Elaine rather excitedly said : 
 
 "Oh, let us -all go. It's only a few streets from 
 here, Jasper Madison Square, you know." 
 
 " I recollect Madison Square very well," said Mas- 
 sereene. 
 
 " It's our apology for not having a Hyde Park," said 
 Aspinwall, sitting forward in his chair, stooping'a good 
 deal, and knocking the but of a phenomenal silver- 
 studded stick that he carried against the knuckles of 
 one gloved hand. " It will seem a pretty small affair 
 to you, Jasper, after the big London show." 
 
 "Well, never mind whether it does or not," ex- 
 claimed Emmeline. " You'll go, won't you, Jasper, if 
 Elly and I run upstairs and put on our bonnets ? " 
 
 " I'll go with pleasure," said Massereene. 
 
 Aspinwall had been right. It did seem a pretty 
 small affair, this New York apeing of a custom so 
 essentially English. A short walk brought himself and 
 the Satterthwaite party into the neighborhood of the 
 Brunswick Hotel, that establishment which began by
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 207 
 
 appropriating to its uses a private residence and then 
 absorbed other contiguous ones, until it now looms 
 from the corner of Twenty-Sixth Street and Fifth 
 Avenue as a curiously ill-proportioned and many- 
 windowed pile, shorn of all dignity by its irregular 
 roofage. Massereene and his companions reached the 
 great gathered throng of people a trifle too late. 
 Eleven coaches paraded that day, and their place of 
 rendezvous had been the east side of Madison Square, 
 opposite that row of mansions which is perhaps the 
 most advantageously and salubriously situated of any 
 in our narrow and building-crowded metropolis. One 
 or two of the coaches had now passed the hotel, and 
 the rest were slowly following, amid the continuous 
 mellow clamor of horns made by some of their various 
 occupants. The small, well-trained horses, four at each 
 vehicle, stepped along with a brisk yet suppressed 
 energy. They seemed to be conscious of the rainbow 
 burdens that they drew, for the coaches themselves 
 were severally tinted blue, green, red, and yellow, in 
 chromatic disdain of all sombre panelling, and the ladies 
 and gentlemen who had climbed up to their accommo- 
 dating summits were clad in costumes of a most uncon- 
 ventional gayety. The gentlemen wore " white hats," 
 with a few dusky exceptions, and many of them were 
 apparelled in pearl-hued coats with large gaudy nose- 
 gays bulging from the lapels of these. The ladies, as 
 next day's papers recorded of them, wore robes of 
 "mouse-colored brocade," "white silk trimmed with 
 flowered foulard," "crushed strawberry satin," and 
 numberless other stuffs quite as costly and modish. . . . 
 Massereene watched it all, and through his mind, as 
 he did so, may have slipped the silent, instinctive com-
 
 208 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 ment : " C'est magnifique^ mais ce n'est pas la 
 guerre" 
 
 It was certainly, in a limited way, magnificent ; and 
 yet to him who had seen, season after season, the far 
 more diverting and spectacular exhibition of Hyde 
 Park, with such superior amplitude of local surround- 
 ing and a multiplicity of coaches which put this pitia- 
 ble eleven into humble numerical shade, it seemed like 
 the most meagre attempted repetition of memorial 
 grandeurs. It was English, and yet it was somehow 
 not English enough to be authentic. He felt a kind 
 of pained shame as he continued to look upon it ; the 
 very expressions of the men and women who sat upon 
 the coaches were in many cases not those which he 
 would have desired to see on the faces of his country- 
 people. They were often smiling enough, but they 
 were daintily arrogant and even childishly pretentious 
 as well. Perhaps they had been that in London, too ; 
 but he had not thought of it there. It had possibly 
 suited England ; it smote him like the most unrepub- 
 lican of discords now and here. Emmeline and Elaine 
 and Aspmwall were delivering their keenly interesting 
 remarks at his side, but he scarcely realized the sense 
 of what they spoke ; he was thinking whether such a 
 proceeding as the present one were not a shame and 
 a folly to be regretted and denounced. 
 
 " There's Minnie Saltonstall," Elaine was saying. 
 " Did you ever see such an unbecoming hat ? . . . 
 And Lou Rivington's feather, Em do look ! . . . Oh, 
 dear, this is the first time for an age that we haven't 
 been in the coaching-parade, too. . . . Aspy, stop try- 
 ing to make Jenny Hudsonbank see you. . . . Just 
 think ! I was to have worn my pink silk, new from
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 209 
 
 Worth, and papa had filled his coach with such a jolly 
 lot of people after we'd been invited to go on the 
 others. . . . Look at Sadie Yan Tassel ; she got the 
 box-seat, after all, on the Van Courtlandt coach, didn't 
 she ? " 
 
 "Don't speak so loudly, Elly," remonstrated Emme- 
 line. "Recollect where we are. People are hearing 
 
 you." 
 
 These people, whether they heard or did not hear, 
 appeared to Massereene as un-English in the extreme. 
 They had, for the most part, none of that stolid re- 
 cipient quiescence which usually marks the British 
 looker-on during any such distinctly patrician mani- 
 festation. They either stared greedily at the whole 
 performance, as though it were in all respects novel 
 to them, or they contemplated it with sinister grades 
 of expression that varied from smouldering sarcasm to 
 overt hostility. But the latter sign was, after all, not 
 frequent, nor was the locality one to call it forth. A 
 good deal of socialism may lurk among the beer- 
 saloons of the Bowery and its contiguous streets ; but 
 Fifth Avenue, in the jocund sunshine of a May after- 
 noon, is rather too blithe a place for such grim pedes- 
 trians as these to choose it. Massereene soon caught, 
 however, some grunted sounds of disgust not far away 
 from him, and on turning saw that a massive-framed 
 Irishman, with a ruffianly look about his very soiled 
 face, had just addressed a mate nearly as clumsy and 
 unkempt as himself. 
 
 " Jim," said the man, with a broad, red, snarl- 
 ing sort of grin, " is them fellers lords, d'ye 
 think?" 
 
 "They luk 's if they wus," growled Jim, under a
 
 210 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 clotted auburn moustache, while lie scratched one 
 bristly jowl with dirt-caked nails. 
 
 His comrade gave a bitter, gruff, contemptuous 
 laugh. "American lords and ladies dooks and 
 duchusses?" he exclaimed, so shrilly that perhaps 
 a score or so of people heard him. " They ain't the 
 genooine make, not quite, but they're warranted to 
 wear, so they are, almost ez good. Come along, Jim." 
 And he drew his friend away, with another scoffing 
 laugh. " It's a queer kind o' country, this Ameriky, 
 annyhow. It's ahvus a-screamin' out that it's freer 
 nur any other, an' it screams this so loud that half 
 the fools in the wurld is gettin' to believe it." 
 
 The man's voice died into distance, but the meaning 
 of what he had said stayed frettingly with Masscreene 
 for some minutes afterward. Then he shook off the 
 little chill, as of omen, that it gave him the pre- 
 sentiment that his own hopes and expectations might 
 not be satisfied and confirmed. And meanwhile he 
 heard Emmeline's voice at his side, murmuring rather 
 petulantly: "What are those dreadful men saying? I 
 do think they ought to have dividing-lines, or some- 
 thing of that sort, at times like this. One has no idea 
 whom one is being jostled against." 
 
 This had for Massereene a decidedly " West End " 
 sound. But he made no reply, and watched the en- 
 tire procession out, feeling rather bored at having to 
 do so, as not a single person on any of the coaches 
 chanced to be known to him. Now and then he fan- 
 cied that he had seen one of the men in some London 
 drawing-room, or perhaps in some restaurant like the 
 Hotel Bristol or the Cafe Royal in Regent Street. 
 But he was never quite sure the huge English
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 211 
 
 capital is so huge, and human countenances, during 
 all occurrences of the daily routine, so rush there 
 upon the vision. It was a relief to find the parade 
 ended and to meet, as they at length did, Mr. Bleecker 
 Satterthwaite, strolling along with a flower in his but- 
 tonhole and the general demeanor of a man for whom 
 life offers no requisition more of a chose obligatoire 
 than whist, billiards or coach-driving. 
 
 Satterthwaite was apparently very glad to meet 
 Massereene. " My dear boy," he said, " it's a devil- 
 ish shame that you couldn't have seen something of 
 all this fun. "I'd have crowded you in at the last 
 minute on top of my coach yes, I would, no matter 
 how the girls and the men fussed and fumed about it. 
 And I was to have such a jolly load ... I suppose 
 the girls have told you. Houston Van Rensselaer's 
 dead my wife's brother, you know. Decency's de- 
 cency . . . but I never really knew the man ; he was 
 forever living abroad ; he hated it here. . . . Well, 
 Jasper, old boy, I'm awfully glad to see you." He 
 put one hand caressingly on Massereene's shoulder as 
 they all walked together up toward the Satterthwaite 
 residence. " I was sure you'd come over at last. 
 You look just the same, except that you're a trifle 
 stouter." 
 
 " I've gained a little in weight," said Massereene. 
 
 This very ordinary remark struck Bleecker Satter- 
 thwaite as something especially apt and neat. Almost 
 any remark that Massereene could have made would 
 thus have appealed to his kinsman. The father of 
 Emmeline and Elaine was delighted to have seen his 
 daughters in this wholly unexpected company. He 
 had already swept his eyes over the personnel of
 
 212 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 Massereene, and let his paternal soul swiftly whisper 
 to him that he was a possible son-in-law of surpassing 
 value. Jasper had nearly always met precisely this 
 kind of parental welcome. He was so notoriously 
 wealthy, he had such a presentable, reputable, at- 
 tractive mien. Manoeuvring English mammas of the 
 highest position 'wives of county grandees, baronets, 
 and even noblemen had long ago forgiven him the 
 drawback of his American birth in recalling that he 
 was rich, handsome, a parti, and that he shared the 
 blood of the Earl of Meath. 
 
 Satterthwaite patted him on the shoulder and jo- 
 cosely said : " My dear Jasper, don't you mind a few 
 more pounds or so of weight. You can stand them. 
 You're tall enough ; they don't take away from your 
 good looks. It's deuced pleasant, old fellow, to see 
 that you haven't forgotten us. This is a bad season 
 infernally bad season for New York. But I'll 
 write you down at the Metropolitan and Gramercy 
 clubs. I'll have you made a six-months' visitor at 
 both, if you'll agree to stay here as long as that." 
 
 " Thanks," said Massereene. " I shall certainly stop 
 here as long as six months." 
 
 When Bleecker Satterthwaite had reconducted him 
 into the Fifth Avenue mansion, and Emmeline, Elaine, 
 Aspinwall and the head of the house himself had all 
 gathered about him with a profusion of conversational 
 hospitality, he began to feel the utter coldness and 
 worldliness of this family as he had never felt it be- 
 fore. They had no subject to discuss except banalite 
 of the dreariest kind. Emmeline was a little different 
 from the others ; her mind seemed now and then of an 
 opposite order ; but her promises of a more interesting
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 213 
 
 development soon faded. Massereene was about 
 taking his leave, having courteously refused an invi- 
 tation to remain and dine, when Mrs. Satterthwaite 
 made her appearance. 
 
 She greeted him warmly. But she appeared to for- 
 get him a moment afterward, and turned towai'd her 
 husband and daughters. 
 
 " I have such news for you all," she exclaimed, sink- 
 ing into a chair and beginning to untie her bonnet- 
 strings rather agitatedly. 
 
 Everybody except Massereene gave a concerned 
 start. " I do hope it's nothing bad about Delaplaine," 
 said her husband. 
 
 " Mamma ! " exclaimed Emmeline, rising and coming 
 forward to where her mother sat. "Is he dead?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," followed Elaine, rising too, and remem- 
 bering that her anxiety (such as it was) had " Cousin 
 Jasper" for an observer. "You do mean that Mr. 
 Delaplaine is dead; don't you, mamma?" 
 
 "No," replied Mrs. Satterthwaite, as she removed 
 the bonnet. " I mean something much . . . well, 
 much stranger than that."
 
 214 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Before Olivia had taken more than twenty paces, on 
 having closed the door of the sick man's room, she 
 met somebody who soon addressed her dazed senses 
 as her aunt, Mrs. Satterthwaite. And yet the girl's 
 mind was in so flurried a state that she did not even 
 recognize, at first, the person who accosted her. 
 
 " Olivia," queried her aunt, " what has happened to 
 make you look so dreadfully disturbed, my dear?" 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite knew perfectly well what had 
 happened. She caught both of her niece's hands and 
 held them tightly while she scanned the delicate, 
 alarmed, bewildered face of their possessor. 
 
 "I have had a great shock," Olivia said, drawing a 
 deep breath. Then she gave a little sigh, followed by 
 a quick, distressful glance. "Did you have any idea 
 that he he was going to speak like that?" she asked. 
 
 "Like that?" repeated Mrs. Satterthwaite, as her 
 niece broke away from her. "Why, what do you 
 mean? What has he said?" 
 
 " Forgive me, Aunt Augusta ! " now fell from 
 Olivia. She was pierced by an abrupt self-reproach 
 for having done her aunt an injustice. "Of course 
 you did not know; how should you know? Mr. 
 Delaplaine has asked me to marry him me! On his 
 death-bed, too ! Think of it ! " 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite had thought a great deal more 
 about it than her poor young kinswoman remotely
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 215 
 
 imagined. She now threw open the door of an apart- 
 ment next to that from which Olivia had just fled. 
 "Come in here, my dear," she murmured, and they 
 entered together. She had not been quite sure of her 
 forthcoming policy until now, and now she suddenly 
 felt herself to be quite sure. There was a large, com- 
 fortable, tufted lounge in the chamber, and as Olivia 
 sank into one corner of this her aunt sank at her side. 
 "I will be very frank with you," Mrs. Satterthvvaite 
 now went on. "I will confess to you that I had 
 suspected something of this sort would take place." 
 
 "Mr. Delaplaine told you, then ?" 
 
 " He could make the matter plain to me without 
 precisely telling ... do you not understand? And 
 now pray let me know just what passed between you." 
 
 Olivia clasped her hands together in her lap, lowered 
 her eyes, and gave a clear if somewhat hesitating 
 account of all that had taken place. When she fin- 
 ished, her aunt allowed quite a marked interval of 
 silence to ensue. And then she said, very measuredly 
 and reflectively : 
 
 "My dear, it seems to me a most noble action on 
 his part. And if you were to do as he requests, no 
 one could reasonably blame you. Marriage, Olivia, is 
 a very sacred relation ; there should be love on both 
 sides ; it is folly to affirm there should not be. But 
 this proposed marriage is an affair outside of all ordi- 
 nary considerations. It is or it would be, my dear 
 a marriage of duty. I don't only mean duty to 
 your dead father's old friend ; I mean duty to your 
 dead father himself." 
 
 "Aunt Augusta! what are you saying?" 
 
 "The truth, Olivia or at least, the truth as I feel
 
 216 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 it and see it. Mr. Delaplaine cannot live. He wishes 
 to save you endless trouble and vexation in the retain- 
 ing of that inheritance which he has left you after he 
 is gone. He told you this you admit he did. Per- 
 il aps you shrink from taking such a step because you 
 believe it would be so hollow a mockery. But I can't 
 agree with you on that point ; I'm older than you, 
 and I've had a great deal more experience than you 
 can possibly have had, and I am convinced that the 
 whole proceeding (if you should consent to it) would 
 rank among the tenderest and sweetest concessions 
 that a young girl like yourself could make . . . My 
 dear girl, it isn't as if you were marrying an old man 
 for his money ! " 
 
 Olivia nodded her head with positiveness here. 
 "Yes, it is," she exclaimed. "It isn't anything else. 
 I would be marrying an old man on his death-bed for 
 his money. Just that ; you can't make it different 
 from that ; I'm sure that you can't." 
 
 " Let us see if I cannot, Olivia. He was the most 
 faithful and devoted friend your father ever had. By 
 leaving you his fortune he confers upon you a benefit 
 which you may most honorably accept. But he has 
 relatives; and then, most probably, the members of 
 those charitable associations to which he had be- 
 queathed so much, having learned long ago of his 
 intended bequests, would array themselves against the 
 administration of a will that had been changed a short 
 time before his death. . . . All such distressing re- 
 sults as these, a marriage like the one which Mr. 
 Delaplaine proposes would swiftly and forever pre- 
 vent. . . . Are you following me, my dear Olivia? You 
 somehow look as if you were not ... as if you . . ."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 217 
 
 "Oh, I hear every word that you say?" exclaimed 
 Olivia, rising from the lounge and beginning to pace 
 the floor with drooped head and with hands joined 
 behind her back. Mrs. Satterthwaite remained seated, 
 watching her as she thus unexpectedly deported herself. 
 
 " This promises well," thought the astute lady. She 
 kept silent now, waiting for her niece to speak again. 
 
 " If I did do it I can't help but feel certain that I 
 would act with a a mean, grasping selfishness." 
 Olivia said nothing more for some little time, though 
 she still continued her nervous walk from end to end 
 of the apartment. She was thinking of her life at 
 Mrs. Ottarson's of the odd, coarse, uncongenial peo- 
 ple whom she was forced to meet there of how the 
 changed conditions of her days had begun to affect 
 her with an incessant erosive and unconquerable dis- 
 content. She was thinking of brief moods which had 
 recently visited her when she had told herself that it 
 would perhaps have been wisei*, more judicious, to 
 have entered, even on terms of genteel dependence, 
 into the household of either the Auchinclosses or the 
 Satterthwaites. There she might have had her mo- 
 ments of chagrin, irritation, humiliation, but at least 
 she would have been among persons who knew the 
 convenances, who were not continually reminding her 
 that she came of gentlefolk and they did not. 
 
 "You say, Aunt Augusta, that it would be a tender 
 and sweet concession on my part. It wouldn't be at 
 all that, for if I were to consent I should have only the 
 realization that I had done so on my own account, 
 and not Mr. Delaplaine's." 
 
 " That would not prevent the good consequences of 
 what you did do, my dear."
 
 218 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 " Good consequences ! " As she repeated her aunt's 
 words, Olivia paused directly in front of Mrs. Satter- 
 thwaite, and looked down at this lady with eyes full 
 of suppressed fire. "And what would he know or 
 care when he was dead?" 
 
 "It might make him die easier." 
 
 Olivia nodded once or twice, gnawing her lips. Her 
 face appeared to have aged within the last few min- 
 utes ; she had never seemed less maid-like and more 
 womanly than now, while her features were influenced 
 by traces of the severest trouble. " That is perhaps 
 true enough," she exclaimed, beginning her restive 
 walk again. " But my motive ! I can't deceive my- 
 self by not admitting that I would be marrying him 
 for no other reason than the money he has settled upon 
 me. If he wanted me to marry him simply as an act 
 of benevolence, or a a tribute of sentiment before 
 he died, would I hesitate for one instant in my re- 
 fusal?" 
 
 "Then you do hesitate now, my dear?" asked Mrs. 
 Satterthwaite. 
 
 The calm question, falling in modulated tones from 
 this wiliest and most strategic of women, dealt Olivia 
 a kind of sting. 
 
 "I I do not want to hesitate ! " she stammered, 
 knotting her hands together. 
 
 "My darling, you want to think it over all alone by 
 yourself," said Mrs. Satterthwaite, rising, going up to 
 her, and kissing her on one cheek. " And you shall do 
 so. ... There, I will leave you for ten or fifteen min- 
 utes. Your aunt Letitia was to be here this afternoon ; 
 perhaps she has arrived. . . . And, Olivia, love, re- 
 member that you will be taking a step of which we
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 219 
 
 both approve. . . . Candidly, my dear, I believe that if 
 you do not take it you will feel pangs of conscience 
 hereafter." 
 
 "Especially if his relatives carry a successful law- 
 suit against me," said Olivia, with a swift irony that 
 was quite unwonted in her, and showed how sharp a 
 secret moral revolt had begun against the temptation 
 that had latterly assailed her. 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite patted her on the shoulder. She 
 understood, with her worldly shrewdness, that this 
 bitter sentence, so filled with feverish self-reproach, 
 had its practical promise of surrender. " You argue 
 foolishly, Olivia," she murmured. " If your stay at 
 Mrs. Ottarson's has fatigued you, and you feel your- 
 self unsuited for its ... peculiar requirements, that is 
 no reason " 
 
 " But I have not said that it fatigued me," broke in 
 Olivia, with a querulous, perturbed, self-contradictory 
 look straight into her aunt's composed eyes. 
 
 " I grant that you have not, my dear. . . . We will 
 let that pass. . . . But you must not assert to your own 
 mind that the impulse would be a selfish one. You 
 behave more heroically than you now perceive." 
 
 " Heroically ! Aunt Augusta ! " 
 
 "Yes, yes. I use the word in no careless way. It 
 would all be a very fine and admirable service for you 
 to perform. Your nice sense of right will make that 
 plain to you hereafter. . . . There, no\v, my dear, I 
 will leave you to think it over, as I said." At this 
 point Mrs. Satterthwaite glided toward the door which 
 led into the outer hall. " Pray wait here until I re- 
 turn. If you decide that your consent is impossible, 
 please don't think that either your Aunt Letitia or I
 
 220 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 will attempt to use with you the least strenuous per- 
 suasion. Oh, no, indeed. Everything will be left 
 entirely with yourself with your well-known regard 
 for your poor lost father and with your own inter- 
 pretation of duty toward the truest and most faithful 
 friend whom that father ever knew." 
 
 She passed at once from the room after thus speak- 
 ing. " It's in the girl to consent," she rapidly as- 
 sured her own thoughts. " That awful woman, with 
 her boarding-house entourage, has had just the effect 
 I hoped for. And advice will do the rest or else 
 I'm immensely wrong in my whole estimate." 
 
 Olivia, left alone, dropped into a chair and stared at 
 the floor. She had been slightly affected by her aunt's 
 train of argument. There was no moral reason why 
 she should marry Spencer Delaplaine. She did not 
 owe it to her dead father ; she did not owe it to her 
 father's dying friend. The oath of marriage was too 
 holy a one to be taken except because her heart willed 
 that she should swear it. If Delaplaine had been a 
 man whom she had loved, this deathbed union would 
 have its complete justification, and its romantic sanc- 
 tity as well. But he was not such a man, and to 
 marry him would be, under existing circumstances, a 
 sacrifice unsupported by rational requirement. Her 
 father would never have asked her to make it ; it 
 must mean so much to a girl of the least sensitive- 
 ness, the least sensibility 
 
 " And yet " her musing continued, "I stop to brood 
 over the matter. I don't refuse, once and for all, to 
 give it a further minute of consideration. Why is 
 this?" 
 
 She met and faced the exact solution It was be-
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 221 
 
 cause she would, reap material benefit by becoming 
 Spencer Pelaplaine's wife. She was far too honest a 
 custodian of her own mind and heart not to insist 
 upon flouting all duplicity with either. There lay the 
 nude, unflattering truth. To allow this marriage 
 would be to soil her own purity, to debase her ideal, 
 no matter what Mrs. Satterthwaite might urge in 
 refutation. 
 
 But desire pushed its claim against the monitions of 
 honor. Those past boarding-school days came back 
 vividly to Olivia now. She recalled the sudden self- 
 abandonment that would almost seem to thrust her 
 over .the brink of some misdeed. . . . Was it not the 
 same at this moment? Did she not feel that old ma- 
 lign force at work? the insubordinate obstinacy of 
 spirit the reaching out after a boon forbidden her 
 by order, law, propriety, whatever name was held 
 fittest to bestow on the opposing stress ? Yet she 
 might resist if she chose. It had always been thus in 
 former days, when comparative trifles were brought 
 into question ; and now, when the trial was of larger 
 moment and stronger meaning, she also might resist if 
 so inclined. 
 
 But, instead, she began to ask herself whether men 
 and women would be liable to call such a marriage on 
 her part a sordid and cold-blooded one. True, it would 
 be almost like standing at the side of a coffin, and be- 
 coming the bride of the corpse ; and yet, when every- 
 thing was known, as everything must be at length 
 known, society would doubtless take the same view of 
 her conduct as that of Mrs. Satterthwaite. 
 
 And then the subsequent gain ! Could she shut 
 her eyes to that ? All the freedom and independence
 
 222 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 of a married woman would be hers, to go whither she 
 pleased, to do a hundred things that in an unwedded 
 member of her sex would fall under the head of pre- 
 sumption or immodesty. The fortune bequeathed her 
 would be safe from litigious attacks. Olivia knew 
 very little about the methods of legal administration 
 in any country, but it was not hard for her to assume 
 with confidence that as the wife of Delaplaine her 
 title of heirship would prove unassailable. And what 
 good might she accomplish with her fortune! She 
 had often declared to herself, during the latter years of 
 her girlhood, that the one most cogent means of secur- 
 ing earthly happiness was in the vigilant and careful 
 discharge of charitable offices. Once possessed of 
 wealth, she would never find contentment in such idle 
 pre-eminence as that which her father's two sisters 
 were now enjoying. Not she! It was no sophistry 
 that wrought tricksy spells upon her here. She was 
 willing to admit her own selfishness in yielding at all 
 to the voice that lured and enticed. But this was the 
 generous and high-minded side, so to speak, of that 
 very selfishness. Had she not again and again medi- 
 tated upon the good that she might do with the money 
 of which her orphanage would, as she once so firmly 
 trusted, make her the mistress? In the stillness and 
 suspense of her father's Inst hours thoughts like these 
 had often come to her. It had never been among her 
 musings, for some strange reason, to dream, as other 
 girls were forever doing, of a possible gallant, gracious 
 and irreproachable husband. A curious, delicate, vir- 
 ginal fierceness had risen within her the moment she 
 let her brain ponder that probability. What we have 
 heard her tell Mrs. Ottarsou on the subject of never
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 223 
 
 meaning, to marry, had been spoken straight from the 
 maidenly innocence of her own chaste, candid, fool- 
 ishly devout conviction. 
 
 And now it looked very much as if she would in- 
 deed marry though after a fashion startlingly differ- 
 ent from that to which her former protestations had 
 borne reference. . . . She had for some little time 
 ceased to pace the floor of the apartment. She had 
 thrown herself into a half-reclining posture upon the 
 lounge when Mrs. Satterthwaite softly opened the door 
 and passed into the room. 
 
 " My dear," said this lady, drawing quite close 
 to her, "I have seen your Aunt Letitia, who ad- 
 vises . . ." 
 
 " Well," broke in Olivia, lifting up her head and 
 showing how pale her face was, " what does Aunt 
 Letitia advise ? " 
 
 " That you do not trouble yourself any further 
 regarding this matter. If your mind is not made up 
 yet ... or if you still feel that you had best not con- 
 sent . . ." 
 
 Olivia rose, here, with suddenness. " My mind is 
 made up," she said, " and I do consent." 
 
 " My dear child ! " 
 
 " Yes, I consent. Neither you nor Aiint Letitia 
 could ever persuade me that I am doing right that 
 I am doing what poor papa would sanction that I 
 am serving any one's true interests except my own." 
 . . . She paused, just here, and the feeblest and sad- 
 dest of laughs made at her lips a sound that seemed 
 only formed to die there as drearily as it did die. 
 " But I am resolved. You may let Mr. Delaplaine 
 know, whenever you choose, that I am . . . ready."
 
 224 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 Daring the next half-hour or so Olivia felt herself 
 beset by a fright that quickened her pulses and more 
 than once sent shivers through her frame. But her 
 determination had been taken. She moved nervously 
 about the room, hardly aware that she did not still 
 remain seated. She knew that her aunt Augusta had 
 gone away again to superintend certain preparations. 
 She was waiting. Sometimes her heart galloped so 
 wildly that she believed herself on the verge of break- 
 ing down altogether and of rushing out to find Mrs. 
 Satterthwaite and avow her disability, her change of 
 mood, her withdrawal of everything that she had 
 lately affirmed. 
 
 But no such hysterical act really resulted from her 
 perturbation. She did not herself realize how strong 
 was the new desire that filled and ruled her. Unable 
 to do more than despise it, she still perversely clung to 
 the idea of its gratification. Her choice was made. . . . 
 When Mrs. Satterthwaite re-entered the room it did 
 not seem to Olivia as if she had been away, this last 
 time, longer than five minutes at the utmost. 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss, on the present occasion, followed 
 closely behind her sister. She kissed her niece and 
 pressed the girl's hand ; a sense of duty was every- 
 where manifest in her behavior. You could see it, too, 
 in the lines of her lips, the angle at which she held her 
 nose, the very management of her eyelids. 
 
 " There is something truly beautiful in your having 
 consented, my dear," she whispered to Olivia. 
 
 " I don't think there is anything beautiful in it at 
 all, Aunt Letitia," was the reply, given with a blunt 
 promptitude which bespoke more self-possession than 
 Olivia's kindled eyes and pale, twitching lips other-
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 225 
 
 wise evidenced. " But if the affair is really to be gone 
 through with, I I should like it begun yes, and 
 ended as soon as possible." 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss still retained Olivia's hand ; she 
 softly patted it with her other disengaged hand, now. 
 "I have heard," she said, "that you insist upon sepa- 
 rating from your proposed step any ... er ... com- 
 passionate or ... er ... duteous impulse. But I 
 know that this exists in you ; your Aunt Augusta 
 knows it as well. "We both . . ." 
 
 Here Mrs. Satterthwaite gave a little dry cough of 
 pronounced impatience. She saw that Olivia's con- 
 dition was more excited than when she had last quitted 
 the chamber. The girl looked in no mood to endure 
 much discussion of her resolve. How was it certain 
 that Mrs. Auchincloss's efforts to moralize character- 
 istically on the subject might not result in some sort of 
 impetuous and disastrous recoil ? Besides, Delaplaine's 
 malady had assumed still more fatal symptoms. It 
 was by no means a surety that he would last until 
 morning. What was to be done had best be quickly 
 done. And so Mrs. Satterthwaite translated her ad- 
 monitory cough, as it were, by at once saying : 
 
 " Letitia, I really think we should lose no time." 
 
 Olivia drew her hand away from the caressing clasp 
 of her elder aunt with a vehemence of movement that 
 admitted no misinterpretation. 
 
 " Yes," she exclaimed, " do not let us lose any time. 
 It might turn out very badly for me if I did so." 
 
 The irony in that final sentence could not fail to 
 affect its hearers. It caused them to exchange a look. 
 
 O 
 
 It made Mrs. Auchincloss pretend that she was griev- 
 ously surprised ; it sent from the eyes of Mrs. Satter-
 
 226 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 thwaite the glance that seemed to say : " Don't disturb 
 her any more than she is disturbed now. Leave good 
 alone. Don't you see that she may break down if we 
 are not careful ! " 
 
 The apartment of Delaplaine, as Olivia, between her 
 two aunts, entered it a little while afterward, was con- 
 siderably less dim than when she had hurried thence 
 hardly an hour ago. Two or three figures stood near 
 the bed, and one of these, from its clerical attire, left 
 no doubt that it was the minister summoned to per- 
 form the wedding ceremony. Delaplaine lay with 
 open eyes and an expression of suffering on his hueless 
 face. But he smiled faintly as his gaze rested upon 
 Olivia. Mrs. Satterthwaite gently pushed her niece 
 to the edge of the bed. An extreme stillness reigned 
 in the apartment. 
 
 Olivia heard her own heart beat as the sick man 
 stretched out his hand and slowly clasped hers. She 
 let him draw it toward him. Her head grew a little 
 dizzy then, and she feared that she might fall. But 
 soon this most tormenting sensation passed, and she 
 perceived that the gentleman in the clerical dress was 
 close beside her. He looked down at Delaplaine, who 
 was breathing somewhat heavily now, and whose eyes 
 would close for a few seconds, quickly to re-open and 
 seek the face of Olivia, with a sharp relief that had the 
 meaning of " Ah ! you are still there ! " and with a 
 sudden tightening of his feverish fingers about the 
 girl's palm. And in response to the clergyman's mute 
 inquiry, Delaplaine nodded a very faint affirmative. 
 
 The large, soft hand of the clergyman fell upon his 
 and Olivia's where they lay joined. And then a low, 
 rich voice broke the silence, repeating the Episcopal
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 227 
 
 wedding service. ... To Olivia it all had a dream- 
 like unreality and rapidity. The ring had been 
 slipped on her finger, and the last words of the sacred 
 ritual were being uttered, when she became aware that 
 Delaplaine's breathing was louder and more difficult 
 than it had yet sounded. " If he should die before we 
 are fully married ! " swept through her mind. ... A 
 little later her aunts drew her away ; he seemed in 
 great pain, and she heard him moan, " My side ! my 
 side ! " as if the chief agony were there. 
 
 Both her aunts kissed her, and then she let them lead 
 her from the room 
 
 " Will he live much longer?" she asked in low and 
 
 O 
 
 trembling tones. 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite spoke : " The doctors think 
 not." 
 
 "I I wish to go, now," said Olivia. " I will of 
 course come to-morrow, and send this evening from 
 Aunt Thyrza's to find out how he is. But I would 
 prefer to go, now." 
 
 She saw amazement depict itself on Mrs. Auchin- 
 closs's face. Mrs. Satterthwaite raised both hands 
 and shook her head in energetic negative. The latter 
 immediately spoke, saying : 
 
 "Go now, Olivia! Why, my dear, of what can you 
 be thinking? "And then Mrs. Auchincloss : "Go 
 now, Olivia ! " 
 
 They had all three just entei'ed the same room 
 whence Olivia had passed in their company only a 
 short while since. The girl stood in the centre of 
 this room, after thus being unexpectedly addressed, 
 and let her eyes wander from the countenance of one 
 companion to that of the other.
 
 228 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 " I don't understand you at all," she faltered, " why 
 can I not go now? I have done what you required 
 me to do. I I have married him. He is very ill; 
 he is going to die." Here she paused. The pain of 
 remorse was already at work in her. She had been 
 quite certain the remorse would come. In other 
 times, after she had yielded, and doggedly committed 
 the very fault which she recognized as a fault, she had 
 always foreseen the stabs of conscience to which, as it 
 were, she had both rashly and deliberately committed 
 herself. But the remorse, like the culpability, had 
 been of so different kind, then ! A tremulous nervous 
 weakness, a gloom of spirits, a shrinking from the 
 arraignments of her own mortified and incensed moral 
 obligations, had commenced to play fatal havoc with 
 her inward peace. She felt none of the calmer reac- 
 tion that with many natures would succeed fulfilment 
 of a purpose conceived in turmoil of soul and executed 
 as the means to a self-serving attainment. 
 
 " You can't expect me to stay here," she at length 
 continued, with a wistful though petulant ring in her 
 voice, " until . . . until it happens. It may not happen 
 for hours yet perhaps not for a day or two longer." 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss drew near to her and laid a light 
 but firm touch on her arm. " Olivia," this model of 
 all the higher and better duties now exclaimed, "do 
 you not see that your present part is to behave as if it 
 might not happen at all ? " 
 
 " As if ... it ... might not happen at all ? " she 
 repeated brokenly. " No ; I don't see that I should 
 so behave, Aunt Letitia. At least not to yow." 
 
 "Your aunt is right, my dear," said Mrs. Satter- 
 thwaite. " Remember, you are a wife now."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 229 
 
 "Yes ... I am his wife. . . . And I shall soon be 
 his widow." 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss gave her sister a despairing glance. 
 " But, Olivia, you are not his widow yet" 
 
 "No," was the answer. She looked down at the 
 wedding-ring on her finger. "Not yet. Well? And 
 if I am not?" 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss was about to speak, at this point, 
 but Mrs. Satterthwaite silenced her by a gesture half 
 imploring and half commanding. 
 
 "Your proper place, then, is here here in this 
 house. Don't you see that it is? ... Word will be 
 sent to Mrs. Ottarson, if you wish. Change of attire, my 
 dear, and all that, will be attended to. But you ought 
 not to leave this house . . . you must not leave it." 
 
 The door of the room had been left ajar. At this 
 moment the graceful and handsome youth whom 
 Olivia had seen not long ago, and whose name she 
 had learned to be Adrian Etherege, crossed the thresh- 
 old. He went at once to Mrs. Satterthwaite and 
 said, in his clear, soft, winning voice : 
 
 " Mr. Delaplaine is suffering very much, but he has 
 asked to see you." 
 
 "I will go to him," was the lady's ready answer. 
 She made a step or two toward the door, and then 
 turned, addressing Olivia: 
 
 "You will remain here till I come back, my dear? 
 You will remain with your Aunt Letitia?" 
 
 Olivia made no answer. She had fixed her eyes 
 upon Adrian Etherege. As if possessed by a sudden 
 idea, she approached the young man, standing close 
 at his side before he himself seemed to be aware 
 of what she had done.
 
 230 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 "Tell me," she said, "do you think that Mr. Dela- 
 plaine will live through the night?" 
 
 He whom she thus questioned gave a start. His 
 large, luminous brown eyes lost all their gentleness, 
 for an instant, as they met Olivia's. A hardness, a bit- 
 terness, for which she was totally unprepared, seized 
 and altered his charming visage. . . . And then the 
 change vanished as swiftly as it had come. ... It had 
 already passed when he responded, in a voice full of 
 respectful courtesy : 
 
 " I can't tell you how long Mr. Delaplaine may live. 
 But I do not believe he is dying now at all. He is 
 very ill, but I have every hope that he will recover." 
 
 " Recover ?" murmured Olivia. . . . She shot a wild 
 look at either of her two kinswomen. Both of them 
 avoided it. 
 
 "Recover?" she again said ... In another minute 
 the room had begun to whirl about with her. She 
 knew that she was staggering as she tried to find her 
 seat. One of her aunts she could not tell which 
 one helped her to find it. 
 
 "You are ill, my dear," she heard a voice say. She 
 could not make out to whom the voice belonged, her 
 brain seemed in such a tumult. 
 
 "Recover?" she murmured once more, though 
 unaware that for the third time this word had left 
 her quivering lips.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 231 
 
 XIII. 
 
 THE faintness that had assailed Olivia soon left her. 
 When she sat up and looked about her once more with 
 a clear gaze, Adrian Etherege had quitted the room. 
 Her first words were spoken to Mrs. Satterthwaite. 
 
 " Do you believe this to be true? " she asked. 
 
 "You mean what Adrian just said?" she replied. 
 
 " Yes ; that is precisely what I do mean." 
 
 Mrs. Sattei-thwaite had gone toward the door, and 
 her hand was already on its knob. A request from 
 Spencer Delaplaine at such an hour was not to be dis- 
 regarded. " Positively, my dear," she said, " I do not 
 believe it to be true. This young man, perhaps, finds 
 it hard to realize that death has actually come. . . . 
 There, I must leave you. Remain with your Aunt Le- 
 titia . . . promise me that you will." 
 
 Olivia made no answer, and Mrs. Satterthwaite 
 quitted the room with a furtive and telling signal to 
 her sister. The latter understood perfectly ; she was 
 enjoined to repress all tendency on their niece's part 
 in the direction of escape. And Mrs. Auchincloss was 
 pi'epared to oppose that course in Olivia with quite as 
 much vigor as any which Mrs. Satterthwaite could have 
 drawn upon. 
 
 Olivia had seated herself now. She was very pale, 
 but her former excitement had apparently quite van- 
 ished. Mrs. Auchincloss took a seat on the lounge at 
 her side.
 
 232 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 " Have you such a horror, then, of Mr. Delaplaine's 
 recovery, my dear?" asked her aunt. 
 
 "Why should I not have?" she answered in a voice 
 that rang firm and steady, but held a new hollow 
 note, like the emanation from some great hidden dread 
 or anxiety. " If I thought he would get well, Aunt 
 Letitia," she went on, "I am almost certain that I 
 would kill myself." 
 
 " Olivia ! What are you saying? " 
 
 " I would either kill myself or else hide from him 
 somewhere, miles and miles distant where he would 
 not dream of finding me." She gave a slight, dolorous 
 laugh here. "But he would find me, would he not, 
 in these days of telegraphs, detectives, and newspapers, 
 if he only searched enough ? " 
 
 " My child ! " 
 
 " Oh, the very thought is so terrible ! It has given 
 me a kind of benumbed feeling. I was merely flut- 
 tered and distraite before, thinking of how coldly 
 calculating a thing I had done ! But now this seems 
 like a vague threat of punishment." She drew herself 
 up,, and a smile flashed along her lips. "I am too 
 absurd, however, am I not? There is no chance 
 none at all. That young man, Adrian Etherege, gave 
 me such a shock ! I wish he had not spoken as he 
 did ; I fancy I shall detest the very sight of him after 
 this, handsome though he is." 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss felt chilled into silence. This ab- 
 horrence that was ready to steep itself in the blackest 
 tide of tragedy, frightened and amazed her. She was 
 unused to such robustness of emotion ; she had held 
 it in polite and dainty scorn all through her life. A 
 surge of regret swept over her that she she, Letitia
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 233 
 
 Auchincloss, a woman of race and breeding and the 
 most haughtily exclusive habit should thus have 
 encountered the risk of being connected with anything 
 so sensational, so " newspaperish," as the headlong 
 despair at which her niece's behavior hinted. After a 
 while she falteringly managed to say, while Olivia sat 
 with eyes riveted on the floor and her lips tightly 
 locked together : 
 
 "You will not for a moment imagine, my dear, that 
 I have had the least desire to make you act otherwise 
 than as a dutiful daughter of your poor papa. I was 
 quite without knowledge, on the other hand, Olivia, 
 that you entertained such repugnance toward Mr. 
 Delaplaine. . . . And, indeed, if I had supposed " 
 
 "I entertain no repugnance toward him," Olivia 
 trenchantly broke in, lifting her head and showing how 
 much trouble blent with her strange composure. " But 
 to to really be his wife! " She put her hands up to 
 her face, covering it from sight. Her aunt watched 
 her, while a faint tremor shook her frame. " Do not 
 let us talk of that subject, please," she continued, let- 
 ting her hands fall again into her lap. ..." You wish 
 me to remain here, you and Aunt Augusta. You think 
 it best that I should stay over-night. . . . Well, I will 
 do so. But I must send for Aunt Thyrza for Mrs. 
 Ottarson. You don't like her, either of you, I know. 
 But I must send for her, all the same. She will come 
 to me as soon as she gets my note. . . . Where can I 
 write it ? a bit of paper and a pencil are all that I 
 want. I must write it at once." She rose as she fin- 
 ished speaking, a'nd looked about the room. She saw 
 a desk in one corner, hastened toward it, and perceived 
 that writing-paper was placed there, with pen and ink.
 
 234 OLIVIA . DELAPLAINE. 
 
 She seated herself before the desk, and began a note 
 to her aunt with extraordinary swiftness. Mrs. Auch- 
 incloss, from her place on the lounge, gazed with lifted 
 eye-glasses at this hurried proceeding. " If that horri- 
 ble woman is to be sent for," she reflected, " I had 
 best go." It struck this lady very much as if she 
 might be instrumental in having sown the wind to reap 
 a hurricane. She had always borne herself as a placid 
 idolatress of conventionalism, and now, when there 
 was even a dim omen of her flawless respectability 
 being put into any peril, she desired to lift her nice 
 skirts clear of the least soilure. 
 
 " There," said Olivia, having finished, sealed, and 
 directed her note. " I have made it short, but Aunt 
 Thyrza will understand that I want her." She rose, 
 and again glanced about the apartment in search of a 
 bell. She saw one and went to it. As she rang it she 
 proceeded, still in the same collected voice that she had 
 used of late : " I must have the note sent without 
 delay. Some servant will be found to take it, of 
 course." 
 
 " I suppose so, Olivia," said Mrs. Auchincloss. 
 " How you do cling to that lady, my dear ! " 
 
 " I cling to her because she is the only real friend 
 whom I now have on earth ! " 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss rose from the lounge with a pained 
 look. "Are not your Aunt Augusta and I your friends, 
 my dear ? " 
 
 " I hope so," said Olivia, with an unmerciful frank- 
 ness. "But you are not pardon me for expressing 
 just what I mean at such a time you are not the 
 same to me as Aunt Thyrza is. I want her near me 
 now, and I must either have her here or else go to her."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 235 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss sighed. " Then you agree to stay 
 until she comes ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Very well. Please do not expect me to meet 
 her; that is all." 
 
 " I don't expect it, or even wish it." 
 
 Mrs. Auchincloss sighed again and walked toward 
 the door. Just as she did so it was opened, and her 
 sister once more appeared. 
 
 Olivia, on seeing her, instantly said: "Well? . . . 
 what is the news ? " 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite eyed her niece with much as- 
 sumed gravity. "Mr. Delaplaine is very weak, my 
 dear," she answered, " and failing fast." 
 
 "Ah!" said Olivia, drawing a deep breath. "Then 
 that young man Adrian Etherege was wrong ? " 
 
 " I fear he was," returned Mrs. Satterthwaite. 
 
 " Augusta ! " here exclaimed Mrs. Auchincloss, in 
 tones of great distress, "I I am most wretchedly 
 agitated by what Olivia has been saying. I I feel 
 myself to have been thoroughly misunderstood. I 
 had no conception that she shrank with such loathing 
 from the possibility of Mr. Delaplaine's recovery. 
 She has written to Mrs. Ottarson, and insists upon 
 having her note at once sent to that . . . person. 
 And she has spoken words which have more than 
 shocked me words, I mean, relative to her course 
 of conduct in the the event of Mr. Delaplaine's 
 not dying. She has mentioned suicide, Augusta 
 yes, really i ... It is all too dreadful ! I must not 
 stay here and listen to such language any longer ; it 
 has made me truly ill. I I shall go at once. I 
 should never have consented to this marriage never!
 
 236 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 if I had known our niece had entered into it with 
 such extremely worldly intentions." 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite surveyed her plaintive sister 
 tranquilly enough. " You are scared out of your wits 
 and want to play traitor to me," she told her own 
 thoughts. 
 
 But aloud she said: "Very well, Letitia. Leave 
 me to speak with Olivia alone." And Mrs. Auchin- 
 closs, with a most aggrieved shake of the head and a 
 deprecating elevation of both hands, passed from the 
 chamber. 
 
 "My dear," said Mrs. Satterthwaite to Olivia, as 
 soon as they two were alone together, " what folly is 
 all this ? " The girl gave no answer, and she present- 
 ly went on with harsh directness : " It certainly has 
 not the advantage of being in good taste." 
 
 "Good taste," murmured Olivia, with a laugh full 
 of forlorn mockery. "I should say not. No more 
 has the act I've been guilty of." 
 
 " No one sees guilt in it except yourself. Come, 
 Olivia, be sensible. I haven't a doubt that you've 
 been shocking your poor Aunt Letitia half to death. 
 Fortunately it is not quite so easy to shock me. 
 What you have done, my dear, you have done. Re- 
 trogression is too late, now. You were not forced to 
 take the course you did take. I have a very clear 
 recollection of my own words to you just before your 
 decision was made of how I advised that you should 
 not trouble yourself any further regarding this matter. 
 But you chose to do otherwise. As for Mr. Dela- 
 plaine's condition, you can't say I deceived you the 
 least in that. I thought him fatally ill then, and I 
 think him fatally ill now. . . . Really, Olivia, if you
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 237 
 
 talked about suicide, and that sort of thing, with your 
 Aunt Letitia, you did so without the faintest provoca- 
 tion. I have no doubt whatever that he will have 
 ceased to live in twenty-four hours' time." 
 
 Olivia felt those latter sentences nerve and cheer 
 her beyond expression. A little while ago she would 
 hotly have resented such a charge as that she could, 
 under any conceivable circumstances, have rejoiced in 
 the tidings of a fellow-creature's imminent death. 
 "In twenty-four hours' time," she softly repeated. 
 That was the only answer she made, or thought of 
 making. How comforting to have the distance 
 between oneself and so calamitous a doom widen ! 
 If Mrs. Satterthwaite had insulted her, now, she 
 would hardly have minded it from one who came 
 the emissary of such courage-bringing news. 
 
 As it was, Mrs. Satterthwaite continued in no con- 
 ciliatory tones: "You wish Mrs. Ottarson here. You 
 have a letter in your hand which you wish despatched 
 to her." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 ' At this moment a knock was heard. Mi's. S#tter- 
 thwaite turned and opened the door. A servant 
 stood outside, having come in answer to Olivia's 
 summons. 
 
 "I rang," Olivia now went on. "I wish this letter 
 sent immediately to the address written on it." She 
 handed the envelope to Mrs. Satterthwaite, who in 
 turn gave it to the servant. 
 
 " Let it be taken as quickly as possible," Mrs. Sat- 
 terthwaite said. After the servant had gone she 
 turned to Olivia, reclosing the door. 
 
 " You see, your letter is sent. But now that Mrs.
 
 238 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 Ottarson is coming here, I prefer to absent myself 
 at least until to-morrow. You agree, do you not, to 
 stop here over night?" 
 
 "It ... it will be so strange!" Olivia answered, 
 with uneasy hesitancy. 
 
 " But it will be best ; it will be right. This is your 
 home now. You will claim it if he dies ; you must 
 not desert it while he lives. . . . And, Olivia, bear in 
 mind that you have contracted no secret marriage. It 
 is sudden, hasty ; but it must promptly be published 
 to the world for all that. I will see that it is printed 
 in all the morning newspapers. People will talk, gos- 
 sip ; that is to be expected. You are a Van Rensse- 
 laer, and no one with your name and position can do 
 anything of this sort without causing a perfect fer- 
 ment of remai'k. But we have nothing to conceal. 
 This is not the first time that such a ceremony as a 
 death-bed marriage has taken place. . . . And now, 
 promise me that you will preserve the propriety of the 
 thing, my dear, and spend the night as Mrs. Spencer 
 Delaplaine should in the house of your husband." 
 
 Olivia's response was somewhat slow in coming, but 
 at length it came : " Yes," she finally acquiesced ; " I 
 promise." 
 
 "That is the suitable way to speak, my dear and 
 to feel, as well. Orders shall be given the servants to 
 accommodate you perfectly. They know what has 
 happened. As for changes of clothing, Mrs. Ottar- 
 son will, no doubt, capably assist you there. . . . My 
 dear Olivia, you have only to behave with discretion 
 for a few hours longer. Afterward you will be you 
 own mistress. You understand ; I am sure that you 
 do understand."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 239 
 
 " Yes, I understand," the girl replied. " You may 
 trust me." 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite had left the house in Tenth 
 Street by the time (a good hour later) that Mrs. Ot- 
 tarson arrived there. Olivia received the latter in 
 that same apartment which she had entered and had 
 never once quitted since leaving her funereal bridal- 
 chamber, not far away. 
 
 The meeting was, on Olivia's side, a passionate one. 
 The moment that she and Mrs. Ottarson were to- 
 gether, with a shut and locked door between them- 
 selves and the outer hall, every sign of tranquillity 
 died from the girl, and she surrendered herself to an 
 outburst of tears and moans, while both arms clung 
 about her aunt's plumply accommodating neck. 
 
 " I wrote you that I was married married, Aunt 
 Thyrza ! And I am it's true! Oh, I've so much to 
 tell you ! You don't know anything yet. It seems 
 now as if I couldn't have done it as though some one 
 else must have done it, not I! ... But do not blame 
 me till you hear everything till you hear just how 
 and why it happened." 
 
 " I won't, 'Livia," replied Mrs. Ottarson, whose dark 
 eyes were sparkling and whose mien denoted extreme 
 perturbation. " I think I can guess a good deal of it. 
 Those two aunts o' yours set you up to it, an' got him 
 to consent. That's 'bout the size o' the whole thing, 
 I reckon. Ain't it, now ? . . . Don't cry so. ... 
 You ain't murdered if you are married." 
 
 " No, no ; you're wrong," cried Olivia through her 
 tears. "He wanted it ; he asked me; his wish his 
 dying wish has been behind it all. ... I I pitied 
 him, Aunt Thyrza, but it wasn't pity that made me
 
 240 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 yield. It was something cold and wicked and grossly 
 selfish in me. Yes, that only that ! And now I 
 feel as if I were to be punished for letting that wrong 
 impulse get the best of me. They say he is dying. 
 But he may not die. And then . . . think! If he 
 should not die ! . . . This never even occurred to me 
 till afterwai'd. And when it came it froze my very 
 blood with terror. . . . And now it seems so horrible 
 that I should be waiting his death and wanting him to 
 die! It is like one sin begetting another. . . . And 
 yet I must either hope that be will die, or else No, 
 no, no ! I haven't been bad enough to be punished 
 so fearfully ! Have I, Aunt Thyrza ? It would be too 
 cruel, too monstrous would it not ? " 
 
 Olivia and Mrs. Ottarson stayed together in Dela- 
 plaine's house that night. The room they occupied 
 opened off from the same hall as did that of the inva- 
 lid. Olivia slept fitfully ; Mrs. Ottarson scarcely slept 
 at all. The latter had, so to speak, fully grasped the 
 situation. She had sent for changes of attire to 
 Twenty-Third Street; she had talked with two or 
 three of the servants who had held converse with the 
 nurse on watch at Delaplaine's bedside. If any dis- 
 tinct alteration took place in, the condition of the sick 
 man she was to be informed of it. And once or 
 twice, while the hours were very small, she stole out 
 of her own apartment and entered that of Delaplaine, 
 meeting the nurse on its threshold. 
 
 He was very ill. There had been no decisive turn 
 for worse or better in his disease. This was all that 
 she could ascertain. By about dawn she sank into a 
 deep, fatigued sleep, and on awakening, she found 
 that the sunny May morning was well advanced, and
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 241 
 
 that Olivia had risen, had dressed, and was now mov- 
 ing about their bed-chamber. 
 
 "I could not sleep," said Olivia; "I've been up 
 since quite an early hour. I rang for a servant and 
 inquired after Mr. Delaplaine. The answer was brought 
 back to me that he continues exactly the same." 
 
 "Jus' so," mused Mrs. Ottarson. " I s'pose he'll go 
 right off 'fore you can say 'Jack Rob'son.' That's 
 the way a good many 's old 's he is do go, 'specially 
 when it's the pneumonia. . . . By the bye, Liv, did 
 the help you saw say anything 'bout our gettin' any 
 breakfast ? " 
 
 " It will be served us whenever we want it, Aunt 
 Thyrza." 
 
 And not long afterward it was most admirably 
 served them in the dining-room below stairs. What 
 a contrast between this perfect attendance, this gleam- 
 ing silver and snowy linen, these delicate dishes pre- 
 pared with nicest art, and the haphazard waiting of 
 Ann and Bridget, the plated forks and nicked china, 
 and the precarious, not to say untrustworthy cooking 
 by which Olivia had for days past been confronted ! 
 Two or three of the servants addressed the girl as 
 " Mrs. Delaplaine," and made her cheeks tingle as 
 they did so. In the morning paper, which had been 
 placed upon the breakfast table, she read the an- 
 nouncement of her marriage thus : 
 
 DELAPLAINE VAN RENSSELAER. On Tuesday, 
 May , 188 , by the Rev. Dr. Ray Olmstead, SPENCER DELA- 
 PLAINE to OLIVIA CLINTON, daughter of the late Houston 
 Clinton Van Rensselaer. 
 
 What a queer, impossible look it had ! It somehow 
 recalled to her, in an oddly analogous way, a curious
 
 242 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 poem which she had somewhere seen, about a ghost 
 wandering through a graveyard, stumbling over an 
 old grave and reading his own epitaph upon the crum- 
 bled tombstone. That ghost could not have under- 
 gone a more amazed thrill than hers was on reading 
 those few little lines of divulging print. 
 
 "There is nothing for us to do except to wait," 
 Olivia said, after they had gone upstairs again and 
 entered the sitting-room which opened off from the 
 apartment in which they had slept. "You will stay 
 with me here to-day, will you not, Aunt Thyrza?" 
 
 " Oh, I s'pose so," replied Mrs. Ottarson. It was 
 not easy for her to give even this partial kind of con- 
 sent, since no Ida Strang now held a vice-regal posi- 
 tion in West Twenty-Third Street, and she could not 
 look upon the fact of her own absence without visions 
 of dire domestic topsyturvy-dom. " P'rhaps I can slip 
 off a little later, when we've heard what the doctors 
 think. Then I can come back later on still, I guess." 
 
 " Oh, do try, please," begged Olivia. " It is so 
 dreadful for me to feel myself all alone here. And 
 even if Aunt Letitia and Aunt Augusta do come, 
 there's somehow such a gulf between them and me ! " 
 
 " I see," said Mrs. Ottarson, with a grim intonation. 
 "You jus' want me to kind o' be a bridge over the 
 gulf, don't you? Well, Livvy, that's all right, but 
 then bridges are trod on, an' that's w'at those two 
 aunts o' yours would like to do to me. Oh, I know 
 'em. Well, we'll have to fix it so's I'm kep' out o' 
 their sight, like something with too many claws an' 
 teeth. I'm perfectly 'greeable to that, I mus* say." 
 
 Olivia found herself growing bolder as the day 
 lengthened. She repeatedly moved into the outer
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 243 
 
 hall and stood there, looking about at the quiet rich- 
 ness of all the appointments. But whenever the lower 
 hall-bell sounded she would disappear frightenedly. 
 This bell began to sound very frequently, it soon 
 occurred to her. Sometimes footsteps would pass her 
 closed door. These, as she conjectured, were physi- 
 cians coming or departing. By and by there was 
 brought her a request from Mrs. Auchincloss and Mrs. 
 Satterthwaite that she would kindly join them else- 
 where. 
 
 " I would much rather stay here with you," Olivia 
 said, after she had sent back an affirmative reply. 
 " There is nothing that I have to say to them except 
 the asking of a single question. . . . Well, perhaps 
 they will know how to answer it better than the ser- 
 vants. I suppose Mrs. Satterthwaite has seen him." 
 
 " It may be that he wants to see you" ventured 
 Mrs. Ottarson. 
 
 " Oh, I hope not ... I hope not ! " exclaimed 
 Olivia. " Aunt Thyrza, I should feel so miserably 
 ashamed to stand beside him, having had the the 
 thoughts about him that you know of. ... And yet 
 he must have been certain, all the while, of just why 
 he prevailed upon me. If I had deceived him, my 
 sense of sinfulness would be ten times worse than it is 
 now!" 
 
 Not long after this, Olivia opened the door, prepar- 
 atory to joining her aunts. But just as her foot 
 touched the threshold of the hall itself, a sound of 
 voices arrested her. The persons who were speaking 
 together could not have been many paces away. 
 Every word of what they said came with the greatest 
 distinctness to her hearing.
 
 244 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 " It is a very extraordinary thing, Doctor," declared 
 one voice. 
 
 " His vitality," answered another, " is truly marvel- 
 lous." 
 
 "This change in his temperature has astonished 
 me." 
 
 "And the marked abatement of congestion that 
 is even more unusual." 
 
 " A superb constitution, Doctor." 
 
 " Iron, my dear sir iron. . . . Well, he has lived 
 a most careful life. It tells now." 
 
 "Upon my word, I believe we are going to pull 
 him through." 
 
 Then came a laugh, in which both voices partici- 
 pated. " He's going to pull himself through," were 
 the next words, in response to those just uttered. 
 "If his pulse and respiration continue as they are now 
 five or six hours longer, he'll throw the whole trouble 
 off as easily as if he were a boy of nineteen." 
 
 Olivia staggered back from the half-closed door. 
 She sank beside the chair on which Mrs. Ottarson 
 was sitting, and hid her head in that lady's lap. Her 
 form quivered, as shudder after shudder passed 
 through it. Mrs. Ottarson was deeply alarmed, but 
 presence of mind stood high among her worthy traits. 
 She suspected that Olivia had overheard something, 
 for she had seen the girl pause in a listening attitude. 
 She stooped down, took Olivia in her arms, and rose, 
 forcing the poor, cowering frame to rise also. 
 
 "Now, 'Livia," she began, as the girl's head fell 
 upon her shoulder and the shudders were again mani- 
 fest, "this aint goin' to do one bit. No, deary, it aint.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 245 
 
 "W'atever you heard, it don't make any difference. 
 You've got to brace up, an' not shame yourself. 
 Come, now, w'at 'd you hear out yonder in the entry ? 
 Let me know right straight off ! " 
 
 Olivia raised her head and whispered these words 
 from colorless lips : 
 
 " I heard them say that he was going to get well. 
 They were two doctors-, talking together. One of 
 them said that if his pulse and respiration should con- 
 tinue five or six hours longer as favorable as at pres- 
 ent, he he would quite overcome this illness." 
 
 Olivia's eyes were as dry in their light as diamonds, 
 and below them lay heavy curves of shadow that her 
 augmented pallor made mournfully plain. A few 
 hours had turned her bloomful girlish face into that 
 of a suffering woman. A desperation had come into 
 it that clad all its features with melancholy maturity. 
 You felt that its beauty would soon vanish if the pain 
 that was wearing at her heart did not lessen. 
 
 " I guess I wouldn't see either of my aunts, if I was 
 you," said Mrs. Ottarson, solemnly, while Olivia still 
 clung to her. "If they come up here, that's one 
 thing. I don't think they will, though ; I guess I'll 
 act as a scarecrow." And now she permitted herself 
 to add a very imprudent thing. " I'd be one to 'em, 
 sure enough, if they knew what deceit I suspect 'em 
 both of tryin' to practise." 
 
 Olivia sprang backward. Her eyes flashed. "Do 
 you mean that, Aunt Thyrza? Do you mean they 
 they knew all along he would get well ? " 
 
 "I mean they jus' played on your belief he toowldn? 
 get well. A word from either one of 'em would have 
 made you alter as quick as wink, but they didn't say
 
 246 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 it. Not them ! They wanted to get you Vay from 
 me by hook or by crook ; an' they wanted you to make 
 a 'ristocratic match besides, no matter w'ether it left 
 you widow or wife." 
 
 "True," murmured Olivia, in her shame, her wretch- 
 edness, her growing affright. The homely phraseol- 
 ogy of her Aunt Thyrza threw fresh revealing rays 
 upon all which had passed. She had really been but 
 a puppet in the hands of two ambitious kinswomen. 
 She perceived this now, and the realization kindled an 
 indignant fire in her young soul. She herself had 
 been blarnable enough, but their cunning had dealt 
 with her faultiness no less coolly than ignobly. 
 
 An hour, two hours passed. Olivia had paid no 
 heed to Mrs. Satterthwaite's request. At last, by 
 about half-past one o'clock, a second summons came 
 from the same lady. Would Mrs. Delaplaine have 
 luncheon served upstairs, or would she take it down 
 in the dining-room with her two aunts? 
 
 Olivia seemed to muse for a moment. Then she 
 answered the servant that she desired no luncheon 
 whatever, but that her aunt, Mrs. Ottarson, would be 
 served upstairs, here, in the sitting-room. 
 
 The luncheon was sent up for two, and Mrs. Ottar- 
 son forced Olivia to swallow at least a few mouthfuls 
 of food. She did not like the girl's glassy eyes, her con- 
 tinual startled, nervous motions, and the complete ab- 
 sence of all color in her vigilant, strained, harassed 
 countenance. The elder woman felt that all consolatory 
 language must fall ineffective upon the younger one. 
 That single irrepressible dread had grown into an 
 anguish of suspense now, and no power except a 
 certain dark yet distinct piece of information could
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAIXE. 247 
 
 alleviate its cogency. Meanwhile, Mrs. Ottarson had 
 misgivings lest some piteous collapse might soon over- 
 whelm Olivia. She was like a being borne in a rud- 
 derless and earless boat at the mercy of a flood which 
 swept her toward an inexorable abyss. If the flood 
 itself would only retard its menacing current, all 
 might still be well with that unhappy, jeopardized 
 life. But if not ! To watch Olivia as she rest- 
 lessly, almost fiercely waited what she held to be her 
 impending doom, was to comprehend how keen were 
 her spiritual torments. 
 
 By about three o'clock there came a knock at the 
 door. Mrs. Ottarson went herself and answered the 
 knock, this time. She admitted Mrs. Satterthwaite, 
 followed by Mrs. Auchincloss. Both gave her a little 
 freezing bow, and passed her without the least ap- 
 parent concern as to whether she returned it or no. 
 
 "My dear," began Mrs. Satterthwaite, as the two 
 ladies approached Olivia, who stood in the centre of 
 the chamber, " since you thought it best not to come 
 to us we have decided it is best we should come to 
 you." 
 
 Olivia bowed her head. Both her visitors must 
 have seen the striking pathetic change that had been 
 wrought in her appearance. 
 
 "Well," said the girl, coldly and formally, "you 
 have come to tell me that Mr. Delaplaine is ... recov- 
 ering, no doubt. I have heard that he will recover. 
 Have I heard correctly ? " 
 
 The ladies looked at one another. 
 
 " Don't speak, please, Letitia," said Mrs. Satter- 
 thwaite to her sister, in a low, eager voice. " Let me 
 speak."
 
 248 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 Olivia caught the two sentences. " Pray do speak 
 at once," she said. " I wish to know my fate." 
 
 "You foolish girl!" exclaimed Mrs. Satterthwaite, 
 who had become paler than perhaps she herself guessed. 
 " He is surprisingly better. Yes, the doctors now say 
 that with a little careful nursing his life will be spared 
 to his many friends. These will all be so thankful for 
 this miracle. And why should not you be as well? 
 You, my child, who now bear his name, and whom he 
 will cherish as his wife with a fondness, an indulgence, 
 that" 
 
 A sharp, harsh cry sounded from Olivia, here. She 
 lifted her hand and clenched it. "You knew you 
 both knew that it might turn out like this!" she 
 broke forth, with a voice of accusation, irony, arid 
 despair. " You acted with deceit with cruelty. 
 Oh, you were very diplomatic very non-committal ! 
 There is nothing I can charge you with having said 
 it is what you did not say that now makes me feel how 
 you have acted as my tempters my enemies ! It 
 will kill me or I hope it will." She swerved side- 
 ways, at this moment, and both her hands went to her 
 breast as though she would tear from it something 
 that suffocated her. . . . Again she reeled, and by 
 this time Mrs. Ottarson had darted toward her, past 
 those whom she had thus heatedly addressed. 
 
 " If I do die," she went on, with her look still fas- 
 tened on the faces of her aunts, while she steadied 
 herself, so to speak, in the arms of Mrs. Ottarson, 
 "you you both of you two cold, heartless women 
 . . . will . . . have to ... answer for my . . ." 
 
 She did not pronounce the word " death," but as 
 her eyes closed, and her breath resolved itself into a
 
 OLIVIA LELAPLAINE. 249 
 
 few short, resonant gasps, this word was faintly 
 shaped by her lips. 
 
 And then her form grew limp and effortless in Mrs. 
 Ottarson's clasp. She had swooned, though the fit of 
 unconsciousness was not a long one. But she awoke 
 from it in delirium. That night her life, and not the 
 life of her husband, was in peril. He had indeed 
 already made wonderful strides toward convalescence. 
 But with Olivia Delaplaine it was just the opposite. 
 The physicians who watched her hourly expected an 
 acute cerebral paralysis, or, if not that, a dementia 
 consequent upon severe nervous shock. Even Mrs. 
 Ottarson (who would not have left her if certain that 
 every boarder in her establishment was to vacate it by 
 the morrow) had not dreamed of how drastic had 
 been the tension laid upon her darling's unprepared 
 brain. As it was, stifling her tears like the brave soul 
 nature had fashioned her, she hovered near Olivia, 
 waiting, hoping, silently praying, but never forgetting 
 capably to prove herself of service as well.
 
 250 OLIVIA UELAPLAIXE. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 THE chronicler of the present history must now 
 record that more than seventeen months have elapsed 
 since Olivia's illness terminated, so fittingly yet so 
 gloomily, the dramatic misfortune of her wedding- 
 day. As the play-bills in the theatres will sometimes 
 have it, our scene changes from grave to mirthful ; 
 and one might readily concede that the cafe in Del- 
 monico's, toward about eleven o'clock on a crisp-aired 
 January evening, might supply all desirable elements 
 of mirth. 
 
 The large, crowded room certainly looked gay in the 
 extreme. It was not bariole like the lady-haunted 
 restaurant that faced on Fifth Avenue, but its merri- 
 ment of mingled voices compensated for the absence 
 of festal color. Nearly all the tables were occupied, 
 and at one of these sat Jasper Massereene and as 
 uncongenial an associate as young Aspinwall Satter- 
 thwaite. 
 
 They had not entered the cafe together, but had 
 met here only a few minutes previously. Aspinwall 
 was now in his graduating year at Columbia, and had 
 long held his manhood to be about as firmly planted a 
 fact in the estimation of a large public as the bluff, 
 gallant, sailor-like bronze statue of Farragut just across 
 the way at the edge of Madison Square. To-night 
 meant a gathering of the fashionable clans, for it was 
 to be marked by the first Patriarch's Ball of the season.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 251 
 
 Aspinwall would not for the world have missed airing 
 in the Delmonioo rooms upstairs his new coat (just 
 over from London) with the rolling satin collar, his 
 white waistcoat with the gold buttons, and his new 
 cat's-eye stud with the small row of diamonds running 
 round it, of which the young Duke of Dunderhead 
 had condescended to say last summer at one of the New- 
 port Casino balls : " By Jove, now, that's quite neat, 
 isn't it?" Aspin wall's pale, beardless face had lighted 
 up as he strolled into the big, marble-floored room, 
 wrapped in his sable-lined overcoat, and perceived 
 " Cousin Jasper." But the spirits of Massereene mo- 
 mentarily darkened, proof though their usual bright- 
 ness rendered him against the depression produced by 
 the ordinary bore. Aspinwall was in no sense an 
 ordinary bore. The years that bring wisdom to the 
 sophomore had in his case only inflated with fresh 
 vanities the senior. And the worst of it all, as Mas- 
 sereene may quickly have decided while his young 
 relation flung off the costly outer garment preparatory 
 to sitting down at the same table with himself, lay in 
 the solidity of the worldly backing by which all these 
 vanities were supported. This young Aspinwall Sat- 
 terthwaite was a nonentity, an ignoramus, just able to 
 acquit himself in his college exercises with decent 
 competency, and yet the amplitude of his father's 
 bank account and the witchery of possessing a family 
 name with a strong patrician aroma diffused from it 
 here were potent considerations enough to make 
 many a clever young girl, his superior in a hundred 
 ways, feel glad if he would condescend, during the 
 progress of the ball upstairs this evening, to pause 
 even for a few precious minutes at her side.
 
 252 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 Alas! we speak with wonder, sometimes, of the days 
 when men like Moore and Sheridan, provided they 
 chose to leave Grub Street and seek the society of the 
 dandies elsewhere, perforce had to cringe hat in hand 
 to my lord this and my lord that, begging the entree 
 to Watier's in Bolton Street, or moving heaven and 
 earth to secure a card for White's. . . . Well, the old 
 order changes, as a poet of our own century phrases it, 
 and yet . . . does it so radically change, after all ? 
 " A man's house is his castle," cries the select-souled 
 American of to-day, " and he has a right to ask whom 
 he pleases thither." True ; but what if the castle be 
 built with too feudal an architectural touch, good 
 friend, and filled by an assemblage who are lords and 
 ladies in all except the titles that they would break 
 their pi'oud, undemocratic hearts to win ? Caste, unless 
 it be founded upon virtue, intellect, or good-breeding, 
 is the foulest fungus in a republican soil. And caste 
 that has none of these claims for its permission to 
 thrive, infests and infects the chief cities of our land 
 at this time. Young Aspinwall Satterthwaite meant 
 and expressed caste of just this baleful character. 
 Where was the difference between his actual heredi- 
 tary "position" and that of some English, French, 
 German, or Austrian stripling who presumes upon the 
 prestige his own merits never earned him, and of which 
 his follies might very properly dispossess him? 
 
 " We have our dukes and marquises and earls here," 
 thought Jasper Massereene as he looked at his cousin, 
 now, across the table of the cafe. "There isn't the 
 same historic romanticism about them ; their fields of 
 sway are narrower ; they sometimes, though not always, 
 exhibit more vulgarity and less native refinement than
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 253 
 
 their prototypes do. But their assumption, their mo- 
 nopoly, their implied arrogance, is after all nearly the 
 same." 
 
 "You won't drink anything more, old chap ? n Aspin- 
 \vall was meanwhile saying. He had just ordered a 
 brandy-and-soda; he had called for it as a soda-and- 
 brandy, doubtless with some idea that to reverse the 
 names of the liquids thus would indicate a more Eng- 
 lish turn of idiom. He wanted above all imaginable 
 things to be English ; he would rather have been 
 
 o o * 
 
 undissentingly thought that by his set than have 
 received from them any honor their esteem could 
 devise for him. "I generally drink something before 
 I go to a big crush like this ball. These affairs are so 
 brutally common, you know. People break their 
 necks for tickets. It wasn't so in the old days, when 
 the town wasn't so large. They hadn't Patriarch balls 
 at the Fourteenth Street Delmonico's^ but they used 
 to have Assemblies, and then the rush wasn't half what 
 it is now." 
 
 "No," said Massereene amiably, "I suppose not." 
 He knew nothing with regard to the Fourteenth 
 Street Delmonico's. He had possibly been at Eton 
 when its dead-and-gone glories were flourishing, and 
 as oblivious that it existed as he was conscious of the 
 old century-battered statue of Henry Sixth in the 
 quadrangle there, of the sweet, umbrageous elms half 
 obscuring Windsor's massive towers a few hundred 
 yards beyond, and of the keen perplexity wrought by 
 Latin verses upon the undergraduate mind. 
 
 But perhaps there may have been a stray reveller 
 among the talkative company scattered about him this 
 evening, whose forty or fifty or even sixty years con-
 
 254 OLIVIA DELAFLAINE. 
 
 tained vivid reminiscences of that other demolished 
 and irreparable structure. He may have been as fine 
 a beau in his day as was Aspinwall Satterthwaite to- 
 night, while he sat sipping his refection here in the 
 new Delmonico's, and dreaming of the old. Memory 
 is a tyrannous optimist on her own ground of retro- 
 spection. What colors she can paint with, joyous as 
 well as sombre ! This musing individual whom I take 
 the liberty of fancying, and who may have had no real 
 identity whatever, would have had to ask his sad soul 
 after many a dead and loved comrade, many a happy 
 and treasured reunion. 
 
 The wine seethed crisper in the goblet then than it 
 did to-night, and the laughter of those who quaffed it 
 ransc with a mellower cadence. Where are those 
 
 o 
 
 noctes ambrosiance now? Where's Harry with his 
 wit, Frank with his sporting-talk, Louis with his love- 
 affairs? What's become of Johnny, with his princely 
 manners, his exquisitely high-bred face, his early French 
 education that gave him the least touch of a charming 
 accent when he spoke English, and his clean, superb 
 fifty thousand a year? How the girls courted him, 
 how the mammas beamed on him, how the men 
 gathered round him! Was ever a life so radiantly 
 fortunate as his? When he came into the Four- 
 teenth Street Delmonico's, after opera or dinner, 
 you would somehow always hear the champagne- 
 corks begin to pop not far away. It seemed like 
 magic, but it was only tact; a sign, a whisper to 
 one of the gar$ons, and there we all were, with our 
 more economical whiskey-and-water spirited off, and 
 the topaz Clicquot or Verzenay glistening or simmering 
 before us. He was so considerate of his friends, so
 
 OLIVIA UELAPLAINE. 255 
 
 debonair, so frankly and heartily cordial, was Johnny, 
 and withal such a natural instinctive aristocrat. . . . 
 Only a few years later he was met in Broadway with 
 a faded and rather vacant face, and with his former 
 laugh, though all the sunshine had gone from it. He 
 had been very ill somewhere abroad, he said (alas! we 
 had heard of the sudden madness that had struck him 
 down in the midst of Parisian pleasure far too wildly 
 chased), and they had shut him, up for a long time. 
 It was so good to be out, he added, looking round him 
 with a dim flash of his once lucid blue eye and a 
 glimpse of that bel air which his mental ailment had 
 marred pathetically. And not very long after this we 
 learned of his death, and soon his relations were quar- 
 relling about his money. . . . But others besides poor 
 Johnny have passed away into the great shadow and 
 mystery, though he was the star of them all ! How 
 it would teem with ghosts, that Fourteenth Street 
 Delmonico's, if it had been left standing as it once 
 stood, and they had not reared a huge upholstery 
 store in its place! I sometimes feel like taking my 
 hat off to that upholstery store and thanking it for the 
 painful souvenirs that it spares me. It is like an 
 immense merciful tomb, hiding a multitude of buried 
 recollections and suggestions. Better that ne\v-married 
 couples to-day should go there and buy carpets and 
 furniture for the flats they have just rented, while 
 they dream of soon-to-be-sought cradles and of heaven 
 knows what domestic felicity besides, than that middle- 
 aged croakers like myself, or the imaginary ruminator 
 whom I have mentioned, should dine and tipple once 
 more in the haunt of those dear dead friends. Better 
 this, indeed, than that we should dance in ball-rooms
 
 256 OLIVIA VELAPLAISE. 
 
 where our springing step would now seem a desecra- 
 tion as though we literally danced on the graves 
 themselves of merry-makers whose blithe feet once 
 kept time so rhythmically to our own! 
 
 No doubt most of those who gave the ball this 
 evening would have held Aspinwall Satterthwaite's 
 anticipatory remarks concerning it to be highly imper- 
 tinenit. It was the first large entertainment of a 
 public kind that Massereene had ever witnessed in 
 New York. He had been travelling about the West 
 for many months after his return to these shores. He 
 had wanted to see his country, not the seaboard, 
 metropolitan, ultra-civilized portion of it. He had 
 been everywhere, as a man may say who has roamed 
 from St. Paul to New Orleans and from New York or 
 Boston to San Francisco. At last he had drifted 
 eastward again ; and the Satterthwaites, knowing of 
 his return, had sent him a card for the present ball. 
 
 Aspinwall accompanied him upstairs, and introduced 
 him, with a flourishing manner which he strongly dis- 
 liked, to the ladies who " received " in a room not far 
 from the main ball-room. Massereene felt himself a 
 stranger as he passed the threshold of the latter apart- 
 ment. But Mrs. Satterthwaite, blazing with diamonds, 
 soon saw him and called him to her side. He remem- 
 bered, then, that he had engaged himself to dance the 
 cotillon with Emmeline, and that he had sent this 
 young lady a bouquet in testimony of the honor she 
 was supposed to do him. But Emmeline, who soon 
 paused near him in the promenade that followed every 
 waltz or polka, had by no means forgotten either his 
 engagement or his tribute.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 257 
 
 " Thanks so very much for those charming flowers," 
 she said, stopping for a moment at his side, while 
 three gallants who accompanied her opened their eyes 
 uncivilly wide at him. . . . And then Ernrneline passed 
 on, and in a little while he saw Elaine, attended with 
 an equal devotion, and not long afterward he had said 
 to Mrs. Satterthwaite : 
 
 "Your daughters are enjoying themselves, are they 
 not? It is very pleasant to see how happily their 
 faces beam." 
 
 These were commonplace words, and yet Mrs. Sat- 
 terthwaite turned smilingly to hear them because of 
 their speaker. Several other gentlemen were stand- 
 ing before her ; she was one of the matrons who 
 never missed being courteously attended. She was a 
 power in society, and her increasing age was for this 
 reason ignored. The men who wanted to push their 
 way beset her with their suavities, and the men who 
 had already pushed their way and who wanted to 
 remain in her good graces, offered, for the most part, 
 a similar politeness. She never suffered from the neg- 
 lect experienced by other maturer ladies ; she enter- 
 tained too much for that. Besides, even if it had not 
 been thoroughly well-known that no young gentleman 
 could dine or sup at the delectable Sntterthwaite 
 mansion who did not pay his court to "mamma," she 
 possessed the esprit de salon which made her at any 
 time a vivacious transient companion. 
 
 " Yes," she now said to Massereene, " the girls are 
 having a jolly time. They always do, I'm glad to 
 say." And then she tapped him on the shoulder with 
 her jewelled fan. "Come, now," she w r ent on, "you 
 mustn't waste yourself upon a poor old woman like
 
 258 OLIVIA DELAPLAIXE. 
 
 me. You must bear in mind that you are a some- 
 body." 
 
 "la somebody?" replied Massereene. 
 
 "Of course you are," pursued Mrs. Satterthwaite. 
 " The idea of your not recognizing it ! Lots of people 
 are dying to know you. It's been whispered about 
 who you are" 
 
 " I'm the merest nobody, however," returned Mas- 
 sereene. 
 
 " Oh! are you? Well, they don't think so here. 
 . . . By the way, have you met my sister, Mrs. 
 Auchincloss?" 
 
 "Not here yet," returned Massereene. 
 
 "Oh, you mean that you dined there the other day. 
 Yes, I heard that you did. It was quite a large 
 dinner, wasn't it? And Mrs. Delaplaine, my niece, 
 was there, was she not?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Did you sit near her?" 
 
 "No; at some distance away." 
 
 "You were presented, however?" 
 
 " Yes ; but we had met before." 
 
 "I remember in London. Do you think her 
 handsome?" 
 
 Massereene gave a little start at this question. 
 " Who could fail to think so ? " he said. 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite laughed in her metallic "society" 
 way. " I hope you don't say that because she is my 
 niece. You will most probably see her to-night." 
 
 He did, a little later. She was standing near her 
 husband; they had just entered the ball-room. She 
 wore white, with a string of large pearls about her 
 throat, and others braided amid the vapory gold of
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAIXK 259 
 
 her hair. A great many eyes were fixed upon her; 
 she was the belle of the Patriarchs' Ball that evening, 
 beyond a shadow of dispute. She appeared to be 
 neither specially ignorant nor conscious of this fact, 
 but the complete repose of her demeanor may have 
 meant indifference. She held four or five bouquets of 
 tea-roses and lilies-of-the-valley, bound together and 
 making one immense cluster. She was more beautiful 
 than when we saw her last, though the girlish delicacy 
 of her face had yielded to the spell of a sweet expan- 
 sion, like the candor of an unfolded flower after its 
 half-sheathed bud. But at the same time there was 
 an expression on her face which had no concern with 
 its youth and unblemished bloom. Perhaps it was 
 rather a fitful visitation than an actual expression. It 
 put, now and then, an icy light into her eyes and her 
 smile; it seemed to come and go across her brow 
 darkly, like a shadow ; it lived a moment in the tenser- 
 drawn lines of her lips; it quivered at the edge of her 
 sensitive nostril, or was conveyed in the transitory 
 droop of her graceful head. It was intangible, unde- 
 finable, yet it was there. Was it disappointment, 
 unwilling toleration of wrong, contempt of self? Was 
 it either of these, or was it all three subtly commingled 
 and interblended ? 
 
 Massereene had just begun to ask his own thoughts 
 one or two questions of that kind. Olivia Delaplaine's 
 face had fascinated and haunted him. He knew her 
 story, or a certain part of it. Who did not know ? 
 Had it not been cried from the house-tops? The 
 strangeness of her sudden marriage to a man more 
 than twice her years had caused the widest comment, 
 and her long subsequent illness had given rise to many
 
 2GO OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 peculiar contradictory reports. But it had never au- 
 thentically transpired that she had married Spencer 
 Delaplaine with the fixed belief in his immediate 
 death. The world, with all its random uncharitable- 
 ness, had spared her this distinct charge. It all came 
 to the one result: she had been excessively talked 
 about, but she had chosen a husband of the highest 
 position, and neither gossip nor scandal had cast the 
 least injurious slur upon her own. After everything 
 was said, what had she probably done? Married a 
 man older than herself, answered the babblers in the 
 land, for his money and his station. But then she 
 had had station herself ; she was far better born than 
 he; she came of the oldest Knickerbocker lineage. 
 Hundreds of those whom social notoriety of any 
 sort keenly interests, were anxious to see her and 
 know her. It had got abroad that she was to appear 
 in gay circles to-night at the Patriarchs', for the first 
 time since her return from Europe. She had spent 
 last winter at Nice and Cannes and Monte Carlo 
 with her husband, and though they had been home 
 ever since latter August, their life had most success- 
 fully eluded publicity. Till late October Mrs. Dela- 
 plaine had dwelt in a country-seat on the Hudson, of 
 which her husband had secured a long lease. For a 
 month or so she had been passing her time most ob- 
 scurely in West Tenth Street, and had not accepted 
 a single invitation until very recently, when she had 
 appeared at a dinner-party given in her honor by her 
 aunt, Mrs. Archibald Auchincloss. 
 
 Thus much Massereene and hosts of others had read 
 concerning her in the society columns of the news- 
 papers; for she had remained, as the picturesquely-
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 261 
 
 wedded wife of so eminent a personage as Spencer 
 Delaplaine, just that object of prying curiosity which 
 purveyors of on dits and canards are forever bent 
 upon jealously observing. Massereene now went np 
 to her and took the hand which she graciously offered 
 him, with a feeling of pity in his large, kindly heart 
 that she should be so mercilessly and speedily beset by 
 the stares of the surrounding throngs. 
 
 Spencer Delaplaine, looking, in his evening-dress, a 
 trifle older, but no less elegant and distinguished than 
 when we saw him last, shook hands cordially with 
 Massereene, whom he had met a few days ago at the 
 notable Anchincloss dinner. He was clearly aware of 
 the attention that he and his wife were causing, but 
 he bore himself with a consummate seeming uncon- 
 cern of it. Tall, gray, serene, faultlessly gentle- 
 manlike, he stood beside Olivia, presenting to her 
 loveliness a contrast that was of cruel violence if 
 one were aware of the relationship between them. 
 Some of his old friends asserted of him that he bore 
 himself, since his marriage, in an austerer way, and 
 that he ostensibly cared less for either the notice or 
 the esteem of his kind. Massereene, who rarely 
 permitted himself to dislike people without cause, 
 was repelled by something in his voice, his manner, 
 his gestures and the turns of his phrases. " Bloodless 
 insensibility to all that is most finely human," thought 
 the young man, " was never stamped upon a face with 
 greater emphasis." And then his eyes wandered to 
 Olivia. "What a life he must lead her!" his medi- 
 tations went on. "I somehow can't see in her face the 
 reason why she married him, though his explains one 
 side of the question perfectly."
 
 262 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 Massereene almost fancied that Mrs. Delaplaine's 
 blue eyes lit for him in a grateful way as he and she 
 soon began conversation. The staring, brief a while 
 as she had been called upon to endure it, must have 
 proved extremely unpleasant. But Spencer Dela- 
 plaine's acquaintance was too wide a one for a num- 
 ber of the gentlemen present who desired the honor 
 of knowing his wife not summarily to request that he 
 would introduce them. Olivia's practical triumphs 
 now commenced in vivid earnest. She had never 
 until now felt what has truly been called the intoxi- 
 cation of the ball-room ; and where is the woman with 
 brilliant beauty and with her years hardly counting 
 beyond the term of girlhood who ever stops to ask 
 herself whether this heady wine of flattery, admira- 
 tion and enjoyment that she lifts to her lips be not, 
 after all, a beverage with more sparkle than flavor 
 and with less cheer than enticement? We, who are 
 a little older than Olivia was that night, we of either 
 the beau sexe or its opposite, have grown to think 
 this wine a poor and even an acid vintage. But we 
 loved it once, and now our palates are alone to blame. 
 And the wine will always be poured for some glad 
 lips, while other paler and wearier ones refuse it, 
 from satiety, perhaps disgust as well! 
 
 Olivia quaffed it very willingly, surprised that the 
 draught should be so agreeable. She had heard a 
 hundred times of the follies that make the impetus 
 and stimulus of society. But the pretty speeches 
 that were now addressed to her had no indication of 
 this aimless quality. Her wit, innate and nimble, ex- 
 ulted in placid contests which it was now called upon 
 to wage. She \vas not old enough to perceive the
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 268 
 
 flippancy in such undertaking, and she was sensible 
 enough keenly and readily to discriminate between 
 the ball-room bore, so ubiquitous and so intolerable, 
 and the man of good reason, comparatively rare as he 
 may be, who occasionally drifts among Delmoniconian 
 gayeties. Already she had promised to dance the 
 German with her cousin, Aspinwall Satterthwaite ; 
 this dainty stripling had not been quite sure whether 
 he had done a discreet thing or no in engaging her at 
 the Auchincloss dinner, of which he had been one of 
 the guests. Olivia had accepted his offer, and per- 
 haps the most tasteful and expensive of the bouquets 
 that she carried had been the one sent by Aspin- 
 wall. 
 
 Massereene watched her swiftly-growing popularity. 
 He saw that she not only relished her belleship but 
 carried it with an air of facile security. 
 
 " She is beautiful," he thought; "and young. She 
 likes to shine, and she deserves to shine. She is un- 
 happy, and this babble affects her like a soothing 
 elixir. That marble fellow, her husband, is secretly 
 in love with her. I am mightily mistaken, or he de- 
 plores while he is proud of the admiration that she 
 creates." 
 
 Delaplaine kept his wife in sight with a vigilance to 
 justify this belief. Hosts of old friends waited to 
 shake hands with him, yet he entirely deserted his 
 former standard of deportment. He ceased to be 
 the beau of yesterday ; he sought no one ; his calm 
 eye observed but did not solicit. 
 
 At last, just before supper, Massereene seized a 
 chance. "You have been besieged," he said to 
 Olivia. "But have you yet been asked to sup with
 
 264 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 any one ? I hear that it is the custom here, at these 
 Patriarch balls, to accept an escort to one of the small 
 tables below, in the supper-room. Will you accept 
 me?" 
 
 A march was just then struck up by the orchestra; 
 it meant the march to supper. Mr. J. Remington 
 Todd had just given his arm to Mrs. Madison Lex- 
 ington, the richest woman in the room, and the ad- 
 mitted queen of society. He led the way to the 
 apartment below stairs. The rest of the assem- 
 blage prepared to follow Mr. J. Remington Todd, 
 the arbiter of the Patriarchs', the gentleman who 
 could by a wave of his little finger "keep out" the 
 undesirable Miss Smith or "push back" the ineligi- 
 ble Mr. Jones. There is always a Mr. J. Remington 
 Todd in all great cities. He is a human expedient 
 that rises ready at the call of social emergency. He 
 interests himself with lists; he decides who shall 
 cross the sacred patrician threshold and who shall 
 not. He is alert, evasive, dexterous, polite and ap- 
 propriately frivolous. He has nothing weightier 
 to do than to make laws of just this petty sort, 
 and in a country which has the republican right of 
 despising such laws, he might have something a great 
 deal wiser to do. Massereene had already heard of 
 Mr. J. Remington Todd. " Shall we follow the Gen- 
 eralissimo?" he said, offering his arm to Olivia. 
 
 Olivia slipped her own arm into his. But just as 
 she did so, Aspinwall Satterthwaite rushed up. 
 
 *"My dear cousin!" he exclaimed. And then see- 
 ing Massereene, he drew back. Aspinwall prided 
 himself upon being always a gentleman of irrever- 
 sible breeding among those whom he considered
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 265 
 
 liis equals. "Oh," lie said, "I see you have some- 
 one else, Cousin Olivia." 
 
 " Come and join us, won't you ? " answered Masser- 
 eene, shortly. Something made him detest Aspin- 
 Avall just then. He went downstairs with Mrs. 
 Delaplaine. Aspinwall followed. There was the 
 usual great hurry for tables. It happened that 
 Massereene and Olivia secured one at which the 
 great Mrs. Lexington and her professional kind of 
 escort, Mr. Todd, had already seated themselves. 
 It was not in the order of things that these two 
 seats at this particular table should be thus occupied. 
 Mrs. Ogden Van Wagenen was expected ; she had 
 not arrived for some reason. Mrs. Lexington looked 
 a storm-cloud at Olivia, and then suddenly grew 
 pleasant. She recognized Olivia as a Van Rensse- 
 laer; she had been a Van Twiller herself; it was 
 so delightful, swiftly mused this great lady, to have 
 a person of one's own kind near one. She smiled 
 upon Olivia and promptly began a conversation with 
 her. She even condescended to introduce herself 
 she, the magisterial Mrs. Lexington, a personage 
 whom even Mrs. Auchincloss would have paid 
 duteous court to! She spoke to Olivia of her father, 
 of her husband ; she was complaisant, almost garru- 
 lous. She had a galaxy of the Lexington diamonds 
 strung about her weirdly thin neck ; she was a very 
 ugly woman, but she was Mrs. Lexington, and so 
 people bowed down to her. On her other side, 
 elbowing Mr. Todd, sat a lady named Mrs. Quinby 
 Spence. The Quinby Spences, husband and wife, had 
 been desirous of slipping into society for several years 
 past. Mrs. Quinby Spence, a lady with sharp, thin
 
 266 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 face and a pair of nervous black eyes, managed to 
 get herself seated near the great Mrs. Lexington. 
 She had contrived to whisper a word or two in the 
 ear of Mr. Todd. " Introduce me, please, won't you?" 
 Mrs. Quinby Spence had said. The Quinby Spences 
 had feasted J. Remington Todd again and again in 
 their splendid house in Fifty-Seventh Street. But 
 Mr. Todd now winced notwithstanding. The Quinby 
 Spences were " in," but they were not so " in " that 
 they should presume lightly to seek acquaintance- 
 ship with a potentate like Mrs. Madison Lexington. 
 Still, "introduce me, please," had been imperative. 
 Mr. Todd, with his bland, moonlike face embar- 
 rassedly aglow, made the presentation. Mrs. Quin- 
 by Spence, talking across the solid shoulder of him 
 who had thus introduced her, said most volubly and 
 effusively to the lady whose social cachet she desired 
 to obtain : 
 
 " I am so glad to meet you, Mrs. Lexington ! It 
 gives me such pleasure! We have entertained so 
 many mutual friends. I am very fond of entertain- 
 ing at dinner." 
 
 "Really?" murmured the great Mrs. Lexington. 
 
 "Yes very fond. I was thinking over our many 
 dinner-parties the other day. My husband and I 
 were trying to recall just how many we had given 
 this winter. It may seem to you, my dear Mrs. Lex- 
 ington, a rather curious matter to think of at all, but 
 we estimated, my husband and I, that we had enter- 
 tained, during the last few months, almost a thousand 
 people." 
 
 Mrs. Quinby Spence thought this was all quite 
 proper to say. So many of the really select peo-
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 267 
 
 pie had been to her dinner-parties ! It had indeed 
 been said of the Quinby Spences that they had " dined 
 themselves " into society. 
 
 But the great Mrs. Lexington did not respond. 
 She contented herself with turning to her friend, 
 Mr. Todd, and saying in a tenuously lady-like 
 whisper : 
 
 " Good heavens ! Does this woman keep a hotel ? " 
 
 But, all the same, Mrs. Quinby Spence scored a 
 point and succeeded thenceforth in knowing Mrs. 
 Lexington, and thus scaling the last rung of that 
 social ladder which for years she had so assiduously 
 climbed. 
 
 Massereene and Olivia were meanwhile at the same 
 table. Olivia had not yet learned the value of social 
 grades. She did not realize how much importance 
 had lain in the civility of the thin, ugly woman who 
 had just been polite to her. 
 
 Aspinwall, also, was at that table. He had begun 
 to be very jealous of Massereene. It had vividly 
 occurred to him that Olivia was the belle of the 
 Patriarchs' Ball and he resented the idea of being 
 " cut out " by even so acknowledged a notability as 
 Jasper Massereene. 
 
 But meanwhile Olivia had had another most wary 
 and intent observer. This was her husband.
 
 268 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 XV. 
 
 OLIVIA was from that night a reigning success in 
 + h fashionable world. The rush and whirl at first 
 pleased her unspeakably ; they took her so effectually, 
 for a time, out of herself. And the relief of being 
 thus made in a measure forgetful, during certain mo- 
 ments of the day or night, that she had become the 
 wife of a man whom she abhorred, was deeply wel- 
 come. This abhorrence had not been of quick growth 
 with Olivia; it had gradually spread itself through 
 her being with a steadfast, benumbing stealthiness 
 of influence. When her long and dangerous illness 
 terminated, she found herself facing her fate with a 
 resignation that surprised her own spirit. Delaplaine 
 was by this time in his usual health. He entered into 
 his new character as the elderly husband of a youthful 
 bride with steps that were so slow, cautious and dis- 
 criminating as to awaken Olivia's admiration at his 
 blended diplomacy and kindliness. She could never 
 dream of loving him, but might not the respect which 
 he was in a fair way of both rousing and perpetuating 
 stand hereafter as at least a decorous apology and sub- 
 stitute for love ? He had told her that he was dying ; 
 but surely, she now reflected, he ^vas not culpable in 
 having failed to die. No one had been culpable ex- 
 cept her own miserable, wayward self. As soon as 
 she was strong enough to see Mrs. Auchincloss and 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite, she sent for them, and begged that
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 269 
 
 they would pardon her hasty, hysterical charges. The 
 former accepted her niece's amends with a grieved 
 complaisance, and held it her duty to show as much 
 generosity on the occasion as the sad extent of the 
 injury inflicted would allow. 
 
 "Do not say another word about what happened 
 then, my dear Olivia, was Mrs. Auchincloss's highly 
 gracious response. "Of course I felt myself wounded 
 by your words ; how could it be otherwise ? But I 
 hope I am Christian enough to forgive them ! " 
 
 " Oh, Letitia, how magnificent you sometimes are ! " 
 thought Mrs. Satterthwaite ; but aloud she said to 
 Olivia, with her chin a little in the air, her eyes no 
 softer than if they had been agates, and her voice 
 devoid of the least sympathetic ring : 
 
 " Oh, it's all right, my dear, naturally. You were 
 going to be very ill. You didn't know what you 
 were saying. I assure you I should have come to 
 you, just like this, whether you had sent for me or 
 not." 
 
 Still later Olivia began to change her opinion re- 
 garding the part played by her two aunts in that little 
 mati-imonial episode. But whatever certainty of op- 
 posite conclusion she may have reached, her future 
 conduct never revealed it to either lady. They had 
 long ago taken the color of their environing world as 
 a partridge takes that of its furrow. And it was a 
 world so full of falsities and treacheries, of sham, 
 meanness and misrepresentation, that one must either 
 accept it as one found it or leave it to its own less 
 critical denizens. To try and improve upon its con- 
 glomeration of follies and misdoings would be indeed 
 to try and bail out the sea !
 
 270 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 But just now Olivia had not such condemning 
 thoughts about society. It acted like a lulling drug 
 upon her tormented life. Delaplaine had begun woo- 
 ingly and suavely, but he had soon dropped his mask. 
 Beneath it was the face of a tyrant. Olivia had just 
 made up her mind that to endure him as a husband 
 would not be the misery she had anticipated, when he 
 suddenly appeared before her in a new light. Her 
 health, at this period, was thoroughly restored. They 
 were about to visit Europe together ; the season was 
 latter autumn. One day he entered her private sit- 
 ting-room and found her in converse with Mrs. Ottar- 
 son, whose devotion during her sickness had been un- 
 paralleled in its noble self-surrender. He had never 
 thus far shown the slightest rudeness toward Mrs. 
 Ottarson, though he had more than once made it clear 
 to his wife that she was not by any means an object of 
 his liking. Moreover, he had paid respect, or some- 
 thing which resembled it, to Olivia's loyal and loving 
 gratitude for all that she now felt she owed her aunt. 
 But to-day his manner was brusque and curt. After 
 Mrs. Ottarson had departed, he said, speaking for the 
 first time with that assertion of command for which 
 the future had so many relentless examples in store : 
 
 " I must tell you, quite candidly, that she sets my 
 teeth on edge, that woman." 
 
 Olivia turned pale. "Aunt Thyrza?" she faltei-ed, 
 feeling as if an abrupt knife-stab had entered her 
 flesh. 
 
 "Yes, she is insupportable. I hope you mean to 
 drop her as soon as you can. She has been very good 
 as a nurse. But you are now quite strong again. If 
 she had been your hired nurse you would not have
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 271 
 
 done more than give her a handsome salary. I am 
 very willing that you should do that now. You have 
 your allowance ; it ought to be equal to rewarding her 
 services in a very nice way. But if it isn't, draw 
 upon me for any reasonable sum or any unreason- 
 able one, providing your sentiment toward the lady 
 makes you think she deserves notable recompense. 
 Only, I cannot have her continuing to come here and 
 wake the echoes with her frightful sins against gram- 
 mar and breeding." 
 
 Olivia did not reply for several minutes. Then she 
 said, measuring each word: "I think you misunder- 
 stand Aunt Thyrza. She would never accept a dollar 
 from me. She would regard it as an insult if I offered 
 her the least payment." After this the young wife's 
 voice broke a little, and she went on, using the name 
 which he had asked her to call him by, and which he 
 had told her that it was most pleasant music to hear 
 from her lips : " It seems as if something had offended 
 or annoyed you this afternoon, Spencer. I hope that 
 I am not to blame for " 
 
 He cut her short with a little impatient toss of the 
 head. "One thing has offended and annoyed me 
 that woman's ridiculous intimacy with you. If she 
 were a man I should call her a rowdy. It occurs to 
 me, Olivia, that you should rate your position, both 
 as your father's daughter and as my wife, something 
 less cheaply than you do." 
 
 He at once left the room after having pronounced 
 these few piercing sentences. To Olivia they meant 
 the infliction of a wholly unforeseen terror. For sev- 
 eral weeks past she had been assuring herself that 
 their existence in each other's company was to prove
 
 272 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 one of the most unruffled serenity. The mockery of 
 their union must inexorably remain. He was not the 
 husband of her heart, and she must forever hide from 
 him spiritual depths of which his inevitable non-pos- 
 session would forbid all sweeter and holier conditions 
 of intimacy. But at least he was going to show him- 
 self the gentleman and not the jailer, the indulgent 
 guardian and not the surly sentinel. Apart from the 
 combined farce and sadness of their bonds, they were 
 no doubt destined to become excellent friends. Every 
 new week repeated the comforting disappointment. 
 Then there were jewels given her, and other costly 
 gifts as well. No bride of her years could fail to be 
 touched by these and like attentions. Love might lie 
 as dormant as it pleased, with torch unlit and chaplet 
 unbraided ; but if friendship were going to steal in with 
 sweet puritan face and a frank willingness to keep the 
 hearthstone always ruddy through chill weather, why 
 the days might not lag so sluggishly, after all. 
 
 Olivia had in truth made a little hopeful picture of 
 her own future. Delaplaine and she were the two 
 chief figures, of course. As he would become gradu- 
 ally enfeebled by the multiplication of years, leaving 
 her still strong and young, she would assume toward 
 him a more and more aidful and tributary place. 
 Herein should be the working out of her expiation 
 the practical fulfilment of her repentance. She would 
 do all that lay in her power to make Spencer Dela- 
 plaine bless their marriage. Her act of selfishness 
 should be caused to bear sacrificial fruit. When the 
 hour came that really laid him upon his death-bed 
 not upon that semblance of one which had formed her 
 past reason for wedding him perhaps he would take
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAIXi:. 273 
 
 her hand and tell her that she had been a worthy wife 
 Such she meant to be, and she now constantly thanked 
 God that the difficulty of attaining this desired object 
 would not prove insuperable. 
 
 Abruptly the change in her husband shattered aspi- 
 ration. He was never the same to her from that 
 afternoon when he showed her his unmantled self. 
 The passion she had inspired in him had not ceased, 
 but its primary fervors were diminished. Possibly 
 the sharp line of division between what he had been 
 and what he was henceforth to be, drew its extreme 
 emphasis from a single manifestation of her own. 
 She refused to obey him in the matter of slighting 
 her Aunt Thyrza, and most assertively told him so. 
 
 " You spoke not long ago," she said, looking at him 
 with a courage in her glance that did not for a second 
 flinch, "of my position as my father's daughter and as 
 your wife. I love poor papa's memory so dearly that 
 I could not dream of shaming it. If you think I owe 
 you the concession of discontinuing to know one who 
 is bound to me by the sweetest and strongest ties both 
 of blood and gratitude one I love and respect as a 
 woman whose great, benevolent heart deserves that I 
 should do then I must point out your very serious 
 mistake." 
 
 He started a little, but that was all. " You mean, I 
 suppose, that you will not drop Mrs. Ottarson?" he 
 said, with immobility. " She is an irritating vul- 
 garian, but you persist in keeping her up against my 
 will?" 
 
 " She is the dearest friend I have in the world, and 
 I shall always treat her as the friend I believe hei\" 
 
 Olivia was prepared to have him reply with fierce
 
 274 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 anger, now ; but she had not yet followed his imper- 
 turbable methods. The tenderness he had thus far 
 disclosed to her had been of about the same depth as 
 those brittle and curly woofs of lichen that we some- 
 times find on rocks. She was too wofully destined to 
 strike against the obdurate silicate that lay below! 
 
 "I perceive," he said, with his gray eyes fixed on 
 her face. "In spite of any orders of mine to the con- 
 trary, you will have this person visit you here at my 
 house." 
 
 "No," said Olivia. "It is your house. I would 
 not allow Aunt Thyrza to enter it against your 
 wishes. Possibly you don't realize or care to realize, 
 how much she would scorn to do so." 
 
 "Ah . . . yes. ... It will merely be a series of 
 visits on your part ? " 
 
 " That is what I mean." 
 
 " But suppose I forbid you to go there at all." 
 
 Olivia firmly shook her head. "I shall not hesitate 
 to go, all the same," she answered. 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders and smiled icily. " Does 
 this not seem to you a rather bold measure?" 
 
 "Not bolder than is justifiable under the circum- 
 stances." 
 
 He gave her no answer. For hours afterward she 
 felt like one who has been remorselessly duped. He 
 was a man of stone ; she had thought him so, or very 
 nearly so, before their marriage, and now the remem- 
 brance of this old conviction tauntingly returned to 
 her. . . . 
 
 He proffered no further mention of Mrs. Ottarson. 
 But almost every succeeding day showed her new 
 exasperating points in his loveless and cynical dispo-
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 275 
 
 sition. He soon made up his mind that there was a 
 point with her where his coercion must stop. Some 
 women would have had physical fear of him, if none 
 other. Olivia was so brave, so dauntless in her deal- 
 ings with him, that he admired her secretly all the 
 more on this account. Still, it would never do, he 
 had assured himself, to go on with that honeymoon 
 pose. He had begun to feel acutely bored by the 
 necessity of maintaining it, and he had concluded that 
 it had best be abolished forthwith. Let Olivia see 
 him once and for all as he was ; she might as well get 
 used to him, if she were ever going to be as accommo- 
 dating as that ; she would doubtless have a good deal 
 of his society during the next few years, to judge by 
 the proofs of bodily toughness which he had given 
 the physicians not long ago. 
 
 They sailed for Europe a short time afterward. 
 Olivia greeted the event as a source of precious dis- 
 traction, just as she was greeting the turmoil of New 
 York merriments now, a year later. Adrian Etherege, 
 the handsome young secretary of Delaplaine, surprised 
 Olivia by saying to her, a few days before her depart- 
 ure took place : 
 
 "It would give me such delight, Mrs. Delaplaine, if 
 I could only go with you! " 
 
 "Go with us, Adrian?" she repeated. She had 
 always called him " Adrian." It had appeared quite 
 natural for her to call him so on taking her rightful 
 place as feminine head of the establishment. Occa- 
 sionally her husband would permit the lad to dine 
 with them, and once or twice he had done so at his 
 wife's request. Adrian came and went in a most 
 irregular style ; it seemed an accepted fact in the
 
 '216 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 household that he should be exempt from all rules of 
 punctuality and exactitude. Now and then he would 
 sleep away from the house in West Tenth Street, and 
 perhaps not even return thither on the following clay. 
 But no one showed the least concern regarding such 
 absences, and it was only necessary to look with close- 
 ness into his fair, star-eyed, poetic face for the least 
 suspicion that he was of dissipated habits to vanish 
 completely. His manner toward Olivia had been one 
 full of exquisite politeness ever since they had first 
 met after the protracted illness of the latter. J^t 
 times it struck her that he might be desirous of oblit- 
 erating from her memory all retention of the curiously 
 angry look she had once seen him give her. What 
 Olivia knew about Adrian Etherege's personal history 
 and antecedents the youth himself had told her. 
 Delaplaine had thus far not done more than say in 
 his wife's hearing : 
 
 "Adrian is a good boy, honest-minded and wholly 
 trustworthy. . . ." On one occasion, just after the 
 first dinner that the young secretary had taken with 
 them, Olivia had the fancy that some further informa- 
 tion concerning Adrian was to be given her by his 
 employer. But although Delaplaine then seemed on 
 the point of volunteering a statement, he refrained 
 from doing so, and she did not press him for disclos- 
 ures, feeling sure that they would be afforded by 
 other lips. 
 
 And they were. Adrian fell into the fashion of 
 holding little talks with her when he and she met, 
 in halls, on stairways, or perhaps in the library, to 
 which he was allowed free access. He pleased Olivia 
 indescribably. It was not merely his beauty that
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. Til 
 
 attracted her; it was a winsomeness half melancholy 
 half joyous. He affected her as an individuality that 
 Nature had shaped for the freest acceptance of all 
 life's yellowest and richest sunshine, but over whom 
 circumstance had drawn a kind of shadowy veil. She 
 had no more thought of being touched by him into an 
 attachment beyond friendly interest than if his years 
 had numbered fifteen instead of twenty. This very 
 concern which he had aroused in her made her ques- 
 tion him about his past. She wanted, naturally 
 enough, to learn whence he had managed to derive 
 his charming manners. And at length he had made 
 her acquainted with a little history which she did not 
 dream of doubting. Why should she so have dreamed? 
 He gave it, finally, with an air of veracity and sim- 
 plicity that his lovely brown eyes and his almost ideal 
 countenance gently seemed to corroborate. 
 
 A long time ago, he told her, when he was a small 
 fellow, Mr. Delaplaine had known his father favorably 
 as one of the bank-employees. His father had died 
 suddenly, and he, an orphan, had been recommended 
 to the charity of the wealthy, powerful banker. Mr. 
 Delaplaine had been very good, giving him the advan- 
 tage of a long term of schooling, and then permitting 
 him to enter the banking-house in a minor capacity. 
 Afterward the secretaryship had grown from that. 
 There was really nothing more to narrate. The 
 school had been a good one a boarding-school not 
 far away from town at Fordham, in fact. If Mrs. 
 Delaplaine was kind enough to think that he had 
 fairly cultivated manners, this complimentary opinion 
 could only be explained by the careful, refined course 
 of instruction pursued at the suburban school.
 
 278 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 Olivia unhesitatingly credited all this. Her heart 
 had so warmed toward Adrian Etherege by the time 
 he made his direct appeal to accompany herself and 
 Delaplaine abroad, that she promptly looked upon 
 such a project with entire acquiescence. 
 
 But her husband instantly frowned upon it. His 
 frown was one of unusual sternness, considering his 
 ordinary composure. " Have you lost your senses?" 
 he asked, after she had mentioned to him the wish of 
 Adrian. " I should think you might see the insanity 
 of such an idea." 
 
 " Insanity ! " murmured Olivia. 
 
 "Certainly." Delaplaine had no reservations from 
 her now. He had cast off all disguises in unrelenting 
 earnest. "An old fellow like me and a good-looking 
 youngster like that ! I'd be a fine fool to let the world 
 talk. No, thank you ! " 
 
 Olivia's face crimsoned, and her eyes kindled. " You 
 can't imagine " she began. 
 
 "Imagine?" he broke in, with a hint of scoff in his 
 tones. " Of course I don't. I'm not troubled with 
 imagination, anyway. I'm what they call an exact 
 thinker. Do you suppose I'm afraid you care for the 
 boy? If I did I'd send him packing in no time. Be- 
 sides, you couldn't care. He's not in your line. I 
 know what might be. He isn't. You'd never fall in 
 love with " 
 
 " Stop ! " cried Olivia. " You insult me as your 
 wife!" 
 
 He gave a short, dry laugh. "Do I?" he retorted. 
 "Oh, no, I don't. I merely show you how I might. 
 You would feel insulted all the same if you were fond 
 of poor young Adrian. Women are never so finely
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLA1NE. 279 
 
 innocent in their assumptions as when they're guilty. 
 . . . We won't take the boy to Europe, however. I 
 know it's not a matter of much moment with you 
 whether we do or not. I keep a closer eye on you 
 than you perhaps fancy I keep. There may come a 
 time when you won't be altogether . . . indifferent. 
 Possibly that time must come, as affairs are situated. 
 But when it does, don't flatter yourself that I shall be 
 fooled for more than a week. The chances are that I 
 shall be even wiser from the very beginning than you 
 are." 
 
 He left her, after having spoken these words with 
 what she held to be an infernal coolness, and he left 
 her, also, rankling under the infliction of what she 
 rightly held to be a brutality. But she was yet in her 
 apprenticeship as regarded the full perception of just 
 how satanically insolent he could show himself. It 
 may readily be surmised that he behaved without 
 provocation during conferences of this sort. He freely 
 admitted to himself that he did. He was the kind of 
 man who would have been execrable in all domestic 
 relations, even if he had married twenty years younger 
 than at present. The world had been easy enough for 
 him to get on with. Its points of tangency, so to 
 speak, were not at all like connubial ones. A very ill- 
 natured bear in his home-circle may be a popular com- 
 panion at the clubs. Delaplaine could never have been 
 called popular anywhere, nor was he at any time a bear ; 
 for in allowing him such a definition as the last, you 
 would lose sight of his refined rather than blunt modes 
 of torment, his premeditated rather than impulsive 
 cruelty. "If I had married an angel from heaven," 
 he had said to himself not long before the conversation
 
 280 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 just recorded, " I should Lave found it impossible to 
 get on with her unless we sometimes quarrelled. I 
 don't know what I should have done to get up a quar- 
 rel. I think I might have picked the feathers out of 
 her wings while she was asleep." 
 
 They went to Europe, leaving Adrian at home. He 
 had grown singularly sad, Olivia observed, during the 
 days that immediately preceded their departure. She 
 wondered whether affection for Delaplaine could pos- 
 sibly explain his altered spirits ; it seemed incredible 
 that this should be the case. 
 
 " You would like so very much to go to Europe ? " 
 she said one day, a little while before they sailed. 
 
 "Ah, how I should enjoy it! " he exclaimed, a light 
 seeming to pass across his face and then vanish. 
 
 " But some day you will go," said Olivia. 
 
 " Some day ! Yes alone ! " 
 
 "Alone?" she echoed, surprisedly. " Why do you 
 so dread going that way, Adrian?" 
 
 And then she saw that he had colored deeply. 
 Thinking his embarrassment might have sprung from 
 a betrayal of the regard which he bore his benefactor, 
 she at once said, with the hope of putting him at his 
 ease : 
 
 "But of course you would rejoice in the companion- 
 ship of one whom you have known so long and so 
 intimately as you have known Mr. Delaplaine. It is 
 always a pleasure to travel with those of whom we 
 are fond." 
 
 " Fond of him J/" 
 
 The words leapt impetuously from his lips. Olivia 
 saw, hurrying over his face and darkening it, the same 
 fiercely irate expression witnessed there at a previous
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE, 281 
 
 time. It amazed her that such specks of flame could 
 swirn, however momentarily, in the tawny shadow of 
 those peaceful eyes. 
 
 "You dorit like Mr. Delaplaine, then?" she ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 He burst into the most awkwardly contrite little 
 laugh. "I I didn't say that," he stammered. " I 
 like him? Why, how could it be otherwise after all 
 that he has done for me? Of course I like him." 
 And then there was another apologetic laugh, lamer 
 than that which had preceded it. "I I was merely 
 a a trifle surprised that that you should be in 
 doubt of how I really felt." 
 
 " Oh, I was not in doubt," answered Olivia. 
 
 But from that time she became confident of Adrian's 
 keen yet smothered aversion. This knowledge made 
 her somehow set greater value upon the youth's evi- 
 dent regard for her; it forged a new link of congeni- 
 ality between them. As for her husband's recent 
 words, they wore dyes of deeper insult as she recalled 
 their unprovoked acerbity. . . . 
 
 Two days before they took the steamer for Havre, 
 an event occurred which caused her to wonder in an 
 oddly perplexed way. She had gone to make a few 
 purchases in the morning and to speak a loving fare- 
 well in the ear of her inalienable friend, Mrs. Ottarson. 
 She returned at about three o'clock in the afternoon, 
 and passed upstairs toward her own apartments. But 
 just as she neared the library, a loud, clear voice, 
 plainly that of a woman, sounded from behind the 
 closed door of that particular room. 
 
 "I don't want to have him kicked into a hole, like a 
 dog," cried the voice, " when I'm dead and gone."
 
 282 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 "Who cares what you want?" came the answer, 
 loud as well, and most uncharacteristically so, since the 
 new speaker was beyond dispute Delnplaine. " You 
 had no right to come here. You must go at once. 
 And don't ever presume to come again." 
 
 Before Olivia had more than just slipped by the door 
 of the library, it was flung open, and a woman crossed 
 its threshold. The woman saw her as she receded, but 
 Olivia caught only the least glimpse of a pale, rather 
 careworn face, lit by dark eyes that were now as rayless 
 as they might once have been radiant. 
 
 Then Delaplaine himself appeared, as white as he 
 had looked on the day he was believed to be dying. 
 " Let this be the last time, now ! " he cried. " It's no 
 
 place for you, and by , if you forget that again, 
 
 I'll ." 
 
 The woman, who stood then on the upper landing 
 of the stairs, pointed with a sudden gesture and a slight 
 laugh of mockery toward Olivia. 
 
 Delaplaine turned, saw his wife, motionless and 
 astonished a yard or two beyond, and gave a terrible 
 start. The woman hastened downstairs, while Dela- 
 plaine, more discomfited in manner and speech than 
 Olivia would have thought it possible for him to be, 
 stammeringly began some sort of explanation. 
 
 " She is one one of those those beggars who 
 bother me at times for money. They they come to 
 you with all all sorts of tales. A person has to be 
 very very careful, or he runs the chance of getting 
 swindled horridly by them." 
 
 The next moment he passed back into the library. 
 Olivia slowly walked on toward her own suite of 
 chambers. Perhaps Delaplaine had spoken the truth,
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 283 
 
 and it was some beggar, who referred to husband, son, 
 or brother while saying that she did not wish to see 
 him kicked into a hole, like a dog, after she was dead 
 and gone. But then Spencer Delaplaine's unquestion- 
 able agitation . . . why should that have shown 
 itself ? 
 
 " Surely," thought Olivia, while her maid was reliev- 
 ing her of bonnet and wraps, " if the woman had been 
 one whose presence here should bring shame on him, 
 he need not have felt the slightest concern on my 
 account. And as for his really feeling any, it doesn't 
 at all correspond with his present perfectly undisguised 
 brutalities . . . tout au contraire" 
 
 The traits that she thus uncompromisingly de- 
 scribed underwent no diminution after she and Dela- 
 plaine sailed for European shores. " I like Paris," he 
 said to her one day during the early part of their 
 sojourn in that city. "It is so exquisitely filthy 
 here." 
 
 "Paris is generally thought to be a very clean city," 
 said Olivia, quite misunderstanding. 
 
 He laughed his raucous little laugh, and leaned 
 backed in his chair. "Oh, I don't mean her streets; 
 I mean her morals. Almost every other civilized 
 nation of the globe has been piling abuse on France 
 for centuries, and yet we've all such a secret delight 
 in her. It's too amusing. Whenever I see one of 
 these highly proper Americans or Englishmen who 
 shudder at what he calls her 'nastiness' in painting, 
 novel-writing or the drama, I always feel like sending 
 a note to that fellow's wife anonymous, of course 
 telling her to have him watched and followed on the 
 evenings he says he's going to the club for a quiet
 
 284 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 rubber of whist and will be home by eleven or a 
 quarter past. . . ." 
 
 "Did you ever meet any human being whom you 
 trusted?" Olivia asked him, with a gentle exaspera- 
 tion, at another later period. 
 
 " No, not a single being of whom I could say, ' I'll 
 trust him or her through anything that may happen 
 in the way of temptation.' There isn't anybody who 
 can be trusted like that. Every one who ever lived 
 has had a price. Sometimes it's large, but then the 
 size depends on the amount of respectability that is to 
 be imperilled." 
 
 "Then there is no such thing as conscience." 
 
 "No. Emphatically no. Conscience is traditional, 
 and that only. You might have a child, and train 
 him up to believe that looking at the moon was a most 
 horrible sin. All through the rest of his life, no 
 matter how enlightening might be the influences 
 brought to bear upon him, he would never look at the 
 moon without a sense of violation and trespass. You 
 would have established in him what Herbert Spencer 
 would call a line of least resistance for the incident 
 force of fear. Conscience, remorse, scrupulosity, all 
 began with that. . . ." He paused, and watched Olivia 
 with the smile that she had grown to detest. " I re- 
 member I said something of this same sort to you before 
 we were married and shocked you. Didn't I ? " 
 
 " You shock me now." 
 
 "I know. But I don't mind. I have got you all 
 safe to myself, now; you can't escape me. Can you?" 
 
 She saw that he was in one of his waspishly jocular 
 moods, and she rose to leave the room. 
 
 "Don't go," he said. "I've something to tell you.
 
 OLIVIA DEL A PLAINS. 285 
 
 It's about our truly remarkable marriage. For it was 
 remarkable, was it not?" 
 
 "Very," she answered, turning pale. She had a 
 sudden curiosity to know what new sting he would 
 inflict. He gave a soft, unctuous chuckle before he 
 went on. "I told you I'd changed my will; I made 
 your aunt Satterthwaite believe I had. But I didn't. 
 I didn't intend to die. I was a little afraid that I 
 might, in spite of my intentions, but still I'd made up 
 my mind not to die if I could help it. It was all a 
 delicious fraud on my part. You can't find many 
 men who have the nerve to scheme like that on what 
 may turn out their death-beds within an hour or two. 
 If I had died before you married me you wouldn't 
 have got a dime. That seeing my lawyer was all a 
 blind a ruse de guerre . . . excuse my bad pronun- 
 ciation ; you know I never could get on with French ; 
 I leave that for my young and accomplished wife, who 
 'had resided abroad for many years previous to be- 
 coming the spouse of her eminent banker-husband,' as 
 that silly Franco-American newspaper announced the 
 other day. ... If I had died after our queer wedding, 
 you'd have got your widow's third no more." And 
 then he gave another chuckle, and looked out from 
 the window near which he sat, and which commanded 
 a view of the Champs Elysees, bathed in winter 
 sunshine. 
 
 Olivia always bore this cat-and-mouse treatment 
 with a solemn, almost a sublime patience. Afterward 
 she would say to herself, thinking over some special 
 dagger-thrust that he had dealt her: "I am glad I 
 made him no answer. I am glad I bore it calmly as 
 I did. It is my punishment."
 
 286 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 But now and then, for several days at a time, lie 
 would be a model of urbanity and good humor. Dur- 
 ing intervals like these she could see why he had 
 gained ascendancy with both women and men ; his 
 caustic wit spared no person or thing, and yet she 
 comprehended how, with other hearers than herself, it 
 had sounded its discordant notes not too recklessly 
 for the production of a distinct amusement. 
 
 When they reached the Riviera all the hotels were 
 packed with visitors, and gayeties reigned imperially 
 at the various Mediterranean-skirting resorts. But 
 Delaplaine would not allow his wife to participate in 
 any festivities whatever. Many of her own country- 
 people sent invitations, but he refused them himself, 
 and vetoed their acceptance on the part of his wife. 
 An occasional luncheon or dinner he permitted ; no 
 large gatherings, however, would he sanction, nor any 
 entertainments in which elaborated and magnificent 
 costumes became requisite. 
 
 "No," he soon informed Olivia, in his low-voiced, 
 smooth-visaged way, " you shan't, as my wife, cheapen 
 yourself at any of these foreign places. I won't even 
 let you be presented at Court in London. As an 
 American one is incontestably nobody the instant 
 one's foot lands upon transatlantic soil. A good many 
 Americans are constantly forgetting that more's the 
 pity. I recollect dining once in the salon of Del- 
 monico's, and seeing seated next me a' party of three 
 palpably raw Westerners, who had come to view the 
 town a father with a tanned face and a beard down 
 under his chin ; a mother with a yellowish fur cape 
 that reached below her waist, and long earrings of 
 gold scroll-work, and a reticule ; and finally a son of
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 287 
 
 about fifteen or so, with enormous front teeth, and his 
 mouth in a perpetual gape of awe. . . . You know the 
 kind of rural persons I mean. . . . Well, they seemed 
 in doubt what they would take. I was dining with a 
 little party that evening (I believe your aunt Satter- 
 thwaite gave the dinner, by the bye), and we fell 
 into private giggles, all of us, over the absurd hesi- 
 tancy of father, mother and son. The waiter stood 
 listening with a resigned air for their decision, and 
 finally it came. They ordered three pieces of mince 
 pie and three cups of tea. . . . Well, that, after all, 
 fairly represents the conduct of the average American 
 citizen on English or Continental soil. Some Ameri- 
 cans do even a great deal worse than that. Others 
 (people of whom there are a few thousands like you 
 and me) must suffer in consequence. Socially we are 
 nothing here, the very best of us, and we need not for 
 an instant flatter ourselves that we are something. 
 You might make a great success among the swells 
 here, but though you would be in their throng you 
 would never really be of it ; they would always con- 
 nect you with the species of person that orders a cup 
 of tea and a plate of mince pie in Delmonico's at the 
 usual dining hour. It may be hideously unjust all 
 this . . . who says it isn't ? But when you've reached 
 my age you'll understand the full rarity of justice on 
 our planet; black swans and white crows are not a 
 circumstance to it ... All very well, Olivia, for such 
 women as Mrs. Brummagem Baker to despair of get- 
 ting into New York society and go abroad for the 
 purpose of having an aristocratic stamp put upon 
 them, that they may come home afterwards with gilt- 
 ed<;ed recommendations to the residents of their own
 
 288 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 native metropolis. But you don't require to ' invade 
 New York' as they used to say Mrs. Brummagem 
 Baker did, after she'd been received at Marlborough 
 House and passed a day at Sandringham. No ; you 
 are a Van Rensselaer in the first place, and you're 
 Mrs. Spencer Delaplaiue in the second. That will 
 have to be enough for one lifetime or, at least, till 
 I'm dead and you marry somebody else. Anyhow, 
 you'd never win anything here but a sort of tinsel 
 favoritism. They might take you, but they'd take 
 you with a big pinch of salt as only an American. 
 And I won't have you taken that way. . . . We'll 
 wait until we get home before you try. a turn among 
 the fashionable assemblages. There you're princess, 
 duchess, and countess all rolled in one. Yes, you are, 
 thanks to some of the ridiculous shortcomings of our 
 ridiculous republic about as great a national failure, 
 take it all in all, as the records of history can show." 
 
 It will now readily be understood why the stay of 
 Delaplaine and Olivia abroad was not attended by 
 any except the most meagre social excitements.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 289 
 
 XVI. 
 
 DELAPLAINE was of the opinion that America has but 
 a single season whose record is handsome enough to 
 deserve honorable mention in any calendar. This 
 season, he affirmed, was autumn ; and on his return to 
 his native land, in August of the following year, he 
 expressed a great desire to see once more the Hudson 
 when its banks were tinted with the summer's pris- 
 matic decay. Accordingly he leased a very fine estate 
 not far from Tarrytown, installing Olivia there, by no 
 means against her will. The house was spacious and 
 comfortable ; the grounds commanded a noble view of 
 the lordly river near by. Olivia took long walks, long 
 rides and long drives through the delightful surround- 
 ing country. She was from early training an excellent 
 equestrian, and the stables were as well stocked with 
 horses as were the halls and chambers of her new 
 abode supplied with drilled and efficient servants. 
 Her husband now and then would spend one or two 
 nights in town, but he always instructed her by letter 
 or telegram of his intended absences, which decidedly 
 did not fill her with inconsolable regret. She was 
 
 o 
 
 lonely, but not to any despondent degree. She had 
 books of many sorts to read, and as she kept early 
 hours, slept healthfully, and saw a good deal of the 
 breezy sunshine which was then at its thriftiest, her 
 days hardly dragged more than they could be ex- 
 pected to do amid surroundings of so much undis-
 
 290 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 turbed solitude. Besides she had the winter to antici- 
 pate. She was to see something of social amusement 
 then ; her husband had promised her that she should 
 both entertain and be entertained after they returned 
 to West Tenth Street, and she knew that his pride in 
 her would make him keep his word, however caprice 
 might delay him in the ultimate fulfilment of it. She 
 feared showing too great a desire for distractions of a 
 social kind ; his moods of tantalizing cruelty were 
 never to be calculated on. She had discovered that 
 the love he felt for her was one constantly on the alert 
 to ensheathe itself in the most distressing jealousy. 
 She had never, as yet, given him the least incentive to 
 become jealous, but it was plain to her that this trait 
 in him only waited an opportunity for rapid and 
 morbid development. 
 
 All this time she was very far from being happy. 
 But, as she told her Aunt Thyrza during several trips 
 that she made to town, it was not a misery that stood 
 any chance of shortening her existence. 
 
 "He is at times intolerable," she said. "One of the 
 proofs of just how odious he can make himself, Aunt 
 Thyrza, is the manner in which he forces me to meet 
 you either secretly or not at all. I should so love 
 to have you up there at Green acre to sniff the country 
 air, dear old soul, for a week or two, and do just as 
 you chose with everybody and everything about 
 you!" 
 
 Mrs. Ottarson gave one of her laughs. " Jfy, Liv ! " 
 she exclaimed. "I guess I'd have pretty tough work 
 doin' 's I chose with Mr. Del'plaine round ! " 
 
 Olivia smiled drearily. " I am afraid any one would," 
 she answered.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 291 
 
 Mrs. Ottarson took her hand caressingly between 
 her own. "My poor deary! It's all been wrong. 
 No one knows more'n I do jus how wrong it's all been. 
 Many's the night, 'Livia, while you was over there 
 'cross the water, I've laid 'wake in bed thinkin' 'bout it. 
 An' all I can say, Livvy, is that you've stood it splendid 
 ever since you got through that awful illness. You 
 d'serve credit for bein' so brave and womanly." 
 
 "I surely deserve no credit at all, Aunt Thyrza," 
 was the answer. " You and I have talked this matter 
 over before now. The marriage may have been fraud- 
 ulent enough on his part; but I need not have made 
 it. I believe, now, that I fell a victim to the deceit of 
 more persons than that sick man who lay with so 
 white a face there in that dim chamber. . . . But 
 never mind ; it is too late for any good to come of 
 open accusations. Besides, I find no one so hard to 
 pardon, in this matter, as myself. And I don't want 
 to let myself believe, even for an instant, that I was 
 excusable in having taken the downward step I did 
 take. I might begin to waver, then to lose what 
 courage I possess to strike back, blow for blow, in- 
 stead of bearing it all as unflinchingly as I can, be- 
 cause convinced that it is my just recompense, my 
 rightful penalty." 
 
 Two or three times Olivia met Adrian Etherege 
 during short visits at the West Tenth Street house, 
 while she was in town for a few hours. A year had 
 made the youth look manlier, though it had robbed 
 him of no beauty. He had a hundred questions to 
 ask his friend concerning the lands and cities embraced 
 by her own and Delaplaine's long absence. But it 
 was not always of foreign travels that Adrian wanted
 
 292 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 to talk. He sometimes chose subjects of a far less 
 material sort. 
 
 " You tell me that you are lonely," he once said to 
 Olivia. " So am I ; and I sometimes feel that I shall 
 continue lonely for the rest of my life." 
 
 " Have you no friends, then?" his companion asked. 
 " I mean apart from myself," she added sweetly ; 
 for ever since her husband had let fall those memora- 
 bly sneering words about the project of having Adrian 
 accompany them abroad last year, she had lost no 
 chance of showing the young secretary in how much 
 purely amical regard she held him. 
 
 "Few that I care for," said Adrian. "They are 
 mostly young men of my own age and they are 
 devoted to business pursuits ; they are at the bank of 
 Delaplaine and Company, or they are at other banks, 
 or in brokers' offices. Now, I have no love for the 
 ideas, the aims and the undertakings that make up the 
 chief joys of life for persons like these." 
 
 " And yet they tell me that you are a clever busi- 
 ness man." 
 
 Adrian quickly shook his curly golden head. " Oh, 
 they are wrong if by 'they' you mean Mr. Dela- 
 plaine, as I suppose you do. I haven't my work at 
 heart ; I go through it like an automaton ; when it is 
 over I want to forget it. And there is no one to help 
 me forget it. That is why I'm so lonely. If I had a 
 love for books it might be different ; but I haven't. I 
 I simply like people the people who amuse 
 me." 
 
 Olivia laughed ; she rarely laughed nowadays 
 indeed, so rai*ely that the sound of her own audi- 
 ble mirth woke a little thrill of surprise in her. "You
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 293 
 
 forget that yon also amuse them" She laid her hand 
 on his arm and looked into his adorable eyes, which 
 had never enchanted her moi'e than if they had 
 been those of some woman whom she was fond of 
 and thought singularly fascinating. "But my dear 
 Adrian," she went on, calling him by the name which 
 she had used in addressing him weeks before her 
 departure for Europe, " you have the faculty of 
 being intelligent without the need of books to make 
 you so." 
 
 "I am not intelligent, Mrs. Delaplaine," he an- 
 swered, speaking with excessive earnestness. "I 
 can never do anything in the least remarkable. I 
 can simply like and appreciate those who have gifts 
 and striking qualities above my own. I I was born 
 to be a background and not a foreground. I'm no 
 talker, as you know; I love to listen when I may 
 get those to who;n I can listen without becoming 
 wearied. Let me speak very frankly with you ; I 
 don't want you to misunderstand me to imagine 
 me vain in what I have just said about those mercan- 
 tile associates. I am far from placing myself above 
 them, but ... I can't even be a background to 
 them. ... If I had been born above my present 
 position in life, I think I should have made a suc- 
 cess of it, as the phrase goes. I should have known 
 persons who interested me artists, dreamers, poets, 
 men of brains and culture. I should have been their 
 patron, their helper. But now I am nothing. I am 
 simply agreeable, as you once told me that I was. 
 I'm not of enough importance for the talented beings 
 wherever they exist in New York, if they exist at 
 all to seek me out. So I must remain lonely, since
 
 294 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 I have no means of meeting or mixing among the 
 spirits with whom I truly sympathize." 
 
 Olivia laughed again. " You don't know how you 
 interest me," she said. 
 
 Adrian looked at her fixedly for a moment. " Why? 
 Because I declare myself a nonentity ? " he asked. 
 
 "Absurd! Because you are so much less a nonen- 
 tity than you imagine. ... I fancy, from what I have 
 read of the great thinkers, the great poets, the great 
 minds, generally speaking, that it is much more fortu- 
 nate to be apart from them and admire them than to 
 be one of them and suffer, as their biographies tell us 
 that they nearly all have suffered. . . . But if you 
 really want congenial acquaintanceship, perhaps I 
 shall be able to find it for you." 
 
 "To find it for me? You?" Olivia failed to 
 notice just what accent and intonation went into this 
 reply. 
 
 " Yes. I shall see a good deal of the world next 
 winter. Mr. Delaplaine " (she rarely spoke of him as 
 "my husband") "has promised me that I shall. And 
 then your chance will come. I prophesy it, Adrian." 
 
 A startled, incredulous look responded to her. " Ah, 
 he would never allow that ! " the young man mur- 
 mured. " He would never let me even dream that I, 
 his secretary, his servant, was on an equality with 
 you! He would forbid the first effort you made." 
 
 " Perhaps," said Olivia softly, as if speaking to her- 
 self. But suddenly her face brightened. "I would 
 tell him," she proceeded, "that I wanted to secure a 
 wife for you." 
 
 "A wife?" 
 
 "Yes, . . . Some day you will marry, of course.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 295 
 
 Why should you not ? And I will carefully look all 
 about me to obtain some charming girl who will be 
 just the proper match for you." Olivia now assumed 
 a humorously grave look. "Let me see: she must, in 
 the first place, be handsome almost, if not quite, as 
 handsome as you are. Secondly, she must be rich " 
 
 "Pray, stop," broke in Adrian. There was a 
 pained, imploring gaze in his eyes as they now 
 lifted themselves to her own, which made Olivia 
 pause and even regret the badinage that she had 
 thus lightly begun. . . . 
 
 She had never mentioned to her husband these few 
 interviews which she had held with Adrian. One 
 evening he said to her, amid the almost drowsy dul- 
 ness following their seven o'clock dinner at Greenacre : 
 
 "That boy, Adrian Etherege . . . you remember 
 him ? " 
 
 " Of course," returned Olivia. 
 
 "He had better see to some loose papers which I 
 have been leaving up here, and which need to be filed 
 and labelled. He may come up with me to-morrow 
 night. Do you object to his corning?" 
 
 " No," replied Olivia. " Why should I object ?" 
 
 Adrian carne up with Delaplaine the next evening. 
 Dinner was served almost immediately after the 
 arrival of host and guest. Adrian conducted him- 
 self, as he always did iri the presence of his employer, 
 with repression and comparative reticence. 
 
 After dinner he went with Delaplaine into the pri- 
 vate study of the latter, and remained there for over 
 two hours. They came out together, and at once 
 joined Olivia, who sat reading near a lamp, in a room 
 that glowed with Japanese decorations.
 
 296 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 " I hope to-morrow will be a glorious autumn day," 
 she said smilingly to Adrian, " now it is arranged that 
 you are to stop over at Greenacre for a holiday. We 
 have had so many beautiful days during the past fort- 
 night that it will be a sharne if to-morrow is not 
 charming." 
 
 "The best plan is never to expect anything good 
 from the weather," said Delaplaine, with his glacial 
 quietude. "Then it may agreeably disappoint you 
 like some few women I have met." 
 
 Long ago Olivia had learned to treat the sarcasms 
 
 o o 
 
 of her husband as though they had remained un- 
 spoken. " And how do you like this absurdly large 
 house of ours?" she again said to Adrian. 
 
 " I am decidedly pleased with it," he answered. 
 " The appointments are all in such taste. You forget 
 both the size and the number of the rooms in their 
 artistic treatment." 
 
 " I knew you'd have something to say in praise of 
 Greenacre," replied Olivia. " To-morrow I will show 
 you some of those exquisite views of the river that I 
 mentioned the other day." 
 
 Delaplaine had drawn near the log-fire in the big 
 chimney-place ; for the evening outside (broken with 
 innumerable voices of crickets and katydids) told 
 chillingly of perished summer. He turned his head 
 a little away from the blaze, though still keeping his 
 slender body bowed and one thin hand crooked like 
 the claw of a bird, with the firelight shining through 
 it and staining it pink. He spoke to his wife : 
 
 "Did you see Adrian the other day?" h-e asked. 
 
 " I did," said Olivia. She was sorry that her tongue 
 had slipped. She had not previously referred, before
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 297 
 
 her husband, to these few past meetings with Adrian. 
 If he had asked her whether his secretary were at 
 the house in West Tenth Street when she had pre- 
 sented herself there, she would unhesitatingly have 
 answered " yes." As it was, she had preserved 
 silence regarding the whole affair. Adrian now en- 
 joyed a liberty on which, as the functionary of a 
 man like her husband, he was certainly to be congratu- 
 lated. Who could tell what sudden restriction might 
 be placed upon his goings and comings, provided 
 Olivia were to state that she had met and talked with 
 him? And so she had held her peace, by no means 
 regretful that Delaplaine had failed to question her. 
 
 He moved away from the fire, now. He was look- 
 ing with fixity at his wife. "You mean in Tenth 
 Street ? " he said. 
 
 " Yes," returned Olivia, striving to speak with utter 
 carelessness and succeeding. "Adrian happened to 
 be there at the same time with myself." 
 
 "Ah . . . indeed," said Delaplaine, with a tone so 
 neutral and colorless as to leave the spirit in which he 
 made this brief response wholly inscrutable for his 
 hearers. 
 
 "I am usually in Tenth Street until three in the 
 afternoon," " said Adrian, " when nothing calls me to 
 the bank." 
 
 Delaplaine 'turned and watched him placidly for a 
 moment. " My dear boy," he said, " I know the irre- 
 proachable industry of your habits as my secretary. 
 You have no cause to enlighten me upon that point." 
 
 Adrian bit his lip. He wondered what displeasure 
 this sudden access of mock politeness foretokened. 
 Almost immediately after this, Delaplaine strolled
 
 298 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 out of the apartment, and in a few minutes a servant 
 appeared requesting that Adrian would meet his mas- 
 ter for a short further talk in the study. 
 
 " He is angry," thought Olivia, " at my having pre- 
 sumed to see poor Adrian in Tenth Street without 
 informing him. And he is going to make his anger 
 felt." 
 
 She was right. Adrian did not pass the following 
 day at Greenacre. Delaplaine had discovered that 
 there were letters of importance in which he would 
 require his secretary's assistance at the bank. 
 Throughout the remainder of their residence in 
 the country-house, Adrian was permitted to pay 
 them no second visit. 
 
 "Is it jealousy?" Olivia asked herself, "or is it 
 only the autocratic protest of a man who searches 
 for some cold-blooded device of annoyance?" 
 
 Delaplaine never made her sure just what it was. 
 If he anticipated an expression of disapproval on the 
 part of his wife, no such evidence greeted him. The 
 truth was, Olivia now simply awaited what the com- 
 ing season in New York would bring forth. If he 
 attempted then to hamper the enjoyment, the relaxa- 
 tion, the self -forgetful ness that she daily grew to crave 
 with stronger yearning, she might have some cards to 
 play in such a cruel victimizing game by which he 
 would be surprised if not repulsed. 
 
 Latter October was despoiling the trees about 
 Greenacre of their last leafy brilliancies when Mr. 
 and Mrs. Delaplaine returned to town. The Tenth 
 Street house was most capably prepared for their re- 
 ception. Servants were in readiness ; carriages and 
 horses waited Olivia's order; the air and distinction
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 299 
 
 of the entire household were past cavil. But no 
 one was invited to participate in all this reposeful 
 and flawlessly refined luxury. Olivia had hoped to 
 see Adrian again, but he had seemingly left the abode 
 to return no more. She refrained from questioning 
 her husband with respect to his absence. 
 
 November went by. Her two aunts, Mrs. Auchin- 
 closs and Mrs. Satterthwaite, had exchanged visits 
 with her. At last came the large Auchincloss din- 
 ner, which she was permitted to accept, and which 
 marked the beginning of her career as a woman of 
 
 o o 
 
 society. 
 
 The Patriarchs' Ball was of course followed by many 
 others, both public and private, and Olivia went to 
 every one which the marital veto did not exclude. 
 Delaplaine was excessively commode about it all. He 
 never danced nowadays, and yet he would sit chatting 
 with the dowagers till the small morning hours, again 
 and again, while his wife shone as a star of the cotil- 
 lon. It began to be declared of him that he would 
 make a model husband. But no one saw his petty 
 domestic tyrannies, or the lynx-like way in which he 
 watched all Olivia's male admirers. It delighted his 
 egotism that she should " succeed " thus brilliantly. 
 He wanted his wife to be not merely a great lady, 
 but also a lady of well-conceded personal charm. For 
 this reason her popularity pleased him. But other 
 points connected with it pricked and irritated him. 
 Like almost every old man who has ever been in love 
 with a young woman, he became susceptible to the 
 sharpest pangs of jealousy ; but in his special case 
 they were seizures which all the more clearly indicated 
 how barren and arid was his nature through the aus-
 
 300 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 terity of its unrelieved selfishness. His was the old 
 dogTin-the-manger feeling : he could not secure 
 Olivia's heart himself, but he was determined that 
 no one else should secure it. 
 
 Slowly, but with a gathering increase toward their 
 culmination, his suspicions all assumed a single shape. 
 The season was now ending; Lent was on the verge 
 of throwing over the giddy multitude that penitential 
 nimbus in which it is supposed to conceal its follies 
 even while still indulging them. Delaplaine now 
 felt certain that Jasper Massereene was preferred by 
 Olivia to all her other devotees. He privately thought 
 the young man excellent style, as he himself would 
 have put it. What he chiefly liked about Massereene 
 was the engaging simplicity which went with an intel- 
 lect of no ordinai-y calibre. He had tested that intel- 
 lect more than once in their talks together, and he had 
 been astonished at the thoughtfulness, cultivation and 
 acumen concealed behind manners that were no less 
 elegant than unpretentious. 
 
 The truth was that he failed to see in Jasper Mas- 
 sereene a product of our so-called modern agnosticism 
 totally opposite from that which he himself repre- 
 sented, and yet in every way as distinctively stamped 
 by the same peculiar parentage. Massereene was of 
 necessity the finer and more thorough scholar of the 
 two. His reading had been wider, his outlook was 
 more educationally sweeping. But writers and think- 
 ers like Mill, Spencer, Darwin, Buckle, Huxley or 
 Lecky had stood the mental sponsors of both. And 
 yet with Massereene a sincere and thriving optimism 
 had resulted from precisely the same causes which 
 had fed and vitalized Delaplaine's implacable pessim-
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 301 
 
 ism. The contrast between these two individualities 
 could not have been more positive than it was, and 
 yet they had been moulded, so to speak, by one iden- 
 tical philosophic potency. 
 
 Delaplaine had asked his own mind, not many weeks 
 aero what could be the inducement which led this En^- 
 
 o o 
 
 lish-reared young radical to mix among the frivolities 
 of a fashionable New York winter. He had seen that 
 species of gayety at its most shining stage of London 
 development. Why should he care for so feeble and 
 comparatively provincial a reproduction of it as he 
 encountered here? If he had been a shallow, or even 
 a conventionally mediocre person, it would have al- 
 tered the case ; but he was very far from being either. 
 He might have gone to a few of those entertainments 
 where one meets the meagre literary element of New 
 York society; or he might have dropped in at a few 
 of the Twentieth Century Club reunions, presided 
 over by persons of culture and solid ability, even 
 though their assembled throngs are perhaps not al- 
 ways just the serious auditors to be expected at such 
 momentous gatherings. But to go about night after 
 night, where flippancy reigned undisputed, to dance 
 that mechanical cotillon, to send bouquets idly broad- 
 cast among silly women, to prefer deliberately the in- 
 terchange of platitudes for that of ideas a like 
 course in one so talented and sensible was hard to 
 account for. 
 
 Suddenly Delaplaine, with no cheerful sensations, 
 grew confident that he had found a solution of the 
 puzzle. Massereene went out into the merry world 
 because Olivia went. He was more persistently and 
 meaningly attentive to her than any other of her male
 
 302 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 friends. The latter were getting, indeed, to pay him 
 a certain deference of priority when he appeared. 
 Delaplaine began to watch these demonstrations 
 with an augmenting inward restlessness. One morn- 
 ing he returned from the bank unexpectedly, and en- 
 tered the drawing-room to find Olivia seated there 
 with Jasper Massereene in earnest conversation. A 
 day or two afterward, having promised Olivia that he 
 would meet her at a certain large and noteworthy re- 
 ception, he was exceedingly late in keeping the ap- 
 pointment. Olivia had left the reception with Mas- 
 sereene, having dismissed her carriage a few minutes 
 beforehand. Delaplaine had the pleasure of seeing 
 these two, strolling in the most leisurely manner 
 side by side, from the window of his brougham as 
 it sped up Madison Avenue. 
 
 About a fortnight ago invitations had been sent out 
 for a great ball at the Satterthwaites' on the day but 
 one preceding Lent. This ball was regarded as a 
 most appropriate termination of the winter's mirth- 
 making. The Satterthwaites were such incontestable 
 old Knickerbockers that society felt a grateful thrill 
 to them for thus magnanimously helping to wind up 
 the season. Then, too, it was so generous of the Sat- 
 terthwaites ; for they had done so much entertaining 
 in previous years, and their two girls, Emmeline and 
 Elaine, were still husbandless. " I believe there is a 
 ... a ... Mr. Plunkett who is quite attentive to 
 the elder of my two cousins," Madeleine Auchincloss 
 used to say nowadays, with her most innocent smile. 
 "I don't know much about Mr. Plunkett, and of 
 course the name is not a familiar one, but I think 
 he has a married sister who goes among artists and
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 303 
 
 writers and that kind of people. I am not sure but 
 that Mr. Plunkett is a writer himself." These last 
 words were always added with the suggestion of not 
 wanting to be too hard on the young gentleman 
 concerned, and to give him his full right of contra- 
 dicting what may have been a false accusation. 
 
 There was no one conspicuously attentive to Made- 
 leine. But she would never have put up with any- 
 body whose principal recommendations to matrimony 
 were that he possessed gifts either of brains or breed- 
 ing. Who can guess just how keen a satisfaction it 
 gave her to insinuate that if her cousin Emmeline 
 should contract an engagement before very long, it 
 would not be to a person of either station or wealth ? 
 As for Madeleine herself, she would never be d 
 prendre on d, laisser in the way that some well-born 
 girls allow themselves to become. Not she! Either 
 she would marry advantageously or not at all. Alas! 
 it is just this high and disinterested view of marriage 
 that is yearly filling the ranks of our most select 
 American maidens with cases of inflexible spinster- 
 hood ! 
 
 A general understanding existed that the Satter- 
 thwaite ball was to be given in honor of its hostess's 
 beloved niece, Mrs. Spencer Delaplaine. Olivia's hus- 
 band, after drawing these conclusions regarding Mas- 
 sereene of which mention has been made, was now 
 resolved that the intimacy should forthwith end. His 
 wife had, once before, boldly disobeyed him ; that re- 
 volt had concerned her ceasing longer to know Mrs. 
 Ottarson. But on all other occasions where he had 
 commanded she had acceded, and the meekness with 
 which she had borne his manifold irritations could not
 
 304 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 have offered any domestic despot more tempting 
 chances of tyranny. There is little doubt that 
 Delaplaine mistook the motives of this former con- 
 tinued meekness when he said to her, only a short 
 time before the much-talked-of ball : 
 
 " I suppose you are engaged for the German at the 
 Satterthwaites'?" 
 
 "Yes," Olivia replied. 
 
 " May I ask to whom ? " 
 
 " To Mr. Massereene." 
 
 "Ah?" murmured Delaplaine. It was about four 
 o'clock in the afternoon, and he had met his wife, clad 
 in a daintily fresh street-costume, at the door of the 
 lower front drawing-room. Her coupe waited outside. 
 She was going to pay some visits of etiquette. She 
 had been looking over her cards, and held a little col- 
 lection of them in her neat-gloved hand. They were 
 the cards of the gentlewomen whose visiting-day hap- 
 pened to be this particular one. 
 
 " I have a word to say," Delaplaine now continued, 
 with his usual faultless repose. "Be good enough to 
 let me say it in here, will you ? " And he passed im- 
 mediately into the drawing-room. 
 
 Olivia followed him. He had tried her very sorely 
 of late ; more than once she had felt her patience giv- 
 ing way beneath his formidable impertinences, his 
 steel-tipped personalities. She knew that her popu- 
 larity gratified his pride, but she had begun to weary 
 under the incessant goad of slur by which he made 
 her pay for having thus pleased others besides himself. 
 
 After they had both cleared the threshold of the 
 outer hall by a good many paces, Delaplaine turned 
 and quietly faced her.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 305 
 
 "You are too much seen in the company of that man, 
 Massereene," he said. 
 
 " Indeed ! You think so ? " 
 
 "I decidedly think so. It must cease. I allow you 
 to be a woman of fashion for the present, because it 
 suits me that you should show people how my mar- 
 riage, late in life though it was, has not resulted in my 
 marrying a feminine dullard. You have held your 
 own thus far very well. I did not expect to find it 
 expedient that I should rebuke any imprudence in 
 you. I now find it so. As I said, you see too' much 
 of this Massereene. I don't wish you to dance with 
 him the last German of the season. And I will not 
 permit you thus to dance it. You must break your 
 engagement with him for the Satterthwaite ball. . . . 
 
 o o 
 
 Do you understand me ? " 
 
 "Perfectly," said Olivia. Her eyes had been 
 drooped for several seconds. She now raised them 
 and looked at him as lie had never seen -her look at 
 him before not even when she had defied him with 
 relation to cutting Mrs. Ottarson. " Perfectly," she 
 repeated, " and I shall not do as you desire." She 
 paused for a moment, and drew a deep, long breath, 
 her face paling noticeably at the same time. "I am 
 engaged to Mr. Massereene," she continued, "and I 
 shall dance with him on Wednesday night." She 
 took a step or two nearer Delaplaine. A light came 
 flashingly into her blue eyes, and a curl raised her lip 
 so that he could see the white teeth glistening be- 
 neath it. "You have asked me," she still went on, 
 " whether I understood you. I do understand you, 
 thoroughly. And I refuse point-blank I refuse 
 to do as you most unjustly require ! "
 
 306 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 He stared at her. He had got out his eyeglasses, 
 and had begun to twirl them by their slender cord 
 over one finger. 
 
 " Ah," he said in very low tones ; " you . . . you 
 defy me, then ? " 
 
 Olivia threw back her head, and laughed with a 
 terrible bitterness. The stored-up misery of months 
 rang in that laugh. But something else rang in it as 
 well the desperate challenge of a spirit goaded until 
 resignation was flung quite away. 
 
 "I do defy you ! " she answered. " You have made 
 me suffer long enough ! Now you shall see me throw 
 off the mask. Now you shall see just what sort of a 
 woman you married when you made her your wife 
 made her so by the lies you yourself not long ago ac- 
 knowledged that you spoke ! "
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 307 
 
 XVII. 
 
 DELAPLAINE drew backward, feeling that he had 
 indeed unloosed a whirlwind. Olivia's face was very 
 pale, now, and its expression was one of blended cour- 
 age and contempt. She gave her husband no time to 
 reply. She seized upon the swift-passing chance that 
 his own evident amazement afforded her. Her voice 
 was not loud, but its vibrations expressed at once a 
 fierceness and an intrepidity which mere sound could 
 not have more plainly conveyed. 
 
 " You have told me how you came to marry me. 
 But you have never yet heard how I soiled myself by 
 consenting to marry you. My consent had nothing 
 whatever to do with gratitude toward my dead father. 
 I became your wife, in the distressing way that I did 
 so become, because ambitious feelings tempted me 
 and most unworthily, I admit. . . . You know of my 
 wretched illness after learning that you would live 
 and be my husband. . . . Well, let all that pass . . . 
 I recovered ; I was your wife, and I faced the fate 
 that I had brought on myself. But how did I face it ? 
 Just as if it had been the infliction of a deserved pen- 
 ance ; that, indeed, is what I held it to be. You were 
 my yoke my burden ; but I had brought you upon 
 myself, and I determined to bear you bravely. At 
 first your kind treatment was a new reproach to me. 
 I did not merit being thus permitted to endure the 
 consequences of my own misdeeds with so little conse-
 
 308 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 qucnt pain. It seemed only right that I should suffer. 
 But tliat came soon enough. You made me suffer. 
 You cannot say that I flinched often. I am not a 
 fool; you knew I was not that, when you married me. 
 I don't know whether you saw or not that I was 
 simply clenching my teeth and bearing it all as best I 
 could. I think you did see this, and that it made you 
 still more cruel in your dealings with me. Meanwhile 
 I drew upon my own fortitude, and kept my nerves as 
 steady as the good fortune of my youth could help me 
 to keep them. If I had been an older woman, I might 
 have broken down. As it was I did not break down. 
 'I am taking my punishment,' I said and I took it. 
 Once you presumed to dictate terms regarding the 
 continuance of my friendship with Aunt Thyrza. 
 There I opposed you, for you passed (and at the very 
 moment of assuming your real character) beyond the 
 bounds of either my toleration or my self-control. 
 But perhaps that little episode gave you my gauge, as 
 it were; it showed you just how far you could bend 
 me before I broke. On a hundred different occasions 
 you have had no cause to complain of my disobedience. 
 I have never been in the least afraid of you. If I had 
 been I should have felt fear in taking the stand that I 
 take now. For I admit that my patience is at last 
 exhausted. You say that I shall not dance the Ger- 
 man with Jasper Massereene at the Satterthwaite ball. 
 I reply to you with the utmost conceivable defiance^ 
 that I shall so dance. If you try to prevent my going 
 to the ball, then you must use force it may be that 
 you will even use personal violence. I have heard of 
 husbands like yourself doing just those miserable 
 things. Very well, then tout est dit. You push the
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 309 
 
 whole matter into publicity. For myself, I don't care 
 whether you do or no. If they told me afterward 
 that I had any good ground for getting a divorce from 
 you, I am sure that I should sooner or later rejoice 
 very much. I confess my entire rdle of hypocrisy to 
 have been a sad failure. I play no longer either the 
 saint or the meek-souled woman. Henceforth I mean 
 to forget that I sinned in marrying you. Or, if I do 
 not forget, I shall consider my expiation accomplished. 
 Your future commands will win from me no more 
 attention than your taunts have done for a year past. 
 You must now either leave me my own mistress or be 
 prepared for my desertion of you. I mean, plainly, 
 that I will go back to Aunt Thyrza. No power on 
 earth can make me live with you against my will, and 
 certainly such power is not represented by either your 
 insolence or your persecution." 
 
 Olivia moved past her husband, after this long yet 
 inflexibly sustained speech, with a queen's ownfroid- 
 eur in her face. Heredity is a marvellous fact; you 
 saw, as if by a sudden little burst of revelation, that 
 she was her aunt Letitia's indisputable niece but 
 with, of course, a vast difference. 
 
 She left the room, and he allowed her to do so with- 
 out volunteering the least reply. He could scarcely 
 have done anything which Olivia would have found 
 more tantalizing. 
 
 For a long time, however, he remained there in the 
 drawing-room. He was not angry at his wife. Lov- 
 ing her as, in his curious fashion, he did love her, the 
 audacity of her recent outburst had even placed her 
 before him in a new admired light. But at the same 
 time it had inflamed his jealousy with a wholly new
 
 310 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 fire. He assured himself that Jasper Massereene was 
 at the root of her abrupt rebellion. She had flung 
 aside all disguise, but not because she was weary and 
 stung beyond the bounds of patience. A passion had 
 enveloped her spirit, and she was acting by its impe- 
 rious dictates. Her swift sentences of accusation and 
 of explanation had pierced him deeper than he desired 
 to let any living mortal know and least of all her 
 from whose quiver such wounding shafts had sped. 
 He had always known and felt that she cared nothing 
 for him ; but her announcement that she cared noth- 
 ing for reputable concealment of her injuries and her 
 matrimonial heart-burnings, assailed him with an un- 
 expected keenness. 
 
 He sat for a long while with his thin hands knotted 
 together and his gray head most dejectedly drooped. 
 He had too much power of brain not to perceive the 
 mournful absurdity of his own position. The love 
 that he bore Olivia the love that his acid and repul- 
 sive temperament could no more express in a gracious 
 and courtly way than some fountain whose tubes are 
 mire-clogged can send forth a limpid current to the 
 sun this love seemed now objective and apparent 
 before him, mocking him with its incongruous vitality. 
 And socially it stood a fair chance of wrecking him. 
 He had always abhorred the idea of a scandal being 
 connected with his name. But here, suddenly, he 
 found himself face to face with a desperate woman 
 a woman who had asserted that she would not hesitate 
 to turn the full glare of publicity upon their past 
 relations as man and wife. 
 
 Still, Delaplaine's agitation, keen as it now was, did 
 not prevent his lucid mind from working. Almost
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 311 
 
 instinctively he reviewed Olivia's late conduct, and 
 compared it with the manner in which she had previ- 
 ously behaved to him. Did she not really value her 
 present position ? Had she not openly admitted that 
 she had married him solely for reasons of worldliness? 
 Infatuated as she may have become with Masscreene, 
 was there not more temporary feminine heat in her 
 late show of recklessness than its apparent sincerity 
 would imply? She had assumed a posture of the most 
 baffling indifference as regarded her pi'esent place 
 before the world, but would this dauntless unconcern 
 prove permanent? She had professed herself un re- 
 gardful of future impoverishment, but would she so 
 bravely meet, after all, the stern, practical test of her 
 boasted hardihood? 'I will try her,' Delaplaine said 
 to himself. And he did ti'y her believing unchange- 
 ably, at the same time, that she was now swayed 
 by an ai'dent and headlong sentiment for Jasper Mas- 
 sereene. 
 
 That same evening they .were engaged to be present 
 at one of those great, costly dinners which grow more 
 and more frequent as New York departs farther from 
 early republican ideals. Delaplaine did not again see 
 his wife until he met her in the lower hall, cloaked for 
 the carriage that waited outside. He noted that she 
 was a little paler than usual ; otherwise her counte- 
 nance bore no traces of the tempest that not long ago 
 had stirred and kindled it. A footman opened the 
 front door, and she silently passed out, descending the 
 stoop. Another footman opened the door of the 
 carriage. As Olivia entered the latter she appeared 
 perfectly ignorant that her husband was following 
 her. He seated himself opposite to her, and the
 
 312 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 vehicle rolled away. It was dark, and the electric 
 lights were all aglow. Olivia, leaning back against 
 soft cushions, let her gaze obliquely fasten itself upon 
 an unshaded segment of the window nearest her. 
 They had begun to move at a rapid pace, for their 
 hosts lived considerably higher up town than West 
 Tenth Street, and it was now almost the hour (half- 
 past seven) at which they had been asked to present 
 themselves. As the carriage was hurried clatteringly 
 
 O O / 
 
 through Fifth Avenue, Olivia watched the various 
 forms of the passers, outlined with such inky darkness 
 against the silvery glare all about them. They would 
 have done, in their weirclness, for a Blake or a Vedder 
 to have peopled some fanciful hell with. "And yet," 
 came her thought, both humorous and grim, "I haven't 
 a doubt that lots of them would be very unsuited to 
 infernal surroundings. And I dare say that very few 
 of them would change fates with me if they could 
 look into my heart and see the darkness there" 
 
 She had already begun to shudder at the prospect 
 of Delaplaine's hostility being shown by some act of 
 vengeful exposure. She was not willing to make the 
 least retraction of her passionate words, nor did she, 
 indeed, regret their utterance. But dearly as she 
 still loved and would always love Mrs. Ottarson, the 
 mere thought of returning to West Twenty-Third 
 Street had borrowed from calmer reflection almost 
 terrifying colors. Still, she would go back there 
 resignedly if the worst should come. After all, if 
 her husband refused full surrender, to live with him 
 longer would be insupportable torment. His jealousy 
 of young Adrian Etherege had seemed a trifling insult 
 enough, without this later exposition. It was perhaps
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 313 
 
 because Jasper Massereene had roused in her feelings 
 where an ardent respect narrowly approached positive 
 reverence, that Delaplaine's last unforeseen fiat, pro- 
 nounced with relation to him, had marked the abso- 
 lute limit of her concession. She had still no more 
 dreamed of loving Massareene than she had dreamed 
 of not honoring his intellect, his manliness and his 
 rectitude, or of not finding solace, help and encourage- 
 ment in his unique companionship. She was a woman 
 whose fervor of sentiment (provided that she, a wife, 
 had realized cherishing it toward any man not her 
 husband) might have burned on in her soul as harm- 
 lessly as the fire of a diamond will burn amid its 
 defensive crystal sheath. 
 
 The silence that Delaplaine maintained there in the 
 darkness of the carnage began to impress her with the 
 keenest discomfort. What fell intensity of response 
 or of counter action was he reserving behind this 
 stony reticence ? The very gloom which enwrapped 
 him added an appreciable dread to his mysteriously 
 speechless policy. And policy was just the word to 
 define his present attitude. He was a man of untold 
 resources. He had doubtless dealt with women be- 
 fore now under circumstances where emotion had 
 arrayed itself against calculation and self-mastery. 
 "And I," thought Olivia, while she continued im- 
 movably to stare away from him, through the win- 
 dow of the swift, rumbling carriage, "I have only my 
 heart, my sense of right, my recognition of outrage to 
 guide me, in fighting with his frigid tact, his experi- 
 enced cruelty." 
 
 Suddenly he surprised her by speaking. His voice 
 was just loud enough to be plainly heard.
 
 314 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 "You still intend to defy me in that matter of 
 dancing with a certain gentleman ?" 
 
 She gathered herself together, as it were, on the 
 instant. "Yes," she replied. 
 
 " I wouldn't excite myself again, if I were you," he 
 returned, with the same impenetrable undertone. "I 
 can hear you quite as well if you answer me in a 
 lower key. I suppose you don't want to go into din- 
 ner looking red in the face and vulgarly flustered. 
 Your appearance was very composed very reputa- 
 bly so when I last had the pleasure of seeing you. 
 A quiet question asks only a quiet answer. I'm going 
 to put another question, by the way. Provided you 
 do leave me, as you distinctly threatened, have you 
 weighed the importance of what I could say you stated 
 to be your true reasons for having married me ?" 
 
 "Have ... I ... weighed its importance?" came 
 the somewhat faltered answer. Then, more firmly, 
 she went on : "I have weighed the importance of but 
 one thing ending the wrongs you have made me 
 suffer from." 
 
 "Ah," he murmured. She heard him draw a long 
 breath. "It's rather a serious thing to have said of 
 one that you married an old man on his death-bed for 
 his money and afterward freely admitted this." 
 
 Olivia gave a bleak laugh, unconscious of having 
 done so. " And the old man ! " she exclaimed. " Pray 
 don't forget his side of the affair. It would scarcely 
 be just." 
 
 " Oh, my dear madame, I assure you that I shall 
 entirely forget it. If there is ever any public talk of 
 you and me, the drift of opinion cannot possibly set 
 but one way."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 315 
 
 " I understand," she returned ; " you will use every 
 means to make it set so that falsehood can supply you. 
 with." 
 
 " Oh, not at all. My record, you know, is quite 
 unimpeachable. I shall simply make a few state- 
 ments, and people will all believe me. Don't for an 
 instant flatter yourself that they will not. I have 
 been a great many years before New York society. 
 You may think very hard things about me, but New 
 York society thinks exceedingly nice ones. It will 
 say 'Poor Delaplaine! At his age to become the 
 victim of a manoeuvring girl like that ! What a 
 terribly unprincipled creature she must be ! ' Some of 
 the people whom you told me you had met in Mrs. 
 Ottarson's boarding-house might sympathize with you, 
 after they had heard your side of the story. I don't 
 just know how contented you would feel with that 
 sort of a constituency. But it would be all you could 
 ever secure. Of course if you had money, matters 
 might be different; you could afford, then, to snap 
 your fingers in the faces of your detractors. But as 
 you would now be placed, you would represent two 
 very unpleasant phases of life poverty and unpopu- 
 larity. You would find that nearly all your friends 
 would drop away from you after you had gone to the 
 Twenty-Third Street boarding-house. It wouldn't be 
 so difficult for them to forget that you are a Van 
 Rensselaer after you had been at pains to remind 
 them that you are also a ... Jenks. And your slim 
 purse would be no temporary inconvenience, either, 
 provided you really left me. I would get the clever- 
 est lawyers I could find to keep you out of your thirds 
 after you became my widow. I'm not sure but that
 
 316 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 desertion would afford rather easy grounds for such 
 an arrangement. I'm entirely serious about all this, 
 as I think you must perceive. You might fight my 
 will, but litigation is expensive." 
 
 His words had to Olivia's jarred nerves the sharp- 
 ness and hardness of knife-edges. " I shall not fight 
 your will," she said. "If I live longer than you do 
 I will not touch a dollar of your money except what 
 you choose lawfully to leave me. As for quitting 
 your house now, I will only do it if I am driven to it." 
 
 "I see. If I don't consent to your dancing the 
 German with Jasper Massureene." It would be impos- 
 sible for any spoken sentence to convey satire at once 
 more caustic and more serene. 
 
 Olivia gnawed her lip in the darkness. She had 
 always detested satire, but when, as she now felt, it 
 became like a wounding splinter from the stony nature 
 of him who employed it, her aversion deepened to 
 loathing. 
 
 " Put it that way if you please," she replied. " I 
 have no objections. What you say is a part, though 
 far from being all, of the actual truth." 
 
 "Precisely," he muttered, with his unalterable re- 
 pose. " The real cause of war between nations very 
 often lies wholly outside the excuse for beginning 
 hostilities." 
 
 " I require no excuse," responded Olivia, " and I 
 have no cause except one resentment against injury." 
 
 Just then the carriage stopped. For the first time 
 since their entrance into the carriage together, Olivia 
 saw her husband's face, bathed in the white light that 
 streamed from an opposite corner. It looked, that 
 face of Delaplaine's, as though it were cut out of drab
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 317 
 
 slate. A slight smile flickered about its parted lips. 
 She had seen that smile hundreds of times before, but 
 it had never looked so coolly devilish to her as at this 
 especial time. 
 
 "You have another cause," he said. "I mean Jas- 
 per Massareene." 
 
 "That is untrue," she answered, while her heart 
 gave one indignant throb. 
 
 " You say so in the most virtuously glib way. But 
 you can prove it by obeying my commands." 
 
 " I will not obey them." 
 
 " Oh, but you must," he said, looking at her with 
 eyes that seemed to hold the glint of steel in their dim 
 pupils. 
 
 " I will not. What I say to you I say for the last 
 time, too : I will not. Be prepared for any course 
 you may decide to take. But rely on this : my oppo- 
 sition meets and matches your tyranny, act for act." 
 
 All this passed very quickly between them. In 
 another moment the footman had swung wide open 
 the door of the carriage. Delaplaine at once alighted, 
 and assisted his wife to do the same, with that sn'ace- 
 
 O 
 
 ful composure of movement which his years had not 
 yet destroyed, and which, in his earlier life, had won 
 him a well-merited repute for courtly and distin- 
 guished manners. 
 
 It looked, now, like the most momentous sort of 
 deadlock between them. But circumstance, that 
 busiest of entanglers and unravellers in her dealings 
 with the threads of all human destiny, was already 
 employed on her usual incalculable task after a fashion 
 that neither could have remotely prophesied. 
 
 The Satterthwaite ball never occurred. Not many
 
 318 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 hours later, New York society woke to the 
 
 table fact that it would be deprived of so festal an 
 
 opportunity for crossing the dreary Lenten threshold. 
 
 Little Lulu Satterthwaito had been in her gayest 
 spirits that morning. There was to be a commemora- 
 tive cotillon at dancing-school in the afternoon. The 
 school continued through Lent, but some of the merry 
 young folk who 'formed its corps of disciples had 
 induced their preceptors to give them a gala meeting, 
 as if it were "winding up" an imaginary fashionable 
 season. Lulu herself had risen the reigning spirit of 
 the proposed frolic. She had been for days full of 
 " mamma's ball," and watchful of all its preparatory 
 details. She knew exactly what her mother and her 
 two sisters were to wear, and had said to Elaine 
 several days ago, with her little golden head put sapi- 
 ently on one side, and a miniature frown of marked 
 solemnity on her forehead : 
 
 "Do you know, Elly, I've been thinking it over 
 very seriously, and I do think nothing will be so 
 becoming to you, after all, as your blue tulle trimmed 
 with the forget-me-nots? You've only worn it once 
 before, you know at the second of the assemblies 
 and you've not a single dress that shows you off half 
 as well. It's altogether the most fetching thing you 
 have." 
 
 But Elaine had answered snappishly that she would 
 wear what she pleased, and that such proceedings 
 were not of a sort to interest little girls. " Besides, 
 Lulu," her sister added, " if you don't stop using those 
 slangy phrases which I'm sure that Vnn Dnm boy 
 teaches you, I'll get papa to make you cease having 
 anything to do with him."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 319 
 
 Lulu tossed her head. "Papa wouldn't," she re- 
 torted. " He knows Charity's a catch ; some day he 
 will have lots and lots of money; all the big girls will 
 be setting their caps for him when he grows up. I 
 heard Mrs. Rivington tell her little Eva so the other 
 day, at the dancing-class. Eva is so stupid. She 
 wanted to know what kind of a cap, and how it was 
 going to be set. And I explained just what her 
 mother meant. I happened to be passing, on Dickey 
 Van Horn's arm, at the time; and then I heard two 
 or three of the other mammas laugh, and one of them 
 said: 'She'll hold her own, some day,' meaning 
 me, of course. Hold my own! I should think I 
 would ! " And Lulu gave her slender little body a 
 whirling turn that made her look for an instant not 
 unlike that pirouetting fairy they used to put on the 
 old-fashioned Christmas plum-cakes. 
 
 She had been engaged by young Van Dam to lead 
 the cotillon with him that afternoon ; or rather, she 
 had indicated in a gracious, managerial way that this 
 would be the most advisable plan. Monsieur Duprez, 
 the head of the dancing-school, and his sister, Madame 
 Chantillon, had become Lulu's willing slaves. As her 
 brother Peyster expressed it, "Now, she bosses things, 
 now, Lulu does," and Peyster was assuredly right. 
 
 She had even considered with her preceptor all the 
 different figures that were to be led, and her privi- 
 leged eyes alone had prematurely gazed upon the 
 glowing and tasteful favors after their purchase. She 
 intended to look her very best that day, she had 
 informed the two nurses who would assist her at her 
 toilet. " There won't be many girls there much older 
 than I am," she had said, " and I mean to cut them
 
 320 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 out completely. Oh, dear, how I wish they only 
 would mention our affairs in the papers, and describe 
 how we were dressed. . . . Well, well, one must have 
 patience ; all that is sure to come later, when one 
 really goes out into society." 
 
 She had been greatly excited all through the morn- 
 ing; but it chanced to be Saturday, and hence was 
 not a day of study with her. At about eleven o'clock 
 she was handed by one of the servants a bouquet of 
 the rarest roses, with a card attached to it, bearing 
 the name of Mr. Charlton Van Dam. If Elaine's 
 friend, Lord Scarletcoat, could have heard the little 
 scream of pride and pleasure with which Lulu seized 
 this enchanting nosegay, he would hardly have re- 
 versed his previous unjust opinion as to there being 
 no children in America. 
 
 When the hour came for the child to be dressing, 
 she discovered with dismay that her two sisters and 
 her mother would all be absent. They had visits to 
 pay, or engagements of a similiar sort. Elaine, just 
 before departing, gave Lulu a quizzical look of amaze- 
 ment as she said: 
 
 " The idea, Lulu, of your expecting that we would 
 stay in to see your frock put on 1 It is too absurd. 
 ... If I only had my way with you, I'd stop all this 
 vanity and nonsense by sending you up to the Park 
 with your nurse, and letting you breathe fresh air and 
 get some healthful exercise." 
 
 "Pooh!" cried Lulu, disdainfully. "I see more of 
 the Park than you do, Elly. I rode six or seven miles 
 there yesterday. My riding-school teacher says I'm 
 the bravest and best young rider, of my sex, that 
 he has."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 321 
 
 Emnieline, who was always kinder to her preco- 
 cious little sister than was Elaine, and who chanced 
 also to be present, just then, here broke into an 
 amused laugh. "Which means, Lulu," she said, 
 " that you ride very well for a little girl. Why 
 are you so afraid of being called a little girl ? Some 
 day you'll be sorry nobody can possibly call you one 
 any longer." 
 
 Lulu gave a short, self-satisfied nod. "No doubt," 
 she returned. "I want the time to come when I shall 
 be sorry ; that's all." 
 
 " You do too many things," said her mother, who 
 had entered a few minutes ago and had been quietly 
 listening, not far from the doorway. "It's your 
 papa's idea that riding agrees with you ; it's not 
 mine. But you've those red spots in your cheeks 
 now, my dear, which show that you are ner- 
 vous." 
 
 "Oh, I'm always nervous," said Lulu, wheeling her 
 tiny figure about. " I'm a nervous constitution." 
 
 The three ladies exchanged glances that showed 
 how comic they thought this admission from so 
 ridiculously youthful an authority ; and Lulu swept 
 over all their faces a covert look, revealing the most 
 unchildish self-consciousness. She wanted to see 
 whether she had not said something diverting and 
 extraordinary for one of her years. Among the 
 many faulty features of her unhappy education, 
 was this tendency on the part of her elders to en- 
 courage her in the 'habit of imitating their own forms 
 of phraseology. Eager to be thought "old for her 
 age," she was pei'petually having this unwholesome 
 craving fostered instead of repressed by those very
 
 322 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 observers of it who should have been the first to con- 
 demn its indulgence. 
 
 Her mother, Emmeline and Elaine soon afterward 
 left her. She was alone with the two nurses at the 
 commencement of her elaborate toilet. 
 
 "Je suis un peu fatiguee" she suddenly said to 
 Fran9oise, her favorite, after the process of frizzing 
 her lovely golden locks had been completed before a 
 large mirror. " J^ai mal a la tete, Franpoise ; peut- 
 etre c'est nne espece de neuralgie. J^ai remarque que 
 maman et mes soeurs souffrent comme pa, de temps en 
 temps. Ce n'est rien ; fa passera, fen suis sfire" 
 
 But it did not go away. In a short time there 
 came upon the child what she piteously described as 
 a raging headache ; she used even in her pain the 
 modes of speech caught from others far older than 
 herself. Her eyes began to shine with a feverishly 
 unnatural light. The two nurses looked at each other 
 in alarm. 
 
 " Mademoiselle se trouve malade" murmured one. 
 
 " Vraiementf" faltered the other. 
 
 " I'm not ill," asserted Lulu. She had not yet put 
 on her brilliant beribboned frock. But she went 
 toward it, where it lay, bright as a sunset cloud, 
 upon the bed. " I tell you it's only a headache, and 
 it makes me a little dizzy. I I had one, something 
 like it, the other day at dancing-school ; but it passed 
 off; it didn't last as long as this, and it didn't make 
 me so dizzy. . . . But this will pass off, too. . . . Ah, 
 my dress my beautiful dress. . . ." 
 
 And then, as her voice grew husky, she reeled, 
 while one of the nurses sprang to her. . . . 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite was the first of the absent ones
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 323 
 
 to return. She had taken "mamma's coupe" and had 
 been shopping a little, and calling a little at the 
 houses of various friends. She had spent money, 
 and talked scandal over more than a single cup of 
 tea, served her in the most delicate of china. She 
 could not have told you in which occupation she 
 found the most enjoyable desceuvrement, but spend- 
 ing money, talking scandal and drinking tea were all 
 very pleasurable pastimes. 
 
 Her young son, Peyster, met her in the hall as she 
 entered it. His eyes were red with crying. "Oh, 
 mamma ! " he exclaimed, and ran toward her, seizing 
 her dress. 
 
 But she repulsed him ; it was a very handsome dress, 
 and she did not like to have it treated so roughly, even 
 by the son of whom, in her way, she professed to be 
 very fond. 
 
 "Peystey, what are you doing?" she cried. And 
 then she saw what the dimness of the hall had not yet 
 allowed her to see. "You're crying? What has hap- 
 pened?" 
 
 " Oh, mamma ! Lulu ! Now, she's, now . . ." 
 
 The poor boy could say no more for his tears.
 
 324 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 DURING the next half hour or so, Bleecker Satter- 
 thwaite and his daughters, Emmeline and Elaine, all 
 three returned. They were all going to dine out 
 somewhere ; they had calculated their time for dress- 
 ing. Emmeline was going to one dinner-party, Elaine 
 to a second, and Mr. and Mrs. Satterthwaite had a 
 similar engagement which necessitated their keeping 
 it in one another's company. As for Aspinwall, he 
 had not returned at all. It was nearly always thus 
 with the members of this mundane and insatiably 
 pleasure-seeking household. Domesticity was un- 
 known to them. Theirs was a home without a 
 single home-like trait. They were a family who 
 resembled some fanatical priesthood all passionately 
 employed in various offices of pagan worship. Their 
 temple was that of fashion, and their rites were per- 
 formed with a truly sacerdotal zeal. It is doubtful 
 whether they reaped much enjoyment from the 
 whole senseless cult so doubly and signally sense- 
 less arnid a government that professes to be lifted on 
 republican bases above the Old World claims and pro- 
 testations of caste. 
 
 What charities were undertaken by Mrs. Satter- 
 thwaite or by either of her daughters bore relation 
 solely to the kind of co-patrons who would appear 
 on the same lists with themselves. Mrs. Auchincloss 
 and Madeleine literally, on many occasions, would
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 325 
 
 seek the slums of the city, personally acting as the 
 teachers and agents of mission-schools and various 
 other institutions. They were snobs, but snobs with 
 a religion, and as far as their religion went, its ethical 
 effects were salutary. Their trouble was the old 
 Pharisaical one; they penetrated into the most dole- 
 ful purlieus of the "East side," but it was known in 
 Fifth Avenue that they did so, and their pilgrimages 
 were not solitary ; they always made them in the so- 
 ciety of ladies who, whether young or old, were incon- 
 testably dans le monde. In fact, neither Mrs. Auchin- 
 closs nor Madeleine would have thought herself quite 
 as socially secure without her charities as with thorn. 
 They were a part of " duty," and not to have a code 
 of duty which you practically and rigorously respected 
 was, in their belief, not to be crowned with the best 
 sort of gentility. The root of the whole impulse 
 religious, no less than eleemosynary may have lain 
 in that one word, gentility. I am by no means sure 
 that the chief recommendation of godliness in the eyes 
 of Madeleine and her mother was not the highly 
 respectable odor which they considered to pervade 
 it. They prided themselves, too, upon being devo- 
 tional thinkers. They were always, in spite of their 
 avowed and seemingly adamantine faith, reading some 
 book of the many which our curious age now pro- 
 duces, wherein the defence of faith and its diligent 
 support from metaphysical sources., were made the 
 subject of numberless eloquent chapters. This month 
 they would be " oh, so much interested " in " that en- 
 chanting volume," " Science as the Confirmation of 
 Scripture," and next month they would own to an 
 equal admiration for " that wonderfully comforting
 
 326 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 series of essays," "Modern Thought as the Hand- 
 maid of Revelation." Mr. Auchincloss and the 
 blameless Chichester would appear to share their 
 esteem for works of this description. Mrs. Auchin- 
 closs would now and then say : " My husband has 
 been so absorbed, lately, in the delightful book," or 
 Madeleine would declare : " My brother, Chichester, 
 tells me that he has never read anything at once so 
 logical and so cheering." 
 
 With the Satterthwaites it had all been markedly 
 different. Their world was not the world of books, 
 and they would as soon have occupied their superficial, 
 butterfly existences with the evidences of Christian 
 creeds, from Methodism to the last decision of the 
 (Ecumenical Council, as they would have questioned 
 the advisability of mounting a tantivy coach or the 
 wisdom of playing lawn-tennis. They accepted both 
 modes of diversion, just as they accepted the rather 
 tiresome but wholly proper occupation of aristocratic 
 almsgiving. They lived solely for personal enjoy- 
 ment; but since others, who lived just as they did, 
 had conceded that it was "the thing" to show some 
 heed for those disagreeable hundreds of thousands 
 who made up the lower strata of society, they treated 
 such a popular drift of taste as though it had been a 
 new shade in bonnet-strings or a prevalent caprice in 
 the tying of them. 
 
 They were all keenly shocked on discovering the 
 illness of Lulu. Mr. Satterthwaite and his daughters 
 entered the little girl's chamber to find her mother, 
 the nurses and two physicians grouped about the bed- 
 side, while Peyster, with an awed look on his dull, 
 hobbledehoy ish face, sat quite still in one corner.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 327 
 
 Lulu was fearfully ill ; it soon become apparent to 
 the whole family that this was the case. Her trouble 
 was a brain congestion of sharp violence. The physi- 
 cians were loth to administer narcotics except in the 
 smallest quantities, and these appeared thus far to 
 accelerate rather than retard her disorder. There was 
 no doubt that she now grew hourly worse. Fits of 
 coma would be succeeded by bursts of delirium, in 
 which her lips, hot with sudden fever, would let fall 
 pell-mell sentences of the most pathetic mania. 
 
 And it all bore incessant reference to the unnatu- 
 rally strained, gay, frivolous life that she had been 
 permitted to live ! 
 
 "Mamma," she would suddenly cry, seeking to lift 
 herself from the bed, with glassy, staring eyes and a 
 face flushed crimson amid her yellow wealth of hair 
 " Mamma, I shall be late for the dancing-class ! And 
 you knoic I'm to lead the cotillon I've told you so 
 fifty times! . . . Who's that girl in my dress? Make 
 her take it off! Is it Sally Van Dam?" (Then a 
 wild, shrill laugh that pierced her hearers.) " Oh, if 
 it's only Sally, I don't care. She is Charity's sister. 
 . . . But none of the other girls shall dance with 
 Charity. . . . He and I are to lead together. On 
 horseback, too! Isn't it nice and queer? A German 
 in the Park on horseback! Yes, Monsieur Duprez 
 said it was all right. . . ." (Then a shivering moan of 
 terror and a glare of untold affright from the poor, 
 dilated eyes.) "Oh, look! look! One of the horses 
 is dancing all wrong. He's he's gone mad. . . . 
 It's Peystey's black pony; he wants to kill Bessie 
 Ludlow. . . . He'll trample her to death. . . . Pey- 
 stey! Can't you manage him! Can't you! Ah!
 
 328 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 it's all over ! He's killed her ! " (And then plaintive 
 shrieks, these ending in convulsions that gave the frail 
 limbs an almost unearthly strength.) 
 
 By about ten o'clock that night she woke from one 
 of her stupors, calling out : " Oh, I'm blind ! I'm 
 blind ! " 
 
 It was true. There had been some suffusion of the 
 visual nerve-centres, and from that moment sight was 
 hopelessly paralyzed. 
 
 And then a most bitter thing happened. Mrs. 
 Satterthwaite, trembling with distress, bent down and 
 clasped the terrified child in her arms. "Lulu!" she 
 cried, perhaps addressing her little girl with the first 
 true motherly accent that she had ever yet heard from 
 maternal lips : "Lulu! Don't be frightened ! I'm here. 
 Mamma's here. Don't you know mamma?" 
 
 But the child pushed her away, and rose up from 
 the bed with both arms gropingly outstretched, as 
 though her lost sight were hiding from her somewhere 
 near by and she sought to regain it. The mother's 
 embrace of consolation and protection was futile and 
 meaningless to her. What did she, poor sufferer, 
 know of such love as that ? A pat on the cheek, or a 
 stroke of the curls, now and then a nod, a smile, or 
 a laugh, when she delivered any of her bold, shrewd, 
 quaint sayings an occasional frown, lifted finger or 
 biting word of reprimand this child knew her mother 
 by these and similar tokens, but by these alone. And 
 now, in the ordeal of horror and pain, there was no 
 sweet magic and magnetism of affection to claim her 
 instinctive response. The arms that leaned to clasp 
 her had no familiar feeling; the bosom that would 
 have pillowed her head bore no recollected warmth.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 329 
 
 "It must be that I'm dying!" she shrieked. "The 
 darkness must be that ! Oh, I don't want to die ! I 
 want to live ! It's horrible to die, and turn all white 
 and stiff, and be put in a dark grave ! And I love 
 so to dance, and to ride on horseback, and to wear 
 nice clothes! . . . What is it that makes me blind? 
 Oh, can't somebody tear the blackness out of my 
 eyes? . . ." 
 
 Poignant as was all this for those who observed it, 
 mercy at least lay in the fact of its not lasting very 
 long. A swoon followed what had perhaps been the 
 most agonizing of Lulu's outbursts, and for a long 
 time she lay so pale and still that her watchers antici- 
 pated death at any instant. But just before death, 
 came re-awakened consciousness, and while a shudder 
 ran through the group at the bedside because they 
 feared a repetition of the lamentable scenes just 
 enacted, Lulu opened her still sightless eyes and began 
 to babble fragmentary sentences that soon told their 
 own dreamy and sombre story. . . . She was at 
 dancing-school at the grand fete that afternoon, 
 from which, hours ago, a messenger had been hurried 
 with dismay, to learn what detained herself and her 
 brother. . . . Now she sat beside Charity Van Dam 
 and smelled the bouquet he had sent her, and told him 
 how lovely she thought the flowers, and how kind it 
 was for him to send her such a real grown-up bouquet. 
 . . . Again, she would be in the mazes of a cotillon- 
 figure, prompting some fellow-dancer who was more 
 dull of wit than herself, or less nimble of foot. . . . 
 And at last she would seem to be in soft wonder and 
 perplexity why the fete had not begun. "Everything 
 is ready, Monsieur Duprez," she would murmur. . . .
 
 330 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 " Where's the music ? We are all here in our places. 
 . . . Why don't the musicians play for us?" 
 
 But the musicians had played, poor little absentee, 
 and you were not there to hear them! The lights 
 have all gone out; the ball-room is silent and deserted; 
 the children are home and in bed. They missed you 
 very much. They heard with surprised and startled 
 looks that you were ill and could not come. But they 
 did not even fancy that you would never come again, 
 with your eyes that danced as gayly as your pretty 
 beribboned toes did, and your face as old and thought- 
 ful in one way as it was young and bloomy in another! 
 
 Somewhere near midnight, Lulu's babblings grew 
 fainter and fainter, like those of a brook that has lost 
 its path among alien pebbles and can trill but in the 
 thinnest of voices what melody it has borne from its 
 urn up among the hills. No complaint about her own 
 blindness had fallen from her lips for a long time. 
 She was very peaceable, with the cool white cloths 
 laid and re-laid against the temples that had burned 
 and throbbed so. But they did not burn or throb 
 now. For many minutes she would not speak at all, 
 and then the words that sounded from her would seem 
 to have no more significance than the tender cooings 
 of a pigeon by its cote. But when the end was very 
 close at hand indeed, a smile broke like light about 
 her lips, and a dim flash came into the blind eyes just 
 before they dropped their lids in rest forever. All 
 who stood at her bedside could plainly hear what she 
 then said. 
 
 " Oh, now we're going to begin. . . . There's the 
 music! How merry it sounds!" Perhaps she caught 
 the strains of a finer music than earthly flutes and
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 331 
 
 viols can make. But if truly she had heard such 
 harmonies, her spirit went nearer to where they soared 
 and floated, not ever returning to the small, placid 
 little body whence it had flown on its far-away adven- 
 ture and quest. No one was ever to know what Lulu 
 had vanished to find. Though the great city where 
 she had lived her brief span of days might crumble 
 into the time-spurned ruin of another Thebes, through 
 all its multitudinous morrows the light that she had 
 seen and the music to which she had hearkened would 
 remain as two more drops of gloom in the vast ocean 
 of secresy we name death ! For, every life that the 
 mighty shadow takes into itself is bathed by an equal 
 dusk, and one same dignity of mystery clings about all 
 who have sunk into its unsurrendering tides the 
 pure as the sinful, the lofty as the lowly, the old, 
 white with years, and the young, yet scathless under 
 their goads ! 
 
 After all was over, the family met, one by one, in 
 the large drawing-rooms below stairs ; but two of its 
 members remained absent Aspinwall, who had not 
 yet come home, and Peyster, whose sobs the nurses 
 were seeking to quiet, and whom everybody save 
 these had forgotten. The drawing-rooms were per- 
 vaded with preparations for the never-to-be-held Sat- 
 terthwaite ball. It would have occurred on Monday ; 
 to-morrow would be Sunday, and as such woi-k, for 
 so-called holy reasons, must cease even in this secular 
 household, arrangements had been fully completed 
 before dark on Saturday evening. The floors were 
 neatly covered with glossy linen "crash" for dancing; 
 the furniture had been set close to the wall or else 
 removed altogether; the mantels were stripped both
 
 332 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 of drapery and ornament, waiting their burdens of 
 bedded flowers. The apartments were not brightly 
 lit ; they had a ghostly, staring, comfortless look ; 
 and to the people who now gathered in them their 
 aspect was horrible. As for Mr. and Mrs. Satter- 
 thwaite, Emmeline and Elaine, they sat and gazed at 
 one another, above the pale glare of those wide, long 
 floors, in a senseless, blank, stupefied way. You might 
 have detected a kind of irritated hauteur, too, in the 
 expressions of their faces noticeably in that of 
 Bleecker Satterthwaite himself. Perhaps it seemed 
 to this family as if death had smitten them with an 
 unwonted insolence in thus at all abruptly afflicting 
 them. As for grief, they did not appear to know how 
 one should show it. Possibly they were too stunned, 
 just yet, to realize its existence in their souls. They 
 had never given much heed to the question of souls. 
 There had always been something brassy and flaunting 
 about the completeness of their materialism. They 
 had thought considerably more concerning the welfare 
 of horses than that of their fellow-creatures. They 
 had always found a stable more congenial quarters 
 than a library this being as true of "papa" and 
 Aspinwall as it was of the two grown-up girls. 
 
 Aspinwall had not been home since luncheon time, 
 and might very possibly have drifted into some gay 
 company of college-friends. Nobody had known where 
 to find him ; he had left no orders with his valet ; and 
 there were certain rare occasions when even one with 
 whom dress was so much afaible as with Aspinwall 
 Satterthwaite, did not feel himself compelled to attire 
 himself for dinner. 
 
 Midnight had sounded some little time ago. They
 
 OLIVIA LELAPLAINE. 333 
 
 all had tacitly conceded, while sitting there in the big 
 shadowy room, that they were waiting for "Aspy" to 
 come home. Mr. Satterthwaite had begun to pace 
 the long apartments with hands clasped behind him 
 and lowered head. Emmeline cried a little, now and 
 then. Her sister Elaine would turn and look at her 
 very seriously as she wiped her eyes and drew short- 
 ened, sobbing breaths. Elaine did not feel like crying. 
 Her tears had never flowed except for selfish causes, 
 and seldom even for those. It was not that she failed 
 to mourn, but rather that a dazed and clouded sensa- 
 tion had come upon her faculties. Such a calamitous 
 event as this which had befallen herself and her kin- 
 dred arrived in the guise of so bewildering a novelty ! 
 Death had always been to her a possibility clad with 
 remoteness. Of course it might enter their house one 
 day. But it would give premonitory rumors of its 
 hateful advance. There was so much time in which 
 to become prepared for that; and meanwhile there 
 were all the pleasurable pursuits, with inestimable 
 bodily health added, to sum up, to adorn, to merrily 
 intensify life. Elaine had not dreamed of scanning 
 the whole problem deeper. To her it was not a prob- 
 lem at all, but a festivity. She had thus far had her 
 choice of cultivating or ignoring its guests. This 
 black one, thrusting itself into her notice and insisting 
 that it should not be treated de haut en bas, thrilled 
 her with an unprecedented terror. 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite remained motionless in her chair. 
 She realized more piercingly this night that she was a 
 mother than the worst pains of child birth had ever 
 taught her to realize before. Her thoughts had flown 
 to Aspinwall, her eldest son, loved beyond all her
 
 334 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 other children by a heart which too often had let her 
 only vaguely know that she in reality loved any of 
 them overmuch. At intervals she would lift her head, 
 as if listening for a sound in the outer hall. The 
 sound for which she listened was the turning of a 
 latch-key in the lock of the front door. 
 
 At last she felt sure that she heard it, and suddenly 
 rose. Her husband paused in his monotonous walk. 
 She glided toward the large main doorway of the 
 drawing-rooms. 
 
 " That is Aspy, now," the others heai'd her say ; 
 and then she disappeared into the hall. Frigid woman 
 of the world as she had always been, her spirit of 
 motherhood now yearned with an immense longing to 
 clasp her favorite boy against her breast and be the 
 first who should break the tidings of his little sister's 
 death. 
 
 A minute or so later they who were in the drawing- 
 room heard a faint cry. All three, in an instant, 
 gathered at the threshold of the door. 
 
 They saw Aspinwall standing in the hall with a 
 shamed leer on his face and a sagging laxity of post- 
 ure that swiftly told its brutal tale. 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite, pale and convulsed, motioned 
 with one hand for them to leave her alone beside her 
 son. The father and the two sisters drew backward. 
 There was a potency of appeal in the look of that wife 
 and mother which neither of them could resist. 
 
 Still, while he receded, an oath of exasperation broke 
 from Bleecker Satterthwaite. 
 
 But Emmeline, whom they had been wont to laugh 
 at in other days for her moods of so-termed sentimen- 
 tality, sprang toward her father now.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 335 
 
 " Papa," she cried, " don't judge him too harshly ! 
 Remember how we, who are all older than he is, have 
 never taught him to feel the disgrace of it as we 
 should have done! And yoii, papa would you have 
 cared so much, after all, if it had not been ... to- 
 night?" 
 
 Satterthwaite did not alone hear these words. His 
 wife, there in the near hall, heard them as well. Who 
 shall say what an arrow of repi'oach they became, to 
 cleave the conscience of either blameful parent? 
 
 The news of little Lulu's death gave a sharp shock 
 to hundreds of the Satterthwaites' friends. But it 
 may be said to have acted most tellingly upon the 
 very destiny of Olivia and her husband. Still, it is 
 supposable, on general principles of deduction, that 
 Delaplaine would finally have yielded. But he would 
 not have done so until, as the phrase goes, the last gun 
 had been fired. He would have waited for concession 
 from Olivia, knowing how radically her present as- 
 sumptive position would be weakened the moment she 
 betrayed fear of consequences. 
 
 As it was, Delaplaine hailed the non-occurrence of 
 the Satterthwaite ball for a priceless piece of luck. 
 He was now enabled to maintain his reputation as an 
 unflinching opponent of contumacy. But a few days 
 after Lulu's death had changed everything, Olivia 
 surprised him by saying : 
 
 " I wish to have a full understanding with you on 
 the subject of Mr. Massereene." Her tones were all 
 steadiness and self-command ; her blue eyes met his 
 with an unfaltering fixity. 
 
 " Ah," he said, preparing himself. Almost any other
 
 336 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 man would have started with an irrepressible embar- 
 rassment. Delaplaine only delivered himself of this 
 ruminative "Ah," and leaned farther back in the big 
 leathern chair of his study, where Olivia had found 
 him. " I imagined that we had reached a full under- 
 standing on that subject already," he coolly went on. 
 
 "Then you were mistaken," returned Olivia. 
 
 "Mistaken?" He did start, now, although his not 
 doing so was merely pretension. " I assure you I had 
 entirely made up my mind to the contrary. I had 
 told you my wishes ; you had very hotly refused to 
 follow them. But I had not the least fear that you 
 would not follow them when the time came." 
 
 Olivia threw back her head a little. The damask 
 slipped up into her cheeks, and a glitter pricked its 
 rays through the calm of her eyes. 
 
 "In that case," she replied, with plain scorn, "it 
 may have been just as well for your peace of mind 
 that the time did not come." 
 
 "You mean that you would have disobeyed me?" 
 
 " I would have disobeyed you, as you are pleased to 
 put it. There is not the faintest doubt on that point." 
 
 He stroked his chin, smiling in a frozen way. 
 ft Your determination, courage, firmness whatever 
 you choose to call it, my dear Olivia might have 
 failed you at the last moment." 
 
 " It would not have failed me." 
 
 "Ah, you tell me so now" he drawled. 
 
 She was silent for a little space, standing there at 
 his side. He saw with the corner of his eye that she 
 was biting her underlip, and it gave him a pang of 
 malicious delight to perceive that he had irritated her 
 honest, brave nature anew.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 337 
 
 "Do you wish me to drop Mr. Massereene's ac- 
 quaintance?" she presently asked. "Because if you 
 do there had best be an immediate understanding 
 between us. I " 
 
 But Delaplaine had now sat up in his chair, lifted 
 both shoulders, then lifted both hands, and, turning 
 toward his wife, had shown her a countenance pos- 
 sessed by so much vivid surprise that she involuntarily 
 became silent with surprise correspondent. 
 
 Ever since receiving intelligence that there would 
 be no ball at the Satterthwaites', he had felt certain 
 that his own sanction of Massereene's further acquaint- 
 ance with his wife must become a question at issue 
 between them. His jealousy was now much stronger 
 than it had been ; the rebellion of Olivia had fed it 
 into full-grown, viperish thrift. He believed that his 
 wife loved Massereene, and all the wiliest duplicities of 
 which he was inwardly master found themselves on a 
 sudden summoned together by the most imperative 
 little roll-call. He would never have forbidden Olivia 
 to dance the German with her friend if he had been as 
 jealous then as he was jealous now if he bad wanted 
 then to discover what he now wanted to discover. 
 At present he was bent upon watching every slightest 
 feature of their intercourse. No detail should be 
 trivial enough to escape him ; fame se mele d, tout. 
 Once empowered with proof of her infatuation, he 
 would be able to control Olivia as he desired. She 
 might brave him to-day, but if to-morrow she were 
 detected in a compromising attachment, he was confi- 
 dent of knowing her character too well not to antici- 
 
 O 
 
 pate as a certainty her pliant and alarmed humiliation. 
 " She would never take the foolish plunge that some
 
 338 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 women take," he reflected. " She misftt look over the 
 
 7 O 
 
 edge of the precipice, but she wouldn't jump. I un- 
 derstand her too thoroughly not to be sure of that." 
 
 The truth was, his tingling, senile-savored jealousy 
 prevented in him the least lucid judgment of what she 
 might or might not do. Olivia moved before him, 
 daily and hourly, as spotless as ever wife could be, 
 and morally incapable of even dreaming the misdeeds 
 that his inflamed fancy needed but a mild incentive to 
 .lay at her door. She was obdurate, unswerving, in 
 her new course of action that and that only. She 
 would either live her life beneath his roof as a gentle- 
 woman whose honor rose above aspersion, whose de- 
 cent social privileges resented vulgar molestation, or 
 she would seek refuge and freedom elsewhere. She 
 was implacably unwilling to give up the right of re- 
 ceiving Jasper Massereene whenever he might care to 
 visit her. If Delaplaine meant to push his objections 
 beyond that boundary at which circumstance had 
 lately compelled him to pause, she desired enlighten- 
 ment concerning his intentions ; and for this reason 
 she had quietly, intrepidly, sought the interview now 
 in progress. 
 
 Its new turn, on her husband's part, astonished her 
 as she observed and followed it. 
 
 "Do /wish you to drop Mr. Mnssereene's acquaint- 
 ance?" he gently cried, repeating her own words. 
 "Pray, have I ever given you the least excuse for 
 thinking that I wanted you to do anything of this 
 preposterous kind ? Can't you see the difference be- 
 tween behaving civilly to a nice, gentlemanlike fellow, 
 as I admit Mr. Massereene to be, and allowing the 
 idiocy of gossip to connect your name unpleasantly
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 339 
 
 with his? Now that Lent has come, and all the 
 lime-light glare of society has been extinguished 
 until another season sets it blazing again, I haven't, 
 of course, the vaguest objection to your receiving the 
 man as often as you please." Here Delaplaine took 
 off his eyeglasses and began to polish them with 
 leisurely touches. " God bless my soul, Olivia ! 
 what do you take me for ? An Othello ? Ask 
 Massereene to dinner, some day, if you like. I can't 
 conceive why you shouldn't. He's excessively clever. 
 We don't agree on some points, but I haven't met 
 any one in an age who impressed me with being a 
 better thinker or a more interesting talker. . . ." 
 
 Olivia left her husband's study that afternoon with 
 a distinct sense of victory and an indistinct sense of 
 adroit deception. But she shook the latter feeling off. 
 She told herself that she should be thankful for any 
 sort of respectable armistice. It chanced that on the 
 next afternoon Massereene paid her a visit. While 
 they sat and talked together in the drawing-room, 
 Delaplaine entered. His greeting of Massereene was 
 faultlessly courteous, and he sank into a chair after 
 having extended it, while saying with his most gra- 
 cious air : 
 
 " So you have reconciled yourself to the repose of 
 Lent, my friend ? " 
 
 " Yes, and most willingly," answered Massereene. 
 " But it has begun gloomily, as Mrs. Delaplaine and 
 I were just telling one another." 
 
 " In what way ? " Delaplaine asked. 
 
 " We were speaking of poor little Lulu's funeral 
 yesterday," said Olivia. 
 
 Her husband broke into one of his most cynical
 
 340 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 laughs. It was doubtless true he had of late grown 
 more unconventionally daring both as to the bitter 
 things he uttered and as to how he uttered them. 
 "I should scarcely call the death of a child impor- 
 tant enough to affect a community. Anybody's death, 
 for that matter, is really a thousandfold less important 
 than it gets the credit of being." 
 
 " I am with you there," smiled Massereene. " We 
 mortals magnify our own pettiness. But the Satter- 
 thwaites are what would be called an influential fam- 
 ily, and so their loss appears larger to those immedi- 
 ately about them." 
 
 " And a fine sermon could be preached from such a 
 text," said Delaplaine. " I suppose none of the fash- 
 ionable ministers dare touch the event, however dis- 
 creetly. It would be an excellent thing if they 
 exchanged one of their ordinary dull discourses for 
 one with a subject like that. The little girl perished 
 from sheer neglect in a home crowded with luxuries. 
 Nobody had time to think of her ; they were all oc- 
 cupied with trying to make themselves believe they 
 were enjoying themselves. And poor little Lulu, 
 with the constitution and nerves of a fairy, watched 
 her elders, and thought it a capital idea to do as they 
 were doing. She did, and it killed her. The Sat- 
 terthwaites are pleasant enough people to meet, 
 but . . ." 
 
 " Be careful," interrupted Olivia at this point. 
 " They are Mr. Massereene's cousins." 
 
 " Which does not prevent my agreeing with Mr. 
 Delaplaine," hurried Massereene, " as far as he has 
 gone. I am sure that he knows the family much 
 better than I do."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 341 
 
 " I know them very well indeed," said Delaplaine. 
 " They make the unhappy mistake, I think, of living 
 solely for outside appearances. They have brains, 
 but they never dream of using them, and for the 
 reason that most of their acquaintances are brainless. 
 Hence they are at times keenly bored, though their 
 loyalty to a fixed aristocratic principle remains ex- 
 treme. If they were a foreign family, with a historic 
 name, such desire for ascendancy might be forgiven 
 them. But we are all commoners here, and intense 
 American self-valuation, whether because of money 
 or birth, is apt to recoil in ridicule upon those who 
 profess it." He paused now, and gave Massereene 
 a glance of direct scrutiny. " This nonsense of caste 
 in New York must have surprised you considerably. 
 Or had you heard of it before you came across ? " 
 
 " I had not heard of it," replied Massereene ; " and 
 it did not merely surprise, it grieved me." 
 
 " Ah, you're patriotic, then ? " 
 
 " I hope so." 
 
 " I was, at your age or I fancied I was." 
 
 "Perhaps you now only fancy you are not," Masser- 
 eene said. 
 
 " Oh, no, I don't ; I'm sure that patriotism is merely 
 a grandiose form of selfishness. It's astonishing how 
 ' self ' can be found at the root of all human exploits, 
 performances, and even so-termed ideals, if we only 
 search deep enough." 
 
 Olivia started and looked at Massereene. He some- 
 how returned her look, and Delaplaine did not miss 
 the interchange. 
 
 " She has told him of my cold-bloodedness," passed 
 through the mind of Olivia's husband. "It is the
 
 342 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 next thing to her telling him she detests me. Per- 
 haps it even went with some such pretty disclosure, 
 as a sort of confirming embellishment." 
 
 Almost at once Massereene said : " The one su- 
 preme patriotism is, of course, philanthropy. All 
 our widest modern thinkers recognize this truth. 
 But to serve one's country while living, and to die 
 for her when occasion demands, is obviously, I should 
 judge, the nearest that modern civilization will permit 
 us to approach lofty self-sacrifice." 
 
 "Right, indeed!" exclaimed Olivia. The eager ap- 
 probation in her tones dealt Delaplaine a sting. He 
 smiled as he now placidly watched Massereene, quite 
 ignoring his wife's quick, impulsive comment. 
 
 "You make me suspect you of enthusiasm," he 
 responded, with his voice like an audible sneer, 
 though his demeanor failed to betray the least touch 
 of incivility. " I am always exceedingly timid when 
 an enthusiasm pops up at me. I know I shouldn't 
 stand the faintest chance against one while discuss- 
 ing such a question as this. I confess I've regarded 
 it from a very matter-of-fact standpoint. The soldier 
 who defends his country is just as apt as not to re- 
 ceive wages for defending an abominable cruelty or 
 injustice. In thousands of cases he doesn't care ; he 
 is too ignorant to care, and too intimately a part of 
 that huge mechanism, an army. When he does care, 
 and is an officer, he nearly always has to go dancing 
 about as the puppet of statesmen and politicians, on a 
 wire long enough to reach from their closets to his 
 own battlefield." 
 
 Massereene shook his head : "Patriotism is not war, 
 though it must too often use war's weapons."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 343 
 
 " And be thrashed by them, as well." 
 
 " Washington was not thrashed." 
 
 " He came near being hanged." 
 
 "And the elevation he reached is a good many 
 times higher than the highest scaffold," said Mas- 
 sereene, with his sunny look and smile. 
 
 This rapid retort, with its not infelicitous turn, 
 seemed to pique Delaplaine. " And perhaps a good 
 many times higher than he deserved," the latter said, 
 in tart semitone. 
 
 " Deserved ? " Massereene echoed. And then, with 
 a most serious intonation, he went on : " Such words 
 as these have indeed a strange sound in America, 
 Can you possibly mean that Washington is not 
 worthy of great honor for purity as for bravery ? " 
 
 Delaplaine began to polish his eyeglasses. " Oh, 
 come," he said ; " that's quite too leading. There 
 are still some subjects on which a man is compelled 
 to think with the big crowd. Otherwise he runs a 
 chance of being mobbed or lynched. Liberty of 
 thought has here reached that superfine degree of 
 development. . . ." 
 
 At this moment Olivia rose to receive another visi- 
 tor, and not long afterward Massereene found occasion 
 to say, with lowered voice, in her ear : " Is there any- 
 thing or anybody not liable to the sneers of your hus- 
 band?" 
 
 She looked at him surprisedly, and saw that he was 
 annoyed. " I am sure I cannot tell you," she replied, 
 almost stammering, and with still greater consterna- 
 nation. She had got to know him quite well, and he 
 had never before made the least adverse allusion to 
 her husband. It somehow shocked her that he should
 
 344 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 do so now. But she quickly recovered her former 
 equipoise. After all, why should he not speak like 
 that ? Was it not natural, she mused, for one of 
 Jasper Massereene's healthful and hopeful tempera- 
 ment to resent the positively mephitic and mildewed 
 sentiments of Delaplaine ? . . . 
 
 Weeks went by. Lent passed, and Spring, having 
 first converted our New York streets into rivers of 
 slush, froze them one day so that they glittered like 
 glass, thawed- them again the next, dried them up 
 with irrelevant repentance after a few more morrows, 
 and finally devoted herself to decorating some of the 
 trees in the parks with buds that it was uncertain 
 whether she would nip and blight before another 
 twenty-four hours. 
 
 Meanwhile, Massereene had repeatedly visited the 
 house in West Tenth Street and had often, if by no 
 means invariably, met Delaplaine on these occasions. 
 Olivia still drew only perplexity from her husband's 
 politeness. She was yet waiting to ascertain what 
 occult meaning, if any, lurked behind his hospi- 
 table deportment. Omens were somehow in the air, 
 and yet she could gather from these no palpable 
 prophecy. 
 
 In an unforeseen way she was fated shortly to arrive 
 at much more satisfying conclusions. The veil of her 
 uncertainty was destined soon to be rent with conse- 
 quences of revelation no less definite than sudden.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 345 
 
 XIX. 
 
 THE Satterthwaites would have been both amazed 
 and incensed if they could have heard the harsh criti- 
 cisms that Delaplaine had passed upon them. They 
 had for years looked upon the bachelor banker of 
 West Tenth Street as a staunch ally and supporter; 
 and now that he had become the husband of their 
 kinswoman, they took it for granted that he was 
 bound to them with still firmer ties. Delaplaine's 
 contemptuous opinion of their daily habits and doings, 
 however, in no manner concerned the open homage 
 that he was willing always to extend them. When, 
 some time in May, he learned that Emmeline was 
 engaged to Mr. Arthur Plunkett, he said to his wife : 
 
 " We must give the girl a dinner. She's your 
 cousin, and the Satterthwaites are all in mourning; 
 so we 'd better make it a family affair and invite those 
 soporific Auchinclosses. We will fill up all deficien- 
 cies with outsiders, however, so as to give a Jill to 
 every Jack. It ought, by the way, to be a rather 
 handsome dinner, because I hear that Emmeline is 
 marrying badly." 
 
 In one sense Emmeline Satterthwaite was marrying 
 remarkably well. Her fiance was a gentleman, both 
 in manners and aspect. What caused numberless 
 pairs of eyebrows to be lifted when the engagement 
 became known, was the disti-essing fact that Mr. 
 Plunkett did not belong to a family of the slightest
 
 346 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 note, and yet presented no gilded apology for this 
 shortcoming by being able to rank himself a million- 
 aire. Indeed, if he had been a little less prosperous 
 than he was he would have been actually poor. 
 Society thought it a magnificent thing for him, but 
 sighed that a Satterthwaite should so have lowered 
 her standard. It chanced that young Plunkett was a 
 man of considerable intellect, a rising star in the legal 
 profession, and possessed of literary taste in no small 
 degree. But these minor features of the alliance were 
 naturally ignored. He wasn't a swell and he wasn't 
 rich, and one of the Satterthwaite girls had consented 
 to throw herself away on him voild, tout. Intel- 
 lect? Literary taste ? " Bah ! " would have cried that 
 charming goddess of caste and cultivation who presides 
 over the holy inner circles of New York. " You can 
 find plenty of that anywhere ; it grows on trees." 
 Meanwhile, Emmeline carried herself with as grand 
 an air as if she had just become engaged to young 
 Lord Scarletcoat, whom Elaine had been tempting 
 into cis-Atlantic matrimony with her most winsome 
 smiles, but who had recently sailed for his paternal 
 estates, whither, it was whispered, a sharp letter from 
 his anxious ducal father had hastily summoned him. 
 
 "I'm going to marry Arthur Plunkett," Emmeline 
 had boldly said to her cousin Madeleine, one day, 
 " and I know very well that people assert it's not a 
 good match. But upon my word, I should like to 
 know why. If Arthur were a baker or a grocer, I 
 could at once give him position by marrying him. 
 And as for money, papa's promised us the interest on 
 four hundred thousand dollars twenty thousand a 
 year. Then Arthur has about six thousand a year,
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 347 
 
 and that will make twenty-six thousand. Nothing 
 very wonderful, of course, but then it isn't precisely 
 poverty when you bear in mind that we shall be 
 guests of papa and mamma at Newport in the sum- 
 mer, for as long as we please. We can rent a small 
 house on Fifth or Madison Avenue, and have two or 
 three carriages and about four horses, and a butler 
 besides the coachman, and a man to assist the butler, 
 while at the same time going out alongside of the 
 coachman and also acting as Arthur's valet, morning 
 and evening, and a maid for me, and then about five 
 other servants. But all of the other servants must be 
 women. We can't afford a chef. Arthur and I have 
 been figuring it all down, and we've decided that a 
 chef is impossible. It grieves me to think of this, but 
 the line must be drawn. It will be plain, genteel liv- 
 ing, you see, but it distinctly will not be poverty, and 
 I should be very glad, really, Lina, if you would con- 
 tradict any reports you may hear circulated about 
 papa having objected to the marriage, and his not 
 intending to help us a particle." 
 
 "I certainly will," replied Madeleine. "It must be 
 so satisfactory," she went on, " to marry just as your 
 heart prompts, whether he's rich or poor, high or low." 
 
 ' If there ever was a falsehood,' thought Emmeline, 
 ' she's telling it now ; for she thinks nothing of the 
 sort.' But aloud, with the most amiable smile : " My 
 dear, there's no such happiness none! And I do 
 hope you'll find it soon, for you've waited long 
 enough to deserve it." 
 
 " Waited!" faltered Madeleine. 
 
 "Well, then, only expected" said Emmeline, making 
 matters a little worse instead of better between them,
 
 348 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 as one young lady nearly always contrived to do with 
 the other, during those urbane verbal fencings which 
 they held together under the guise of pleasant conver- 
 sation. 
 
 The dinner-party given to Emmeline by the Dela- 
 plaines was of sumptuous quality as regarded the 
 repast itself. But it brought conflicting elements 
 into real if not stormy commotion, and lacked, for 
 this reason, all the better traits of a congratulatory 
 reunion. The Satterthwaites had fallen under the 
 secret disapprobation of the Auchinclosses through 
 their conduct since little Lulu's death. They had 
 not conducted themselves with a sufficient attention 
 to "duty" as mourners for persons of their own race 
 and name. They had done nothing in strikingly bad 
 taste, but they had hovered upon the edge of such 
 violation. And to-night it seemed to the Auchinclosses 
 that their bereaved cousins were all much too gay. 
 Olivia observed the whole series of demonstrations, 
 and secretly smiled at them. Mrs. Auchincloss looked 
 reproachfully at her sister whenever she laughed 
 aloud. She had told Olivia, not long ago, that she 
 had noticed a "softening effect, at first, upon Sister 
 Augusta, caused by the loss of little Lulu, though it 
 had unfortunately been one quite too soon obliter- 
 ated."" Mrs. Satterthwaite, who raight still have had 
 her depressed moments, evidently took pleasure in 
 maltreating Mrs. Auchincloss's nerves this evening, 
 by continuous exhibitions of mirthful spirits. Emme- 
 line and Madeleine tossed bitter but sugared little 
 pills at one another, across the table, Elaine now and 
 then abetting her sister. Chichester Auchincloss 
 attempted to patronize his cousin, Aspinwall Satter-
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 349 
 
 thwaite, on the subject of too profound a fondness for 
 horses and horse-racing, and received from the heir of 
 his uncle certain sarcasms which labored under the 
 disadvantage of an ill-tempered crudeness. The ma- 
 jestic Mr. Archibald Auchincloss came augustly to the 
 rescue of his son, and was met by his brother-in-law, 
 Bleecker Satterthwaite, with so much veiled yet mani- 
 fest belligerence as to make Arthur Plunkett, Masse- 
 reene and two or three other guests uncomfortably 
 stare at their knives and forks. But the contest 
 passed away in a travesty of genial reconciliation, 
 like the ending of many similar engagements. Mr. 
 Auchincloss had managed, however, before peace was 
 restored, to say several caustic things about the Met- 
 ropolitan Club, and Mr. Satterthwaite had held his 
 own by vigorously deriding the Centennial. 
 
 " What an unfortunate dinner it was ! " Olivia said 
 laughingly to Massereene, when they met, a day or 
 two later. " I never heard so many disgreeable 
 remarks in the space of two hours. And Mr. Dela- 
 plaine," she added, perhaps unconsciously changing 
 her tones from levity to gravity, " was all the time 
 astonishingly good-natured." 
 
 "Does that happen so seldom?" asked Massereene. 
 He had again and again asked himself whether Olivia 
 would ever consent to speak without reserve on the 
 subject of her extraordinary marriage. 
 
 She colored a little, now. " You are beginning to 
 know him quite well," she replied. " Judge for your- 
 self. 
 
 " Oh, he is always civil enough with me." 
 
 " But he is terribly pessimistic," said Olivia, looking 
 at her companion as though she wanted him either to
 
 350 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 confirm or deny this view. " It seems to me that he 
 grows worse and worse ns time passes. But that may 
 only be my imagination." 
 
 "He is a pessimist," returned Massereene. "And 
 perhaps you're right about his 'growing worse.' Uap- 
 petit vient en mangeant" 
 
 " A short time ago I did not even know what the 
 word ' pessimist ' meant," she exclaimed, with a rueful 
 accent on each word and a troubled light beginning to 
 shine in her eyes, which made their blue like that of 
 shadowed water. " I had never heard of such people 
 as pessimists. I might easily have been persuaded 
 they were a kind of mineral." 
 
 " They're thought to be of the earth, earthy. . . . 
 But you had heard about Diogenes? " 
 
 "Oh, yes. But it never occurred to me that the 
 kind of things he said were worth listening to. I be- 
 lieved that all the darkness in the world was the nat- 
 ural shadow cast by the brightness." 
 
 "And I hope you haven't changed your creed. 
 Have you?" 
 
 She shook her head very dubiously. " In a little 
 while," she murmtfred, " I have had so much material 
 for a totally new species of thought thrust upon my 
 mind! I used to accept all the arrangements of life 
 as functions of one perfect system. Those who were 
 charitable, self-disciplined, kindly of spirit, received 
 their reward not merely hereafter, but very often here 
 as well. The selfish and cruel and wicked people were 
 punished in the same way. ... I do not feel my faith 
 waver at all on the subject of a 'hereafter,' but as for 
 * here,' . . . well, it seems to me as if those who get 
 the most out of life are those who can serve their own
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 351 
 
 interests with the greatest dexterity and craft." At 
 this point Olivia paused, and laughed a little flutteredly. 
 "That sounds as if I were turning pessimist, myself, 
 in good earnest; does it not?" 
 
 "It sounds as if you had been . . . disappointed." 
 He lingered over the last word before pronouncing it, 
 and as though he were on the verge of choosing 
 another. 
 
 " I have been disappointed," said Olivia, drooping 
 her eyes. " In myself," she added. 
 
 "Ah ... Who is not?" 
 
 " I did a wilful, reckless thing, not long ago, and I 
 am suffering for having done it." 
 
 "Was it a selfish tiling?" asked Massereene. 
 
 " Yes miserably so." . 
 
 "There," he said gently. "See how a minute has 
 made you contradict yourself. You have served your 
 own interest, by your own confession. But you have 
 not found it ' getting the most out of life.' " 
 
 O O 
 
 "You misunderstand. I meant those who began 
 very young and lived that way in everything." 
 
 " I see. The crustaceous persons. But you are not 
 one of those. The people of such hard prose as that 
 resemble the poets in a single respect at least they 
 are born and not made." 
 
 Olivia looked fixedly at the speaker for a moment. 
 In her full gaze there had always been to Massereene 
 a blending of courage and sweetness which made her 
 face wholly different from that of any other woman he 
 had met. "No," she said, slowly and thoughtfully, 
 " I was never born to deafen and blind myself 
 thus." 
 
 " Never," Massereene repeated, with fervor. " And
 
 352 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 this fault ... do you mind telling me what it is 
 or was ? " 
 
 " Oh, it still is. ... Its results are an incessant re- 
 minder. . . . No, I will not tell you what it is. I 
 don't doubt that you have more than half guessed 
 already. Rien rfest plus facile" 
 
 The long spring afternoon, which had been some- 
 what chilly out of doors, filled the luxurious room 
 where they sat with a light at once drowsy and cheer- 
 ful; what came to them was bright enough sunshine, 
 but folds of lace and velvet obstructed its too glaring 
 ingress. A fire snapped and sparkled on the silver- 
 grated hearth, sending little reddish floods of lustre to 
 the big leaves of a tropic plant not far away, and mak- 
 ing it appear as if visited by wizard memories of its 
 own equatorial heats. As Olivia sat in one corner of 
 a satin couch, with her feet on a carpet of richest 
 texture and an arm resting upon the most costly of 
 embroidered cushions, Massereene could not but feel 
 how much irony of contrast lay between the luxuries 
 of her environment and that discontent, that self-scorn, 
 of which he had long ago guessed her to be the victim. 
 
 He leaned a little nearer to her, and said : " You 
 mean your marriage ? " 
 
 She nodded, and looked about her with a sudden 
 alarmed expression, as though an eavesdropper might 
 be lurking behind one of the screens or arm-chairs. 
 But this fancy, if indeed it had come to her, possibly 
 caused the dim, sad smile that edged her lips as she 
 now said : 
 
 " Of course that is what I mean. I do not doubt 
 you have heard many strange statements regarding my 
 marriage."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 353 
 
 "Well . . . frankly ... I have heard it criticised." 
 
 "And with little charity?" 
 
 "Not always, perhaps, in the kindest manner." 
 
 " I have often felt," she softly exclaimed, " that it 
 deserved the worst odium." 
 
 He seemed not to know just what interrogatory ven- 
 tures on his part would transgress delicacy. With 
 some hesitation he asked: 
 
 " Was not Mr. Delaplaine very ill when you married 
 him?" 
 
 " Yes. Dying, I thought" Her head drooped, and 
 he watched the rosy color bathe the cheek nearer him. 
 "If ever shame stained a woman's cheek," he thought, 
 " it is staining hers now." " He says that he deceived 
 me," she went on ; and here, as though swayed by a 
 thoroughly new impetus of feeling, she raised her 
 head, and he saw that her eyes were most spiritedly 
 enkindled. " He admits that he meant to live if he 
 possibly could manage it. But I had received only his 
 entreaties as a dying man ; I knew nothing of the hope 
 which he had of his own recovery. He used my 
 father's name in imploring me to become his wife; he 
 offered their long friendship of the past as a reason for 
 my present consent ; he " 
 
 " Why, this completely exonerates yon ! " Massereene 
 broke in. His face grew radiant to Olivia as he thus 
 spoke. " I dared actually to blame you," he hurried 
 on, with excited tones, and an expression in his eyes 
 full of self-accusing ardor. "Yes, I, who had no 
 earthly right, presumed to say that you had acted in a 
 way unworthy of your better nature. I must ask your 
 pardon for it. After having confessed thus much, I 
 must be you for absolution." 
 
 CJ /
 
 354 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 "But you were right," said Olivia, firmly, meas- 
 tiredly, and with a look of unflinching resolve on her 
 face. " I did violate my better nature " 
 
 " But he deceived you ; he " 
 
 " He never once clouded my mind to the fact that I 
 would be aiding my own fortunes in marrying him. 
 There lies all my self-humiliation. I don't see how I 
 can ever pardon myself for making what I believed a 
 death-bed marriage, yet one which I knew would prove 
 greatly to my own worldly advantage" 
 
 " And you would like to be pardoned this fault by 
 your own conscience?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Massereene clasped his knee with both hands, and 
 bowed his head musingly; the attitude would have 
 been called, in some men, objectionably unconven- 
 tional ; but he was always as graceful as he was natural 
 in his movements, and for this reason took liberties 
 with taste while managing not to offend it. " Pray 
 what do you call your conscience?" he questioned. 
 " Give me another name for it." 
 
 "I will," said Olivia; "God." 
 
 " Ah ! . . . you mean that your religious sense cries 
 out against what you hold as the commission of a grave 
 fault." 
 
 "Yes, because with me all sense of right is religious 
 sense. I cannot think of good without I think also of 
 God." 
 
 " And you believe God is offended with you for hav- 
 ing . . . married as you did?" 
 
 She nodded a sombre little affirmative. Then, seeing 
 a slow smile creep about his mouth, she exclaimed pro- 
 testingly : " I know it seems absurd enough to you,
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 355 
 
 who have thought and studied it all, and could prob- 
 ably write a book upon it, to-morrow, of which I 
 would not be able to understand more than an occa- 
 sional chapter. But neither can you understand my 
 faith ; " and as she pronounced that final word Masse- 
 reene seemed to see what he would almost have de- 
 fined as an expression of holiness flash across her 
 face. 
 
 " I cannot understand your faith," he said, " but I 
 am by no means without a faith of my own." 
 
 " You are an agnostic," said Olivia ; " I heard you 
 tell my husband so." 
 
 " I told him, yes. It is true." 
 
 " But you and he are so different ! He is an agnos- 
 tic, too, or so he would claim. But he always seems to 
 be saying : ' Well, if this insoluble mystery that baffles 
 me were really solved, I think we should find nothing- 
 ness behind it.' You, on the other hand, seem at times 
 to have chosen a hope for yourself that is enough like 
 faith to be her twin sister ... I like to hear you talk 
 with my husband on these terribly important themes. 
 He never conquers you, though he is supple and adroit 
 and a combatant to feel in dread of. And the reason, 
 I am assured, is simply this : you have a divine con- 
 viction, and .the power of presenting and advancing it. 
 All his strategies of pessimism and cynicism cannot 
 argue that away." 
 
 " I sometimes think that I acquit myself very un- 
 philosophically in those discussions," replied Masse- 
 reene. " For conviction, however it may secretly 
 comfort its possessor, will be apt to make him a sorry 
 ally in debate." 
 
 " I have not seen it prove so in your case," said
 
 356 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 Olivia, with earnestness. "Your points always appear 
 admirably taken. Whenever you have talked with my 
 husband I have felt as if I might come to your rescue 
 provided you were in danger of defeat; but I have 
 never yet seen you even moderately jeopardized. 
 And surely that is fortunate, is it not ? " 
 
 " By no means," he returned, smiling. " I should 
 enjoy being so honorably reinforced. . . . But this 
 trouble of yours?" he pursued. "Since you are 
 capable of imagining to yourself a definite individual 
 God, I should fancy that you might gain comfort 
 from the thought of making this Deity some atone- 
 ment some "... 
 
 " Ah," Olivia here broke in. " That is just what I 
 have sought to do ! " 
 
 " And successfully ? I mean, with satisfaction to 
 your own wounded conscience ? " 
 
 " No. I have failed wretchedly failed." 
 
 " Failed ! " he repeated. 
 
 She had averted her face, but she now turned it 
 again toward his own, and laid her hand, as she did 
 so, lightly and briefly on his arm. The instant she 
 spoke he perceived that her voice was filled with the 
 tears which had begun to swirn and glitter in her eyes. 
 
 "I I can't tell yon just now what I mean," she 
 faltered. " Perhaps some other time I will tell you. 
 I I would like your help your counsel. But not 
 now. Let it be enough, at present, for me to answer 
 you by saying that I have failed that the God in 
 whom I believe fervently now seems angry with mo, 
 as with one who has not profited by the gifts of forti- 
 tude and self-control that he gave me in the past. 
 And yet I somehow cannot take up the task where I
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 357 
 
 have let it fall. Or, if I were willing so to take it up, 
 there might be reasons against its resumption as be- 
 fore . . ." 
 
 " I understand you," began Massereene. You 
 have " 
 
 " Never mind what I have done ! " Olivia broke in, 
 rising. " We will speak of all this again, no doubt, 
 though I I can't promise you at just what hour such 
 another talk will suit my humor." She looked down 
 at him with a faint smile on her trembling lips and a 
 starry plaintiveness in her moistened eyes. . . . But 
 the next minute she had drawn out a pretty little 
 bediamonded watch and glanced at it. "You came to 
 take me to the Academy of Design," she went on, 
 with an immediate alteration of tone. "It is already 
 past four, and I shall need at least ten minutes to put 
 on my bonnet and wraps. It will be nearly five by 
 the time that we get down there . . . well, I hope 
 you will not think I have quite spoiled our afternoon's 
 project with my aimless commonplaces." 
 
 " I have heard no commonplaces," Massereene an- 
 swered ; "and I should dislike to call what you have 
 said to me aimless, because, as I pray you will not 
 forget, a sort of engagement results from it." 
 
 "An engagement?" she repeated, puzzledly. . . . 
 "Ah, yes, I remember But don't treat it as any- 
 thing like a compact between us, or I may never be 
 able, through sheer nervous reluctance, to speak again 
 of the melancholy matter." 
 
 " I hope you will be able and soon," he said. 
 
 Olivia had glided toward the door. She stood for a 
 moment looking at him over one shoulder. " Why?" 
 she asked.
 
 358 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 "Because I might offer some bit of advice not 
 wholly despicable that's all." 
 
 She left the room without a word of reply. Masse- 
 reene paced the floor until she returned. He had never 
 so vividly seen as now what a mockery and misery 
 her life with Spencer Delaplaine had proved. If 
 she ever gave him the right to counsel her, this young 
 man knew (or he now passionately told himself that 
 he knew) just what form such advocacy would take. 
 He had seen enough of the Delaplaine menage to com- 
 prehend how a sensitive and high-strung woman daily 
 suffered under the lash of persecutions that her own 
 large-minded ness alone kept her from resenting. He 
 was alive to the painful delicacy of his own position, 
 should any real question arise of urging Olivia to avail 
 herself of a certain expedient ; for nothing, as he 
 clearly realized, could exceed the difficulty of enacting 
 this role with due tact and grace, when a little emo- 
 tion of too lightly-bridled a quality might reveal more 
 than the friendly spirit of intercession which he solely 
 desired to exhibit. 
 
 "She is the most charming woman in the world," 
 JVlassereene now somewhat excitedly mused, " and one 
 of the most spotless. In spite of what she believes 
 the sin of her marriage, she would have made him the 
 loveliest of wives, if the old satyr had but permitted. 
 . . . Live? He may live twenty years yet ; and mean- 
 while, age will not wither nor custom stale his infinite 
 hatefulness. ... If she allows me to speak ten words 
 of guidance to her hereafter, I know what those words 
 will be." 
 
 Olivia reappeared about a quarter of an hour later, 
 dressed for the visit to the Academy of Design. They
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 359 
 
 walked from West Tenth Street up Fifth Avenue, 
 talking on subjects that seemed to Massereene the 
 airiest of trifles after that discussion which had pre- 
 ceded them. The day was brilliant and salubrious; 
 the Avenue rang with the hollow clatter of high-step- 
 ping horses, and from open carriages Olivia and Mas- 
 sereene received more than one smiling bow. Mrs. 
 Delaplaine's career during the past season had been 
 marked by so much 'en viable notability that a bow 
 from her was no less eagerly sought than, in most 
 cases, it was beamingly given. Among those who 
 saluted Olivia and her companion, were Mrs. Satter- 
 thwaite and Elaine. Mother and daughter were being 
 driven out to the Park for ah airing in the prettiest 
 and most chic of landaus. They were both in mourn- 
 ing, of course, and the coachman and footman were in 
 mourning also. The whole effect was very imposing 
 in its general suggestion of strict family adherence to 
 propriety, decorum and the usage du monde. But 
 Olivia did not repress a sad smile as the carriage of 
 her aunt and cousin rolled by. 
 
 "Poor little Lulu!" she said. "Such majesty of 
 mourning seems like an overwhelming tribute when 
 one recollects what a tiny childish life it commemo- 
 rates." . . . Then she bit her lip and added, soberly 
 enough, " It would not seem so, I suppose, if any of 
 them really cared. But I half believe they have 
 almost, if not quite, forgotten "... 
 
 The Academy of Design caused Massereene to burst 
 into an amused laugh as they approached it. "I find 
 it so ridiculously like and yet wwlike," he said, " the 
 Venetian palace it is copied from in miniature." 
 
 Olivia smiled. "I am afraid we are not going to
 
 360 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 see anything half as artistically worth our notice 
 inside" she said. 
 
 " Is it an inferior exhibition ? " he asked. 
 
 " Oh, I suppose it will be tame enough. And yet I 
 have no reason to anticipate mediocrity. I have not 
 even taken the trouble to read the newspaper notices 
 upon it ; did you ? " 
 
 " No. It is surely time that we had some good art 
 in this country. And, indeed, I am sure that we have, 
 Since my arrival I have met several American artists, 
 and have visited their studios. They showed me 
 excellent work, though it was mostly in landscape. 
 They complain bitterly of the national tendency to 
 do just what you have done." 
 
 " And what have I done ? " asked Olivia, as they 
 ascended the handsome marble steps leading into the 
 suite of lofty and elegant apartments beyond. 
 
 "You have unconsciously fallen into the popular 
 vein of detraction. Before even getting a glimpse of 
 what you come to examine as the production of your 
 country-people, you have assumed that it is to strike 
 you unfavorably." 
 
 Olivia paused at the centre of the last stairway. 
 "You are right," she affirmed, with vehemence. "I 
 deserve to be both reproached and repressed for my 
 unjust and unwarrantable prejudice." 
 
 "I meant nothing so severe." 
 
 " Yes, you did, and I thank you for it. I can so 
 easily understand that good American artists should 
 groan under the burden of indifference which con- 
 stantly oppresses them. Is it such a very heavy one ? 
 Before we go to look at these pictures, tell me what 
 their ground of complaint truly is. Do they not say
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 361 
 
 that they are forced to struggle against foreign com- 
 petition to a disheartening degree?" 
 
 " That is their complaint," replied Massereene, in- 
 terested by the swift repentance that he had awak- 
 ened, and mentally matching it with other tendencies 
 in Olivia's character which he had before marked as 
 setting toward a humane and kindly estimate of her 
 fellow-creatures. "They claim," he continued, "that 
 the foreign craze of nearly all American buyers cruelly 
 stands in the way of their own fair appreciation as 
 painters. Mediocre canvases, bearing European names, 
 are sold here for prices far above any which the best 
 native effort may hope to secure. They state that the 
 American spirit in art is a servile worshipper of im- 
 ported labor. They admit that their cause has been 
 defended by certain friendly journalistic pens ; but it 
 has been so defended, they declare, without avail. 
 No one seems to deny the wrong inflicted upon them ; 
 but the great public here is like the Chancellor in 
 Tennyson's poem, " who dallied with his golden chain, 
 and smiling put the question by." It does not even 
 trouble itself to contradict the fact that Smith and 
 Jones, in their studios yonder on Fourth Avenue, or 
 just across the street in the Young Men's Christian 
 Association Building, can paint remarkably well. But 
 it prefers to decorate its drawing-rooms, all the same, 
 with the paintings of Germans and Frenchmen." 
 
 "And this protest?" said Olivia, thoughtfully, as 
 though Massereene's words had impressed her with no 
 slight force. "Do you consider it founded upon a 
 legitimate grievance ? " 
 
 " Generally speaking, I do. Of course there are the 
 incompetent grumblers ; but then they always skulk
 
 362 OLIVIA DELAPLA1NE. 
 
 at the skirts of any reformatory movement. Not that 
 this should be called one. The contempt in which 
 good American artists are held by those who should 
 aid and support them is not, like our lack of all Copy, 
 right Law, a subject for progressive legislation. There 
 is a kind of ethical equity which cannot be secured 
 either at Albany or Washington. On the chance of 
 ultimately gaining this (for their descendants if not 
 for themselves) our painters must base all future 
 hopes." 
 
 Olivia woke herself from a little revery. " Come," 
 she said, ascending the last few steps that remained to 
 be taken; "let us look at everything we find here, 
 with thoroughly impartial eyes. Let us mettre les 
 points sitr les i's like the most careful and incorrupti- 
 ble critics." 
 
 " You are a critic, then ? " asked Massereene. 
 
 "Yes; why not? I have opinions. Is not a critic a 
 man or woman who has opinions?" 
 
 " That would make all the world a critic." 
 
 " So it is. Is not everybody forever delivering an 
 opinion on somebody else? If it is not expressed 
 about the picture you paint, the poem you write, or 
 the house you build, it is made to concern -the man 
 you did marry, the woman you didn't marry, the 
 beauty of your wife, the solvency of your husband." 
 She broke into a gay laugh, and waved her catalogue 
 to and fro. "A critic? Of course I'm one. I don't 
 really know any more about painting than astronomy ; 
 but that doesn't ever prevent me from saying fear- 
 lessly what I think. Do you hold that to be unpar- 
 donably impudent?" 
 
 "No for an excellent reason."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 363 
 
 "What reason?" 
 
 "Being confessedly ignorant, you only say what 
 you think; you don't print it, as so many similar 
 critics do." 
 
 But Olivia misrepresented her own taste and knowl- 
 edge in an equal degree. With her father, in past 
 years, she had visited many of the most famous gal- 
 leries abroad. She had acquired that power to seize 
 upon the best attributes in a good picture or the 
 superior ones in a picture of slender merit, which is 
 less purely instinctive than resultant from early famil- 
 iarity with superfine models. 
 
 The various halls, opening one into another, con- 
 tained groups of people scattered over their floors, 
 with an occasional pair, such as Olivia and her escort, 
 but nowhere the least semblance of a multitude. 
 Three or four weeks had elapsed since the Academy 
 had once again flung back its doors to the public, and 
 that, for a city whose artistic perceptions are as lan- 
 guid as those of New York, meant quite a protracted 
 interval. Olivia had been betrayed, as she herself 
 frankly conceded, into three or four little bursts of 
 eulogy, and she was moving onward with her com- 
 panion from one of the large chambers into a second 
 still more spacious, when she suddenly became aware 
 of a gentleman, catalogue in hand, who advanced 
 directly toward herself and Massereene. The next 
 instant she had seen that this gentleman was her 
 husband. 
 
 Such a meeting might have been the most accidental 
 circumstance conceivable, and it might have been pre- 
 arranged with vigilant adroitness. The latter explana- 
 tion of it now shot through Olivia's mind. She had
 
 364 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 nothing to be in the least ashamed of or embarrassed 
 at, and yet while she stood beside Massereene and 
 waited for her husband to approach still nearer, she 
 could feel the deepening flush of crimson heat her 
 cheeks.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 365 
 
 XX. 
 
 IT was a confusion, a loss of savoir faire, that she 
 hated herself for experiencing. She feared that Mas- 
 sereene would observe it, and she knew that her 
 husband would infallibly do so. In another minute, 
 or less time than that, she perceived that he had done 
 so. On his own part there was not the faintest reve- 
 lation of surprise. He came to the spot where she 
 had paused, with a tranquillity as unruffled as any that 
 she had ever seen him show. He shook hands most 
 composedly with Massereene, but Olivia was conscious 
 of his cold, undeserting gray eye, fixed upon her 
 flushed cheek with what her fluttered nerves readily 
 construed into relentless exultation. 
 
 " Have you come here to look at these amateurish 
 pictures?" he said. "How odd that we should have 
 hit on the same day ! It speaks plainly for the dul- 
 ness of the season, does it not? I hardly know any 
 mode of amusement that I should not have preferred." 
 
 "We were just deciding," said Massereene, "that 
 we had hit upon a very agreeable one." 
 
 Delaplaine, as he had heard this, lifted his eyebrows 
 a little. " What ? Truly ? " he murmured. Then he 
 became at once his serene self again. " Oh, they are 
 not all daubs, of course. But so many of them are, 
 that one loses sight of the few creditable things." 
 
 Olivia had striven with her detested agitation, by 
 this time, and conquered it. She felt certain that her
 
 366 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 color was receding, and on that account she trusted 
 her voice. 
 
 " The word ' daub ' is such a very harsh one," she 
 hazarded. Then, satisfied that the tones just used 
 were firm as she wanted them to be, notwithstanding 
 those more rapid heart-beats which continued to annoy 
 her, she boldly went on: "We have only seen, thus 
 far, the contents of this one room. But, for my pai't, 
 I like several paintings very much. I did not sup- 
 pose that American art was in half so flourishing a 
 condition." 
 
 Delaplaine had on his glasses : he lifted one hand 
 and re-arranged them by the daintiest of movements ; 
 then he stared all about him, with a smile breaking 
 through the hueless edges of his lips. 
 
 "American art?" he queried with undisguised su- 
 perciliousness. "I don't discover the vaguest evi- 
 dence of any. There is a picture of some negroes 
 grouped round a stove, grinning at one another, in the 
 next room, which possibly might merit that name. 
 But it is a bit of mongrel crudity, with horrors of 
 coloring and the most precarious draughtsmanship. 
 Whenever you light on anything good here, it strikes 
 you as being so simply because it is not as bad an 
 imitation of modern European masters as its ambi- 
 tious but inefficient author might have made it." He 
 ceased to speak for a moment, and his dry laugh 
 sounded as shrill as the crackling of fagots in a quick 
 breeze. " American art, indeed ! Why, the whole 
 affair is like the work of a lot of pupils in some atelier 
 of France or Germany. Even the clever landscape 
 men are irritating copyists. I should like to discover 
 a single original brush-stroke among them all."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 367 
 
 Olivia, without reply, passed slowly into the next 
 apartment, whose threshold was but a few yards away. 
 Delaplaine and Massereene followed. She went from 
 picture to picture, gradually collecting herself and 
 feeling the unpalatable certainty augment within her 
 that this abrupt appearance on her husband's part had 
 been the sly sequitur of some deliberate ambuscade. 
 
 Soon .she heard her husband speaking again, and 
 seemingly close at hand. He was no doubt answering 
 some remark which Massereene had just addressed to 
 him. 
 
 " Some thinkers deny that there ever can be any- 
 thing like an American literature, and they're most 
 probably right. Nations cannot be expected to have 
 a literature of their own without having a language of 
 their own. What literature has Switzerland or Bel- 
 gium? As long as the same language is spoken in 
 London and New York, Liverpool and San Francisco, 
 our Letters will deserve but a single name colonial, 
 I don't see how any one who isn't quite besotted with 
 patriotic prejudice can refuse to grant this. Why, 
 some of the Greek poems and plays were written in 
 such un-Attic Greek that it would almost have puzzled 
 an Athenian ; and yet the whole collection was called 
 Greek literature ; no one ever dreamed of calling it 
 anything else. But as regards American art, that is a 
 wholly different affair. We simply want to assert 
 ourselves, to be representative, to be American, if 
 there is anything artistically American to be!" 
 
 "And you are inclined to think there is not," said 
 Massereene. In his voice Olivia could detect only 
 dispassionate inquiry, without the vaguest ring of 
 either approval or censure.
 
 368 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 " I can't see any evidence, from present indications, 
 that such an element exists. And if it does, it is 
 abominably neglected. Take the figure-painting here. 
 It is all even the strongest of it weak as the 
 struggles of tyros always are. Here we have an 
 academy of tyros ; I dare say that some of them are 
 gray-beards, and have 'been at it' for an age; but 
 they're tyros, all the same." 
 
 "I wonder," now thought Olivia, "that he dares 
 talk like this. He may be overheard, but even if he is 
 not, how can he know that Jasper Massereene doesn't 
 secretly regard him as a person with whom the mau- 
 vaise langue is a mere mania ? I have never known 
 him so recklessly bitter as he has shown himself of 
 late." 
 
 And then a little thrill of dread passed through 
 Olivia. What if his mind were beset by some malady 
 of which these intemperate condemnations formed the 
 discordant prelude ? Her life with him sane had been 
 one of enough aggravation and dreariness. To what 
 depth of distress might not this life sink if he should 
 develop some cerebral distemper, fraught with new 
 ordeal to herself, while at the same time exempted 
 from the usual restrictions demanded by violence ? 
 
 She now turned and joined her husband and Masse- 
 reene, just as the latter was saying : 
 
 "Your disrelish, Mr. Delaplaine, is a besom that 
 sweeps away everything before it. For myself, I find 
 some good painting here, though some that is both 
 tentative and irrational." 
 
 Delaplaine gave one of his bleak little laughs. 
 " Every man who presumes to paint the human form 
 should remember that though genius may not be
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 369 
 
 teachable, anatomy is. Look at that Carlo vingian 
 princess, yonder, praying to her bai'barous conqueror. 
 You find yourself astonished that she should have so 
 little feminine vanity as to pray with such abnormal 
 finger-joints. No true woman would have done it. 
 She'd have seen her captive lord lose his head first." 
 
 " That depends upon the captive lord's previous use 
 of his head," Olivia could not resist saying, as she 
 peered at one of the smaller pictures in a slightly 
 stooped posture. Before her husband could answer 
 if he had had such an inclination Massereene began : 
 
 "Allow that there are faulty figure-pieces. The 
 landscapes " 
 
 But at once he was interrupted. " They're mostly 
 either slavish in their copying of renowned landscape 
 men abroad, or so finical and detailed that they sug- 
 gest a new kind of nature, known and cherished only 
 by their photographic portrayers of it." 
 
 "I do not at all agree with you," remarked Masse- 
 reene, with quiet firmness. " There, for instance, is a 
 
 landscape by ," and he named a painter of more 
 
 talent than fame, whose canvas fronted them. " Those 
 autumnal tints are to be found nowhere in Europe ; 
 this man has drawn his inspiration from the woods and 
 fields of his own coiintry. That mist upon the distant 
 hills, that brooding smoky color in the leafy valley, 
 that cluster of frosted foliage pluming the foreground 
 they are all American beyond dispute, and all 
 treated with a lavish poetical spirit . . . At least 1 
 think so," finished Massereene, who scarcely ever per- 
 mitted himself to be downright, even when convinced 
 that he held the ruling side of a discussion. * 
 
 "Ah, yes," responded Delaplaine, with a blunt
 
 370 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 asperity that struck a most unhabitual note in liis 
 wonted composure, " ' I think so.' That is the usual 
 arbitration of the judge who has no better critical 
 resources. ' I think so.' . . . Yes, yes, no doubt." 
 
 This narrowly bordered upon impertinence, and its 
 recipient answered it with a look full of gentle yet 
 assertive dignity. But somehow, a moment later, he 
 caught Olivia's eye, and saw there a kind of worried 
 pleading which caused him speedily to forget her hus- 
 band's unmannerly rebuff. 
 
 "He is full of hatred toward Jasper Massareene," 
 Olivia was then telling herself. " I am almost certain, 
 now, that he has spied upon us. Behind all this scorn 
 of American painting lies a mood whose harshness I 
 shall feel the brunt of hereafter." 
 
 They soon began, all three, to move onward, and 
 for quite a long time there was no perceptible abate- 
 ment of Delaplaine's inclement verdicts. Every new 
 work that he condescended to notice at all he made a 
 target for his most unmerciful raillery and disdain. 
 There was often so much truth mingled with his sav- 
 agery, that if some adept at shorthand could have 
 taken down all that he said, and printed it verbatim 
 in a newspaper, it would have served excellently for 
 an example of the " brilliant," " slashing " or " fear- 
 less" criticism of our period. In other words, it was 
 wholly uncharitable, and marked by a perspicacity that 
 reserved its keenest discernments for the worst errors 
 of the artist. Meanwhile, however, he contrived to 
 blend with all his acerbity a vein of clear concilia- 
 tion toward Massareene. It soon became apparent 
 that he desired to express regret, if nothing like con- 
 trition; and they had not finished their tour of the
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 371 
 
 five or six apartments befoi'e he had courteously asked 
 Massareeue whether he would not find it agreeable to 
 give Mrs. Delaplaine and himself the pleasure of his 
 company at dinner that evening. 
 
 Massereene acquiesced. The young man may be 
 said never to have formulated his own feelings as 
 regarded the exact terms of his acquaintanceship with 
 Olivia Delaplaine. But it is certainly well within the 
 bounds of probability that he should have indulged a 
 little self-introspection as to why he so coolly and 
 unalarmedly confronted the prospect of a dinner at 
 the board of her Rhadamanthine husband. As it was, 
 he gave up a partial engagement to dine with an 
 Englishman at Delmonico's that same evening. He 
 softened his own compunction, after saying au revoir 
 to Olivia on the outer steps of the Academy, by assur- 
 ing himself that the Englishman was a pushing fellow 
 whom he had always thought third-rate in nearly 
 everything, and that he had not by any means prom- 
 ised his own presence as an unfailing certainty. For 
 the rest, a memory dwelt with him of Mrs. Dela- 
 plaine's last look, and so dispelled all further consci- 
 entious qualms. The look had seemed to say : " Do 
 not disappoint; your coming may save me untold 
 discomfort." Still, this was the mere haphazard inter- 
 pretation of a most dubious intuition. Mrs. Delaplaine 
 (as Massereene soon afterward informed his own 
 thoughts) might have intended to do no more than 
 look polite sanction of her husband's hospitality. 
 
 Delaplaine's brougham was waiting for him outside 
 the Academy. Massereene had already left them 
 when husband and wife set foot upon the lower pave- 
 ments. Olivia had by this time seen the brougham.
 
 372 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 "I shall walk down home," she announced, very 
 placidly. 
 
 " There is not time for you to do so," he replied, 
 pulling out his watch and giving it a glance. " It is 
 nearly six now, and if you wish to dress for dinner " 
 
 " I don't wish to dress for dinner," she interrupted, 
 moving away. " I shall not be late and I prefer 
 walking." 
 
 She passed right on toward Madison Avenue with- 
 out offering another word or waiting to hear one. 
 The thought of being driven home at Delaplaine's 
 side had become execrable to her; she did not know 
 what thrilling insult might leave those unmerciful lips 
 of his after he and she were once in the carriage to- 
 gether. She felt glad that Massereene had hurried off 
 up town, to dress, as he had told them, for dinner ; 
 otherwise her husband might have construed her 
 present course into some design of seeing the young 
 man again between now and dinner-time. "I will not 
 look at one of the carriages that go past me in the 
 avenue," Olivia mutely determined ; and she did not. 
 If her homeward progress was being scrutinized by a 
 pair of pursuant marital eyes, she therefore remained 
 ignorant of it. As for Delaplaine's late ccrdialty to 
 Massereene, she had grown almost convinced that this 
 had been founded upon sham. But why the employ- 
 ment of sham ? Why the invitation to dinner ? Had 
 her anxiety but conjured empty spectres after all? It 
 may even have been that the meeting in the Academy 
 of Design was accidental. Olivia tried to soothe her 
 own troubled sensations by asking herself if she had 
 possibly allowed mere nervous misgiving to cast a 
 fantastic or hobgoblin light over the commonplace.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 373 
 
 She went immediately to her room, on reaching- 
 home a little before seven. The changes that she 
 had decided to make in her toilet were slight ; she 
 had completed them when a servant knocked at her 
 door, informing her that Mr. Massereene was in the 
 drawing-room and that dinner was served. But she 
 had scarcely gone out into the hall before she perceived 
 her husband coming toward her from an opposite di- 
 rection ; like herself, he was approaching the staircase 
 that led below. 
 
 "You are in time for dinner after all," he surprised 
 her by most amiably saying. 
 
 " Oh, yes," she answered, making her tones ex- 
 tremely affable, and beginning to descend as she 
 spoke ; " I was sure that I should be." 
 
 " I suppose it quite astonished you to find me there, 
 at the Academy." 
 
 " Well, it seemed a little strange, as you said, that 
 we should both have hit on the same day especially 
 as you had not mentioned going. But no doubt you 
 go every year ; do you not ? " 
 
 He did not answer, and a minute later they both 
 stood in the lower hall. Suddenly, she saw a look of 
 great moroseness and acrimony possess his face, and 
 it seemed to her that a cold, bluish light leaped electri- 
 cally from his angered eyes. 
 
 " You know very well," he said hissingly to her, 
 "that I went there because you and Tie went be- 
 cause I saw you from my carriage as I drove along 
 because I had a most natural curiosity to ... 
 to learn how this very friendly intimacy was devel- 
 oping." 
 
 The plain sneer in his last words lost its point for
 
 374 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 Olivia, because of the suppressed fury that accom- 
 panied it. She had become so used to his sneering 
 under conditions of the most entire immobility that 
 this unusual evidence of exasperation, and perhaps of 
 burning jealousy as well, at once gave a weapon to 
 her dauntless young spirit. She had never feared 
 Delaplaine, as we know. She regarded him now 
 with a look full of that rebuke which a larger nature 
 can sometimes visually, inexplainably, and in a trice, 
 as it were, communicate to a smaller one. 
 
 " What admirable taste ! " she said, under her breath. 
 " But I might have been prepared for it in you." She 
 pointed to the closed door of the drawing-room, near 
 which they both stood. " Why ask here, to dine with 
 you, a gentleman upon whose acts you have played 
 the spy ? " 
 
 He made an enraged gesture. " Do you want me to 
 speak out what I think," he said, " before him ? be- 
 fore you both ? " 
 
 Her eyes flashed. " If you insulted him, he would 
 know bow to resent it," she answered. " If you in- 
 sulted me in his presence, you would be lowering 
 yourself more than a man of your social prudence 
 would be at all apt to do." 
 
 Her retort was vibrant with the most challenging 
 scorn. She at once went forward to the closed door. 
 As she placed her hand upon its knob, she heard him 
 say, in tones replete with agitation and menace : 
 " Take care take care." 
 
 But she waited to hear no more. She felt desper- 
 ately goaded and stung. In another moment she had 
 glided into the drawing-room. Massereene was there, 
 and rose as she entered. She left the door open, ex-
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 375 
 
 pecting that her husband would follow her. But he 
 did not, and she seated herself, indicating by a slight 
 motion that Massereene should do the same. 
 
 " You seem excited," he murmured to her, as he 
 dropped upon the sofa at her side. 
 
 "I am," she could not help acknowledging. "Some- 
 thing has happened something most distressing. I 
 am not sure " and then she paused, with a break 
 in her voice that her paleness accentuated to him 
 while he waited for her to speak again. "My hus- 
 band may make matters unpleasant," she went on, 
 much more evenly and calmly. " I have just been 
 greatly annoyed by certain words that he has ad- 
 dressed to me. There are limits to one's patience. 
 I confess that I would not speak thus if I had not a 
 fear an actual fear lest he may seriously embarrass 
 us both by " 
 
 But Delaplaine now crossed the threshold of the 
 drawing-room. He looked perfectly collected and 
 host-like. In another minute he had shaken hands 
 with Massereene, and almost jovially congratulated 
 his guest upon the virtue of punctuality. 
 
 " I believe dinner is served," he continued, with his 
 best bow the bow that had long ago helped to es- 
 tablish him as a favorite in the haute voice of a now 
 dead-and-gone epoch. " Will you give your arm to 
 my wife, Mr. Massereene ? " he continued, with a 
 little burst of laughter. " I will walk unaccom- 
 panied behind you. I will imagine that I have on 
 my arm the most delightful and charming lady in 
 town except our hostess. . . . Now, there's a compli- 
 ment to my wife, Massereene ; isn't it ? And rather 
 creditable for an old fellow past sixty, eh ? What do
 
 376 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 you think of it for a proof that I'm the shining type 
 of a model husband ? " 
 
 Olivia slipped her hand into Massereene's proffered 
 arm. The hand trembled and she could not but be 
 aware that he was conscious of this betrayal. " What 
 does it all mean ? " she was silently questioning her- 
 self. " Will some horrid thing soon occur, or does he 
 only wish to torture me in a new way, after having 
 tortured me in the old one for so many months." 
 
 But as the dinner proceeded, Delaplaine gave no 
 signs of adopting any such painful course. It was 
 not long, however, before he had turned the conver- 
 sation between Massereene and himself into a some- 
 what philosophic channel. And by degrees his 
 materialistic views clouded his discourse more and 
 more darkly, till Massereene, accustomed to all 
 forms of argument among his English university 
 friends, could not help exclaiming ; 
 
 " You denounce as autocratic those who insist 
 upon that ' one far-off divine event to which the 
 whole creation moves.' But why are they more 
 daringly d, priori than those who affirm the direct 
 contrary, granting that both sides dispense with rev- 
 elation as a kind of supernatural support ? Is it 
 not, when all has been said, dogma for dogma? 
 Only, have not the optimists the best oi the dis- 
 pute ? For my part, I maintain that they have 
 immeasurably." 
 
 "Ah," replied Delaplaine, with a shrug of the 
 shoulders, " if you have the remotest intention of 
 beginning to justify and account for the whole absurd 
 series of phenomena we call life on grounds of trans- 
 cendentalism, you will find me a rather tough contest-
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 377 
 
 ant. You might as well quote Bishop Butler or Paley 
 to me, and have clone with it." 
 
 " I have no intention of quoting either author," re- 
 plied Massereene. "My belief is something quite 
 apart from their elaborate efforts to prove a per- 
 sonal Divinity." 
 
 "You mean your belief in a personal Divinity?" 
 
 " No ; I neither believe nor disbelieve, there." 
 
 " Ah, of course. From the purely agnostic vantage- 
 ground I should speak in the same consistent terms of 
 formula. But a minute ago you mentioned your be- 
 lief. Am I to understand by this word your faith in 
 the posthumous continuity of all human life, with 
 results that throw satisfying light upon every present 
 mystery? or, conversely, your denial that all is futil- 
 ity, with blind forces flung accidentally together to 
 create consciousness at the beginning, and the disrup- 
 tion of these forces, with annihilation of consciousness, 
 at the end ? " 
 
 "You are certainly to understand my denial," de- 
 clared Massereene, " that life is any such terrible trav- 
 esty as this. A hundred signs point oppositely." 
 
 " Give me one," said Delaplaine, while he selected a 
 plump Spanish olive and began to nibble it. 
 
 " The existence of mind as an apex, a terminus, of 
 nature's many grades and degrees of performance. 
 Man's possibility of progression is boundless. His 
 divine destiny cannot be misinterpreted. He has 
 but to speak, to think, to feel, and he has suggested 
 his own heirship to eternity." 
 
 Delaplaine smiled, while he still made little bites at 
 his olive with his white, well-preserved teeth, holding 
 it in a gingerly way between thumb and finger.
 
 378 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 " Bah, my dear fellow, you talk like a poet. Can- 
 didly, if I had my say, I should render .all people who 
 were tried and found guilty of being poets, unable 
 either to inherit or purchase property, besides taking 
 away their privileges at the polls. The truth is simply 
 this : for about five thousand years past, man has been 
 ceaselessly endeavoring to find out whence he came, 
 whither he is going, and why he is here at all." 
 
 " He has probably been doing it for a much longer 
 time than five thousand years." 
 
 " Oh, we'll say two or three millions, if you please. 
 I dare say it took a very great while longer for the 
 ape to reach even the rudimentary human biped. But 
 we know that man's inquiries as to the whence and 
 whither of his fate have certainly been going on for 
 about that period of five thousand years. And in all 
 the monstrous interval thus employed, what has he 
 learned ? Nothing. He has prostrated himself before 
 the gods of many and many a separate theogony. He 
 has spilled seas of blood in the defence of his different 
 creeds. But to-day the sphinx holds the secret just as 
 firmly as ever. Now, in this nineteenth century, we 
 are beginning to make up our minds that there is no 
 secret at all. We are concerning ourselves with 
 matter, and we are gradually arriving at the rational 
 conclusion that matter begins everything and ends 
 everything." 
 
 "Do you imply, then, that we are approaching 
 atheism ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Oh," cried Olivia, " that is horrible even to think 
 of!" 
 
 Delaplaine took no notice of her exclamation. "All
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 379 
 
 the great modern thinkers," he went on, addressing 
 Massereene, " are atheists at heart. They pretend 
 that they are not, but science is their gospel; and 
 science, the more facts that she gathers, grows the 
 more certain of how many picturesque falsehoods 
 have been circulated in the name of metaphysics." 
 
 *' Science pauses at the unknowable," said Masse- 
 reene, " but she does not presume to postulate beyond 
 it. She leaves the spiritual part of the question alone, 
 and rightly. But she does not, for this reason, assert 
 that no vast realm of marvellous supervision lies outside 
 her powers of perception or analysis. I remember no 
 instance among the writings of these thinkers to whom 
 you have alluded where they can be credited with 
 stating that a supreme Providence fails to overlook 
 and direct the whole inscrutable plan." 
 
 " No, they don't state it, but what do they infer ? 
 Far more than that, what does the immense misery 
 and sorrow inflicted upon the race at large infer ? It 
 is when we take a broad view of this "inscrutable 
 plan " that we discern how faint, how feeble is the 
 testimony it furnishes of an intelligence in the least 
 concerned with its welfare. Millions of people are 
 now staggering, throughout the globe under a yoke 
 of drudgery. A few are prosperous and compara- 
 tively happy in all lands. Disease fastens upon those 
 whom affection guards, dragging them to untimely 
 death. Nature, the inveterate enemy of mankind, 
 destroys by earthquake, cyclone, malarial infection, 
 pest, shipwreck and the numberless ills through which 
 she is ever proving to us that the sentimentalists have 
 lied about her sympathy and her kindliness. Science 
 conquers her dumb, stolid enmity in the steamship,
 
 380 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 the railway, the telegraph, the telephone. But Nature, 
 still an unlaid foe, inflicts her innumerable ills upon 
 the race. Meanwhile, prayers and hymns of worship 
 go up from the churches, and what answer do they 
 receive? None. We find in ourselves the sole remedy 
 for the enormous misfortune of existence. And it is a 
 very meagre one. Our hospitals and asylums keep 
 from us, in centres of civilization, the full sadness and 
 horror. Our prisons aid too, for they hide the moral 
 maladies as well as they can. Something perpetu- 
 ally compels man to hope, to bear up to eat his 
 dinner, when he can get it, and not fix too acute a 
 gaze upon the general wretchedness of his lot. He 
 is really a captive, cursed with a durance that has 
 clutched him for the crime of having been born. But 
 he is more than a mere captive, since he is one con- 
 tinually under sentence of death. And those whom 
 he loves are under a like sentence ; at any moment 
 they may be torn from him, making his custody still 
 more like the caprice of a tyrant. When he sees the 
 whole despotism in its darkest hues and has the bold- 
 ness to affirm life the unsolicited oppression that it is, 
 he receives the condescending commiseration of those 
 who wilfully darken their sight and stuff their ears. 
 He is called ' morbid,' and ' unhealthy,' and ' a brooder.' 
 By shibboleths like these he is denounced and silenced. 
 Poets foam at the mouth before him in their illogical 
 epilepsies which they call 'divination.' Religion tries 
 to crush him with its tomes of ' revealed truth.' He is 
 only a poor wretch of a pessimist. He can't hear the 
 music of the spheres, or the choruses of the seraphim. 
 He can hear other sounds, however very earthly 
 ones, like groans and sobs and cries for help. He is
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 381 
 
 compelled to cloak his ' morbidness,' or his most influ- 
 ential friends will cut him, and that may be a question 
 of his bread-and-butter. But all the while, poor fellow, 
 he has only told the truth about life. It's a king with 
 a coffin for a throne, death herself for a queen-consort, 
 despair for a prime minister, and religion for a court- 
 jester. . . . There's poetry for you, Massereene, as 
 you seem to be fond of the muse." 
 
 It would be impossible to convey the real effect of 
 these sentences as they fell from Delaplaine's lips, each 
 one being spoken with an air of indifference, if not 
 positive languor. His voice never once rose above the 
 most ordinary conversational pitch ; and, delivered 
 with a glacial disregard of all rhetorical parade, every 
 phrase he uttered seemed to acquire a new pungency. 
 
 " I am fond enough of poetry," returned Massereene, 
 "but not of that kind one which reminds me of a 
 certain French poetic school that prides itself upon 
 wholly ignoring the spiritual side of life. I confess 
 that I cannot honestly contradict anything you have 
 said ; but there is to me proof of the infinite meaning 
 and potency of life in the thought that two diverse 
 lines of vision may touch it in such totally varying 
 ways. The unhappiness that afflicts humanity is 
 broken by gleams and flashes of the most exquisite 
 joy and contentment. Scarcely a single man has ever 
 lived who cannot truthfully assert this of his mortal 
 career. But when he lives unselfishly, when he nur- 
 tures within his own soul impulses of generous concern 
 with the misfortunes and misdeeds of his fellows, then, 
 in proportion as he grows less occupied by personal 
 fears and hopes, the more does he realize how magnifi- 
 cent may be the incumbency which before has seemed
 
 382 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 so doom-like and so dispiriting. The finer agnosticism, 
 then, offers him beautiful rewards for perished ortho- 
 dox faith. He comprehends that to live duteously, 
 sacrificially, cannot be to live in vain. He finds that 
 ever) though the farther side of the grave may hold an 
 eternal void and blank, this side of it teems with a 
 potential godliness. Reason may repulse with its 
 insuperable bounds, but the deeper that he probes the 
 sources of philanthropy the more clearly he becomes 
 aware from what sacred fountain-heads these have 
 sprung. Where one may discern such riches of 
 spirituality as those manifest in a chaste, altruistic 
 life here on earth, it does not seem hard to let imagi- 
 nation do reason's work, and point to some statelier 
 disembodied condition. Still, evolution, from the 
 marvels it has already shown us, may mean so glo- 
 rious a rise, for the race if not for the individual, that 
 in the mighty pulse and push of this great energy alone 
 may lie our sole attainable heaven." 
 
 "You are laudably cautious," loitered Delaplaine, 
 watching the almost rapt look that had overspread his 
 wife's face while Massereene had spoken her parted 
 lips, her glistening eyes, and the tender tremor of 
 either nostril though Olivia was herself quite una- 
 ware of having provoked his attention. " You outline 
 a Paradise for the race and not for the individual. 
 And evolution is to bring about all that millennial state 
 of things, eh ? How about dissolution, then ? This 
 relatively small sun and tiny earth of ours will sooner 
 or later, according to the very law you instance, be 
 two cinders whirling through space. Astronomy as- 
 sures us that many a solar system has burned itself 
 out, and that the mementos of these are dark and
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 383 
 
 frozen worlds, which swing round their dark and 
 frozen luminaries in the most ghastly way conceivable. 
 Here is the priceless lesson that evolution teaches us ! 
 I fail to see the necessity of progression and ameliora- 
 tion, if it brings us a heaven based on such perishable 
 foundations." 
 
 " I am far from believing that the individual is cut 
 off from all entity after death," Massereene replied, 
 while a shade of annoyance crossed his face at being, 
 as it struck him, maliciously misconstrued. "How 
 can one touch these subjects except he does so in a 
 speculative fashion ? If I were to put my creed in a 
 few words, I should say that I am an agnostic, but a 
 very reverential and idealistic one. No tidings may 
 yet have reached us, but on this account we should by 
 no means be comfortless." 
 
 " Comfortless ! " cried Olivia, wholly forgetting her- 
 self and stretching forth one hand until it rested on 
 Massereene's wrist ; " I am not comfortless, but ah, 
 how miserable it would make me if I thought no tid- 
 ings had reached us ! " She paused, and with flushing 
 cheek drew her hand away ; she had caught her hus- 
 band's eye, and its cloudy look had made her guiltily 
 conscious of what was, after all, the most harmless bit 
 of friendliness. 
 
 "We three," said Mnssereene, somewhat with the 
 air of a person who wishes to fill an awkward pause, 
 " represent three separate forms of mental growth." 
 
 "Decidedly separate in my wife's case," muttered 
 Delaplaine, with a stinging dryness. "But women 
 would be lost without religion, I suppose. I can't 
 recall any who did not possess it and were not more 
 or less depraved." He now rose from the table;
 
 384 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 dessert had been served ; Olivia was prepared to have 
 him propose a cigar with Massereene upstairs in the 
 library. But, to her surprise, he said : 
 
 "I have an engagement which will detain me for 
 two hours or so. I must be among a lot of financial 
 fellows by nine o'clock to discuss the advisability of a 
 government loan which I have already made up my 
 mind not to be advisable. I would much prefer to 
 remain here and talk with you of less tangible and 
 mundane matters in my materialistic way." He 
 shot a furtive look at Olivia while ending the last 
 sentence. She understood (or believed that she un- 
 derstood) this look, as signifying that his own side of 
 the conversation with Massereene had been visibly if 
 silently disapproved by her. And indeed, she had 
 loathed both to watch and to listen while he vented 
 what she considered his odious ideas and theories. It 
 had occurred to her, once or twice, that he might have 
 some desire to show Massereene in a worsted and 
 humiliated plight, stricken by the lances of the Dela- 
 plaine logic. But it would have taken a whole arsenal 
 of such weapons, each one wielded by a most brilliant 
 adept in their use, to have made Olivia's firm faitli 
 waver or tremble. 
 
 Her husband now went on, still addressing Masse- 
 reene: "I must apologize for this summary exit; 
 but probably yon won't mind letting Mrs. Delaplaine 
 have your society for the next hour or so." (Those 
 last few words were, for Olivia, fairly steeped in the 
 most acrid sarcasm.) "I am sure iny wife will not 
 object to your smoking; but my library, if you will 
 allow me to say it, is the pleasanter room for that. . . . 
 Edward " (to the butler) " you know where my cigars
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 385 
 
 are to be found. ... It is possible tbat I may return 
 before you depart. But in case I do not, I will say 
 good evening now. . . ." 
 
 Olivia was not at all averse to ascending with Mas- 
 sereene into her husband's library. Delaplaine's prop- 
 osition that she should do so astonished her almost as 
 much as his sudden withdrawal from the dinner-table. 
 But his appearance in the Academy of Design and his 
 invitation to her companion afterward had both been 
 astonishing. This third little coup de thedtre, as she 
 could not help secretly thinking it, was productive of 
 a still greater amazement. 
 
 " I doubt if he has any engagement whatever," she 
 now said to her own thoughts. " He wishes to mystify, 
 to bewilder me by a little train of eccentricities. Per- 
 haps he has seen that he cannot wrangle successfully 
 with Massereene and not become merely insolent, so 
 concludes to retire and brood over some new means of 
 provoking my future irritation." 
 
 "You have never seen this room?" she said with a 
 forced lightness to Massereene, after they had entered 
 the library. " It is pretty, is it not ? " 
 
 "Exceedingly pretty," her guest answered. The 
 shaded lamp, and one or two dim-lit gas-jets in the 
 chandelier above it, threw just the requisite illumina- 
 tion upon rich-toned walls, low book-cases, infrequent 
 yet rare objects of ornament, and carpet, rugs, table- 
 cloth and tapestries of the most admirably harmonious 
 hues. Across a wide doorway at some distance from 
 the commodious chairs in which Olivia and Massereene 
 now seated themselves hung a heavy curtain of velvet 
 on rings attached to a gilded rod. Beyond this cur- 
 tain, lay Delaplaine's own suite of apartments. Olivia
 
 386 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 had not the faintest suspicion that her husband had 
 not already left the house. She and Massereene had 
 talked together in the dining-room over their fruit and 
 coffee for at least a quarter of an hour after Delaplaine 
 had disappeared. They had said very ordinary things 
 to one another, and now, when the man at her side 
 made reference to their brief colloquy just before 
 dinner, his quiet but serious change of subject affected 
 her with a startling sense of abruptness. 
 
 " You spoke there, in the drawing-room," he began, 
 "of a certain fear that seemed to bear upon your 
 husband's forthcoming behavior. . . . Well, you were 
 agreeably disappointed, were you not? He" did not 
 make matters unpleasant, after all unless one takes 
 into consideration your dislike of his cheerless tenets 
 and canons." 
 
 "Those chill me whenever I am obliged to hear 
 them," she answered. "But no it was not to them 
 
 that I alluded. He had been saying " But now 
 
 her voice sank, while the color slowly dyed her face. 
 "Well, I can't tell it," she broke off impetuously. 
 " Never mind what he said or did or threatened." 
 
 "Threatened?" Massereene repeated very sharply, 
 and with an unmistakable note of query in his tones. 
 
 She gazed steadily into his dark, manful face. How 
 capable he looked of bravely defending one for whom 
 he cared ! But she drooped her eyes a moment after- 
 ward. 
 
 "Threatened, I mean, to to distress me in your 
 presence. No matter how." Here she again lifted 
 her eyes and gave a little perturbed laugh. " Dear, 
 dear, I am always wanting to talk of 'something else' 
 with you lately, am I not?"
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 387 
 
 " I should like to talk of something else," said Masse- 
 reene, staring down at the ruby end of the cigar which 
 she had herself lighted for him not long ago. "I 
 wonder though if you will think now a time for it. 
 Perhaps you will not. I shall remember that you 
 promised me your confidence, but I shall not seek to 
 force from you, however gently, its expression. Entre 
 Parbre et Vecorce ne mettez pas le doigt" 
 
 "You mean about how I strove to atone for my 
 fault the fault of my marriage and how I failed ? " 
 
 "Yes," he answered. 
 
 There was quite a long pause between them now. 
 Olivia had lowered her eyes again, and somehow it 
 seemed to him who watched her as if their glan ce had 
 fallen upon the wedding-ring that shone, among others, 
 from the small white knot which her clasped hands 
 were making in her lap. And presently she began 
 to speak, without altering either her attitude or her 
 countenance. 
 
 " I told myself that I had committed a sin by 
 marrying as I did. But I had bowed my head under 
 the yoke, and I must wear that yoke with fortitude 
 until death his death, most probably disburdened 
 me of it. I would endure the full consequences of 
 my own sordid piece of ambition ; I would neither 
 flinch nor murmur. . . . At first it seemed as if God 
 had already forgiven me. . . . (You see, I cannot 
 speak of God in your way ; when I think of Him at 
 all He is a living, breathing presence to me, and in all 
 sympathetic sense as human as He is in other senses 
 divine.) But soon I discovered how greatly I had 
 erred. A very hard task was before me." She now 
 spoke on for many minutes, describing the humilia-
 
 388 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 tion, impertinence, and generally deplorable treatment 
 to which, during months and months after their mar- 
 riage, Spencer Delaplaine had subjected her. 
 
 "But at last," she pursued, "I I broke down; I 
 gave way. I could stand it no longer. There is no 
 need of my telling you just why this miserable col- 
 lapse of mine occurred. But it did occur, and with the 
 debdcle of my strong self-scourging resolves, I grew 
 desperate and disdainful. I amazed him by the heat 
 and intensity of my revolt. I poured out my re- 
 proaches upon him; I warned him that except on 
 certain conditions I would not live under his roof, 
 but would go to my aunt, Mrs. Ottarson. . . . Well, 
 circumstances arranged so that a particular demand 
 which he had made of me and which I had refused to 
 grant, could neither be enforced nor disregarded. A 
 kind of compromise has been the result. There are 
 times, however, when his treatment makes me dread 
 a recurrence of those former piercing aggravations. 
 . . . And I cannot suffer them to be resumed without 
 resenting them ... I have told you all that I I 
 deem it best to tell regarding his methods of render- 
 ing me unhappy. If they are resumed, do you not 
 think it would be wiser for me to leave him ? " 
 
 " To leave him ? " echoed Massereene in a meditat- 
 ing tone ..." Yes ! " he suddenly burst forth, his 
 voice ringing as if a transport of passionate pity had 
 seized him. " By all means, yes!" 
 
 " This is your advice to me ? " 
 
 "It is my advice." 
 
 "You do not think it would be unpardonable weak- 
 ness in me, after having entered into such a marriage 
 of my own free will, to "
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 389 
 
 " Oh, absurdity ! " cried Massereene, springing to 
 his feet. "Your own free will ? Why, has not your 
 own story made it as plain as day to me that you were 
 deceived, played upon, absolutely bedevilled by that 
 man and your two heartless aunts? You, almost a 
 child ! I don't think you understand the strength of 
 the influence that they exerted. I believe there is 
 hardly a girl living who would not have yielded under 
 the stress of such persuasion as that brought to bear 
 upon you then ! I " 
 
 He paused, for Olivia had given a quick, shrill cry, 
 and risen. She was looking toward the large velvet 
 curtain at the farther end of the chamber. It had 
 been partially withdrawn, and with his face showing 
 very pale indeed against its dusky background. 
 Spencer Delaplaine was standing just in front of 
 it. He had heard every word of the recent conver- 
 sation between Olivia and Massereene.
 
 390 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 DURING about as long a time as it would take for 
 any one in a leisurely manner to count ten, there 
 reigned complete silence in the library. Neither 
 Olivia nor Massereene was at all sure that the master 
 of the house had been playing eavesdropper. But his 
 extreme pallor, mixed with an accusative tension of 
 the lips and a slight but distinct clouding of the brows, 
 gradually rendered this conclusion almost a certainty. 
 And while both were making up their minds how it 
 would be best to break a silence every new instant of 
 which was growing more severely painful, Delaplaine 
 himself spoke, with the huskiness of an ungovernable 
 wrath. 
 
 He advanced toward Massereene, raising one hand 
 rather with denunciation than with any hint of assault. 
 
 "So you dare, sir," he cried, "to advise my wife 
 that she shall leave me ? Is this what you call being 
 a gentleman? I'm, of course, no match for you in 
 
 strength, but by G if you do not leave this house 
 
 at once, rascally prig and charlatan that you've shown 
 yourself, I'll . . ." 
 
 Massereene, pale from the shock of insult, here ut- 
 tered a suppressed cry ; but his doing so was not the 
 reason for Delaplaine having paused. The latter had 
 just lifted one hand to his throat as though assailed 
 by a fit of choking. In another instant his eyes
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 391 
 
 closed, and then rapidly re-opened, with a dilated and 
 glassy stare. These changes had taken so little time 
 that Massereene, through some oblique effect of the 
 light, and no doubt because of his indignation as well, 
 had not perceived them. He was even about to frame 
 a retort that would have told his anger most unspar- 
 ingly, when he saw the form of Delaplaine sway and 
 then fall with piteous heaviness to the floor. . . . 
 
 He was unconscious when uplifted, and he had sus- 
 tained an abrasion of one side of the head near the 
 temple, which bled profusely and distressingly, and 
 which had, in the opinion of at least one physician 
 who attended him, saved his life after the violent 
 apoplectic stroke imperilled it. 
 
 Olivia had no recollection of parting from Jasper 
 Massereene that night. She was in a state of pathetic 
 turmoil; it seemed to her that if her husband died 
 she would be steeped in shame for the rest of her life- 
 time. They had carried him upstairs, and she stood 
 half the night listening at the door of his chamber, in 
 tremors lest the announcement that he had died should 
 freeze her already palpitating nerves. If she had 
 wantonly violated those marriage vows taken in that 
 same room near which she now kept eager vigil and 
 taken there with such uncanny gloom of accompani- 
 ment ! she could not have been more despondently 
 the prey of remorse. 
 
 "Mine is indeed an heirship of misfortune," she 
 declared to herself while she waited in the dimness of 
 the outer hall, kept by a sluggish horror at the heart 
 from entering the room where he lay and assuming 
 there the post or duties of an ordinary wife. " I begin 
 to think that Jasper Massereene may have been right
 
 392 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 that I was dragged into that marriage. And then 
 all the sorrow and struggle that has followed it ! And 
 now this new torment of having been implicated in 
 his death ! For even although he survives the present 
 attack, I sha.ll always feel as if his life may have been 
 shortened by me ! " 
 
 He did survive the present attack, and of course 
 Olivia's desolation of spirit did not abide by any means 
 as darksome as while the shadow of death hung most 
 menacingly over her husband. But the self-rebuking, 
 penitential mood had not departed. For a fortnight 
 her husband lay quite speechless, and only conscious 
 at intervals. During this period (at any minute of 
 which he might suddenly have ceased to live) Olivia 
 bestowed upon him her most devoted attention. The 
 ice once broken, in so far as concerned her appearance 
 at his bedside, she left no effort untried to preserve a 
 life for whose extinction she felt that she would be at 
 least partially culpable. But this impression began to 
 vanish after a while ; it was expelled from her mind, 
 so to speak, by the salutary forces of health, just as 
 foreign element is cast out from the flesh by pure 
 blood. Olivia was herself too healthy to brood long 
 over an entirely imaginary fault. In all her relations 
 with Jasper Massereene, she had been thoroughly 
 guiltless, and this fact could not but thrust its knowl- 
 edge, like some vivid beacon-ray of encouragement, 
 through the tempest of her trouble. 
 
 Still, she refused to receive Massereene, though he 
 came again and again to see her. At last she wrote 
 him. The letter was extremely difficult of composi- 
 tion, because her avowed reasons for desiring to break 
 their friendship once and for all, played about prov-
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 393 
 
 inces of mutual relationship describable only in terms 
 that repelled her by an undue warmth. " I cannot tell 
 him," she mused, " that his society has for weeks past 
 been so dear to me as now to make our separation a 
 positive trial." . . . And yet she did write very much 
 in this strain. But her refusal to meet him again was 
 absolute. " Our intimacy," she wrote, " must end for 
 the present. If I were to put in words just why it 
 cannot now be resumed, I should run one of two risks : 
 I might wound you by too bluntly dealing with a 
 friendly regard of which I have had such ample proof; 
 or, still worse, I might soil in your eyes those gossamer 
 things, my womanly delicacy and dignity, by reference 
 to impediments both needlessly and cruelly reared." 
 
 It was a good fortnight longer before Delaplaine 
 was pronounced out of danger. He now spoke, choos- 
 ing his words, at first, with so much hesitancy and 
 deliberation that aphasia (most deplorable of infirmi- 
 ties) became dreaded by his watchers. But this threat 
 passed away, and it was soon found that the invalid 
 could speak quite as intelligently and fluently as ever. 
 
 A little while afterward, indeed, he began speaking 
 to Olivia, and showed that none of his old cynicism 
 had left him. He was still exceedingly feeble, and 
 could not move about unassisted, one arm and one leg 
 being partially paralyzed. 
 
 A great many of Olivia's new fashionable friends 
 now paid her visits of etiquette, but for very few did 
 she permit herself to be " at home." Of course, when 
 the Auchinclosses or Satterthwaites called, she was 
 obliged to see them or, rather she chose, however 
 inwardly disinclined, to pay the sisters of her dead 
 father this courteous tribute. And yet the presence of
 
 394 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 either lady was a stringent reminder to her of that 
 strange episode from which a certain amount of hollow 
 splendor and a very great deal of solid, remorseful 
 misery had been born. Mrs. Auchincloss . came with 
 Madeleine, just as Mrs. Satterthwaite afterward came 
 with Emrneline. There was something almost super- 
 human to Olivia in the deceit of self (if that were 
 really the proper name for what she was often tempted 
 to call quackery and mealy-mouthedness) which her 
 Aunt Letitia and that formal precisian, Miss Madeleine, 
 were capable of exhibiting. They both had not the 
 slightest suspicion that Spencer Delaplaine's death 
 would cause sorrow to his wife. They were indeed 
 both very safely confident that such an event would 
 produce relief rather than regret. Nevertheless, Mrs. 
 Auchincloss announced, with her head put a little 
 sideways, and her tones adjusted in precisely the right 
 commiserating key : 
 
 " Madeleine and I want you to feel, my dear, that in 
 this hour of bitter trial you can command our services 
 just as you know that you do command our sym- 
 pathies." 
 
 "Yes, Cousin Olivia," supplemented Madeleine, with 
 her ascetic smile. " If ever one's blood relations should 
 feel it their duty to be near one, it is at just such times 
 of suffering as these." 
 
 Olivia looked into her aunt's eyes until they fell, as 
 she responded : " It is not so much a question of suffer- 
 ing as of suspense." 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Mrs. Auchincloss, glad to seize on 
 any pretext for airing (what she would have thought 
 you a most horrible person if you had refused to be- 
 lieve) her "humanity"; "the suspense must be really
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 395 
 
 frightful. And do the doctors give you any decided 
 hope that he will recover?" 
 
 This was during the first few days after Delaplaine's 
 seizure, when the doctors had given very little "hope." 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite and Emmeline paid their visit 
 somewhat later. The contrast between themselves 
 and their kinswomen had in it a degree of real re- 
 freshment to Olivia. They were so politely and non- 
 committally brutal on the subject of Delaplaine's ill- 
 ness. Perhaps little Lulu's death had had its 
 permanently softening influence upon Mrs. Satter- 
 thwaite, but if this were true, she did not in the 
 least reveal any such attendrissement to the world 
 at large. The facets of her personality remained as 
 hard and clean cut as ever. Already no one in the 
 family ever spoke of Lulu ; it was such a painful 
 subject. Emmeline had occasionally referred to her 
 dead little sister, but both her mother and Elaine had 
 assured her that every time she did so it sent through 
 them a kind of nervous chill. Aspinwall's unhappy 
 return to the home of his parents, late on the night 
 that Lulu breathed her last, formed doubtless, a rea- 
 son for this excessive sensitiveness. If Augusta Sat- 
 terthwaite had any love in her soul it was for the son 
 who had come reeling into the house of death that 
 night ; and there was a ghastly enough melancholy 
 to her about this entire incident for its recollection 
 to prove both abiding and acute. Still, " Aspy " had 
 been forgiven not long afterward. His father held 
 out the most obdurately of any one a circumstance 
 doubly annoying to the young gentleman, because it 
 involved not merely a plethora of disapprobation but 
 a dearth of pocket-money. Mrs. Satterthwaite ulti-
 
 396 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 mately talked her husband, however, into a more 
 indulgent frame of mind, and Aspimvall gave his 
 mother a drawled-out promise that he " wouldn't 
 touch any spirits, don't you know, for a whole 
 year." He kept this oath of penance exactly two 
 weeks. But it was quite late when he came from 
 Delrnonico's on the night that he broke it. Nobody 
 saw him or heard him enter the house ; they were all 
 sleeping almost as soundly in their warm, wide beds 
 as poor little Lulu was sleeping in her cold and nar- 
 row one. After a short time his violation of his word 
 transpired among them. And when it did, nobody 
 thought Aspy had committed so very dreadful an 
 offence. Even his father, who had been so severe 
 with him at first, was finally heard to say : " Poor 
 young rascal, I hardly see how he could get along 
 without taking an occasional drink. I suppose that 
 ass of a Chichey Auchincloss could; but thank God, 
 Aspy isn't cut after his pattern." 
 
 Mrs. Satterthwaite, to whom these remarks were 
 chiefly addressed, answered them in a tone that 
 evinced regret for the lie of her son, however she 
 may have felt willing to condone his vinous habit 
 on grounds of easy, fashionable indulgence among 
 youths of Aspinwall's age. " But the boy was only 
 asked that his promise should relate to spirituous 
 liquors" she said. "It allowed him still to drink 
 wine whenever he pleased." 
 
 " I know," replied Bleecker Satterthwaite dryly. 
 " If it had forbidden the first and permitted the last 
 I dare say he'd have been just as much tempted to 
 break it. There is one glory of claret, another of 
 champagne, and another of brandy-and-soda," he
 
 OLIVIA DEL A PLAINS. 397 
 
 added. " We must only hope that the boy will 
 in time learn how to drink, as I did." 
 
 And meanwhile, as in thousands of similar cases, it 
 was an affair of the merest chance whether or not 
 "the boy " drank himself into his grave before he had 
 reached five-and-thirty. Every gentle yet subtle re- 
 strictive educational force had been denied him ; all 
 his early training had been a haphazard flinging away 
 of salaries upon modish but incompetent masters ; he 
 had been " crammed " in order to enter college, and 
 had pursued his studies there with the audacious aid 
 of " ponies," just escaping graduation at the foot of 
 his class. The laurels of scholarship ; the honor of 
 the intellectual life ; the fine, sweet wage that after 
 years of toil is due a faithful political servant ; even 
 the rectitude and probity crowning a long and useful 
 commercial career these gains he had not been 
 taught, in plain black-and-white, to despise, but he 
 had never been taught to respect either the qualities 
 that could win them or the prizes themselves when at- 
 tained. Fashion ; pretension ; cultivation so culti- 
 vated that it had become vulgarity ; the un-American 
 malady of caste that has crept into- Americanism 
 and may one day leave it a mass of mere democratic 
 wreckage ; Anglomania which means the servile 
 licking of England's hand, not the brotherly grasping 
 of it these, and a hundred other items of perverse in- 
 struction, had formed a part of his practical daily tui- 
 tion, while above the whole noxious collection of pre- 
 cepts, one fixed and deep-founded article of faith 
 tow r ered proudly paramount the worship of money 
 as the be-all and end-all of earthly precedence, valua- 
 tion and prestige.
 
 398 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 "I suppose you have no ... er ... expectation 
 that he will ever be much better?" said Mrs. Satter- 
 thwaite to Olivia, during this visit of hers with Emme- 
 line. "I mean, he'll continue an invalid, even if he 
 doesn't ... er ... die?" 
 
 "That is about what the doctors now appear to 
 think," said Olivia. "But he may become so little of 
 an invalid as to dispense with attendance, to go out 
 alone, and all that." 
 
 "How perfectly horrible," said Ernmeline, "to have 
 him not get any better and yet not . . ." She paused, 
 but by no means embarrassedly, leaving her meaning 
 to be understood, as she was wholly confident it 
 would be. 
 
 "Oh, perfectly agonizing," struck in her mother. 
 " His ... er ... death would be far preferable, 
 of course." And then its hardest note got into this 
 lady's voice as she looked about the room and pro- 
 ceeded : " Especially, my dear Olivia, when he leaves 
 you so comfortable." 
 
 "He hasn't left me yet," answered Olivia. There 
 was no one in the world whom she would have 
 answered in just that curt way except Augusta Sat- 
 terthwaite, the woman whom she knew to have 
 schemed, not long ago, against her maiden content, 
 as also against her maiden integrity of principle. Her 
 bluntness now resembled that which some accomplice 
 in a crime might have used at an after period to him 
 who had shared his guilt. Even Emmeline, sitting 
 broad-shouldered, high-colored and robustly handsome 
 at her mother's side, looked somewhat astonished. 
 Then the girl gave a laugh of cold amusement, as 
 she said :
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 399 
 
 "Well, Cousin Olivia, you don't speak as though 
 you were to be exactly shattered by such a bereave- 
 ment." 
 
 " Shattered ? " said Mrs. Satterthwaite, looking at 
 her daughter. " "What an odd word to use, Era ! I 
 fancy that if Olivia is, she'll manage to collect her 
 fragments and re-exist with them." Then, turning to 
 Olivia : " Shall you not, my dear ? " . . . 
 
 It was not very long after this that young Aspinwall 
 Satterthwaite presented himself in the drawing-room 
 of Olivia. Deplorable as she thought him in many 
 respects, he was nevertheless her cousin, and he was 
 making an evident call of condolence : so she saw 
 him. But scarcely had Aspinwall begun to talk, in 
 his blended strain of pomposity and fatigue, when a 
 card was handed to Olivia bearing the name of Chi- 
 chester Auchincloss. " Que faire ? " she questioned 
 of herself, and then promptly decided. They were 
 both equally related to her by blood, arch foes sworn 
 though she knew them to be. Their detestation of 
 each other might prove diverting under the circum- 
 stances. She briefly instructed the servant who had 
 brought in the card, and presently either of the two 
 young men was producing a bomb-shell effect upon 
 the other. They shook hands, and then surveyed 
 each other with a mutual scorn, veiled under what 
 was at least the similitude of politeness. 
 
 "The old gentleman 's no better, then, Olivia," in- 
 quired Aspinwall, playing with a stick that he carried, 
 superbly mounted in silver. 
 
 " No," Olivia said. 
 
 "Does Aspinwall allude to your hitsban d ? " asked 
 Chichester.
 
 400 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 "I imagine he does," .replied Olivia. "Don't yon, 
 Aspinwall ? " 
 
 " Certainly," said Aspinwall. He half turned, and 
 scanned Chichester with the corner of each eye ; his 
 steep collar would not permit much greater laxity of 
 movement, unless he shifted his entire position. Chi- 
 chester, clad in the darkest and most simple garb, 
 offered the sharpest contrast to his cousin, whose 
 gloves were bright yellow, whose hat was of cinna- 
 mon-brown, whose necktie was of sky-blue satin, whose 
 waistcoat was blue with a kind of yellowish sprig in it, 
 and whose trousers were of a flaring check pattern, 
 red, black, white, and perhaps a few more colors 
 beside. 
 
 "What's the matter with 'old gentleman'?" said 
 Aspinwall. " Don't you like it?" 
 
 "No," emphatically answered his cousin. "Used 
 in reference to Olivia's husband it savors painfully of 
 slang. It is evidently employed in the same spirit as 
 the 'old gentleman' which very many young men 
 apply with such dreadful taste to their own fathers." 
 
 Aspinwall laughed rather coarsely, and then looked 
 at Olivia with a glance that expressed unfathomable 
 contempt of his kinsman. But Olivia pretended not 
 to see the glance. 
 
 " I always call my dad ' old gentleman,' " said As- 
 pinwall, in a provocative and highly satirical voice ; 
 "that is, when I don't call him 'dad.' Sorry you 
 think it such bad form." 
 
 "Aspinwall," exclaimed Chichester, "you know we 
 seldom do agree." This was meant to silence Aspin- 
 wall. " Pray tell me something of Mr. Delaplaine's 
 case," the young gentleman continued, leaning toward
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 401 
 
 Olivia and bending upon her his very closest atten- 
 tion ; " I've read a little upon neurological subjects 
 myself, and " 
 
 " Jiminy ! " scoffed Aspinwall. He put up one 
 yellow-gloved hand and hollowed it behind his ear. 
 " Let's hear that big word again," he cried. " Where 
 
 O O * 
 
 did you get it from, Chichy?" 
 
 Chichester coughed a little, and threw back his head 
 a little, and crossed his own dark-gloved hands in his 
 lap, with a piqued, snappish manner which his sister 
 Madeleine sometimes rather tellingly adopted, but 
 which with him had the effect of an almost old-maidish 
 effeminacy. 
 
 "I got that word, Aspinwall," he replied, "from a 
 book you've not seen much more than the outside of. 
 I mean the dictionary." Then he laughed titter- 
 ingly and looked at his hostess. " He's probably as 
 wise now as he was before ; don't you think so, 
 Olivia?" But Olivia merely smiled in a neutral way. 
 She had no intention of arraying herself on the side of 
 either Montague or Capulet. 
 
 Chichester at once proceeded, speaking to Olivia as 
 though he were so oblivious of Aspinwall's presence 
 that he had no longer the faintest remembrance of it ; 
 "I should not have used the word 'neurological' with 
 reference to your husband's case. It is one of apo- 
 plexy, as I understand. Now, unless past inquiry into 
 this subject quite escapes me, cerebral hemorrhage 
 may be divided into four separate kinds." 
 
 " Good Lord ! " ejaculated Aspinwall, under his 
 breath, falling back into his chair. "What are we 
 going to have next?" 
 
 But Chichester, with magnificent self-possession,
 
 402 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 pursued his monologue, keeping liis gaze fixed, all the 
 while, upon Olivia's courteously disposed visage. " The 
 first on the list is the case in which two or three or more 
 bleedings rapidly succeed one another. The second is 
 where death occurs inside twenty-four hours, and 
 where the temperature falls at first, though it after- 
 ward greatly increases. The third is where illness 
 terminates in a few days after the attack; and here 
 the temperature diminishes, but is followed by a sta- 
 tionary period in which, after its physiological stand- 
 ard has been regained, the body of the patient is 
 beset by oscillations above and below this point. And 
 the fourth is that stage in which the patient recovers. 
 There is then " 
 
 "Houpla!" exulted Aspinwall, with his head ab- 
 surdly far back on the cushion of the lounge he 
 occupied, and a cigarette between the thumb and 
 finger of his right hand. "May I smoke, Cousin 
 Olivia? Yes, I know you'll let me. I couldn't stand 
 this medical lecture if you didn't." 
 
 " No, Aspy," said Olivia. " You carCt smoke here, 
 and you ought not to think of doing so." 
 
 " There is, fourthly," continued Chichester, still 
 haughtily ignoring his male cousin, "that happy case 
 in which they say the patient stands an excellent 
 chance of recovery. The temperature then falls, as in 
 other serious attacks, but it is followed by a temporary 
 rise, and later the normal standard so clearly asserts 
 itself that " 
 
 " Oh, look here ! " interrupted Aspinwall, pulling 
 himself up from his semi-recumbent position and 
 frowning serio-oomically upon the speaker. "We don't 
 want to know about the chances of the old chap getting
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 403 
 
 well. We'd rather hear your highfalutin remarks on 
 the subject of his quietly doing the other thing. . . . 
 Eh, Olivia?" 
 
 As the last word left Aspinwall, Olivia turned her 
 eyes on him. " You are impertinent to me," she said, 
 " and inhuman to my husband." 
 
 Aspinwall sprang from his chair. He was one of 
 the young New York gallants who pride themselves 
 upon being gentlemen, without the dimmest real con- 
 ception of those quieter occasions and intervals when 
 high breeding should make itself smoothly and accept- 
 ably evident. " By Jove ! " he exclaimed, " I hope I 
 haven't bored you the least in the world! Save I? 
 Now, do tell me if I have, and I'll get right down on 
 my knees, don't you know, to beg your pardon ! " 
 
 " Oh, you need not do anything so humble," said 
 Olivia, smiling amicably, and at the same time telling 
 herself how all indignation must be thrown away 
 on such wearying fatuity as this cousin of hers 
 represented! "The only apology I shall exact from 
 you," she continued, " will be the civil treatment 
 of our cousin Chichester's rather learned medical 
 treatise." 
 
 " Oh, he got it all from some book before he came 
 here. Didn't you, Chi ? " exclaimed Aspinwall. 
 
 Chichester drew himself up. "I have never in my 
 life before been called ' Chi,' " he said, with the edges 
 of his lips, as it were, "and I really wish you would 
 never again, Aspinwall, address me by such an un- 
 pleasant diminutive." 
 
 Aspinwall shrugged his shoulders and toyed with, 
 the cigarette which Olivia had forbidden him to light. 
 "All right," he replied, and at the same time assured
 
 404 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 himself that nature had never, no, never, created such 
 a thorough ass as his cousin. 
 
 When her two visitors had gone, Olivia went up- 
 stairs again to the sick-room of her husband. He was 
 then still so weak both in mind and body that he 
 could scarcely address a coherent word to her. 
 
 But in a short time he became strong enough to 
 deliver himself of many words, and often excessively 
 bitter ones. As he grew convalescent his venomous 
 remarks increased, each day adding to their malig- 
 nancy. Olivia was in just the repentant state to 
 endure them silently. She had lost all her old rebel- 
 lious impulse. She was still often haunted by the 
 idea that she had pushed him into his present sickness, 
 and the chief comfort she obtained with regard to this 
 question of her culpability was secured from Mrs. 
 Ottarson, whose friendship and loyalty strengthened 
 in time of trouble. 
 
 " Let him talk," 'Livia," asseverated her aunt. 
 "You know jus' w'at he says that's false an' jus' w'at 
 isn't. Make believe you don't care. He's sick. You've 
 got to stand it. Goodness me! If you only had some 
 o' my troubles! Deary, I'm glad 'nough you haven't 
 got 'em. Mr. Spillington an' his wife have both left 
 me, an' there's that thirty-five dollar suit of 'partmerits 
 empty. An' w'y? 'Cause Amelia Sugby, the author- 
 ess, wouldn't stand bein' browbeat. That woman's 
 full o' spunk. I s'pose it comes from scribblin' those 
 stories that curl people's hair. An' she got, oh so 
 cantankerous ! An' I guess she was 'bout right, after 
 all. He jus' laid himself out one evenin' at dinner. 
 He told her she was panderirf in her writin's. That's 
 the word he used, though I kind o' forget how he said
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 405 
 
 she was panderin'. But she didn't like the word, an' 
 neither did I. An' she says to me, one mornin' : 
 * Either he goes, Mrs. Ott'son, or else I go. Now 
 w'ich is it to be ?' ' Well,' I says, 'Li via, ' fair 
 play's fair play, an' I won't see any boarder o' mine 
 unjustly attackted.' An' then it came out that he'd 
 called her a penny-a-liner one afternoon when I wasn't 
 round. That was bad, 'specially as she gets a sight 
 more'n a penny a line for that stuff she writes, though 
 I do think it's the worst trash I ever tried to read. So 
 she s.aid she'd quit if Spillington didn't, an' she's good 
 pay, an' she's lately got an order from the Weekly 
 Evening J^anip, or some paper like that, which'll bring 
 her in four thousand dollars. Now, Spillington owed 
 me over a hundred dollars, an' I was 'fraid to tell him 
 he must go, on that account. Still, I asked him to 
 'pologize to Mrs. Sugby. 'Pologize! I wish you'd 
 seen him ! He jus' cleared that throat o' his an' began 
 to talk so you'd almost heard him in 'Leventh Avenue. 
 So I got mad, an' I says 'Go.' Well, he went, an' 
 the hundred dollars went too. I don't believe I'll ever 
 see a cent of it, an' I needed it. Still, I can scrape 
 along, I guess, without it." 
 
 Olivia drew out her purse and pushed it into her 
 aunt's hand. "Here are two hundred dollars, Aunt 
 Thyrza," she said. "I've no earthly use for the 
 money. I've been simply carrying it about with me 
 for an age. There, now, kiss me and take it. Don't 
 say a word. You know how I love you. And 
 remember all you did for me in those days when poor 
 papa was dying ! " 
 
 Toward the end of June, Delaplaine showed marked 
 signs of recovery. The physicians recommended a
 
 406 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 change of air. Greenacre was waiting, and a body- 
 guard of servants also was waiting to conduct him 
 thither. Olivia offered no objection whatever. She 
 asked herself whether Jasper Massereene would hear 
 of their departure or no. Yes, she concluded, since 
 it was sure to transpire in the newspapers. Of late 
 the dark, composed, virile face of Massereene had 
 repeatedly shone upon her in her dreams. She loved 
 him, and fully realized that she loved him. But her 
 soul was so unstained, so helped by a faith in a God 
 of immeasurable goodness, so convinced that this God 
 would befriend her through all possible trials, that she 
 found unspeakable comfort in prayer and in medita- 
 tions no less holy. Her life became more and more 
 penetrated with the most earnest belief. She reviewed 
 her past temptations, ahd remembered them unceas* 
 ingly in her prayers. She prayed not only for her- 
 self but for Massereene. After they had arrived at 
 Greenacre she devoted herself to Delaplaine with all 
 the nursing arts that it lay in her power to exhibit. 
 He incessantly made her the butt of his bitter wit, his 
 torturing satire. As his health augmented, his cruelty 
 kept pace with it. He referred to Massereene both 
 openly and by the most hateful innuendo. But no 
 matter what sinister things he said, Olivia maintained 
 her post unflinchingly at his side. 
 
 His cynicism revealed new depths that she had not 
 dreamed of before. One day, while she accompanied 
 him in a walk about the grounds (lie moving with the 
 paralytic step that plainly betrayed his wretched dis- 
 ease), she read to him a sad note from a friend in 
 town who had recently lost a young child. 
 
 "Bah!" he said. "How much absurd sentiment
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 407 
 
 is poured upon the question of parental affection ! 
 What, after all, is a mother's or a father's love except 
 the most utter selfishness ? And the children them- 
 selves what is really lovable about them ? You 
 can always buy a child's affection with a few sweets. 
 I have often thought that all the badness of humanity 
 is to be found in the undeveloped male or female 
 biped. Where can you see more detestable traits of 
 bullying coarseness than are to be met with in a boy ? 
 I have always abominated boys. They are like young 
 Neros and Caligulas. They delight in the meanest 
 and wickedest deeds. Fortunately for the race, they 
 unlearn some of these by the time they have become 
 men. Among the numerous inanities for which ro- 
 mance is responsible, a glorification of childhood and 
 children stands foremost. Such writers as Victor Hugo 
 (whom, by the way, I have for years believed to be a 
 lunatic) do much toward popularizing such rubbish 
 as that children are angelic. Satanic would be a far 
 more suitable term for lots of them." 
 
 He appeared to understand the new power which 
 he had gained over his wife. It was evident to his 
 shrewd mind that she had become possessed with the 
 remorseful idea of having caused his perilous illness. 
 He had no intention of altering the will which he had 
 made on recovery to health after his singular mar- 
 riage, and in which he had left Olivia mistress of his 
 entire large property. Nevertheless, he delighted in 
 having his lawyers visit him at Greenacre, and in 
 remaining closeted with them for an hour or two 
 at a time. Afterward he would devour his wife with 
 a prolonged stare behind his glittering glasses, and 
 say at length, with a little malicious writhing of his
 
 408 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 pale lips, while he fumbled nervelessly among the 
 documents that covered his desk: 
 
 " It's a great bother, this re-arrangement of one's 
 money affairs a great bother. Still, there's no tell- 
 ing just when I may pop off now, and if I do I shan't 
 be fool enough to have all my money fill another 
 man's pockets not I ! " 
 
 Olivia's face would flush at times like these, and 
 she would gnaw her lips in agony of spirit. But not 
 a word of retort left her. As for her husband's 
 money, there were moments, even hours, nowadays, 
 when she longed that he would bequeath her nothing. 
 She wrote as much in a letter to her Aunt Thyrzn, 
 wherein she poured out her soul, telling of the exqui- 
 site pain he was inflicting upon her. " His allusions 
 to Mr. Massereene," she wrote, "sting me more than 
 all others ; for that name now points, as it were, to 
 the very high-tide mark of his tyranny and my own 
 complete innocence." 
 
 Meanwhile he exulted over the thought that he was 
 possibly filling her with the sharpest alarm regarding 
 those lawyers and their mysterious departures and 
 appearances. In reality some few changes of invest- 
 ment were all that were meant by the latter ; but he 
 constantly would inquire of both gentlemen, with an 
 expression and a tone which indicated sharp avidity 
 for the exact truth : " Did Mrs. Delaplaine say a 
 word, when you met her down-stairs, this morning, 
 about why you had run up from town ! " Or again : 
 " My wife, by the way . . . has she asked you at any 
 time what was the object of your coming up here from 
 the city? Now think, please." . . . And he would put 
 one of his tremulous hands upon the shoulder of the
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 409 
 
 gentleman addressed. " I beg that you will try accu- 
 rately to recollect. I have an especial motive in 
 presenting to you this question." But neither of the 
 lawyers had the slightest gratifying information to 
 impart. Olivia had made no inquiries of them ; and 
 though quite unconscious that her reticence had the 
 most irritant effect upon Delaplaine, she was none 
 the less punishing him through it with about as much 
 stringency as if she had employed some skilfully 
 deliberate method. 
 
 " You appear to be losing your looks," he said one 
 day, in his inhuman sort of mutter, to which she had 
 grown so forlornly accustomed. " Are you not well ?" 
 
 "I am not precisely ill," she answered, "though I 
 have felt better." 
 
 " Ah, I see. Greenacre is boring you. You had 
 expected Newport this summer, with a pleasant touch 
 of Lenox in the autumn. Long drives on Ocean 
 Avenue, long rambles over the hazy Berkshire hills, 
 with" .... He paused, and she knew that he was 
 watching her face, to see whether the color mounted 
 to it or no. " Why don't you ask Massereene up 
 here? " he presently said, in a darting, stabbing way. 
 
 She bent her eyes a little closer on the book that 
 she was reading. "I should not know where to find 
 him," she said. 
 
 " Oh, are you sure of that?" he asked, with a mock- 
 ing insolence of distrust that she had long ago become 
 more used to than she herself realized. 
 
 " Yes," she replied. " Perfectly sure." 
 
 He remained silent for quite a little interval. They 
 had been sitting on the piazza. It was a day full of 
 summer's brio-htest and most dulcet fascinations. The
 
 410 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 sky had not a cloud in it, and the south wind was 
 pulsing incessantly among the leaves, making their 
 vibrant greenery sing like hundreds of voices heard 
 in a dream. 
 
 " Perhaps it is a trifle dull here," said Delaplaine, 
 breaking the silence. " When Adrian comes up you 
 may find it less so." 
 
 "Adrian?" echoed Olivia, laying down her book. 
 " Have you decided to ask him here ? " 
 
 "Yes. But not as a guest. I must have a secre- 
 tary, now that I've begun really to interest myself 
 again in the conduct of my business affairs." 
 
 "The doctors in New York said that you should 
 not touch business affairs for at least six months 
 longer," Olivia said. She thought it her duty to 
 remind him -of this injunction, and did so. 
 
 He nodded, and gave that dry laugh of his, which 
 had made Olivia feel, while in a fanciful mood of 
 criticism, the other day, that there were withered 
 laughs, just as there were withered leaves. 
 
 " How enchanting of you to take so much care of 
 me ! " he answered. " One would imagine that you 
 were really anxious that I should get well ! "
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 411 
 
 XXII. 
 
 OLIVIA was charmed by the plan of having Adrian 
 at Green acre. But on meeting him she was instantly 
 struck with surprise, and of by no means the most 
 agreeable nature. The sweetness, the pensiveness, the 
 winsome femininity had all gone from Adrian. It 
 seemed incredible that a few months could have so 
 radically altered any one's personality. His brown 
 eyes had hardened and brightened into a colder, 
 more crystalline lustre. He carried his fine figure 
 with an assertiveness that made it almost look mar- 
 tial. He had never lacked suavity and ease of man- 
 ner ; but a virile element was blended with his grace 
 that gave it the most unexpected tinge of worldly- 
 wise gallantry. Olivia found herself greatly inter- 
 ested in the lad's development, if it were worthy of 
 so large a name; after watching it a little she had 
 a sense that perhaps it was worthy of being called 
 only a pathetic effacement. To her husband's eyes 
 there had been no metamorphosis at all, or else one 
 which he had already observed. He showed perfect 
 indifference, now, to all interviews between Adrian 
 and his wife. He treated his secretary with a civil 
 enough bearing, and made no attempt whatever to 
 interfere with Adrian's hours of leisure. These were 
 not few. Olivia no longer rode, and drove only in 
 the company of her husband when he expressed a
 
 412 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 desire that she should do so. She soon found herself 
 wondering at the perfectly polite and yet marked 
 repression in Adrian's manner toward herself. She 
 had never had any but the most cordial feelings of 
 friendship for him, and his coolness, however deco- 
 rously he chose to mask it, roused in her a natural 
 pique. It was all very well to make allowances for a 
 swiftly disclosed maturity in Adrian, but this cere- 
 monious waiving away on his part of their once frank 
 and easy intimacy must be accounted for by other 
 reasons. What were these reasons ? Olivia was too 
 generous to dream of enforcing an explanation by any 
 such magisterial means as those to which her semi- 
 proprietorship at Greenacre would have entitled her. 
 She resolved to break the ice with a very sharp blow 
 as soon as occasion served ; and it did serve within a 
 few days after Adrian's arrival. 
 
 It was about two o'clock in the afternoon. Luncheon 
 was just over. Delaplaine had gone upstairs to take 
 his daily sleep of at least two hours' duration. Olivia 
 had passed forth on the broad-sweeping piazza that 
 lay just outside the low windows of the dining-room. 
 She had been asking Adrian whether or no he thought 
 that Mr. Delaplaine's health was being retarded by 
 his dictation of financial correspondence during the 
 morning. Adrian had answered negatively, add- 
 ing: 
 
 " The occupation is, I think, more of an amusement 
 than a task. He merely gives me the roughest outline 
 of what he wishes said, and I frame it in the kind of 
 epistolary English that I know he prefers." 
 
 " And with great skill, I am sure," said Olivia, smil- 
 ing graciously if but transiently.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 413 
 
 " No ; it is nothing except the result of long habit. 
 I've become quite used to the kind of work he de- 
 sires." 
 
 " And you have made up your mind to remain there 
 at the Bank for a long time yet ? " 
 
 Olivia artfully put this question just as she was 
 stepping across the threshold of one of the windows. 
 He was obliged to follow her out upon the piazza, or 
 else to appear unpermissibly rude. She was almost 
 certain that he would not have quitted the dining- 
 room with her unless that much urbanity had become 
 obligatory. But he bowed, as it was, to the necessity 
 of acquiescence. There were several wicker-work chairs 
 scattered about, and Olivia sank into one of them. He 
 stood at her side, with his hands meeting behind him, 
 a figure full of the most happy symmetries and crowned 
 by a face and head which it struck her that some o 
 the famed marbles have not surpassed. 
 
 " I expect to continue at the Bank," he answered, 
 "If Mr. Delaplaine will not object to my doing so; 
 and I suppose he will not." 
 
 " But if anything should happen to Mr. Delaplaine ? " 
 questioned Olivia, looking up at him from where she 
 was now seated. 
 
 " Then there would still remain two other partners, 
 as you doubtless know. I am on good terms with 
 both of them." 
 
 " You should be a partner there some day yourself, 
 Adrian," she said to him very sweetly. " I wish it 
 with all my heart. I think you deserve it." 
 
 He colored, bit his lip, and half turned away. She 
 stretched out her hand and caught his coat-sleeve, 
 detainingly, between thumb and finger, pulling at it
 
 414 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 with a hearty good will, as if she were well in earnest 
 on the subject of his not leaving her just yet. 
 
 As if suddenly conscience-stricken, he veered round 
 and faced her. "Oh, Mrs. Delaplaine," he exclaimed 
 Boftly, "how good of you! But you were always 
 good to me." 
 
 Olivia burst out laughing. " It's pleasant to receive 
 that bit of intelligence from you, Mr. Etherege, at a 
 time when I have been wondering what precise bee 
 you've lately allowed to buzz in that bonnet of yours. 
 Once or twice I've been on the verge of asking you if 
 you would not, de bonne grace tell me what I had pos- 
 sibly done to offend you to put you on your 'high 
 horse,' in this perplexing manner. But no ; I con- 
 cluded that I'd wait and dexterously drop my hand- 
 kerchief so that you'd have to pick it up, with a grand 
 Louis Quatorze bow ; and then, while receiving it, I'd 
 inform you how beautiful your new manners were, 
 and ask you whether you'd purchased them expressly 
 to wear up here at Green acre." 
 
 Adrian dropped into a chair at her side. "That 
 would have been cruel and consequently very unlike 
 yourself." 
 
 "I can be terribly cruel when I believe people 
 deserve it," she said. 
 
 He shook his head, pointing upward. " There is 
 somebody in this house from whom I am beginning to 
 see that you are bearing cruelties angelically." 
 
 She gave a little start. '-Oh, say philosophically," 
 she replied coloring. " But never mind him, Adrian. 
 Why have you treated me like so thorough a 
 stranger?" 
 
 He had drooped his eyes while she intently watched
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 415 
 
 him. " I almost dreaded to meet you again." And 
 now he turned upon her the full, mild brown splendors 
 of his eyes, and she saw that they were moist if not 
 really tearful. "I I knew it was best that I should 
 not come here. And yet something drew me ; I may 
 say dragged me! I had made up my mind that I 
 would not come that I would invent some excuse 
 that even if it enraged him, even if he discharged me 
 angrily because of it, I would still avoid coming. But 
 at the last moment I weakly yielded. I " 
 
 He impetuously caught her hand in both his own, 
 and was lifting it to his lips, when she tore it away 
 and rose from her chair. She had become pale, and 
 her eyes were shining ; but otherwise there was not 
 the least sign of agitation in her manner. 
 
 " You are so irritating in your folly," she murmured. 
 " Do you suppose I will permit you to stay here now ?" 
 A little scornful laugh ran rippling through her next 
 sentence. " I am not the least anxious to wound your 
 feelings of which you have just given me so aston- 
 ishing, so regrettable an evidence. But I have now 
 only this to tell you : If, by the day after to-morrow, 
 you have not found some excuse for leaving Greenacre, 
 I must inform Mr. Delaplaine that you have been 
 guilty of a very great discourtesy to me. . . . Do you 
 understand?" she went on with much of sad appeal 
 in her eyes and lips, while she put out both hands 
 toward him, anxiously, compassionately, to withdraw 
 them again in an instant. " I have understood you. 
 ... I am very, very sorry. But it cannot be arranged 
 otherwise." 
 
 Then she hurried indoors, without his making the 
 least effort to detain her, and reached her own room.
 
 416 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 There she sat for a long time, staring at the huge silver 
 serpent of the Hudson beyond, and telling herself that 
 this whole affair was miserably unfortunate. In her 
 solitude, broken as it was only by such unpalatable 
 companionship as that of her husband, she had felt a 
 soft little thrill of real joy to learn that she would 
 soon be shaking hands with Adrian Etherege. She 
 had never comprehended until then how sisterly had 
 been her regard for the lad, how severe was her an- 
 noyance at the separation Delaplaine had forced upon 
 them, aiid by how many acts of helpful friendship she 
 would have been willing to prove her attachment. 
 The festivities of fashion, crowding upon her as they 
 had done with new demands both upon consciousness 
 and memory, had never made her forget Adrian 
 Etherege. Not even Jasper Massereene had made 
 her forget him. 
 
 Perhaps it was Jasper Massereene's influence upon 
 her now the recollection of his unfailing humanity, 
 his power not only to feel/br but with suffering fellow- 
 creatures that gradually changed the whole current 
 of her thought and intention. 
 
 " How can I be sure," she mused, " that I have not 
 behaved blamably in my dealings with Adrian? His 
 nature is impressionable, ardent ; it may be that I 
 (mentally older than he was, if not so in years) did not 
 use toward him the discretion he merited." 
 
 When they next met, Olivia said, as soon as oppor- 
 tunity favored : " I hope you are willing to assist me 
 in forgetting what passed not long ago. I spoke too 
 hastily, and apologize. You also spoke hastily; it 
 may be that you will consent to ask my pardon. If 
 you do I will readily grant it." She put out her hand 
 as she finished speaking.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 417 
 
 He caught it, looked at her steadily first, and then 
 lifted it to his lips. But she had studied his eyes and 
 let him do so, this time. 
 
 "I behaved myself like a a ruffian," he faltered. 
 " How few good women there are, good enough to 
 forgive me ! " . . . 
 
 After that they were the best of friends again. 
 And yet they were not friends in the same way as 
 before. She had learned his secret. 
 
 Adrian's company formed her sole social pastime. 
 " There are a few people about us," she said to him, 
 during one of their talks, " who have shown a desire 
 to be more intimate with me this summer;" and she 
 mentioned the names of several neighboring families. 
 "But I have pleaded Mr. Delaplaine's illness as an 
 excuse." 
 
 "He is so much better, however," said Adrian. 
 
 " Yes. But nothing restrains him from those bursts 
 of bitterness and of personality the latter always 
 directed, as you know, at myself. He prefers we 
 should live quietly, and I think it is fortunate he does. 
 I had hoped your presence might have some effect ; 
 but he pours forth his streams of cynicism just as 
 freely as before you came. I suppose they sometimes 
 make you inwardly shudder, as they do me." 
 
 "I bear them better, much better than I did," 
 replied Adrian, with a touch of mysticism in his air. 
 
 "How is that?" 
 
 "Shall I tell you?" 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " I do not see why not," he returned, with sudden 
 impetuosity. " In those other days when you and he 
 and I were together I believed him "
 
 418 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 "Well?" questioned Olivia, as the young man 
 paused. 
 
 " I believed him my father." 
 
 She made a gesture of surprise. 
 
 "And now?" 
 
 "I know to the contrary." 
 
 "You know?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "He has told you?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Who, then?" 
 
 "My mother." 
 
 "Your mother? Ah, I see. And you asked her if 
 such a thing were true ? " 
 
 "No. But she saw how I hated him, and how my 
 hate grew. The suspicion that he was my father had 
 entered my head several months before you and I ever 
 met. It made me hate YOU, at first, because I believed 
 that I could compel him to right by marriage the 
 wrong which he had done my mother." 
 
 "That look you gave me that look of positive 
 savagery on the day I became his wife," Olivia 
 murmured. " I understand it now." 
 
 He indistinctly caught her words, and said : " To 
 what look do you refer?" He searched her face with 
 eagerness while he thus spoke. 
 
 "Never mind," Olivia returned. . . . "And your 
 mother has told you . . . ? " 
 
 " That I am not his son. It has lifted a great load 
 from my heart." 
 
 "But she your mother how was it that she 
 induced him to aid you as he has done?" 
 
 " She would not tell me that. Some day I hope to
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 419 
 
 know. But my mother and he were never well, 
 you understand. It has been a great relief to me." 
 
 " Poor boy ! " thought Olivia. " I don't doubt that 
 his mother has told him a merciful falsehood." 
 
 She soon got away from Adrian. These revelations 
 had affected her in a singular way, and she wanted to 
 be alone to brood on them. 
 
 What she had heard made her regard her husband 
 with a fresh, uncontrollable antipathy. . . . That night, 
 at dinner, he was in one of his most cheerless and 
 biting moods. He appeared in the dining-room with 
 a card which he had just lighted on in the hall. 
 
 "General and Mrs. Swartwout," he read from the 
 card. "The General was never in but one action 
 during his life, and on that occasion he was slightly 
 wounded. . . . Where ? Some people said it was in 
 the left breast, just above the region of the heart. A 
 faithful friend and comrade of the General's, however, 
 who chanced to be in the same action with him, used 
 to deny this statement. He said that there was no 
 wound in the General's left breast at all, as the bullet 
 had stopped before getting there. ' What stopped 
 it?' asked some one innocently. < His shoulder-blade,' 
 replied that kind-hearted friend." . . . Here Dela- 
 plaine laughed to himself in a smothered chuckle, as 
 though he did not expect either Olivia or Adrian 
 Etherege to join him. ..." Ah," he presently went 
 on, beginning to sip his soup, " of all honorable occu- 
 pations there is none to which society, feather-headed 
 society, so bows down as the profession of killing. 
 The moment you are a killer extraordinary of your 
 fellow-creatures, like a general or a colonel, you are 
 more or less worshipped. The clergy is simply no
 
 420 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 where in comparison. There have been more monu- 
 ments reared to the men who have killed successfully 
 than to all the painters, sculptors, philosophers and 
 reformers combined. You see, I leave out poets, not 
 thinking them worthy of a moment's concern. They're 
 merely melodious liars ; they'll lie prettily on anything, 
 from life, death, or the so-termed human soul, to a 
 glove, a ribbon, or a rosebud. . . . Well, Olivia, did 
 you see the General and his wife ? " 
 
 " No," said Olivia ; " I was not at home." 
 
 " You mean ... in a poetical way." 
 
 " I had gone for a little walk." 
 
 "Um-m-m. And to gather a little sunburn. I 
 wouldn't. It's hoiTibly unbecoming." 
 
 " Why, Mrs. Delaplaine does not seem in the least 
 sunburned to me, sir," said Adrian. 
 
 " That's because a young stripling like you thinks 
 half the milk-maids that he meets are goddesses." 
 
 " Well," said Olivia, laughing, and at the same time 
 hoping to turn the talk, if she might, into pleasanter 
 channels, " Pm certainly no milk-maid." 
 
 "You!" scoffed Delaplaine. "I should say not 
 in the sense of pure-mindedness." 
 
 Adrian colored and started. These thrusts had for 
 him a sacrilegious atrocity. He looked straight at 
 Mr. Delaplaine, and spoke with an accent of the deep- 
 est sincerity and a sudden sparkling out of his old 
 youthful demeanor : 
 
 "I should say, sir, that your wife had as much pure- 
 mindedness as any woman that ever lived." 
 
 '" Ho, ho ! " laughed Delaplaine. " Much you know 
 about the matter ! Take care, or she'll be twisting 
 you round her finger in fine style. She's craftier than
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 421 
 
 when you knew her last ; she's had a season of New 
 York deviltries to practise on." 
 
 " In most of which you were my companion," Olivia 
 either could not or simply did not resist now saying, 
 although she had but lately shot Adrian a look that 
 enjoined silence upon him. 
 
 " I'm not so sure of that," he answered, and gave his 
 laugh again. 
 
 Olivia had trangressed her usual rule in having shown 
 the faintest resentment toward her husband. She 
 now regretted this fact, and immediately turned to 
 Adrian, with a second pitiful attempt to alter the 
 conversational current. 
 
 "This General Swartwout," she said, "has such a 
 pretty daughter. I should like, some time, to present 
 you." 
 
 But Delaplaine was unpropitiable to-night. " Why 
 on earth," he asked, " would you pi-esent Adrian ? 
 She's an airy girl, with a great idea of marrying a 
 bigger swell than she is herself." 
 
 "Oh," said Olivia, with a smile at Adrian, "we will 
 not mind the marrying part, will we ? " 
 
 "No, indeed," said Adrian, "I'm not at all ambi- 
 tious to marry." 
 
 " Still," struck in Delaplaine, " you'd like to marry 
 ambitiously ; there's a difference." 
 
 "There is no difference for me, sir," Adrian re- 
 plied. 
 
 "Stuff!" Delaplaine said. "Every man or woman, 
 unless made a fool of by the mental distemper named 
 love, always wants, if it be possible, to fly the matrimo- 
 nial kite high. ... I have very rarely seen an ex- 
 tremely rich man who did not marry a beautiful wife.
 
 422 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 They have the pick of the market, as it were; any 
 one whom they choose to ask is delighted to accept." 
 
 Adrian shook his head. "You yourself admit, sir, 
 that the mental distemper named love, exists after 
 all." 
 
 "It doesn't stand the dimmest chance against 
 money, once in a thousand times. Not the dim- 
 mest. Let the young capitalist appear on the scene 
 and Phyllis will begin to smirk at him over Corydon's 
 very shoulder. And presently she gets up and waltzes 
 toward the new-comer, leaving poor Corydon her 
 crook, perhaps, for consolation. She won't need it 
 any more ; she's going to be too fine a lady." 
 
 " Corydon ought to take up the crook," laughed 
 Adrian, " and lay it over the millionaire's back." 
 
 "Much good if he did. There'd be a lawsuit, and 
 the millionaire, having money enough to supply him- 
 self with the highest legal intelligence in the land, 
 would handsomely win the day. And Phyllis would 
 be sure to call her old swain a horrid rough wretch 
 and to declare herself so glad she didn't marry him, 
 while she gazed down at the glittering engagement- 
 ring somebody else had just given her." 
 
 Adrian again shook his head, but this time with a 
 melancholy emphasis. " I hope, sir, the world isn't 
 quite so black as you paint it ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 " It's a good deal blacker, in many cases." 
 
 " But I'd rather not at my age think it so," 
 cried Adrian. "I want to think that it holds many 
 good women and noble men." 
 
 Delaplaine pointed across the table at his wife. As 
 he did this, a light thrill shot through Olivia's blood. 
 What new insult was he about to perpetrate ? Every
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 423 
 
 week his outward integument of gentlemanliness ap- 
 peared to lose a layer or so of its density. He was 
 perpetually sinking lower and lower toward a brutal- 
 ity of which his extreme physical weakness alone pre- 
 vented Olivia from dreading a still more gross deteri- 
 oration. She had begun to tell herself that there was 
 nothing his irritated and semi-diseased brain might 
 not prompt him to say, for there are some maladies 
 which intensify and reduplicate the worst and most 
 prominent faults of just such a nature as his. But 
 the chances of his doing her any bodily harm were 
 slight enough, since his own muscular feebleness, if 
 no other cause, would have prevented this crowning 
 outrage. 
 
 His finger still pointed at her. On his face was a 
 smile of infernal derision. 
 
 " Many good men and noble women ? " he said, 
 with a mockery that to Olivia had in it the flickering 
 of a snake's forked tongue. "There sits one of the 
 latter. She's a noble woman ; I suppose you think 
 so ; eh, Adrian ? " 
 
 "I do ! " exclaimed Adrian, with a nervous break 
 in his voice, as though he too were fearful of some 
 insult specially violent. 
 
 " Well, then, she married me on what she believed 
 was my death-bed, and just for my money. No other 
 reason. She thought I wouldn't live three hours. 
 There's nobility for you. Eh, Adrian?" 
 
 He fell back into his chair, laughing shrilly, while 
 his finger still pointed at his wife. 
 
 Olivia shuddered as she saw the butler and footman 
 smile and turn away. She rose staggeringly from the 
 table ; she was pale and gasped a little ; every instant
 
 42.4 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 it seemed to her as if she might swoon ; the room 
 whirled round with her ; but pricking through all 
 other sensations with an intolerable poignancy, was 
 her exquisite shame ! 
 
 The next instant she saw Adrian spring toward her 
 husband and stand over him with lifted arm and blaz- 
 ing eyes. 
 
 " You scoundrel ! " Adrian cried, every influence of 
 past authority swept away in this one overwhelming 
 moment of passionate championship. "It's only your 
 weakness that keeps me from " 
 
 "Adrian ! " Olivia screamed. " No, no ! " But be- 
 fore she had reached his side the young man had 
 folded his arms on his breast. There was a sneer 
 on his lips and a look of scathing scorn still in his 
 beautiful eyes. 
 
 " Do not be afraid," he said to Olivia. " I shall not 
 touch him." 
 
 " Puppy ! " Delaplaine hissed. He had drawn him- 
 self so far back into his chair and lie was so blood- 
 jessly pale that he looked ten years older than his 
 actual age. "Leave my house, and never dare to 
 ask a dollar of me again ! " he went on, huskily. 
 
 "I will leave your house this night," said Adrian. 
 "I should feel degraded by every hour longer that I 
 remained there." He was breathing hard, with set 
 teeth, as he turned toward Olivia. " Good bye," he 
 muttered, looking into her eyes. Then he strode out 
 of the room, and she followed him. 
 
 "Adrian," she pleaded, stopping him in the hall, 
 "do not go to-night." 
 
 "Yes yes," he said. "There is a train I can 
 catch. If not, I can sleep in the village till morning."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 425 
 
 "But you must make up with him you must. 
 Think : what will become of you if you are suddenly 
 discharged from the bank? What will become of your 
 mother, who, as you have told me, depends upon you 
 for support ? " 
 
 Adrian smiled. "There are twenty houses, at least, 
 that I know of, willing to give me a corresponding 
 position as clerk. Do not fear on that account." He 
 watched her with a chivalrously tender look growing 
 in his gaze. " You are far more to be pitied than I 
 am, since you are a woman and must live on compara- 
 tively alone with him." 
 
 Olivia shuddered.- Suddenly she put both hands up 
 to her face. The whirling feeling had come into her 
 head again. She uncovered her face and reeled toward 
 Adrian, who caught her. " My God ! " she gasped. 
 " I feel as if I were dying. I I hope it is death ! 
 I" 
 
 And then a night put its blackness into her brain. 
 But what seemed to her possible death was only the 
 briefest of fainting-fits. She awoke to find herself on 
 a lounge in the sitting-room, with one of the woman- 
 servants bathing her temples. As soon as she felt 
 sufficiently strong and collected to go in search of 
 Adrian, she found that he had left Greenacre. He 
 had gathered only a few articles of apparel together, 
 had taken these with him in a portmanteau, and had 
 informed a domestic that he would send for the 
 others. . . . 
 
 Olivia had a sense of absolute loathing now, as she 
 prepared once more to enter the presence of her hus- 
 band. She conquered such reluctance all the more 
 easily, however, on recalling her new and positive
 
 426 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 determination. She meant to leave on the morrow 
 for New York and her Aunt Thyrza. It need not be 
 a permanent absence ; she would be willing to return 
 if certain promises were afterward given her. The 
 self-accusative feeling had not yet left her. She could 
 not rid herself of its occasional spell. But for the 
 confession that she had made to Jasper Massereene, 
 her husband would perhaps have escaped the stroke 
 to which a great deal of his later abuses and imposi- 
 tions might be attributable. In truth Olivia now bore 
 herself with a martyr-like loveliness, where many an- 
 other woman would have pursued a course either of 
 lamentation or rebellion. Yet she had been taxing 
 too severely her forces both of endurance and resigna- 
 tion. A spiritual fatigue had resulted perhaps she 
 did not dream how cogent a one. But she was des- 
 tined soon to learn, and in a way which it would 
 have appalled her with horror could she have soberly 
 foreseen. 
 
 Her husband had by this time gone, as she supposed, 
 to his library upstairs. But on entering that room 
 Olivia found it vacant. She next tried his bedcham- 
 ber, but as she approached the latter she was met by 
 Delaplaine's valet. 
 
 "I do not think Mr. Delaplaine is at all well, 
 ma'am," said the man. 
 
 " Is he lying down ? " asked Olivia, pointing to the 
 apartment which the man had just quitted. 
 
 " Yes, ma'arn. He says he's in a good deal of pain." 
 
 Pain ? " 
 
 "Yes, ma'am ... I wasn't with him when he had 
 those fits of internal gout, but from what he tells me 
 I'm afraid it's another attack."
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 427 
 
 "Did you send for a doctor?" 
 
 " I haven't yet, ma'am. Mr. Delaplaine said 'twas 
 best to wait and see if the pain got worse . . ." 
 
 Here the man paused. A heavy groan sounded 
 from the near chamber. 
 
 The pain was already worse, and a doctor was imme- 
 diately sent for. Lulled through many months into 
 submission and quietude, with its right of possession 
 usurped, as one might have believed, by another 
 wholly different disorder, the man's old foe, gout, 
 had suddenly leaped upon him and begun to inflict 
 its keenest pangs. The attack was a terrible one, and 
 Delaplaine fainted two or three times during its first 
 most agonizing seizures. By about twelve o'clock on 
 the following day his regular physician arrived from 
 New York. He remained about three hours at Green- 
 acre, carefully watching the patient. " There is noth- 
 ing for me to do," he told Olivia, " which the physi- 
 cian whom I found in attendance cannot do as well. 
 "We have consulted together, and our views entirely 
 agree. This sudden access of hot weather is certainly 
 against Mr. Delaplaine. He has rallied before from 
 similar attacks, but he was not then, as now, weakened 
 by the results of hemiplegy. Still, unless the internal 
 gout should again manifest itself, I see no reason for 
 further anxiety." 
 
 The practitioner from L , near by, stayed with 
 
 Delaplaine until about nine o'clock that evening. The 
 patient was then seemingly better, though very weak. 
 He slept at intervals, awaking after dozes of ten or 
 fifteen minutes' duration, and complaining of extreme 
 thirst. It was not thought advisable to give him any 
 means of gratifying this thirst except minutely-cracked
 
 428 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 ice, which he disliked and protested against as insuffi- 
 cient to relieve his needs. 
 
 The night had become oppressively hot. A full 
 moon flooded the lawns of Greenacre and showed the 
 great river beyond them in a scimetai'-like curve of 
 brilliance. All the windows had been opened. Olivia 
 supposed that the servants would close the house below 
 stairs when the regular time came for doing so ; she 
 had not given this question the least thought ; she had 
 had too many other thoughts of over-towering import 
 with which to concern herself. 
 
 Just after the doctor from the village had gone, she 
 said 'to the woman who watched at Delaplaine's bed- 
 side : 
 
 " You may go and lie down, now, Martha. I will 
 stay here for two or three hours. When I grow very 
 tired if I do grow so I will go upstairs to your 
 room and call you. Then you can relieve me." 
 
 "Yes, ma'arn," said Martha. "Do you know about 
 the medicine, ma'am ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 They were standing just at the threshold of Dela- 
 plaine's dim room, where the yellow glow of a shaded 
 lamp blent with the silver rays drifting in through 
 two broad windows. 
 
 " He is to have a tea-spoon of that medicine in the 
 large glass the aconite every hour, provided he 
 awakes," continued Olivia. 
 
 " That's it, ma'am," said Martha. "But we're to be 
 careful, you know." 
 
 "Careful?" 
 
 "Yes, ma'am. The doctor said it was so danger- 
 ous . . . don't you remember, ma'am ? "
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 429 
 
 "Oh, yes," answered Olivia, really remembering. 
 " You mean he might drink it if he reached out his 
 hand, or anything like that. . . . Yes, I recollect what 
 the doctor said. But he seems to be sleeping quietly, 
 now ; and besides, Martha, it's not on the table by the 
 bedside ; it's there on the bureau. . . . Oh, I'll be very 
 careful." 
 
 Every syllable of her own and Martha's words ap- 
 peared so completely unimportant, then. But every 
 syllable returned to her memory with so frightful a 
 distinctness, not very long afterward ! 
 
 Martha went upstairs to bed. Olivia stood at the 
 door-sill of her husband's room for a slight while. His 
 breathing was quite regular; he seemed in a wholly 
 placid sleep. She passed into the room adjoining. 
 
 It was the library, and here, too, the light had been 
 turned somewhat low. But three windows, opened 
 to their fullest extent, showed the magnificent pearly 
 glamour of the moonlight, whose quality, for some rea- 
 son belonging to the dead sultriness of the atmosphere, 
 revealed a kind of milky, brooding thickness as the 
 night advanced. 
 
 Olivia seated herself near one of the windows. If 
 her husband should wake and utter the least sound 
 she knew that she could instantly hear him. 
 
 She brushed the hair with both hands back from her 
 heated temples, and leaned out as far as the window- 
 ledge would let her. 
 
 She was thinking : " How horrible my life has been 
 of late ! What if its wretchedness should end to-night, 
 or soon after to-night? Do I hope that it will? Have 
 I power quite to crush down such a hope ? Let me 
 try let me try with all my soul ! . . . I used to have
 
 430 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 those wicked impulses in the old days of the pension 
 abroad. I thought I had conquered them, when I 
 came back for the last time with papa. . . . How poor 
 papa used to laugh at them ! . . . I wonder if he is 
 where he can know about me now, and be sorry that 
 he ever did laugh. For it was one of those impulses 
 that made me Olivia Delaplaine. Yes, it was all 
 my fault. Neither Aunt Augusta nor Aunt Letitia 
 was to blame, but I, only I ! " 
 
 Then she thought of Massereene, as she sometimes 
 could not help but think. "Where is he now? Has 
 he forgotten me? If anything should happen, would 
 he ?" 
 
 But she forced herself to banish him from her mind, 
 as she had done a hundred times before now. The 
 exorcism cost her a struggle, however. To-night the 
 failure to effect it seemed fraught with a peculiar 
 unduteousness. " He is so good and high himself ! " 
 she pursued, rising amid the vagueness of the moonlit 
 chamber. "He would respect me more if he knew 
 that I had striven to " 
 
 At this point a sound broke upon her ears. She 
 knew on the instant whence it proceeded. Her hus- 
 band had waked and uttered it. She glided without 
 delay into the next chamber where he was lying.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 431 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 "Dro you call?' she asked, pausing at Delaplaine's 
 bedside. 
 
 He was wide-awake. A beam of moonlight had 
 shot in from one of the windows, and spread its ice- 
 like pallor across his colorless face. He looked like a 
 living corpse. 
 
 Olivia waited beside him. Some change in his 
 expression (she could not have told just what) made 
 her perceive that he recognized her. 
 
 "Yes, I called," he said, presently. His eyes had 
 begun to wander from point to point in her costume, 
 as a child's might do, pausing once more at her face. 
 And then, in the dimness, Olivia saw that a new 
 expression filled them. It was vulpine to her, and 
 she recoiled from it. But as she did so, he reached 
 out a hand and clutched hers. The grasp was not a 
 strong one ; she could easily have cast it off. But she 
 did not. If it had been less weak, she would have 
 done so ; but as it was, she did not. 
 
 " I shouldn't be surprised if it were all up with me, 
 this time," he said to her, in a voice not greatly above 
 a whisper. " I feel as if it were going to be that 
 way." His voice sank, and it seemed to her that the 
 eyes with which he now fixedly stared into her own 
 had become two spots of fiery, molten gray. She 
 could never afterward quite be sure whether this 
 effect was born of her own disturbed state or whether
 
 432 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 some actual basilisk-like change of the sort really took 
 place. 
 
 "I hate to go," he said, "and not take you with 
 me. Ah ! if I only could have you die when I died J 
 If I only could ! You witch, you, that made me care 
 for you in my old age, what shall I do without you if 
 there should be any after-life ? . . . Eh ? what shall I 
 do without you? If I were only strong enough to 
 kill you just when I'd got sure of dying myself! 
 Then we 'd go together together. That's what I 
 want. It's horrible to think of going like this, and 
 leaving you with all that youth to live out, and all 
 that love in you, too, that you never gave me the 
 tiniest part of ! It's horrible, I say, Olivia, and ..." 
 
 But she snatched her hand away from him, here. 
 He had leaned a little forward, but he now fell back 
 upon the pillows, laughing hoarsely and faintly to 
 himself. 
 
 She felt certain, by this time, that his brain was 
 afflicted with some serious lesion, even if she had 
 truly doubted it during many weeks before. Shivers 
 were passing through all her nerves, though she still 
 forced herself to remain at the bedside. He roused 
 in her an abhorrence that strangely blent with pity. 
 She loathed and shrank from him, and yet she could 
 not but feel now that the ravage of his disorder had 
 been steal thier than she herself had appreciated, and 
 that his present almost infantile demeanor showed a 
 brain of no common order pitiably wrecked. Then, 
 too, the thought shot through her mind : ' If I had 
 more persistently kept before me this fact of his men- 
 tal decay, might not many of the distressing things he 
 has done have lost their chief power to wound ? '
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 433 
 
 Still, almost simultaneously, these last words of his 
 were ringing through recollection with a frightful 
 mockery. Could it be possible that he really desired 
 her to die with him, in case he himself died? His 
 clutch upon her wrist had affected her as though its 
 coldness and clamminess had been those of the dead. 
 She felt its pressure yet, and furtively rubbed the 
 wrist against one side of her gown as she at length 
 said : 
 
 " It is time for your medicine. I must give it to 
 you now." 
 
 He made her no answer, and she went to the man- 
 tel where the medicine was placed. She brought it to 
 him. The glass which contained it was almost full. 
 He watched it with a greed in his gaze. 
 
 "I'm thirsty," he said. 
 
 Olivia was stirring the liquid in the glass with a 
 spoon. But she now stopped, and looked down at the 
 small table placed close beside the bed. " There is 
 your ice," she answered. 
 
 " I hate that horrid, slippery ice. It doesn't quench 
 my thirst ; it only aggravates it by leaving those little 
 drops of water in my mouth when I don't want drops 
 of water at all when I want a whole glassful, like 
 that you have in your hand." 
 
 " This ! " exclaimed Olivia, starting, while both the 
 doctor's and Martha's words came back to her. 
 "Why, this is deadly poison." 
 
 " And you're going to give it to me ! " he said 
 grimly, as she stooped down toward him with a tea- 
 spoonful of it. 
 
 " Only .a small dose at a time," she answered. " It 
 is aconite, you know."
 
 434 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 He let her place the spoon between his lips. "I 
 didn't know," he muttered, " and I don't much care." 
 
 Immediately after he had taken the medicine he 
 uttered a little sound of exasperation, and as she 
 looked inquiringly into his face she saw that he was 
 again staring into her own. 
 
 " Don't be too sure," he began in a voice as husky 
 as it was meaning. 
 
 "Too sure?" she repeated. 
 
 "Yes. That I am going to die this time. Per- 
 haps I'm not. Remember how I fooled you once 
 before. Threatened men, you know .... Don't be 
 too sure, that's all." 
 
 Olivia repressed a shudder. "It is all in God's 
 hands," she said. 
 
 " God's hands," he grumbled; "yes. When medi- 
 cine goes out of the sick room by one door, religion's 
 invited to come in by the other. ... I wish you'd 
 turn that light down lower. It keeps me from sleep- 
 ing. I believe it's that ; it must be that." 
 
 Olivia at once obeyed him, turning the lamp down 
 until it made but a vague star in the moonlight as 
 vague. Her hand trembled so while she performed 
 this little task that but for the gloom he might easily 
 have remarked the agitation he had produced in her. 
 To have him read, like this, emotions that she had 
 Bought to hide even from her own intelligence ! There 
 was a kind of crucial wizardry in it that made her 
 want to fly from the chamber where he lay. She knew 
 that his belief as to his not sleeping was wholly a de- 
 lusion, and that he would soon have dropped into 
 another slumber like that from which he had lately 
 awakened. Slipping from his room, she gained the
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 435 
 
 one adjoining it. Here the moonlight was much am- 
 pler of volume, and a great silvery medallion, wrought 
 by it, lay upon the carpet. She had a calmer sensa- 
 tion, somehow as soon as she was in this other apart- 
 ment. . . . Why had he taunted her with those last 
 words of his, that had pierced like one of the sharpest 
 shafts which conscience itself can forge ? 
 
 She had been anticipating his death. She could not 
 help doing so. But if by any preventive act she could 
 possibly keep him alive, would she not perform such 
 act with all willingness and promptitude ? 
 
 A wave of new nervous dread swept over her as 
 she reflected upon what he had just said. This extra- 
 ordinary fondness of his, which appeared to borrow its 
 modes of exhibition from antipathy rather than affec- 
 tion, might perpetuate itself through many future 
 years. And if it did, how hateful must be her lot! 
 Men with his vitality lived sometimes until ninety, and 
 past that age. And she, if this prolongation of his life 
 occurred, would still be young by contrast with his 
 afflicting, bui'dening decrepitude. What fresh funds 
 of patience and self-control must she draw upon to 
 meet the continuance of all this martyrizing bondship? 
 Where and from whom should she seek the needful 
 fortitude ? In the sore straits of weariness, exhaustion, 
 disgust, whence to draw added courage? A quette 
 portef rapper ? 
 
 Suddenly, after perhaps five good minutes had 
 passed, while she stood there in the moonlight, terri- 
 fied at the potential future that had piled its masses of 
 gloom before her mental vision, she recollected some- 
 thing, and a sharp little gasp left her lips. 
 
 She had omitted to replace the glass of aconite upon
 
 436 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 the mantel. It was there, now, on the table at her 
 husband's bedside ! 
 
 She flew to the threshold of the doorway that led 
 into his room. And then, almost as abruptly as if 
 some palpable hand had set upon her its detaining con- 
 tact, she paused. 
 
 Paused. . . but why? She knew, and yet her brain 
 had begun to whirl in a chaotic way. 
 
 Why did she not go to him and take the glass of 
 poison from where he could so easily reach it ? She 
 kept asking herself this question, dumbly, insistently, 
 and yet . . she still remained immovable. 
 
 With a frightful panoramic vividness, occurrence 
 after occurrence of her past life had begun to rush 
 before hej* inward vision. She saw herself at the pen- 
 sion, beset again and again by those malign attacks of 
 evil tendency at which her father had afterwards 
 laughed so lightly but of whose pregnant meaning she 
 was herself far better aware than he. Bursts of mis- 
 chief as they had been, they had preluded that larger 
 temptation, that more momentous fall, which had 
 made her the wife of Spencer Delaplaine. 
 
 And now ? She had only to leave the glass there a 
 little longer. If he drank o'f it she would not be giv- 
 ing him to drink of it. He might reach out his hand, 
 and lift it to his lips, in the craving of his thirst. It 
 Avould kill him, no doubt, before they could get the 
 doctor to his bedside. . . Well; and if it did kill him? 
 
 " Wait here just a few more minutes," a voice had 
 begun piercingly to whisper. "You've a right to wait 
 here if you chose. And should he reach out for that 
 glass and drink what it contains, imagining this to be 
 water, how should such an act at all incriminate you?
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 437 
 
 The chances are that he will not drink ; for he does 
 not even know that the glass is there. How should 
 he know ? He asked you to make the room darker, 
 and you did so. He has most probably fallen into 
 another doze. . . Still, wait here a little while longer. 
 You have a perfect right to do so. Wait. There; 
 the time is passing on, on, even now. Before you 
 fairly know it, fifteen, twenty minutes will have 
 elapsed. So much may happen in fifteen or twenty 
 minutes." 
 
 Olivia's eyes, all this time, were riveted upon the 
 window through which the misty silver of the moon 
 was passing. She "lived through many a new moon 
 before the beams of it had become to her anything 
 else than a ghastly reminder of that fateful interval. 
 The lawns went sloping off into nebulous dreams of 
 their own spaciousness; and, beyond, glittered the 
 huge river. It had the sparkle of diamonds, of wealth ; 
 it was shaped like a curving sword as it lay along the 
 shadowed lands, and a sword symbolled power. But 
 though power was good , liberty was more what Olivia 
 longed for. Perhaps the contour of the sword meant 
 that too the severance of bonds that were both an 
 agony and a horror! These wholly idle fancies, rush- 
 ing with gloomier and weightier thoughts through her 
 brain, as light foam-wreaths will cling to dark throngs 
 of on-rolling surges and be borne whither they hurry, 
 came back to Olivia with a fearful definiteness during 
 after reflections. 
 
 She did not turn from the sophistries of that voice. 
 She let it speak still further ; she listened to it. Her 
 heart had got beating so violently that its strokes 
 sounded like hammer-blows in her ears. She realized
 
 438 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 that this baneful force, though a mere pranksome imp 
 of old, had grown a devil now, and had silently but 
 jeeringly challenged her to wrestle with him and over- 
 come him. What a contrast between this demon and 
 that of her girlhood ! What a contrast, and yet how 
 traceable, how authentic a similarity ! 
 
 But a full conception of her own resistant power at 
 last broke upon Olivia. She sprang aloof, as it were, 
 from the sorcery of temptation enmeshing her. She 
 spoke to her own soul in that clarion way which it 
 cannot but hear. Truth itself seemed to leap up her 
 ally, and to help her destoy this enslaving spell, as the 
 breeze might help a taintless flower to shake from its 
 petals the brackish water that some fro ward chance 
 had spilled upon it. 
 
 " Free ? " she faintly sobbed to herself, recollecting 
 the fancy that the sword -sh aped glory of the river 
 had given her. "I am free now! Thank God for 
 saving me ! " 
 
 But abruptly a new thought darted through her 
 mind. A certain length of time had intervened be- 
 tween the beginning of that miserable struggle and 
 the present moment. How long had it been ? Say ten, 
 twelve, even twenty minutes. 
 
 What if ? 
 
 But she would not let herself think the thought out. 
 She sped through the little passage-way leading into her 
 husband's room. It was just as dim as she had left it. 
 She stood with her foot on the threshold, listening. 
 At first she told herself that she could hear him 
 breathe with the regularity of one who sleeps tran- 
 quilly. But soon she had become otherwise convinced ; 
 he was breathing in an odd and very uncertain way.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 439 
 
 And then, making her strained nerves tingle, he gave, 
 without any warning, a heavy and most painful groan. 
 
 Olivia hurried to the lamp and turned it up. Then 
 her glance shot toward the little table at the side of 
 the bed. 
 
 The glass was there, but it was empty. 
 
 She would not believe her own senses at first. She 
 went nearer to the table and peered down at the glass. 
 Yes ! Empty ! 
 
 Still clinging to a last frail hope that her eyesight 
 had tricked her, she raised the glass in her hand. But 
 it fell from her effete fingers to the floor. 
 
 She did not attempt to pick it up, or even to ascer- 
 tain whether it had been broken or no. She had turned 
 her look upon her husband's face. He had closed his 
 eyes, and lay upon his back. He appeared to be quite 
 unconscious. She leaned over him and grasped his 
 shoulder, slightly shaking his form once or twice. He 
 seemed either in a state of sluggish coma, or else dead. 
 Which was it? 
 
 She rang the bell violently several times. Then she 
 sank down on her knees at his bedside. Her face was 
 hueless, her hands were clasped tightly together, her 
 eyes were dilated, as though she were undergoing some 
 intense physical torture.
 
 440 OLIVIA UELAPLAINE. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 AFTERWARD she felt as if she were in a dream as 
 if .the servants who came hastening into the room 
 were visionary shapes as if the voice with which she 
 addressed them and that with which they answered 
 her were heard through deadening folds of fog. The 
 poison had begun speedily to work upon Delaplaine, 
 as aconite nearly always does, and his sufferings became 
 acute. He complained of a wretched giddiness, of a 
 peculiar tingling in his arms and hands, of pain in the 
 abdomen, of an almost asphyxiating heaviness about 
 the heart. Then followed spasms of the most racking 
 nausea, with other symptoms no less deplorable. Be- 
 lieving that her husband would die, it was a relief to 
 Olivia when he at length ceased staring at her and 
 entirely lost consciousness. Until the arrival of the 
 doctor she joined the servants in leaving scarcely an 
 effort at restoration untried. From the first she had 
 not hesitated to tell them, one and all, the cause of this 
 unexpected attack. If she had failed to do so she 
 would have seemed to herself like a veritable murder- 
 ess concealing her crime. And, as it was, she had 
 already told herself, with pangs of remorse which made 
 her heart feel as if it were being cut in twain, that 
 Delaplaine's death, if this really occurred, would be 
 a result of those few minutes wherein she had so 
 weakly, ignobly lingered and demurred.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 441 
 
 " Mr. Delaplaine must have drank his medicine," 
 she said, " for I found the glass empty on returning to 
 his room after being away from it only a little while." 
 
 And then to her own soul she mutely added : 
 " Though they arrest me and put me in prison as his 
 assassin, I will speak the truth. God knows, if I did 
 not do that I should then despise myself even more 
 than now?" 
 
 When the doctor at last came she told him in a 
 clear and perfectly sustained manner just how her hus- 
 band's illness had been brought about. "I may have 
 been careless in leaving the glass of medicine on the 
 table at his bedside," she finished, " but it could not 
 have remained there more than twenty minutes at the 
 utmost, and the room had been darkened through Mr. 
 Delaplaine's desire, as he said that he wished to sleep 
 and could not do so otherwise." 
 
 " Mr. Delaplaine did not know that the medicine 
 was on the table, I suppose," said the physician. He 
 was watching, as he spoke, the few faint convulsions 
 that of late had assailed the sick man. He had already 
 concluded that there was no chance whatever of saving 
 his patient's life ; the dose had been too heavy a one, 
 and too much precious time had been lost before he had 
 been enabled to reach Greenacre. 
 
 " I think that he knew nothing of the medicine 
 being there," answered Olivia. " I imagine that he 
 gave this point no heed at all, however, and simply 
 drank the first liquid that he could find." 
 
 " Strange," murmured the doctor." 
 
 "Do you consider it strange?" Olivia asked, with 
 controlled voice and a self-possession that surprised 
 her while she assumed it.
 
 442 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 " Yes," came the reply. This country doctor was a 
 quaint man, replete with bony angles, and having two 
 dark, bluish streaks under his eyes that gave to his 
 long, haggard face a look no less lugubrious than sin- 
 cere. You had only to glance at him in order to see 
 what a terribly serious matter with him was the rising 
 of each day's sun, and also the going down thereof. 
 He had instantly begun to blame himself for having 
 left so large a dose of the deadly aconite in Dela- 
 plaine's apartment, and for not having sufficiently 
 warned those who surrounded the invalid concerning 
 just how baneful a preparation it was. He was a 
 person, this Dr. Matthew Gleason, who rather mor- 
 bidly blamed himself a great deal for a great many 
 things. 
 
 " Yes," he now repeated. " If, as you say, the room 
 was dark and no one was here to hand it to him, why, 
 his taking it at all was certainly strange." 
 
 The color flew to Olivia's cheeks. But for a brief 
 period, at least, her sensations were not guilty ones. 
 It gave her, indeed, a certain hectic gladness to speak 
 the next words, which fell from her lips with a little 
 accent of indignation : 
 
 " No one could have been here to hand it to him. I 
 hardly understand your meaning, Dr. Gleason. One 
 would suppose " 
 
 But the doctor did not hear her. He was bending 
 over Delaplaine, in whom the first struggles of death 
 were beginning. Assiduously, spurred by an energy 
 that seemed determined to leave no conceivable re- 
 source unused, this sombre man worked on and on, 
 for an hour or more, with remedy and antidote. But 
 at length he failed, as he had been almost convinced
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAISH. 443 
 
 beforehand that he must fail. Perhaps the anticipation 
 of how much he was hereafter to have on his brooding 
 and sensitive conscience through the dreary and lonely 
 nights of the coming winter, stimulated him now into 
 making the prospective burden as light as possible. 
 
 The sultry summer dawn was just breaking when 
 Spencer Delaplaine died. He had been breathing al- 
 most imperceptibly for some little while, when with- 
 out a hint of premonition his frame was disturbed by 
 two or three light, swift shivers. 
 
 Dr. Gleason stooped down, with a ducking gesture 
 whose infinite awkwardness could not escape Olivia, 
 notwithstanding her perturbed state. He placed one 
 of his large ears just below the left breast of the pros- 
 trate man, and appeared for several minutes to be 
 listening intently. 
 
 When he raised his head, he at once turned toward 
 Olivia. She silently bowed, wondering at her own 
 thorough calmness. There was no mistaking the new 
 
 o o 
 
 gravity that had gathered upon the doctor's habitually 
 mournful face. 
 
 "Dead?" she murmured. 
 
 "Yes," he answered below his breath, and she 
 fancied that he shot at her, from his doleful eyes, a 
 look of irrepressible reproach and accusation. . . . 
 
 But she was mistaken here. In about half an hour 
 Dr. Gleason had asked her to give him a few moments 
 of private conversation. They went together into the 
 room adjoining that where Delaplaine had lately ex- 
 pired. The moonlight had given place to the dawn, 
 and Dr. Gleason's countenance, illumined by the 
 whitish glimmer that struck upon it, confronted 
 Olivia with an unearthly ugliness.
 
 444 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 "Is he going to charge me with having killed my 
 husband?" she asked herself, as she stood before him 
 in statue-like composure. 
 
 But Dr. Gleason had not the remotest intention of 
 playing any such grim part. On the contrary, he 
 broke the silence by saying, with tones full of con- 
 science-stricken disarray : 
 
 "Mrs. Delaplaine, this unhappy accident has oc- 
 curred, and and it must (I feel sure that it must) 
 reflect very unfortunately upon upon myself as a 
 medical man. If possible, I would endeavor to have 
 the real facts hidden. But that cannot be. Too 
 many people are already acquainted with them. . . . 
 As for my culpability, I I don't know just how other 
 physicians those who practice in the great centres 
 like New York will regard my my share in the 
 mistake. There is no doubt that I might have left a 
 smaller portion of the dilution. But as it was, I gave 
 clear warning in the matter of its noxious quality. 
 And just now I am hard-worked in the village. It 
 has been an unhealthy summer. I feared lest I might 
 not reach Mr. Delaplaine again until to-morrow I 
 should say this afternoon. And therefore I acted as 
 seemed to me most wise and prudent. But I have 
 apparently committed a a most grievous professional 
 error. I acknowledge this ; I feel that it is my duty 
 to make such acknowledgment, both before you 
 and " 
 
 But here Olivia broke in. "I cannot see where 
 your error lies," she said. "Blame, if there is any 
 blame, should belong to those with whom you left the 
 dangerous drug, after having so explicitly warned 
 them." And now she rested one hand upon Dr.
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 445 
 
 Gleason's big, angular arm. " I shall tell everybody," 
 she went on, "that you deserve the fullest exonera- 
 tion." Her voice almost failed her, for a few seconds, 
 and then she again continued, with a fresh repose and 
 serenity: "I shall tell everybody I promise you 
 this most faithfully that my husband's death has 
 been due to my own neglect in leaving that glass of 
 aconite near him, even for the short space of time that 
 I did so leave it." 
 
 Dr. Gleason stretched forth one of his large-knuckled 
 hands and clasped one of her own with it. 
 
 " Oil, Mrs Delaplaine, I thank you ! I thank you so 
 much! You you haven't just taken the load from 
 my mind, but you've you've eased me wonder- 
 fully!" . . . 
 
 Olivia kept her word. From the morrow, as might 
 be said, she faced the whole world unflinchingly with 
 the truth. Or, if not the real truth, with enough of it 
 to make everybody believe that she had kept nothing 
 in reserve. The former gossip concerning her pecu- 
 liar marriage was now revived, and perhaps a few 
 cruel things were said in connection with that and the 
 almost equally peculiar manner of her husband's 
 death. But these comments were spared Olivia. 
 And, yet, for that matter, she heai'd them in imagi- 
 nation ; for this was a period of her life when those 
 receptivities that mean in us the dealing of deep and 
 incessant wounds were with Olivia most briskly opera- 
 tive. Night followed night, after Delaplaine's death, 
 and not an instant of sleep came to her. It was the 
 sort of insomnia that has no briefer moods of mercy. 
 "I shall go mad," she had begun to gasp in the dead 
 night-watches, sitting up in bed and hearing the clock
 
 446 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 tick and the very darkness itself seem to flow about 
 her in whirls and counter-currents. But she had the 
 vigor of youth, as yet, for this vampire of distempers 
 to draw upon. An increased pallor was the sole 
 change in her that, during several days, any of those 
 whom circumstances called upon most closely to 
 observe her remarked. 
 
 Meanwhile Delaplaine's body had been brought to 
 West Tenth Street, and his funeral had been held at 
 Grace Church with that preponderance of black coats 
 which invariably will mark such ceremonials when they 
 take place in the middle of the summer season. The 
 Auchinclosses had felt it their "duty" to come into 
 town, notwithstanding the extreme discomfort of the 
 heat, but the Satterthwaites had remained at Newport 
 and written Olivia a note of "condolence." That is, 
 Emmeline (who had secret misgivings lest her future 
 wedding-present, when she married Arthur Plunkett 
 in the autumn, might suffer as to size and general 
 expensiveness) volunteered to represent her family by 
 the composition of such a note. She began it with a 
 yawn and ended it with one. " Oh, dear," she said, 
 after two sheets of her mourning-rimmed paper had 
 been covered, " what monstrous fibs I have told ! The 
 idea of alluding to Olivia's ' painful affliction,' when 
 we all know, and she knows we all know, that if she 
 has any feeling at all regarding the affair, it must be 
 one of pure delight." 
 
 " Delight ?" echoed her sister, Elaine, lazily. "Oh, 
 Em ! isn't that too strong ? " 
 
 " Not a bit," returned Emmeline, " provided his 
 Will is found to leave her everything." 
 
 " It has somehow got around," said Elaine, with a
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 447 
 
 note of conviction in her voice, " that he has left her 
 very little. They say he got to perfectly detest her 
 for some time before he died. How horrible if he 
 left her poor/" 
 
 "Oh, d<m?t! n remonstrated Emmeline, as if the 
 possibility were too harrowing a one for serious con- 
 templation. 
 
 But Spencer Delaplaine left his wife all his very 
 large property, without reservation or stipulation of 
 any sort. Olivia was keenly surprised when she 
 learned this fact ; she had expected (when thinking 
 at all on the subject) a legacy as great as the law itself 
 apportioned her and not a dime greater. She was now 
 an exceedingly rich young widow ; but during those 
 days of feverish inward turmoil and outward tranquil- 
 lity, she found herself constantly forgetting that this 
 was the case. 
 
 The lawyers, .however, soon began most pertina- 
 ciously to remind her of it. " I guess, 'Livia, they'll 
 worry an' pester you a good deal 'fore you're through 
 with 'em," said Mrs. Ottarson, who was sitting with 
 her one day, and whom Olivia liked to have at the 
 West Tenth Street house as often as that lady could 
 spare the time for coming. 
 
 " There would be no worriment at all, Aunt Thyrza," 
 she replied, "if if . . . ." She paused, and lifted 
 her hands to her eyes, rubbing them almost as a 
 sleepy child might do. " Well," she finished, with a 
 little laugh as faint as it was discordant, "if I were 
 only feeling more . . . more as I used to feel, some- 
 how." 
 
 The last words were spoken with the saddest of 
 tremors, and then a forced brightening of demeanor 
 followed them.
 
 448 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 Mrs. Ottarson gave a little start, and afterward let 
 her black eyes dwell very fixedly indeed upon Olivia, 
 while the latter bent her head over a legal document 
 which the servant had recently handed her. 
 
 Presently Mrs. Ottarson rose from her chair. Olivia 
 did not seem to be aware that she had done so until 
 the lady's hand touched her shoulder. 
 
 "'Livia?" 
 
 "Well, aunt?" 
 
 " Look here, 'Livia." 
 
 Down sat Mrs. Ottarson, after that, and close to her 
 niece's side. She caught one of Olivia's hands and 
 held it pressed tight in her own. 
 
 "Now, 'Livia," she recommenced, "I want you jus' 
 t' look right straight at me. No droppin' your eyes 
 like that, deary : I ain't 'fraid t' meet your eyes .... 
 There; that's it. ... Now, 'Livia, you're jus' mis'ra- 
 ble! I've seen it ever since you sent for me t' come 
 here. I've watched you pretty smart, too, all the 
 while we've been t'gether, an' I'm ready to swear 
 somethin' 's half settin' you crazy." 
 
 " Oh, no, Aunt Thyrza . . ." 
 
 "Oh, yes. Aunt Thyrzy! Come, now, you can't 
 fool me like that. I will jus' know w'at 't is. Out 
 with it, now, 'Livia. I ain't to be bluffed off." 
 
 "I I sleep badly," murmured Olivia. She had 
 lifted her eyes but now she had again drooped them. 
 "The truth is, if you will know, that I I don't 
 sleep at all" 
 
 "Don't sleep at all?" 
 
 She shook her head. "I haven't had a minute's 
 sleep, since " 
 
 " I understand. Since that night. You're worryin*
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 449 
 
 'bout his drinkin' that med'cine. 'S if you could a 
 helped it ! " 
 
 " I could have helped it." 
 
 She whispered the words. Mrs. Ottarson barely 
 caught them. " Could ? " she repeated. . . . And 
 then the color died quite out of her olive cheeks. 
 " 'Livia, you don't mean w'at you're sayin' ! No, you 
 don't!" Suddenly lowering her tones, she pursued: 
 "Watever you do mean, tell me! Don't be 'fraid. 
 Tell me/" 
 
 She dropped Olivia's hand. She put forth both 
 arms and threw them round her companion's form, 
 through which shivers had begun to pass in quick, 
 alarming succession. 
 
 "I will tell you," Olivia cried, while her head fell 
 upon her aunt's shoulder. "I will tell you, though 
 you should hate and loathe me after you've heard ! " 
 Then her voice fell almost to a whisper. "I I left 
 the medicine there by mistake. He wanted the lamp 
 turned down, and I tui-ned it. All that is true. 
 Everything you've heard me say is true. But . . . 
 there is something else." 
 
 " Something else ? Well, what ? " 
 
 " This ! " she answered, in a choked, hoarse way. 
 And now for perhaps five minutes, with her head still 
 on Mrs. Ottarson's shoulder, she spoke, agitatedly, 
 brokenly, but not once with the least sign of tears. 
 Her ending sentence was : " There, I have con- 
 fessed to you just what a guilty creature I am, 
 and how little sympathy I deserve from any living 
 fellow-creature except those as much steeped in sin as 
 myself!" 
 
 For a few seconds there was no response to this
 
 450 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 hopelessly mournful outburst. Then Olivia felt her 
 aunt's arms tightening about her frame. 
 
 " You great goose ! " exclaimed Mrs. Ottarson. 
 " 'Xcuse me, 'Livia, but I can't help it ! W'y w'at on 
 earth did you do? You jus' stood there in that dark 
 room, an' had a few evil thoughts. Who mightn't a 
 had 'em, if they'd been through all you'd been through ? 
 An' then you conquered 'em, as you was certain to 
 conquer 'em, an' rushed in t' where he was layin'. 
 My! isfctoall?" 
 
 Olivia raised her head, and stared supplicatingly, 
 childishly, passionately, at the speaker. 
 
 "Oh, Aunt Thyrza, are you in earnest? Don't 
 deceive me! It means so much to me if you think 
 if you really think that I. . . " She could say no 
 more, and just as her lips were trembling incapably 
 her aunt placed a heavy and hearty kiss upon 
 them. 
 
 "Who's dreampt o' deceivin' you, Livvy? W'y it's 
 all sheer nonsense f you to go on so 'bout nothin' 't 
 all. Ev'rybody has spells o' badness like that. It's 
 the way the devil tries to catch his own, I s'pose. 
 Gracious! I've had 'em fifty times. An' la snkes 
 alives, what did you do, after all ? 'Livia, 'f you really 
 felt well you wouldn't care a snap for such rubbishy 
 fancies. . . . You ain't well, an' you mus' see a doctor. 
 . . . I'm glad you're cryin' ; 't will do you good. 
 'T ain't the first time, is it, Liv, you've cried on this 
 old shoulder o' mine ? " 
 
 Olivia's tears came in a tempest. Perhaps they 
 saved her reason. That night she slept profoundly, 
 and far on into the next morning. Physically she was 
 well enough afterward. But nevertheless a certain
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 451 
 
 reaction succeeded the supreme burst of thankfulness 
 and exultation which Mrs. Ottarson's comforting words 
 had invoked. Olivia soon found herself looking at 
 her own behavior in what she could not but assure her 
 own moral sense was the properly judicial light. She 
 had been so far from actually causing the death of her 
 husband that to accuse herself of having played such a 
 hideous part was clear absurdity. Her temptation- 
 had amounted to this : She had remained passive for 
 a certain number of minutes when passivity might 
 have meant fatal neglect of duty. She had resisted 
 the impulse to continue away from Delaplaine's bed- 
 side stoutly and successfully resisted it. But success 
 had not come until a certain time had gone; and 
 during that time the death-dealing potion had been 
 lifted to the invalid's lips. Had she staid near him, 
 she, his voluntary nurse had she been a sentinel at 
 her post and not one who did worse than to desert it 
 she might easily enough have saved his life. 
 
 " It all lies there," Olivia afterward ruminated : 
 "in the fact that I allowed those minutes to pass before 
 I had put that hateful feeling away from me ! I shall 
 never pardon myself for that hesitation. I shall never 
 cease to blame myself because of it. I shall always 
 think of myself as different from the fellow-creatures 
 whom I daily meet and talk with. Even though I 
 may not have committed a positive crime, the shadow 
 of one has fallen upon me. Amid that shadow my 
 spirit must dwell, alone and apart, from now until 
 I die." 
 
 In the second or third week of the autumn following 
 Delaplaine's death, Jasper Massereene called upon 
 Olivia. She had heard that he had been in Newport
 
 452 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 all cummer, and had dreaded lest he should present 
 himself in West Tenth Street on his return. For it 
 belonged to the gloom of that "shadow" in which 
 through the rest of her days she must be bathed, not 
 to permit any but terms of the most distant future 
 acquaintanceship between herself and Massereene. 
 
 But for once, at least, she resolved to see him. 
 Thereafter she would avoid doing so as far as lay in 
 her power. She had silently rehearsed their meeting 
 a hundred times, but when it took the guise of reality 
 it was so diametrically different from what she had 
 expected ! They shook hands with the most ordinary 
 kind of collectedness on both sides. They fell to 
 talking of Newport in tones and terms that might 
 have been employed by two persons without a single 
 true common interest. 
 
 " They tell me it is a very delightful place," Olivia 
 said. 
 
 " Oh, very. You have never been there ? " 
 
 "No. . . . Were you quite gay while there?" 
 
 " Not gay at all. I did not see many people. I had 
 pleasant rooms, and I read a good deal, drove or rode 
 a good deal, and occasionally dined with friends, 
 though not oftener than twice a week." 
 
 "You selected a rather fashionable spot to be quiet 
 in." 
 
 " That, I found, is the charm of Newport. You can 
 be as retired in the midst of all the merrymaking as 
 though you were a hundred miles off." He hesitated, 
 and looked with a sudden meaning animation at Olivia. 
 In an instant, as it were, she realized that her ordeal 
 had begun. 
 
 " Besides," he added, " I had no choice for amuse-
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 453 
 
 ment no choice and no heart. You may perhaps 
 guess why." 
 
 " I may guess ? " she asked, making her voice neutral, 
 except for its faint, conventional shading of surprise. 
 
 He ignored this composed answer, " I came in town 
 for . . . the funeral," he said. " I wanted to call upon 
 you afterward, but thought it best not to do so. I 
 suppose that was the wiser plan ; was it not? 
 
 " I was quite unwell for some time afterward," she 
 said. 
 
 " Naturally. The shock must have affected you." 
 
 "It did." 
 
 "But you have recovered by this, I hope." 
 
 Oh, yes." 
 
 There was a silence. She felt rather than saw his 
 eyes restlessly sweep her face. "May I say to you," 
 he began, " that I trust my coming this afternoon has 
 not been at all ... inopportune ? " 
 
 She bit her lips. " Inopportune ? " she repeated. 
 
 He made an impatient gesture, and leaned nearer 
 toward her. " You are receiving me with a terrible 
 coldness," he exclaimed. " What have I done to de- 
 serve it ? " 
 
 "You have done nothing; you are always blame- 
 less," Olivia answered, with a little defiant, hollow, 
 embarrassed laugh that she immediately regretted. 
 " It is I," she added, with a less artificial air and just 
 the hint of a break in her voice, " I who continually 
 am making myself culpable." 
 
 " You imagine that you are," he said, with an in- 
 stant kindness. " Surely you had done nothing, in 
 former days, to feel so grievously guilty about ; it had 
 all been done to you. And yet you dwelt in a perpet-
 
 454 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 ual atmosphere of self-arraignment . . . And now 
 well, I have not caught even a rumor of what your 
 true spirits are, but I will engage they are dark with 
 remorse and repentance." 
 
 He had ended smilingly, but she almost snatched 
 the words from his lips, while her face was whitening. 
 " Remorse repentance ? " she cried. " What do you 
 mean? Why why should I feel either?" 
 
 "You look as if you might have been a sufferer from 
 both," said Massereene, shaking his head while the 
 smile deepened on his lips. " Ah, I was sure of it ! 
 That mistake about the medicine would, I knew, 
 plunge you in agonies of contrition. You cannot 
 forgive yourself. You are not just sure how it happens 
 that your fault is so black, but you are no less confident 
 of its blackness." 
 
 His playful satire, so completely unsuspicious of the 
 real truth, had by this time become apparent to his 
 listener. He had thought manifold thoughts regard- 
 ing Olivia Delaplaine since their separation, and among 
 these could conspicuously be placed the deduction that 
 she was the victim of an excessively tender conscience. 
 In referring to the matter of the draught of aconite, 
 he merely mentioned what had of course become a 
 theme for current discussion during at least two or 
 three weeks after Delaplaine's death. Olivia felt that 
 he was indeed carelessly laying his hands upon wounds 
 which the least rough touch might make betrayingly 
 bleed. She managed to speak with a fair amount of 
 quietude as she said : 
 
 " I suppose that the story of the medicine got about 
 everywhere. . . . Did they say ill-natured things of 
 
 mo?"
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 455 
 
 "None that I heard." He laughed. "What could 
 they say except the merest Mtises ? " 
 
 " Even those are waspish, now and then ; they carry 
 stings." 
 
 "Only for very sensitive persons. . . . But you 
 have a right to be sensitive to have a hundred 
 trifles 'give you some nerves,' as I once heard a 
 Frenchman say while he floundered in English. You 
 have been through untold trials. But now all that is 
 past. Your liberty has come again. You are still 
 younger than many a girl who has not yet thought 
 much about marriage. Everything should point to 
 your perfect happiness, and no one hopes for it with 
 greater sincerity than I do ! " 
 
 He was the Massereene of old to her while he thus 
 spoke; she surrendered herself to the rich sweetness 
 of his voice and let herself enjoy the candid sparkle of 
 his gaze. . . . Then, abruptly, came the chilling rec- 
 ollection of that " set gray life and apathetic end " 
 with which she had resolved that her future should be 
 unalterably associated. 
 
 "I thank you," she said, in tones grave enough 
 thoroughly to suit the mourning attire which he had 
 expected to see her wear, and yet which had seemed 
 to keep her unduly removed from him ever since they 
 had met this afternoon. " I begin to think there is no 
 such thing as happiness in the sense you evidently 
 mean. But I hope to secure the contentment that 
 comes of charitable work toward my fellow-creatures. 
 In this way I shall achieve that self-forgetfulness 
 which is, after all, perhaps, the one most desirable 
 aim. . . . My life is to be a busy and yet a very 
 quiet one. I shall quite give up the world. Poor
 
 456 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 dear Aunt Thyrza will be about the only friend whom 
 I shall retain though for that matter, I was without 
 friends here when I came back from Europe for the 
 last time, and " 
 
 "You have made none since! " broke in Massereene. 
 His brow had clouded botli perplexedly and angrily. 
 ".Tam doubtless not your friend! You wish to toss 
 me aside you have done with me ! " 
 
 "I I did not say that," answered Olivia, sitting 
 pale before him, with drooped eyes. 
 
 He sprang to his feet. " But you meant it you 
 wanted to convey that meaning. You came down to 
 meet ine with the fixed intention of sending me away 
 from you, if you could do so in a peaceable way, for- 
 ever. . . . You, at your age, and after the dog's life 
 that Delaplaine led you, to talk of ' that self-forgetful- 
 ness which is the one most desirable aim.' Good 
 heavens, woman ! you have your life to live, health- 
 fully and sensibly ! No one objects to your being as 
 charitable as you please. Give thousands to the poor, 
 if you like. But an ascetic you ! The very idea is 
 preposterous ! . . . There," he ended, half turning 
 away, " I have incensed you ; I see it in your 
 face." 
 
 "You have not incensed me," Olivia replied. "But 
 you have not changed my resolution of wholly forsak- 
 ing the world or at least that part of it called 
 society. I can't fully explain to you my determin- 
 ation. But it exists it exists unchangeably ; and 
 if you neither approve it nor respect it, you can still 
 recognize its permanence." 
 
 He turned his back upon her, and she saw him bow 
 his head ; but in another minute he had faced her once
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 457 
 
 more ; and with tones through which vibrated an un- 
 mistakable despair, he cried : 
 
 " I love you ! I want you to be my wife ! " 
 
 "No, no," she said, rising and moving away from 
 him. 
 
 But he hurried close to her, then. " I can't give 
 you up like this I can't and I won't ! There is no 
 reason why I should, unless you care nothing for me. 
 Tell me on your word of honor that you do care 
 nothing ! " 
 
 " I I care for that other life," she faltered. " I 
 do not mean that it shall be the life of an ascetic. 
 But I am resolved to live it, and I have no other 
 answer than this." 
 
 " And this is no answer ! At least, it is none if you 
 love me. When, before his death, you forbade me 
 even to know you, and wrote me that most repelling 
 of letters, I said to myself that I would bide my time 
 that I would wait until that dead wall of circum- 
 stance no longer lifted its hard, chill bulk between us. 
 I have waited, and now you inflict upon me this cruel 
 sorrow without the least rational cause ! " 
 
 Olivia felt herself begin to tremble. She slipped 
 toward the door, which chanced not to be far away. 
 " I gave you no cause, in those other days," she said, 
 " to believe that I ever meant to become your wife." 
 
 " I thought then that you loved me. I think still 
 that you love me. This should be cause enough, 
 surely ! " 
 
 " But if you were wrong ? " she asked, with a 
 sort of haughty exasperation. "If you were wrong 
 then, and if you are wrong now ? " 
 
 He took several steps in her direction. His eyes
 
 458 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 were glowing the eyes that she loved, that she had 
 seen gazing at her through the mist of a hundred 
 dreams, that had nearly always made her heart beat 
 quicker if she had looked into them deeply or without 
 warning. 
 
 "I am not wrong, Olivia," he said. "Your soul 
 tells you that. . . . Don't let any mad fancy, caprice, 
 theory, come between us. The stars in their courses 
 should be with two hearts that love as ours do." He 
 stretched out his arms and opened them. 
 
 For one swift instant she longed to bound toward 
 him to lay her head on his breast to tell him 
 everything to accept the forgiveness that he was 
 certain of extending her, and to let such forgiveness 
 stand in the place of what she would have called 
 God's. 
 
 But her longing died under the stress of another ; 
 it was one that she held to be far holier and higher. 
 She receded to the very threshold of the room, all the 
 while looking straight at Massereene. 
 
 " I hope," she said, without a quiver in her voice, 
 "that we shall never see one another again on this 
 earth. I hope it most earnestly, devoutly. I may 
 write you I am not sure. But if I do not, take my 
 good-bye now and here." Then she saw his face 
 through her rushing tears, and as it seemed to come 
 nearer, she turned, hastening from the room. 
 
 " Olivia ! " she heard him cry. . . . For days after- 
 ward that sound echoed through her reveries, and now 
 and then she would tell herself that it must so 
 echo until the one last silence made it forever 
 cease. 
 
 But for two or three hours after disappearing from
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 459 
 
 the presence of Massereene, she remained in the most 
 supplicatory and entranced mood of prayer. She 
 poured forth thanks to God for having enabled her to 
 resist the happiness offered her in place of that life- 
 long expiation by which she could at least partially 
 annul the atrocity of her sin. She prayed for strength, 
 hereafter to discipline every desire which bore upon 
 self-gratification ; and having thus prayed for strength, 
 she arose, like the majority of those whom an ecstasy 
 of personal prostration and abasement has intoxicated, 
 believing that she was already vastly stronger. 
 
 But she met with no further temptation from Jas- 
 per Massereene. In about three weeks' time she 
 learned through the Satterthwaites that he contem- 
 plated recrossing the ocean . . . 
 
 Spencer Delaplaine's will had required that his 
 widow's share of the banking-business should, as 
 soon as possible, become completely null. Her for- 
 tune was to be withdrawn from the house, and sub- 
 sequently re-invested elsewhere. All such operations 
 as these took time, and were attended with not a few 
 legal complications as well. Olivia had many a prosy 
 term of converse to undergo, and some of the proceed- 
 ings explained to her were by no means as lucid after 
 explanation as she might have wished. Suddenly, 
 one day, the thought of Adrian Etherege flashed 
 through her mind. How materially he could have 
 aided her in the clearer understanding of these per- 
 plexing details ! And why had she not remembered 
 him before ? 
 
 The truth was, she had absolutely forgotten him 
 for weeks. " How ungrateful of me ! " she reflected. 
 " And after he defended me so bravely at Greenacre
 
 460 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 that evening ! He must have felt bitterly toward me 
 all this time. No doubt he has been waiting for me 
 to summon him. What harm can there be in my 
 doing so at once?" 
 
 Still, she feared the questions he might ask her 
 regarding that fateful night. Massereene's reference 
 to it had caused her many a memorial shudder. 
 What if Adrian had refrained from seeking her again 
 because he suspected her of greater guilt than that 
 with which she already charged her own unhappy self? 
 
 A few hours later one of the employees at the Bank 
 
 a gentleman with whom she had already held more 
 than a single rather wearisome parley presented 
 himself at her house. After not a little hesitation, 
 she made up her mind to inquire concerning Adrian. 
 
 "Etherege?" was the reply. "Oh, we have not 
 seen him at the Bank for certainly six weeks. They 
 say he is quite ill. I don't know what the trouble is. 
 We have paid him his salary as usual. Once or 
 twice his mother a tall, solemn-faced, elderly lady 
 
 has appeared and received the money in pei-son. I 
 myself had no conversation with her, but I believe she 
 said her son was seriously ill with a fever. Several of 
 the clerks called at Etherege's house, but I don't 
 think any of them succeeded in seeing him. Mrs. 
 Etherege always received the visitors, if I am not 
 mistaken, and gave them the same answer that 
 ,her son was too ill to have any one enter his room. 
 . . . I've no idea how his sickness will terminate, but 
 it is beginning to be whispered, down at the Bank, 
 that he is in a very dangerous condition. You knew 
 him well, I suppose, Mrs. Delaplaine, when your hus- 
 band was alive?"
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 461 
 
 "Yes," Olivia said. "I knew him very well. His 
 illness is a great surprise to me and a shock also. 
 Can you give me his address?" 
 
 "I can have it sent to you," came the answer. 
 
 " Please do so, then, immediately." 
 
 On the following day Olivia received the address. 
 It was considerably up-town, in one of the easterly 
 side-streets, not far from Second Avenue. That after- 
 noon she had herself driven there in her own private 
 carnage. 
 
 She felt convinced that the woman whom she would 
 now most probably meet was the same whom she had 
 seen for a brief minute or two at the head of the stair- 
 way on a certain afternoon, not very long ago, while 
 Delaplaine's curt words of dismissal had rung out 
 with such astonishing harshness. And this woman 
 the mother of Adrian had no doubt once been the 
 mistress of Delaplaine. All indications, as presented 
 by Adrian himself, had tended toward such a belief 
 on Olivia's part. It was not pleasant to seek her 
 friend with the prospect of being accosted by Mrs. 
 Etherege at the very outset of the search. Still, the 
 gloomy character of the tidings Olivia had heard left 
 her no alternative. In the way of sacrificing her own 
 inclinations or prejudices, much more than she now 
 contemplated doing would have cheerfully enough 
 been undertaken by her for reasons like the present, 
 
 The house at which her carriage finally drew up 
 was one of those small, third-rate red-brick buildings 
 that contribute so multitudmously toward the re< 
 nowned ugliness of the metropolis. Here dwelt Mrs. 
 Etherege, renting the house and sub-renting all floors 
 of it but one. This was the first, or " parlor " floor,
 
 462 OLIVIA DELAPLA1NE. 
 
 and in its front apartment she received Olivia, amid 
 surroundings of a shabby-genteel quality. Effects 
 here and there suggested the taste or influence of 
 Adrian ; but the ensemble was in the main both dreary 
 and threadbare. 
 
 Mrs. Etherege looked indisputably the first if not 
 the last. Olivia recognized her at once. And the 
 solemn lines on her worn face did not grow a grade 
 more cheerful after she had been told her visitor's 
 name. Indeed, Olivia noticed the lines about her 
 mouth tighten ominously as she said : 
 
 "You called, ma'am, to inquire about my son ? " 
 
 "I called to see him, if I could. I hope he is well 
 enough to see me. I " 
 
 " He never sees anybody," was the interruption, 
 hard as a blow. 
 
 "I am very sorry," said Olivia, sweetly. "Is he 
 then so exceedingly ill ? " 
 
 "Yes. He's pretty sick." 
 
 "Dangerously, do you mean?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Will you let me ask you what his trouble is? " - 
 
 Mrs. Etherege did not seem at all disposed to tell. 
 She was occupying a straight-backed chair in front of 
 the easier one into which Olivia had sunk. She had 
 drooped her eyes and was scanning the carpet with 
 them. It appeared quite possible to Olivia that she 
 might raise them any minute, and show them glitter- 
 ing with most inhospitable beams. It was evident 
 that the woman did not like her boldness in coming / 
 thither, but also that she had motives for not making 
 this disapproval too palpable. Meanwhile, notwith- 
 standing the grimness and bleakness of her visage,
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 463 
 
 Olivia could detect in it a strong though covert resem- 
 
 o o 
 
 blance to Adrian's ; one might almost have said that 
 its beauty had become insultingly flouted by trouble 
 and disappointment two as malevolent vitriol- 
 throwers, in their way, as any that ever prowled. 
 
 " He's affected strangely," she at length said, raising 
 her eyes. "He had typhoid. But that's gone now, 
 and he's . . . well, he's very weak." All expression 
 of animosity died on a sudden from her face, and one 
 of excessive worriment succeeded it. " I'm very often 
 afraid he's going crazy ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 " Ah ! how dreadful ! " Olivia cried. " But perhaps 
 it's only the result of the fever. It may wear off when 
 he gets back his physical strength. Such cases are 
 happening all the time." 
 
 Nothing could have sounded more spontaneous, 
 more sympathetic, than these words of the visitor's, 
 uttered in her dulcet voice and with softly sparkling 
 eyes. They perceptibly softened Mrs. Etherege, who 
 gazed long and earnestly at her companion, and then 
 said : 
 
 "Adrian's mind is in a very curious state. He lies 
 without speaking, for hours. Then he'll begin to 
 murmur to himself in a most incoherent manner. It 
 seems as if he were hiding something from me some- 
 thing that he's heard or done in former days and 
 yet as if this were preying so on his mind that he 
 must sooner or later disclose it. ... He's often spoken 
 of you, ma'am. . . ." 
 
 " Of me ! " exclaimed Olivia, a pang of self-reproach 
 passing through her heart. 
 
 "... And I must acknowledge that lately," pur- 
 sued Mrs. Etherege, as if she had made up her mind
 
 464 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 to have it all out while her own propitious mood lasted, 
 " he's been begging that I would send for you." 
 
 "And why did you not? " 
 
 Mrs. Etherege began to gnaw her lips. "Well," 
 she said, " there were reasons. Mr. Delaplaine, as you 
 know, was very good to Adrian. For quite a while 
 he almost adopted him. There was nothing very re- 
 markable in his doing so. Adrian was a handsome 
 boy, and I ... er ... I was a relation of Mr. Dela- 
 plaine's. I don't know if he has ever mentioned this 
 fact to you or not." 
 
 "No," said Olivia, "my husband never mentioned 
 it to me. At least, not that I recollect." She had 
 become somehow most promptly convinced that Mrs. 
 Etherege's latter statement was a premeditated false- 
 hood. All in all, however, she was rather glad that 
 this coolly audacious way had been adopted of dealing 
 with the whole awkward and unsavory subject. If 
 Adrian's mother had ever sought to convince Dela- 
 plaine that he was the father of her son, she must sig- 
 nally have failed after the lad reached any appreciable 
 age, since he bore no vaguest trace of such fatherhood. 
 Whatever Delaplaine had subsequently done for Adrian 
 must either have been prompted by some lingering 
 shadow of sentiment for his mother (which, as Olivia 
 had seen, that lady was inclined too daringly to count 
 upon), or by the mingled comeliness and capability 
 which the boy himself presented. 
 
 "Yes, oh, yes," proceeded Mrs. Etherege, with a 
 slow, decisive nod at Olivia. "I'm surprised he 
 didn't speak of the relationship. Adrian knew 
 nothing about it ; I never told him." Here she 
 coughed, as though to give herself time for fresh
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 4G5 
 
 inventions. " I thought he might refer to it on some 
 occasion when Mr. Delaplaine was not in the best of 
 humors you understand ? " 
 
 "Yes," acceded Olivia mechanically. She thought 
 she understood very well indeed. 
 
 " Now I was more than astonished," went on Mrs. 
 Etherege, " I was grieved when I heard that Mr. Dela- 
 plaine had not even remembered me by as much as a 
 small legacy." She paused, and drew a long breath, 
 and Olivia wondered whether, during these few min- 
 utes of intercourse, she could not read her character 
 somewhat clearly. Was she not a woman who had 
 started life on a large stock of good looks and a mod- 
 erate amount of principle, and who, having found the 
 resources of both insufficient to keep her prosperously 
 afloat, had luixed herself up in a hundred petty dupli- 
 cities, remaining now, at a rather advanced age, wholly 
 dissatisfied with the successful diplomacy of any ? 
 
 " If, as you tell me, you are a relation of Mr. Dela- 
 plaine's," Olivia at once answered, " I shall be glad to 
 make some amends for my husband's neglect." She 
 said this, thinking of Adrian, and hoping that she 
 could thus turn a little golden key in the doorway of 
 obstruction between himself and her. 
 
 Mrs. Etherege smiled, and the smile seemed to as- 
 tonish her sombre, fade face; you might have fancied 
 that certain little muscles used in the process had 
 grown stiff from lack of exercise. 
 
 "Oh, thank you, ma'am thank you very much. 
 We're not in the best of circumstances, and one or two 
 of my boarders think of leaving me. If Adrian's sal- 
 ary at the Bank should be stopped, it would be very 
 hard on us. The truth is, as I can tell you^ my up-
 
 466 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 stairs drainage isn't what it ought to be, and people 
 don't stay with me long, even if they come. But I've 
 a three-years' lease of the house, so I tmist stay here 
 and try to make both ends meet." 
 
 "Well," said Olivia, smiling, "I will help you to do 
 that. Trust me." She was anxious to see Adrian at 
 once, and would have made almost any kind of prom- 
 ise, just then, in order to secure his mother's good 
 wilt 
 
 " It was because I felt so hurt about Mr. Delaplaine's 
 forgetting me altogether," now pursued this lady, 
 "that I well, I didn't think it was best to send for 
 you, no matter how hard Adrian begged." 
 
 "And he did beg hard?" exclaimed Olivia. "Ah, 
 I hope you would have relented soon and sent for 
 me!" 
 
 "Well, I dare say I would," she replied, looking 
 down with an uneasy roll of the eyeball ; and her 
 hearer almost concluded that she would have been 
 cruel enough to delay the summons perhaps many 
 days. 
 
 But Olivia now made an eager request to see Adrian. 
 Mrs. Etherege presently rose and left the room, after 
 saying that she would ascertain if such a plan were 
 feasible. Her return was awaited most impatiently. 
 But not until twenty good minutes afterward did she 
 again appear. 
 
 "He is very weak to-day," she said. " I had to tell 
 him in the most cautious way that you were here." 
 
 "And it gratified him to know?" asked Olivia. 
 
 "It shocked him. He's in a state when so little 
 will shock him. But he seems very glad now. He 
 is waiting to see you with a kind of new look in his
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 467 
 
 face. . . . Please do not let him excite himself any 
 more than you can help." 
 
 " I will do my utmost to soothe, to quiet him," 
 Olivia answered. 
 
 " Very well. He wants me to leave you alone with 
 him for a half arr hour. . . . That is rather a long 
 time, considering how ill he is. ... But I shall be 
 within call, if you should want me. It's only two 
 rocms off. Will you come with me now?" 
 
 Olivia rose, following Mrs. Etherege. Very soon, 
 after that, she was standing in a neat, plainly-appointed 
 room, near the bedside of Adrian.
 
 468 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 His face, as she cast her eyes upon it, sent a thrill 
 of horror through her nerves. Its beauty of contour 
 and proportion was not so altered that she could not 
 recognize it at once ; and yet the change, the pallor, the 
 attenuation ! . . . Olivia did her best to conceal a 
 visible tremor, and succeeded. She went nearer to 
 the bed and took the hand that Adrian stretched out 
 to her. Its clasp was burningly feverish. His exqui- 
 site brown eyes seemed to devour her face as she 
 paused close beside him. 
 
 "Leave me here with Mrs. Delaplaine, mother," he 
 said, suddenly making this appeal. " Remember your 
 agreement." 
 
 " Yes, Adrian," was the reply. Without another 
 word Mrs. Etherege passed from the room. 
 
 There was a chair quite near Olivia. She took it, 
 and then, amid the silence that ensued after Adrian's 
 mother had departed, she said, with her voice full of 
 the tenderest solicitude : 
 
 "I had no idea until yesterday that you were ill." 
 
 "No?" he responded. His eyes dwelt upon hers 
 as though some fascination compelled the searching 
 intensity of their survey. " I wanted mother to send 
 for you ; I wanted it so much ! But she kept putting 
 me off. At length I made up my mind to do a certain 
 thing, for I had lost all patience, and I suspected that 
 she was deceiving me with false promises. If she did
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 469 
 
 not send for you this very day I had determined to 
 give her a fright for she loves me, notwithstanding 
 her tame and gloomy way of showing it." 
 
 " A fright, Adrian ?" asked Olivia. " You mean ?" 
 
 "I'd have told her the blunt truth that I'm dying, 
 and that if she kept us apart any further length of 
 time she would be merely hastening the end for me." 
 
 "No, no, no," Olivia murmured. "You cannot 
 mean that, Adrian ! " She laughed as cheerily as she 
 could, though her heart had begun to beat in a sicken- 
 ing way. 
 
 " Yes, it is true. I made the doctor tell me yester- 
 day. He is a clever man, Dr. Wallace ; he saw that 
 I was in earnest, and that no prevarication would 
 avail with me. Mother thinks that because my mind 
 wanders, now and then, while I'm lying here as weak 
 as a little child, it's my brain. But it is not. It's my 
 heart. Dr. Wallace says so. Theie's no hope for me ; 
 it's what they call an atrophy, a wasting away. It 
 followed the fever; I had typhoid, you know, for 
 months. . . . Isn't it strange that I should die from 
 that? a heart that is starving ! I used to feel as if 
 my heart were starving when I looked at you in those 
 other days." 
 
 " Oh, Adrian ! " Olivia faltered, drooping her head. 
 
 " I did. But all that is past, now. I had resolved 
 not to speak of it when you came. You knew that I 
 loved you. It was torture for me to see him treat you 
 as he did. I shall never forget that last evening at 
 dinner. When I left you, a little later, after you had 
 fainted, you believed (did you not?) that I had left 
 for town?" 
 
 " Yes."
 
 470 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 "It was not true. I staid in the village all the next 
 day. The next night I went back to Greenacre. My 
 thoughts all day had been horrible. It seemed to me 
 at times as if your very life were in peril from him. 
 As I said, the next night I went back to Greenacre." 
 
 He appeared purposely to emphasize that last iter- 
 ated sentence. He spoke in a low voice almost too 
 low for his mother, if she had chosen the part of eaves- 
 dropper, to have heard him. Speaking doubtless fa- 
 tigued him, and at times a glassy light would replace 
 the richer and sweeter lustre of his eyes. He was too 
 sick a man to talk as much as this. Olivia was about 
 to tell him so, and gently bid him to exert himself 
 less, when his repetition of those words, " the next 
 night I went back to Greenacre," somehow made her 
 forget her designed injunction. 
 
 "Do you mean that you went there and asked for 
 me?" she inquired. 
 
 Adrian closed his eyes for a moment, and a smile of 
 the most ironical sadness broke from his lips and 
 slowly faded there. 
 
 "No; I did not ask for you. I asked for no one, 
 It was some time after dark. The night was very 
 warm, as you perhaps remember." 
 
 " I do remember," Olivia said, with a slight inward 
 thrill. 
 
 " The front doors were open ; the light from the 
 hall shone out across the piazza upon the lawn, where 
 jt joined the full, splendid moonlight. I did not know 
 of Delaplaine's illness, but I felt sure I would not 
 encounter him, as a closer view of the piazza told me 
 he was not there, and I had observed that since his 
 state had become so enfeebled he moved about very
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 471 
 
 little. But I believed that I might see you, and I 
 wanted very much to see you. I had been racked by 
 the most forcible pity for you. I longed to press your 
 hand in farewell, and assure you that if you needed 
 my presence hereafter you had only to telegraph me 
 and I would obey the call without an instant of delay. 
 . . . All looked lonely and deserted as I ascended the 
 piazza. If I had met a servant I would have sent a 
 message to you. But even after passing into the hall 
 I met no one whatever. Then the idea occuri'ed to 
 me of going upstairs to your sitting-room. Perhaps 
 you would be there alone, and on such a warm night 
 your door might be open. That would be better, I 
 speedily decided, than to ring the bell for a servant 
 and send up my name to you, thus risking the fact of 
 my presence being made known to him. . . . Well, so 
 I mounted the stairs and soon found myself in the 
 upper hall. As I passed your husband's bed-room the 
 door was slightly ajar. You were speaking with an 
 attendant, and before I had realized it I had heard all 
 you said and all she said. I even caught a glimpse, 
 too, of the man who lay there, and understood clearly 
 that he must be very ill. . . . The woman soon left 
 the room, and by the time that she had done so, going 
 straight upstairs, I had withdrawn into a corner of the 
 dim-lit hall. If she had turned and discovered me, I 
 suppose she would have screamed and taken me for a 
 robber . . . and then I should not have done the 
 thing that freed you from him forever." 
 
 "What thing?" questioned Olivia, with her breath 
 coining in gasps. A terror had begun to creep icily 
 through her veins, but it was a terror somehow mixed 
 with wild gladness.
 
 472 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 "Can't you guess?" he answered. "You went out 
 of the room, and I was going to follow along the hall 
 and enter the other room where you were. But some- 
 thing held me back. I was thinking of the poison in 
 that glass ; I was thinking of how it could rid you of 
 him forever." 
 
 "Adrian!" 
 
 "Presently he called you. You went in to him 
 again. I heard those horrible words he spoke to you 
 about wanting to have you die when he died. I was 
 on the verge of rushing in when he grasped your hand 
 like that; but I stood still outside there, instead, and 
 felt my hate of him and my compassion for you mingle 
 and surge through my veins. . . . Then he spoke of 
 his thirst and of how he wanted a glassful of water as 
 large as that of the medicine you were giving him. 
 You told him it was a deadly poison, and after he had 
 taken a spoonful of it you left the glass on the table 
 at his side, because you were most probably agitated by 
 those other words of his, warning you not to be too sure 
 that he would die, after all you who would not have 
 retarded his detestable life by one second for all the 
 wealth of all the world ! . . . Then he told you to turn 
 down the light, and you did, and left him. . . . And 
 then my mind was made up, and I waited my chance." 
 
 "Your chance?" 
 
 "It came almost at once. He said, presently, in a 
 husky voice, which you were too far off to heai*, ' Oh, 
 how thirsty I am ! ' . . . And then I did not wait any 
 longer. I went into the dark room, softly, on tiptoe. 
 He did not see me enter. I glided up toward the head 
 of the bed, too much beyond him for him to have seen 
 me, even if the room had not been in such thick
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 473 
 
 shadow. I readied for the glass on the little table. 
 * Here's water,' I said, and the voice I spoke in startled 
 me; it was very faint, but it was so shrewd a copy of 
 just the way you would have spoken those two words. 
 He put out his hand in the gloom, and I gave him the 
 glass. I heard him begin to drink, with the sound a 
 very thirsty child might give. . . . And then I did not 
 stop even to see if he would put the glass back on the 
 table or let it fall. ... I shot away, and no one sa\v 
 me dart downstairs and hurry out upon the lawn again. 
 The news of his death came to me here in town. . . . 
 I dare say the illness would have attacked me anyway. 
 ... I don't know. But I began to suffer fearfully for 
 what I had done, and and when the news also 
 reached me that you had admitted his death was 
 owing to your own carelessness in leaving the medi- 
 cine so near him, I had a sick sort of dread lest you 
 might might be reproaching yourself with the 
 thought " 
 
 These latter words were broken painfully, and ut- 
 tered with a difficulty that seemed to indicate the 
 approach of death itself. But extreme exhaustion, 
 not death, was now at work with Adrian. In another 
 moment his eyes had closed, and his ghastly face, 
 turned a little sideways on the pillow, revealed his 
 complete loss of consciousness. . . . 
 
 Olivia rose from her chair. For a slight space of 
 time she forgot even to cry out and summon the assist- 
 ance of Mrs. Etherege. A single thought dominated 
 her being. She was not guilty, after all ! Heavy 
 bonds were falling from her spirit, and as if with the 
 audible noise of shattered chains. Darkness was fly- 
 ing away from her, struck into a hundred cloudy frag-
 
 474 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 merits by shafts of poignant, enrapturing sunshine ! 
 "Thank God! thank God!" broke from her lips, 
 and as the words escaped her she seemed to gaze upon 
 the very face of Massereene, as though it had become 
 visible in the flesh close at her side. But she discerned 
 it through a blur of besieging tears; and when, a little 
 later, she hurried to find Adrian's mother, these tears 
 were streaming down her cheeks as though the bitter- 
 est grief and not the most impassioned joy had caused 
 them. 
 
 A few hours later she sat alone in her own room. 
 An open letter lay before her, sheet after sheet, with 
 the ink scarcely dry on the last one. It was to Mas- 
 sereene. It told him everything the entire story of 
 her temptation, her self-loathing, her renunciation of 
 all future individual delights and it confessed that 
 the love she bore him was chief and paramount among 
 those delights. Then it recorded the meeting with 
 Adrian Etherege and the new, dizzying revelation that 
 had come to her from his lips. 
 
 "Even if I should never see you again and that 
 is now for you to decide " the letter here went on, 
 "I implore you to keep as an absolute secret what I 
 have just written. But I know your merciful heart 
 and Adrian is a dying man ! His sin has been 
 terrible; I feel that I can judge somewhat of its 
 magnitude by the anguish that its consequences have 
 cost me. There is no other living soul except yourself 
 to whom I would have told his unhappy story. I 
 wonder if it is selfish of me to feel that you must 
 know the whole truth that it is only justice to my- 
 self for such completeness of knowledge to be given
 
 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 475 
 
 you. ... As I said, Adrian Etherege will not live 
 long; you already may read on his face that he is 
 doomed. Explain it as you will, but I cannot help a 
 feeling of infinite gratitude toward him. Still, in any 
 case I would have promised his mother very liberal 
 help, both before his death and afterward. . . ." 
 
 Olivia directed her letter, sealed it, and sent it to 
 the hotel at which Massereene always lived when in 
 New York. 
 
 " Will he come to me ? " she asked herself. 
 
 Massereene, seated in his own room at the hotel, 
 received two letters. He took them both carelessly, 
 opened one and read in it that the particular state-room 
 which he desired on a certain steamer sailing a few 
 days from then would be reserved for him. . . . Then 
 he glanced at the other envelope and gave a great 
 start. His recognition of the handwriting set him in 
 
 o o 
 
 a quiver of excitement. . . . About fifteen minutes 
 afterward he came downstairs with unwonted speed, 
 almost threw himself into a cab, and gave orders to 
 be driven to West Tenth Street. . . . 
 
 "Foolish child!" he said to Olivia, afer the first 
 and almost silent ecstasy of their meeting had passed ; 
 " why should you not have told me your trouble before, 
 when it was tormenting your soul ? I would have con- 
 vinced you that your sin (no matter what may have 
 been its result) was far less unpardonable than you 
 believed." 
 
 " Nothing could have so convinced me," said Olivia. 
 She drew away from him with a little shivei', though 
 his encircling arms would not let her recede far. " I 
 have misgivings even now," she went on, " that I am 
 absolving myself much too easily."
 
 476 OLIVIA DELAPLAINE. 
 
 " Oh, don't bother, then, about absolving yourself at 
 all," smiled Mnssereerie. " Leave it all to me. Make 
 me the keeper of your conscience." 
 
 " You've enough that is mine to take care of 
 already," said Olivia, looking deep into his eyes and 
 answering his smile. 
 
 "I've your heart," he said. "Do you mean that?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 He laughed. " Well, I'll own to the responsibility, 
 my dearest, and not be too ambitious about increas- 
 ing it." 
 
 Olivia drew a long sigh. "Responsibility?" she 
 murmured. " My sense of a great one will never cease 
 while I live; for I shall always see reproachful proofs 
 of my weakness in the strength which ought to have 
 made it self-control." 
 
 "And I," he replied, still playfully, "shall always 
 hope for strength to grapple with your hardiest meta- 
 physics, and repress them when they take too morbid 
 an outlook." 
 
 But she shook her head forbiddingly at this lighter 
 mood of his, even while she drooped closer to him and 
 let his arms more fondly enwrap her; for with all her 
 ever-to-be-endured regret, she could not but love the 
 levity that his happiness forced from him, and as 
 naturally as the dawn itself will force a dewy glitter 
 from those grasses that its first beams have bathed !
 
 Tfie Worfcs of Eflgai Fawcett. 
 
 EACH IN ONE VOLUME. 12MO. PRICE $1.60. 
 
 Sent, postpaid, on receipt of the price, by the publishers, 
 
 TICKNOR & CO., BOSTON. 
 
 "He is the novelist of New- York life and society; he knows all 
 the eddys and currents of its complicated course, and with faith- 
 ful observation he has amassed a knowledge of its phases which 
 makes him by far the best interpreter of its many-sided life. His 
 minute acquaintance with New-York society gives his back- 
 ground a brilliancy which heightens the strength of the character- 
 drawing in his stories. No novelist of the present day, except 
 Mr. Howells, has so thorough a comprehension of the feminine 
 attitude toward society and life as Mr. Fawcett. His books are 
 among the best American novels that we have. Domestic 
 Monthly. 
 
 " His observation is singularly keen. His judgment is generally 
 true. His sense of humor is alert. His cheerful temper savt-s 
 him from excessive bitterness. He has imagination enough to 
 invest realistic description with the glow of poetry, and to repro- 
 duce even dulness with vivacity and wit." New-York Tribune. 
 
 " Few American authors have won more solid recognition and 
 enduring fame than has Mr. Edgar Fawcett, poet, novelist, and 
 playright. His works are more widely known and read than 
 those of any of the other younger novelists; and his vigor and 
 vivacity of "thought, combined with unusual delicacy of touch 
 and charm of style, are recognized by the best critics of literature. 
 The vigor of Mr. Fawcett's work is intellectually refreshing. His 
 fiction is suggestive as well as interesting, and offers food for 
 thought. The keenness with which salient points in life are 
 pictured makes it most breezy and exhilarating reading. " 
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 With engraved portrait of Edgar Fawcett. 
 
 " It possesses a weird sort of fascination, like Dore's pictures." 
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 " It is a story of terrible power; it fascinates even when it is 
 most disagreeable; it has some thrilling descriptions, and at 
 times it reaches a high pitch of tragic intensity. Mr. Edgar 
 Fawcett is known as a novelist who believes in painting the life 
 of his city and his time, and who finds in this life the charm of 
 romance as well as the realism of bread, butter, and banking. 
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 EDGAR FAWCETT'S POEMS. 
 
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 ROMANCE AND REVERY. 
 
 The Magic Flower, The Sorceress, 
 
 Christ, Irony, 
 
 The Dying Archangel, Twenty Sonnets, 
 
 Sister Brenda, And many other Poems. 
 
 " ' Romance and Revery ' is a volume of peculiar merit. 
 Aldrich alone can rival him in daintiness and delicacy of fancy; 
 and there is a compressed brilliancy in most that he writes, which 
 no living writer can excel." Boston Advertiser. 
 
 " It is a rich, strong, rounded work, worthy of the ripened 
 powers of Fawcett. Full of intellectuality, sensuous, alive with 
 the modern spirit, splendid in its music, masterly in its technique, 
 it is a book to be dwelt in and studied and loved." tit. John 
 Globe. 
 
 SONG AND STORY. 
 
 Alan Eliot, A Vengeance, 
 
 The Republic, A Mood of Cleopatra, 
 
 Tne Singing of Luigi, Ideals, 
 
 The Rivers, Fifteen Sonnets, etc. 
 
 "Alan Eliot,' 'A Mood of Cleopatra,' 'A Vengeance,' are 
 narrative poems of great force ami beauty. The delicious 
 Italian love tale, 'The Singing of Luigi.' " Harper's Mttc/azine. 
 
 >' When you close this dainty volume with its fine linen leaves, 
 rough edges, and gilt top, you will carry away with you in your 
 heart, perhaps, the melody of the 'German Cradle Song,' the 
 tenderness of ' Consolation,' and the beautiful story of ' The 
 Singing of Luigi.'" Life. 
 
 *' A young poet, therefore, who is essentially an artist, reveren- 
 cing deeply his art, and master of all its technicalities, should 
 attract our most earnest regard. Such a poet is Mr. Edgar 
 Fawcett. Never falling into the snare of sound for sweet sound's 
 sake only, his pregnant lines are nevertheless harmonious as 
 though his sole aim were harmony. Mr. Fawcett's phrases are 
 moulded with nicest skill; he makes them rich and delicious, tit 
 to be rolled under the tongue; but each has a reason for being, 
 each is vitalized with an idea. His poems are filled with the 
 charm of suggestiveness; scarcely one but brings some new 
 thought, some strange analogy to haunt the brain after reading 
 it." ROBERT ELLIOTT, in T/ie Current. 
 
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 EDGAR FAWCETT'S WORKS. 
 
 ADVENTURES OF A WIDOW. 
 
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 aspect shows the hand of a bright and observant man of the 
 world." Boston Gazette. 
 
 " If Mr. Fawcett had never written any other novel than this, 
 it would have been sufficient to stamp him as a writer of fiction 
 of the first rank among modern American authors. It is in all 
 probability the best story that has yet come from his pen. 
 Among the haut ton of which he writes he is perfectly at home, 
 his language is both graceful and natural; his action frequently 
 dramatic." New-York Star. 
 
 " Mr. Fawcett has been particularly happy in his pen pictures 
 of American types of literary men and women, and his analysis 
 of the shifting sands of pur society is deep and searching. 
 
 " New York society is a somewhat well-worn target for our 
 younger American writers, but Mr. Fawcett shoots with a 
 polished and barbed arrow and leaves his shaft quivering in the 
 very centre." Boston Commercial Bulletin. 
 
 "There is a great deal of fine art in the book; pages upon 
 pages are executed with the superb skill of a master; the words 
 are culled with the nice perception of a poet and the accuracy of 
 a linguist; the portraitures, excepting the bouffe group, succeed 
 each other like cameos in a cabinet of jewels. The dialogue 
 sparkles with epigram and wit, and there is scarcely a lapse of 
 common-place even in the pauses. No lover of the art of word- 
 painting can turn the pages without genuine admiration for the 
 author." New-York Home Journal. 
 
 TINKLING CYMBALS. 
 
 "A strong and wholesome book." New-York Tribune. 
 
 "A novel which would -be especially beneficial' to society 
 people, and to people anxious to enter the ' best society,' inas- 
 much as it principally deals with these two classes. Mr. Fawcett 
 always writes of what he knows, and in this story has made his 
 characters strikingly natural, and yet original." American, 
 Queen. 
 
 " He has the dramatic faculty which makes any thing that he 
 writes very readable." Kan-Francisco Chronicle. 
 
 " Their faithful delineation reveals a sense of the eccentric and 
 the humorous that is delicious, but rare in works of American 
 fiction. It is the best description we have of Newport fashionable 
 society life as governed by that of New York; and its satire, 
 humor, and literary skill are very strong and effective." Boston 
 Globe. 
 
 " Never have our social frivolities and shams been scourged 
 with a more cutting lash." New-York Tribune. 
 
 " Admirable and piquant sketches and novelettes of New-York 
 life and society, rich in original types and vivid portrayals. 
 Fawcett is one of the best of our younger novelists." Beacon. 
 
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 EDGAR FAWCETT'S WORKS. 
 
 THE HOUSE AT HIGH BRIDGE. 
 
 " It is not often so good a novel appears in these days. We can 
 commend it heartily to all those who enjoy Trollope's stories of 
 English home-life; and we are delighted to see an American who 
 is treading in the old-fashioned footsteps of that pleasure-giving 
 English novelist." Boston Transcript. 
 
 "There is plenty of entertainment in the book. No one will 
 fail to finish it after once getting under way in it, and there is 
 not a dull line in it." Chicago Tribune. 
 
 " And in the matter of dramatic construction Mr. Fawcett may 
 safely be said to stand alone; no living American or English 
 novelist equals him in this respect, and the best French masters 
 must admit him their peer. The plot of 'The House at High 
 Bridge,' for example, is, so far as I can judge, nearly faultless. 
 Its movement is quiet, steady, undemonstrative, but at every 
 turn it gathers strength and significance; no touch that can add 
 to the effect is missed or misapplied, and yet nothing is forced or 
 exaggerated." JULIAN HAWTHORNE, in New-York World. 
 
 "In ' The House at High Bridge,' there is a pleasant culmin- 
 ation of his past experience, and the beauty of his sentences and 
 perfection of his plot produces a most felicitous and happy 
 volume." The Decorator. 
 
 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES. 
 
 Being the Impressions of Mr. Mark Manhattan. 
 
 "Mr. Fawcett in this volume has shown a skill in analysis 
 which makes him the most formidable rival of Henry James, 
 while most readers of James' later work will admit that Mr. 
 Fawcett seldom indulges in the hair-splitting style or the tedious 
 mannerisms of the author of ' The Bostonians.' " San-Francisco 
 Chronicle. 
 
 " In a strain of humorous satire the essayist deals with some of 
 the most glaring social follies and affectations of his age and 
 country. 'The Young Gentleman who Succeeds,' is a rebuke to 
 some silly preferences, 'A Millionaire Martyr,' is not without 
 pathos in its stern reproof of the heartlessness of certain nomelles 
 riches- 'The Gentleman who is Glib,' is a story of conquest in 
 which we side with the victor. Other suggestive titles are: ' The 
 Lady who Reformed,' 'The Destroyer of Firesides,' 'The Lady 
 with a Son-in-Law,' ' Au Anglo-Maniac with Brains.' " Mon- 
 treal Gazette. 
 
 " The author's work is both delicate and accurate." Town 
 Topics. 
 
 " It must at the end be confessed that it is supremely, unquali- 
 fiedly entertaining. It is a book to be taken up in a tired 
 moment, to be tossed down, perhaps, at the end of a chapter, but 
 never to be lost sight of until the very last page is turned." 
 Milwaukee Sentinel. 
 
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 $1.50. 
 
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 and grace of the general handling, and in the singularly faithful and realizable 
 handling of the social atmosphere of the old Colonial days. The Academy 
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 It is wonderfully picturesque in its scenes. Its historic accuracy makes the 
 book almost a living panorama rising from the past. The dramatic power of this 
 series of living tableaux is remarkable, and the story is one that will take rank 
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 $1.00. In paper covers, 50 cents. 
 
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 A Brilliant New Novel, by the Author of " The 
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 OUEEN MONEY. 
 
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 " Queen Money," by the author of "Margaret Kent," is a novel whose interest 
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 ingly clever, and the wit and brightness of the book are beyond question. It is 
 full of sharp and amusing dialogue. Whether we read it as a study of character, 
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 The readers of "The Story of Margaret Kent" will expect in "Queen 
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 many men and women, feverish and restless, and breathing the spirit of these 
 modern times, an anxiety for sudden wealth, could read the story and take in its 
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 natural, never strained, evenly drawn, and, in a literary sense, wholly excellent. 
 Chicago Inter-Ocean. 
 
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 also in point of interest. In fact, there can be no hesitancy in pronouncing that it 
 will not only be the novel of the season but even of this decade. It is a story of 
 New York life ; keen in its characterizations, vital with the electric spirit of the 
 day. In the guise of one of the most fascinating of modern novels the life of 
 to-day is held up to the mirror, and the false and the ignoble is relentlessly dis- 
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 of city life are brilliant in color, impressive in characterization, full of life and 
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