fornia 
 aal
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN.
 
 A 
 
 SUPERFLUOUS 
 WOMAN 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 31 EAST lyxH ST. (UNION SQUARE)
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY 
 THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 All rights reservtd. 
 
 THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, 
 RAHWAY, N. j.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 "DYING? H'm!" said the doctor. 
 
 He was a short, square man with great shoulders; 
 and he stood with his hands thrust into the pockets of 
 his coat, and with his legs a little apart ; he had for- 
 gotten to turn down his trousers before coming into 
 the room, so that a pair of large strong boots, much 
 splashed with mud, planted themselves only too visibly 
 upon the carpet. He was not a West End doctor, and 
 had made his way to this West End mansion by short 
 stages in omnibuses and by short stages on foot. His 
 practice lay among the sores which devour the flesh of 
 Lazarus. Most of his hours were spent in those hos- 
 pitals where the maimed worker seeks a little respite 
 from misery before he passes from the cruelty of the 
 world, and much of his leisure in gratuitous labor 
 among the fetid dens of the poor. He seemed in his 
 own eyes to be as a gatherer who binds together per- 
 petually fallen sheaves of blighted corn, and his con- 
 stant fight with death had brought a grim look into his 
 face. 
 
 But not into his eyes. These were large, brown, 
 soft, and penetrating, and had the look of one who 
 
 2228966
 
 2 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 brings a message, or who entreats a favor. They called 
 this man Dr. Cornerstone. 
 
 "Dying, doctor!" repeated the lady with whom he 
 was in converse, wiping from her eye the moisture of 
 sentiment, while her mind with really strong feeling 
 repudiated his boots. 
 
 "Madam," said Dr. Cornerstone, "perhaps I can see 
 my patient?" 
 
 Upon which the lady brought her pocket handker- 
 chief from her face, and rose, and led the way from the 
 room. 
 
 The house through which the doctor followed her 
 was full of pleasant airs and pleasant scents ; through 
 the open windows of the staircase he caught glimpses 
 of trees in blossom (for it was May), and the sound of 
 the city came to the ear only as a pleasing hum, for 
 the mansion was in one of the best parts of London, 
 and roundabout blew the breezes of the open park, so 
 that in a moment, as by enchantment, he who entered 
 here was set apart from the noise and the disgrace of 
 the streets. 
 
 They paused at the door of a chamber. Here the 
 lady turned round once more, and once more wiped 
 the tear of sentiment from her eye. 
 
 "Dying, doctor!" said she. "The most beautiful 
 woman in England, and one of the richest. The world 
 was at her feet. Indeed, there is no doubt that, had 
 not this illness intervened, Lord Heriot " 
 
 "Madam, shall we proceed?" said the doctor, with a 
 singular look. 
 
 And the lady opened the door. 
 
 He found himself in a large chamber so disposed for
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 3 
 
 luxury that the senses of one who breakfasted, dined, 
 and supped on misery might well stagger for the 
 moment. A wide and beautiful window showed trees 
 full of blossom ; opposite the window, but at some dis- 
 tance back in the room, was a comfortable couch, upon 
 which the patient lay, covered with a pearl colored silk 
 eiderdown. By the side of the couch was a table with 
 flowers and fruit ; a nurse, appropriately dressed in the 
 exquisite garb of her profession, stood near, holding a 
 cup of fragrant soup. Another nurse flitted in the 
 background of the room, where the doctor rather sur- 
 mised than saw a bed, and the elegant litter of a lux- 
 urious toilet. The prettinesses of the chamber alone, 
 gathered there merely to please the eye of the occu- 
 pant, must, the doctor reflected, have diverted labor 
 sufficient to have produced the clothes and food for a 
 whole street of starving people for a year's time. 
 
 He advanced toward the couch and planted himself 
 somewhat sturdily before it, his hands again in his coat 
 pockets, and his muddy boots a little apart, and he 
 looked down at the face and figure which the pearl-silk 
 eiderdown partially concealed. 
 
 The lady who had accompanied him stood mean- 
 while a little behind, with her hands folded together 
 and her head inclined, and wearing an expression of 
 anxiety which was rather conventional than deep. 
 
 Contrasts are apt to be trying, and, by the side of 
 the sturdy doctor, anything tutored and compressed in 
 deference to fashion fell away from the lines of hu- 
 manity into caricature. And one-half of this lady's 
 personality had been purchased, it is to be feared, in 
 shops; Worth, the hairdresser, perfumer, and dentist,
 
 4 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 were responsible for her more striking features, while, 
 though God may have been the shaper of her bones in 
 the first instance, they had suffered from the corset- 
 maker's processes. As to her mind, if the exterior 
 were any index to it, this, with the smile and tear, was 
 probably Society's own product. 
 
 Such was the woman within whose hands had lain 
 the shaping of the earlier years of the girl who reposed 
 beneath the eiderdown upon the couch ; she it was who 
 had been the ruling spirit, the educator, and influence. 
 
 It was in the doctor's mind that it had been so, as 
 he stood gazing at the unsolved enigma of his patient ; 
 and the thought threw him upon a reverie so deep that 
 he forgot either to move or speak; and presently the 
 lady unclasped her hands and drew up her head, the 
 attitude of appropriate sorrow being prolonged further 
 than endurance could bear. At the same moment a 
 nurse set a cup of broth down on a table. The chink 
 of the china roused the doctor; he raised his head and 
 looked round. 
 
 "Remove these women," said he. 
 
 The lady signaled with her hand, and the attendants 
 disappeared, closing the door behind them with the 
 caution of long practice. When they had gone, she 
 found herself confronted by an open-eyed and steady 
 look. This unaccustomed steadfastness and truth in 
 the eye confounded her like an accusation, and her 
 nerves shrank and her spirits took a panic, and all the 
 artifice slipped off her face, as the color will wash from 
 the cheek of a doll. 
 
 "I must request you also to leave me alone with my 
 patient," said the doctor, in a cool, clear whisper.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAtf. 5 
 
 Whereupon the woman's scared senses fled straight 
 away to the book of etiquette ; it was her rock of ages, 
 and she clung there with tenacity. 
 
 "Impossible, doctor! Impossible! I could not do 
 such a thing! It is not customary!" she returned in 
 emphatic sibilants. 
 
 A ray of sardonic humor gleamed in the man's eye, 
 and alarmed her once more with the sense of the 
 unusual. 
 
 "Madam," said he, "you tell me that three physi- 
 cians have tried their hands on this case and failed. 
 You tell me that, hearing my name by chance, you 
 proposed to call me in to assist. And your physicians 
 consented to permit this last resource. But they in- 
 formed you that my methods were unusual and unor- 
 thodox, and that it was impossible for them to meet 
 me professionally, or to take the responsibility of apply- 
 ing them. In other words, in spite of my doctor's 
 degree, I am a quack. You have, madam, sufficiently 
 outraged custom by calling me in at all, and a trifle 
 more or less will do no harm. Custom, you will under- 
 stand, does not apply to quacks." 
 
 He began to walk at her as he spoke, with his head 
 raised, and with his eyes steady. And she went before 
 him as though a wind had blown, carrying a shaft of 
 fear in her heart. When she had gone, he turned the 
 key in the door. 
 
 The patient had not so much as lifted an eyelid. 
 
 Dr. Cornerstone went first to a table where the pre- 
 scriptions and medicine bottles stood, and where pens 
 and ink were placed in readiness for himself. He read 
 the prescriptions in a leisurely manner, and then took
 
 6 . A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 up the notes of the nurses. The prescriptions he 
 swept aside; upon the notes he made a few concise 
 comments. And then once more he came to the side 
 of the couch and gazed at the patient. Then he drew 
 a chair near and sat down, and stretched out his hand 
 and took hers into it. 
 
 She lay there as beautiful and still as a marble 
 statue. Her dark hair fell upon the pillow and over 
 the edge toward the carpet ; her dark lashes rested on 
 her cheek; her features were small, and there was a 
 dimple near her mouth, and a dent in her chin; her 
 eyebrows were wide and beautiful as a bird's wing. 
 She was called Jessamine Halliday. One wasted hand 
 lay outside on the quilt, and held a sprig of the white 
 jessamine blossom loosely. Only by the scarcely visi- 
 ble motion of the lace about her throat and breast 
 could one have told that she lived. The doctor kept 
 her hand in his silently for a few minutes. And he 
 looked toward the garden, where the wind came and 
 went softly among the May blossoms, and where the 
 bees already hummed. 
 
 Then, in a low voice, he spoke : 
 
 "The Reaper goes," said he, "over the Great City. 
 His wings are Famine and Overwork, but his eyes are 
 merciful. He stands now upon the threshold of a 
 room ; none who are in the room see him or think of 
 him ; he is their deliverer, the only one they have, or 
 can have, but their whole life is spent in keeping him 
 at bay. They think only how they shall manage to 
 live to exist. They think of that, though there is 
 nothing in life which they can hope for to make it 
 pleasant and worth living. They ask for nothing but
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 7 
 
 to work hard hard and to gather a few pence at the 
 end. The fear that the hard work will fail them is the 
 haunting fear of their lives. The room is a low attic, 
 with a slanting roof and a small window. The window 
 is open, but just outside is a wall with other small win- 
 dows ; the one opposite has a broken pane stuffed with 
 rags. There is a stifling smell in the room, for it is 
 filled with people at work. Under the window are two 
 men cutting pieces of fur into shape on a wooden 
 table ; across the fireplace is a board on trestles, and 
 here a lad nails the fur and stretches it. In another 
 corner is an old wooden bedstead, worm-eaten, moth- 
 destroyed, and revolting ; here a sick woman sits, and 
 her shaking fingers hold some strips of the fur. She 
 never raises her head ; she sews and sews, and looks at 
 the work; when she coughs badly she has to wait for 
 a minute, but her trembling fingers set to the work 
 again feverishly. At the other end of the room are 
 two other women sewing as she does. They are all 
 three elderly, and all three are leaden-eyed and pale 
 and exhausted. They are working now as they have 
 worked all their lives ; the sick woman on the bed has 
 two children to keep. Her husband died five months 
 ago ; but for two years before his death he was ill and 
 could not work. She kept him, too. She is thinking 
 now of the two little ones locked in the garret in the 
 opposite court, and waiting for her to come back to 
 feed them. All her life she has worked as she works 
 now, but she has never made for herself or for them 
 one wholesome set of clothes, nor cooked one satisfy- 
 ing meal. And now there are sores upon her face, her 
 hair has been cut away in patches, her eyes are half
 
 8 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 blind, and her cheeks are sunken, so that the bones 
 threaten to pierce them, and her skin burns with fever. 
 Once she looks up, and in her eyes is a horrible fear; 
 something frightens her. The women at the other end 
 of the room have been talking loudly and complain- 
 ingly, and the man at the table is answering them 
 angrily. 'You can do it or not, as you like,' he says in 
 a rough voice; 'is it my fault, I asks? What does the 
 governor say to me? He says I may take the furs at 
 two and six a dozen less, or I may leave them alone. 
 He says he knows a chap that will do them lower than 
 that. "It's nothing to me," he says, "who does them, 
 or who doesn't. I'm not going to waste my time talk- 
 ing," he says. And if he knocks off my pay, where 
 am I? Is it my fault that I take a penny here or a 
 penny there off yours? How am I to live, I want to 
 know? There are plenty of women waiting to take 
 your places, and you know that as well as I do.' He 
 swears as he talks, and the women are silent after a 
 time. She on the bed has never spoken. Her eyes 
 sink back to her work, and her cheek has gone deadly 
 pale. She lays her hand on her breast for a moment. 
 The baby at home is but six months old, and how is 
 it to be fed? 
 
 "Night comes. At last the lights are put out in the 
 workroom, and the woman can go home. She creeps 
 upstairs to the garret in the opposite court, full of sick 
 fear and misery. She is always frightened when she 
 leaves them so long alone. To-night, when she opens 
 the door, she finds the eldest child wailing on the floor, 
 and the baby lying in the cradle, white and weak, with 
 scarcely a breath passing between its lips. And the
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 9 
 
 fear comes into the mother's face again, and she feels 
 at her breast, and cries to one who has come up the 
 stairs behind her: 'Doctor! doctor! for the Lord's 
 love give me a drink of broth! For the child's sake, 
 doctor!' 
 
 "But the Reaper, unseen and merciful, followed her 
 from the workroom ; he stands now beside her in the 
 garret, and his eyes are merciful and tender; he lays 
 his hand upon mother and child. He does it now 
 for this is no dream he steps nearer. He gathers 
 these two, and lays them to rest in his bosom." 
 
 The doctor's voice ceased. And when it had stopped, 
 the wind was heard whispering through the trees. 
 And he still held one of the white hands of Jessamine 
 in his own ; the other hand had let fall the blossom. 
 
 "The Reaper goes over the Great City," spoke the 
 doctor once more; "and his wings are Idleness and 
 Riches, but his eyes are flames of wrath. And he 
 stands upon the threshold of the room, and he cries: 
 'How long, O Lord, how long?' And a Voice goes out 
 like the whispering of wind in the blossoms of the 
 trees. And the Voice says: 'Lay not thine hand to 
 the root, but give time for repentance, and bid the sick 
 arise, and work, and suffer!' ' 
 
 The doctor stopped and turned from the window, 
 and the girl's eyes were wide open and were fixed upon 
 his ; and then he lifted her with his arm, and while she 
 lay back against his shoulder he fed her slowly in small 
 sips with the strong and fragrant soup. 
 
 "Is the woman dead?" whispered the patient. 
 
 "Yes, v said the doctor.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 JUST one year and one month passed, and upon a 
 mild June evening Dr. Cornerstone sat talking with a 
 friend in his study. The windows were thrown open 
 and the blinds were not drawn. When for a time the 
 square was silent, and no one passed up it with the 
 shriek or the whoop by which born Londoners try to 
 assure themselves of mirth at the heart, a rustle of 
 trees was heard ; and from the window (for the room 
 was on the first story) were to be seen interlaced 
 branches and leaves, with the gaslight of the square 
 very prettily shining upon them. In the daytime the 
 trees looked black and dry, and exhausted the spirit 
 rather than refreshed it ; but at night they put on 
 something of their pristine character. 
 
 Besides the trees, high between the chimneys of the 
 great hospital opposite, one saw a star or two. 
 
 Around the square, which was in comparison a well 
 of silence, the roar of the city went like some evil and 
 despairing beast. 
 
 Dr. Cornerstone sat on an armchair, \vith his feet 
 stretched out. Business was not quite as brisk with 
 him as usual; in June the people were neither choked 
 with poisonous heat nor nipped to the heart with cold ; 
 in June Dr. Cornerstone had a less grim look than ordi- 
 nary. He appeared quite sweet-tempered now as he 
 enjoyed this unusual leisure with a friend by his side.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAK II 
 
 From upstairs sometimes at those moments when 
 no beat of human feet passed up the square one heard 
 the measured creak of a rocking chair, and the sound 
 of a sweet voice singing an old song: 
 
 Go from the windo\v love, go, 
 
 Go from the window, my dear ; 
 The wind and the rain will not drive you back again ; 
 
 You may not be lodged here. 
 
 That was Dr. Cornerstone's wife rocking her baby. 
 
 Opposite to the doctor, on another easy-chair, sat an 
 old friend named Carteret. He was a small man, and 
 he did not stretch himself out, but crumpled his body 
 up and hugged it with his crossed arms; and he thrust 
 forward his thin, eager face, and fixed his eyes steadily 
 on one spot in the carpet, as though a hand wrote 
 something there for him to read. 
 
 "And so she did not die, after all?" Carteret was 
 saying. 
 
 "Die? Oh, dear me, no! Certainly not." 
 
 "Have you a name for her illness?" 
 
 "I call it a splenetic seizure brought on by ennui and 
 excessive high breeding." 
 
 "No disease?" 
 
 "None. A mere fantasy, a pose. Her imagination 
 had been touched by the picturesque interest of mortal 
 decay upon aesthetic furniture." 
 
 "Faugh ! What medicine can purge such sickli- 
 ness?" 
 
 "One only. I administered the pill which they call 
 Reality in silver wrapping, it may be." 
 
 Carteret grimaced at the carpet. 
 
 "A few visits unfolded her nature to me if, indeed,
 
 12 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 it be nature. I never saw a creature so fatally femi- 
 nine. She was just a pretty piece of sexuality. She 
 never thought of herself save as a dainty bit of flesh 
 which some great man would buy." 
 
 "Hum! A professional 
 
 "Beauty" interposed Cornerstone; "and with a high 
 price for which she would stand out. Poor wretch ! 
 She they are what Society makes them." 
 
 "And they take to it kindly!" 
 
 "Some do. As to her, I do not know that. Some- 
 thing tormented her. She had tried every conceivable 
 contortion by which to kill time. She was clever; I 
 never met with a more able nor a more restless little 
 mind. One year she had been artistic, another learned, 
 a third aesthetic, a fourth political, and so on. She was 
 fond of horses, it appears, but not with constancy. 
 She told me that in the autumn she would sometimes 
 shoot and fish like a man. But, in spite of all, the 
 days gaped at her blank and empty." 
 
 "Mortally sick of herself and her amusements, in 
 short." 
 
 "And so her final resource was death. I never saw 
 so highly self-conscious a creature, nor one so intuitively 
 aware how the graces of a lifelong demeanor may be 
 rounded off at last by a poetic exit from the stage. I 
 fancy the purveyors to fashionable drawing rooms 
 must have entreated her presence from motives similar 
 to those which prompt them to seek out exotics for 
 the decoration of the table. Her own personality 
 appears to have been her single sustained and success- 
 ful study. But she had a will! And had she not 
 puzzled the doctors! When I found her she was cer-
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 13 
 
 tainly in danger floating gracefully down the stream 
 of life to the dark river at the end." 
 
 "And you plucked at her skirts with a rough hand, 
 and saved her?" 
 
 "I did so." 
 
 "And when you had set her up on her legs again 
 if one may surmise legs in so superlative a creature 
 how did it work?" 
 
 "My pill, you mean?" 
 
 "Yes; your pill Reality." 
 
 ''Like madness in the brain.' She got well and 
 plunged into new fevers of restlessness. To infuse 
 reality with sober effects one needs a prepared system. 
 She got a sufficient hold of my notions to run new 
 crazes with them. She read Thoreau and Browning's 
 'Waring,' and caricatured the ideas in her self-conscious 
 mode. By August she was dressed in unbleached calico 
 and prints at twopence a yard ; in the early winter she 
 was running over the East End with a train of lovers ; 
 at the turn of the year I heard of her lecturing on a pub- 
 lic platform, the audience chiefly composed of men." 
 
 Carteret shrugged up his shoulders and stretched 
 one lean hand out toward the spot in the carpet, with 
 a derisive grimace. 
 
 "If," said he, "I were a doctor and it is perhaps a 
 providential dispensation that I am not I should, 
 Cornerstone, use some discrimination in my art of 
 healing." 
 
 "I agree with you theoretically." 
 
 "I might, for instance," continued Carteret, "have 
 thought it scarcely worth while to bring this pretty 
 humbug back to life."
 
 14 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "But," said the doctor, "a pound or two of healthy 
 human flesh is more valuable in the eyes of our profes- 
 sion than gold of Ophir, and as rare." 
 
 "And she this artificial minx is sound?" 
 
 1 'To the core, Carteret. Besides" the doctor paused 
 and sighed "she is a woman." 
 
 "And therefore destined to be 'a breeder of sinners.' " 
 
 Dr. Cornerstone stretched himself out further, folded 
 his hands, leaned his head on the back of his chair, and 
 contemplated the movements of a moth about the 
 ceiling. 
 
 "Being a woman," said he, "I both pitied and had 
 hopes of her." 
 
 "You were always an optimist." 
 
 "An optimist? No. Try a day's doctoring among 
 the people, and ask yourself if such a thing be possible. 
 But a man whose bitter repast is mitigated by a season- 
 ing of hope yes." 
 
 "And how did you manage to fish up that bright 
 colored thing from the rag-bag of this life?" 
 
 "One day I sat thinking, and I got an idea. Carte- 
 ret, did you ever get an idea?" 
 
 "I? Never." 
 
 The doctor smiled at the moth. Carteret looked up 
 at him with expectation. He was a man whose pleas- 
 ures lay almost exclusively on the mental side, and his 
 face was worn with the partly conscious martyrdom of 
 deprivation. In thought, in conversation, he was the 
 peer of his fellows, but not elsewhere. An insistence 
 upon the wholeness of human nature, the identity of 
 body and soul, an exhortation from the pagan school 
 to partake of life's feast freely, genially, and without
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 15 
 
 fear, must be irony to some men, and but bitter advice 
 to innumerable women. 
 
 "The truth is," said the doctor, "we look at things 
 with a too-limited eye, and are constitutionally 
 invalided. We are not robust enough to bear to 
 accept the processes of Nature, and we distrust some 
 of our own best faculties." 
 
 " By the last you mean, I presume, that offense 
 against priesthood, mind-energy that which bids us 
 to dare, do, will, and think, and, one may add, to pull 
 down the house about our ears by way of letting in 
 the skies ? " 
 
 " Surely energy manifests itself in reserve, self-con- 
 trol, masterly silence, and patience, as well as in the 
 more obvious activity ? But you are right it was this 
 mind-energy I alluded to. And I note that the quality 
 is not so much found alarming in a man's own mind as 
 in that of his neighbor the other man." 
 
 "Or the other woman?" 
 
 " Of her chief and foremost," cried the doctor, " whom 
 we are so slow to recognize as our neighbor. Well, the 
 idea that came to me was simply a sudden flashing 
 appreciation of mind-energy as the one thing to be 
 trusted in, cherished, and cultivated above all other 
 qualities, and in all persons, without distinction of sex. 
 It was an inspiration of faith in what we have within 
 ourselves of the best. It was a revolt against invalidish 
 prudence, and an invitation toward robust daring any- 
 where and everywhere. Even so far as to say that we 
 ought not so much to name mistaken results disaster, 
 as the common practice of servile imitation and faint- 
 hearted acquiescence,"
 
 1 6 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "The cost being not counted too great, so that 
 genuinely new ideas are opened out to a failing 
 world?" 
 
 "Precisely." 
 
 "Well, all I can say is that to a dead certainty the 
 mere suggestion of such a thing will set all our hens, 
 male and female, cackling." 
 
 "Yet I found this sudden premonition of trust- 
 worthiness in mind-energy extraordinarily refreshing. 
 It was as though I had lifted up windows in the soul 
 and seen new horizons." 
 
 "It is all very well," said Carteret; "but plenty of 
 people will tell you that you can't trust a child with 
 fire nor Phaeton with the chariot of the sun." 
 
 "Oh, undoubtedly, there might be some ferment and 
 a little danger at first. But the education would be 
 gradual. And in my opinion fewer houses would be 
 burned down, and there would be fewer unpleasant 
 accidents with the fiery elements, if people were guided 
 by explanations, instead of being handed mechanical 
 rules." 
 
 "Possibly," said Carteret. 
 
 "Moreover, life has an odd habit of calling unwilling 
 Phaetons to drive ghostly chariots along perilous ways, 
 without any preparation. I propose simply an assidu- 
 ous cultivation of the mind, so that the man may be 
 prepared to rise to sudden emergencies the man"- 
 here the doctor paused and sighed "and also the 
 woman." 
 
 "Ah ! now we return to our Jessamine !" 
 
 Carteret settled himself in his chair like a child 
 expecting a story. While the doctor collected his
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. I? 
 
 thoughts, a belated organ grinder at the end of the 
 square turned on his instrument, played a few bars 
 spasmodically, and left off with the dominant seventh 
 unresolved. 
 
 "Yes, here we return to her," said he at last. "Life 
 does not exempt these untrained travelers from the 
 usual problems. 'Your right decision or your life!" 
 cries that constant and remorseless old highwayman 
 to every soul, male or female alike, and he will take no 
 excuses, nor admit palliations. Yet the education of 
 our Jessamines is into the suppression and rarely into 
 the exercise of mind-energy ; it is a prolonged process 
 of curtailment and stunting of the faculties on which 
 right choice and firm, vitalizing decisions depend. 
 This leaves the nature pliant to the cultivation of cer- 
 tain characteristics, which, being exaggerated, leave 
 them particularly open to sudden dilemmas." 
 
 "The unfortunate creature! She has never been 
 taught even to shoot at a mark or to do anything with 
 a trigger save scream at it." 
 
 "Just so." 
 
 "It is our infernal selfishness women crammed 
 inside the coach out of the way of the view, while man 
 bosses it on the box seat and breathes the air." 
 
 "It is precisely this contact with the fresh air, this 
 command of the wide view, which I claim for all, but 
 demand particularly for women as a necessary con- 
 dition of their wholesome development. You perceive, 
 Carteret, what a flat catalogue of conventional virtues 
 we impose upon women, assuming them to be the 
 characteristics of the whole sex. Now, I am by no 
 means certain that the catalogue does not include
 
 1 8 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 some very deplorable elements, which result in un- 
 mitigated harm both racially and socially. At any 
 rate, in varied individualities there must be difference 
 all through, yet one type of character is handed to 
 all, with the advice 'Please copy.' But no virtue is 
 effective that is not living and spontaneous. And how 
 can a set of fictitious rules give these women any guid- 
 ance in self-management?" 
 
 "You see," said Carteret, "it was a man who bore 
 the sins of the world. The woman has the far more 
 onerous office of going into the wilderness as a scape- 
 goat, bearing its virtues." 
 
 "Just so," said Cornerstone. 
 
 "I have always held," continued Carteret dryly, 
 "that our great national improvidence lies in the two 
 departments of our refuse and our women. The dis- 
 tinctions of sex, where they are arbitrary, are in them- 
 selves a waste. Why squander individuality in rules? 
 The manner of a woman's thoughts, deeds, and words 
 is prescribed, as you say, beforehand by society ; her 
 very love must be according to platitudes and the 
 code. It must be a beautiful fidelity, affection, senti- 
 ment, but not a passion like a man's. But supposing 
 a woman fall into something indecorously natural?" 
 
 "Well, then comes the rub, for which their education 
 has not prepared them. All coercion and restriction, 
 from outside instead of from within, is merely painful 
 without fruitful result. When I first saw Jessamine, I 
 was considering this very point. I went one day to 
 the Park, at the fashionable hour, to watch the faces." 
 
 "Hum!" 
 
 "After ten minutes I knew I had got fast among a
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 19 
 
 circle of the damned. I saw that the place was a 
 wheel round which, in slow immortal weariness, souls 
 damned for idleness were being drawn." 
 
 " L'ennui fruit de la morue incuriosite, 
 Prend les proportions de I'immortalite," 
 
 murmured Carteret. 
 
 "It was a bad sort of sight. I found only the very 
 young girls at all tolerable. Youth in itself is a 
 triumph and a hope. But even there the indefinable 
 tracing of pain and coercion had begun ; not one, even 
 of the girls, carried her fetters unconsciously. The 
 iron entered into their souls. I fancied they leaned 
 back in their carriages with closed lips in despair!" 
 
 "Lord, how you exaggerate!" exclaimed Carteret. 
 
 "I think not," replied the doctor; "not when you 
 make allowances for exceptions. I've nothing to say, 
 for instance, of the emancipated woman of the well-to- 
 do middle class, beyond a friendly grip of the hand 
 such as one bestows on an equal. Neither have I to 
 do just now with the multitude of women toilers of 
 the masses. And I will leave out of the question also 
 the recognized prostitute. I am occupied simply with 
 the unemancipated daughter of the aristocracy, the 
 plutocracy, and the upper and lower middle classes." 
 
 "With the idle lady 'the superfluous female,' in 
 short?" 
 
 "Just so. No; I do not exaggerate. I assure you, 
 Carteret, that in all the hours I stood there watching, 
 I never saw one man and woman speak to each other 
 with the free and independent dignity of equals con- 
 scious of obligations to the world they live in. It was
 
 20 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 all sexuality on the one side, with its correlative sen- 
 suality on the other. Whereupon a furious and blind- 
 ing rage fell upon me ; I stood as a stone in my place, 
 wishing that I had the whip of small cords with which 
 the Lord drove the swine down the hill into destruc- 
 tion." 
 
 "Your theology, Cornerstone, is somewhat mixed, 
 but is always efficient." 
 
 "And while I stood thus stupefied, an open victoria 
 drew up by the rails close beside me. I think the 
 princess was passing. There were two women in the 
 carriage one quite elderly, the other a girl in her 
 teens. The heart of the old one had perished ; she 
 did not suffer, because mortification had set in ; but, 
 then, she was no longer human. The other was, as I 
 say, young; I thought at first she did not suffer either. 
 She leaned back and did not lift her eyes. Her face 
 was soft and quiet and beautiful 
 
 "Ah, Miss Halliday!" 
 
 "That was the first time I saw her. Carteret, there 
 are faces which issue from Nature's hand as from a 
 dream. It is as though she sat musing upon an idea 
 as an artist might do, picking up a trait here and 
 a feature there, until it is made perfect, and then she 
 sends it out into a thankless world. What shall we do 
 with our beautiful women? It was a little face not 
 one of those big, bouncing, full-blown roses; but soft 
 and rare, small and exquisite. And, then, she had an 
 air which turned the whole place info a picture. Her 
 name is Jessamine, and Jessamine describes her; and 
 she held a spray of the flower in her hand. They say she 
 always has leaf or blossom by her. Well, as I gazed, I
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 21 
 
 became suddenly aware that I impeded the desire of 
 some other person to get near her, and a voice spoke 
 over my shoulder. Ugh ! that voice ! A thread of 
 vice ran through it like the twang of a broken wire 
 a thin trickle of disease dropped out with every 
 syllable " 
 
 "But what did the fellow say?" 
 
 "Oh, ah! Nothing! nothing! 'How do you do, 
 Miss Halliday? So fortunate to catch a glimpse of 
 you! You enjoyed last night? So glad. Going to- 
 night to Lady S.'s? So glad! Shall I be there? Can 
 you ask? Reserve me a waltz. No, no! a waltz' " 
 
 The doctor rose up from his seat and took two or 
 three turns along the room ; then he paused opposite 
 
 Carteret's chair. 
 
 
 
 "I say the face had an ineffable quality," he said. 
 "A violet before now has plucked at my heart. In 
 flowers there are 'thoughts too deep for tears.' A 
 beautiful face with that indescribable something in it 
 that poetic suggestion will stir my soul as a passage 
 of music might ; it will lift up my thought for a week. 
 But before my mind had pictured the Paradise about 
 this modern Eve, I saw already the snake lurking in 
 the grass fatal, horrible." 
 
 The doctor reseated himself. 
 
 "I turned away; but as I turned I heard someone 
 answering for the young girl. The voice said, 'Dear 
 Lord Heriot, we receive a few favored friends at five 
 this evening for tea. Come round and settle about the 
 dance with dearest Jessamine.' I turned again why, 
 I cannot say. Lord Heriot was occupied with that 
 old Jezebel ; the girl had moved her pretty head, and
 
 22 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 was looking at me. It was the strangest moment. I 
 don't think she saw me really, but she let me read in 
 her face like a book. There was complacent vanity 
 there in large measure (they say Heriot is the greatest 
 catch in Europe, so heavily does our beautiful civiliza- 
 tion handicap the strong against the weak and diseased), 
 but, struggling through this miasmic cloud, I saw a look 
 in her eyes. These cried to me plainer than words: 
 'Rescue me! Rescue me!'" 
 
 Dr. Cornerstone paused. A thin noise of rain fell 
 among the trees in the square, and the step of a man 
 in haste went by. 
 
 "When they called me to her bedside I was not 
 astonished," said the doctor presently, in a low voice; 
 "it could not surprise me that she had chosen to die." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 "Her eyes it was three years or so after the scene 
 in the Park that they called me in kept always that 
 look. They are astonishingly deep and somber. They 
 cast a mystery over the face. I have had the convic- 
 tion sometimes when she turned them toward me, with 
 their inscrutable pathos, that it is humanity itself which 
 cries to one through eyes like that the sufferings of 
 generations having been concentrated into one pair of 
 orbs ; they look at you with the pent-up grief of a 
 race." 
 
 "Or is it prevision of her own?" 
 
 Dr. Cornerstone made no reply. He rose once more 
 from his chair, and began once more to perambulate 
 slowly up and down the chamber. 
 
 Meanwhile Carteret got his hand into his coat- 
 pocket, and began to fumble in it with a slow, hesitat-
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 2$ 
 
 ing air. At length he drew out a copy of an evening 
 paper. 
 
 "Have you heard the news?" said he. 
 
 "What news? Is there anything new under the 
 sun?" 
 
 "This paragraph, for instance?" 
 
 "What about?" 
 
 "It is headed It appears to be about Miss 
 
 Halliday." 
 
 The doctor stopped in his walk, and his brow con- 
 tracted uneasily. 
 
 "Ah! She has married Lord Heriot!" 
 
 "No," returned Carteret ; "no, not that. The para- 
 graph is headed, 'Mysterious Disappearance of Miss 
 Jessamine Halliday.' '
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE morning after the doctor's talk with Carteret, a 
 servant entered his consulting room and handed him a 
 letter. It had no postmark, and had been pushed into 
 the letter box by some person unknown. Nor was 
 anyone aware at what hour, for the deliverer had 
 neither rung nor knocked. The doctor took it with- 
 out curiosity, supposing it to be one of the constantly 
 received demands for help in illness or poverty. But 
 a certain prosperous air about the envelope, a sugges- 
 tion of luxury in the thick creamy paper, above all, 
 the firm, characteristic handwriting so expressive of 
 culture, caught his attention. He opened the letter at 
 once, and found it to be one of several sheets in an 
 unknown hand ; then he glanced at the signature and 
 read to his infinite surprise the name: 
 
 JESSAMINE HALLIDAY. 
 
 After which Dr. Cornerstone sat down and immedi- 
 ately perused the contents. They were as follows: 
 
 "DEAR DR. CORNERSTONE: 
 
 "Before you receive this letter, you will have heard 
 the news. And the news is that I have disappeared. 
 As a rule, when one reads of 'mysterious disappear- 
 ances' in the papers, it really means that the people
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 25 
 
 appear for the first time. They come to the surface 
 labeled 'Disappeared,' and then you hear of their 
 existence. One was not aware of it before, and one 
 certainly would not have missed them. 
 
 "But everybody has heard of 'Jessamine Halliday,' 
 and if, like Helen of Troy, she take it into her head to 
 disappear, it will be a true sensation. One owes it to 
 Society to create an excitement sometimes. All the 
 Society papers will have a leading article, and people 
 will rush to buy ; the photographers will make a for- 
 tune of my picture, and all the men at all the clubs will 
 say 'By Jove !' Even royalty will deign to raise a per- 
 turbed eyebrow. 
 
 "But not a creature of them all will know where I 
 am, and not a creature of them all will really care two- 
 pence. 
 
 "But you, Dr. Cornerstone, savage Mentor, you are 
 not 'in Society,' and perhaps you will care the least 
 little bit in the world ; somehow or another I have 
 not the heart to drop quite out of sight without 
 nodding 'adieu,' and whispering in your ear that 'all is 
 well.' 
 
 "Besides, in some sense, you are at the bottom of 
 this freak of mine, and ought to share a little of the 
 responsibility. Did you not take a great deal on your 
 shoulders when you called me back to life? The world 
 might have been saved much mischief, and I some 
 hurt, if you had let me slide away. Sometimes do 
 other people feel it? when I am most gay and tri- 
 umphant, and most admired and most charming (and, 
 dear doctor, am I not a charmer?), something stretches 
 out toward me from an immeasurable distance; it
 
 26 A SUPERFLUOUS 
 
 comes swift and straight from a far, far place where it 
 waits for me, and it touches me on the heart and on 
 the brow, so that I grow still and afraid. It seems to 
 me as though a future unknown friend or foe steps up 
 to this little soul Jessamine (who is not in the least 
 like Helen of Troy scratch that out, dear doctor!) 
 to make a terrible claim upon her. 
 
 "What am I what are we, doctor we little women, 
 I mean? You have answered many questions, but 
 never that. The ancients said we had no souls; and 
 perhaps they were right. The moderns say we care 
 for nothing but an armchair, and a good fire, and a cup 
 of tea, and a novel, and to have some man slaving for 
 us; or else they gird at us for our tiresome desire to 
 be 'emancipated,' which some call immodest. I think 
 there must be truth in all this, because the moderns 
 have got all the light. People tell us so many things 
 with such an air, and they write them down in print, so 
 that it is no wonder we come to believe them, and to 
 act upon them if we don't happen to have any extra 
 force of mind, that is. 
 
 "And then people who rise to poetry say we would 
 sell our best friend for a diamond, and they give his- 
 toric instances, which seem to prove everything (though 
 sometimes afterward I have remembered historic in- 
 stances of quite the contrary). 
 
 "I wonder, doctor, if I would do so I love dia- 
 monds! 
 
 "In those horrid moments, when the Unknown Foe 
 (I think // must be a foe) startles me, I feel as though 
 I were a falling star, my heart runs down so quickly 
 something meant to be set on high in a fixed and con-
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 27 
 
 stant path, but falling falling just anywhere ; and I 
 am so frightened that I would (if I could) catch hold 
 of any big virtue to save myself. 
 
 "But you said I had no virtues, only inherited tend- 
 encies, though you gave me hopes of making up a few 
 if I would exercise tremendous effort. 
 
 "I think I have done very well in a year; everybody 
 says I am quite a genius, and in full possession of all 
 the light of the age. And all I did has been reported 
 in the Society papers. 'Miss Jessamine Halliday has 
 consented to take a stall at the bazaar for the dis- 
 tressed costermongers.' 'Miss Halliday insists upon 
 the duty of plain attire, and does not fall into the com- 
 mon error of supposing that luxurious expenditure is 
 good for trade.' That \vasyou, doctor, and I went up 
 in everybody's estimation like a rocket. They said it 
 was such a stroke of genius to see that, instead of put- 
 ting the money into our own fancy dresses, we might 
 put it into the fund for the costermongers. You see, 
 doctor, that people will listen to your 'grim' phrases 
 from my mouth. How they did stare when I stood on a 
 platform and lectured them on general topics ! I looked 
 my best, they say. And how everybody did applaud ! 
 
 "Dear doctor, I have one virtue: I like you you 
 who were so savage to me, and who spoke such terrible 
 words! I like your little finger better than the whole 
 heap of trumpery souls that form my range of acquaint- 
 ances. And I hate the world yes, I do, doctor, I hate 
 it ! I hate it most when the Unknown Foe comes and 
 touches me. I cry then real tears out of my heart, if 
 I have such a thing. Lord Heriot and Messrs. So-and- 
 So say I have not.
 
 28 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "Aunt Arabella does not know one bit how, where, 
 or why I have disappeared. I owe it her to spite her 
 mightily. All my long, long life (I am twenty-one) I 
 can remember nothing but Aunt Arabella's care, and 
 Aunt Arabella's teaching, and Aunt Arabella's 'dearest 
 Jessamine' and Aunt Arabella's deportment ; so that 
 you will understand I owe her SOMETHING. 
 
 "I will tell you just the truth, though it is all quite 
 inexplicable, and it is this : 
 
 "I was as near as possible engaged to Lord Heriot. 
 Aunt Arabella said it was more than nearly that, in 
 real fact, I was engaged to him, and that, after behav- 
 ing as I had behaved, no honorable girl could draw 
 back. When she says this, she says what is not true. 
 Like Caesar, 'I come, I see, I conquer.' But there is 
 not a living soul dares to accuse me of so much as lift- 
 ing an eyelid to attract any man. Ah, how full of 
 scorn my soul is sometimes! When I enter a drawing 
 room and see a strange gentleman there, I know that 
 in five minutes he will be beseeching the hostess for an 
 introduction to the dark lady with the jessamine in her 
 hair. Dear doctor, it is not my fault. I think of them 
 as if they were whipped curs, and Heriot I loathe. 
 
 "Dear doctor, I did not forget your lessons. I tried 
 to lead a new life of simplicity and usefulness indeed 
 I did. 
 
 "Perhaps I did not quite know the way. Perhaps I 
 shall have more time to think when I have got this 
 business of being married over, and it is off my mind 
 once and for always. Aunt Arabella did so hate you ! 
 When I got better she would not let me ask you to the 
 house as a friend ; she said it was not proper, and that
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 29 
 
 you wore such strange boots. (Will you give me one 
 to keep in a glass case in my bedroom to help me to 
 be good the boot that has walked so many miles that 
 the wearer may do so much kindness?) 
 
 "When I got better, I heard that a new beauty had 
 arrived in London, and that she was trying to catch 
 ileriot. He is the biggest catch in Europe, you know, 
 doctor. (I tell you because you are not 'in Society,' 
 and so perhaps have not heard) ; and only a real beauty 
 so much as dares to try for him. But I never tried at 
 all, and yet there he was at my feet ! Still, I own I 
 felt curious to see the new beauty who was angling for 
 Heriot. And I created a tremendous sensation by 
 going to the Duchess of S.'s ball in a dress made 
 of unbleached calico, and no jewels at all. I did it be- 
 cause of you, doctor. And you never saw such a work 
 of art as that dress was, nor how exquisitely the dull 
 cream color suited me. They say I never looked so 
 lovely. Well, I saw the new beauty there. She was 
 a large blond thing in pink and diamonds. And I 
 never lifted even the tail of my eye to Heriot / loathe 
 Jiim. But he followed me all the evening like a dog, 
 and when I talked to any other person he would have 
 my bouquet of jessamine to hold. As for the large 
 blond thing, I was sorry to see how she changed her 
 color. 
 
 "How sick of myself I was when I got home ! Aunt 
 Arabella said I had behaved so beautifully that my 
 conduct was so perfectly ladylike ! And there came a 
 feeling into my heart, when she was speaking to me, 
 that I would rush out into the street in my wonderful 
 calico dress, and dance and scream and shout, as I had
 
 3 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 been told the bad girls at the East End do. Only, of 
 course, I did not. I kissed Aunt Arabella on the 
 cheek, and went upstairs, with my maid behind. 
 
 "Dear doctor, I have so tried to be and to do as you 
 said. But perhaps very likely I did not quite know 
 the way. I gave all the money saved from dress (there 
 was not so much) to the Charity Organization. You 
 said the 'Charity Organization,' did you not? And I 
 read Mill and Thoreau, and I learned such quantities 
 of Browning! One day I brought a crossing sweeper 
 into the house to be warmed and fed (it was in the 
 Society papers next week); but Aunt Arabella said I 
 must not on any account do such a thing again ; he 
 made such a mess, and people talked so, and a small 
 crowd collected, and it upset the footmen. I brought 
 him in at the front door, and made him stand his broom 
 in the hall; I chose a wet, muddy day on purpose, be- 
 cause of course it is more horrid to be a crossing 
 sweeper on such a day than any. And you said that 
 'one man was as good as another;' but James and 
 Thomas did not seem to think so, and Aunt Arabella 
 says they gave notice. 
 
 "Well, as I said, I LOATHE HERIOT; but he took a 
 great interest in my work, and helped me (dear doctor, 
 I do so hope you think it really was work f] ; and this 
 matter of my marriage is so tiresome until it is settled ; 
 and Aunt Arabella said I should be able to do so much 
 more good, and to be so much more useful, if I were 
 Lady Heriot. And, of course, he is the biggest catch 
 in Europe I only wish there were a bigger! And, 
 then, the large blond thing was still trying and she 
 ought to know her place (an American !). And, as I
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 31 
 
 have said, the important thing is marriage, and one 
 must get it over one time or another. And so things 
 went on and on, until one evening, a fortnight ago, 
 when, for once (Aunt Arabella must have arranged it), 
 we were at home, and alone, and Lord Heriot came in 
 to call. 
 
 "He brought a present for me. I love jewels. This 
 was really the most splendid jewel I had ever seen. It 
 was a bracelet ; and it was in the shape of a snake 
 coiled several times round. The eyes were two enor- 
 mous diamonds, and the neck and upper part glittered 
 with alternate diamonds and sapphires, and the tail 
 ended in a wonderful sapphire. I never saw such 
 stones and such taste! Lord Heriot unfastened the 
 case, and laid it on the table. He said it was a trifling 
 offering to the most beautiful woman in England, and 
 I stood looking down at it, for, though I have plenty 
 of jewels, I always want some more. And just then 
 James came in with candles. 
 
 "Of course, nobody ever notices a footman, but 
 somehow on that occasion I happened to do so. He 
 brought the candelabra to the table where the case 
 lay; and I saw him glance at the jewel, and I saw a lit- 
 tle significant smile come into his eyes, quite a different 
 look from the servant-look, and it made me furious. 
 But I do not know why. I think if James had not 
 come in, and worn that little smile in his eyes, I might 
 be 'married and done for' at this moment. 
 
 "After setting the candelabra on the table, James 
 went round the room, drawing the curtains in quite the 
 ordinary way, and Lord Heriot went on talking in a 
 low voice. I do not know what he said, for I was
 
 32 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 wondering what James meant by his odious smile, and 
 making up my mind that I would tell Aunt Arabella 
 to give him notice next morning. Aunt Arabella she 
 ' is always present when Lord Heriot calls, to see that I 
 do not forget my manners, and by my 'manners' I 
 mean the woman's way of being soft and sweet and 
 smiling when she is really eaten up with fury and 
 hate the slave s way sometimes, I think, doctor. But, 
 then, I think such out-of-the-way things, and all the 
 men tell me they are my slaves. But Aunt Arabella! 
 She sat in a remote corner, quite oblivious of us, 
 and she was sewing the eternal altar cloth, which 
 makes everyone think her so pious, and Lord Heriot 
 talked. 
 
 "But I heard and knew nothing. I was thinking 
 thinking why James had that odd smile in his eye. 
 And while I thought I became aware that I was hold- 
 ing out my arm unconsciously, and that upon the wrist 
 Lord Heriot was clasping the jewel. 
 
 "It was then that the strange mood came upon me 
 in a moment : I felt my Unknown Foe pressing me on 
 the heart and on the brow, and the jewel looked like a 
 fetter on my wrist that was going to chain me up for- 
 ever; and just at that moment Lord Heriot's hand 
 gently touched my bare arm. 
 
 "And when he touched my arm, I felt as though the 
 snake were a live one, and that it was cold, and slimy, 
 and horrible. I shook my arm free from the jewel in 
 a moment, and it fell clattering upon the table. And 
 I looked at Lord Heriot I know I did it, because 
 Aunt Arabella sprang up from her seat, dropped the 
 altar cloth on the floor, and said something I looked
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 33 
 
 at him as though he were a snake. And I heard my 
 own voice saying quite coldly and quietly: 
 
 "'Thank you, Lord Heriot; I will not have your 
 jewel. I do not like snakes.' 
 
 "And then I walked out of the room, but not before 
 I saw him turn pale with fury. And when I got to my 
 bedroom I felt sorry, because the jewel was so pretty, 
 and because I knew he would take it straight to the 
 blond person. And I began to walk up and down in 
 the twilight. 
 
 "It would be all very well if I could have the brace- 
 let without the giver; but a girl can't accept handsome 
 presents like that without being engaged. And it 
 would be all very well if I could be Lord Heriot's 
 widow; but there is such a dark place between. And 
 oh, dear doctor! I loathe that dark place so the see- 
 ing him day after day, and never any more being able 
 to escape until death comes. I wonder why marriage 
 is so hateful to me. It is not to all girls; for a few 
 one or two have told me they were glad. The others 
 were indifferent, or miserable, or frightened, or pious 
 and resigned. I think very few would be married if it 
 were not for the flattery and triumph and the fuss of 
 the wedding day, and if there were anything else to do. 
 Men play upon our vanity, and that, of course, is pro- 
 digious. 
 
 "I think sometimes that no girl would be married at 
 all if there were anything else possible. But of course 
 there is not. 
 
 "And all these thoughts have only come to me since 
 that fatal bracelet evening. I said many such things 
 to myself then as I walked up and down the room.
 
 34 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "But by and by the fury went out of my mind, and 
 the twilight gathered about me, and I began to feel so 
 strange. I began to remember some of the things you 
 had said ; only, this time, though they were yours, 
 they seemed to be coming back to me through my own 
 heart. You told me to work, and to live simply. I 
 thought I really had been trying; but to-night to- 
 night as I walked about in the dusk, it seemed as 
 though it had been all by rote. 
 
 "I felt like a shadow a shadow in a vain world. I 
 am so sick of shadows. And then the Unknown Foe 
 came to me, and I felt my heart swelling and my brow 
 throbbing, and the tears rushed out of my eyes. I 
 stretched my hands about in the darkness, feeling for 
 something that I could not find. My heart beat so. 
 I had a feeling of great trouble in my mind. It was 
 no use praying. If you had prayed at Aunt Arabella's 
 knee as a little child, and by her side in church all 
 through your young life, )'ou would never want to 
 pray, nor dream of doing it when trouble comes. 
 
 "But after a time I sat down in the big armchair in 
 the corner; it began to grow dark, and a moonbeam 
 suddenly came and laid a long thin streak of light upon 
 the carpet and up my dress. And while I sat with my 
 hands tight clasped on my knee, my Great Idea came 
 into my mind. It was like an inspiration ; and I re- 
 membered you had told me to seize hold of an inspira- 
 tion, if ever I got one, and to trust to it. A voice out 
 of my own heart said to me : 
 
 " 'The world is vain; go out of it. You feel like a 
 shadow; step into the real. You are sick of shams; 
 try vigorous work,'
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WO MAX. 35 
 
 "It seemed so simple when it was said, and yet the 
 being able to say it was like the clapping of thunder 
 after a long, still, sultry day. And I thought I would, 
 doctor. I thought I would leave Aunt Arabella and 
 all my finery, and that I would go out alone into the 
 workaday world and see what it is like. I have no 
 idea what it is like, but I mean to see. The having 
 the inspiration to do it was the difficult thing. The 
 moment it got into my brain I made out a whole 
 scheme quickly. The scheme I will not impart even 
 to you, dear doctor, but only the inspiration. I am 
 telling you that you may know a cruel fate has not 
 befallen me, but that I am where I have chosen to be. 
 
 "As I sat in my armchair and made my plans, I be- 
 gan to laugh, and I clapped my hands softly in the 
 darkness. It seemed so charming, so new the best 
 thing I had ever devised, and the most startling. All 
 the Society papers will talk; Heriot will rave; and my 
 Aunt Arabella will 
 
 "Dear doctor, it was just there that a cruel little 
 thought came and tripped up my joy as it went danc- 
 ing along the future path I had sketched for it. Sup- 
 posing I asked myself supposing you can never, 
 never, NEVER get rid of your Aunt Arabella? Sup- 
 posing that when you were a little, little child, with 
 heart as soft as the softest clay, and limbs like un- 
 kneaded dough, and a mind like an unwritten page, 
 your Aunt Arabella wrote all over it, and gave a twist 
 to your heart and a turn to* your limbs that you can 
 never, never, NEVER get rid of? Supposing that hate 
 and hate her as you may your Aunt Arabella has be- 
 come a part of you, which you can never throw off until
 
 3 6 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN'. 
 
 all your body falls into decay? Perhaps not then 
 perhaps when your soul flies away, even, it will carry 
 your Aunt Arabella with it. 
 
 "I thought of it until my heart went cold like a stone, 
 from terror. I seemed to be like a creature coming to 
 life, for the first moment to find itself, without choice 
 of its own, in a terrible labyrinth without chance of 
 escape. And there I sat down and wept. And my 
 Unknown Foe sat down and wept with me. 
 
 "So many thoughts, dear doctor, had never come 
 into my mind before. It seems to me that when you 
 have opened the way to one inspiration, you cannot 
 close the door before a host of unwished and uninvited 
 followers have entered. But what I thought only 
 made me more determined. I would go away lose 
 myself hide. And I wished there had been a Pool of 
 Siloam somewhere, into which I could have stepped 
 down and got rid of the Aunt Arabella in me, and 
 washed myself clean of her, and come out upon the 
 other side just 'Jessamine* and no more. How strange 
 that here, on my first venture into an independent life, 
 I should find myself so mixed and fictitious a creature 
 that I knew not how to calculate upon myself! 
 
 "But one thing, doctor, I am certain of. I am going 
 to do a good and useful thing; and perhaps the world 
 will know of it afterward, and I shall be a leader, a 
 pioneer, and others will follow me. Dear doctor, I am 
 going out like the apostles and the teachers of old, to 
 do good. Believe it of your little patient. 
 
 "But, oh! promise promise me one thing. Don't 
 tell Aunt Arabella even this one word ! She doesn't 
 care in her heart of hearts what happens to me. She
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 37 
 
 has nothing but an ambition for me, by means of which 
 she herself would step up higher. Don't let her come 
 and ferret me out. 
 
 "Your grateful and reformed 
 
 "JESSAMINE HALLIDAY." 
 
 Dr. Cornerstone finished the letter, folded it up, and 
 placed it in his pocket. And then he sighed. 
 
 "Tell Aunt Arabella!" said he. "I think I would 
 bite my own tongue out first, Jessamine ! But oh ! my 
 fairest among fair women, that dip into the Pool of 
 Siloam is, as you surmise, no easy business."
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A PEASANT farmer, in a remote district of the High- 
 lands, stood at the door of his cottage, conversing with 
 his wife. The man's name was John McKenzie, and 
 the little tract of land which he tilled was named 
 Drynoch. t 
 
 The cottage was a roomy place, designed and built 
 by amateur hands, with some assistance from the mason 
 and carpenter. The architecture was primitive and 
 odd ; but the whole result was comfort, space, and 
 decency. The owner, a strapping fellow of thirty-five 
 years, with a dark beard and fine gray eyes, leaned 
 against the side of a porch, which was creeper-covered 
 with the hardy convolvulus. 
 
 The season was unusually hot and dry, and on this 
 glorious July afternoon the sun poured down such 
 mighty rays as are not often felt in the Highlands. 
 The farmers looked thirstily day by day for rain, 
 lamenting the moisture necessary to their light and 
 sandy soil, but accommodating their minds, with the 
 patience of their race, to the perversity of a climate 
 which rarely blesses the efforts of human toil with 
 liberal assistance. 
 
 The country was bleak, poor, and yet beautiful, hav- 
 ing much natural splendor, though little luxuriance for 
 human needs. A broad valley spread between the hill 
 ranges ; here and there lay a silvery loch ; the universal 
 
 38
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 39 
 
 heather ground was broken by the green gold of ripen- 
 ing corn, the verdure of sparse pastures, or bluish drills 
 of turnips and potatoes; every level and brae that 
 would give some return to culture carried its crop; 
 woods of birch (low, gray, and bushy) covered the 
 knolls of unredeemed land, or the glorious growth of 
 heather spread undisturbed ; while isolated groups of 
 pine shot somberly upward, strengthening the air with 
 their fine aroma. Fir woods covered the lower hills, 
 where, according to the farmers' opinion, sheep should 
 have been grazing; and the higher hills, with their 
 solemn, unapproachable sides, reflected the mute lan- 
 guage of the sky in the perpetual change of light and 
 shadow. 
 
 On this still July afternoon nothing stirred in the air 
 save here and there the white wing of a loch gull, no 
 sound met the ear save the light domestic noises from 
 inside the cottage, and now and then the shout of a 
 peasant child herding cows at a distance. 
 
 "I must be off to fetch the kye home," said John 
 McKenzie to some person invisible within the cottage. 
 
 "Ay," responded a voice, "there you stand like a 
 crow in a cornfield, just always ready to be away." 
 
 It was a soft voice, with a musical fall and rise and 
 drawl in it, a measured temperance of long habit con- 
 veying sharp words harmlessly, and it belonged to 
 John McKenzie's wife Annie. 
 
 "Where will the bonnie wee lassie be?" inquired 
 John, lowering his voice and peering round curiously. 
 
 "She is just drinking her tea in her room." 
 
 "She will soon be through with that," returned 
 John; "it is no a very great occupation."
 
 4 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "Oh, yes; she will soon be through." 
 
 "And an awful uncommon hour for tea-drinking, 
 Annie." 
 
 "Indeed, we will no be finding fault with new-fangled 
 notions that have their uses. It will just be giving me 
 time to look round and to find myself again." 
 
 "Five o'clock is no a very decorous hour for tea," in- 
 sisted McKenzie. "But she's bonnie," added he softly. 
 
 "And you will have been saying that a good few 
 times, John McKenzie!" 
 
 "Annie!" 
 
 "A-weel !" 
 
 "I was just in a terrification when I was seeing her 
 first. I call her awful bonnie ! It fetches a body's 
 breath to see a lassie like that stepping out of a train 
 her lane, and coming up and just saying, 'Are you 
 John McKenzie?'" 
 
 "Indeed, and it will be making a woman start to see 
 her step into the kitchen like a wraith, and to hear her 
 saying, 'Shall I wash up for you, Mrs. McKenzie?' " 
 
 "It will be an awful strange dispensation for us, 
 Annie." 
 
 "A-weel. We must be taking the Lord's will as it 
 falls upon us. And she pays well." 
 
 "Oh, yes; it's a good input. She pays well, though 
 she's but a lassie, and a bonnie one." 
 
 "So bonnie that she casts a shadow." 
 
 "Ay. She makes the wee bit housie look ill-sorted. 
 And such a sight of bonniness going her lane makes a 
 body think." 
 
 "I'm thinking we may just as well think good as ill 
 thoughts."
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 41 
 
 "I'm not saying to the contrairy. You will be kind 
 to her, Annie?" 
 
 "Indeed, I hope so. I shall do my best, whatever." 
 
 "And best brings best along after it." 
 
 "At times, John McKenzie," replied Annie with 
 deliberation, "that has a fine-sounding flourish, but I'm 
 not very sure it will fit the uncertainties of this world. 
 It will be an ill thing to be sorry for our wrong-doing, 
 but it is a worse to be sorry for our good." 
 
 John scratched his head. 
 
 "I'm not very sure if that will be sound doctrine, 
 Annie. But when she is through with tea, what then?" 
 
 "Indeed, she will ever be wearying till I find her a 
 new occupation. I must just give her the graip, John 
 McKenzie, and bid her lift a potato for to-morrow's 
 dinner." 
 
 "It makes a body giddy to have to bid a rare bonnie 
 leddy lift potatoes. How will she answer, Annie?" 
 
 * r just, 'Thank you, Mrs. McKenzie.' Her voice is 
 soft like honey, and she is ay teachable and gentle. 
 Whiles I turn over in my mind if it's waking or dream- 
 ing. But I haud on to my pigs and pans and look no 
 further. Biding's better nor spiering, and there's just 
 no time for wonder." 
 
 "A-weel. It is an awful strange dispensation. Has 
 Colin been?" 
 
 "Indeed, you would be hearing if he had." 
 
 "Then Colin has not seen her yet?" 
 
 "I will not be saying whether he has met her in the 
 road." 
 
 "I made some mention of the matter to Colin." 
 
 "A man's tongue is ever ready with clash."
 
 42 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "Nay, woman! This is a dispensation that wants a 
 wee bit explanation. It makes a body feel mixtie- 
 maxtie to come upon her sudden like amidst the pots 
 and pans." 
 
 "And what will Colin be saying?" 
 
 "Oh, he will just be saying that there is no inquiring 
 into the new-fangled ways of an ill place like London. ' 
 
 "Colin thinks himself no sheep-shank." 
 
 "Oh, he will ever be a very discreet douce man." 
 
 "I'm not saying to the contrairy. Whist! John; 
 she will be coming downstairs now. I can hear the 
 jingle of the cups. It is a sore dispensation having a 
 London lassie in and out amongst the kitchen work; 
 but I will not be saying that it is worse than a man 
 standing havering on the doorstep." 
 
 So saying, Mrs. McKenzie, who had been throwing 
 the soft modulations of her voice from some place 
 invisible, appeared on the threshold. She had a mat- 
 ronly figure, soft red hair falling upon each side of her 
 forehead, steady gray eyes with a smile in them, and 
 a beautifully arched head. The effect of her glance 
 upon her husband's face was as the quiet and unnotice- 
 able stirring of conscience within him ; the two things 
 had been for so long a period simultaneous that John 
 McKenzie ceased to discriminate between them ; he 
 thought it an original stirring of compunction which 
 now reminded him of his cows and caused him to walk 
 off suddenly with a strong swinging gait. 
 
 Mrs. McKenzie turned back into the cottage to wel- 
 come with the same genial smile of kindliness the 
 entrance of another person. 
 
 An inner door which had been closed before was now
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS IVOMA.V. 43 
 
 open, and upon the threshold stood a slim girl, clothed 
 in a gray linsey dress and holding a tray. She had 
 the cautious look of one unaccustomed to the office. 
 Her two small hands grasped the sides firmly, and her 
 eyes were bent in anxious solicitude upon the crockery, 
 while a slight tension in the grace of her figure marked 
 a conscious difficulty of poise. From the ruffled 
 shadowy hair, gathered above the arch of the head, to 
 the small foot planted on the ground with elastic firm- 
 ness, she was a perfect model of a very rare type of 
 beauty. And when she raised her dark lashes, and 
 fixed her eyes with a whimsical look of fright in them 
 upon Mrs. McKenzie, she had a marvelous charm. 
 
 Some faces distort the expression of beautiful feel- 
 ing, others fling trifling and even ignoble emotions into 
 a momentary exquisiteness of setting. Some souls 
 beat out their deep and tragic personality in an inher- 
 ited mold of stupidity ; others carry their trivial 
 experiences through a medium of ancestral nobility. 
 
 Mrs. McKenzie relieved the girl of her tray, and set 
 it upon the table. 
 
 "Shall I wash up the things?" asked the newcomer 
 in musical, well-bred English. 
 
 "Oh, yes. If you will not be minding it, you can 
 wash up." 
 
 "And when that is done?" 
 
 "When that is done," returned Mrs. McKenzie, with 
 a great patience, "you will be taking the graip 
 
 "But what is the graip?" 
 
 Mrs. McKenzie produced an agricultural instrument 
 in the shape of a short iron fork. 
 
 "A graip will just be this fork."
 
 44 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "Oh, thank you." 
 
 "And you will be going down to the potato 
 drill 
 
 "The drill?" 
 
 "In the garden 
 
 "I think I know, thank you." 
 
 "And you will be lifting a few potatoes for dinner 
 to-morrow." 
 
 "Shall I have to dig deep?" asked the girl, with a 
 pretty animation. 
 
 "Not deep at all. You will just be gently loosening 
 the roots, and then you will be shaking the plant out 
 of the soil, and you will be rinding the potatoes." 
 
 "Thank you. And shall I peel them afterward?" 
 
 "Folks," returned Mrs. McKenzie, with the faintest 
 sign of exasperation, "will be resting from their labor 
 at eventide." 
 
 "I am not tired." 
 
 "Potato-peeling is hurting to the skin. It will be 
 very hashing to your wee bit hands." 
 
 "I do not mind," returned the girl, with intense 
 earnestness; "I wish to work. I wish to help you." 
 
 "Oh, yes," returned Mrs. McKenzie, with a sigh. 
 
 The conversation was broken by the patter of two 
 bare-footed children into the kitchen. It was one of 
 Mrs. McKenzie's secret grievances that, since "the 
 bonnie leddy's" advent, she had been unable to keep 
 her own little Maysie and Maysie's five or six com- 
 panions from pattering over the carefully cleaned floors 
 in order to get a fair look at the show.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 WiIEX Miss Jessamine Halliday made up her mind 
 to the project of disappearance, which she disclosed in 
 her letter to Dr. Cornerstone, she recalled this patch of 
 country in the Highlands. She had passed through it 
 once when on a journey of pleasure; it was a large dis- 
 trict, unattractive to the ordinary tourist as a place of 
 continued residence; the few cottages, sprinkled here 
 and there among farm lands, were inhabited solely by 
 peasants, and had little or no accommodation for 
 lovers of luxury. This isolation made it precisely the 
 refuge she required. She recollected the cottage of 
 the McKenzies, having stopped to purchase a glass of 
 milk there; and John McKenzie had consented by let- 
 ter to rent her a couple of rooms in his house, and had 
 also understood that the arrangement included instruc- 
 tion in the household work and a share in the life of 
 the family. He drove to the station many miles dis- 
 tant expecting to meet and carry home with him a 
 big lassie, with substantial wrists and a bustling air of 
 management; nor was he without some shrewd appre- 
 hension of a bargain advantageous to himself. The 
 contrast between his conception and the amazing 
 actuality threw him into a condition of ecstatic amuse- 
 ment and perplexity, of which he had been unable to 
 rid himself during the drive home, or, indeed, for days 
 afterwaVd. 
 
 45
 
 4< A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 Upon Jessamine's part was unmitigated satisfaction. 
 When she got into the trap by McKenzie's side, her 
 modest trunk pushed in behind, she looked round upon 
 the broad stretch of country with a sense of beatitude. 
 After London, with its heat of life, its inconsequent 
 fret and flurry, after Aunt Arabella, the width and 
 grandeur were as the space is to an escaped bird, and 
 the peace and calmness dropped like cold dews on her 
 heart. And then, after this draught of spiritual refresh- 
 ment, she sat up in the dogcart to glance at the face of 
 the driver. 
 
 From class to class, faces are as nothing mere 
 masks, beyond which nothing can be seen because 
 nothing is surmised. The roving eye, softly aflame 
 with hope and entreaty, seeks out the lineaments of 
 desire, but drops dead and dull beyond the barriers of 
 rank. Here the divine spark fails, the tinder takes it 
 not. Or if any avail to cast it unquenched beyond 
 the pale, that is a sin which society may not condone. 
 
 Jessamine, however, had some occasion to study the 
 face of her future host. She found it an intelligent 
 exponent of indispensable human traits; shrewd, cau- 
 tious, gentle thoughts had left tracks upon it, while 
 from the eyes a spirit of human kindliness looked 
 leniently upon the world. Besides these general char- 
 acteristics, an irrepressible smile lurked upon the man's 
 lips, broadening them out and curling them up did any 
 occasion betray the secret humor which tickled his 
 spirit. The reason for his unaccountable mirth was no 
 part of Jessamine's care; she let it alone, and for the 
 rest sank back in her seat satisfied. 
 
 It was a part of Jessamine's character to enter into
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 47 
 
 a matter with zest, until the point was reached when 
 she relinquished the whim in favor of the next. The 
 morning after her arrival she proved her mettle by set- 
 ting to work at once, and kept steadily at it for the 
 next week or so. Mrs. McKenzie found that slimness 
 of figure and fineness of face are not incompatible with 
 persistence in labor, and by degrees she began to 
 accustom herself to the soft, radiant presence among 
 her pots and pans and to lose something of her exas- 
 peration, though still inwardly bewildered by a sense 
 of unreality invading her prosaic labors, as though a 
 dream should inexplicably involve itself amid high 
 noontide hours. 
 
 Meanwhile, the t\vo or three weeks of vigorous ap. 
 plication told upon Jessamine's appearance ; labor, 
 early rising, and exercise brought a pink flush into her 
 cheeks and inspirited her aspect, while little fierce lines 
 of effort began to pluck up the melancholic Burne- 
 Jones droop of lips and chin. Moving about McKen- 
 zie's house or barns or fields, she was either from the 
 disparity of her surroundings or for a much more 
 subtle and human reason lovelier and more attractive 
 than in her life before. A look was in her face like to 
 the ripening of fruit when the sun is up. ; 
 
 A whole month passed away, and one evening she 
 sat in her room repairing a rent in her working dress. 
 She had brought no other gowns than these rough 
 linseys, whose simple make suited so admirably not 
 only the labor she had undertaken, but the grace of 
 the wearer. After sewing industriously for some 
 time, she took her scissors and snipped the thread off 
 with a little composed air of self-satisfaction, let the
 
 48 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 dress fall upon her lap, and looked up idly to the 
 window. 
 
 Supposing anyone undertook to disentangle the bare 
 prosaic content of thought from the various and beau- 
 tiful emotions in which it is transfigured, the result 
 might be startling to the sensibility. Jessamine's think- 
 ing, for .all her intense and exalted air, may be briefly 
 summed up as follows : 
 
 "I am leading a useful and simple life; I have for- 
 saken the refinement and luxury necessary to a person 
 of my culture to come among these poor cottagers, and 
 to give them the benefit of my help and superior influ- 
 ence. Dr. Cornerstone will be pleased with me, and 
 will be more interested in me than ever. I am really 
 endeavoring to be good and, of course, remarkable at 
 the same time. And as I am a most beautiful and 
 clever woman, my example will be the more striking; 
 people will follow it, and my position in society will be 
 elevated. Meanwhile, it is delightful to spite Aunt 
 Arabella and to torture Lord Heriot, whom I hate, but 
 intend eventually to marry." 
 
 The girl had no idea that these were her thoughts ; 
 she felt and looked something so different ; indeed, she 
 experienced a warm, subdued glow as she recalled Dr. 
 Cornerstone's profound and austere instructions, and 
 she mistook the reflected fires of his strong spirit for a 
 flame within her own. 
 
 After her meditation, she rose and went out to watch 
 the milking of the cows in the barn. When that was 
 over, she came outside to refresh herself and breathe 
 the air. 
 
 It was a silent evening; the converse of the fowls,
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 49 
 
 dreamily disputing between the pauses of her thoughts, 
 was the only sound. The sun, though the hour was 
 late, hung softly brilliant in the sky; the tints and 
 shadows were tremulously deep and vivid; a visionary 
 beauty, like some diaphanous covering, enwrapped the 
 hills and woods and valley, and the enchantment 
 dropped even upon the human heart. Jessamine for- 
 got to think, and her mind lay passive to feeling. Her 
 face was turned to the hills, the light mused in her 
 eyes and folded itself like a veil about her head. 
 
 And in such a moment as this fell the master event 
 of her life. 
 
 The opening of the wicket gate into the inclosure 
 had not disturbed her, nor a tread which followed ; she 
 supposed McKenzie to be still at his work; but the 
 gradual apprehension of suspended sound at length 
 attracted her attention, and then, looking round, she 
 saw, a few paces from her, a man whom she had not 
 before encountered. He was standing as though 
 arrested, looking upon her with a gaze of unembar- 
 rassed concentration, yet so impersonal as to miss 
 effrontery. His dress was that of a peasant farmer. In 
 person he possessed a full share of the strength and 
 height of his race ; he had great shoulders and limber 
 straight limbs; moreover, his face was of a fine quality, 
 firm in feature, with steady eyes of a yellowish brown, 
 and throwing out an impression of independence, pride, 
 and unconquerable gentleness. Jessamine, startled 
 into attention, inadvertently permitted her glance to 
 be locked by his, whereupon he merely altered his gaze 
 so far as to throw into it an added steadiness; his ex- 
 pression remained the while placid and unconscious,
 
 50 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 and his head took a slight inclination from its normal 
 uprightness, so as to suggest his bearing when in 
 church or when in presence of anything curious and 
 uncommon. 
 
 Jessamine, who was profoundly sensitive to the im- 
 pression she produced, perceived as clearly as though 
 she read it from a printed page, that he who was thus 
 gazing upon her recognized in her no part of his own 
 humanity, but found her a picture, an art product, an 
 object which it was well for him to have seen, and no 
 more. Indeed, so mirrorlike and accurate an impres- 
 sion of herself was reflected back from his eyes and 
 face that it became a moment of self-revelation. 
 
 It touched her mind as with a pin's point, and the 
 finest ripple of feeling passed over her features. The 
 man, remarking it, lifted his cap and removed his eyes; 
 but this was so evidently the exercise of will in casting 
 off an entertaining triviality, that it became a worse 
 misdemeanor than the first. Translated into her own 
 phrase, the voiceless verdict floated thus to the ear of 
 her mind : 
 
 "An art product, a curiosity, very pleasing and 
 unique, which I am glad to have beheld, but it is no 
 affair of mine, and I cannot waste my time upon it." 
 
 As this clear conviction entertained her, the man 
 advanced toward her and passed by; his steps brushed 
 close through the grass, and his shadow fell upon her 
 as he went, and she caught an odor not of cigars and 
 high living, but as of temperance and "a fruitful field."
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 JESSAMINE, paring apples with Mrs. McKenzie in 
 the kitchen, was as pretty as an Academy picture, and 
 about as real. A peat fire burned on the hearth, with 
 the kettle swinging over it ; on one side the chimney 
 sat Mrs. McKenzie, a bowl of apples grasped in her 
 sturdy knees and an empty one by her side, paring 
 away with a prosiac dispatch and a murderous sound 
 of steel. Jessamine sat opposite on a wooden bench 
 against the open window; a trellis creeper pinked out 
 the window frame with a pretty embroidery and cast a 
 checker of light and shade over her head. She had an 
 earthenware bowl deftly balanced on her knee, and a 
 long ribbon of peel uncurled itself from her fingers 
 slowly and daintily, for Jessamine worked in some fear 
 of the knife and with care for the finish of the matter. 
 The door as well as the window was thrown open to 
 let in a broad and cheerful beam, and from outside the 
 noises of fowl life the hectoring and disputing, the 
 boasting and wise counsel of matrons, the swagger of 
 cocks assailed the ear with a continual reminder that 
 there are other worlds than ours. 
 
 "Mrs. McKenzie," said Jessamine, breaking the 
 silence, "who was that man who called last night on 
 your husband?" The question had been goading the 
 tip of her tongue all morning. 
 
 "That will be Colin Macgillvray you are meaning.
 
 52 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 Him and John are great friends. Macgillvray Dalfa- 
 ber," added Mrs. McKenzie, to be explicit. 
 
 "Mr. Colin Macgillvray of Dalfaber," repeated Jessa- 
 mine; "and where is Dalfaber?" 
 
 "It will be west to here. Across the fields, on the 
 other side the road." 
 
 "The house lying far off by the loch?" 
 
 "That will be it. It lies on the hill above the loch, 
 high on the moor." 
 
 "Ah, I think I know! So near as that? Some barns 
 and a thatched cottage and some oat fields." 
 
 "That will be Dalfaber, lassie. It will be lying about 
 half a mile distant a thatched cottage. Macgillvrays 
 have but a poor bit housie." 
 
 "I suppose is he a fanner?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, he is a farmer!" 
 
 "Does he work for himself?" 
 
 "Oh, yes; he will be doing all the workpn the farm ! 
 It will be his father's farm old Mr. Rorie Macgillvray. 
 He is a very old man." 
 
 Jessamine was silent again ; Mrs. McKenzie dropped 
 three apples into the bowl to her one. 
 
 "Mr. Colin Macgillvray is married, of course?" said 
 she presently. 
 
 "Oh, no ! Colin is not married; oh, no! Indeed, 
 and he is not married ! He will be just living with his 
 father and mother." 
 
 "You like this Mr. Macgillvray? He is a respecta- 
 ble man? " 
 
 "Oh, yes; we like Colin Macgillvray very well ! He 
 is just a douce quiet man. His mind's just in his 
 worruk. He doesn't think of much else. There's
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 53 
 
 nothing in him than his worruk. That will be Colin. 
 Oh, yes! The farmers about keep themselves very 
 respectable." 
 
 With which Mrs. McKenzie, who saw Macgillvray 
 with the familiar eye of one who looks upon a thing so 
 commonly as to sweep the surface merely and to miss 
 the essence, dropped the last apple in the dish and 
 seemed to reach the end of the subject. Not so Jessa- 
 mine; for to meet the person who acquaints one with 
 one's self is the great beginning of a very long matter. 
 
 Some days passed, and she did not again encounter 
 Macgillvray nor come in his way; but the mind, which 
 runs up and down the earth seeking while the feet halt, 
 went on its quest. There are things so incomplete in 
 themselves that one is tortured until they are rounded 
 by a finish. From the fields, the highway, and the 
 moors, loomed every day a possibility which ended in 
 disappointment ; her eyes searched the distance as she 
 walked, and many a passing peasant was startled by 
 her expectant glance into lifting his cap reverently to 
 this presence of high quality and beauty. From no 
 eyes, however, did she catch the critical shaft of Mac- 
 gillvray's, and this caustic and cold still rankled in 
 her heart. It is of the nature of such wounds that the 
 enemy who gives them proves the only physician ; it is 
 also in the nature of things that, while many come, the 
 one stays away, and that frequent hands proffer trashy 
 friendship, while the single hand whose smart has made 
 it valuable refrains. 
 
 Jessamine walked often somewhere in the direction 
 of Dalfaber, but on one occasion it was Sunday after- 
 noon took that course more frankly. So far, she had
 
 54 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 hovered on the outskirts of the farm, in the woods or 
 on the moor that flanked it, not venturing beyond the 
 inclosure. A shy dread of repulse kept canceling her 
 wish for an encounter; she felt the effect of an eye, 
 which can succeed better than the law and the police 
 in keeping off intruders and making the owner proprie- 
 tor of house and land. This Sunday afternoon, how- 
 ever, while man and beast reposed, and the very air 
 sank in vitality under the Sabbath dullness, an urgency 
 of the heart got the better of more retreating instincts. 
 She stepped through the inclosure, and then, like a 
 soul lost beyond the borders of orthodoxy, began to 
 wander about Macgillvray's fields, and beside his rows 
 of barley and oats, and over his pastures, until at last 
 she neared the cottage itself. 
 
 The cottage was a roomy and primitive looking 
 building, a chimney at either side, tolerable windows, 
 and a wide door. There was no pretense at adornment 
 nor the faintest hint of a garden ; nevertheless the 
 place, with its dark heather thatch, its grave loneliness 
 awatch upon an environment of tumultuously tumbled 
 hills, had a somber charm, as though reminiscent of a 
 hundred years of human life braved out within its walls 
 in the bleak solitude. 
 
 Jessamine approached ; the door was certainly ajar, 
 but a closed, silent, Sabbatarian air, a dullness as 
 though the life within had been nipped, affected her 
 dismally, and the expectation, escaping from her heart, 
 left it flat enough to be composed. She took some 
 steps forward, meaning to pass the cottage and go 
 home. At this point, however, a dog, with disconcert- 
 ing suddenness, rushed from the door and sprang bark-
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 55 
 
 ing upon her. Jessamine, the more startled that she 
 had just been lulled into security, gave a cry, and in- 
 creased the beast's excitement by running a pace or 
 two toward the cottage. Her sharp and timorous call 
 brought out the master pfle-infle, and before she had 
 time to recall her dignity she found herself shrinking, 
 as is the manner of women in fear, close behind Mr. 
 Colin Macgillvray. At his appearance the dog changed 
 his note to one of excellent temper, and, having done 
 the mischief, now sniffed round the pair inquisitively 
 with a friendly wagging of the tail. 
 
 "Haud oof with you! Go back!" cried Mr. Macgill- 
 vray, smiting in the air with his arm. 
 
 Whereupon the collie walked away, glancing back 
 round the corner of his shoulder as he went, as who 
 would say, "My feelings suffer from this rebuff." 
 
 "The dog would not have hurt you," said Macgill- 
 vray, now turning to Jessamine and looking leniently 
 into her wide-open, startled eyes; "it's just his way of 
 showing joy." 
 
 "Oh!" returned Jessamine, "I thought he seemed 
 very angry; I was just a little frightened." 
 
 "Oh, na, na! The dog was not angry. It will just 
 be his play. But you will come in now and rest you 
 awhile?" 
 
 Macgillvray 's eyes were still lenient while, with a 
 very noble and gracious air, he pushed the door open 
 wider and signed to Jessamine to enter. She walked 
 forward, her heart still beating, partly with physical 
 fear, partly in amaze at finding herself precipitated into 
 the center of an event which she had intended to ap- 
 proach with a prepared mind.
 
 56 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 There were two rooms only on the first floor of the 
 cottage, but these were divided by a space from whence 
 the staircase mounted to the story above; beneath the 
 staircase was a small cellar. One of the two rooms 
 was the kitchen; the other, to which Colin ushered 
 Miss Halliday, possessed an alcove with a bed in it, 
 and was a combination of bed and sitting room. Colin 
 placed a chair for his guest and took one himself. 
 
 "And this is your room?" said Jessamine. 
 
 "Oh, yes!" answered Colin; "it will be mine." 
 
 As usual, Miss Halliday's mere presence grouped 
 her surroundings into a picture. She sat in a high- 
 backed chair, her head thrown back, her dark hair 
 rumpled, and a lovely lassitude in limbs and posture. 
 Colin, seated opposite, with the ease of a man at home, 
 one arm flung carelessly over the back of his chair, con- 
 templated her steadily. A touch of remorseful sym- 
 pathy, because of the quick rise and fall of her breast, 
 softened his lips, and when Jessamine's glance, after 
 wandering round the room, paused large, wistful, 
 shy upon his, he immediately spoke. 
 
 "I'm just most sorry, indeed," said he, "my dog has 
 really frightened you." 
 
 "Well, yes," returned Jessamine, "he looked very 
 wild and savage, as though he meant to hurt me." 
 
 "Na, na! He will never be doing any harm to any- 
 one. He is just always for rushing, but it means noth- 
 ing." 
 
 "He is a good watch-dog, at any rate." 
 
 "Oh, yes! he's a good watch-dog; but he's most 
 fond of strangers," said Colin, still anxious for the re- 
 moval of inhospitable impressions.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 57 
 
 "Perhaps I had no right to be where I was?" ven- 
 tured Jessamine, anxious to bring the conversation to 
 less general topics. 
 
 "Indeed!" cried Macgillvray, starting forward with 
 a courteous inclination of the head; "we are most 
 pleased to see you. We will be most glad if you will 
 be coming just when you like to rest you here, or to 
 sit and walk on the bit of land." 
 
 "Thank you," returned Jessamine. 
 
 And her thanks were accompanied by a grave, lumi- 
 nous glance for which many a high-born gentleman in 
 London would cheerfully have paid a price. Mac- 
 gillvray inclined his head slightly to one side to facili- 
 tate his quite impersonal observation of one pleasing 
 trait the more in a pleasing picture. 
 
 Meanwhile, here as everywhere, the poverty of 
 human resource cast itself upon chatter as a refuge. 
 It is only the beasts (and possibly the Chinese) who are 
 sufficiently self-poised to sit opposite each other in 
 Homeric silence, contenting themselves with the occa- 
 sional embrace of a stolidly friendly eye. In this 
 cottage room, the conversation struggled on through 
 the inequalities of class habit and class ideas, like a lop- 
 sided car; Jessamine's alert tongue leaping from topic 
 to topic to find that upon which the peasant's would 
 run easily, while Colin declined to become discursive 
 upon any. It was the lights and touches in his face 
 and manner which revealed his nature, as the sun fall- 
 ing upon a rock will discover its secret beauty. He 
 stood out from the triviality of the conversation with 
 all his qualities large, deep, massive. Miss Halliday's 
 facility in remark began to strike him as for him, at
 
 5 8 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN'. 
 
 least a godless witchcraft, though possibly an angelic 
 trait in the world of quality ; and as he made courteous 
 shift to reply, he was troubled with a haunting recol- 
 lection of the Fourth Commandment, which bids 
 men "remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." At 
 length Jessamine, seizing upon the statement in pure 
 nervous hurry to whip up the moment out of this 
 laggard incapacity, assured him of her admiration of 
 the country and her appreciation of the beauty of the 
 hills. Whereupon Colin turned his head and let his 
 eyes rest upon the range of mountains seen through 
 the windows, wearing in his expression a deep suffi- 
 ciency of familiar content, which seemed to remove 
 him from her presence. 
 
 "Oh, yes," said he in his curious sweet voice "oh, 
 yes, it's a bonnie country. The hills look butifully in 
 an evening; all this summer they really have been 
 looking butifully." 
 
 That was his utmost expansiveness, and his eyes, in 
 their aloofness from her, and their restful familiarity 
 elsewhere, seemed to set her aside ; she rose to go, 
 pained and baffled. Fora moment she stood hesitat- 
 ing in the whitewashed cottage room, beautiful and 
 brilliant as some strayed rainbow cloud, while he 
 looked down upon her. But nothing altered in his 
 balance and gravity, and she turned away, an empti- 
 ness in her face like the withdrawing of sun from a 
 prison ray. Colin accompanied her to the door and 
 stood upon the threshold ; she bade him adieu, and 
 lifted once more a wistful and propitiating eye; but 
 Colin, his glance comprehensively including the hills 
 over her shoulder as well as herself, gravely saluted the
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 59 
 
 high quality which had deigned to visit him, by plac- 
 ing his hand to his forehead and murmuring thanks for 
 her condescension. He kept meanwhile an air of cour- 
 teous dismissal, and his brow so proud and uncontami- 
 nated an independence that it left Jessamine the per- 
 son abashed. 
 
 She did not go home, but sought a lonely spot and 
 sat down on the heather near a group of fir trees. 
 Some demons chuckled derisively in those regions 
 which conscience makes horrible. It is a discomforting 
 thing to graciously forsake your rank, your high heels, 
 and your paint pot, in order to follow humanity at the 
 plow, and then to find that humanity at the plow 
 keeps these articles ready to hand back to you with 
 rigid courtesy putting the china shepherdess back 
 in its right place on the shelf before proceeding un- 
 ruffled with its own weighty affairs.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE morning after her interview with Macgillvray, 
 Jessamine waked restless and dissatisfied. Her pretty 
 scheme, running so merrily, along the ways of self-con- 
 tent, had met with something in the nature of an upset. 
 Had Miss Halliday been living in London, or any- 
 where within call of a fashionable friend who might 
 come in to make the morning hours vapid with talk, 
 her temper might have discharged some sparks; but 
 Mrs. McKenzie's atmosphere and the necessities of the 
 day excluded the privileges of spleen. As well be 
 spiteful in the front of a milch cow as in the eye of 
 Mrs. McKenzie. She lived aloof, irradiating kindliness 
 and vigor, understanding nothing of the ins and outs 
 of sensitiveness and fine feelings, but effacing these 
 distempers by a beatific wholesomeness. So that Jes- 
 samine, who appeared with somber eyes and brow, and 
 an air of inscrutable melancholy, found herself com- 
 pelled into an ordinary mood, and was finally driven 
 by the sheer force of circumstances to help in the hay- 
 field. 
 
 A day or two after, rather to her astonishment, she 
 found herself on Macgillvray 's land, stepping round, as 
 it were, to make inquiries as to the progress of his hay. 
 As she came near him in the hayfield, he looked up, 
 desisted from his labor, lifted his straw hat courteously, 
 then, setting the scythe to the ground, took a wide 
 
 60
 
 .-/ SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 6r 
 
 sweep of the steel through the hay, and carried him- 
 self by the strong leisurely movement a yard or two 
 from her. Jessamine shrank back hastily; an uncon- 
 querable something kept turning its uncouth back upon 
 her. 
 
 That evening, she somewhat flagged in the ardor of 
 her application. She relieved Mrs. McKenzie from her 
 impetuous energy by going out for a walk. Upon 
 coming back, she heard unusual sounds issuing from 
 the open door of the kitchen. It was her custom to 
 enter by the porch, though her apartments might be 
 reached by another door. The doctor's counsel had 
 run thus: 
 
 "Return to simplicity of life, and do serviceable 
 work." 
 
 And Jessamine very carefully practiced the maxim 
 by an observance as minute as that of a Pharisee of 
 old. She therefore repudiated the entrance set apart 
 for herself, and took by choice the ordinary way. Her 
 step was light indeed, curiosity prompted caution ; 
 the kitchen was rilled for the moment by the weird 
 sound which, in the Highlands, is strangely called 
 singing, and she reached the threshold unheard, and 
 stood there unseen to look upon the scene within. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. McKenzie sat side by side; Mrs. 
 McKenzie was knitting, but she glanced now and then 
 at a book which her husband held ; both were singing. 
 Little Maysie, their only child, stood between her 
 father's knees, listening; her round grave eyes were, 
 however, fixed in awe and admiration upon a fourth 
 figure who sat opposite. Of this visitor Jessamine 
 could see no more than one broad shoulder and a por-
 
 62 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 tion of a sturdy neck and head, for he was seated with 
 his back to the window, a little withdrawn behind the 
 door; but in him she at once recognized Colin Mac- 
 gillvray. There was one other figure which she could 
 see entirely. This was a small boy, one of Maysie's 
 numerous companions; he stood with his small elbows 
 folded upon Colin's knee, and was gazing up into the 
 man's face with a curiously fearless content. 
 
 Jessamine beheld this picture undisturbed for the 
 briefest moment ; then Maysie spoiled it by catching 
 sight of her and pointing. The change was instan- 
 taneous. The song broke off, and both men dropped 
 their books; McKenzie favored her with the smile of 
 indulgent humor which was his usual greeting, Mrs. 
 McKenzie exhibited faint signs of momentary per- 
 plexity, and Colin, rising from his seat with his air of 
 defiant respectfulness, made the peasant's salute by 
 touching his forehead with his hand, without inclining 
 his perverse head one inch from its uprightness. 
 
 Jessamine's eyes encountered this indifferent, un- 
 bending look; and it seemed to her that a tear ran 
 scalding down her heart. She repaid McKenzie's smile 
 by a faint fleeting dimple, and hurried through the 
 kitchen with averted face, closing the inner door 
 behind her. Here she paused, anxious to know if the 
 singing would recommence; it would have been inter- 
 esting to learn if Colin's voice were rich and deep, to 
 suit the color and quality of his eyes. But no! not a 
 sound. The silence of embarrassment enfolded the 
 kitchen, and before she reached the top of the stairs, 
 Colin's step crunched the gravel outside and retreated 
 from the house,
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 63 
 
 Then Jessamine entered her sitting room, threw off 
 her hat, and sat down by the unpropitiating square 
 table, with her elbows on it and her chin in her hands. 
 
 "It is almost," said she to herself, "as though I had 
 died and been born again ugly." 
 
 She gazed at the table with blank eyes. 
 
 "Who cares for pretty Jessamine?" said she dis- 
 mally. 
 
 She listened again ; the hushed song made a painful 
 silence in the cottage, and the wind which murmured 
 round did not fill it. Jessamine got up and wandered 
 up and down the very small space of the chamber. 
 
 "Oh, dear!" said she; "how real they are, and how 
 impossible to get inside it ! How they keep me off, 
 and how they reject me! Oh, dear! I don't want 
 elegant trifles any more; I want some good, substan- 
 tial bread" 
 
 To one so accustomed to court and welcome wher- 
 ever she moved, whose lightest word and act had been 
 received with plaudits, the experience was a bewilder- 
 ing one. Colin Macgillvray was the chief offender. 
 She began to wonder whether he really appreciated 
 her beauty ; she was quite sure he did not approve of 
 it of her. That last thought set her mind running 
 into all sorts of regions hitherto unexplored. It was a 
 much more severe discipline than Dr. Cornerstone's 
 stern instructions. After all, that was a sort of court 
 for was not Dr. Cornerstone taken up with her? Now, 
 Colin ignored her. 
 
 Three days afterward the hay was gathered in ; "all 
 except," they said, "a small field of Macgillvray's." 
 
 And Jessamine, when the shadows lay long upon the
 
 64 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 ground, and the scents of pine and heather were warm 
 in the air, went down to watch the final carrying. She 
 seated herself upon a bank under a rowan tree whose 
 berries showed red among the leaves, and watched the 
 moving to and fro of the figures at work in the field. 
 Only Colin was there and a boy and a woman ; and 
 only a few haycocks remained to be gathered and taken 
 to the cart. Jessamine watched and waited until Colin 
 came and thrust his fork into the haycock near her 
 side. He freed one hand, as he did so, and lifted his 
 cap with his unaltered air of courteous indifference. 
 
 "May I help?" murmured Jessamine timidly. 
 
 "Thank you, you are most kind ; but we are all but 
 finished now." 
 
 The boy led the cart up as he spoke, and he turned 
 with the load of hay suspended upon the fork to pitch 
 it in ; but somehow a portion fell to the ground, and 
 Jessamine, rising with a sudden impulse, stooped over 
 it, and gathered it up in her arms. Macgillvray tran- 
 quilly deposited his share in the cart, and then, tossing 
 aside his fork, turned to relieve her. 
 
 "Thank you," said he once more, as his brown hands 
 freed her from her burden ; "you are most kind." 
 
 But Jessamine lifted her eyes with wistful entreaty 
 in them the entreaty, not of a vain girl to be sexually 
 flattered, but of one human being to another for a 
 recognition of service, and she fancied that for a sec- 
 ond Macgillvray 's eye held her at a less distant range 
 than before. It was only for the briefest instant ; be- 
 fore the ripple of pleasure had time to rise in her heart 
 he was standing by his cart again, his back toward her, 
 and was turning his horse's head away from the field.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 65 
 
 The hay was all lifted, and Jessamine was left alone in 
 the sunny place, with thoughts that dimly yearned 
 after austerity and goodness. 
 
 After this, during the next three weeks, her encoun- 
 ters with Colin became frequent. With the hay sea- 
 son a habit had been formed of wandering about Dal- 
 faber. When she met the owner she would pause 
 with a pretty deference, the color in her cheek and the 
 wistful light in her eye, and ask some question about 
 farming; as these inquiries were at least to the point, 
 he would find leisure to stop and to reply to them 
 carefully. Sometimes a momentary relaxation of his 
 unbending manner recalled the faint beat of pleasure 
 in the hayfield, but oftener beneath his courtesy 
 lurked sturdy defiance. Her acquaintance with the 
 McKenzies had taken a simple cordiality of condition 
 from the first, but her acquaintance with Macgillvray 
 was as a long journey upon an undiscovered winding 
 road that has to be conquered by inches, and where, 
 each corner rounded, the same figure walks before, the 
 back toward one and the face averted.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ONE afternoon Jessamine had been tempted to take 
 a longer walk than usual, and found herself some miles 
 away from home, over-tired, and dragging exhaustedly 
 along the highway alone. Moreover, the sky threat- 
 ened storm. While in this evil case she heard behind 
 the sound of wheels, and, turning round, saw Macgill- 
 vray approaching in an open trap. As he came up he 
 lifted his hat, and Jessamine signed to him to stop. 
 
 "Are you going back home, Mr. Macgillvray?" 
 asked she. 
 
 "Oh, yes; I am going to Dalfaber." 
 
 "I am very tired. Would you be so kind as to let 
 me drive with you?" 
 
 "Indeed, Miss Halliday, and I will be most pleased 
 whatever," responded Colin with his most courteous 
 air. 
 
 Jessamine got into the vehicle by his side. It was 
 a very common dogcart, ill-hung and of preposterous 
 height, and the horse that pulled it was an imperfectly 
 broken-in farm beast, that started and shied on every 
 small occasion. Nevertheless, she nestled down by the 
 driver with a sense of well-being, thrusting her hands 
 under the rough rug which he folded carefully over her 
 because the air was chill. 
 
 It was the first time she had had an opportunity of 
 really long continued converse with Macgillvray, and 
 
 66
 
 A STPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 67 
 
 in all these weeks it seemed to her that she had but 
 nibbled at the outside crust of intercourse; and now, 
 while the horse jogged on at a lurching trot, she feared 
 that he was disposed for silence. 
 
 "There is storm in the sky," she ventured at last. 
 
 "Ay," answered Colin; "friend or foe?" 
 
 And as he spoke he leaned forward, the reins hang- 
 ing loosely in his hands, and looked skyward. The 
 horse instantly dropped into a walk. Jessamine seized 
 the opportunity of Macgillvray's altered attitude to 
 observe more deliberately the firm line of his profile, 
 the composed folding of his lips, the steady uplift of 
 his eyelid, and the clear depth of his eye. 
 
 This was not an intellectual face, but it was a strong 
 one, with the unconquerable quality of mass. His 
 proximity brought with it impressions of warmth, 
 wholesomeness, and power, and his elusive silence 
 piqued curiosity at once by a denial and a promise. 
 After so much clever or vapid chatter, how this reti- 
 cence spoke to her inmost mind ! 
 
 "Friend or foe?" repeated Jessamine inquiringly. 
 
 "A body gets thinking whiles," said Colin, still star- 
 ing upward. 
 
 "Yeb," returned Jessamine. 
 
 He glanced down at her, and pointed to the sky with 
 his whip. 
 
 "We hoe and dig and drive the plow," said he, "but 
 3'on is the Great Tiller. Morning by morning we go 
 out to search his face, and then we must be waiting on 
 his smile or frown." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "It will be a strange thing to work so hard and be
 
 68 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 so helpless. Whiles a man's heart feels sore in his 
 body when he stands by the cornfields, to see the grain 
 beaten with the smiting of the showers until the yellow 
 heads lie low on the bit land. And then, come even- 
 tide, the clouds open and the sunshine flies and sets 
 the hills laughing under it ; and though the grain lies 
 beaten, the sunshine wins." 
 
 "Wins?" 
 
 "Ay; wins the soreness from the heart." 
 
 "Is that because it is beautiful?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, because it is butiful. The smile runs over 
 the heart and makes a body think." 
 
 "Does it?" 
 
 "Oh, yes; it will be like a book with thoughts in it." 
 
 "But you get tired of always working and always 
 waiting." 
 
 Colin looked over toward his horse's ears with a 
 smile. 
 
 "Ay, a body gets tired; but the sky will not be 
 always against us. And when the weather's grand it 
 works for ten." 
 
 "Still, you are obliged to be constantly doing the 
 same thing from year's end to year's end." 
 
 "Oh, yes, just so," returned Colin quietly. 
 
 "And do you not wish for something different?" 
 
 An odd momentary light shot into Colin's face from 
 some inward source. 
 
 "Whiles a body dreams," said he. 
 
 "And then you want to get away, to do something 
 different," said Jessamine, leaping to probable conclu- 
 sions. 
 
 "No; it suffices," answered the man.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 69 
 
 "What suffices?" asked Jessamine, discontentedly 
 closing up her idea. 
 
 "The dreaming is enough," repeated Macgillvray. 
 "It will be a wonder where the thoughts will be com- 
 ing from that enter a man's head, and how such 
 strangers to one another and so uncalled-for as they 
 will be they will just end always in the same thing." 
 
 "And how do they end?" 
 
 "In a thankfulness that a man's way is appointed. 
 And in finding that, after all, it looks butifully." 
 
 "Oh !" said Jessamine. "Well, yes, perhaps, after 
 all, that is the best ; perhaps it is beautiful." 
 
 "Oh, yes," returned Colin with delight, "it will be 
 butiful. The shining that comes into a body's mind 
 from within is a guide, and makes the limits of his path 
 plain. And yet ' 
 
 "Yet what?" 
 
 The slow rare smile hovered again about his lips. 
 He flicked several flies off his horse as he stared 
 reflectively at it before answering. 
 
 "If we bide a wee, who knows?" said he as though 
 to himself. 
 
 He spoke so inwardly that the words were as the 
 shutting of a lid over some secret treasure of the spirit. 
 Jessamine was left on the outside of the closed casket. 
 She wanted to undo the lock and to see that which he 
 would not display, and rash desire precipitated her into 
 indiscretion. 
 
 "Do you ever talk like this to your friend Mr. 
 McKenzie?" asked she. 
 
 "No," returned Colin shortly, a light alarm whipping 
 the dreams out of his face.
 
 70 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 He flicked his' horse sharply over the ears as he an- 
 swered, and tightened the reins, and the beast resumed 
 its trot. 
 
 Jessamine bit her lip in regretful vexation. All 
 her life "the beautiful Miss Halliday" had blotted 
 out the landscape for her, and it had been so sweet 
 and new a thing to be forgotten while this man 
 revealed one corner of the undiscovered treasures of 
 his mind. 
 
 After this they drove on for some distance until 
 they encountered a flock of sheep, which were being 
 driven along the road to new pastures; they were 
 going in an opposite direction, and had traveled for 
 many miles and many days; the shepherds looked tired 
 and exasperated, and the dogs were wearying of the 
 distinction of their office. Colin, careful of adding to 
 labor because he knew the meaning of labor, drew up 
 against the side of the road ; it took several minutes 
 for the flock to pass, and then he drove on again for 
 about a quarter of a mile. The railroad a single 
 country line at this point ran parallel to and close 
 upon the road. Colin suddenly brought his horse 
 again to a standstill, and rose up from his seat. 
 
 "What is it?" asked Jessamine. 
 
 "That will be a sheep from the flock we have just 
 met," returned Macgillvray, pointing along the line 
 with his whip. "The poor silly beastie has strayed 
 away, and is running on the railroad." 
 
 "Oh, dear!" said Jessamine, standing up too, to look 
 in her turn. 
 
 "And there should be a train coming soon," added 
 Colin, taking out his watch.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 7 1 
 
 "Oh, dear me!" cried Jessamine, "it will be killed! 
 Can't we save it?" 
 
 "We will be trying to, whatever," answered Colin, 
 jumping from the dogcart. 
 
 When on the road he hesitated for a second, and 
 glanced up at Jessamine. The glance was doubtful, 
 but the air with which he turned away was unmis- 
 takably disparaging. 
 
 "I can hold the reins," said she," mistaking his idea. 
 
 "Oh, yes," replied the man ; "but the horse will 
 stand well enough." 
 
 Then he climbed the embankment and ran on until 
 he overtook the sheep. The only result was that the 
 animal slipped past him and raced along the path of 
 peril in the opposite direction. This happened more 
 than once, and at last he stood still, looking vexed and 
 baffled. 
 
 Jessamine meanwhile had felt the spur of that single 
 disparaging glance. 
 
 "Mr. Macgillvray," she called from the dogcart, 
 "cannot I help you?" 
 
 Macgillvray, from his place on the embankment, 
 once more surveyed the slim and cultivated grace of 
 her figure as she stood up in the trap ; his estimate set 
 her obviously at nought, and he said nothing. But 
 she jumped out of the dogcart, climbed the embank- 
 ment, and stood by his side, for his look smarted in 
 her heart. 
 
 "I might stand here," said she, making the proposi- 
 tion timidly, "while you try and drive it back once 
 more." 
 
 "That will do it," returned Macgillvray cheerily.
 
 72 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "It is most kind of you. It is bound to jump down if 
 there will be one of us on either side. You will be 
 standing here, and will be waving your arms and shout- 
 ing if it comes your way." 
 
 Having made this proposition, and without waiting 
 for a reply, he ran off again, leaving her with his com- 
 mand upon her conscience. She was considerably 
 startled at the situation, but, nevertheless, stood where 
 he had directed, her arms open and ready to wave (like 
 any automaton scarecrow), and her lips parted ready 
 to shout. Colin had got some two hundred yards dis- 
 tant, and the game began. The sheep proved sillier 
 than is even usual ; it ran up and down between them, 
 but clung to the line. At last it made a determined 
 rush toward Jessamine, and she, being inwardly fright- 
 ened (for, though small, it had horns), instead of dash- 
 ing at it with such outcry as she could make, shrank 
 back out of the way, drawing her skirts together, and 
 letting it get past to the line beyond. A shout from 
 Macgillvray carried a note of derision ; sooner than 
 tolerate it, she recalled her courage, tore after the 
 sheep at her utmost speed, got in front of it again, and 
 drove it back toward him with desperate bravery. It 
 began to be really exciting. 
 
 It was the first time Jessamine had tasted real com- 
 radeship with a man. Comradeship is impossible 
 where sex is predominant, and in the refined world 
 which she had forsaken sex stands opposite to sex, the 
 stronger with the stirrings of an exhausted sensuality, 
 the weaker comporting itself as a rechercht morsel 
 which knows its price. But here all was changed. 
 This stalwart peasant saw her only as a serviceable
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 73 
 
 human being; he shouted orders in a peremptory tone 
 as he ran hither and thither, and she made every effort 
 to obey them, sending back shrill retorts when neces- 
 sary, her voice forsaking, in the exigency of the 
 moment, that sweet lowness which is an excellent thing 
 in drawing rooms. 
 
 All this rush and scramble was a matter of a few 
 minutes. Suddenly an electric something flashed into 
 Jessamine's face and changed it. In her look and 
 movements great effort had hitherto been discernible, 
 but now a vivid uncontrollable spontaneity animated 
 her. Her quick eye had seen the expected train 
 approaching behind Macgillvray, and at the same 
 moment she saw that, occupied with running and 
 shouting, he heard nothing. He was about fifty yards 
 distant from her, and at the instant of her discovery, 
 abandoning without a shadow of hesitation both the 
 sheep and herself, she dashed forward at him along the 
 line, her arms wildly outstretched, and a shriek of 
 warning upon her lips. It was a swift, unpremedi- 
 tated, and scarcely conscious action. She came back 
 to a more normal state to find herself being snatched 
 by Macgillvray from the embankment, the sheep tum- 
 bling down headlong-beside them, while the train flew 
 past with horrid din. 
 
 "Why, what ails the lass?" cried Macgillvray. 
 
 His rude grasp was still upon her; her slight figure 
 yielded, and her cheek and hair rested against the 
 rough texture of his coat. When he saw her eyes close 
 and a quiver distort her lips, he forgot the distinction 
 of rank which hitherto he had been so careful to record 
 in the least shade of his bearing, and thought only how
 
 74 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 tones of the voice and the homely pressure of firm 
 muscle may reassure human terror. The sheep mean- 
 while began to tear up the road in the right direction, 
 and the train disappeared. 
 
 "Why, what will be ailing her?" he repeated with 
 emotion. "She will be looking as frightened as the 
 poor beastie itself. It will be too much running for 
 her, after all. Oh, I am most sorry ! I am most 
 sorry !" 
 
 "Oh, no! no! no!" cried Jessamine, opening her 
 eyes and giving a great sigh. "I thought you didn't 
 see the train ! Oh, I thought you didn't see it ! I 
 thought Oh, I don't know what I thought!" 
 
 And then "scales," as it were, fell from her eyes. 
 She knew that there was no scare, neither had there 
 been danger or alarm. Suddenly she realized that her 
 terror had been the creation of inexperience, and that 
 Macgillvray, treating her as one would treat a foolish, 
 terrified child, was holding her in a close embrace. 
 She snatched herself from his arms, the side which he 
 had so rudely pressed, blushing unseen with angry 
 shame, and stood defiantly apart, fury flecking her 
 cheeks and dropping a veil upon her eyes. 
 
 Macgillvray, when she withdrew from him, let his 
 arms fall, and stood contemplating her with an aspect 
 of quiet wonder. Upon this at last a pucker of amuse- 
 ment stole. It began to dawn upon him that this 
 slight whiff of humanity had supposed his own large 
 and vigorous person to be in danger, and had flung 
 herself forward to save him. It tickled all his heart 
 and filled his whole nature with ecstatic laughter; yet 
 so gentle and tender an expression crossed the mighty
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 75 
 
 amusement of his smile that it went far to win him 
 forgiveness. 
 
 "Oh, no," he said; "oh, no. I'm all right" his 
 voice disparaged himself "I'm all right, whatever." 
 
 Then he turned to his horse, and vaguely touched 
 the harness about its nose. After which he took the 
 reins suddenly into his hand. 
 
 "We will be going home now," said he gravely. 
 "The sheep is safe, and it is all well over." 
 
 Jessamine, still furious and still shivering, found no 
 method by which to assert her outraged dignity. The 
 mere sense of mass in the nature of this man compelled 
 her; she felt rather than saw the tranquil expectation 
 of his eye, and her resources ran down to nothing. 
 With a completely subdued air she got in by his side, 
 and they drove off in silence.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE thing discriminated from all else is the point of 
 danger. Ever since the coming of Miss Jessamine 
 Halliday among them, Macgillvray had felt her differ- 
 ence from anything he had seen before with the inten- 
 sity of a dumbly artistic nature; he was profoundly 
 aware of her beauty, he knew it to the slightest ex- 
 pressive turn of her head, and the willful manner of 
 the smallest of the tresses about her brow. It was 
 only the balance of his mind which kept his feet firmly 
 gripped upon his own standpoint ; the rock, however 
 much the light plays tricks with it, is still a rock, and 
 though a mute poetry clung about him, and though 
 gentleness and sweetness grew, lichenlike, upon him, 
 the sturdier qualities which had disturbed Miss Halli- 
 day's conclusions were the essential matter. So that, 
 just as he turned a face of unbroken patience to the 
 buffets of the climate under which he toiled, he could 
 confront this will-o'-the-wisp loveliness, whose somber 
 eyes cried their own warning, by the inward power 
 which he possessed of reticence over his own thought. 
 Our practiced virtues marshal themselves when the 
 tug of trial comes. 
 
 Here, dull though it might be, was his road, and no- 
 where else; such a man and no other was he; and not 
 an inch would he budge from his estimate of himself 
 and his surroundings, but would keep his everyday 
 
 76
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 77 
 
 relation to dry facts undisturbed, damming up the 
 surging element of the imagination with the superb 
 pride of common sense. 
 
 It was on the evening after the incident on the rail- 
 road that this attitude was for the first time disturbed. 
 That night he sat in his cottage with his head in his 
 hands. He could not control the spark that seemed 
 to run from his throat to his heart and burn there 
 every time he remembered the manner in which she 
 had risked herself in absurd fears for him ; he could 
 not rid himself of a phantom pressure against his side, 
 of an enfolded something within his arms, of every 
 slight shade of the moment's sensations which, unno- 
 ticed at the time (for his grasp of her had been rude 
 and unconsidered), now returned and settled upon him 
 as birds come home at eventide to roost. Outside the 
 hills, which from childhood had reached him the help 
 of their tranquillity, lay in the eternal sameness of 
 their profound and beautiful peace; he scarcely dared 
 lift his glance toward them, so conscious was he that 
 his own eyes were changed. 
 
 At last he rose, and went out to stand on the thresh- 
 old of his home ; he pressed his hand upon his brow 
 and eyes, and then his glance traveled slowly and 
 deliberately over the stony, meager land upon which for 
 a century his fathers before him and he himself at last 
 had toiled in stubborn patience, and from which annu- 
 ally they had taken Nature's niggard reward. He sur- 
 veyed his six poor fields the barley and the oats, the 
 turnip and potato drills, the scant rough pasture long 
 and steadily. The herdboy drove his cows to the 
 shed and the calves gamboled beside them ; the lad
 
 7 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 shouted as he went to the fowls which had got into the 
 oatfield ; some doves wheeled from the roof of his 
 barn ; the smoke poured down from the ill-built chim- 
 ney over the side of the house ; near at hand was a 
 stack of peat, and there a heap of manure; two horses 
 cropped heather in the hollows; and, close by, his old 
 peasant father, in greasy clothes and with smoke- 
 stained face, crept slowly about, prodding at the earth 
 with the staff in his hand, as though unable to wean 
 himself from a habit of patient interrogation of its 
 stony surface. All these things Colin looked at with 
 a consciously deliberate gaze, teaching himself once 
 more what manner of man he was. And then he 
 remembered with infinite relief that the next day was 
 the Sabbath. 
 
 When the sun crept next morning into Jessamine's 
 bedroom and laid a beam like a sword across her 
 breast, she opened her eyes sufficiently to pass into a 
 waking dream, but not enough to gather about her 
 those feints and evasions under which she had been 
 taught to drive Nature into cover. She lay, her eyes 
 shining between her lashes, conscious only of warmth 
 and well-being, and for the moment as bare to feeling 
 as any pagan girl. The feeling was like a dream, and 
 the dream was a memory. At first her mind recalled 
 Macgillvray's words and played round them, bestowing 
 fanciful meanings; then his rude forceful pressure 
 returned again upon her slender figure with an alluring 
 yet terrifying sweetness ; from the chaotic web of light 
 and shade in the room his face rekindled in its kind 
 solicitude ; and lower than the obvious blowing of the
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 79 
 
 wind outside was the tender emotion of his voice in 
 her ear. 
 
 The next moment the sun, escaping more completely 
 from the clouds, smote her upon the face with another 
 ray which actually wakened her; she started up in bed, 
 and, setting her feet upon the floor, stood with her 
 dark hair tumbling in disheveled waves to her knees, 
 an angry spark in her eye and a frown upon her brow. 
 
 She could hardly have distinguished whether it was 
 against Macgillvray or herself that her wrath was 
 pointed. 
 
 It was Sunday, and Sunday with the McKenzies was 
 a scene of dullness. 
 
 Jessamine's sitting room was an uncompromising 
 chamber, a prim square place, in which a Puritan under 
 the Stuarts might have sat nursing his rage against the 
 world and human nature. It had for sole adornment 
 upon the walls a map, not of the country, but of the 
 Calvinistic scheme, drawn out in diagrams for the 
 assistance of the believing few and the terror of the lax 
 many : at the left-hand corner of the map, in a melan- 
 choly ellipse, the damned went forth to flames and 
 worms; at the right-hand corner, in a no less sorrowful 
 shape, the elect marched out to thrones and psalms. 
 Beneath this stern relic Jessamine sat, recalling all the 
 defenses of society against spontaneity, and pinching 
 the heart out of her timid bit of nature. 
 
 The fascination of the life between Drynock and 
 Dalfaber had lain in the element of resistance which 
 met her upon every side. Had she been flattered and 
 easily accepted, it is probable she would have sickened 
 of her experiment before this, and have returned
 
 8o A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN". 
 
 repentant to the bosom of Aunt Arabella. But no 
 second-rate lady had ever struggled more ardently to 
 get into a first-rate aristocratic drawing room than had 
 Jessamine to penetrate into this inner life of the sturdy 
 Highland peasant, and hitherto she had failed. Fail- 
 ure meant pique, and pique gave zest to higher motives. 
 It was not so much, she felt, the individuals that 
 repulsed her as their common reality of life. This 
 reality in them appeared to reject her as inevitably as 
 a healthy tissue will reject a morbid growth. 
 
 But had the taste of it which she had just procured 
 agreed with her? What was the price of becoming as 
 real as these wholesome Highlanders, and bundling the 
 host of fictions and fastidiousnesses, in which she had 
 been bred, out of doors? 
 
 Ah, that price ! The fascination of this genuine sim- 
 plicity and naturalness lay possibly only on the exterior 
 surface, and might be lost if she penetrated too far. 
 Indeed, with what unlooked-for dangers might not fur- 
 ther discovery be accompanied, and with what sur- 
 prises ! Something in the memory of that rude, firm 
 grasp of Macgillvray's arms upon her was fraught with 
 terror; his simplicity and directness were in themselves 
 an alarm, so brusque was he, yet so tender. 
 
 "I am very, very angry!" said Jessamine. 
 
 And even as she said it the moment came back in 
 such strong, appealing sweetness that it overwhelmed 
 the wrath. Thus one thought, with harelike cunning, 
 doubles on another that pursues it. 
 
 "My God!" murmured the girl, with her hand over 
 her eyes, in an inexplicable medley of emotion and in 
 very real fear.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAb r . 81 
 
 Being Sunday, Jessamine was banished all day to 
 the parlor. She wished the McKenzies were not such 
 rigid Sabbath-keepers, and that she could have sur- 
 rounded herself with the cheerful atmosphere of the 
 kitchen, and broken the monotony by activity with 
 pots and pans, for her restlessness increased. As it 
 was, she had no resource save reading, so she took out 
 a novel from the bookcase. It was a book considered 
 by the sick nurses of propriety as eminently suitable 
 to the virgin mind. The morning dragged away, the 
 afternoon came, and Jessamine closed the book with a 
 sense of nausea. 
 
 "Something has gone wrong with this author," said 
 she; "I used to like her. All this talk of duty and 
 good manners now seems to me sickly and rotten. I 
 don't think Dr. Cornerstone would approve of it. 
 I even believe he would call it 'invalidish.' " 
 
 She threw it aside and went out into the wholesome 
 air and sunshine. As she put her hat on she told her- 
 self that Macgillvray was not in her mind, yet she 
 took the way to Dalfaber. Instead, however, of pass- 
 ing the cottage, she walked down to the loch, and sat 
 upon the bank to watch the flow and sport of the 
 ripples. About her spread the fields of barley and of 
 oats; she looked on them as Colin had done the night 
 before, yet with different eyes; already the barley 
 ripened on the stalk, and she knew that the harvesting 
 must begin. Then, again, as Colin had done, she 
 looked to the hills; the afternoon light pinked out 
 every bush and rocky angle, and deepened the shade 
 in the crevices, and burned into the tints, so that the 
 hues of the heather became more roseate and the grass
 
 82 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 and mosses greener, and flames of color stole like still 
 fire hither and thither; a delicious undertone of flap- 
 ping water, scarcely heard and yet apparent, lulled her 
 ear; the wind was in the trees, but not on her; the sun 
 flung light and shade, as seed scattered from a sower's 
 hand, upon the loch, and the clouds (beautiful players) 
 moved, floated, changed, catching the light and hiding 
 it, throwing it over the hills and withdrawing it, with 
 the noiselessness of serene nature, the great sweet 
 sport of universal beauty at one with itself, content. 
 
 Jessamine looked and listened. All day she had 
 been trying to goad into activity the small fry of con- 
 ventionality, but the effort died out; she fell instead 
 under a grave and strange presentiment. For there 
 crept upon her mind the dim consciousness of a differ- 
 ence in herself; it lay there like a weight, with the 
 heaviness of an unborn child. But, also, it was accom- 
 panied with a sense of physical well-being, of oneness 
 with the very heather on which she sat, so that she 
 stretched her bare hands out and lifted her unveiled 
 face to the sunshine and the sweet blowing of the wind. 
 And that vague pleasurable emotion which had wak- 
 ened with her in the unguarded morning hours returned 
 thrivingly in the sunshine. 
 
 Suddenly from the west, like a trumpet call, shot up 
 a red flame, and lit a beacon upon the hills. Jessa- 
 mine shook off her dream, rose to her feet, and took 
 her way back to Macgillvray's land. With more active 
 movement a buzzing of discomforting ideas returned. 
 She pictured the peasant as coarsely and consciously 
 reminiscent of yesterday's occurrence, and portrayed 
 to the eye of her mind the offensive smile with which
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 83 
 
 he might greet her. The blood flecked her cheek, and 
 again a spark was in her eye; she made ready such 
 weapons as she judged would tell. On gaining the top 
 of the slope from which Macgillvray's cottage looked 
 down, she beheld him approaching at a distance. He 
 came through a narrow path in a field of oats ; his collie 
 ran to meet him ; the shrubby birch wood flanked the 
 field in a half circle; there was no other figure in sight. 
 
 Jessamine walked toward him firmly and deliber- 
 ately. She meant to incline her head with the indiffer- 
 ence which had been in the old life her daily practice, 
 and which was of all things the most fitting in the man- 
 ner of a high-born lady toward a rustic. Her lips, 
 touching each other without any grimace of firmness, 
 yet held the onlooker distant, and when, as Colin came 
 near, she raised her eyes, their shafts were icy. 
 
 Here, however, the Unexpected tripped her up. 
 
 The face her glance swept contained, as she saw at 
 once, no hint of consciousness, nor of any recollection 
 which was touched with levity. The man's eyes were 
 raised and onlooking; a serious gentleness lay upon his 
 lips; his brow had its old aloofness. The impressions 
 of the Sabbath evening service had not passed from 
 him ; he had from that sparse sowing reaped richly of 
 his own spirituality, and he carried still about him his 
 own thoughts. So that Jessamine's prepared demeanor 
 stumbled, as it were, against the massive unprepared- 
 ness of a preoccupied mind. She received even be- 
 fore her own condescending little gesture was ready 
 the courteous dismissal of Macgillvray's hat-lift and 
 the grave glance of his eyes in her direction. Then he 
 relapsed into meditation and passed on.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE small hours of Monday morning were washed 
 with showers. When Colin opened his cottage door, 
 the clouds had cleared and the sun shone; but a fra- 
 grant smell of rain lingered in the air, and a grateful 
 moisture intensified the hues of the heather, the 
 myriad tints and flash and flame of color. 
 
 "It will rain again before noon," said Colin, his eyes 
 fixed on the clear hue of a distant hill, behind which a 
 small but ominous tail of cloud streamed up into the 
 ether. 
 
 "Ay!" said old Rorie, staring about with open 
 mouth to supplement the dimness of his eyes. 
 
 "Lad, are ye remembering how ye promised John 
 McKenzie to take the cart up to Drynock?" called 
 Mrs. Macgillvray, a woman with a voice sharpened by 
 retrospective grievances. 
 
 "I'm not forgetting," returned Colin. 
 
 And he stepped out on the moor and went toward 
 the fields, his head up, his brow stern with some tena- 
 cious resolve. But his eyes were soft as they followed 
 the long lines of the oatfields, the green still faintly 
 sprinkled amid the gold, and the blades bowed with 
 the heaviness of ripening, tawny red. 
 
 When the dinner hour came, Colin appeared again 
 in the cottage. There was an unaccustomed weariness 
 in his face, and he wiped the sweat from his brow, 
 
 84
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 85 
 
 though he had not been putting any great force into 
 his work, and though the morning was fresh. Indeed, 
 new clouds hurried up in the sky, and a wind had 
 arisen. Mrs. Macgillvray pushed a smoking plate of 
 porridge toward him as he seated himself at the table. 
 He took a spoonful and dipped it in the milk, but he 
 did not eat with appetite. 
 
 "Ye were taking the cart to Drynock for John?" 
 asked his mother, her eye anxiously fixed on old 
 Rorie's somewhat uncertain operations with the 
 spoon. 
 
 "I was working in the barn," returned Colin. 
 
 "Aweel, lad!" put in old Rorie. "John will be ill 
 pleased with ye." - 
 
 "Maybe," answered Colin. 
 
 He fed himself again with the porridge, but his hand 
 was unsteady, and underneath the ruddy sunburn his 
 cheek was pale. Presently he put his spoon down, and 
 stared fixedly at the closed door; then he rose, opened 
 it, and looked out. This happened twice. 
 
 "What will be ailing ye, laddie?" cried his mother. 
 
 "I was thinking somebody was knocking," returned 
 Colin confusedly. "Mother, I've done, and I'll be 
 going out to see after the horse." 
 
 "But ye are not through with that porridge !" 
 
 "I have done, though. A body need not be eating 
 more than he wants." 
 
 "It will be a sinfu' waste." 
 
 "It will be a worse if I was choking myself." 
 
 "Gude save us! the laddie's ill! Staring at the door 
 like a bogle, and leaving good porridge on the 
 aschette !"
 
 86 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "I'm all right, mother," answered Colin, correcting 
 some confusion of face by a smile. 
 
 Then he went to the outhouses, and fetched a halter, 
 and walked down among the heathery hollows, where 
 his horse stood thrusting his nose into the purple tufts 
 and cropping them short. Colin brought him up to 
 the cart, and harnessed him. 
 
 "It will be an easy thing," said he with a grim look, 
 "to see the way clear when a body's in the kirk, and 
 when nothing comes betwixt the talking of the heart 
 and the Lord. I was meaning John McKenzie to fetch 
 the cart himself to Drynock, and to go for the coal his 
 lane. When a body is clean daft, he must be his own 
 keeper, let folks think what they will. But Gude save 
 me if I can bear her knocking at my heart and at the 
 door of my cot any longer, and not make answer!" 
 
 Then he took the way to Drynock. 
 
 "You are late, Colin," said McKenzie, as his friend 
 pulled up the cart in front of the creeper-covered 
 porch. 
 
 "I am late," he responded shortly. 
 
 "Aweel, there will be the whole afternoon before 
 us, and time enough will be as good as any time, I'm 
 thinking." 
 
 "Oh, yes!" 
 
 "You will be coming with me? We can load the 
 cart quicker together." 
 
 Colin leaned back against his horse, and did not 
 immediately respond. His eyes sought through the 
 open door of the kitchen for a glimpse of the bright 
 presence of Jessamine. The kitchen was empty. Mrs. 
 McKenzie's dolly-tub stood with some of the wet linen
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 87 
 
 hanging on the side ; a heap of unwashed things were 
 tossed on the settle. He glanced round the yard and 
 the garden, and then he caught sight of Mrs. McKen- 
 zie standing near the road and looking up it, her hand 
 shading her eyes. Before he had responded to 
 McKenzie's request, she turned round and walked 
 toward them, some perturbation of mind disturbing 
 the habitual serenity of her brow. 
 
 "Colin," said she, "you were not passing Miss Halli- 
 day along the road as you were coming?" 
 
 "I was passing no one," returned Colin, his heart 
 thumping. 
 
 "I'm fretting a bit over her. I'd very much rather 
 she would just be taking her walks about the moor and 
 the roads, but she was ever very willful since she came. 
 And this morning she would not hearken to counsel." 
 
 Colin did not reply. He looked hard at Mrs. 
 McKenzie, and it seemed to him that he was staring at 
 a dark place whence words, which he knew beforehand, 
 would issue ominously. 
 
 "And so, for all I was saying," continued Mrs. 
 McKenzie, "she must take her way this morning 
 through the deer forest and up to Craggan More, carry- 
 ing her bit lunch in her hand." 
 
 Colin turned sharply to McKenzie, as though to 
 respond to his request. 
 
 "I have work to do," said he; "I will not be coming 
 with you." 
 
 "Bide a wee, Colin!" cried Mrs. McKenzie. "Will 
 the deer be getting dangerous? The lassie has been 
 gone a weary time, and storm is gathering." 
 
 "Ay, they will be getting dangerous."
 
 83 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 And without another word he turned on his heel, 
 leaped over the fence, and ran back toward Dalfaber, 
 and on to the deer forest at the top of his speed. 
 
 That morning Jessamine had waked with a sore 
 heart. 
 
 "I will not work," said she; "what does anything 
 matter? I wish there were somewhere for me to hide 
 myself and lose myself, that I might cry all the tears 
 out of my heart and no one see. It is horrible to be 
 despised." 
 
 Mrs. McKenzie prepared for the weekly washing 
 after breakfast, and put the cups and saucers aside for 
 Jessamine's share of the work. Then she set the inner 
 door open, and, presently looking up, saw the girl 
 standing there, the dark, dusty little staircase down 
 which she had just descended throwing off her profile, 
 with its delicate pale despondency, the rays of spare 
 light tenderly touching the curves of her cheek and 
 the ruffled rings of her dark hair, and tracing the fair, 
 slim lines of her figure. 
 
 Mrs. McKenzie, looking at her penetratingly in the 
 brief moment when she dangled her hat in her hand 
 before raising her eyes and speaking, read in her mien 
 a total disruption of the morning's arrangements, and 
 sighed. Then occurred that little passage between 
 good counsel and willfulness which she had described 
 to Colin. When the girl had taken her basket and 
 passed out, Mrs. McKenzie stepped to the door and 
 looked after her with the steady benediction of her 
 motherly eyes. 
 ' "The lassie's young," said she, "and it's an ill thing
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 89 
 
 when one's young to get properly acquaint with one's 
 own heart. Seems like as though we started life with 
 a stranger in the bosom, who will be taking up a deal 
 of our good time. When we're a bit settled down in 
 life we get used to it, and leave taking so much note 
 of what will be going on in our own insides, and we 
 will just be remembering that others' insides will be in 
 the same ill-chance as our own. Gude send she comes 
 to no harm !" 
 
 Jessamine, whose small bark of experience was far 
 from being anchored by this tranquil wisdom, was 
 attracted by the width and silence and loneliness of 
 the fir woods, and fancied that she could sit all day 
 among the trees and solve the problems of her heart 
 by thinking of them. 
 
 The wood was fenced on one side ; there was a road 
 through it, but the gate was locked. Therefore an 
 entrance into the place involved a climb of some kind. 
 The locking of the gate which was done to the high 
 inconvenience of the people of the place was the act 
 of the proprietor, a man who lived in the country for 
 one month in the year and shot over the land. But 
 the road had been closed for many weeks beyond this 
 one month, and when Jessamine had climbed the fence 
 she found about her an untrodden wildness which 
 delighted her. The road was heather-covered, the cart 
 ruts showing only as deep lines of shadow among the 
 rank purple blooms; spiders' webs woven from tuft to 
 tuft glittered with the raindrops which the sun had not 
 yet licked up; and the bluish translucent mist, which 
 hovered beneath the thick growing branches of the 
 young firs, was pierced with shafts of brilliant un-
 
 go A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 touched color purple and crimson heaths, emerald 
 ferns, carmine fungi, blood red cranberry leaves, rich 
 browns, and pale variegated lichens. Above, between 
 the fine lace of the topmost branches, the blue of the 
 sky was of unfathomed depth, and over it the hurry 
 and disorder of wisplike clouds kept passing at inter- 
 vals, like the ranks of a flying squadron. Amid this 
 undisturbed loveliness the girl went slowly with her 
 graceful, dainty tread, swinging her basket in her hand 
 and lifting her fair face to receive the painting of the 
 sun. It was lonely to eeriness ; but her health was 
 splendid, and in nerve and fiber she was strong. As 
 to danger, inexperience forbade her to conceive it 
 possible. 
 
 The road wound upward almost to the top ; here 
 bare crags escaped from a dwindling edge of trees and 
 lifted their scarred sides to the sky. The point of the 
 hill was called Craggan More, and it was Jessamine's 
 first design to reach the summit ; but before she was 
 halfway up she saw between the branches a place al- 
 most clear of the wood, and where the heather spread 
 bare and purple. Then she left the road, and, pushing 
 through the thicket, reached the heather, and flung 
 herself down to rest. 
 
 From her position she commanded a good view of 
 the country ; among the more familiar landmarks she 
 saw the loch that lay below Dalfaber, and on the moor 
 above the brown thatched cottage. Fixing her eyes 
 upon it, she clasped her hands round her knees and 
 began to think. 
 
 This was her first half-conscious recognition of the 
 fact that she was nearing her own life problem. She
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAX. 91 
 
 had been instructed by Aunt Arabella into the duty of 
 a girl to repress feeling, to hold herself poised between 
 relative advantages until the event culminated from 
 the outside. As to her own nature, of that she had 
 heard nothing; passion, she had been taught, was an 
 offensive word and an unladylike allusion. But dicta 
 of this kind have been proved before now ineffectual 
 when genuine emotion is in question. What she was 
 feeling might be right or wrong, decorous or indeco- 
 rous ; that was not the point. She partly realized that 
 she did feel that her heart, hitherto cold and virginal 
 as snow, was melting and opening beneath an influence 
 that was as new as it was strange. So self-conscious 
 a creature as Jessamine could not wholly miss this 
 change in herself, nor the subtle delight of the entrance 
 of the fresh experience within. She was far more 
 inclined to yield to, and dally with, her sensations than 
 to direct them. There were not in her whole repertory 
 any reasons at all for conduct one way or another, 
 except the reason that a course was comme il fant or 
 not comme ilfaut, as the case might be; and this was 
 not likely to prove efficient before the strongest of the 
 natural impulses. It was true she possessed a vein of 
 hard appreciation of the advantageous as distinguished 
 from the disadvantageous in a worldly point of view. 
 That, however, if it ever came to a severe struggle 
 between inclination and moral force, was only likely to 
 weaken the decision by confusing the issue. Great 
 decisions are won only upon clear, simple lines, and it 
 is merely a sign of feeble character to take too many 
 points into consideration when resolutions have to be 
 made.
 
 92 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 Jessamine had just reached the phase when the stir- 
 ring of her nature like the rising of the sap in spring 
 threw her upon an unusual activity of mind as well as 
 body, her whole self putting out new buds and leaves, 
 here and there and everywhere, of thought, and feel- 
 ing, and beauty, and health. She was occupied at 
 present with the unmixed delight which characterizes 
 the opening of a passion before the more difficult 
 stages are reached. But her acute little mind seized 
 at once on that general opposition which is sure to 
 meet an individual excursion from the realm of the 
 accustomed, and she felt it already as an injustice, as a 
 too great demand upon personal sacrifice, to be re- 
 quired to keep to a beaten path which she had had no 
 responsibility in shaping, which she had been taught was 
 advantageous but had had no means of trying for her- 
 self, and which, indeed, in the initial stages, she already 
 cordially hated. Unawares mingled with the percep- 
 tiveness of her thinking, it was pictorial rather than 
 reasoned, yet the sense of contrast between this dawn- 
 ing spontaneity and the flat range of her former ideas 
 of life was clear enough, and she discovered it to be 
 alluring. 
 
 It was scarcely a deliberate meditation into which 
 she fell ; thoughts hitherto strangers passed into her 
 mind without her knowing how or why; a sense of 
 greatness overshadowed her, of isolation, a prevision 
 freed from the tiresome details which she had been 
 wont to call "considerations." For when Nature is 
 very near, she has a hand with which to touch the 
 remote springs, and to bring to the surface hidden and 
 unspoken matters which lie slumbering within.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 A HIGHER wind came suddenly in the fir trees, and 
 a drop of rain fell upon Jessamine's hand. She looked 
 up, and saw clouds hurrying from the east, and long- 
 trails of rack stretching over the sky, and shadows roll- 
 ing upon the hills. A shower descended visibly over 
 the furthest range, and drew over it a glittering veil. 
 The glow of color was changing into silvery grays and 
 duns, but the sun still rode high in the heavens, shoot- 
 ing shafts of light into the heart of the mists, and 
 keeping the air around wonderfully clear, so that the 
 nearer landscape gathered in distinctness, and Dal- 
 faber, with its loch, its fields of corn, and its brown 
 thatched cottage, stood out like an etching of Durer's. 
 
 Jessamine did not move. In spite of the threaten- 
 ing drop upon her hand, she sat still to watch the con- 
 tention of light and shadow as the mists encroached 
 upon the valley, and it pleased her fancy to see how Dal- 
 faber shone like a jewel on a somber nebulous garment, 
 chancing, as it did, to concentrate the bright scarce rays 
 upon itself. Her dreaming was over; the whole en- 
 campment of vivid images stole away from her heart, 
 and left it sadder and more desolate than before. 
 
 Luminous thinking was rare with her. To see any- 
 thing in its essential simplicity and incontrovertible 
 verity was, with her, as a rift in a cloudy sky that closed 
 again. Upon a mood of clear intellectual activity and 
 
 93
 
 94 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 of genuine discrimination followed the accustomed 
 parodies of those powers. She had never learned to 
 look anything in the face, or to concentrate herself 
 upon it; the eyes of her mind glanced hither and 
 thither. So that after any short spell of thinking, be- 
 fore she knew it, a host of distracting by-thoughts and 
 fictions ran into her mind with hot pattering feet and 
 perplexing rapidity, and all that she possessed of native 
 genius remained but to assert itself in a sad foreboding 
 of martyrdom, and a more mournful prevision of per- 
 sonal apostasy. 
 
 "I cannot think," said Jessamine, whimsically point- 
 ing what is a common experience to her own case, "but 
 the Aunt Arabella in me gets into it and spoils it." 
 
 It must have been close to noon when her reverie 
 permitted her for the first time to distinguish from the 
 slow regular rustle of wind in the branches, and the 
 occasional fall of a raindrop, the sound of something 
 stirring near at hand. She turned round with a start, 
 to behold among the trees behind the red side and 
 branching antlers of a stag. It was cropping heather, 
 and was partly hidden by the interlaced foliage of the 
 firs, so that it did not see her. But this sudden appre- 
 hension of alien life close beside her was infinitely 
 uncanny, and a remembrance of Mrs. McKenzie's 
 warning made her look upon the creature with alarm. 
 
 'Tf I keep very still," thought she, "it will go away 
 without seeing me." 
 
 The stag, however, showed no signs of retiring, but 
 continued to crop the heather with short snatching 
 noises. For full half an hour she sat in a silent tension 
 watching, the situation pressing upon her with a more
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 95 
 
 and more painful sense of loneliness; the hurrying of 
 the clouds overhead seemed inconsequently to increase 
 the feeling, while the sight of the unattainable refuge 
 of Dalfaber, lying below in homely security, made her 
 heart yearn hungrily. As the moments dragged on, it 
 began to appear as though she and the stag were hung 
 midway between earth and heaven in a world of their 
 own, which to her was terrible. 
 
 Then the stag raised its head, and saw her. Her 
 heart leaped when those strange wild eyeballs rolled 
 upon her own. For full ten minutes the forest crea- 
 ture stood motionless, gazing at her with a pair of 
 humid, startled eyes, its branching antlers proudly 
 lifted ; and Jessamine in mortal fear stared back. 
 
 And still she was acutely aware of Dalfaber lying 
 below, with the smoke curling steadily out of the old 
 chimney. It seemed to her that her spirit flew out of 
 her body, and flung itself knocking and crying at the 
 door. 
 
 The stag began slowly to move round and round in 
 a circle. She followed it with her eyes. Sometimes it 
 got behind the trees, and she lost command of it for 
 the moment, and then her nerves shivered in an 
 extremity of expectation. Presently it began to make 
 its circle smaller and smaller, and to gradually disen- 
 tangle itself from the trees. She dared not stir, but 
 still trusted to quietude and the steadiness of her own 
 glance; but at last the creature stopped, stretched out 
 its throat, and gave a frightful bellow. Jessamine, who 
 was wholly unprepared for the sound, was startled out 
 of her self-control, and she sprang to her feet with a 
 cry. Then the creature set its head down, and rushed
 
 96 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 toward her. She flung her basket at it, and fled toward 
 the shelter of the trees. For the moment the basket 
 saved her. The stag stopped, and gave her time to 
 reach the thicket ; but Jessamine, as she pushed her 
 way frantically through the close-growing branches, 
 saw over her shoulder, with sickening horror, how the 
 beast tore and trampled on the basket until it was in 
 shreds. Desperate now, and completely unnerved, she 
 rushed through the wood at exhausting speed, over the 
 hidden bowlders and treacherous clumps of heather 
 and fern, breaking her way through the interlaced 
 branches as best she could, her clothes torn, her hands 
 bleeding, and her face smarting from the frequent strik- 
 ing of twigs against it. Her aim was to reach the old 
 heather-covered road, for when in it she would know 
 in what direction to run, and fancied that fleetness 
 might carry her safely to the fence in time. By good 
 luck she made her way through the thicket pretty 
 straight to the desired point. The trees became larger 
 and wider apart, and she saw the road through them ; 
 but as she neared it, the mad, crashing sounds in her 
 rear which had been to her like the goading of a 
 nightmare of terror suddenly seemed in front. Halt- 
 ing for a second to listen, she heard the stag some- 
 where to the left, and before she had time to effectu- 
 ally conceal herself, it bounded out into the road, and 
 stood still, turning its head about, and snuffing the air; 
 then again it bellowed. 
 
 Jessamine's heart leaped in her body, and her throat 
 was so dry that her breath hurt her; her limbs began 
 to fail, and she clung to the shelter of a large tree, and 
 gained a moment's respite. But the stag saw her
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMA.V. 97 
 
 immediately, and trotted in her direction. She darted 
 from that tree and reached another, glancing frantic- 
 ally round to see if there were time to scramble up and 
 take refuge in the branches. But before her trembling 
 hands had grasped the lowest twigs the stag was rush- 
 ing forward again, and she was compelled to flee toward 
 a new shelter. 
 
 "O Colin, Colin!" cried the horror-stricken girl. 
 
 For an hour of time, with limbs that seemed each 
 moment less capable of sustaining her, and with strain- 
 ing eyes that grew more and more blind, and ears that 
 were deafened by the horrible singing in her head, 
 Jessamine saved herself from the onslaught of the 
 beast by the expedient of darting from tree to tree. 
 She hoped by degrees to near the fence, but the crea- 
 ture still followed her, and she seemed no nearer the con- 
 fines of the forest than when the despefate game began. 
 Then the sense that a moment must come when her 
 strength and her wits would inevitably fail began to 
 sap the little remaining courage which she possessed ; 
 and finally the thing she dreaded most of all hap- 
 pened she lost her footing, and fell headlong over a 
 clump of heather, only saving herself from rolling help- 
 lessly over and over by snatching at the friendly trunk 
 of a pine tree near. Unable to regain her feet, the 
 most complete despair settled upon her, and she 
 uttered shriek upon shriek of anguish that tore her 
 throat. Then the strength even to do that failed ; she 
 yielded herself to the bitterness of death, and lost 
 every kind of sense and consciousness, saving an 
 extremity of horror and darkness and a quivering of 
 the flesh in terrific expectation.
 
 9 8 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 But the fate she waited for delayed ; it began slowly 
 to dawn upon her benumbed senses that the crashing 
 sounds of the stag's progress were arrested ; then she 
 heard it bellow once more at some yards' distance. 
 Opening her fainting eyes with half-terrified hope, she 
 found that it had entangled its antlers in the crooked, 
 close-growing branches of a tree, and was for the mo- 
 ment a prisoner. Relief brought back more of her 
 sense and strength, and then she was enabled to dis- 
 tinguish the reiterated shout of a man's voice some- 
 where in the forest. No flutelike music could have 
 sounded so sweet as that rough sound, and, gathering 
 her forces together, she managed to give an answering 
 cry. And then came the rending and tearing of the 
 underwood again as someone frantically fought a way 
 toward her, shouting as he came. The stag, frightened 
 both at the soifrids and its own imprisoned condition, 
 made frantic efforts to free itself, and at last broke 
 from the branches, and bounded away into the thicket 
 at the very moment when Colin's form became visible 
 among the heavily massed foliage. 
 
 Jessamine was struggling to her feet as he came up, 
 and he put his hands out to help her, bending speech- 
 lessly toward her with a white face. She burst out 
 crying when she saw him, and caught at his coat, cling- 
 ing to him and hiding her face until the horrible shud- 
 dering was overpassed. And he held her silently, his 
 mouth set and grim. 
 
 "Oh!" moaned she, lifting her head at last; "to die 
 like that to die like that !" 
 
 "Ay," he said; "young and so bonnie!" 
 
 Then he threw one arm round her, and helped her
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 99 
 
 along, while with the other he beat back the branches. 
 When they came to the road, he lifted her like a child 
 in his arms. 
 
 "Cannot I walk?" asked Jessamine. 
 
 "Not until we get to the highway," he answered 
 briefly. "Put your arms about my neck; I will be 
 carrying you easier that way." 
 
 She laid her arms about his neck as he bade her, and 
 closed her eyes. And then she heard him give a great 
 sigh, and it seemed to her that for a moment he 
 pressed her tight against his heart. When they 
 reached the highroad, he set her again upon her feet. 
 By this time the rain beat down in a wild shower. He 
 stood so that he could shelter her a little with his 
 body, his hands being thrust into the side pockets of 
 his coat. 
 
 "Bide a wee," said he ; "a cart or something must be 
 passing along in a moment. There are a good few 
 every hour." 
 
 "Oh!" cried Jessamine, her eyes still wide with ter- 
 ror, "if you had not come the stag would have killed 
 me. I could not have run another yard." 
 
 "If it had got you," said he shortly, "there would 
 not have been a live deer left in the forest by morn- 
 ing." 
 
 She looked up. His face was still white and grim, 
 and in his eyes was a somber desperation which could 
 not be lightly banished, and which affected her with a 
 sort of fear. She made no reply, but cowered by his 
 side, while the rain poured down in sheets before them, 
 washing out more and more of the landscape, and, by 
 obliterating their surroundings, concentrating the con-
 
 ioo A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 sciousness of the two upon the small dripping spot of 
 earth which they occupied together. Jessamine shiv- 
 ered not only with retrospective terror, but with fore- 
 boding fear. Glancing up again to his strong figure, 
 and taking an indelible impression from the quiet force 
 of his face, her heart ran down to some remote place 
 of weakness in her being, and it seemed to her that she 
 had been snatched from death only to be set upon 
 some dim-washed islet of earth, where a tremendous 
 and inexplicable claim grasped and held her. 
 
 Both of them were relieved when a cart rumbled 
 along, driven by a man with a mackintosh cap pulled 
 over his nose and a mackintosh cloak pulled over his 
 ears ; the rain ran in rivers over him. Colin stopped the 
 cart, and briefly explaining what had happened, begged 
 the driver to take the exhausted girl back to Drynock. 
 
 "Indeed, and I will," was the gentle Highland 
 reponse. 
 
 And while Colin helped her into the cart the driver 
 unbuttoned his mackintosh to spread over her. It 
 seemed to Jessamine to make everything that had 
 passed more dreamlike and inexplicable, that Mac- 
 gillvray had altered his manner to the old distant 
 respectfulness. 
 
 "Stop!" she cried, as they were about to start. 
 And, leaning over the side of the cart, she stretched 
 her hand to Colin, who came up and took it reluctantly 
 in his own. "If you had not come," she murmured, 
 gazing at him with eyes that were still dazed, "the stag 
 would have killed me." 
 
 She had intended to thank him, but nothing save 
 this lame phrase would rise to her lips.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. IOI 
 
 "I'm thinking," returned Colin, "that we will be 
 quits now." 
 
 A faint smile played for a moment over his white 
 lips; but he withdrew his hand instantly and signed to 
 the driver to proceed. The last Jessamine saw of him 
 was walking along the road, his head turned aside, 
 the inextinguishable grimness still in his face. Then 
 the showers washed him out, and left nothing save a 
 blurred shadow. And she cowered down in the cart 
 under the mackintosh, with her hand pressed tight 
 against her heart.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 MISS HALLIDAY liked her colors in half light; the 
 hues she prefererd were pale primrose, cream, or wan 
 yellows. Nevertheless, one morning, about a week 
 after the stag incident, and when she had entirely 
 recovered the event, she was to be seen ransacking her 
 drawer for a knot of rose-colored ribbon. But her 
 drawer contained no such thing as a bit of bright rib- 
 bon ; though she turned the contents over with eager 
 hands, nothing of the sort was to be found. 
 
 After searching in vain, she stood still in the middle 
 of the poor cottage chamber, the clumsy beams near 
 her head, the little window letting a chill draught stir 
 the skirt of her dress. It was the gray woolen dress 
 with the straight unadorned folds. Her hands were 
 loosely linked, and her body so poised upon thought 
 and so still that it looked like a lovely statue, and the 
 wonderful female face was lifted like a flower. 
 
 Suddenly, with a sobbing exclamation, she stretched 
 out her hand and unhooked from the wall the small 
 looking-glass which formed the sole substitute for the 
 splendid mirrors of yore; it hung in a dark corner, but 
 she carried it to the window and looked critically at 
 the reflection of her own face. Macgillvray, who con- 
 tinually set her in a new light to herself, made even her 
 beauty a matter of interrogation, so that her gaze into 
 the glass was both penetrating and anxious. Out of it
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 103 
 
 looked back to her a small oval face, with a dash of 
 color in the cheeks, exquisite lips, red like cherries, a 
 short dimpled chin, and underneath the winglike eye- 
 brows a pair of large dark eyes with storm in them. 
 The color and the storm were new. She took a knot 
 of pale primrose and then of cream ribbon and tried 
 them against her cheek, but neither satisfied her. A 
 bit of red sweet William with other flowers stood in a 
 vase on her mantelpiece; she tried that. The rich 
 deep velvety hue suited, she saw in a moment, the 
 flamelike signals in her cheeks, the new ripeness of her 
 lips, the wild strange light in her eyes. There was an 
 amazing magical something in her face which the color 
 intensified, and she threw the dejected aesthetic hues 
 (which so ill-suited this leaping up of life within her) 
 away, and, putting on her hat, slipped out without 
 pausing to excuse herself to Mrs. McKenzie, and 
 walked many miles to the nearest shop, and purchased 
 two or three shades of bright-colored ribbons. 
 
 On her return she hurried up to her bedroom again, 
 and tied her ruffled hair up in a little heap above her 
 head, with a tiny knot of the ribbon showing like a 
 spark in the midst, and she fastened a handkerchief of 
 the same color under her collar and long white throat. 
 The walk had flushed and animated her, and when she 
 looked again into the glass a laugh of triumph parted 
 her lips, making her pearly teeth glitter, and dimpling 
 with tender mischievous touches the pretty curves of 
 her chin and cheeks. She threw down the glass and 
 lifted her lovely arms, clasping her hands behind her 
 head. 
 
 "I am beautiful! beautiful! beautiful!" cried she, in
 
 104 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 a strange fervor of conviction. "Ye gods! why have 
 I been made so beautiful?" 
 
 The moment after her arms sank again to her sides, 
 and her body fell into a posture of lassitude, while her 
 brows slightly contracted over some brooding thought. 
 
 "So beautiful," she murmured, "that it frightens 
 me!" 
 
 After which she shook off the impression and went 
 out demurely, without any covering on her head (as 
 she had seen Mrs. McKenzie do), to ask if she could 
 not set her hand to some work. 
 
 In the field opposite the house McKenzie was occu- 
 pied with his stack ; he was covering it with fresh green 
 rushes as a defense against the rain. In the same field 
 Mrs. McKenzie was spreading the morning's washing 
 out to dry. Two cows and a horse pastured near 
 them ; the field had a little curving path through it, 
 and a slope of rising ground ; the fowls picked their 
 way across the road toward the stack, with the air of 
 trespassers who trust a preoccupied world may imagine 
 that they come upon affairs of importance. Mrs. 
 McKenzie, looking up, saw Jessamine with her red rib- 
 bons and uncovered hair unfastening the wicket gate 
 and approaching; McKenzie, glancing down from his 
 ladder, saw her also, and greeted her with the smile of 
 indulgent amusement which was his invariable saluta- 
 tion. She lingered near the stack for a moment, her 
 eyes entreating for a recognition of her beauty, and her 
 lips asking all manner of questions about the rushes 
 and his mode of fastening them on, and what was the 
 most excellent way of preserving a stack from harm, 
 and whether the hay would last all winter for the cows.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 105 
 
 A co\v meanwhile, neglecting its pasture, stretched a 
 moist muzzle over the fence toward the stack with vain 
 and improvident appetite. McKenzie, looking down 
 from his ladder to answer her inquiries, perceived that 
 the play of sunshine on her bright ribbons and wavy 
 hair was a beautiful thing to the eye, and smiled the 
 more because of it. Jessamine turned away satisfied, 
 and passed down the field toward Mrs. McKenzie. 
 
 In Mrs. McKenzie's roomy nature the most astonish- 
 ing event settled down after a time into composure. 
 She had put forth a maternal tendril or so the more 
 on Jessamine's account, and when she saw the girl 
 approaching with the bright ribbons in her hair and a 
 new and nameless grace upon her lips and brow, she 
 raised herself slowly from her stooping posture and 
 looked her over steadily. And she saw, as in a picture, 
 a way opening before her, the most mysterious and 
 dread of our existence, save death itself, and Jessa- 
 mine passing down it alone and unaided. Men call it 
 the way of Love. What erratic, fitful light gleaming 
 out of the astonishing depths in Jessamine's eyes 
 touched her Scotch nature with vague premonition, it 
 would be hard to say ; but the quietude and sobriety 
 with which she received the girl intensified in her gaze 
 as though she would have thrown out some steady 
 anchorage to her help. 
 
 "Lassie," said she in a caressing, grave voice, "are ye 
 fey?" 
 
 "Fey? Oh, no! See! I will help you with the 
 linen." 
 
 And she dragged a sheet with effort out of the 
 basket.
 
 106 A SUPERFLUOUS 
 
 "I have been away all morning," she added. "Have 
 you been busy?" 
 
 "Ay. In this hard country we must be doing all we 
 can, and taking every chance that comes. There will 
 not be any time too much." 
 
 "Where I came from time dragged." 
 
 "Ay. It is all one hour; but a body here will be 
 saying 'Bide a wee,' and a body there will be saying 
 'Go straight on like the lightning.' He is aye ill-treatit 
 is old Time ; he pleases none." 
 
 "And here it is never dreary," murmured Jessamine, 
 with a certain cadence in her voice like the color in her 
 cheeks. 
 
 "When the wunther comes it will be dreary espe- 
 cially the wunther evenings." 
 
 "And when time is dreary, what do you do?" 
 
 "Indeed, we just pass it away as well as we can." 
 
 Jessamine looked round ; the sweet country out-of- 
 door life, the shafts of sunlight, the stir of work, the 
 ripples of laughter from the children who played in the 
 road, filled her heart with melody. 
 
 "In the winter it does not look like this?" she said. 
 
 "In the wunther it is ever bleak and cold; there will 
 be little work to do, and long dark evenings to be sitting 
 still. And the wind drives cauld down the chimney." 
 
 "Have you books to read? There must be some- 
 thing." 
 
 "A few books; but John and me will not be great 
 readers. We have the singing class, though, and that 
 will be something." 
 
 "You sing? Ah, I remember! But how about this 
 class?"
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WO MAX. 107 
 
 "The lads just meet at each other's houses, and then 
 we sing in parts. It passes time away." 
 
 "Does Mr. McKenzie sing?" 
 
 "John is not so much at it. He will not have a very 
 good voice." 
 
 "Do you sing in the class?" 
 
 "Oh, yes ; whiles." 
 
 A pause, during which Jessamine's heart ran on and 
 then tripped up. 
 
 "Does Mr. Macgillvray sing?" asked she, with a 
 throb in her voice. 
 
 Mrs. McKenzie shook out a shirt and held it up in 
 her brawny arms. 
 
 "Colin will not be knowing much about it. He does 
 not know how." 
 
 "Does he not like music?" 
 
 "Oh, yes; he is very much taken up with it indeed." 
 
 "Why, then? Hasn't he a good voice?" 
 
 "Oh, yes; he will have a good voice. But he doesn't 
 know anything." 
 
 "Is he not a reader? I am sure he is fond of 
 books." 
 
 "Colin reads a little now and then; but he is not a 
 scholar; he does not care. He just does his worruk." 
 
 "He is a good farmer," said Jessamine, a shadow on 
 her face. 
 
 "He does not care to improve his farm; he has not 
 any ideas. He just does his worruk." 
 
 "He built those good barns," said Jessamine, an 
 inconsequent fury in her heart. 
 
 "The old ones fell down, and he had to have them 
 built up again. The barns are better than the house,"
 
 io8 A SUPERFLUOUS 
 
 insisted Mrs. McKenzie, with her ordinary deliberate 
 composure. 
 
 "The house with the thatch roof is very pretty, I 
 think." 
 
 "It is a poor place; he might improve it. The top 
 story is just nothing. But Colin does not care. He 
 just does his worruk. That's Colin." 
 
 "He is good. He has a face full of kindness. lean- 
 not think he would ever be unkind." 
 
 "Colin is a kind man ; he will be always kind. He 
 keeps himself very respectable. He just does his 
 worruk. That's Colin." 
 
 And Mrs. McKenzie moved farther off, bending her 
 matronly figure over the basket, and setting the large 
 wise prose of her mind to make the more expedition 
 that she had wasted time in words. 
 
 Jessamine, on the other hand, stood idle and reflect- 
 ive, looking at the sheet she had spread upon the grass, 
 with minute care as to the mathematical squareness of 
 its shape. 
 
 Meanwhile, Maysie McKenzie and her small allies 
 had tumbled over the fence into the field, and had be- 
 gun to play near. At this point they made themselves 
 conspicuous by silence ; they stood in a row, hand-in- 
 hand : Maysie with her yellow hair and velvet brown 
 eyes, her discreet manner and brain fertile in mischief; 
 Mary Grant with still fairer hair and blue eyes a tiny 
 toddle, whose little cooing voice perpetually asked for 
 consolation ; Larry Grant, a pale-faced, large-eyed 
 creature, with immense wisdom of demeanor and a 
 facility in following evil counsels; Willie Macniel, the 
 eldest, a red-haired, gray-eyed lad, whose sweet elastic
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 109 
 
 little body was never still, but who ran and leaped and 
 bounded with the grace of a young deer. They stood 
 now, hand-in-hand, gazing with round grave eyes in one 
 direction. Jessamine, wondering what attracted them, 
 looked too. 
 
 Down the little curling path, which ran through the 
 field, came slowly along the figure of an old, old man. 
 He was dressed in corduroy, and his clothes, though 
 good, were ancient and greasy; he wore no collar, and 
 his woolen shirt was open at the throat; he had a 
 crushed wide-awake upon his head, and in his hand a 
 staff. His hair was white and his beard was white ; it 
 was tossed and wild, and his ruddy face was stained 
 with peat smoke and ingrained with dirt. He had 
 large hooked features, and a certain ancient and 
 uncanny air, which made him an astonishing though 
 not attractive picture. At him the children gazed, and 
 Jessamine with them. The old man came on, setting 
 his staff on the ground with a little blow as he went, 
 and staring about him with open mouth and with the 
 slow, dazed stare of the aged. As he neared the stack 
 McKenzie came down the ladder, and leaned over the 
 fence to say a word or two to him. 
 
 "Who is it?", asked Jessamine of Mrs. McKenzie, 
 looking at the old peasant with horrible misgiving. 
 
 "That will be old Mr. Rorie Macgillvray Dalfaber 
 Colin's father." 
 
 "Mr. Macgillvray will be wanting you, Annie," 
 shouted McKenzie from the stack. "He is going into 
 the house." 
 
 Mrs. McKenzie left the linen and hurried after old 
 Rorie, who was walking on and smiting the earth with
 
 no A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 his staff as he went. The children, as though some 
 joyous event had come and gone, began to play and 
 scream with renewed zest. Jessamine for a few min- 
 utes went on unfolding the linen and spreading it upon 
 the grass; and then a feeling of sudden illness over- 
 came her. She dropped a sheet in a heap at her feet, 
 and stood staring dazedly before her; and then she 
 walked right away up the little path down which old 
 Rorie had come, out of sight of McKenzie and the 
 children, until she reached a knoll covered with birch 
 trees. Here she sat down in the shade, her body bent 
 together, and her arms folded across it. 
 
 Beneath her the little path curled, and beyond 
 spread the waving gold of an oatfield ready for the har- 
 vest, and beyond that was the tumultuous grandeur 
 of the hills, over which the afternoon light scattered 
 itself in a golden shower, and above which the clouds 
 slumbered in a silver haze. But her eyes strained 
 themselves along the path that, like a twisted thread, 
 crept about the purple flank of the moor, breaking off 
 now and then in a shredded heap of gray stones, or 
 sinking into a hollow of sparse grass, and finally vanish- 
 ing round the corner of some farmer's cottage beyond. 
 
 We go on and on, knowing neither how nor where; 
 and in youth this irresponsible wandering of untutored 
 feet acquaints us again and again with the strangeness 
 and suddenness of human experience. That road is 
 undiscovered land to each young soul ; a myriad feet 
 may have paved the way beforehand, but to each 
 human being it is as an unpenetrated desert, a venture 
 into new worlds, a sailing on unnavigated seas. There 
 was none to whom Jessamine could appeal and ask,
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. m 
 
 "Whither leads this road?" Her mind opened and 
 shut, opened and shut, letting out formless flitting 
 ideas of youth and passion, life and love; but side by 
 side with every aerial-tinted image went the repulsive 
 figure of old Rorie, staring with open mouth, and smit- 
 ing on the earth with his staff. 
 
 The heavens, wide as hope and clear as the thoughts 
 of a god, are above us, but our feet are entangled in 
 narrow ways. 
 
 Down the curling path, afar off, scarcely distinguish- 
 able at first from the brown side of the cottage, ap- 
 peared at length the figure of a man. Jessamine 
 strained her eyes toward him ; it was as though she 
 had expected the form to shape itself upon the little 
 curling path, and to come walking toward her. A feel- 
 ing of blindness fell upon her as though the whole 
 world were blanched out and the twisting path alone 
 were left with the figure approaching. On he came 
 with poised, deliberate walk, his head up, his limbs 
 moving from tne hip, his great shoulders straight. 
 Jessamine knew without seeing how clear and serious 
 were his eyes, and how his lips were folded one upon 
 another. And presently he was near. His face smote 
 like a brown-red cameo against the translucent blue of 
 the distance, and smote itself like a fiery seal on the 
 heart of the watcher. 
 
 And just then he looked up. 
 
 A gray birch tree with a pallid lichen-covered stem 
 and the indiscriminate gray shadows of many other 
 birch bushes crowded together, drowning color in a 
 cool umbrage ; a grassy knoll, close-cropped and juice- 
 less, a gray heap of granite ; and against the lichen-cov-
 
 H2 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 ered stem a soft gray dress; and above a little face, 
 with sparks of red under the chin and in the knot 
 of hair, and a flame in either cheek, and in the eyes 
 an unutterable something which made the world reel 
 suddenly. 
 
 Colin's steps dragged ; his hand automatically sought 
 his cap; but he saw nothing, knew nothing, save the 
 face which had opened like the heart of a flower out 
 of the dim gray wood for him alone. 
 
 The great world gave a leap as the two pairs of eyes 
 met each other. 
 
 And then a voice, quavering and impatient and com- 
 ing from afar, broke the spell and veiled the moment. 
 It was old Rorie shouting irritably for his son. Colin 
 with an effort forced himself away, and passed on 
 without speaking. Jessamine slid like a shadow into 
 the wood.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 JESSAMINE felt herself to be as one sitting on a bare 
 jet of rock, round which the tide creeps closer. And 
 yet she thought that she could still escape. 
 
 For two or three days she saw nothing of Macgill- 
 vray. In the mornings the first touch of the sun woke 
 her to immediate gladness of existence, and she would 
 spring from her bed, an ecstatic sense of youth and 
 health coursing through her limbs, dyeing her cheeks 
 and shining in her eyes. At such moments she was as 
 an untired swimmer in a sunlit sea, ungirt by visible 
 shores, but leaned upon by a limitless sky. 
 
 She worked so hard and with such a flush of exuber- 
 ant energy, with eyes so hopefully expectant, that 
 Mrs. McKenzie, watching her one morning at the iron- 
 ing table, felt prompted to speak. She was sitting 
 behind, nipping and pressing the edge of a cap with her 
 fingers, and as she looked at the creeper-covered win- 
 dow, with the back of the slim girlish figure over 
 which, she fancied, the sun seemed glad to play sil- 
 houetted against it, a maternal solicitude began to 
 trouble her mild eyes. 
 
 "Two will be in that task, I'm thinking, lassie," said 
 she. 
 
 Jessamine was pressing the iron upon a shirt of Mr. 
 McKenzie's. Mrs. McKenzie, watching her steadily, 
 saw the little ear and the curve of the cheek just then
 
 114 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 daintily edged with light flush; the gentle swaying 
 movements of the ironing continued, but the figure 
 seemed to quiver with consciousness. 
 
 "Will someone be gathering and giving you the bit 
 of white heather?" continued Mrs. McKenzie in a low 
 voice. 
 
 There was no answer; the iron came down on the 
 shirt-sleeve with the deft firmness which had been 
 learned from Mrs. McKenzie herself. 
 
 "They say," remarked the latter as firmly, "that 
 luck's in marriage." 
 
 These words hazarded, she looked for their effect. 
 A second flush beat into the cheek and ear one so 
 deep that they must have smarted as from a blow; 
 then it drew away, leaving pallor. Mrs. McKenzie's 
 eyes filled with wistful alarm, but the patting of the 
 ironing went on, and was continued until the shirt was 
 folded. Then Jessamine turned round, and Mrs. 
 McKenzie found herself confronted with a pair of sad, 
 inscrutable eyes, and the manner of the Dominant 
 class. 
 
 "I have finished the shirts, Mrs. McKenzie, and will 
 go upstairs for a little. No; no one has gathered and 
 given me a bit of white heather." 
 
 In Jessamine's appearance for the moment was a 
 curious resemblance to her Aunt Arabella, and upon 
 this metamorphosis Mrs. McKenzie gazed with eyes of 
 penetrating mildness. Then Miss Halliday left the 
 kitchen, the other remaining to her reflections. 
 
 These were almost immediately broken by the ap- 
 pearance of John at the outer door. He had a spruce 
 and brushed-up look, his skin shining above his dark
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 115 
 
 beard, and his eyes cheerful with the prespect of ad- 
 venture. 
 
 "I must be going, Annie," said he; "but where will 
 the bonnie wee lassie be?" 
 
 Mrs. McKenzie moved her head in the direction of 
 the inner door and staircase without speaking. 
 
 "She might be wanting something from town. 
 Could we be calling her?" asked John, with the hesi- 
 tating awe of high quality which still perplexed the 
 more familiar relations. 
 
 "John," said Mrs. McKenzie, rising, "it seems to me 
 as though I was seeing trouble coming." 
 
 "Aweel," said John, his radiance unabated, "if 
 trouble's coming we will just be sitting still and biding 
 for it; we will not be saddling a horse and going out 
 to meet it." 
 
 "But," said Mrs. McKenzie, "if we could be turning 
 it into another road?" 
 
 "Depend upon it, Annie, if we try, it will be making 
 us carry it here oursels. And what will be ailing you 
 to talk of ill luck?" 
 
 Miss Halliday's light step upon the stair dispersed 
 Mrs. McKenzie's slowly gathering answer, and the mo- 
 ment afterward the bright, innocent face in the door- 
 way shot a reproach right into her bosom. Jessamine 
 walked up to John with a little bit of paper in her hand, 
 and he greeted her with a smile of indulgent liking. 
 
 "You are going to town," said she. "Will you do 
 me a small errand?" 
 
 "I will be most pleased." 
 
 "It is only a little one. You see this name on the 
 paper? It is the name of a journal which you can get
 
 Ii6 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 from any of the large railway stations, if you will be so 
 kind as to call there for me. It costs one shilling." 
 
 "Oh, certainly !" said John, taking the paper, and 
 feeling in his pocket for his book; "but I will be los- 
 ing this scrap of writing, and, indeed, I had best be 
 setting it just down in my book." 
 
 He drew forth a pocketbook, and turned over the 
 leaves. 
 
 "Let me see," continued he; "where will I be? Oh, 
 here ! 'Sale of Corn at Righchar. Longhorn Calf at 
 Bulnabruick.' That will be it. And now what will I 
 put down?" He examined the scrap of paper. "Oh, 
 yes! Society's Whispers." He wrote the name down 
 under the calf. "Oh, yes! Indeed, I will be most 
 pleased to get it for you, Miss Halliday. And I will 
 be bringing it back to you to-morrow, whatever!" 
 
 Then he went out into the yard, and Jessamine fol- 
 lowed to pat the horse on the nose, and to watch Mr. 
 McKenzie get into his trap and drive away. The red 
 of her cheeks and the shining of her eyes caused him 
 throughout his journey to smile again and again unwit- 
 tingly. 
 
 When he had gone, Jessamine returned to the 
 kitchen, where Mrs. McKenzie was bending over the 
 fire to throw vegetables into the broth she was cook- 
 ing; but when Mrs. McKenzie caught sight of her 
 standing in the cross-light between the door and win- 
 dow, she looked her over steadily once more while she 
 continued stirring in the pot with a large wooden 
 spoon. But she said nothing. 
 
 "Let me peel the potatoes for you," said Jessamine 
 caressingly.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 "LUCK'S in marriage." Those had been Mrs. 
 McKenzie's words, and they echoed over and over 
 again in the girl's mind during the rest of the day, fill- 
 ing her with indescribable alarm. Was the question 
 really before her again? If so, this time it was indeed 
 an unvarnished demand one of simple and austere 
 purport, having no part concealed by flattery and 
 adroit artifice. 
 
 Jessamine recoiled with a feeling of offense. 
 
 When Mrs. McKenzie's back was turned she would 
 glance at her with fitful gloom, and her lips were proud. 
 But Mrs. McKenzie made no further reference to the 
 subject. 
 
 "John came home last night, and was looking for 
 you everywhere," said she next morning. 
 
 "I am glad he is back. I missed him," returned 
 Jessamine. 
 
 "And he was not forgetting what you asked him to 
 bring. Here is the paper." 
 
 Mrs. McKenzie handed her a pink-covered journal. 
 The very aspect brought back London and ennui. She 
 seemed to see the corner table in the drawing room 
 at home, on which the papers were wont to lie; she 
 depicted Aunt Arabella coming into the room in an 
 elegant teagown, and sitting down upon the armchair 
 by the fire, and placing her gold-rimmed pince-nez
 
 ii8 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 upon her high-bred ridge, and retiring behind the pink 
 sheets. These involuntary reminiscences caused her a 
 shiver; she glanced at the journal with distaste, and 
 went on with her dusting. 
 
 Mrs. McKenzie, who by this time was too much 
 accustomed to the girl's moods to notice them, carried 
 the pink paper reverentially out of the way of the dust, 
 and, unremarked by her, placed it on a side table in 
 her own room. 
 
 Thus it happened that Society's Whispers lay for a 
 day or two unopened in the little square chamber, its 
 pink satiny covering looking very much out of place 
 there. 
 
 During these two days the ways of Jessamine were 
 beyond calculation, and there were moments when 
 good Mrs. McKenzie gazed surreptitiously at the in- 
 scrutable lassie with awe in her eyes, so mysterious did 
 the swiftness and variety of her changes appear to the 
 even-natured Scotchwoman. And during this time Jes- 
 samine kept herself very much to herself, going little 
 abroad, and doing much hard work. 
 
 On the afternoon of the third day she came into the 
 little square sitting room, and caught sight of the pink 
 paper. Whereupon she approached, and stood gazing 
 down upon it gloomily. Her eyes had a hunted look, 
 and at the moment the masklike coldness lay like a 
 blight over her lovely features. 
 
 "Come," said she, "let me peruse my Aunt Arabella's 
 favorite pages." 
 
 Ere long she was absorbed. The sheets really con- 
 tained a good deal of piquant matter, skimming, as 
 they did, cleverly along the edge of libel. It appeared
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 11$ 
 
 that some scandal the nature of which was insinuated 
 rather than told would shortly involve two exalted 
 families in very unpleasant law proceedings, and the 
 members had vied with each other in scattering well- 
 seasoned particulars abroad. Society s Whispers had a 
 few delectable passages of its own dark hints, on dits, 
 and spicy innuendo; the jaded interest of society in 
 the dull season being very well whipped up, and every 
 means resorted to by which a return to town could be 
 rendered enticing. The journal really had a peculiar 
 interest. Jessamine, who had been shut out, so to 
 speak, from "life" all these months, was quite aston- 
 ished to see how many names of men and women, 
 whom, in the great world, she had pictured as mirrors 
 of deportment, appeared to be trembling on the brink 
 of some scandalous exposure. To a quite unsophis- 
 ticated eye, to an untutored mind, it suggested that 
 society might be troubled by some vicious cancerous 
 growth, whose far-spreading roots could not by any 
 possibility leave any member untouched. 
 
 "It really will not astonish me," said she, "if, when I 
 turn the next page, I find that my Aunt Arabella has 
 been discovered in a not very reputable locality with 
 some antiquated person of the bluest blood." 
 
 The list of marriages was particularly interesting. 
 It was headed by an account of a very grand ceremony 
 and important alliance. This was between a middle- 
 aged man of enormous wealth, who was familiarly 
 recognized in private circles as next to Lord Heriot 
 the biggest rake in Great Britain, and a beautiful girl 
 in her teens, whose family were permeated with heredi- 
 tary insanity, and who was herself said in strict con-
 
 120 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 fidence to have had her moments. The object of the 
 alliance was to connect two splendid land properties, 
 and to unite the blue blood, which it was said the 
 bride brought, with the immense amassed capital of 
 the bridegroom, with the further object of producing a 
 single unit of the race to inherit in his own person all 
 these pleasing consolidated privileges. The alliance 
 had received the highest and most signal support; 
 royalty had appeared at the ceremony, and all the best 
 nobility had been present. As to the clergy, they had 
 assembled in such august and overwhelming numbers 
 that there had hardly been a sentence apiece for them 
 to read over the happy pair. The law also had been 
 assiduous in confirming the alliance, and in tying the 
 two together in a complication of bonds and red tape. 
 
 Jessamine dropped the paper, and looked up and 
 shuddered. It was like a breath of poisonous air. She 
 caught sight of the sky, and the glint of occasional 
 timid sunshine on the wet eaves of the barn, and the 
 big tree near it. The fowl cackled below, and Maysie 
 shouted in the garden. 
 
 She recalled the image of Lord Heriot, the greatest 
 "catch" in Europe, and the most debauched of men 
 of Lord Heriot, with his "Hee-hee-hee /" his moist 
 palm, his vile eyes, and his heavily scented apparel. 
 She thought of his drunken younger brother, of his sis- 
 ter, a microcephalous idiot, of his father dying of 
 paralysis and ungovernable temper. 
 
 And then she thought of Colin. O Colin, "my Jo," 
 with your sturdy planting and hoeing, and eyes that 
 purely and tranquilly peruse the skies! 
 
 "The greatest catch in Europe !" The hateful face
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 1 21 
 
 was driven out by that of her noble peasant. And 
 then she stretched her young limbs in their light cloth- 
 ing, and threw back her head to laugh in pure joyous- 
 ness. She would go out presently to Colin's farm and, 
 though she happened to know he was away, she would 
 spend the remainder of the afternoon in treading where 
 his steps were most frequent. 
 
 But there the fear of old Rorie stopped her. Her 
 cheek blanched at the thought of him, and she stared 
 aimlessly at the wall. 
 
 Presently she was back again upon the page, and 
 that with great absorption, her work neglected, and 
 the dishes lying unwashed in the kitchen; while Mrs. 
 McKenzie in Scotch patience glanced at the doorway 
 again and again, and sighed. 
 
 Alas, poor Jessamine! Society has a thousand 
 scourges for those who disentangle their will and 
 escape to live a human life humanly. And its corrup- 
 tion clings; it is a disease not to be vanquished by the 
 sincerest willing; it eats into the nature, plays havoc 
 with the constancy, and vitiates the best intention. 
 
 The next portion of Society's Whispers contained a 
 summing up of the work of the Parliamentary Session. 
 Members had dispersed very late after their exhaust- 
 ing efforts. As far as one could judge from the report, 
 these endeavors had been directed in a really hard 
 tussle to prevent the rights of humanity encroaching 
 upon the rights of society, and they had been success- 
 ful. Besides which she learned that the political world 
 had been thrown into agitation, because one honorable 
 gentleman had called another honorable gentleman a 
 liar, and that considerable time had been spent in
 
 122 A SUPERFLUOUS 
 
 arranging the matter. There was not, it appeared, 
 much question about the lie; but a nation trembled to 
 see Parliamentary etiquette endangered. 
 
 She turned from that impatiently to the "Ladies' 
 Column," and learned that the laws of fashionable 
 beauty demanded a large excresence to be carried on 
 the back, and waists to be three inches longer, and the 
 heel more in the middle of the foot. 
 
 After this came "Gossip." "Gossip" occupied ten 
 pages of the journal, and it was these ten pages which 
 really absorbed Jessamine; they ate into her mind, 
 they obliterated the present, they altered her sweet 
 face into a semblance of Aunt Arabella's, as she bent 
 over the page. Scotland, the life of the last few 
 months, vanished, as she perused detail after detail of 
 the familiar world from which she had absented herself. 
 
 Habit and familiarity have a terrific power. The 
 redeemed tramp, they say, will leave his model lodg- 
 ing house and return to his rookery, the reclaimed 
 drunkard to his cup, the assisted pauper to his wayside 
 begging, the reformed thief to- his practices, the civil- 
 ized savage to his nakedness and tomahawk, and, as St. 
 James long ago remarked with vigorous perspicuity, 
 "the sow to its wallowing in the mire." Habit makes 
 slaves of us all. The least little clean reach forward or 
 sideways or upward out of the old rut, and after an 
 austere attempt to maintain the new adjustment, back 
 we drop to the ancient ways with relief and even 
 ecstasy. More mournfully tragical than these mys- 
 terious personal chains are the inherited tendencies 
 with which we are born, the preformed habit which is 
 in us at our birth. Who that has striven against some
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 123 
 
 evil inheritance, that has lifted himself out of it by 
 main force of will, does not know the rapture of a 
 relapsed moment? Nature mocks us with this trick of 
 reversion. Behind the mounting steps of Evolution 
 creeps the stealthy shadow Atavism, like old guilt 
 which can never be repudiated any more. Now and 
 then our assured humanity is terrified by seeing an 
 indubitable startling seal of ancestry set on the ill- 
 starred frame of a fellow-man. We behold ourselves 
 in him drawn back as with irresistible force to our 
 abhorred beginning, a woeful reminder of lineage 
 branded on the common frame. But though atavism 
 be rare in the body, no mind can call itself safe from 
 the reversionary principle, nor dare to say it has fath- 
 omed the possibilities within itself, nor to affirm that 
 it has never been startled and confused by some un- 
 premeditated action of its own. One half of us seems 
 running backward to embrace the unspeakable ances- 
 tor, while the rest reaches forward to the high level of 
 posterity. 
 
 This is why arguments and preaching are secondary 
 and comparatively useless matters. To make real way, 
 the child, the plastic soul, must be taken and set from 
 early years in the rut which on the whole will run to 
 righteousness. No soul beating upward from maimed 
 early years, with the common hounds of ancestry pur- 
 suing him along the road, but cries out against the 
 social scheme which lent him no fair start at the com- 
 mencement. To see to it that every man and woman 
 child shall receive their chance in the running, the lit- 
 tle feet being directed straight from the starting point, 
 is work for the statesman and philosopher, and the
 
 124 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN'. 
 
 man who is sturdily striving to raise the average of the 
 common mass does more for his nation and his age 
 than any other form of work can do. But while we 
 are thus every one of us racing a mad race, with the 
 whole wild jumble of our horrible predecessors in full 
 cry behind, and while we know that our own heart is 
 apt to play the traitor to us as we go, calling to us to 
 turn back and join our "own flesh and blood" in their 
 lairs, we yet commonly permit the early training of a 
 child of rank to be a simple pampering of the mouths 
 that will devour him in the end, and of the humbler 
 little one we make the starting point a sheer throwing 
 of the young soul to the kennels, so that he finds the 
 whole ill brood abreast of him ere yet he has set out on 
 the way. 
 
 Jessamine read and read with absorbed interest and 
 burning cheeks. The life that had been leaped into 
 prominence from the recesses into which it had been 
 thrust: the luxury, the triumph, the round of varied 
 excitement, the flattering crowd of acquaintances and 
 lovers. The paper instructed her in the movements of 
 a host of well-known figures. Society life, with its 
 intellectual strain, its heartburnings, its peacock pride, 
 its corroding personal ambitions, its triviality, its splen- 
 did prizes and dominance, its lion hunting and intoxi- 
 cating incense, its grace and fastidious elegance and 
 the sense of the upper circle, its sentimentality and 
 perfumes, its clever talk and learning and piquant 
 gossip and dangerous half-breed immoralities all these 
 things, the whole of this subtle, penetrating, highly 
 charged atmosphere, returned upon her from the skill- 
 ful pages as heavy perfumes after purer airs.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 125 
 
 She looked up presently, glancing out upon the gray 
 landscape with eyes that discerned it not. The farm- 
 yard, with the loose horse cropping such spare grass as 
 he could find, the road, the stack in the field, and the 
 winding path that crept away to the farm near the fir 
 wood, the hills behind with wisps of pale chalk cloud 
 lying along them and gray mists hiding their heads 
 of all this she saw nothing. Her mind had run through 
 the printed page back to the noise of the West End. 
 One pink finger rested upon a single paragraph as she 
 sat motionless, staring blindly from the poor little 
 window. 
 
 She had set it there with an eager little start, with a 
 shooting of surprise and burning anger into her cheek 
 and eyes; and with the same emphatic feeling she held 
 it there now. 
 
 "Out, damned spot!" not an act, but a tendency ; 
 not a deed of blood or shame, but the taint of the 
 whole nature, the inherited and educational hue of the 
 mind! 
 
 She sat there with a frown on her brow and a hard 
 contempt upon her mouth, a somber fury blazing in 
 her eyes, and her figure strangely erect and unbending. 
 Then she looked down again, and reread slowly, and 
 with narrow, bitter attention, the paragraph which 
 had lashed the tenderness out of her face. It ran as 
 follows: 
 
 "Lord H . r . . t, we understand, has taken his yacht 
 to Norway. It causes some surprise that his beautiful 
 fiancee with whose name, we presume, we must not 
 make free to adorn our pages does not accompany
 
 126 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 him with her mother. But they say the lovely blonde 
 is not a good sailor, and the ladies have preferred a 
 quiet trip to the German baths to reinvigorate them- 
 selves after the arduosities of the season. Some are 
 ill-natured enough to remark that he secures his .last 
 few weeks of ^liberty before entering the bonds of 
 Hymen ; but these are the misanthropes, the misogy- 
 nists, and envious. Certain it is that the distinguished 
 nobleman has, during the last few weeks, consoled him- 
 self from the access of despair which he pre-eminently 
 shared with society in the early spring, owing to the 
 sudden and mysterious disappearance of the then queen 
 of society, Miss J. H . 11 . . . y. We regret to say that 
 beyond hearing that she is well and happy, society is 
 permitted to know nothing of the whereabouts of that 
 divine brunette. They say the house in Square, so 
 well known for its elegant appointments and recher- 
 che" gatherings, will be closed during the next season. 
 Whatever can be the motive of the truant fair, certain 
 it is that her abdicated throne is admirably filled 
 already by her majestic blond rival." 
 
 The thing, all claws and fangs and horror, leaped like 
 a wolf on Jessamine's new-born passion.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE girl did not immediately make up her mind to 
 return. 
 
 That glimpse into the old world did two pieces of 
 mischief. In the first place, the slowly growing purity 
 in the springs of her motives was again sullied. In the 
 society she had forsaken, multitudinous smallness 
 served the purposes of serious concerns, and it was all 
 recalled over-vividly to her mind. Again, the perusal 
 of the pink sheets had given her fictitious strength by 
 accentuating the sense of contrast. The atmosphere 
 of the grande dame returned to her, and surrounded 
 her by what she felt as an invincible and enchanted 
 circle. 
 
 This inward assurance of being in possession of an 
 infallible charm against danger resulted in nothing but 
 an encouragement to play with temptation. That is 
 the most subtle of delights to toy with the alluring. 
 From the moth to the man it is so. And we should 
 all flutter round the seductive if we were absolutely 
 certain of escaping without a burned wing. Jessamine 
 told herself that her pinions were free, and that at any 
 moment she could beat them out upon the air, un- 
 trapped. 
 
 It follows inevitably that the creature existing 
 merely as a source of pleasing emotion in others, and 
 educated to conceive of herself only in that aspect, 
 
 rz;
 
 128 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 shall find herself particularly susceptible to the thrills 
 of sensation when, in her turn, she is the victim. 
 
 So that she did not fly. The present was delectable, 
 and in actual ascendency. London was far, and by no 
 means so attractive. Moreover, the season was long 
 since at an end. 
 
 It was the middle of August now, and the days were 
 shorter; about nine in the evening dusk gathered. 
 But one evening, before the sun was low, Jessamine 
 went out. She took her way across the moor; the 
 purple undulations of color spread on every side, 
 mingled with patches of brown where the cattle had 
 cropped a meal. The light throbbed on the red stems 
 of the pines, and the sun's burning flame alternately lit 
 up the dusky canopies, and let them sink again in 
 shadow. A rosy glory like a fisher's net spread every- 
 where, and in the midst the girl walked with her face 
 lifted, her inscrutable eyes large and quiet, and her 
 elastic step treading the heather daintily. 
 
 And Colin, who had been watching and waiting day 
 and night, slipped from the cover of the birch trees, 
 and followed her. 
 
 "For," said he, "if I may see her face once more, and 
 hear her silver tongue, I will lay me down and die 
 most thankfully." 
 
 Thus it came about that a long shadow crept up 
 from behind to the side of Jessamine, and Macgillvray, 
 with his lifted cap, came by. 
 
 " Good-evening," murmured Jessamine. 
 
 " It will be weary for you on the moor your lane." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And night comes quicker now."
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 129 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 And then silence the silence which speaks so much 
 faster and more swiftly than the tongue. And while 
 there was silence, it seemed to Colin that his spirit 
 went out from him and kissed her on the mouth, and 
 to Jessamine that she clung about his neck. They 
 spoke again in fear. 
 
 " In June the evenings were long enough." 
 
 " Oh, yes! it was grand weather in June grand." 
 
 " Shall you begin the harvest soon ? " 
 
 " Well, I think we might be cutting the barley in a 
 day or two." 
 
 " I should like to see it cut." 
 
 " I we shall be most pleased, whatever." 
 
 Then again Silence took them by the hand and 
 walked between, and whispered the same thing to 
 either heart, until the tongue leaped out to divide them. 
 
 "Will it be a good crop this year?" asked Jessamine. 
 
 "Oh, it will be a very light crop indeed this year." 
 
 "I am sorry for that. How is it?" 
 
 "The dry, hot season does not do for this sandy soil. 
 It will be taking a deal of wet." 
 
 "But we have had some rain." 
 
 "Just a shower or two running about, but nothing 
 to make any good." 
 
 Meanwhile, they reached a gate leading to Dalfaber, 
 and Colin paused and laid his hand upon it. He told 
 himself with an ever fainter resolve that just such a man- 
 ner of man he was, and no other; and that just such a 
 manner of woman made to shine in some world which he 
 surmised but could not picture she was, and no other. 
 
 But when he paused Jessamine paused also. He
 
 130 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 leaned against the gate, his hand at the latch ; she 
 stood before him mute, exquisite. She felt him there; 
 his influence smiting like rays upon her. Her eyes 
 could not lift their lashes; she knew his sought her 
 face. Then she felt him withdraw them, and, looking 
 up, found that he had turned them upon the moor. 
 
 "Good-night," murmured Jessamine. 
 
 "Bide a wee!" cried Colin suddenly. 
 
 And Jessamine, following his glance, saw in the 
 midst of the brown and purple land a little tuft of 
 white heather, growing snug and small, close to them. 
 Colin vaulted over the gate, and stooped over it. He 
 gathered it prodigally, leaving not a twig behind. 
 Jessamine, with the words of Mrs. McKenzie going up 
 and down her mind, waited. She saw the moor stretch- 
 ing from side to side, and in the midst the man stoop- 
 ing to gather the symbol of his love. He came back 
 presently with the white sprigs in his hand, and a great 
 emotion in his eyes. 
 
 "Will you take it?" 
 
 She stretched her bare, soft fingers, and, white and 
 warm, they rested for a lingering second upon the 
 peasant's coarsened palm. Then, without a word, she 
 took the sprigs, and turned away. 
 
 Colin stood by the gate watching her as she passed, 
 in the straight gray dress, on and on along the bare 
 moor road, until he lost her in the mazy confusion of 
 the'evening light. 
 
 "O God, God, God!" murmured he, his passion 
 struggling for utterance, and throwing itself out of his 
 silent nature, in the word that for him comprehended 
 the highest mystery.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 IT was twilight in the little square sitting room ; a 
 peat fire smoldered on the hearth, sending out a small 
 red glow, for the evenings were apt to close in coldly 
 after a hot noontide. The windows in the sitting room 
 were low and small, but through them one saw the 
 moon sailing slowly toward the west, and drawing after 
 it a procession of pale ghostly clouds ; the road glit- 
 tered, and the moonlight came into the room carrying 
 a checkered shadow. 
 
 The shadow was of a tree, and it fell over the figure 
 of Jessamine seated motionless by the window. She 
 wore a loose white wrapper, and her head leaned 
 against the pillows of the chair; she was as still as 
 death ; her loosened hair fell over her shoulders, and 
 her hands, lying in her lap, covered something jealously 
 under them. Sometimes the shadow of the tree mov- 
 ing in the wind climbed as high as her breast and fell 
 down again. 
 
 There was no sound at all save the singing of a little 
 wind in the eaves, and the figure in the chair against 
 the window, with its flowing white robe and deathly 
 stillness, looked ghostly in the dusk light of the 
 chamber. 
 
 Suddenly she moved and opened her fingers, and, 
 bending over them, raised what was hidden there to 
 her lips and kissed it reverentially. 
 
 3*
 
 132 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 It was the white heather which Colin had gathered. 
 
 Then she dropped the sprigs back upon her knee, 
 covered her face with her hands, and, bending her body 
 in a heap together, appeared to tremble convulsively. 
 The checkered shadow of the tree covered her as with 
 a net. 
 
 It is a pretty fiction, and one traceable to a simpler 
 and more primeval era of emotion, which paints Hu- 
 man Passion with a child's body wearing colored wings. 
 That might have suited less introspective and less com- 
 plicated times than our own. Ours it will not suit, not 
 even cases less civilized and distorted than this of Jessa- 
 mine Halliday. For us to-day the legend and the alle- 
 gory are otherwise. 
 
 For us Human Passion resembles a sphinxlike 
 woman, with a gray hood drawn over her eyes. She 
 goes about the world groping inexorably for human 
 heart after human heart. When she has found what 
 she desires, she comes close with a riddle upon her lips 
 and a long knife in her hand, and she propounds the 
 riddle. While we are thinking of it we see and feel 
 the long knife ready. If we guess it rightly, we are 
 rewarded that is, she hands us a dish of herbs of 
 mingled sweet and bitter, and clothes us in the garb of 
 a pilgrim, and sets our feet in a path which is suffi- 
 ciently rough and cruel, and in which, at times, the 
 stones tear the flesh as we tread ; but down this path 
 forthwith we have to march. If we fail to read the 
 riddle right, she plunges the knife into the heart up to 
 the hilt and leaves it there. Nor can we die immedi- 
 ately, but by slow degrees, expiring of pain by inches. 
 
 Nor is it possible to assure ourselves that we will
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN, 133 
 
 avoid the torment of that discipline. One day we shall 
 look up and see the figure of the Gray-hooded Woman 
 going along the road in front. We see the long gray 
 shadow there, and we try not to think of it ; we turn 
 straight out of the road to avoid it ; but there it is in 
 front of us again, the Gray Hood bent, the backward 
 parts so mysterious and attractive that we draw nearer 
 and nearer until we are close by. She does not turn 
 her head. We go ourselves and peep under the Gray 
 Hood an irresistible something compels us for a lit- 
 tle, little moment to see what is there. And she looks 
 at us with her eyes. 
 
 And then we move away no more. We stand gaz- 
 ing at her, and secrets pass out of those eyes and out 
 of that austere brow and sink down into the heart. 
 She looks at us; she takes hold of the conscience; she 
 roots up the being; she rakes it from end to end ; there 
 is not the hundredth part of an inch, the remotest or 
 most insignificant corner, that she does not haul over 
 and sweep out. And then, when we are shaken to 
 pieces and have not a solid foothold left, when every 
 preconceived idea is smashed on the head and every 
 ancient staff a broken reed, she propounds her riddle 
 and presents her knife. 
 
 That is Human Passion to an introspective and 
 developed race. 
 
 Jessamine raised herself again with an effort and left 
 her chair, and began to move slowly up and down the 
 room, pressing her handkerchief against her face and 
 eyes, words every now and then escaping her lips un- 
 consciously. The white gown swept the ground, her 
 hair tumbled about her in a dusky curtain, and her
 
 134 A SUPERFLUOUS 
 
 face, lying between like a small silvery disk, caught the 
 moonlight. The red glow in the peat fire shot a broad 
 red ray up the folds of her dress as she passed. 
 
 Every now and then she stood still, and then the 
 face turned toward the window appeared cold and 
 frozen as in dismay, and dismay stared from her eye- 
 balls. 
 
 "Jessamine, pink of perfection !" once she burst out ; 
 "own niece to your Aunt Arabella! Is it true, or is it 
 a dream? In love? In love?" She hesitated, and 
 then twice repeated a magical name. "Colin Macgill- 
 vray! Colin Macgillvray !" she said. " K peasant ! " 
 
 Tears rushed to her eyes ; the large dark orbs swam 
 and glittered in the moonlight, and two drops hung on 
 her lashes; her lips quivered. 
 
 Penetrating further into the realm of Reality, she 
 had found herself face to face with the Unexpected. 
 It became apparent to her that one is not always mas- 
 ter of the event, nor in the position toward it of a 
 graceful enchantress managing the sequences with 
 dexterous, willful fingers. The event, she perceived, 
 might trap her in turn. She had a frightful sense of 
 bungling absurdly. With that, in a sudden change of 
 mood, she raised one hand, and rushed forward a step 
 or two angrily as though she would strike some foe in 
 the face. 
 
 "No one warned me!" she cried. "Oh, I am 
 trapped !" 
 
 Again her anger melted. The rosy moment of Love 
 was still in her memory, and her dazed eyes softened 
 again at the thought. She was in an enchanted place, 
 a place where the wits are distraught by visions, but
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 135 
 
 where Prudence kept plucking at her with a cold, cold 
 finger. There were moments when Prudence prevailed, 
 and held her agonized and chilled. And then she told 
 herself that she must think ; and with that she would 
 shut the moonlight out with her hand before her eyes. 
 But her brain was a blank place, and while she sought 
 eagerly for an idea, her fingers thrilled with a sudden 
 tormenting memory of the palm of Colin, on which she 
 had permitted them to nestle. 
 
 Shivering again convulsively, she moved toward the 
 table, and, drawing a chair close, sat down beside it, 
 leaning her arms and body upon it, so as to gain the 
 perfect quiescence which was needed before she could 
 cope with her thoughts and emotion. Her raised eyes 
 were fixed on the slow depressing drift of thin clouds 
 in the path of the moon. 
 
 "Of course I must go home at once," said she; 
 "back to Aunt Arabella" 
 
 So spake the well-taught schoolgirl to the growing 
 woman. But her whole nature cried out in rebellion 
 against her tutored tongue. Her brain, suddenly 
 active, inquired why such a return was obligatory. 
 The mere statement of the commonplace inevitable 
 remedy called into being a hundred reasons for not 
 accepting it. Some ways which decorum presents to 
 us as right ways offend the nature by their miserable 
 union of the obvious and the distasteful. We tell our- 
 selves that flames and swords are better. Besides, 
 Jessamine's revolt against Aunt Arabella had been a 
 movement of the best part of her nature, and was she 
 to stultify it now by a return? Circumstance sus- 
 pends us by the hair over the lake of pitch from which
 
 I3 6 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 she has drawn us, and puts her choice to us in the 
 moment. 
 
 Jessamine had a love of adventure, and within this 
 adventure were alluring possibilities which thrilled 
 while they terrified. Every prudent dictate was ruined 
 and confused by a colored halo of sweet reminiscence 
 and still sweeter promise ; in her heart were both 
 delight and fear, longing and foreboding, at once. She 
 tried to summon into clearer prominence the chiller 
 self-repressing prose, but the thrill triumphed ; she was 
 young, and it was her first taste of a common human 
 experience. While her lips shaped themselves to cool 
 resolutions feeling overflowed. 
 
 "Oh, oh, oh!" she cried in sudden mighty emotion, 
 as primeval as that of Eve, "let me give myself to him, 
 or I die!" 
 
 The words out of her lips, she snatched herself to- 
 gether with a shrinking gesture, as though someone 
 hailed blows about her ears. Impossible impossible! 
 Most miserable Jessamine ! Hush! 
 
 Whereat her heart rushed welcoming toward that 
 very word " impossible ! " and accepted it. For the one 
 seductive and ever more seductive thing is the impos- 
 sible thing. Once let the heart fix there its desire, and 
 it may not relinquish it again. Jessamine opened the 
 window of her mind, and drew the bird within, and 
 held it in a full-grown grasp and knew her treasure, 
 even though she cried over it the feeble tears of a 
 girl. 
 
 For, indeed, bitter slow tears began one by one to 
 drop over her cheeks. 
 
 "I cannot understand it," murmured she; "God is
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 137 
 
 mocking me. Supposing they knew my Aunt Ara- 
 bella and all those !" 
 
 Even as she told herself she could not understand, 
 her heart began swiftly to spell the heart's own lesson. 
 
 The impossible is the important thing in life the 
 thing that carries us furthest, that gives us power 
 to achieve or power to resign, that shakes all our 
 thoughts apart and discriminates. 
 
 But this emotional creature had no defenses of the 
 mind. She had been taught not to discriminate, but 
 to ignore; neither had she been trained into any 
 heroism of will. 
 
 The new phase of her love was introducing already 
 strange companions within, conjuring them out of her 
 maimed nature as by some cruel trick. All the soft 
 luxury into which she had been trained revolted against 
 the austerity amid which the dazzling figure of Love 
 had chosen to alight. She could not support the con- 
 ditions which he offered, nor carry the burden he 
 imposed. 
 
 Neither could she endure, on the other hand, to set 
 the knife at the root of her happiness. She was a 
 divided thing, and each part cried against the other. 
 
 Moreover, what she had of clear and truthful in her 
 undeveloped character asserted roundly that her duty 
 to Colin forbade her to undertake a position for which 
 she knew herself to be unfitted. There ! Close on 
 that, too small to be flung out, subtle, dark, came the 
 suggestion of a sweet falseness to Colin, to decide noth- 
 ing, to drift on and on to what? 
 
 Jessamine laid her hand over her eyes, and moaned 
 as she learned her lesson the lesson of the mastery of
 
 I3 8 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 feeling reading the inconceivable thing within herself 
 in lines too plain for her mistaking. The moonlight 
 could not quench the crimsoning of her cheeks when 
 she looked up again. 
 
 "There are two Mes," said she in a frightened whis- 
 per. "There is the Jessamine that was ready to sell 
 herself to Lord Heriot for a title and the diamonds, 
 and there is the Jessamine who is ready to throw her- 
 self at the feet of a peasant to-morrow." 
 
 The words being spoken, her lips drew in unto a nar- 
 row outlet, shrinking from the thing they had uttered ; 
 and she clapped her little sunburned hand over them, 
 as though to entrap and enforce what had escaped, 
 while her wild eyes, conscious of the world, cast a 
 timid, fearful glance about the chamber. 
 
 In truth, she had fled from her London experiences 
 only to fall into as indecorous a piece of human passion 
 as ever startled the world. There was "nothing in him 
 than his worruk," his genuineness, and massive sim- 
 plicity; and she, with all her undisciplined impulses, 
 fought frantically against but one part of her surren- 
 der that is, the chain. 
 
 "I can't see anything," she said; "I can't tell one 
 thing from another. Is this passion? Oh, my lover 
 my lover!" 
 
 The moon slowly edged out of the window opposite 
 which Jessamine sat, and the shadow of the tree 
 climbed in gigantic effigy up the wall. 
 
 The girl had withdrawn her hand from her mouth. 
 What was the use of laying it there? The words she 
 had uttered returned to her from the sides of the 
 chamber, and they escaped out of the window and
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WO MAX. 139 
 
 were anyone's possession. She leaned her chin upon 
 her hands and stared into the darkness, and heedlessly 
 muttered and murmured on. Before her on the table 
 lay the white heather. 
 
 " I think," she said, " if I think of it at all, that God 
 must be too great to mind to be angry. Oh, my God ! 
 I feel that I could sell the world for him ! And if I 
 went to him because of the drawing of my heart, and 
 clung to him, would it seem a wicked act for which I 
 must be punished? Oh, my God! my God! you 
 should have made me different if so! For I feel him 
 drawing me, and I long with every nerve to go. And 
 if I did my duty and ran away from him, and to-morrow 
 in a church married myself with the clergyman's bless- 
 ing to Lord Heriot, would it seem a good act for which 
 I shall be rewarded? Oh, my God! if that is so, you 
 should have made me different !" 
 
 Her praying was revolt. And that was the first ear- 
 nest petition to invisible powers which had ever left 
 her heart. The conventional being broken through 
 she found sincerity within, and with it rebellion. Not 
 the mere teasing willfulness with which she had 
 delighted to confuse society, but a heart-felt resistance 
 to an order which she suddenly found was laying a cold 
 prosaic claim upon her own intimate devices for warm 
 and natural joy. 
 
 And order to her was summed up in the figure of 
 Aunt Arabella. God and the social laws might lie be- 
 hind, but Aunt Arabella officiated in the foreground. 
 The idea of this hated incarnation of religion and 
 society piercing with her small metallic eye to her own 
 scene of disorderly tumult thrust her upon a harsh
 
 14 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 mood. She struck her hands sharply upon the table, 
 breaking the sob in her throat by a laugh. 
 
 For, indeed, a sense of the inadequacy of all she had 
 been taught as a guiding principle suddenly affected 
 her the incommensurateness of any reason for good- 
 ness with which she was acquainted, with the difficulty 
 of the effort. Goodness to her was synonymous with 
 prim negations, and she glowed with life. It made her 
 bitter to think with what a defenseless heart and ill- 
 furnished mind she had set out on her quest for reality, 
 and how among her range of acquaintances there was 
 scarcely a friend whose wisdom she could trust with a 
 priceless secret. 
 
 "I have never had anyone to tell things to save 
 Aunt Arabella and" she paused, struck dumb for the 
 moment by an idea of import "and Dr. Corner- 
 stone." 
 
 With the thought of Dr. Cornerstone her emotion 
 passed into a new phase; her heart leaped in her 
 breast, and her face became transfigured. Whatever 
 this phase of emotion was, it appeared to carry her from 
 the realm of agitation and struggle. She remained 
 perfectly still, intent upon something which erased the 
 whole problem by diverting the attention to a plane of 
 thought beyond it; but not for long. These abstract, 
 uplifted moments could never be sustained ones in her 
 mind. 
 
 She caught her hands up with a frightened cry, and 
 sank forward, burying her face within them. 
 
 "I dare not!" she cried, "I dare not! My whole 
 nature chooses him before all the world for my lover. 
 I prefer his strength and his simplicity and his whole-
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 141 
 
 someness to all the culture in London. I am sick of 
 culture. But I dare not ! DARE NOT ! It isn't because 
 I am good. I am not good any more." 
 
 To be in revolt was the recognized form of evil, and 
 Jessamine had nothing in herself to oppose to the 
 idea. A code of rules is the least useful baggage with 
 which the character can set out on its mysterious jour- 
 ney; it will probably find them to be pure impedi- 
 menta. What is wanted is a furnishing in qualities, 
 and then the conscience may be trusted to solve its 
 problems for itself. Disaster and error spring not so 
 much from what is done as from hesitation in the will 
 and fevered incoherency in the choice. 
 
 Jessamine was conscious of temptation either way. 
 It had been easy to escape from the Heriot entangle- 
 ment in London ; but in view of the temptation which 
 met her here, and the fearsome attraction of it, the 
 Heriot entanglement (with the Church and clergy be- 
 hind, and the support of society) appeared almost as 
 the path of virtue. 
 
 How was she to discriminate? Everything within 
 herself appeared ready to play the traitor because she 
 had no notion to what she should be true. Her mind, 
 however, retained energy enough for that self-derision 
 and sorrowful candor which dictate the terms of treach- 
 erous capitulation which the soul makes. 
 
 "At least, let me be true," said she mournfully to 
 herself; "let me be true as death for once. It isn't 
 goodness in myself that guides me. I haven't a guide. 
 I haven't a reason. There is nothing that I know 
 about by which I can direct myself and control myself, 
 except just vanity and custom and fear of Aunt Ara-
 
 I4 2 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 bella and her set. If I escape, it is not because I 
 am good ; it is because I am vain. Praying is no help. 
 When I pray, I pray that God would help me to Colin. 
 As to Dr. Cornerstone, I cannot confess to him. I am 
 afraid because I am sure I don't know but some- 
 thing tells me he might say something that would help 
 me to be set things in queer fresh lights that seem 
 good lights help me heip me 
 
 She snatched herself suddenly from her seat, hor- 
 ror the horror of outraged vanity in her face. 
 
 "Like any housemaid" she whispered, with a thrill of 
 fear and disgust. 
 
 From which terrible moment she gathered herself at 
 last. To act in common with common natures was the 
 one thing which the particulars of her education caused 
 her clearly to repudiate. The word "housemaid" con- 
 quered for the moment. She had been taught to 
 credit common people with feelings unworthy of her- 
 self. That decided her for the moment. And yet 
 the less conscious self which haunts with criticism the 
 more conscious, deciding, acting self did not acquit her 
 now. She had no comfort nor release from self- 
 disdain. Rising from her seat with a soft rustle of her 
 garments, and with a composed, undulating movement 
 of her figure, she approached a second and smaller win- 
 dow of the room, about which a little moonlight still 
 played. Her face was tired and cold as snow that has 
 lain three days, and her voice was bitter and thin. 
 
 "Of course I shall keep straight," she said; "of 
 course I shall go on right enough. Not because I am 
 good, however, but just for vanity's sake. I must have 
 praise."
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 143 
 
 Then she turned and walked to the door. Her hand 
 was on the latch, when, with a new impulse, she looked 
 back on the little room which was so dull, but which, 
 nevertheless, glowed with so much thought and feel- 
 ing, and her eyes swam again with tears. A presenti- 
 ment lay heavy on her heart, a clear foreboding of the 
 inevitable lying before her, of something toward which 
 she was destined to advance, and which beyond this 
 present turmoil and color waited fatally and cold. 
 Would she have the power to escape it? The question 
 shot beyond consciousness, dimly hovered in her brain, 
 disappeared, and left her heart and her eyes empty and 
 distraught. 
 
 Then the door closed, and the small square chamber 
 was left silent. The shadow of the tree had long been 
 expunged, and the moonlight was drawing slowly away 
 from the second window.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE next morning Jessamine went about like one 
 benumbed in feeling; exhaustion for the moment had 
 emptied her of passion. Mrs. McKenzie watched the 
 girl's face, sealed as it was by a new reticence, and 
 shook her wise head. 
 
 When the midday meal was over, Jessamine went 
 out. It was a real harvest day a day of delicious 
 heat and quiet airs; the farmers had been up from the 
 earliest hours reaping, and the fallen corn lay about 
 the fields in yellow bundles, while everywhere along 
 the standing edges passed in persistent rhythmic move- 
 ment the figures of mower and gatherer. Jessamine 
 perceived that the harvest had really begun, and 
 remembered that Colin would certainly be cutting his 
 barley. Yet she turned up the road in the direction 
 away from Dalfaber. Had it been possible to lie down 
 under the trees in some sequestered spot, and softly to 
 sleep herself out of existence, she would have been 
 thankful. 
 
 The way she chose was one not much frequented ; 
 it led over the moor-covered side of one of the hills, 
 and gradually dwindled to a mere straggling path 
 which vanished among heather. and bowlders. At first 
 her idea had been to reach some high crag, and at least 
 to lift herself as far as possible beyond the region of 
 her turmoil and passion, but her limbs refused the
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. MS 
 
 task; she was enfeebled by yesterday's emotion, and 
 needed quiescence from effort. So that midway up 
 the path she paused, and sat down upon a heather- 
 covered rock. The place was not far from a small cot- 
 tage a tiny tumble-down house which had no preten- 
 sion to be called a farm, but where, nevertheless, the 
 morsel of surrounding land showed signs of cultivation. 
 It was more like a picturesque hovel than anything 
 else, and yet had an aspect of comfort. There was 
 even a little outhouse, and one or two other accompani- 
 ments to the meagerest form of agriculture. A burn 
 tumbled down the hill by the side, and a water-butt 
 placed across the channel served to arrest the stream, 
 and to form a convenience for washing purposes; and 
 then the water leaped out of the other side of the butt, 
 and continued its flow with a cheerful murmur. 
 
 Jessamine liked the sound ; of late the vast silence 
 of the country had oppressed her, and now she sat 
 clown willingly within hearing of the brook's chatter, 
 because it broke up and dispersed the settling of 
 thought upon speculative ideas and uprooting ques- 
 tions. After she had been seated there for some time, 
 the door of the cot opened, and a little child came out, 
 and ran toward the burn. She had a tin pail in one 
 hand, and in the other a rag and two or three common 
 spoons. Upon her small face was a look in miniature 
 of housewifely bustle. Having reached the side of the 
 butt, she dipped the pail in, deftly preventing herself 
 from following it headlong, and pulled it out again full. 
 Then she sat down, and drew it cautiously between 
 her sturdy bare legs, and forthwith proceeded to dip 
 the spoons in the water, and to rub them clean with
 
 146 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 the rag. All her actions were deft and careful a 
 delicious parody upon grown-up humanity and Jessa- 
 mine watched with increasing interest and admiration. 
 Her beauty and vigor were great, and she appeared to 
 be but five years old. She had firm limbs and a 
 velvety golden-brown skin, through which showed the 
 healthy red ; her hair of dark brown curled about her 
 head, and underneath the pretty tangle looked out an 
 alert pair of brown eyes; but it was the content of the 
 child, the happy activity and unconscious joy in being 
 and faculty, which best expressed the exuberant whole- 
 someness of her nature. 
 
 Jessamine watched the little creature with growing 
 admiration, and then with yearning. An inexpressible 
 look came into her eyes one which may be seen often 
 in the eyes o'f women, but which was new in Jessa- 
 mine's; she continued to watch until all the spoons 
 were rubbed up to satisfaction, and with every move- 
 ment the mingled delight and longing increased. 
 
 "Little one," she said at last, in a coaxing tone. 
 
 The child turned her brown curly head, and opened 
 her eyes wide in the direction of the sound. Perceiv. 
 ing the beautiful, smiling stranger, she stared unwink- 
 ingly for full twenty seconds. 
 
 "Come and speak to me," called Jessamine from the 
 other side of the burn. 
 
 Then the child very slowly and deliberately drew her 
 sturdy legs up, rose from the ground with great care 
 as to upsetting the pail, lifted it, and carrying it to a 
 safe distance, emptied away the dirty water. After 
 which she picked up the wet rag, and put it in the 
 pail; then she took the clean spoons in the other hand,
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 147 
 
 and, having now finished her preparations, approached 
 the burn and stood on the side opposite to Jessamine, 
 with her bare legs and firm little feet well planted, 
 staring reflectively. Jessamine smiled, and sought for 
 a coaxing phrase. But the child saved her the trouble. 
 Without removing her eyes she uttered an ecstatic 
 crow, and shouted : 
 
 "Granny, come and see the bonnie wifie!" 
 
 This summons was followed by the appearance of a 
 woman at the cottage door. Seeing the beautiful 
 stranger, she hurried forward with apology upon her 
 lips. 
 
 "O Bessie, that's a naughty bairnie ! Staring and 
 talking to the bonnie leddy !" said she. 
 
 "Don't take her away," said Jessamine; "I like to 
 see and hear her. Come over the burn, little creature." 
 
 But the child shrank behind her "granny," and 
 peeped out roguishly from her skirt, shutting up her 
 eyes and making a little mouth, and playing off her 
 coquetries in the manner of babies. 
 
 Jessamine laughed, and turned to the woman. 
 
 "What a beautiful child she is!" said she. "What 
 glorious eyes when she is kind enough to open them ! 
 What fine firm limbs! How old is she?" 
 
 "Three years, ma'am." 
 
 "Three! I thought she might be six, and was cer- 
 tainly five." 
 
 "Aye, she's a bonnie bairnie and a good one," 
 returned the woman with pride ; "and she can do for me 
 already. Ay, she knows how to make herself useful !" 
 
 "Is it your grandchild?" asked Jessamine, looking at 
 the splendid little creature with renewed admiration.
 
 148 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 The woman did not immediately answer; she lifted 
 her apron, and appeared to wipe off from her lips some 
 shrinking apology, while her eyes deviated for a 
 moment from Jessamine's inquiring face. Then they 
 returned with a glance which shyly appealed to a pos- 
 sible knowledge within the beautiful lady's breast of 
 matters which are frankly human, but which do not 
 come under the range of the respectable. 
 
 "Well, no, ma'am," she said; "I'm just caring for 
 the bairnie. I'm no relation, but she calls me granny 
 because I'm fond of her. She is not a legitimate child, 
 ma'am." 
 
 "She does you credit," returned Jessamine with 
 feeling. 
 
 And then she turned away with misty eyes that 
 looked at some far-away thought. 
 
 "Have her parents forsaken her?" asked she pres- 
 ently. 
 
 "Oh, no, ma'am !" returned the woman, scandalized ; 
 "the father is very much taken up with her indeed. 
 He comes every week and brings me the money. He 
 is a carpenter in the near town, ma'am, and the mother 
 is in service at Edinburgh. She sends me the money 
 regularly, and she will just be coming to see the bairnie 
 when she will have a chance." 
 
 "Are they going to be married?" asked Jessamine, 
 with the astonishment of one taking a peep through the 
 open threshold of a new world. 
 
 "Oh, no, ma'am. The mother is just in service, and 
 the father is just a man busy at the carpentering and 
 keeping his old grandfather." 
 
 "Is he a good man?"
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 149 
 
 "He will be very steady and hardworking, ma'am. 
 And he will be very fond of the bairnie." 
 
 Jessamine sat silent, her eyes full of thoughts. The 
 woman, after looking at her hesitatingly, drew softly 
 away to her work, and the child began to play. With 
 the cheerful inconsequence of three years she chose to 
 dig up the ground with one of the three spoons she had 
 just so deftly cleaned. But presently a wonderful thing 
 happened. The beautiful mysterious stranger crossed 
 the brook and came close to her, and dropped upon her 
 knees, and encircled her with her arms. It seemed to 
 the little child like the closing of soft scented wings and 
 shadowy sweetness and delicious wonder about her. 
 
 "Will you kiss me, little one?" asked the tenderest 
 voice she had ever heard. 
 
 And she put out her red lips and nestled her red 
 cheek against the marvelous face with the swimming 
 eyes, and kissed it readily enough. 
 
 How Jessamine loved the beautiful little mortal who 
 had been born into this world out of wedlock! The 
 thought, like some waif and stray into an ancestral man- 
 sion, ran into her heart and hid there. She got up and 
 went down the hill, and took the way toward Dalfaber. 
 
 It was getting toward evening, and the reaping day 
 was almost over. She walked down to Macgillvray's 
 land, as was her custom, and seated herself upon a 
 bank near his barley field to look on. As she sat there 
 watching from afar, she felt like one upon the edge of 
 the river of death who turns a last look at life. And 
 the picture of life which she saw was calm and beauti- 
 ful, and weaved from Nature's quiet moments. 
 
 She saw the yellow waving corn, into which the
 
 I A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 mower thrust his scythe, and at his feet were the fallen 
 glittering heads; leaning across this more distant pict- 
 ure was a rowan tree, with dark leaves and scarlet 
 berries; on the right was a gloomy edge of forest- 
 covered hills, and on the left a beautiful bright soft 
 range meeting them and fading into an exquisite far- 
 ness of blue and opal tints; above that were the piled- 
 up clouds and brilliant ether. The figure of the mower 
 passed along with a strong swaying grace of movement, 
 and the sunburn showed on his cheek and neck; over 
 him the sunshine rested like a homely benediction ; it 
 caught also the figure of the woman following after 
 him in her dun-colored dress. Macgillvray was a fav- 
 orite with children, and, when he worked, a little cluster 
 of bare-legged mites were apt to play about him ; they 
 pattered after him now, their fair hair and bare legs 
 twinkling in the light. Two older boys stood motion- 
 less side by side, the sunshine on their heads and about 
 their bare legs, absorbed in admiration of the mower. 
 Over all the net of light fell with its softening and unit- 
 ing power, and through all ran the sense of people at 
 wholesome work, joyful, kindly one to another. The 
 brown thatched cottage also was near, and a white 
 kitten came and played about the peat stack; behind, 
 two red horses, attracted by the fallen corn, came 
 lumbering up to stare from a distance; and round 
 every part was the softer background of blue hills, and 
 pine woods, and tinted moors. 
 
 Against this beautiful sober picture Jessamine rested 
 her overtired heart as one who earns a little respite, 
 but who hears a sound like the running edge of the 
 deathly river.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 151 
 
 Presently the picture changed. The woman in the 
 dun-colored dress left off gathering, and rested her 
 arms on her hips. Colin stopped also, and drew his 
 scythe out from the corn and leaned upon it ; Jessa- 
 mine could hear his voice as he talked with the woman. 
 Then the latter began to move away from the field, 
 calling and beckoning the children as she walked, and 
 these went running in a little fluttering cloud after her. 
 Colin resumed his work alone. But it seemed to Jessa- 
 mine that as the woman moved away he had turned 
 and looked at her. And she got up from the bank and 
 went slowly down the field toward him. She fancied 
 as she came up that he welcomed her with the old air 
 of courteous indifference, and at this, with the most 
 inconsequent of chills, she felt that the agonies of the 
 few past days had been gratuitous, yet longed to be 
 assured that they were not. 
 
 For not one of the human kind, having tasted it, 
 would barter love, with all its sharpness, for an empty 
 peace. 
 
 "It is a grand harvest day," said Macgillvray, desist- 
 ing for a moment from his work, and lifting his cap. 
 
 "Yes. The woman has left you. Are you going on 
 alone?" 
 
 "Well, yes. I am bound to finish before night; but 
 the harvest day is really over, and the little ones went 
 in for supper." 
 
 "The sun shines still." 
 
 "And while it shines I must be shearing." 
 
 "You have no one to gather for you?" 
 
 "No one." He smiled. "I must gather for myself 
 after the shearing is done."
 
 152 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "I could gather for you." 
 
 He raised himself from his leaning posture and stood 
 erect, looking at her with a ray in his eye that reached 
 her heart. 
 
 "It will be too tiring for you." 
 
 "No," said Jessamine with desperate joy; "I am 
 strong." 
 
 "But you will not know how." 
 
 "Yes; for I watched." 
 
 "Indeed, you do not know how it will tire you." 
 
 "Let me try. I cannot bind, but I can gather," said 
 Jessamine meekly. 
 
 "Thank you ; you are most kind." 
 
 He resumed his work without further argument, and 
 she placed herself behind as she had seen the woman 
 do, and followed, picking up the corn as it fell from his 
 scythe and laying it aside in a large bundle. It was 
 very still, not a sound could be heard save the long 
 swish of the scythe through the barley; he did not 
 speak, and when they reached the end of the row he 
 merely stopped and glanced over her work with a smile. 
 Then he went back to the other side of the field and 
 began again. Not much remained to be "sheared." 
 
 After an hour's steady, silent work the corn had all 
 fallen, and mower and gatherer rested from their toil. 
 For Jessamine the hour was one of benign calmness, a 
 restoration to sanity, a beautiful tranquillized moment, 
 within which she would willingly abide. The air of the 
 fields, the peace of Colin's kindness and presence, the 
 delight of necessary work shared and accomplished 
 these things sufficed, because the whole kingdoms of 
 the world have nothing better to bestow.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 153 
 
 "I cannot bind," said Jessamine, standing still and 
 pushing at the last fallen sheaf with her slender foot. 
 
 "No; I will just do that myself, and then I must 
 stock them." 
 
 "Show me the way, and let me bind too." 
 
 "Very well if you are not tired." 
 
 "I am not tired." 
 
 "See, then. You will r just take a little bit of the 
 straw first." 
 
 Jessamine knelt down and pulled a piece out as he 
 directed. Macgillvray, stooping near her, did the 
 same. 
 
 "Now watch," said he. 
 
 And he put two ends together, and by a deft wrist 
 movement twisted them into a secure straw rope. 
 
 "I can do that. How easy it looks? Now see!" 
 
 She tried and failed, with a pleasant ripple of laugh- 
 ter. Macgillvray laughed too, and came nearer, his 
 shadow falling over her and his bronzed hands out- 
 stretched. 
 
 "You just did it wrong, indeed, for you turned your 
 wrists the wrong way." 
 
 The words were small, the voice rich and deep ; it 
 seemed close to her, and as she looked down disconso- 
 lately on the unattached wisps of straw, he laid his 
 hand upon them to take them from her. And at that 
 moment she raised her head with a smile at her failure. 
 Close to her was Macgillvray 's strong bronzed face 
 under his straw hat ; close to him was the lovely face of 
 Jessamine, pink, dimpled, the eyes swimming with 
 pathos and wistfulness. He looked into them intently 
 for three brief seconds, and then a kind of blindness
 
 154 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 smote into his own, and he stooped forward and kissed 
 her on the mouth. 
 
 For Jessamine the earth seemed to leap as the fire 
 of his kiss burned to her heart; she knelt motionless, 
 staring at the corn in her hands; and then a sudden 
 inconsequent fury seemed to erase the whole problem 
 of her passion and to leave her free and untouched. 
 She looked up, dropping the corn, and turning a face 
 of anger upon him ; had there been in his the least 
 trace of swagger or triumph the anger would have 
 endured. But she found that he had withdrawn a 
 step, and was standing a little apart, his arms hanging 
 by his side, his face dark and soft with a fathomless 
 remorse, and before it the anger and remnant of her 
 resistance vanished. She caught her hands to her 
 burning face and covered it, and knelt trembing above 
 the unfinished sheaf. Had anyone seen that kiss? 
 The world was full of it. 
 
 "You will not be needing," said Colin in a low, des- 
 perate tone, "to be looking at me like that. You will 
 not be needing to cover your bonnie, bonnie face. I 
 know what I have done. I am one just not fit to live. 
 And I will not be living any longer if it harms you. I 
 cannot wipe my kiss off your lips. But I can go and 
 drown myself, so that you need not be thinking at it 
 again, or flushing red like a rose because of my being 
 alive on the same earth. I can go now. I am not 
 caring any more to be alive if I have hurt you." 
 
 The words in their quiet desperation reached Jessa- 
 mine's ear, and sank every one of them to her heart, 
 and created there every one of them an added circle of 
 joy. When he ceased to speak she made no answer,
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 155 
 
 but still seemed listening; she felt like one lulled safely 
 on a small islet about which tumbles an infinite ocean 
 of disaster. Would he speak again? A woman fears 
 to spoil the music of the first love words by any utter- 
 ance of her own. But he said no more ; she fancied 
 she heard his feet move from her through the stubble. 
 And then a misgiving lest she should miss her mo- 
 ment the golden moment of life and drive him with 
 that look upon his face to some despairing deed, sent 
 thrills of terror through her. Keeping one hand over 
 her eyes, she stretched the other out toward him with 
 a passionate gesture, and cried : 
 
 "O Colin, Colin! I am not angry." 
 
 He caught her hand in his own as she rose and stood 
 before him. 
 
 "Not angry?" He waited, looking anxiously at the 
 lovely living cheek and quivering mouth. The hand 
 still covered her eyes. "Do you know what you will 
 be saying? Jessie, bonnie bird! 'Not angry' means 
 you love me," said he, trembling exceedingly, but 
 pressing the question home with grave insistence. 
 
 "Let me go!" she answered, waking up to the thun- 
 dering of those waves of disaster in her ear. 
 
 "No," returned he firmly; "since we are come so far 
 we must go further. If you bid me I will drown my- 
 self for what I've done. I'd rather that than shame 
 you, Jessie. But a man does not throw his life away 
 for nothing. I will drown myself if I hurt you with 
 my kiss. But if I did not hurt you, tell me, and I will 
 live. I must know before I let you go." 
 
 "No, no; you did not hurt me, Colin," said Jessa- 
 mine, shivering.
 
 156 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "Why, then, should you tremble? Ah, my wee 
 bonnie do'e! why would you be looking at me as one 
 not fit to live?" 
 
 His voice thrilled, and shook with hope; and in her 
 heart was so strange a commingling of joy and com- 
 plete despair that it seemed to her beyond the slight- 
 ness of her frame to bear it. She found no words. 
 
 "Let me see your bonnie eyes." 
 
 He laid his fingers timidly upon the wrist of the 
 hand with which she still veiled her emotion. 
 
 "Jessie, Jessie! when a man trembles on the edge of 
 a great happiness and on the edge of a great trouble, 
 much may be forgiven him." He used his strength 
 with reverential gentleness; her hand dropped into his, 
 and her eyes opened upon him. "My God !" said he, 
 with a great tumult in his heart, as he read what was 
 written there. 
 
 "Now let me go," she murmured, drawing away from 
 the passionate force of his embrace; "be content, and 
 let me go. Colin, Colin !" 
 
 And as his arms relinquished her, she fled like a 
 frightened shadow -through the gathering dusk of the 
 field.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 IT is no delusion which makes true lovers feel that 
 their own passion fills the world. For the world itself 
 is interested. 
 
 As a rule, the affair of love, the grave meaning of 
 human union, is lost sight of in the fuss and prettiness 
 of an engagement ; sentiment and elegance serve for 
 passion, and morality is exchanged for conventionality. 
 If there be a white dress, a wreath of orange blossom, 
 a train of bridesmaids, a church or conventicle, and an 
 officiating priest, the union is moral that is to say, 
 society leaves a card upon the couple. If these things 
 are missing, the union is considered immoral; society 
 does not visit. 
 
 An abnormal situation, however, throws us upon our 
 own resources. We cease simply to breathe in and 
 out the exhausted atmosphere of society, and, retiring 
 to some isolated peak of genuine thinking, brace our- 
 selves up to a nobler tenor. 
 
 Once more the square little chamber was the scene. 
 
 Jessamine paced up and down like a caged creature 
 animated by a hope of liberty. Sometimes she leaned 
 against the wall, her hands behind her, and her head 
 thrown back. Colin's kiss still glowed on her lips, and 
 the pressure of his arms about her body, while the cer- 
 tainty of his love snatched her, as in a chariot of fire, 
 out of the ordinary world which she had trodden so 
 long with disdain. 
 
 S7
 
 158 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "I am happy," said she; "I am in heaven! I am 
 alive for the first time." 
 
 The little chamber could not hold her. She folded 
 a woolen "cloud" about her head and throat, and went 
 out. At the back of the house a path led a short way 
 up the hill ; it was moonlit now, though the light was 
 crossed by the frequent overshadowing of birch trees. 
 Up this path she walked, continuing the ascent until 
 she saw a birch tree growing higher up and apart from 
 the rest, larger than them, and with a trunk so divided 
 as to form a natural seat. Leaning against this, she 
 looked across the dusky heads of companion trees 
 the foliage sown as by a silver coinage to the land of 
 shadows beyond. There was nothing to hear; the 
 breeze of the day, so valuable to the reapers, had fallen, 
 and the quietude was absolute. 
 
 "I am happy," said she, "because the thing has hap- 
 pened to me which happens to few women. I have 
 found with my heart the very man my heart would 
 choose out of all the world, and he loves me." 
 
 She nestled down in the forked trunk of the tree, 
 leaning her head with the knitted shawl about it 
 against a branch. Twinkling leaves hung motionless 
 about her, but her feet and gray skirt were scarcely to 
 be discriminated from the ground on which they 
 rested. 
 
 "It is because he is so real that I love hi.m," said 
 she "because it is all so removed from the lies I lived 
 in down there in London." 
 
 She crooked her arm round a branch of the tree, and 
 settled herself more securely. 
 
 "Also," she added with a gasp, "because it is so
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 159 
 
 shocking and ill-regulated such a frightful smash up 
 of everything I know about. Oh, oh, oh ! how happy 
 I am!" 
 
 She closed her eyes dreamily, the moonlight falling 
 placidly upon her face. 
 
 "Colin the peasant kissed me," she said. 
 
 Her heart beat and leaped with mingled fright and 
 ecstasy. She was like an antique Sicilian girl, whose 
 lover seeks her in the woods, and says nothing about 
 ceremonies nor makes any bargain. Jessamine's idea 
 of a bargain was forever connected with her London 
 experiences and the detested Heriot. Her revolt into 
 sheer nature and primeval emotion following upon that 
 was a wild and fearful joy. For the moment, at least, 
 she had got hold of the undivided man, the simple be- 
 loved, unattached to a banking account, to an elegant 
 position, and fine upholstery. She was nearer to nature 
 than most women. And this for the own niece of her 
 aunt Arabella was a sufficiently wonderful matter. 
 
 "Supposing other girls other professional beauties 
 were like me," she said ; " I wonder what would 
 happen?" 
 
 Her face, with the eyes now wide open, gleamed 
 with a little terrified fun, across which mournful 
 shadows kept flitting. 
 
 "I wish," she said, "that the thrusting out of my 
 finger" here a small finger like a little white line 
 appeared from among the shadows "could topple 
 down the whole hateful fabric of London society. 
 Yes; I do wish it. Suppose that, hidden away in this 
 Scotch birch tree, I had such a power with my 
 enchanted finger. Would I not use it?"
 
 160 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 To desire this social upheaval was equivalent with 
 Jessamine to a wish for the destruction of every moral 
 law for the furtherance of her own chance inclination. 
 A want of discrimination gave her wild fancies the 
 criminal touch, which properly was no part of them, 
 her mood becoming that of reckless self-abandonment, 
 without regard to the innocence of her projects, or 
 even their beneficial tendency. It was the conse- 
 quence of her want of brain that she fell into so 
 immoral a spirit, and turned to evil a situation which 
 by no means necessarily involved it, though it certainly 
 demanded a powerful choice. 
 
 The thing which had happened to her argued obvi- 
 ously an unbalancedness within, and receiving this, all 
 the footsteps to joy looked to her as a flight down- 
 ward. Whereupon her mirth faded to mournfulness, 
 and she tenderly considered that to reach her Colin, 
 who was so good, she, his "bonnie do'e," could only 
 be bad a frightful situation that turned her young 
 heart cold. For the instincts of deep affection detected 
 in this the irreparable spiritual separation from the 
 thing beloved. 
 
 She drew her hand back within the shawl, the scorn- 
 ful daring finger seeming in fancy to turn against her- 
 self, and sat with her head downcast, musing. 
 
 To be sure, she was born under a curse, for wherever 
 she turned she was beaten back. When it touched her 
 marriage with Lord Heriot the splendid wedding sup- 
 ported by every possible prestige Dr. Cornerstone, 
 who was in a sense her exterior conscience, had looked, 
 she recalled, upon the proposal with a sort of Satanic 
 wrath that became him, and heartened her as to the
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 161 
 
 next step the kiss in the cornfield exchanged with 
 the stalwart peasant. Her ears tingled and her cheeks 
 smarted already with the hootings of an indignant 
 world's outraged propriety. How could she keep her 
 head in face of the conviction of so multitudinous a 
 condemnation? It is a hard thing to be a woman and 
 heroic. Jessamine's resource was recklessness and a 
 meteoric shooting forth of unguided will. 
 
 "Oh, mad, bad, miserably happy Jessamine !" 
 
 There was no smile on her face as she raised it and 
 gazed up into the vastness of the sky, which night and 
 the moon were filling with changing cloud pictures. 
 But night is night ; and some of Nature's great influence 
 dropped on the weak, forlorn heart beating beneath 
 it. A thought came east and a thought came west, 
 and softly fell upon the confusion of her mind, and for 
 a moment it seemed as though that delicate, little-used 
 thinking apparatus of hers would interpret it, and 
 would move under the impulse of a genuine idea. 
 
 "Forsake the artificial and accept the true, the rose 
 with the thorn." 
 
 She put out, as it were, feelers, half blindly but 
 wholly earnestly, toward a true solution. Her pre- 
 rogative as a human being kept breaking in momentary 
 light in her face, startling her mind with apprehensions 
 too great for its grasping, too great for a definite 
 response, but leaving her with an aching, beating, aspir- 
 ing heart that stretched and yearned she knew not for 
 what. 
 
 It is a terrific experience, and Jessamine at best was 
 a slight creature. 
 
 Her position on the tree became presently too
 
 1 62 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 restrained for her emotion; sliding out of her seat, she 
 stood erect, her hand pressing the knitted shawl upon 
 her breast with both hands. 
 
 The prevision upon her was of the universal which 
 touches us in every personal experience, the call to be 
 through any single event something which belongs to 
 us alone, and which yet is for all. To miss the signifi- 
 cance of the unique moment! That is desolation. 
 
 The girl's heart grew under her passion to a half sort 
 of cosmic apprehension, the wide setting which rims 
 our remotest act being suddenly surmised t>y her, but 
 never for one moment so clearly comprehended as to 
 leave her free to think. She drew the long quivering 
 breath as of a vaguely rising resolve, and stretched her 
 hands out searchingly toward the night, looking up as 
 she did so with solerrh: asking eyes. 
 
 "What must I do?" she said. "What must I do?" 
 
 Then she paced the small space of ground beneath 
 the tree with agitation, forcing her thoughts to mar- 
 shal themselves in regiments that ran with too re- 
 stricted an aim. Better to have gone on lifting a 
 passive heart to the skies. 
 
 "Colin knows nothing," said she. "Need he ever 
 know? He knows I am Beautiful, and he vaguely 
 knows I am something beyond the McKenzie's farm 
 help that I choose to appear to be. He knows it just 
 in the way the McKenzies know it. But he never 
 dreams that I am rich, that I am socially altogether 
 out of his ken. He does not picture, has not the 
 faintest flash of an idea of, my real position and sur- 
 roundings. How should he have? He is just simply 
 a man who sees in me a woman ; he, and he alone, has
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS IVOMAX. 163 
 
 found me has found Jessamine; I am in a sort his 
 creation. I am just what I should be if he were Adam 
 and I Eve. All the rest seems to fall away when I am 
 near him and see his clear-looking, truthful eyes, and 
 feel him loving me." 
 
 Why was he not Adam and she Eve? What shuts 
 the gate of Paradise against them? She stood there 
 knocking at the doors with a timid but ever more and 
 more importunate hand, until the whole night filled 
 with her appeal, and she sank upon the earth kneeling, 
 with extended arms and uplifted face. 
 
 It was to all the old-world mythologies she cried this 
 time, not to the rigid specter whom Aunt Arabella 
 had set up as god. She cried to everything primeval 
 to which men from time immemorial have carried their 
 wants, and, like any pagan girl, asked her impossible 
 heart's desire from earth and skies. 
 
 "Oh, good God, forgive my thoughts, " she cried, 
 "and fulfill them!" 
 
 She drew her hands back, pressing them against her 
 breast and shivering, but still cried on to that whole 
 mythology of Nature. 
 
 Then she rose, and restlessly paced in the shadow of 
 the tree, staring round with a fearful face a face ever 
 too conscious of a prying and derisive world. The 
 pictured mockery drove her to severe lengths of think- 
 ing, to a self-flagellating imagining. Mentally she 
 leaped her abyss and landed on the other and grim 
 side, and there summoned before her the shallow world 
 of critics whom she knew. Her thought, shuddering 
 beneath the weight of its own temerity, pictured the 
 thing that might be. A return after an interval that
 
 164 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 interval too dimly sketched to be anything but a bliss- 
 ful terror, in which heaven and hell were strangely 
 commingled, and from which her thought shrank hur- 
 riedly away. 
 
 But afterward the return ! London and the old 
 circle of flattering friends, with ominously silent faces 
 and a pinlike curiosity in their eyes. 
 
 "To these," said Jessamine, "I speak frankly. I 
 force myself to do it. I carry in my arms my little 
 baby, and I say, 'This is the child of the man I love, 
 and for whom forever, though I see him no more, I 
 shall live as a true wife. He was the best and truest 
 man I ever met, and the finest to look upon ; and he 
 took my heart by storm. He was a peasant, and lived 
 in a sort of hovel, and worked in the fields with his 
 own hands; he looked splendid when he was reaping 
 the corn. He had been educated, but it was a small 
 matter; he did not read much, he said quiet, wise 
 things instead. I'm afraid he knew no poetry, but his 
 eyes were poems in themselves. He had no adven- 
 tures, neither had he any vices. He was wholesome, 
 from his sunburned skin to the inmost core of his 
 heart. There was not a spot in his whole nature from 
 which you had to turn away your eyes. Such a power 
 of goodness went out from him that he had but to look 
 at me and I grew better. I could not marry him, be- 
 cause I was not fit for the duties of his wife; but, yes, 
 I loved him so that I united myself to him with trem- 
 bling joy. And this is my baby.' Supposing I said 
 this." 
 
 Pausing in her walk, she rested again against the 
 birch tree, while her eyes and features lent themselves
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 165 
 
 to the expression of some deep natural yearning; it 
 grew in her face as though she saw something far off, 
 as a star is far away, with which she had some intimate 
 connection. It seemed that she became enwrapt even 
 to partial unconsciousness, for her arms involuntarily 
 extended themselves as though to receive a gift. 
 
 The yearning in her eyes increased, arid she drew 
 her arms together empty as they were and curved 
 them toward her breast. The fashioning of her face 
 under the spell of the idea was wonderful. Presently, 
 as she gazed down, enwrapt, upon her empty arms, a 
 rain of tender tears fell from her eyes. 
 
 Then a little wind came in the tree, and the flutter- 
 ing of the leaves waked her. She glanced up with a 
 distraught look, upon which smote sudden anguish. 
 
 "I dare not ! I dare not!" 
 
 And she fell to the ground shivering and sobbing, 
 and drew the shawl over her head and smothered her 
 face on her gathered-up knees. The moonlight drew 
 away behind the hill and left the place in shadow.
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE morning brought apathy and a passive inclina- 
 tion to let things drift. The performance of house- 
 hold duties in itself helped to carry the moments 
 onward one by one in soothing activity without too 
 much leisure for thought. 
 
 "Where is Mr. McKenzie? I have not seen him to- 
 day," said Jessamine in the course of her labors, turn- 
 ing to Mrs. McKenzie. 
 
 During the morning her eyes had more than once 
 wandered to the open door and the gate in the yard in 
 vague expectation. 
 
 "Oh, he is just away again. Colin Macgillvray was 
 calling this morning, and John was to go with him to 
 the sports at Righchar." 
 
 Jessamine's cheek burned as she sedulously rubbed 
 up a chair. 
 
 "Mr. Macgillvray was here, then?" 
 
 "Oh, yes; he would be here early, lingering about 
 just like anyone daft indeed." 
 
 Jessamine felt no offense ; she smiled at the criticism. 
 
 " 'Colin,' I was saying," continued Mrs. McKenzie, 
 " 'ye will be resting ye at the wrong end of the day 
 whatever.' And Colin he was just laughing." 
 
 "What are the sports?" asked Jessamine, knuckling 
 up her white hand and leaning her pink cheek upon 
 it. "Has Col I mean Mr. McKenzie gone away to 
 them?" 
 
 166
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAX. 167 
 
 "Oh, yes! John was to go with Colin. It will be a 
 change for them." 
 
 "What will they do?" 
 
 "Oh, it will be a very grand affair indeed! They 
 will play the pipes, and they will dance the Highland 
 reel, and they will run and jump and throw the caber 
 and the hammer. Just all sorts." 
 
 "Does Mr. McKenzie join in them?" 
 
 "Oh, no; he will not be joining." 
 
 "What will he do, then?" 
 
 "Oh, he will just stand round and watch." 
 
 "Does Colin Macgillvray just stand round and watch 
 too?" 
 
 "Colin Macgillvray will be trying for a prize. He 
 was ever the best at throwing the hammer. Colin is a 
 strong man whatever." 
 
 Jessamine dropped the duster and came up to Mrs. 
 McKenzie, blushing like a rose and wearing a coaxing 
 face. 
 
 "Mrs. McKenzie, I want to see the games. Am I 
 too late? Can I get there? Will you let me go?" 
 
 "I should think I will let you go, indeed! No, you 
 will not be too late. But it is not fit for a wee bonnie 
 lassie to go her lane." 
 
 "It will be fit for me, Mrs. McKenzie, because I am 
 not a Highland lassie, and because I am very canny 
 and know how to take care of myself." 
 
 "Aweel, that will be as it may be," said Mrs. 
 McKenzie with a sigh. "Ye can be seeking out John 
 amongst the crowd, and ye can be standing near him. 
 and he will just be looking after ye." 
 
 "Can I go now?"
 
 1 68 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "Just as soon as ye like indeed." 
 
 Righchar was a town fifteen miles distant ; the sta- 
 tion was five miles from Drynock; Jessamine would 
 have to walk so far, and could then take the train for 
 the rest of the journey. 
 
 Her dressing for the occasion was studiedly different 
 from the costume of gray with which the villagers were 
 already familiar. She hoped to escape detection in the 
 crowd, and to watch Macgillvray in his action among 
 his own people when he was unaware of her presence. 
 The dress she chose was a simple one of black with a 
 tight-fitting jacket ; the costume had been made for an 
 unfulfilled purpose of hospital visiting in the old days, 
 and it was finished by a close little bonnet and a veil 
 over the face. 
 
 She did not reach Righchar until the day was well 
 advanced and the games in spite of Highland ease 
 and dilatoriness more than half over. The scene was 
 in a field, and the arena, which was extensive, was 
 simply marked out by placing the spectators in a circle. 
 In the center of the space thus formed a number of 
 handsome Highlanders some in national costume and 
 some not were expected to display their prowess in 
 feats of strength, or grace, or agility, or in musical skill. 
 At the moment of her arrival a reel in costume was 
 going on ; but a glance sufficed to assure her that Colin 
 was not one of the performers; indeed, neither he nor 
 John was to be seen. A few carriages drawn up on 
 the edge of the ring had enabled her to approach unob- 
 served ; these were surrounded by groups of respecta- 
 bly dressed people, and, placing herself near, she 
 trusted to her proximity to them and to the newness
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 169 
 
 of her dress to conceal her from notice. The specta- 
 tors were, with the exception of the few gathered near 
 the carriages, composed almost entirely of peasants, and 
 she soon detected the feeling of association and famili- 
 arity which leads a community of equals to call the 
 members by their Christian names and to recognize 
 each one in his individual character and capacity. 
 
 In due season the reel the weird grace of which 
 delighted her came to an end. The bagpipes, how- 
 ever, by no means concluded their operations; they 
 retired behind a wooden shanty, from which the prizes 
 were to be handed, and then each piper, with a strange 
 and quite magnanimous toleration of the rights of 
 others in the matter of music, continued to play each 
 one his own instrument in cheerful and uncomplaining 
 independence, marching about the while in plaids and 
 kilts and unabated dignity. But the dancers having 
 made their bow and disappeared in a picturesque and 
 medley group, a new group of men came now into the 
 center. These were hatless and coatless, and clad in 
 jerseys and short cotton drawers. Among them Jessa- 
 mine's heart leaped up to recognize Colin. The feat 
 to be performed was tossing the caber ; and two men 
 appeared bearing what looked like a small tree, de- 
 nuded of its branches, and about eight feet long. Two 
 or three Highlanders each, in turn, raised it, only to 
 let it fall again ; whereupon a great laugh rippled 
 round the circle of spectators, and a man carrying 
 a saw and dressed in ordinary working clothes came for- 
 ward. Amid the holiday-makers he had a certain irrele- 
 vant and prosaic air, and he applied his tool stolidly 
 to the caber, and made as though he would shorten it.
 
 170 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN; 
 
 The crowd tittered. But then Colin walked forward 
 with his grave, nonchalant bearing, and pushed the 
 workman aside. The people clapped in anticipation ; 
 as for Jessamine, when she saw him stand there in the 
 pride and ease of his strength, the heart within her 
 stirred with a delicious surprise. 
 
 Macgillvray took the caber, planted his feet firmly, 
 and poising it, small end downward, on his right hand, 
 stooped low, and then, with a mighty movement of his 
 arms and body, projected it forward in the air. The 
 caber went up a great height, and then turned and fell 
 to the ground at a considerable distance onward, big 
 end foremost. The spectators clapped and shouted, 
 and Jessamine drew her breath with a quiver. It was 
 the sense of achievement this time that dazzled her. 
 
 " Yes ! He did that ! " said she. " He sent that 
 great thing, that I could not lift, high and far in the 
 air, and he looked beautiful as he did it as though it 
 were a trifle. He can do things that I cannot imagine." 
 
 The unconscious Colin retired modestly after his 
 achievement, amid the plaudits of the crowd, and the 
 eyes of Jessamine followed every one of his move- 
 ments. 
 
 The exploit next on the programme was leaping 
 over the bar. It took the good Highlanders a consider- 
 able time to erect first the two poles, and then to 
 balance the bar across them. However, they were up 
 at last after falling down three separate times and 
 the game began. 
 
 Colin took no part in the leaping, but upon his 
 return to the ground there was a marked difference in 
 his demeanor. Instead of his former collected air,
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 171 
 
 a certain restlessness was to be detected. He held his 
 head high, and walked about with his figure con- 
 sciously drawn up to its full height. His eyes, too, 
 shining lustrously, darted hither and thither over the 
 crowd, and he laughed and talked more than his wont. 
 After the leaping came " putting the weight " ; one or 
 two men walked into the square, and acquitted them- 
 selves moderately well. And then it was Colin's turn 
 once more. 
 
 " A Macgillvray against a' the Macphersons ! " was 
 the cry. 
 
 Macgillvray shook his hair back and presented him- 
 self, his face smiling, and in his eye a curious, excited 
 light. He took the stone and placed himself in the 
 square. The stone weighed about twenty-two pounds ; 
 having this in his hand, and standing on the back 
 line of the square, he raised it to the level of his 
 shoulder, keeping his elbow directly under it and 
 close to his side. His body was balanced on the 
 right leg, the right shoulder being drawn back; the 
 left leg was raised up from the ground and with 
 the left arm thrown forward to help the poise. 
 In this attitude he crouched somewhat, as though 
 pressed down by the weight of the stone, and then 
 raised it up slowly two or three times to the full 
 stretch of his arm ; then he took a quick movement 
 forward, and, both feet now on the ground, but the 
 weight of the body still on the right leg, and the right 
 shoulder still held back, with a sharp spring and rapid 
 half turn of the body a movement of exceeding grace 
 and strength he propelled the stone, holding himself 
 strongly back as his right shoulder swung forward and 
 as his right foot touched the " scratch " line.
 
 i? 2 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN'. 
 
 Jessamine saw him, after the fine and rapid changes 
 of his attitude, with white, set face and strongly thrown 
 out arms, and well-controlled body held back from 
 " following " his shot. The stone, as though it had 
 been veritably projected from some powerful spring, 
 whizzed through the air, and made its first pitch at 
 a distance of about thirty-five feet. 
 
 Jessamine did not know that the " put " was unusual, 
 and would be announced in every sporting paper in 
 England, nor was she aware how great a part the 
 influence of her own personality had in it. But a roar 
 of applause, accompanied by hand clapping, burst from 
 the crowd, and her heart beat high with pride and joy. 
 
 " It's no canny ! the lad's fey ! " cried out an old 
 fellow who knew Macgillvray, and was accustomed to 
 his quiet and cautious ways. 
 
 And Colin, the excitement playing over his face, 
 stepped back a pace or two, and stared round as 
 though dazed by his own achievement. For, indeed, 
 in that moment he touched, as it were, the high-water 
 mark of his life, throwing out, in the way most possi- 
 ble to him, a sudden expression of that fuller person- 
 ality which lies latent and hidden under the everyday 
 character, to escape but in those rare hours when 
 some deep stirring of the nature carries it forward for 
 an instant to a higher plane of action. 
 
 Then he ran laughing from the field. A group of 
 peasant girls near Jessamine were shouting with de- 
 light, clapping and cheering with might and main, and 
 what they were saying sank suddenly upon her ear. 
 
 " Ay, Colin's fey ! " they cried " Colin's fey ! See 
 the big mon running through the field like a bit laddie ! 
 Ay, it will no be canny ! Colin's fey ! "
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 173 
 
 Jessamine felt the interest and exhilaration die sud- 
 denly out of her heart. She wanted to escape and to get 
 home. Slinking out of the crowd, she hastened to the 
 station, determining to take the next train back. But 
 arrived there, she found there was an hour to wait, and 
 that time had to be passed in the waiting room, which 
 was as dreary as such places usually are. A time-table 
 of the Highland railway hung on one wall ; a bundle 
 of texts in Gaelic upon the other. In her heart, in- 
 stead of any pleasant thinking, went the peasant girls' 
 cry of "Colin's fey!" In and out of the room came an 
 occasional passenger. Some Highlander in costume 
 returning, slightly intoxicated, from the games; some 
 dull, respectable Scotchman of the Lowlands traveling 
 on business; a family group dragging about with them 
 a half-witted member; a laird and the laird's man. 
 There was nothing in the surroundings to mitigate the 
 sense of horrible dullness, or the prevision of evil, 
 which had fallen upon her. "Colin's fey!" still rang in 
 her ears, and with it the inevitable sequence. 
 
 "People are 'fey' in Scotland before a great calamity 
 falls. What have I done to Colin?" 
 
 It was getting toward dusk when she arrived at the 
 end of the short railway journey, and stepped from the 
 train, and then a walk of five miles lay before her. 
 The road was long and lonesome and silent. To begin 
 with, the banks on either side were high, for the road 
 ran through a cleft of the hills, and they leaned close 
 upon it with an overshadowing of woods which made 
 it gloomy. After a mile or so the small cleft widened 
 to a broad valley, the hills retired on either side, and 
 the road ran as an exposed white line over a moor-
 
 l?4 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 covered and partially cultivated country. Just now, 
 when a break in the woods permitted her to see it, a 
 beautiful light lay on the tops of the hills; but this 
 was drawing away, and the sky above her gathered 
 already in depth. She met few people ; one or two 
 traps overtook her, and once a group of gypsy tramps 
 passed by, but the traffic was small. She had walked 
 on for about a mile, and dusk was really closing, when 
 a dogcart shot past her at a great rate ; looking after 
 it, she recognized the figures of John McKenzie and 
 Colin Macgillvray. 
 
 "They did not notice me," said she, "and I am glad." 
 
 Another quarter of a mile brought her to a fir 
 wood it closed the road in upon either side and 
 leaning against the fence under the shadow she saw the 
 figure of a man. She advanced with some feeling of 
 trepidation, but as she approached the figure came 
 out, and stood in the road confronting her. 
 
 "Ah, it is you !" said she, with a quiver of mingled 
 gladness and timidity. 
 
 "I'm thinking it will be me," said the low, laughing 
 voice of Colin. 
 
 He stood in front and stopped her. The heart in 
 her breast was agitated, and yet felt heavy as lead. 
 Looking up with an effort, she realized at once, from 
 the expression of his face, the magnitude of the change 
 which yesterday had made in their relations. A word, 
 the touch of human lips on each other, and causes are 
 started which go palpitating on, with the whole of life 
 for their circuit perhaps with the infinite space of 
 ages. 
 
 "It's me," repeated Colin, "and I'm just hungering 
 for you."
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 1 75 
 
 "Shall I take your arm, and shall we walk down the 
 road together?" asked she timidly, with the sense of 
 warding off some greater proposition by a less. 
 
 "That will not be enough," said he. 
 
 And before she had time to surmise his intention, he 
 gathered her to his breast, lifting her in the fervor of 
 his embrace almost off her feet. She gazed up at the 
 strong, masterful, tender face with something like ter- 
 ror. It was all so different from her expectation. 
 
 "I am frightened. Set me down. Let us walk on," 
 she murmured involuntarily. 
 
 "Na; there will be no one coming. I could carry 
 ye as I was doing before. My arms ache for ye." 
 
 "Oh, no, no! I it frightens me, Colin!" 
 
 "You have given me no kiss." 
 
 Her heart beat terribly. Present to her thought was 
 the strong direct strength he had both of mind and 
 body the fierce candor and simplicity before which 
 she was helpless. 
 
 "Colin, I have something to say," said she, grasping 
 for safety at straws. 
 
 "Aweel, Jessie, my do'e." 
 
 "I saw you at the sports." 
 
 "I'm thinking you did. I saw you just as the leap- 
 ing began, and it was like wine in my heart. Nothing 
 would have been too high for me to-day." 
 
 "Colin, no, no! Let me walk by your side." 
 
 "Ay, a maid knows well how to plague a man." 
 
 "You must not talk that way. They were saying 
 to-day when you threw so well that you were fey." 
 
 "Fey was I? I was to believe them, I'm thinking, if 
 they were saying so a while ago. But not after yester-
 
 !?6 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 day, Jessie. Fey or no, I have all I am wanting now, 
 and more than my best dreams." 
 
 "Was yesterday so much?" asked she, at her wits' 
 end. 
 
 "Oh, yes yes! Why, lassie, would it be small to 
 ye?" 
 
 His voice held a disconcerted tone, and that was as 
 intolerable to Jessamine as his unquestioning claim 
 upon her. 
 
 "No, Colin, no! It was not small." 
 
 "Look, my wee bonnie Jessie," said he tenderly; "I 
 love you true. There will not be a corner of me that 
 does not love you. You just will be my heart." 
 
 "Yes, Colin; thank you. I like to be your heart. 
 You passed in a dogcart with Mr. McKenzie just now. 
 How was that? Did he see me too?" 
 
 "No; he was not seeing you. I saw you. I just 
 thought that the machine would do verra weel without 
 me, and I said to John I would just be walking the 
 rest of the way." 
 
 "It was quite dusk, and I was close to the hedge, 
 yet you saw me." 
 
 "I'm thinking I would be feeling you if you were 
 near, whether I saw you or not. But I saw you, Jessie, 
 my dearie. There are eyes in my heart." 
 
 "Are there, Colin?" 
 
 "Yes. Now for my kiss." 
 
 She raised a vainly protesting hand. 
 
 "Jessie," said he solemnly, and he pushed the hair 
 back from her brow with one hand while he held her 
 with the other arm, "you must love me true." 
 
 "O Colin, I do! I do!"
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. *77 
 
 He gazed down upon her face with a long, grave, 
 yearning look. The eyes that opened wide upon his 
 after his kiss were dim with something like terror. He 
 vaguely perceived it. 
 
 "Ye will be trembling, lassie," said he tenderly. 
 
 She made no answer, but caught at the lapel of his 
 coat. 
 
 "Aweel. Trembling will just be the way of a maid. 
 Come closer, and ye winna tremble." 
 
 "No," said Jessamine, in a choking voice; "let us 
 go on." 
 
 "And ye're greeting, lassie! For why? What will 
 ye be greeting for?" 
 
 "O Colin! Perhaps that's just a maid's way too." 
 
 "Perhaps. But I'm thinking we will just make the 
 most of to-day, for to-morrow I shatl be away." 
 
 "Away! Where?" 
 
 "Oh, it will only be a sale of corn to which I'm 
 bound to go with John." 
 
 "When shall you be back?" 
 
 "Oh, by evening." 
 
 She walked on a short distance in silence. They 
 reached the open road, and then she pulled him by the 
 sleeve. 
 
 "Wait a minute; there is something to say. Listen 
 to it now." 
 
 "Ay, Jessie! What will it be, my lo'e?" 
 
 She was so white that a vague apprehension dawned 
 on his heart. 
 
 "Will you remember what I am going to say 
 always?" 
 
 "I will ever remember it. What will it be, my do'e?"
 
 178 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 She placed a hand on either shoulder and looked him 
 full in the face. 
 
 "It is that I love you, Colin, and ever shall and ever 
 must till death comes. Believe it always, remember it 
 always whatever happens." 
 
 He took her hand down from his shoulder and held 
 it in his own. 
 
 "It will be a great matter to say that, Jessie, my wee 
 wife. But it will be true, for I feel it in my own 
 heart." 
 
 After that they walked on soberly together, speaking 
 little. But her hand rested on his arm, and his feet 
 trod on air. 
 
 For herself the unexpectedness and directness of his 
 love-making were at once a terror and charm. He 
 appeared not to dream of circuitous preliminaries; gift 
 bestowing, court, fictitious distance, and compliment 
 paying seemed not to enter his head ; the simplicity 
 and ingenuousness of his passion, now his reserve was 
 once broken down, had in it something inflexible and 
 austere ; his love tokens were the pressure of his arms, 
 the thrill of his voice, the look in his eyes; and these 
 signs in himself he evidently considered sufficient, and 
 that with them she should be well pleased, just as in 
 her they were for him all-satisfying.
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 OLD Rorie Macgillvray, sitting in the nook by the 
 kitchen hearth, fancied that his dim eyes caught sight 
 of the fluttering of a woman's garment past the win- 
 dow. The rain beat slantwise across the smoke-stained 
 pane, but he had an impression that with the rain the 
 wind had puffed some loose gray streamer over the 
 blurred outlines and mist-washed shapes of the moun- 
 tains. It made him stare and open his mouth wider, 
 and turn his head and his ear in an endeavor to supple- 
 "ment one failing sense by the failing power of another. 
 Then the idea of the fluttering shawl touched some 
 association, and he sat thinking of it, his mouth still 
 open and his eyes perusing the smoldering peats on 
 the hearth, upon which in comfortless fashion through 
 the open chimney grimy raindrops fell in frequent 
 spurts. 
 
 His "auld wife," a plaid about her shoulders, and an 
 umbrella or, rather, a blue roof in her hand, had set 
 out at an early hour on a five-mile walk to the "mer- 
 chant's" that is, to the store of the universal provider 
 of the place, an emporium warranted to supply all 
 human wants, from curling irons down to a ha'porth of 
 treacle, in addition to which large enterprise the "mer- 
 chant" had undertaken to manage the post-office neces- 
 sities for ten miles round. Those who possessed their 
 souls in patience were really likely to get their needs 
 
 179
 
 I So A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 supplied at the shop, for it was well stocked. But the 
 drawback of a monopoly is to breed an indifference of 
 spirit which rebels against the routine involved in busi- 
 ness habits. So that the customer, arriving hot and 
 breathless from a long and burdened peregrination over 
 the hills, was as likely as not to discover the post- 
 master and manager nodding in the back parlor in a 
 hopelessly bewhiskied slumber, while a slow and con- 
 fused boy pottered over the post-office business, from 
 which no entreaty could seduce him ; and the girl 
 engaged in farm work at the back would peep in to 
 acquaint herself with the customer and, ten to one, 
 would disappear again with a final air. 
 
 Old Rorie, therefore, from prolonged experience, did 
 not expect the return of his wife for hours to come; as 
 for Colin, he was attending the sale .of corn with John 
 McKenzie. So that the old man's mind, roused to 
 momentary attention, trotted off again tranquilly to 
 fifty years ago, when the things that happened had not 
 so dim and vague an air, and when the fluttering of a 
 shawl by no means belonging to the present Mrs. 
 Macgillvray had been an incident of consequence. 
 The world was not so good as it had been, old Rorie 
 frequently remarked ; events had little interest. 
 Whisky, it is true, retained its fascination, and while 
 his eyes twinkled at the peats in the delights of dis- 
 reputable reminiscence, his old hand sought at the 
 shelf by his side. There is reason to believe that the 
 old fellow had been left at home alone on parole, for 
 Mrs. Macgillvray held it a disgrace to be drunken at 
 the third hour of the day ; nevertheless, his fingers 
 were just nearing the recess where the whisky bottle
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 181 
 
 stood, when a knock came at the door. Old Rorie's 
 hand was jerked down by frightened conscience, much 
 as the hand of a child is snatched back from forbidden 
 sweetmeats, and he stared hard at the direction of the 
 sound. It came back again. Then he felt for his staff, 
 and slowly raised himself, showing as he stood up on 
 the kitchen floor a not inconsiderable height, and went 
 to the outside door and opened it. 
 
 A little figure in gray stood there, at the sight of 
 which he jerked his head forward in an attempt to sur- 
 prise his senses into grasping its full meaning, and 
 then, lifting himself to as erect a posture as possible, 
 made the salute of the peasant. He did not in the 
 least recognize in Jessamine the McKenzies' farm help, 
 of whom he had heard much, but he did recognize the 
 air of a great lady. 
 
 "Is Mr. Colin Macgillvray at home?" asked Jessa- 
 mine, who knew very well that he was not. 
 
 "No, mem; Colin is away. He went west this morn- 
 ing, and he was taking the horse and cart." 
 
 "Will he return soon?" 
 
 "I'm thinking, mem, that he will be back this even- 
 ing. He was going to a sale of corn with John McKen- 
 zie. Him and John will be great friends, ye see." 
 
 "I am sorry not to find him in. It rains fast." 
 
 "It's a very bad morning whatever. Will ye~come 
 in, mem, and rest ye a while?" 
 
 "Thank you." 
 
 Jessamine stepped forward without alacrity. She 
 had been gazing at old Rorie's face with fascinated 
 interest, and yet with horror. It was so fine and yet 
 so grotesque, the civilization faintly veneered over the
 
 1 82 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 obvious barbarism. His features were of the Scandi- 
 navian type, the racial markings still as pronounced as 
 in the age when the Viking harried the coasts. The 
 upper classes pare away the traces of their ancestry ; 
 the rustic peasant startles the fastidious by retaining 
 them unmodified. Moreover, besides his wild though 
 grand tribal features, old Rorie was not clean, nor were 
 his manners pleasant ; his corduroy clothes were greasy, 
 and his woolen shirt was open, revealing a shaggy 
 breast. The course of ages and the surrounding of a 
 gentle-mannered people had, as it were, trimmed the 
 claws of the ogre ; old Rorie was incapable of cruelty, 
 he was hospitable, and had a strong sense of personal 
 dignity; he possessed with this a conservative though 
 independent respect for the Laird and the great world 
 of which he knew nothing; he believed in the election 
 of the saints, and had no doubt of his own salvation ; 
 and though his youth had been somewhat tinctured 
 with the disreputable element and in the matter of 
 "whusky" he was still an impenitent on the whole he 
 was reckoned among the highly respectable members 
 of society. But, then, Culture had given but the 
 hastiest daub to his once splendid animal physique; of 
 all that manifold limitation in air, speech, gesture, 
 which we call "good manners," and which is woven out 
 of an inherited and acquired knowledge of that which 
 is pleasant or unpleasant to our fellows, he knew noth- 
 ing. The Unlimited and the Dubious render intercourse 
 impossible ; disparity of manner is as disparity of race 
 an incalculable thing. Jessamine therefore followed 
 old Rorie with trembling; she would have shivered to 
 have followed a Red Indian into his wigwam, or a Zulu
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 183 
 
 into his kraal, or an amiable gorilla up his tree, and her 
 sensations were not materially different now. 
 
 Still, she was resolved. He was Colin's father. 
 
 "May I see your kitchen?" asked she, as old Rorie 
 turned to the room on the left, to which Colin had 
 ushered her on her first visit to Dalfaber. 
 
 "Oh, yes, mem!" answered Rorie; "it will just not 
 be cleaned up the morn, ye see. But ye can come in 
 and welcome." 
 
 He opened the door into the kitchen, where he had 
 just been sitting. It was a square room, with low 
 wooden rafters, and the rafters and ceiling were black 
 with smoke. The floor was of stone, and so was the 
 hearth. This last was simply a flat surface raised two 
 or three inches, and extending across the room ; the 
 arch of the chimney hung above it, and was simply an 
 immense cavernous aperture the size of a small 
 room which, without diminution in its proportions, 
 opened to the sky. The shelterless nature of such a 
 contrivance was exemplified now by the dribbles of 
 wet which came down the soot-covered wall and fell 
 about the hearth. Old Macgillvray, however, evi- 
 dently regarded his chimney as a show; he beckoned 
 Jessamine to approach the hearth and to look up. She 
 did so, and saw four stone walls festooned with soot ; 
 above them a gray sky, across which trails of rain cloud 
 swept. A thin spiral of smoke was whirling about 
 toward the top in momentary indecision whether to 
 rise or descend. 
 
 "Surely," said Jessamine, "you are smothered with 
 smoke on windy days?" 
 
 "Oh, ay!" answered old Rorie; "we will just be
 
 i?4 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 smothered. Ye see, the vent's too large. Ye see, the 
 smoke blaws down back into the room, and that makes 
 the rafters black. And, ye see, it will be verra cauld 
 in the wunther time. But," added he, "we're used 
 to it." 
 
 His smoke-ingrained skin well testified that Time 
 had lent the clemency of habit. 
 
 As for the rest of the room, there were good presses 
 against the wall ; there was a table, a wooden bench, 
 and a chair or two, shelves with pots and pans, and an 
 indescribable piece of furniture, which Jessamine sus- 
 pected to be a bed. 
 
 "Will your Highness like to see the other room?" 
 asked old Rorie, throwing in a title which he judged 
 commensurate with his guest's distinguished air. 
 
 "Thank you," said Jessamine, unwilling to confess 
 to a former visit. 
 
 "We live mostly in the kitchen, ye see, for comfort," 
 explained old Rorie; "but we have the parlor." 
 
 And he led the way to the other well-remembered 
 room. There was the bed in the alcove, the clothes 
 tossed aside as Colin had left them that morning; a 
 couple of tables, a few chairs, a rifle leaning against the 
 wall, a small looking-glass (for Colin was something of 
 a dandy), one or two books, a vase or two upon the 
 mantelpiece, and a small ordinary grate. The floor 
 was without drugget, but everything was neat and 
 orderly. 
 
 "This will be the parlor, mem, and that will be 
 Colin's bed. Colin sleeps here, mem. This will be his 
 rifle, for Colin was joining the volunteers, ye see." 
 
 "Colin is your only son?"
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 185 
 
 "Colin will be our only son, mem. He will be hav- 
 ing the farm after me." 
 
 Here old Rorie assumed a confidential air, and ap- 
 proached close to Jessamine, who felt exceedingly 
 alarmed ; nor was she at all encouraged by the laying 
 of his hand upon her shoulder. 
 
 "He will be a solid man, ye see, mem, with money 
 at the bank. I'm telling ye this, mem, not to boast, 
 but that ye may just know that Colin will be some- 
 thing. He was ever a very quiet lad with his words." 
 
 "You live very simply," said Jessamine, edging back 
 nervously from the old peasant's confidences. 
 
 "Oh, ay! verra simple. Just porridge and potaties, 
 with a kipper now and then, and milk. That will be 
 it a verra good diet, ye see. Folks will be overheat- 
 ing themselves with meat. Oh, ay ! I'm often saying 
 that porridge is the finest diet in the world." 
 
 Jessamine smiled. Not even the terrible presence 
 of old Rorie could quite overshadow the wistful strange- 
 ness in her heart at standing in the room of the man 
 she loved. She leaned against the window frame, look- 
 ing out upon his beloved landscape, and ineffectually 
 envying his austerity and simplicity. 
 
 "Ye must excuse me, mem," said old Rorie, seeing 
 that she made no answer, "if I am not speaking the 
 English right. Ye see, I'm not verra good at the 
 English." 
 
 "Oh!" said Jessamine; "do you speak Gaelic?" 
 
 "Oh, ay! We will just be talking the Gaelic at 
 home. I can go into more things in the Gaelic. I 
 must ever be looking for my words in the English, your 
 Highness will understand."
 
 1 86 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 Jessamine looked up quickly, a pink spot in either 
 cheek. 
 
 "Do not call me 'y ur Highness.' I am the 
 McKenzies' farm help at Drynoch." 
 
 Old Rorie's jaw dropped at this information. His 
 mind had a long way to travel from the title of his 
 invention to the simplicity of Jessamine's claim, and 
 her aspect belied her words. At last, while she 
 rather tremulously watched him, the bewilderment 
 passed from his face. He made an emphatic gesture 
 with his hand, bringing it down to his. side with a 
 slap. 
 
 "Aweel," said he "aweel, the farm help at McKen- 
 zies'. It's come on me of a suddenty. Dear, dear, 
 dear ! I'm no verra good with my eyes, and I was tak- 
 ing ye for a grand leddy. Ay, but ye are bonnie ; I'm 
 no so blind but I can see that. Ye are bonnie. Lads 
 will let ye know it, I'm thinking. Ay, ye'll be trailing 
 a good few at your heels! Ay, I was hearing of ye a 
 bonnie wee lassie at McKenzies'! But ye'll no be 
 much hand at the working?" 
 
 "I am strong. I can do as much as most. Mrs. 
 McKenzie thinks I have learned a good deal," said 
 Jessamine, feeling rather like one who has swept down 
 all defenses with his own hand. 
 
 "Ay, ye will just be learning, so as ye can manage 
 your own farm, I'm thinking." 
 
 He turned rather a cunning eye upon her. 
 
 "Perhaps," said Jessamine; then she added hastily: 
 "And are you able to work upon the land yourself still, 
 Mr. Macgillvray?" 
 
 "Oh, ay! I can plant and hoe and lift potaties my-
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 187 
 
 self verra weel. But Colin, he will be rare at the work- 
 ing, mem." 
 
 He looked sideways at Jessamine, a cunning thought 
 visibly changing his features, and he nodded his head 
 more than once. 
 
 "Indeed," said Jessamine. 
 
 The old man approached again with his terrifying air 
 of confidence. Jessamine's little start backward did 
 not discourage him. He came and laid a patronizing 
 hand upon her shoulder. 
 
 "Ay, Colin will be an awful clever lad ! When he 
 was a bit bairn, and a charge was laid upon him, he 
 was aye on the alert. Oh, yes! he will just go straight 
 on, and ye won't be stopping him. He will have the 
 farm when I'm gone, mem. And Colin will be a great 
 match, mem a solid man with money in the bank. 
 Ay, ay, I was a saving mon in my day ! And Colin's 
 bonnie, mem bonnie!" 
 
 Still with his hand on her shoulder, he looked into 
 her face, grinning confidentially. 
 
 "Yes," murmured Jessamine faintly. 
 
 "The lassies was ever running after Colin!" 
 
 He gave her shoulder a pat as he spoke, and then 
 drew back, and expanded himself into the joviality of 
 reminiscence. 
 
 "I was a great mon for lassies when I was young. 
 But that will be a great while ago, mem." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Eighty years, I'm thinking, or more. But I was 
 ever for lassies, and Colin will be his father's own son 
 favors me, mem, in his features. But he will be 
 quieter."
 
 188 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Lassies will be ever running after him, though. 
 They will know a bonnie lad when they will see one. 
 I was saying to Colin : 'Colin,' I was saying, 'ye'll be 
 choosing a lass one o' these days.' " 
 
 Old Rorie chuckled. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And Colin was just laughing." 
 
 Old Rorie bent himself together in a quite inexplica- 
 ble ecstasy. 
 
 "Yes," said Jessamine. 
 
 "I'm saying to him sometimes: 'Colin,' I am saying, 
 'ye will be choosing a lassie and bringing her home.' ' 
 
 Again he approached Jessamine, and, laying the tips 
 of his fingers upon her shoulder, stood leaning back 
 and chuckling with a lively mirth. She gazed at him 
 with fascinated intensity, tracing through his dirt and 
 grotesque manners the curious faint remains of Colin's 
 "bonniness" and grandeur in type of which he had 
 claimed the parentage. Suddenly he withdrew his 
 hand, and crumpled up his smiling features into a 
 shrewder look. 
 
 "Ye see," said he, "we will be wanting a lassie about 
 the bit hoosie now. The auld wife she's aging fast, 
 and we would be glad verra glad of a thumping 
 lassie to scrub round and gather and hoe a bit. But 
 my Colin, he's slaw, I tell ye ; slaw and canny my Colin 
 will be." 
 
 He shook his head with affected gravity and great 
 concern. 
 
 "Ay, my Colin's slaw. But I'll just be telling ye ae 
 thing. And I'd no be telling it to every lassie. My
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 189 
 
 Colin will stick. A lassie will just be dealing skeelfu' 
 with my Colin, and he'll stick. Slaw he may be ; but 
 he ever was for sticking since he was young." 
 
 He surveyed her to see the effect of his words. 
 
 "Yes," said Jessamine. 
 
 "And I'll tell ye ae ither thing. My Colin's aye very 
 tender in his feelings. Gude bless ye ! I was myself 
 when I was young. But a mon wears a bit better 
 when he will be eighty year. My Colin he will be ten- 
 der. And a lassie will just be saying 'snap' to his 
 'snip.' A lassie will if she was skeelfu'. And my Colin 
 he will stick." 
 
 Having delivered himself of these predicates, old 
 Rorie drew a deep breath and gazed down at the 
 "lassie" before him. 
 
 "I am rested now," said Jessamine, whose eyes 
 perused the ground, "and I think the rain has stopped. 
 I will go now, and I thank you very much." 
 
 Rorie disentangled his mind with difficulty from its 
 preoccupation, and with a very dignified air opened the 
 door to let Jessamine pass. As she did so she glanced 
 up the staircase, which disappeared into some nonde- 
 script region above. 
 
 "That is your bedroom up there, I suppose?" said 
 she. 
 
 "Oh, na! That will just be a make o' loft. Me and 
 my auld wife we sleep in the kitchen just for comfort, 
 ye see. But," he added cunningly, "I'm not for say- 
 ing that Colin wouldn't knock up a bit room upstairs 
 for the lass and the bairnies when they come." 
 
 "When Colin is married, you and Mrs. Macgillvray 
 will remain here, then?"
 
 19 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "Oh, ay!" returned old Rorie, with the tranquillity 
 of full assurance; "he wouldn't be turning on his old 
 father and mother whatever." 
 
 "No. I will go now, Mr. Macgillvray. Thank you, 
 and good-by." 
 
 "Good-morning to ye, mem," said the old peasant, 
 standing on the threshold, and involuntarily saluting 
 the high-breeding in Jessamine. "I am most pleased 
 to be seeing ye, and we will be verra pleased if we was 
 seeing ye again."
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THAT evening Jessamine stood in the small inclosure 
 which contained McKenzie's barns and outbuildings, 
 her hand resting upon the railings. 
 
 It was the place in which she had first become aware 
 of Colin's existence. Her face looked worn and pale, 
 and she grasped the rail firmly so that the knuckles of 
 her hand looked white under the skin ; this was the 
 sole sign of the tension of her mind. All day she had 
 done no work. The storms of the morning had ended 
 in a steady drizzle of rain, and it was chilly enough ; 
 the landscape was gloomy, the nearer details sordid 
 under the dripping wet, the hills covered with shreds 
 and trails of chalky mist, and overweighted with the 
 heavy roll of black clouds of moisture upon them. 
 Jessamine's eyes looked steadily southward. The 
 stern and unillumined front of a hill, down which the 
 storm rack crept with chilly clinging hands, intercepted 
 her gaze ; but there was an expression in her eyes as 
 though this natural barrier had melted before their 
 penetrating rays, and they saw something beyond and 
 far off. 
 
 She wore a gray Glengarry bonnet and a gray plaid 
 about her shoulders; her position was uncomfortable, 
 but she had chosen it rather than endure the closeness 
 and dullness of the little square chamber; the air, at 
 least, was fresh and sweet. But it was silent ; every-
 
 I9 2 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 thing that runs or flies, chirrups or sings, and lends its 
 little being to help make up the cheerful intermingling 
 of sound and movement, seemed to have sought its lair 
 and to have hurried beneath the ground ; the very rain 
 fell without its usual jovial tinkle, it was but the noise- 
 less emptying of one of those cold and chalky clouds, 
 and its drip washed out rather than intensified the 
 colors of the grass and heather and foliage. 
 
 Suddenly Jessamine gave a violent start. Her eyes 
 flashed and dilated, and a glow as from some reflected 
 sunlight burned in her face. She withdrew a step from 
 the railing and looked to the right. A cautious step 
 among the bushes had been to her heart an unmistaka- 
 ble signal ; and now from the mist and grayness of the 
 birch wood Colin's form appeared and stood out on the 
 green knoll near. He looked at the house for a mo- 
 ment, and then discovered her. She was gazing at him 
 with a curious panting fear in her eyes. 
 
 "Jessie, my do'e! Ye're waiting!" 
 
 And he ran down to her. The fence was between. 
 
 "No!" said she, drawing still further back and 
 speaking almost sharply; "I thought you were 
 away." 
 
 "Aweel? But ye're here, and it makes no differ- 
 ence." 
 
 "Have you bought your corn? And has Mr. 
 McKenzie returned?" 
 
 "Oh, yes. We bought a stock for seed. John will 
 not be back yet. He was staying at McKenzie Craig- 
 owries's his cousin, ye'll understand." 
 
 "He will be returning, Colin, and, if so, he will see 
 me. I should not like that."
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 193 
 
 She made as though she would withdraw, and a 
 blank look drove the radiance out of Colin's face. 
 
 "O Jessie! Ye maunna be going! Why, lassie, I 
 was not seeing ye all day !" 
 
 ' ' Is that so very necessary ?" asked Jessamine, mourn- 
 fulness chasing the sweetness of her smile. 
 
 "I'm thinking it's likely ye need be asking that! 
 Jessie, I'm coming over the fence!" 
 
 "No, Colin, no!" 
 
 "Ay, Jessie, ay! I'm no for bearing these bits of 
 iron between. I've had no kiss." 
 
 "Colin, stoop your head. I will give you one." 
 
 "Your own self, lassie?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 He stooped his head over the fence, and Jessamine, 
 pulling at the lapels of his coat, stretched herself up 
 and touched his mouth with her lips. It went to his 
 heart like a sting. In another moment he was over the 
 fence and had her in his arms. 
 
 "Colin," said Jessamine, "let me go! You are crush- 
 ing me to pieces! I thought I forbade you to come 
 over the fence !" 
 
 "Ye'll be forbidding the sun to shine, and the wind 
 to blaw, and the burn to run down the hill, winna ye, 
 lassie?" 
 
 "Perhaps Mrs. McKenzie has seen you from the win- 
 dows." 
 
 "Then, lassie, I must be making my bit explanation. 
 I have got, ye'll understand," he added gravely, "to be 
 telling McKenzie soon." 
 
 Jessamine, who, after an anxious scrutiny of the 
 road, had retired to the protecting angle of a barn,
 
 194 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 stood with her back against the wall. Her face was 
 red enough now, and her breast rose and fell ; Colin, 
 the very picture of a handsome and triumphant lover 
 stood looking down upon her, his eyes wandering over 
 the flowerlike face, and his heart a mere suffusion of 
 mingled tenderness and worship. 
 
 "Colin," said Jessamine, in a rapid entreating tone, 
 "promise me something." 
 
 "If it's no against nature, lassie, I'll promise ye any- 
 thing. I'll no promise not to kiss ye again in a 
 minute." 
 
 I want you to listen in real earnest," said she 
 anxiously. "You said you would promise?" 
 
 "Ay, lassie." 
 
 "Promise me not to tell Mr. and Mrs. McKenzie any- 
 thing at present." 
 
 There was a moment of silence. If Jessamine had 
 looked up, which she did not do, she would have seen 
 in Colin's eyes a little flash of pained astonishment. 
 
 "Not tell? Aweel, Jessie, that will be as ye like, my 
 lo'e. Come," he added tenderly, "a little nearer. I 
 cannot see your eyes." 
 
 As he spoke he put his arm out and drew her close 
 to his side. The pressure was more like that of a pro- 
 tecting husband than of a passionate lover. And 
 Jessamine yielded to it tranquilly, laying her hand in 
 his, and looking up to his face with eyes swimming in 
 tenderness. 
 
 "Not tell, my lassie?" he repeated, as he bent down 
 to look closer into them. 
 
 "You do not understand," said she, her lids droop- 
 ing for the moment.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 195 
 
 "That may be. But it will be my part, I'm think- 
 ing, just to to be seeing that folks about gets no 
 wrong notions into their heads." 
 
 He loosed his hand from her small clinging fingers, 
 and, folding both arms about her, pressed her jealously 
 to his breast. She lay there with her cheek pressed 
 against his coat and her eyes looking up at him with a 
 sad inscrutable gaze. 
 
 "We see things differently, Colin," murmured she. 
 
 "Oh, ay ! Ye will be versed in many things that I 
 was hearing nothing of. But if ye love me it will be 
 all one." 
 
 " I do love you, Colin," said Jessamine, with sudden 
 emotion. 
 
 And she lifted her arms and tightened their grasp 
 about his neck, and once more startled his lips with the 
 soft fire of her own. 
 
 "That's well, lassie," said he, the grave depth of his 
 voice intensified by tenderness; "it is like the opening 
 of heaven's gate to hear it. Many and many's the 
 time I was thinking of love; but I was never seeing 
 the lassie that could just make me in love with 
 love." 
 
 "But when you saw me, Colin?" 
 
 "I was just set of a sudden out of earth into 
 heaven." 
 
 "Yet you thought ill of me at first the day you 
 came into the yard and stood staring at me, Colin, so 
 as quite to frighten me." 
 
 "Ill of you? Na! na! I was just thinking that you 
 were a make of lassie I was just not seeing before, and 
 that a man had need to be cautious "
 
 196 A SUPERFLUOUS IV OMAN. 
 
 "Cautious?" 
 
 "Ay! Cautious when wraiths and witches were 
 about." 
 
 "You were right !" said Jessamine, with bitter energy. 
 
 "Right was I? Well, I'm no saying but there's 
 witchery in your kiss, lassie my ain, ain lassie ! But 
 wrong, because you love me." 
 
 "Do you trust me so much, Colin?" 
 
 "Oh, ay! 'What else would I just be doing?" 
 
 "Yet you know little of me. Perhaps it is just 
 possible I am different from your ideas." 
 
 "Oh, may be. It will just be a verra pleasant page 
 to learn, I'm thinking." 
 
 "Colin, you always seemed canny cautious. Yet 
 you're taking up a new book, and thinking, like a child, 
 that it will be all straight reading and pleasant." 
 
 He laughed. Then he laid his hand against the 
 curve of her cheek and chin, and lifted her face a little, 
 and kissed her mouth and eyelids. It was so small 
 and flowerlike a face, the figure in his arms was so 
 slight, the locks of hair ruffled against his breast were 
 so fresh and curly and childlike ! 
 
 "I'm thinking I'll just risk all that's written there. 
 Once I've folded ye to my heart, Jessie, I'm not the 
 man to go back on a tough bit or two. I'm thinking 
 that I'd rather like a wrestle with ye." 
 
 "Colin, Colin, be warned!" 
 
 It was almost as though a bird should chirp out a 
 caution, or a child exhort its elder. What in her was 
 there which he could not master? 
 
 "Warned?" said he, with a low, murmuring laugh; 
 "I'll show ye how!"
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 1 97 
 
 "Colin, Colin, you frighten me! I cannot breathe. 
 You must not kiss me again to-night." 
 
 And she struggled in his arms until he loosened them 
 and let her slip from him. 
 
 "I saw your father to-day," said she, rearranging her 
 plaid, and beating the wet out of the Glengarry bon- 
 net, which had long since tumbled on the ground. 
 
 "Did you?" said Colin, his face lighting up with 
 mingled surprise and anxiety. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "You called there?" asked he, with a dubious air. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Your father is a splendid old man." 
 
 "Oh, ay! You saw my mither?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 He waited for more, a vague unrest troubling his 
 heart. He scarcely liked this independent call at Dal- 
 faber when he had not been there to soften its asperi- 
 ties. His eyes were downcast. Jessamine watched his 
 face with remorseful sympathy. 
 
 "Jessie," said he, looking up at last, "ye're but a bit 
 lassie. Ye shall have a servant when ye're my wife." 
 
 Jessamine looked away with a curious creeping of 
 blankness over the love light and color in her face. 
 
 "Thank you, Colin," said she softly. 
 
 "I'll be telling my father and my mither to-night," 
 said he. 
 
 She glanced at him quickly, alarm shooting into her 
 eyes. 
 
 "No, Colin. Promise me you will do no such thing." 
 
 He came nearer, and looked longingly at the little
 
 198 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 bit of warm white throat he could see between the 
 folds of her plaid ; but he made no effort to kiss her. 
 
 "Have you ever a mither, Jessie?" asked he, with 
 grave tenderness. 
 
 "No; I have no mother. I never knew what it is to 
 have a mother, Colin." 
 
 A vision of Aunt Arabella, of her high-ridged nose, 
 the elegant insipidity of her visage, rose to Jessamine's 
 mind, and sharpened her tone as she spoke. 
 
 "That will be a verra great loss, my do'e a verra 
 great loss. I'm thinking I will have to be mother and 
 man to ye both." 
 
 He looked at her leniently as one looks at a child 
 who needs directing. She looked at him with the sad, 
 unfathomable eyes of those who are learned in life and 
 the world. He took her hand in his own. She turned 
 her head away. 
 
 "Jessie, lass, it will be sweet to me to carry a secret 
 i' my breast, and share it just with ye alone." 
 
 She made no reply, but the leaping of color to her 
 cheek showed that she listened. 
 
 "But I'm like a partly drunken man with wine still 
 before him, when I see ye, Jessie." 
 
 A smile like a meteor lit up her eyes. 
 
 "And I'm kind of jealous of myself. I'd like to build 
 a church about ye." 
 
 Jessamine shuddered. 
 
 "Oh, no, no! I should not like it." 
 
 And, turning her face, she suddenly lifted her eyes to 
 his with a soft, mysterious, tempting light in them. 
 
 "Bonnie, bonnie bird!" he murmured. 
 
 He stretched his hand toward her, but she drew a
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 199 
 
 little further off, and stood gazing into the murky, 
 misty gray where the south was. She was so still that 
 Colin did not venture to interrupt her thoughts; she 
 stood lifting the drenched plaid to her chin, and slightly 
 shivering now and then. With her great beauty still 
 before him, he had not room in his mind to discover 
 how inscrutable she was. At last she spoke. Her 
 eyes lifted themselves no higher than the top button 
 of his coat, and her voice, in its low, firm tone, seemed 
 driven out of her by a studied effort of will. 
 
 "Colin," said she, "I will give you leave to tell John 
 and Annie McKenzie and your father and mother in 
 three days' time from this if you still wish it then" 
 
 "I see no harm in that delay whatever. And I'd 
 willingly lengthen out my joy, for it will be a joy to 
 steal round and see ye, Jessie to know ye're all mine, 
 and no one else to guess it." 
 
 "You feel it so?" she asked, with a low, wild little 
 laugh and a darting look. 
 
 And then she shivered again. 
 
 "Good-night, Colin ; I am going." 
 
 "Bide awee. I'm no saying that I can wait these 
 three days and not see ye ! I must see ye, Jessie." 
 
 "Well, where?" said she, with a sudden fierceness 
 of intonation. 
 
 "Could ye trust me, lassie?" asked he hesitatingly. 
 
 She looked in his eyes with a wild challenging 
 smile triumph and dread in one. 
 
 "Ay, how ye look! Lassie, every glance ye give me 
 goes straight to my heart. I feel partly mad. But if 
 ye can trust me, come to-morrow night to the new barn 
 by the stack. Come, and ye'll find me waiting."
 
 200 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "I'll come I'll come!" 
 
 Her eyes were meteors. 
 
 "Gude bless ye, my lassie! But but 
 
 "What, Colin?" 
 
 He raised his hand, and laid it confusedly upon his 
 brow. Jessamine crept near again, and leaned against 
 him, watching him. Her looks were wild, her lips were 
 parted by quick breaths, and her bosom panted. 
 
 The man gave a great sigh, and dropped his hand. 
 
 "Oh, naething! Ye'll just come," he said, in a falter- 
 ing whisper.
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 WOMEN, when they are frail, are so in great measure 
 because they have not been instructed in the nature of 
 choice, nor taught the art of selection, nor the mean- 
 ing of responsibility. Willfulness they may know, but 
 not too many are acquainted with will. 
 
 Jessamine's mental debate was in an ever increasing 
 darkness if, indeed, it could be dignified with the 
 name of debate. She was merely a prey to varying 
 strong impulses, a thing passively delivered over to a 
 struggle between opposing inducements. Shaken with 
 longings and terrors either way, she stood wondering 
 whither her fate would lead her at the last. There 
 was an element in her passion, perhaps, unusually 
 strong. She longed definitely and deeply after mother- 
 hood. Her thinking upon this point was no more the 
 precise reasoned thinking of a man than on others; it 
 was a brooding pictorial feeling on the part of a very 
 feminine type of brain. But it colored all her love for 
 Colin, and was not distinct from it. 
 
 In Jessamine it was not so much that natural feeling 
 lay like a rich residuum beneath a cultured mind, as 
 that she was a pagan creature covered up in artifici- 
 ality. In character development, with all her pretty 
 cleverness, she was far behind the level of her age. 
 She and .other women like her move in a world for 
 them "not realized," and beyond their understanding
 
 202 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 in its serious claims. But this fact does not exempt 
 them ; the serious claims are made upon them, never- 
 theless, fair neglected children as they are of the cen- 
 turies of moral training which have never taken them 
 in hand. 
 
 None of the girl's overpowering emotions were 
 relieved by the consolations of intellectuality, or the 
 dignified sense of a possibility of firm choice. Had 
 the life she had condescended to in a freak proved too 
 lofty for her? Or was she infected by the element into 
 which she had come, to something lower than herself? 
 
 Neither question was she able to decide. 
 
 "Give yourself to Colin !" cried the strong voice of 
 Nature. 
 
 Jessamine did not discern whether this voice came 
 from an angel or the devil. All her thoughts were 
 contradictory. At moments she found herself girding 
 about her the armor of Aunt Arabella's instructions; 
 at others, whipping herself up to the catastrophe 
 almost as the virtuous whip themselves up to virtue. 
 Beaten thus between two hesitations, either way the 
 result would be simply frailty, and not decision. 
 
 And out of frailty nothing of good in this life was 
 ever won. 
 
 All the next morning she moved about silent and 
 distrait. Mrs. McKenzie watched her, and read her 
 with her quiet motherly eyes. Trouble had come to 
 the wee bonnie lassie, but its nature she could only 
 faintly guess. Yet, since matrimony is the way of 
 bonnie lassies, she ventured upon that subject at last, 
 her soft voice throwing around her a region of temper- 
 ance, safety, and peace.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 203 
 
 " Jeanie Macbain will be making up her mind at last," 
 she ventured with cautious irrelevancy. 
 
 Jessamine started at the quiet voice, and blushed at 
 it because of its mild contrast with her own tumult. 
 The cup she was washing slipped from her hand into 
 the wooden bowl with a clatter. 
 
 "It isn't broken, Mrs. McKenzie !" said she peni- 
 tently. 
 
 " I won't be saying that I thought so," persisted the 
 good woman. "Jeanie Macbain will be making up her 
 mind, whatever." 
 
 "What to do?" asked Jessamine timidly. 
 
 "She and Willie Dallas will be married soon." 
 
 "Willie Dallas, of Sluggan Granish?" 
 
 "That will be he." 
 
 "A very well-to-do man, I suppose? I am glad if 
 Jeanie is happy." 
 
 "Aweel, I'll not be saying so much about that. She 
 will be ever very moderate. But it will be a right 
 thing for her, whatever. Willie he was ever very back- 
 ward and melancholious, and Jeanie she was laithfu'. 
 But they are making it up at last, whatever." 
 
 "I am glad. Jeanie is not very young." 
 
 "She will be getting on in years indeed. Many a 
 weary body would ha' had her, but Jeanie she was ever 
 very back-with-drawing. And I said to her one day, 
 'What will you be thinking of Willie Dallas now?' 
 And she said, 'I'm thinking he's getting gray.' And 
 I said, 'Grayer than yourself?' " 
 
 Jessamine reached down a teacloth and began to 
 wipe the cups and saucers. The slop stone stood 
 under the window ; she had been stooping over it with
 
 204 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 her back toward Mrs. McKenzie; but she turned from 
 it now and leaned against it, her slim figure in the short 
 blue linsey gown defined against the light, and her face 
 downcast and rosy. Every ripple of the matron's 
 tones, as she sat opposite, knitting by the hearth, con- 
 tained a gentle admonition and personal application. 
 
 "Yes, Mrs. McKenzie?" said the girl softly, seeing 
 that she paused. 
 
 "It'll be best for a wee bonnie lassie to be wed. 
 Lassies weary in time of jinketing round. Best get a 
 gude mon while they may." 
 
 The tone was firmer and more direct. Jessamine 
 said nothing, and rubbed carefully round the plate. 
 
 "It will ever be a comfort," continued Mrs. McKen- 
 zie, "to find a straight road. It will be a comfort just 
 to run right on without a sight of wonder and uncer- 
 tainty. Whiles there will be turmoil in a lassie's mind. 
 And I've noticed it gets settled down when a lassie 
 buckles to with a douce quiet mon to do for ancl 
 bairnies aboot. That will be just a woman's way. 
 There won't be so many roads for a woman as for a 
 man. It's aye a wise dispensation, for they're but ill- 
 shaped for roving. Seems like the hearts in our 
 breastsies need harboring and resting. Oh, indeed ! 
 It was ever better with me since I took John. It 
 stilled a sight o' thinking. A douce quiet mon and 
 bairnies aboot will be the best thing for a woman, 
 whatever." 
 
 Mrs. McKenzie ended her speech with some sense of 
 surprise at the unwonted length of it. 
 
 "It is the best thing for a woman?" repeated Jessa- 
 mine gently and slowly.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 205 
 
 Mrs. McKenzie, raising her mild glance for a mo- 
 ment, was startled to find the girl's eyes dark as with 
 a veil of trouble thrown over them, and with a face 
 now as wan as it had been rosy. So inscrutable and 
 deep an air of misery had rarely met her eyes before. 
 She dropped her knitting and planted her hands upon 
 her knees and leaned forward, not in excitement, but 
 with a large comfortable inquiring air of sympathy. 
 
 "What will be ailing the lassie? She will be greet- 
 ing the nicht through." 
 
 "Nothing ails the lassie," repeated Jessamine gently, 
 a twisted smile tremulously altering the lovely mouth, 
 "nothing nothing at all. I am, I think, almost terri- 
 bly well, Mrs. McKenzie." 
 
 The wild, wan eyes rested hungrily upon the good 
 woman's face. 
 
 "Aweel!" said the latter, "I'd not be one to be find- 
 ing fault with the good health, whatever ! It's a gift 
 of the Lord to be thankful over. Lassie !" 
 
 "Yes, Mrs. McKenzie." 
 
 "You'll not be saying a worrud over the sports. Did 
 you like them?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, very much. Oh, I liked them!" 
 
 The thought of Colin ran with a thrill through her 
 voice. 
 
 "Colin Macgillvray he went west to the sports too," 
 said Mrs. McKenzie deliberately and with a quite 
 infecting calm. 
 
 All Jessamine's glowing thoughts scampered like 
 startled wild things to their lair when they saw the 
 trap thrown out for them. The rustle of them seemed 
 to her scared senses audible.
 
 206 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "Oh, he was there, of course," she responded hur- 
 riedly, "and Mr. McKenzie too. And and there 
 was a very good piper there, a short man, who played 
 better than anyone." 
 
 "Oh, indeed! You'll not be so very much taken 
 up with the wee bit chappie with the pipes, I'm 
 thinking." 
 
 Jessamine, trembling and frightened, laid aside her 
 teacloth, and turned away to place the cups and saucers 
 on the shelf. It was notable that all the skilled society 
 fencing to which she was accustomed failed her in 
 the wise controlling eye of this wholesome peasant 
 woman. Mrs. McKenzie's atmosphere threw everyone 
 around her back on simple virtues. 
 
 "Mrs. McKenzie," faltered the girl presently, when 
 the last saucer had been put by, "shall I not sprinkle a 
 little salt in the porridge?" 
 
 "Just a thought, lassie," responded Mrs. McKenzie, 
 "and you might be getting the platters down." 
 
 Jessamine reached up for the wooden salt-box. But 
 her fingers were trembling and awkward, and her eyes 
 were blind. She pulled the thing forward on the shelf 
 and let it fall, scattering the white contents over the 
 floor. 
 
 "Oh, that will be wanchancy, lassie !" cooed Mrs. 
 McKenzie in scarcely a raised voice, and more sympa- 
 thetic with Jessamine's ill luck than sorry over her 
 own loss "very wanchancy, whatever." 
 
 "Wanchancy?" repeated Jessamine, staring at the 
 white heaps on the ground. 
 
 "Oh, indeed yes, lassie! Very wanchancy, what- 
 ever."
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 207 
 
 After the midday dinner the rain, which had fallen 
 heavily all the morning, cleared off a little, leaving the 
 atmosphere warm and damp ; and Jessamine restlessly 
 wandered out to the yard at the back of the house, 
 near which she thought she heard John McKenzie at 
 work. She found him building up a peat stack near 
 the shed, under the shelter of the projecting roof. 
 
 All the summer at odd times he had been sawing and 
 preparing wood to build the shed, and, with the aid of 
 Colin and other friendly neighbors, it had gradually 
 risen from the ground, and now presented the appear- 
 ance of a tolerable building. To-day he worked alone 
 at the peat stack, piecing the black blocks of fuel 
 securely together so as to form a convenient heap, and 
 this in the leisurely enjoying manner of one not con- 
 cerned to take Time by the forelock, nor to perform 
 any astonishing feat of empty celerity. The acrid 
 pleasant smell of the peats filled the air; and Jessa- 
 mine, strangely soothed and secure, as she always felt 
 in either of the McKenzies' presence, drew nearer and 
 nearer, until the man's busy glance took her into it. 
 Whereupon he welcomed with his usual pleasant 
 glance the lovely presence \vhich he was now so accus- 
 tomed to see lurking furtively about the edges of his 
 daily labor. 
 
 "Won't you sit down and rest you a while?" said 
 he gently. 
 
 Jessamine climbed on to a heap of fallen wood, and 
 perched herself on the top. For a moment the turmoil 
 that filled her life was stilled. She breathed in good 
 odors, she watched healthy labor, she was conscious of 
 kindly companionship, and, somewhere deep down in
 
 208 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 her nature, of the love that gives richness and glow to 
 all life. 
 
 "We've had bad weather lately for the harvest, 
 haven't we, Mr. McKenzie?" she began, identifying 
 herself as usual with the interests of the place. 
 
 "Oh, indeed, and it's very bad weather," returned 
 McKenzie, with the patient glance at the sky charac- 
 teristic of the Highland farmer. 
 
 "Will the corn be spoiled?" 
 
 Jessamine was anxious, and opened very grave eyes 
 on McKenzie's face. 
 
 "We'll be waiting to see that, whatever. We've got 
 it in the stocks, and we shall carry a bit soon." 
 
 "I'm glad if it is not spoiled. That peat is the win- 
 ter fuel, I suppose?" 
 
 "Oh, yes! In the summer we will be building the 
 stacks, and in the wunther we will just be burning 
 them." 
 
 John threw a pleasant glance up as he spoke. The 
 peace, the monotony, the day-by-day living and labor, 
 soothed her sense more and more. 
 
 "Where does the peat come from?" said she. 
 
 "Side of Craig Ellachie," said John. 
 
 "Above the fir woods? That's a long way to go. 
 How do you bring them down?" 
 
 "Just with the cart and the horse." 
 
 "But the road through the deer forest is closed." 
 
 "Whiles they close it, whiles they open it. It will 
 be open when we will be casting the peats." 
 
 "But it is so rough scarcely a road at all." 
 
 "Oh, it's a very bad road, whatever. It's awful hash- 
 ing for the horses and the harness."
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 209 
 
 "And you have to go so often to get enough." 
 
 "Avveel," said John, "a good few times." 
 
 "How tired you must get with the long journey up 
 and down !" 
 
 "Oh, yes! A body gets very tired and hot." 
 
 "I think the laird should mend the road. It knocks 
 the horses to pieces." 
 
 "It will be very hashing to them. But whiles I'm 
 not so sorry to take the roan. He was ever a very 
 wicked horse ; he will be for rushing, even in the plow. 
 And it will quiet him a bit." 
 
 "But the roan is a good horse. You made some new 
 turnip drills in the old hayfield. 'Hadoof,' you said, 
 'hi, whisht!' and the roan turned, or stepped to one 
 side, or stopped, and was, I thought, very clever and 
 obedient. I wonder how you can make the horses 
 understand." 
 
 "Oh, we just teach them. They just learn by de- 
 grees, like the scholars in the schools. Whiles the roan 
 will be good enough. But he was ever very nervous; 
 since he was young he was a nervous beastie." 
 
 "What a long time it takes to build a peat stack!" 
 
 "Oh, I'll soon be through." 
 
 Jessamine leaned her pretty head against the side of 
 the shed. It was a moment of ease and forgetfulness, 
 of genuine peace, and of that unmarked happiness of 
 which we make too little, because it is only a level of 
 quiet thoughts and gentle composed sensations. For 
 the time she forget even Colin and her passion ; the 
 thought of them may have sung a little gently at the 
 bottom of her heart, but they were merely an inter- 
 mingling of color with the hueless woof of pleasant
 
 210 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 thinking and sensation. John's very unconsciousness 
 of, and his aloofness from, her personal turmoil helped 
 her to forget it ; it passed for the moment into the 
 comforting obscurity of things unconsidered, the out- 
 door life, with its health and large calm, soothing that 
 too intense feeling of the personal, and setting it in 
 truer relation to the rest of nature a relation which 
 few attain to even in moments, and none securely hold 
 throughout a lifetime. 
 
 Out of such moments, if any activity arises, it will 
 be sweet and generous. Jessamine felt a desire to be 
 genuinely useful to the good and kindly folk among 
 whom so long she had resided ; the sense that she had 
 power, might have power to help, was strong within 
 her, and she found no reason why she should not use 
 it. She forgot on what the power was founded and its 
 accompanying humiliation if, indeed, she were capa- 
 ble of feeling this last and she forgot, too, her care- 
 fully preserved disguise. It was with a little grave 
 considering air that she spoke next. 
 
 "The land is poor," said she, "and it would be 
 better if you had the hill with the fir wood on for 
 pasture." 
 
 "Oh, yes! it is a poor bit land," said John tran- 
 quilly, " and if we got the fir wood from the laird for 
 sheep pasture, it would be a very good thing for us, 
 whatever. We could be keeping more sheep, and 
 helping ourselves that way. Oh, it would be a very 
 good thing if we had the deer forest again. Whiles 
 there was no deer forest." 
 
 John, without pausing in his work, glanced up at the 
 long wide range of the hillsides, where the land, which
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 211 
 
 might have sustained a village, was covered up from 
 use by the mantle of fir trees that formed part of the 
 deer preserves for the amusement of one person. 
 Then his glance fell again, and he fitted the peats 
 together sturdily. 
 
 " When I go back," said Jessamine composedly, " I 
 shall speak to the laird. I shall ask him to cut down 
 the fir woods and to give the deer forest to the people 
 for the sheep. And I shall ask him to open the old 
 road and to mend it." 
 
 When John heard her speak thus, he left off his work 
 and stood still, leaning his arm over the peat stack, and 
 looking at the morsel of humanity before him. She 
 proposed, it appeared, in her own small person, to 
 bring about what was to him and his interests a sort of 
 millennium ; she proposed to do it by the simple process 
 of asking the laird. 
 
 He had not the faintest idea of the commercial value 
 of that bit of exquisiteness perched on the heap of his 
 cut wood, her head against his newly built shed. He 
 was unaware that lovely women were bought and sold 
 in the London marriage market very much as Circas- 
 sian slaves are sold to a Turkish harem, nor could he 
 form any notion of the prices lairds and others might 
 be willing to give for their possession even for their 
 momentary favor. The genial twinkle of his face and 
 it was always there when this pretty whiff hovered 
 about him broadened to a forbearing smile. 
 
 "That'll be a rare bit of work for a wee bonnie lassie 
 to undertake," said he. "But you'll not be talking of 
 going back yet a while, lassie? We'd be after missing 
 you if you did."
 
 212 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 Jessamine started. What had she said? Go back ! 
 Stay ! What terrible meaning was locked in either 
 simple phrase to her! For her what alternative was 
 there which was not hemmed in by terror? 
 
 She darted a wan, frightened look at the good quiet 
 face before her, and slipped down softly from her seat.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE evening cleared up more determinedly, though 
 not with any settled tendency toward finer weather. 
 The moon, sailing high in the heavens, wore a beautiful 
 watery halo, and was followed and crossed and sur- 
 rounded by a court of ever-changing, chalky, wraithlike 
 clouds, the whole appearance of the sky being of hurry 
 and preparation for a coming downfall. Every now 
 and then they dispersed and drew back, leaving the 
 tranquil disk, with its colored ring, peaceful and lonely 
 in a deeply colored, cold, clear night, over which again 
 presently that noiseless tumult swept and hurried. In 
 the upturned leaves of the birch trees went the sound 
 of a little showery breeze, and the winding paths 
 showed in the silvery light as cold and slimy tracks 
 through the fields or heather, while the sides of the 
 barns and sheds exhibited also the same silvery shining 
 wetness. 
 
 It must have been toward nine o'clock that the door 
 at the back of the McKenzies' cottage softly opened, 
 and Jessamine slid cautiously out into the night. 
 
 She had her rough gray skirt drawn high above her 
 slender ankles, and her gray plaid twisted about her 
 head and shoulders; save for the exquisite face lying 
 like a carved bit of ivory between the folds, she might 
 have been taken for any village lassie creeping out for 
 a tryst with her lover.
 
 214 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 Slipping cautiously round the corner of the house, 
 Jessamine peered toward the kitchen window, and saw 
 that a faint ray of light came from under the door and 
 from the chink in the shutter, and lay upon the wet 
 pools in the yard. The McKenzies, then, had not yet 
 retired; but the house was closed up for the night, and 
 there was no chance of disturbance. The gurgling 
 sound of water in the ^gutters, the dropping from the 
 eaves, and the cold swish of the trees threw an inde- 
 scribable feeling of discomfort around. Jessamine 
 shivered ; she half drew back, went forward a hesitat- 
 ing pace or two and paused, and then ran desper- 
 ately on. 
 
 Her light step was indistinguishable amid the various 
 noises of the night. 
 
 There was some distance for her to traverse, and 
 once across the road in the safe loneliness of the fields 
 and open space, the girl sped recklessly onward, utter- 
 ing every now and then a sobbing, incoherent word or 
 sentence that seemed to throw itself out of her agita- 
 tion without her will and purpose. For whither were 
 her hurrying steps bent? They carried her not over 
 the heather merely. Her spirit, as a skiff broken from 
 the anchor, leaped and bounded forward on uncharted 
 seas, scudding before the winds and at their mercy. 
 Each beat of her foot upon the ground thrust the 
 familiar world behind her; the new, the irrevocable, 
 the wild adventure lay before! An intoxicated sense 
 of loose moorings, an exaltation of the mind at her 
 own daring, the thousand vivid allurements of the mo. 
 ment, sped whirling through her brain. In one spot 
 a complacent whisper hummed, an assurance that the
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 215 
 
 future still lay in the future and the possibility of 
 safety was not yet snatched from her; that the seduct- 
 ive could be dallied with, yet find her adamant in the 
 last resort. Another corner concealed a reckless thing, 
 which told itself that the cup was there, and that the 
 lips should drink it every drop, nor pause till it was 
 drained ; and just there it was that the wild fiery throb 
 kept burning and stabbing and thrilling her through 
 and through. 
 
 Somewhere on the edges of all was a whisper, cold 
 and gray as the dim shade that uttered it ; this mur- 
 mured of the consequence, and muttered warning. 
 But who listens to a thing dreary and chill? That was 
 the place of the anchor and the mooring from which 
 she bounded away, and behind it was an old world in 
 collapse, with faint thunders of falling cities growing 
 less and less in her ears. 
 
 "I care for nothing! I care for nothing!" Some 
 strange voice floated that out on the air, and suddenly 
 she stood still. She looked up ; the greatness of the 
 night, and the streaming rack with the moonlight leap- 
 ing upon it, arrested her. With it some answering 
 greatness, some womanly foreboding, rose within. She 
 stared up to the sky, clenching her hands. But her 
 eyes and cheeks were wet as the night itself. Again 
 she sought wildly over the heavens, and again 
 nothing like prayer would come nothing save that 
 sick revolt against the purposeless convention which 
 was all the goodness she had ever learned. She 
 raised the clenched hands upward and cried out 
 again : 
 
 "I care for nothing! I care for nothing! There is
 
 2i6 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAtf. 
 
 no meaning anywhere save this. What was I born 
 for, if this is wrong?" 
 
 Out on the air rose her cry, and, shrinking from the 
 silence that followed, with renewed recklessness she 
 darted on. 
 
 Macgillvray's land being reached, she walked more 
 composedly, casting as she went searching, fearful 
 glances about the bushes, and this because she became 
 suddenly seized by an unreasoning fear that old Rorie 
 would start out from them and claim her with his ter- 
 rible courteous welcome. The barns the new sub- 
 stantial buildings, so much handsomer than the cottage 
 of their owner were presently to be discerned, their 
 slated roofs shining in the mingled wet and moonlight. 
 By night they seemed larger than in the daytime, and 
 the little path was swallowed up in their shadow. She 
 paused confusedly, wondering which way to turn in 
 order to reach the door in the front, and as she paused 
 she inconsequently blamed Colin that she was thus left 
 to hesitation and permitted to wait alone. 
 
 The next moment, just as inconsequently, she shrank 
 at his presumption, because she found herself encircled 
 by his arms. 
 
 "I was waiting for you, lassie mine, for a whole long 
 hour," came the warm, rich voice through the chill 
 night air. "Many a weary time have I stepped over 
 the bit field to the road, and looked and waited. There 
 will be a hunger in my heart indeed, for it will be a 
 night and a day since I was seeing you. And your 
 promise made the time seem longer." 
 
 Jessamine sank against his breast, suddenly still ; she 
 heard over and over again the echoes of his voice.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 217 
 
 Everything was done, then? There was no more any 
 struggle left, neither decision nor hesitation, but mere 
 drifting and helplessness. The thunders, and voices, 
 and hurry in her mind were at an end. Silence came 
 with his touch. She slightly shivered. 
 
 "Take me to the barn," she murmured. 
 
 In a moment he had lifted her in his arms like a 
 child. 
 
 "It'll be wet for your wee bit feet, lassie. And oh, 
 my lo'e, I canna draw thee close enough." 
 
 She clung about his neck stiller than ever. Thought, 
 anxiety, terror, were annihilated. There was nothing 
 left in all the world but this. The moment ! the mo- 
 ment ! that was all. No peace was ever more com- 
 plete. 
 
 "A nicht and a day," he murmured, with his lips 
 against her cheek as he walked. 
 
 "Only so long?" the sweet mouth breathed back in 
 the lowest whisper so low a whisper that the words 
 seemed to slide from her tongue to his ear without the 
 medium of sound, and with no more will than is thrown 
 into a sigh. 
 
 "And long enough, my do'e, my wife." 
 
 "Only so long," stole the tiny musical murmur again. 
 "I thought it was a week a month." 
 
 The phrase uttered, her eyes closed softly. Was 
 ever love-making sweet as this? He strained her to 
 his heart with such an upleap of wonder and of thank- 
 fulness that utterance overflowed into silence and was 
 lost. 
 
 Treading gently, strongly, and slowly, so that the 
 tender moment might not be overpassed too soon, he
 
 2l8 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 brought her silently at last within the shelter of the 
 barn. 
 
 "Set me down," she whispered, when she felt the dry 
 rafters over her and the warm air about her. 
 
 In her heart was no other feeling than that of a help- 
 less sliding, strange, delicious, fatal and full, full of 
 that peace. 
 
 There was a homely smell of hay and seed a mild 
 agricultural odor and from somewhere beyond a par- 
 tition came the soft, wholesome breathing of cows. 
 
 Instead of obeying her, Colin seated himself upon an 
 upturned wooden box which he had prepared for the 
 purpose, and drew her to his knee. A single lantern 
 swung from the roof, sending a meager though steady 
 light, which disclosed the middle part of the barn floor 
 carefully cleared and brushed by Colin; in the center 
 was the improvised seat, with a rug thrown upon it ; 
 some gleamings from polished metal showed the har- 
 ness hanging in the dark corners, into which also 
 various simple agricultural implements were pushed ; 
 and the sides of the barn were decorated with scythes, 
 hay forks, bunches of herbs, and repositories for seed 
 stock, save one side, which was a bare partition with 
 apertures, whence came the quiet rustle and the warm 
 breaths of cattle. Above all, the lantern's steady ray 
 illumined the group in the center the woman lying 
 still as death in the arms of the man, her face with 
 closed eyes against his breast, while his head leaned 
 down to touch hers. 
 
 For full quarter of an hour, speechless and motion- 
 less, the two remained locked in an emotion apparently 
 as simple, primitive, and undivided, as though Time
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN'. 2ig 
 
 had run back for them and borne them to the age of 
 Paradise. 
 
 In truth, Jessamine was in a half-fainting condition, 
 will and thought obliterated in the strong reaction 
 after struggle, of which, indeed, the sole survival 
 was a faint surmise a surmise indefinitely circled 
 by that peace of acquiescence. She lay with her 
 face, like a bit of exquisite carved ivory, against his 
 rough coat, her long black lashes resting on her 
 cheeks. 
 
 Colin's face, with its deep conscious life, presented 
 to hers as strong a contrast as it is possible to conceive. 
 He had spent the interval between the last meeting 
 and this in a way of his own, and the mark of it re- 
 mained with him. He leaned above that half-fainting, 
 acquiescent feminine frailty upon his breast with a look 
 of reverence, the impassioned tenderness of his eyes 
 undivorced from the strong quiet curve of the re- 
 strained lips and delicately harmonizing with that, and 
 the thrill of his arms over their burden subordinated to 
 the slow, massive, and accumulated power of his will 
 and conscience. Thus, within this seemingly mutual 
 trance of emotion, difference was already at its work, 
 the woman slipping darkly and helplessly toward some 
 moral abyss, and he with his will anchored, as it were, 
 to the stars. 
 
 The stirring of a heifer beyond the wooden wall, and 
 a sudden prolonged and plaintive low, aroused the pair 
 from their impassioned stillness, and set the tongue to 
 its restless work of speech. 
 
 Colin had his thoughts to impart, and these had been 
 lashed to unwonted speed by the sweet confession
 
 220 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 which had fallen from Jessamine in the moment that 
 he raised her in his arms. 
 
 "Lassie mine!" he murmured at last. 
 
 The lids at which he looked longingly and reverently 
 raised themselves suddenly to a wide-open gaze of sus- 
 pense that startled him. He looked into them until 
 his heart almost swooned with bliss and pain. 
 
 "We need not be waiting long, my do'e," he whis- 
 pered "not long." 
 
 His utterance was slow, unwilling, and bare, because 
 of the mighty restrained emotion behind. 
 
 The dark unfathomable eyes stared at him, the very 
 breath suspended, and the heart almost ceasing to 
 beat. 
 
 What could he say more? Where seek for and hit 
 upon true expression among so much? He failed to 
 discover fitting words at all. 
 
 "I'll be after knocking up the wee bit chamber for 
 you," he murmured ; "there's nothing money will buy 
 but I'll get it for you, lassie!" he continued, impluses 
 of extravagance shooting across his canny Scotch thrift- 
 fulness. 
 
 At this she made a movement. She laid her hand 
 on his coat, and pulled herself to a more upright posi- 
 tion still with that wild suspended gaze. It shook 
 more words from him. 
 
 "You'll be telling John McKenzie, my own sweet 
 lo'e?" he said. "And we'll be looking for the wedding 
 bells before the month is out. Thank God," he added 
 in an eager whisper, "I'm a solid man, and there's 
 naething need keep us twain waiting and apart. I'll 
 fix it up, Jessie, this month. We'll go straight on, my
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 221 
 
 lassie, like the lightning. Love, " said he, " canna be 
 waiting too long too long." 
 
 But to this he earned no response. Had all the love 
 been breathed out in that one sweet whisper, whose 
 echoes still stirred live and warm in his heart? 
 
 She sat straight up now, looking into his face his 
 face all tremulous with tenderness and reverent devo- 
 tion and she placed one hand on his shoulder, while 
 the other lay limp in her lap. 
 
 "You'll not be saying me nay," he pleaded. "Lassie, 
 I canna wait. My heart's pulled in two with loving 
 when I'm my lane. I canna be my lane, sweet Jessie, 
 any more. I'm needing you snug in my life, and no 
 more good-bys nor good-morrows. I will never be 
 knowing what love was before. It is," said he, trembling 
 a little, and looking away from her and up to the rafters 
 where a dove or two sat, "a great great matter." 
 
 Whereupon, at that, suddenly she slid from his knee, 
 and stood upright on the floor beside him. He rose 
 too, and came close to her, and, impatient of distance, 
 drew her again unresistingly within his arms. She 
 leaned against him, but still she did not speak. 
 
 "I cannot fetch it into my mind," he continued, 
 "that I'm deserving of this great gift, whatever. But 
 I'm thanking the Lord indeed. Seems like the fiery 
 chariot of Elijah that went by." 
 
 He looked away from her again, and raised his hand, 
 moving it gently in the air, and seemed bereft of fur- 
 ther speech in wonder. 
 
 "Colin!" 
 
 The tone was scarcely natural. It was thin as well 
 as low.
 
 222 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "Oh, my wee do'e ! What your voice is to me," he 
 murmured, overjoyed at hearing it ; "tell me you'll be 
 saying 'Yes' to your own man. Tell me you'll be com- 
 ing to me drawing into my wee bit housie like the 
 sunshine that you are ; that you'll be resting there, and 
 making it summer, wunther, and all." 
 
 "Colin!" 
 
 "My lassie?" 
 
 "Don't don't say that ! Not that about the chariot 
 of fire." 
 
 "Why not, lassie mine? I'm fair whirled away into 
 a heaven of my own caught up and carried. I'm 
 lifted up from earth." 
 
 "Oh, no, Colin oh, no! Not that not that." 
 
 The voice wailed, with helpless tears in it. The 
 engrossed tenderness of Colin's face changed a little 
 to surprise. 
 
 "I'll not be saying ae thing that my lassie will not 
 be liking," said he briefly. 
 
 "I don't like it !" gasped Jessamine, with her hand 
 against her throat; "it it frightens me." 
 
 "It will just be what I was feeling. But I'll be say- 
 ing it no more." 
 
 The girl stood clutching the lapel of his coat, and 
 staring at him speechlessly. The echoes of his silver 
 tongue pierced her ear and touched her heart ; his face 
 and his eyes overcame her. But all around and about 
 this fair image of manly love beat chaotic miseries, and 
 the religious fervor of his wooing and his simple con- 
 scientious aims drove her cruelly back upon them, and 
 divided him and her, and froze up that acquiescent 
 glow within her heart of hearts into a nipping grief.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 223 
 
 What was the simple natural issue to him was just the 
 clear impossible to her. 
 
 Not yet could she fathom or dare to. realize the abyss 
 between them. But the feeling of it crept near already, 
 cold and cruel as death. 
 
 "Colin," she began again, her voice hoarse with a 
 fear beyond words. 
 
 "Jessie?" he responded. 
 
 And then he looked at her gravely, with more atten- 
 tive interest and scrutiny a scrutiny which was not so 
 much blinded by his own emotion as before. 
 
 The terror and entreaty in her eyes began forthwith 
 to become apparent to him. His head leaned forward 
 a little, and his puzzled look gazed into them. 
 
 As for those eyes of hers, they searched everywhere 
 over his face and over his whole nature in a wild and 
 desperate appeal. Just such an appeal had she made 
 to the dumb mythologies of all times just such an 
 entreaty against the laws of life and fate that crushed 
 and threatened her. 
 
 Her own feeling became darker to herself and more 
 overwhelming ; the intoxication was over ; each thought 
 was an abyss, each breath a slip downward. She 
 shrank in ignorant terror from herself and in shocked 
 amazement from her remembered thoughts ; but more 
 than all she shrank from the religious fervor of his 
 wooing, from the austere tenderness which made so 
 terrible a claim upon her, and up to the level of which 
 she knew it was impossible for her to rise. How 
 should he see that every word conjured up images of 
 distaste and unbearable hardness that behind the face 
 and eyes to which her gaze might have clung Avith
 
 224 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 supreme and satisfied love hovered to her mind an 
 austerity that terrified? All the best gifts he had to 
 offer seemed to her half-swooning heart as fetters and 
 a dungeon. Her love had the quality of self-abandon- 
 ment, but could not rise to sacrifice. Shame she would 
 have accepted, but noble endurance was, as yet, be- 
 yond her. 
 
 So the pair of human souls, chained together solely 
 by passion, divided by everything that remained, gazed 
 into each other's eyes, silent because the darkness and 
 the separation were invincible. Yet some reflection 
 from the terrified phantoms that stole up and down 
 the edges of Jessamine's mind, and did duty for think- 
 ing, crept into the mirror of her eyes, and suddenly 
 into the midst of them Colin's quick words were inter- 
 polated. 
 
 "I mean fair by you, lassie!" he cried. 
 
 The tone was anxious, hurried even businesslike. 
 Before it the sick heart of the girl swooned afresh as 
 with a wound. 
 
 The contract the contract ! How should the hon- 
 est, fair-dealing man dream that the terms of the bar- 
 gain are not forever the main thing in the heart of the 
 impassioned woman? 
 
 To his quick, short sentences she offered no reply 
 save a gasp. She continued to stare up in his face as a 
 dumb child might to a mistaken parent, as a lamb to 
 the slaughterer, as human nature to an irresponsive 
 God. The silent searching fear of her face, the des- 
 peration of her mute appeal, moved the man beyond 
 expression. It drove him from love-making to assever- 
 ation. A spirit as of the ancient Covenanters wak-
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 225 
 
 ened in him a remorseless, puritanic, self-sacrificing 
 austerity. 
 
 "Woman!" cried he sternly, "as I live I'm meaning 
 fair by you." 
 
 Whereat, hearing the sternness of his voice, her own 
 wild daring tender love fled, and sank away somewhere 
 out of sight, abashed and horrified. The rose in her 
 heart froze in a moment. The man her own lover 
 had detected it, perhaps, seen it and reproached her ! 
 She was wrong then bad in his eyes. 
 
 Ah, there was something more awful than Society's 
 tongue-wagging! 
 
 For Love's sake, leaping in her own experience over 
 some abyss the nature of which she but faintly com- 
 prehended she had alighted at the bottom only to 
 meet with the furies of disdain. 
 
 Chaotic sounds rang in her head and ears. She 
 uttered a broken cry, and threw herself upon his breast, 
 grasping his coat with her hands, and sobbing in an 
 emotion as incomprehensible to him as it appeared to 
 be inconsolable. No penitent but disgraced wife could 
 have felt an anguish more acute than did Jessamine as 
 she lay there. Colin held her firmly, quietly, con- 
 cerned now, chiefly, in the beneficent habit which he 
 extended to every living thing, to still and soothe this 
 emotion away. When he believed it to be subsiding, 
 his own tenderness broke out again in the only speech 
 that he knew of which might be likely to touch and 
 heal this fear, and draw her again within a circle of 
 reassurance. 
 
 "Why do you greet, lass?" he murmured with un- 
 utterable gentleness; "why will you not be speaking?
 
 226 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 You understand me, Jessie, bonnie bird? You will be 
 trusting me, your Colin? I mean fair by you honest 
 as a man can mean. What do you fear, my lo'e my 
 do'e? Wee, wee wife of mine!" 
 
 He spoke with difficulty, his bronzed strong throat 
 quivering with tenderness and sympathy, and his heart 
 heaving with the great faithful tumult of his passion. 
 He passed his hand over and over her dark hair in 
 curious worshipful delight, and his thinking was a single 
 unmingled vow of devotion, protection, and plighted 
 troth. It was the highest he could conceive of love's 
 surrender for Colin, too, had prized his freedom and 
 he held it a cheap price indeed. 
 
 She kissed his muscular sunburned hand every time 
 it neared her lips, and shuddered at his words. 
 
 That shudder he felt, and he marveled the more. 
 His slow mind, quickened by love, moved from all its 
 well-anchored points, and sought far and wide over all 
 his knowledge and experience for some solution to the 
 trouble that shook her, and his tongue gathered up 
 into unwonted words the tender distresses of his heart. 
 
 "Jessie, my lass," said he in a firmer, graver tone, 
 through which ran a hint of reproach, "you must be 
 leaning on me, trusting me. Colin," he added, "would 
 never shame you." 
 
 Whereat the slight figure trembled like a leaf, and 
 the head drooped like a withered flower. She had 
 abandoned herself and all her preconceived ideas to 
 meet with blank rejection. 
 
 "Gude save us !" cried the man in intense agitation ; 
 "I will be always holding you high. You will never 
 need be fearing, nor flying off, nor trembling like a
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 227 
 
 shy, frightened bird. The angels above ' His 
 
 voice choked and broke. "It will be like that I am 
 thinking of you, Jessie. My wife my wife /" 
 
 Words could not express his uttermost devotion and 
 reverence ; speech altogether failed him. He lifted his 
 hand and his eyes helplessly to the rafters, where the 
 white gleam of the sleeping doves arrested him with a 
 sense of harmony that answered for him. 
 
 But then the half-swooning girl, lashed by his words 
 as by scorpions, terrified, ignorant, withered by shame, 
 her very passion flying from her like a wild strayed 
 thing from some immeasurable prairie land of freedom 
 back whence it came, slipped from his arms, and 
 tumbled suddenly to the ground at his feet, and lay 
 before him in an abashed heap of tingling dismay. 
 
 Colin, startled beyond expression, his Scotch slow- 
 ness and undemonstrativeness hampering him in the 
 one brief second that was left, drew back a step before 
 he stooped to raise his fallen burden. Did he for the 
 first time apprehend something foreign, incompatible, 
 strange? 
 
 Into that second of time rushed all the dividing 
 legions that come between human souls. 
 
 When he stooped toward it, the form which had lain 
 like a dead thing leaped to its feet ere he had touched 
 it, and darted from him to the half-open door, and 
 thence out into the night. 
 
 Colin, like a man amazed, hesitated for another brief 
 second, and then rushed to the entrance, sending his 
 voice after her in a mighty cry of tender entreaty. 
 
 But the night itself was cruel. Strangling clouds 
 hung over the moon, and in the north the hurrying
 
 228 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 rack had sullenly coalesced, and from thence, blown by 
 the risen wind, a blinding furious shower came and 
 beat across his eyes. 
 
 He stood peering and calling, and waving his arms 
 like one distraught. Then he plunged over the heather 
 in a direction different from the one her winged feet 
 had taken. And at length, struck by a sudden faint- 
 ness of despair, he fell face downward on the soaking 
 ground of his own field. 
 
 Like a wraith she had vanished from his life.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 TEN years had passed away. 
 
 The beautiful month of May was in its zenith, and 
 the parks of London were gay with flowers; jonquils 
 and tulips were being sold in the streets, and the shop 
 windows of the great thoroughfares vied with each 
 other in the display of feminine fashions for spring 
 attire and the other knickknacks of tortured ingenuity 
 which the hand of competition throws out to catch the 
 eye of extravagance. 
 
 The main business of the hour was so to organize 
 the interplay between permanent greed or neediness 
 and chance spendthrift desires that the fickle stream 
 of the latter might be caught and utilized, as by a mill- 
 wheel, before it dashed onward on its aimless play. 
 
 It was May, and it was night. "Everybody" was in 
 town ; not to be in town argued one, in fashionable 
 circles, as a country cousin and an ineffectual nonentity. 
 In the West End the atmosphere was charged with 
 social and political intrigue, with intellectual strain, 
 with all the pressure and confusion of a great world 
 bent on struggling onward in pursuit of its own glitter- 
 ing, noisy aims. 
 
 The streets and squares were beautiful with their 
 regular setting of the topazlike gas lamps or the im- 
 prisoned moons of electric light ; with the moving 
 stabs of color in passing trams and other vehicles;
 
 23 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 with the suspended glows at tavern or theater doors, 
 in chemists' shops, night-abandoned road mending, or 
 other opportunities and tricks of illumination. 
 
 Fashion was, for the most part, in the theaters or 
 concert halls, or in the great drawing rooms of favored 
 houses, or at least on its way to them within the safe 
 protection of closed carriages, glimpses of the bril- 
 liantly dressed, glittering, presumably happy persons 
 flashing out through the windows as they rolled by. 
 The footpaths of the street were left, for the most 
 part, to passengers of another kind. And in the laby- 
 rinthlike quarters that lie huddled and clustering be- 
 hind and near the great thoroughfares outstreamed 
 permanent London to its street chaffering, its leisured 
 hour, its genial gossip, its despair, conspiracy, or 
 crime. 
 
 It was an hour when the great city in all its parts is 
 more restlessly awake, and in some more evilly active, 
 than at any other time an hour for the lover of the 
 sensation of things to be out and moving, feeling be- 
 neath his feet the "pavement of a great city," or realiz- 
 ing from the top of a tram car the stir and pulsation 
 and intoxicating sense of a tumultuous life and fateful 
 destiny. 
 
 Being night, it was also the time when those whose 
 hearts and brains are impressed by the deep and tragical 
 reality of suffering existence which underlies the noisy 
 and ambitious struggle above, become in their con- 
 sciousness clearer as to the causes of things; more 
 convinced as to the distinction between shadow and 
 substance ; more acutely discriminative between the 
 barrenness of party aims and the import of those anx-
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 231 
 
 ious demands which knock periodically and constantly 
 at the doors of the nation, the hunger of starved souls 
 and bodies in their ominous reiteration. 
 
 Invincible faith rather than despair is the characteris- 
 tic of onlookers and thinkers such as these, the heart 
 of patience and hope being retained amid the central 
 glow of pity and indignation which keeps their energy 
 in the cause of the people at a white heat. To them 
 the suffering outcry, or the more piteous dumb appeal 
 of the oppressed, contain within themselves their own 
 irrefutable reply. The unanswerable demonstration of 
 any evil endured by the inmate of a civilized state is a 
 matter which may wait long, but which draws its con- 
 clusion inevitably after it. Not the brilliant talent or 
 the particular gift, but the ascertained need of the 
 weakest and most broken of the children of Fate, is 
 the fulcrum which determines how and in what direc- 
 tion the national will shall move; and the leaving be- 
 hind or the dropping out from social advantages and 
 modern ease of many of some, of even a few is the 
 signal for the readjustment of national contrivances 
 until these laggards in the race be drawn up abreast 
 with average progress, and be reinstated in that place 
 in the world to which chronologically they are born. 
 For within the average mass lies the strength and fate 
 of the nation, and the exceptional success of advanced 
 skirmishers toward progress is immaterial unless it be 
 utilized in bearing forward that desolated and mourn- 
 ful fringe which drags down the average by existing 
 beneath it in the evil social conditions of fifty or a 
 hundred years ago. 
 
 On such a May night a great minister gave a great
 
 232 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 entertainment, and everybody who was anybody was 
 there. It was a pure and beautiful evening, starlight 
 and mild, and the coachmen, driving up their precious 
 freight to the handsome house in the handsome square, 
 blessed themselves in that they had not to sit there 
 under a blinding rain or soaking fog. The stream of 
 carriages was long and imposing; it obstructed the 
 road for some distance beyond the square, but the 
 cause was respectable and out of the arm of the law. 
 So one by one, and inch by inch, they crept along 
 until, after patience and maneuvering, aided by the 
 dexterity of the police, each one deposited its burden 
 beneath an awning amid the breathless and solemn 
 silence of an awestruck crowd, who watched the guests 
 advance up the crimson-laid steps and vanish into the 
 brilliant hall above. 
 
 This silence and awe produced an effect as of a reli- 
 gious ceremony, which touched the imagination of a 
 sharp-faced street child of some education. 
 
 "Oh, my!" came the shrill little voice through the 
 sweet night air; "it's just like the C'lestial City, and 
 the pilgrums, and the haingels wot took them in at the 
 gaites wot teacher told me on !" 
 
 A burly policeman, with some sense of incongruity 
 in the allusion, and feeling that it might be distasteful 
 to parties concerned, here took the prattling little one 
 by the ear and led it gesticulating away. 
 
 At that moment a hansom crept up a common, 
 vulgar hansom in the middle of the coroneted car- 
 riages! and out of it popped a small shriveled, de- 
 formed gentleman, with an ugly wedgelike face and 
 great burning eyes. He ran up the steps, looking as
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 233 
 
 he did so like a curious beetle, and the crowd burst 
 out into a hearty, irrepressible laugh. 
 
 An agreeable sense of pleasure suffused itself over 
 the heart of the little gentleman at finding himself the 
 innocent occasion of momentary mirth among the 
 poverty-stricken gathering outside. 
 
 Mr. Carteret, when he found himself well within his 
 sumptuous surroundings, committed at least three 
 solecisms in tranquil unconsciousness before he reached 
 the opening chamber of a splendid suite of reception 
 rooms. Near the entrance to this first apartment stood 
 the host and hostess, receiving with mechanical cordi- 
 ality the constant stream of arrivals who advanced, 
 exchanged a few words of greeting, and were then 
 carried onward by the press into the apartments 
 beyond. 
 
 Carteret, as surprised to find himself present as 
 others were to see him, as whimsically conscious of 
 incongruity in his person as any observer could be, fol- 
 lowed the loud herald of his own name into the daz- 
 zling scene, and confronted his hostess with a short 
 bow and swift, sarcastic, silent smile. The high-born 
 lady extended the momentary patronage of her grace- 
 ful recognition to the man of genius; his host said a 
 few apt and cordial words; and Carteret singular lit- 
 tle blot upon a scene so gay passed onward with the 
 rest. 
 
 There were four reception rooms opening one out of 
 the other. The first was upholstered in a faint yellow 
 hue, which admirably suited the pale, dark coloring of 
 the minister's wife. And this room was lavishly 
 decked with the most recherclit and expensive kind of
 
 234 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 cream narcissus having the long golden center bell. 
 The fireplace, the mantelpiece, the lamp brackets (the 
 myriad lights being also shaded in faint yellow), and 
 every available receptacle, were heaped and covered 
 with these delicate, highly cultivated blossoms, each 
 one a miracle of perfection and beauty. 
 
 From this fairylike scene the guest passed on to an 
 apartment upholstered in aesthetic green and white, 
 and decked with maidenhair and Gloire de Dijon roses 
 in beautiful, lavish masses. 
 
 The next reception room was of well-toned tints, 
 both enriched and softened by a show of delicate fan- 
 tastic orchids, each one a wonder in itself, and so dis- 
 posed that the long, trailing blooms seemed fancifully 
 etched upon the bronze-colored wall beyond. 
 
 And last there was a large brilliant apartment in 
 pink, or in some faint, indescribable shade of that color, 
 the vulgar milkmaid hue being toned down to some- 
 thing exquisite which could hardly tolerate its low- 
 born name. And this room was decked with gently 
 perfumed and marvelously tinted azalea blooms. 
 
 It was a scene of such enchanting beauty and taste 
 that only the extremely well-bred and blast managed 
 to pass through it without exclamation or remark, and 
 with a mere determination to outdo the effect when 
 their turn for an entertainment came about. 
 
 Carteret, poor little blot, wandered or, rather, was 
 brushed on through the exquisite scene, his head 
 thrust forward, his brows puckered, his restless eyes 
 searching and noting, his under lip pushed out, 
 grimacing from habit, and (again from lonely habit) 
 unconscious and lost from himself, but gathering up
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 235 
 
 all that he saw and heard with his swift observant 
 faculty. 
 
 People saw and noticed him, of course. Beautiful 
 creatures and under the influence of the lights and 
 the color plain women appeared good looking, and 
 good looking women beautiful, and beautiful women 
 exquisite, ethereal angels, while everybody lost a 
 decade from their age beautiful creatures remarked 
 Carteret as they passed ; the silken and lace billows of 
 their trains swept over his legs and knees as the 
 wearers undulated onward, and some of them glanced 
 down on him with a faint amazement, and back again, 
 as from something unpleasant and startling. 
 
 Men went past him whose shoulders obscured him ; 
 he noted broad backs and thick necks with tight- 
 cropped polls; gentlemanly, cultivated backs; weak, 
 slanting backs, with irritable shoulders, and long- 
 stretched necks, and unmanageable hair carefully dis- 
 tributed over bald heads; scholarly, university men 
 backs, slightly bent every kind of back and neck and 
 headpiece. 
 
 "Know lots of these faces," muttered Carteret to 
 himself. "Punch 'Essence of Parliament.' " 
 
 In process of time it took quite an hour Carteret, 
 with his observant eyes, had arrived at the last apart- 
 ment at the room, that is, decked with azaleas. 
 From this there was a wide egress into an open space 
 above the main staircase. The azalea room appeared 
 to be the favorite, partly because people were arrested 
 in it by the fact that the egress, though wide, neces- 
 sarily narrowed the stream, and partly because it really 
 was the most beautiful portion of the scene. Carteret,
 
 236 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 who was already getting bored and depressed, had con- 
 templated passing out through this egress, which he 
 had detected from a distance, and afterward slipping 
 away home. 
 
 He paused at last near a lounge, constructed to hold 
 two persons in a pleasant t$te-a-t$te. Looking toward 
 the outlet, he found that it was blocked by silks and 
 satins, dress coats and their wearers. His frail body 
 was too much fatigued for him to attempt the stand- 
 ing, waiting, and dexterous pushing necessary before 
 he could get out ; so he sank down on the lounge, took 
 out his handkerchief to mop his face, and resigned him- 
 self. Two young married ladies came presently and 
 stood in front of him, talking together in calm oblivion 
 of, or indifference to, the fact that so insignificant a 
 person as this small, beetlelike man could overhear 
 every word they uttered. 
 
 "There she is !" exclaimed one lady to the other. 
 
 They turned their heads, and stretched their necks, 
 and looked keenly in a particular direction. The tone 
 in which the three words were uttered was noticeable; 
 evidently a show person of some kind was approach- 
 ing. Carteret got up, stood upon a footstool, and 
 looked too. 
 
 He caught a glimpse of a tall and slender figure, of 
 a magnificent dress, a perfect coiffure, glittering jewels, 
 and an oval cheek. 
 
 Then the crowd closed over the form ; Carteret got 
 off his footstool and sat down again. 
 
 "It is quite too sad how she goes off!" said the 
 first lady in that make-believe sympathetic tone which 
 barely smothers self-congratulation.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 237 
 
 "She manages to be very, very beautiful still," re- 
 turned the second, in rather a longing voice. 
 
 "Thirty, if she's a day, I suppose !" said Mrs. Four- 
 and-twenty disdainfully. 
 
 "Well, yes! But at thirty a handsome woman is 
 handsomer still," returned No. 2 a little anxiously. 
 "There is esprit, experience, a je ne sais qiwi that 
 younger women miss. It isn't her age." 
 
 "Oh, I am aware she poses for originality as well! 
 One has to do so much nowadays to be anything." 
 The speaker sighed. "It is all wear and tear. The 
 demands on one's resources are continual." 
 
 "All the pewter gilded and rubbed up to look like 
 gold, and everything set out upon the counter as in 
 any trumpery shop !" said No. 2, with unexpected 
 asperity. 
 
 "Well, I don't know that I should care to be as 
 severe upon her as that !" returned the first dexter- 
 ously, taking refuge from the hit in a fold of the gar- 
 ment of Charity. 
 
 No. 2 colored slightly and was silent. 
 
 "What, now, is the special peculiarity you referred 
 to?" asked the first lady, in a voice warmer for the 
 sense of momentary victory. 
 
 "I think I was alluding to the oddness of her chari- 
 ties. You are aware, I suppose, that she takes a par. 
 ticular interest in women who are no better than they 
 should be?" replied the second in a lowered voice. 
 
 "Dear me! Is that all?" returned the first, in an 
 indifferent tone. "But it is the fashion to take up that 
 sort of person now. It makes such splendid platform 
 material."
 
 238 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "Oh, yes! But it is not in that way. She does not 
 exactly take them up. She sympathizes with them." 
 
 "Openly?" 
 
 "Well, of course !" 
 
 "You call that charity ?" 
 
 "I did." 
 
 The back of the first lady expressed, from Carteret's 
 point of view, a rigid sense of her own virtue; the ear 
 and cheek and neck of the second, a sense of confusion. 
 No. 2 was no match for No. I ; she had a habit of 
 blushing. Women over fifty have been known to 
 retain the trick, but they are not usually social suc- 
 cesses. It was No. I who hardily returned to the 
 topic. 
 
 "How does she exhibit this sympathy?" 
 
 "By never assuming any superiority, and by holding 
 out a friendly, helping hand where she can. I like her 
 face. I rather like her odd ways. She is so inoffen- 
 sive and gentle and strange" 
 
 "H'm ! Look at all the men trooping after her!" 
 
 "Oh, well, of course ! She is a great society belle 
 almost historic." 
 
 "Nothing, I suppose, of a scandal in her own life?" 
 
 "I assure you no. There have been odd freaks, but 
 no scandal whatever. She is considered exemplary 
 a perfect model as " 
 
 At that moment the on-coming stream moved up so 
 determinedly that the speakers were gently brushed 
 aside, and Carteret lost the end of the sentence. He 
 remained seated as before, and was presently glad to 
 observe that the lady who had formed the subject of 
 so engrossing a conversation neared the spot, and stood
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 239 
 
 for a moment in front of him, exactly as the late 
 speakers had done. 
 
 Carteret looked at her attentively at so much of 
 her, that is, as he could see. To him she presented an 
 appearance made up of soft color, lace, mystery, sweet 
 odor, flowers, and jewels. There would have been 
 nothing more than that for him had it not been for the 
 words which he had overheard ; she would have been 
 a shining something outside his ken and his world 
 something with which he had better not trouble him- 
 self, had it not been for these. As it was, he surmised 
 the human being beneath the ethereal wrappings, and 
 peered somewhat curiously at the slender, graceful 
 neck, with its splendid diamond necklet and the irre- 
 pressible small rings of dark hair which would escape 
 from the jeweled pins to prettily intrude themselves 
 upon it. 
 
 Presently she moved a little. 
 
 "Let me sit down," said she, in the softest and most 
 weary voice which Carteret had ever heard. 
 
 She addressed herself to the man by whose side she 
 had advanced into the azalea chamber. Carteret 
 sprang up and moved aside, and the dark lady seated 
 herself, submitting as she did so patiently to a certain 
 fussy assiduity from her companion, who, however, 
 immediately left her almost, Carteret thought, with 
 an air of relief. 
 
 It was then that the strange thing happened to Car- 
 teret. He had relinquished the idea of escaping, and 
 stood by the lounge, looking down on her. He was 
 vaguely conscious of a buzzing pressure of men around 
 and near him as bees press round a honey-laden
 
 240 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 flower and he himself was lost in the quiet, almost 
 religious, contemplation of the beautiful face near him. 
 It was overwearied and too languid, but beautiful 
 how beautiful ! Suddenly he could scarcely say how 
 it happened he felt that she looked at him and had 
 noted his appearance. That was followed by a faint 
 though unmistakable sign he hardly knew how to 
 characterize it that she wished him to take the seat 
 by her side. 
 
 Carteret placed himself on the lounge. 
 
 He had no scruple in watching her. Was not she 
 there to be watched? Indeed, her attraction was so 
 great that he was not able to prevent himself from 
 doing it. She leaned back in an attitude of indiffer- 
 ence, her long lashes on her cheek, and her hands idly 
 holding her fan. It was doubtful whether she saw the 
 azaleas, whether she saw anything of her surroundings. 
 Her beauty attracted more and more of the passing 
 people ; they made excuses to pause and look at her. 
 Carteret became convinced that everyone knew her or 
 recognized her; her name, he perceived, was whispered 
 from tongue to tongue, though he did not catch it. 
 To all this, to all the stir which her appearance and 
 presence excited, she seemed, however, blind or indif- 
 ferent. The deepest respect was in everyone's bear- 
 ing, but some there were who envied Carteret his seat. 
 
 Carteret remarked this; but he refused to budge. 
 Inconceivable, incomprehensible though it was, he was 
 convinced that he had received an invitation to seat 
 himself by her side. While others buzzed and paused 
 impatiently around, held off by the invisible barriers a 
 woman knows how to raise, he was permitted to re-
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS IV OMAN. 241 
 
 main snugly beside her, a delicate fold of her drapery 
 intruding over his knee he, the odd little blot on the 
 brilliant scene. 
 
 Men began to cast angry glances at him ; but Car- 
 teret sat on. He sat there speechless, his arms folded 
 together over his bent figure, his eyes fixed on a defi- 
 nite spot in the leg of the trousers of the man in front 
 of him, and his under lip shot out. The sarcasm of 
 his face, the crumpled figure with its stubborn pose, 
 held them all at arm's length as effectually as did the 
 cold graces of the lady. 
 
 "Beauty and the Beast," murmured over his head a 
 faultlessly attired wag, with more shirtfront than brains. 
 
 At that moment a hand was laid on his shoulder, 
 and he raised his head to find leaning over him the 
 genial face of the first friend he had met that evening 
 the friend to whose good offices he owed his introduc- 
 tion to the scene. Carteret's mouth puckered good- 
 naturedly. 
 
 "Lucky dog!" whispered the friend. 
 
 His eyes glanced across to the beautiful woman and 
 laughed back at the little man. 
 
 "Just so," said Carteret. 
 
 "Won't you come out of this and have a chat?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Well, I can't say I wonder. By the way, old man, 
 have you seen Cornerstone lately?" 
 
 "Cornerstone!" repeated Carteret. "Have I seen 
 Cornerstone? Why don't you ask me if I've eaten and 
 drunk and slept and clothed myself lately?" 
 
 "I see. All right, old fellow! Don't go up in a 
 balloon ! We're all mortal ! But just tell him I've got
 
 242 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 the new microscope I spoke of, and ask him to drop in 
 and look at it. And, Carteret 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Just come out of this and have a chat. There is 
 something particular I wish to speak of." 
 
 "I don't budge." 
 
 The friend laughed, and passed on. 
 
 Then Carteret started again. A hand was laid on 
 his arm from the other side. 
 
 "Sir, I beg your pardon !" 
 
 Turning quickly, he found the most perfectly beau- 
 tiful face he had ever seen anxiously bending toward 
 him. The eyes were remarkable even startling. 
 Wide open as they were now, and dark as night, they 
 appeared to him to be dashed by an incomprehensible 
 and haunting look of horror. So deep were the pupils, 
 so marvelously transfixing in their look of human 
 entreaty and fear, that Carteret gazed back at them fof 
 several perceptible seconds silently. 
 
 "You mentioned I thought you mentioned a 
 name?" 
 
 M Yes; I mentioned the name Cornerstone. I spoke 
 of my friend Dr. Cornerstone," replied Carteret, attun- 
 ing his voice to unaccustomed softness. 
 
 "Is he living? Is he well? Do you see him?" 
 
 "He is living and well, and I see him every day of 
 my life." 
 
 "Then you will give him a message?" 
 
 "Willingly." 
 
 "Sir, I trust you. I do not know who you are, but 
 I trust you not to forget." 
 
 "I will not forget."
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 243 
 
 At that moment a shadow fell upon them. The 
 beautiful woman felt it, and shivered before she looked 
 up. Carteret, shrinking instinctively, also raised his 
 head. He had heard the speech before he saw the 
 man. 
 
 "I'm going directly, don't you know," said a voice 
 whose minutest tone was saturated with mental dis- 
 ease and feebleness. " Take my wife home, don't you 
 know." 
 
 The speaker bent over the sofa, disclosing to Car- 
 teret a tall head with retreating forehead bald at the 
 temples, the hair limp, fair, and thin, the nose small, 
 narrow, and mean, the eyes old, and the lips wandering 
 and feeble. He put out his hand, and took hold of 
 that of the beautiful woman. Carteret expected her 
 to wince. 
 
 Instead of that her hand rested quietly in his, and 
 her face was attentive and no more. 
 
 "Don't you think you've had enough of it? Shan't 
 you be tired? I'm deuced sick of the thing myself. 
 Do you want to stop, or will you come?" 
 
 There was a note of anxiety in his appeal. 
 
 "I will come." 
 
 Her voice was a little dazed, and her eyes, still with 
 the strange look in them, wandered back to Carteret. 
 
 "Well, then, come now," returned her husband 
 querulously. 
 
 She rose, dropped her handkerchief, and, as Carteret 
 stooped to pick it up, stooped also, and contrived to 
 whisper in a wild, hurried voice these words: 
 
 "Tell him I entreat you not to forget tell him to 
 come beseech him pray him to come !"
 
 244 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 Then she took the arm of her husband ungrudgingly, 
 and they turned away together quietly, amicably, as 
 any other united pair might do. 
 
 Carteret rose and followed them. She had neglected 
 to give him her name, and it was necessary that he 
 should know it. He watched narrowly to see if she 
 would shrink, would snatch her hand away, or whether 
 either of the pair would exhibit signs of that connubial 
 impatience which is of all earthly experiences the bit- 
 terest and most hateful. Nothing of the kind. The 
 ill-assorted couple kept as close together when no one 
 was watching as when they were being observed, and 
 it was to her husband she turned when the costly wrap 
 was to be hung about her shoulders. 
 
 Whatever this hidden tragedy might be, it had ele- 
 ments in it not of the common sordid kind. 
 
 As the pair stood waiting in the hall, surrounded by 
 footmen and the bustle of departing guests, Carteret 
 fancied that a certain mysterious isolation marked 
 them out, discriminated, and united them as some 
 pairs have been united in the imagination of all time, 
 within the circle of the peculiarly damned. 
 
 Presently a splendid menial came forward and 
 announced : 
 
 "Lady Heriot's carriage stops the way !" 
 
 And then the pair moved forward together, and 
 together vanished.
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 DR. CORNERSTONE had moved his place of resi- 
 dence. He had left Bloomsbury, and taken a house in 
 the district of West St. Pancras, not far from Regent's 
 Park. Here he could give his wife and children the 
 advantage of a beautiful open space, green trees, and 
 some picturesqueness, and yet not be too far from the 
 center of things, that being, in his eyes, the East End. 
 
 In West St. Pancras, close to, and yet isolated from, 
 the main thoroughfares, with their noise and traffic, 
 one comes on the unexpected oasis of a quiet 'street, 
 of a little nest of pleasant detached houses, each with 
 its own bright garden. 
 
 In this street Dr. Cornerstone had settled himself 
 with his wife and children. He had selected it because 
 the atmosphere was bright and healthy, and this he 
 knew to be essential to proper development and happy 
 existence. 
 
 Dr. Cornerstone had no mind to embrace in his own 
 person and in those nearest to him the misery from 
 which he daily saw others suffering. He preferred to 
 maintain a high though simple standard of comfort, 
 and he would no more have attempted to improve and 
 assist a suffering world by adopting in his own person 
 any portion of the scandalous poverty and degradation 
 inflicted upon the struggling hordes of the workers 
 than he would have tried to save it by assuming the
 
 246 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 wicked luxury and degradation of the superfluous rich. 
 He regarded it as his first duty as it is, indeed, that 
 of every responsible citizen to keep himself and those 
 whose well-being depended upon him sane in body and 
 mind ; the pursuit of wholeness was the aim by which 
 he determined his daily personal conduct. His second 
 duty was the work which he had cut out for himself in 
 life, and that was the rescue of others from the high 
 misdemeanors consequent upon either poverty or 
 wealth. That work occupied all his time and energies. 
 
 Dr. Cornerstone's practice had increased, and as it 
 included the rich as well as the poor, he found himself 
 in a position to give more and more of his advice gratis 
 where it was most needed. 
 
 His name had become a well-known one, so that the 
 idle rich would appeal to him when, beaten by the dis- 
 eases that follow in the train of ennui, excess, and self- 
 indulgence, the human nature within them revolted 
 against its own sickliness and yearned for a tonic. 
 This the caustic tone of the uncompromising doctor 
 was sure to present, for his habit was the commingling 
 of heart-searching advice with medicinal prescription. 
 
 To sick women among the rich Dr. Cornerstone 
 habitually mingled mercy and tenderness with his firm 
 truth-speaking, save in a few instances. There had 
 been cases when the dealings of the doctor with his 
 feminine patients had been, indeed, awe-inspiring. 
 
 There was no doubt that he regarded all disease as 
 being somewhat of the nature of moral delinquency, 
 or, at least, as being closely connected with it. This 
 somewhat severe idea was really the occasion of the 
 optimism which was unexpectedly found to color his
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN, 247 
 
 otherwise grim appreciation of the misery amid which 
 he found himself. Possibly he needed a strong imagi- 
 nation to support him under the burden of human woe. 
 And his imagination was of the kind which extracts 
 from desolating facts a reason and a cause, and which 
 possesses an invincible faith in remedial application. 
 Dr. Cornerstone could never persuade himself to accept 
 evil when he saw it, or to pause on the indulgence of 
 mere emotion; the sight of evil invigorated his will, 
 stirred up his brain, and drove him on to that kind of 
 beneficent action which is named hard thinking. 
 
 After some particularly heartrending experience 
 among the wretched and forsaken of mankind, he 
 would come home and sit with knit reflective brows, 
 dreaming dreams, and seeing prophetic visions, until at 
 last he would shake off his depression in the startling 
 declaration that old age and death themselves those 
 two unconquerable items of our fate might, for all he 
 knew, lie finally in the hands of the Race, so magnifi- 
 cent a latent power to work out his own salvation did 
 he discover inclosed within the brain and heart and will 
 of man. 
 
 On a soft, warm evening, a day or two after the 
 Minister's great entertainment, Dr. Cornerstone sat on 
 the veranda of his house with his friend Carteret. 
 
 The windows of the sitting room were thrown open 
 behind him, and every now and then a child or two 
 stepped out, ran to play in the garden, and ran in 
 again. There was an attraction in the sitting room 
 that called the little ones constantly back to itself. 
 The mother sat there with her work; her soft move- 
 ments, the snip of the scissors, the laying down of the
 
 248 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 reel, the rustle of material, the gentle voice speaking to 
 the children, came through the open window to her 
 husband's ear and accompanied his thoughts and con- 
 versation. 
 
 The ten years which had passed over Dr. Corner- 
 stone's head had changed his brown hair to silver, his 
 eyes were tenderer and more attentive than they had 
 been, and his mouth a trifle firmer, otherwise he was 
 unaltered. 
 
 Near the pair a laburnum hung its delicate, beauti- 
 ful flowers; the trees were covered ^with fresh and 
 beautiful green, and the sun turned the well-cut lawn 
 into a carpet of gold. Around in the air the roar and 
 jar of traffic was all too close, yet not so near but that 
 the softest tone might be heard, and the pants of the 
 children's breath from their little red mouths as they 
 ran, and their light footfall in the race. 
 
 "The age," Dr. Cornerstone was saying, "belongs to 
 the common life that flows through our streets, and 
 not to rank, riches, nor genius." 
 
 "I am aware that we are destined to sit under the 
 footstool of the mob, and hob-a-nob with the tramp," 
 responded Carteret meekly. 
 
 "When I see anyone adorning and yet more adorn- 
 ing his own life, and refining and yet more refining his 
 own spirit, and comforting his spiritual imagination for 
 this world and the next " 
 
 "You yearn to bundle him and his fads off this seri- 
 ous earth," interrupted Carteret, with his usual dry air. 
 "But when the virtuous recognizes his kin in the com- 
 monplace sinner, and the man of genius does not exalt 
 himself aeainst the fool what then?"
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS IV OMAN. 249 
 
 '"There you are at your ineradicable individualism 
 again !" said Cornerstone testily. 
 
 "Oh, take all the feathers out of all my caps!" 
 
 "A good brain is, in justice and right, a communal 
 belonging. It owes rent to the community, just as the 
 possessor of a good field, or a mine, or any other 
 special advantage, owes rent to the rest to make the 
 balance even." 
 
 "This intrusive age !" sighed Carteret ; "it leaves us 
 no privacy, nor any private property not even our 
 own heads!" 
 
 "Those least of all. The better furnished one head 
 is, the less is there left for the rest." 
 
 "I decline that!" said Carteret. 
 
 "I insist!" returned Cornerstone; "there are limita- 
 tions everywhere. If we use up the national capacity 
 as a forcing bed for the few, we draw off mental power 
 from the rest. The best individual brain falls off some- 
 where ; so of the national brain. I seem to see " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "I seem to see each man of genius and capacity 
 among us dogged in his steps by the pauper, the im- 
 becile, and the rogue. I will say that the crime, 
 imbecility, and degradation beneath stultify the refined 
 product above. What national pride can we have so 
 long as one degraded specimen is left to run like a rat 
 to a hole at the tread of a policeman? Our symposium 
 at Westminster is canceled by our thieves' quarter, just 
 as a City feast in November is canceled by the hunger 
 of the unemployed. In these things we are debtors." 
 
 "But how to get at the complaisant consciences of 
 the mentally endowed?" asked Carteret.
 
 250 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "Would that I could do it!" returned the doctor. 
 "Would that I could bring your man of abnormal 
 brain power into contact genuine spiritual contact 
 with some of the broken and degraded, and say to him, 
 1 There lies the blot to your personal civilization ; this 
 savagery shames your development, this noisome 
 shadow dogs your advance and belongs to it. Wipe 
 out that blot, change these shadows, cancel this shame, 
 or your presence in our midst, and not theirs, is the 
 worst of our national disgraces.' ' 
 
 The doctor stretched his arms out and got rid of the 
 irritation of shirt cuffs, while he gazed at the setting 
 sun. It burned slowly down through the trees oppo- 
 site and sent flames of color up into the London sky. 
 A child ran suddenly forward and leaned a round pair 
 of arms upon its father's knees, looking up into his 
 face silently and happily. Then it darted away to its 
 play. 
 
 "Cornerstone!" 
 
 Carteret's voice was sad and musing. An unwonted 
 depression had characterized him during this interview. 
 The doctor turned and looked at his friend. 
 
 "When we have harried all the rogues off the face of 
 the earth, and solved all our problems the women we 
 have always with us." 
 
 "Ah, I for one decline to speak of that difficult 
 problem as an insoluble one. I will never allow that 
 natural law is so stubbornly adjusted as to leave one- 
 half the race under a real, permanent disadvantage." 
 
 "Of late an odd thing happened to me." 
 
 "Out with it." 
 
 "I went the other day to a great entertainment.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN, , 25 J 
 
 I was present at Lady Shunland's the other even- 
 ing." 
 
 "Poor strayed sheep! Poor fish out of water!" 
 
 "It was there the odd thing befell me. I saw there 
 the most beautiful woman in England or in Europe, 
 for the matter of that." 
 
 "H'm !" said the doctor, with an uneasy frown. "In 
 
 my opinion there's no beauty left since " He 
 
 broke off suddenly, and that with an eye of regret. 
 "Well, proceed." 
 
 " I saw her, and she exhibited toward me a certain 
 favor." 
 
 "The deuce she did ! The jade ! That was your 
 odd experience, eh?" 
 
 "She held all the men at a distance. None might 
 come near her, saving myself; I was the favored one. 
 I might sit by her side with a fold of her dress over my 
 knee." 
 
 "The Jezebel had heard of your book, Carteret. 
 They'll take up with anybody when they fancy it 
 increases their power." 
 
 "I found myself touched, Cornerstone." 
 
 "Devil take her! Pooh! Did I swear? Don't let 
 my wife hear!" 
 
 The doctor here cast a rather fearful glance toward 
 the sitting room, whence now came the gentle click of 
 knitting needles. 
 
 "I was moved by her, Cornerstone moved as I 
 rarely am by a woman. I suspect them all range 
 myself against them all by instinct. With this one, on 
 the contrary, I took sides against the world." 
 
 The doctor shook his head.
 
 252 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "This is bad, Carteret, bad ! You are advanced in 
 life, but that makes the case worse. Change of scene 
 might, however, be effectual." 
 
 " Ever since I saw those eyes of hers I have been 
 dreaming." 
 
 "Heavens and earth! What of!" 
 
 "Of mortal ruin and despair." 
 
 "Ah h ! I see, I see. This is not a common case 
 no mere outbreak on the part of an elderly old fellow 
 who ought to know better? Proceed." 
 
 "There was something in the eyes that went straight 
 to my heart. I could believe that I had heard the cry 
 of a lost soul. My bodily ear did not receive the 
 words, yet they haunt my mind as though they had 
 been spoken: 'I am lost beyond hope! But soothe 
 my soul with one drop of human comfort before hell 
 swallows me up forever!' " 
 
 "Indeed! indeed!" 
 
 "I am tough enough, yet I cannot endure the mem- 
 ory of that woman's eyes." 
 
 "Poor soul! she was in the-*usual feminine predica- 
 ment. Sucked in by love and passion into some moral 
 morass?" 
 
 "I hardly think it." 
 
 "What, then?" 
 
 "There were certain indications that the case was 
 peculiar." 
 
 "Well, her name?" 
 
 "Her name ! That is a thing of disgrace a name to 
 scald the tongue!" 
 
 "Pretty company for you to be in! What name 
 was it?"
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 253 
 
 "A great name as the world goes. She answered to 
 'Lady Heriot.' " 
 
 "Ah, my prophetic soul !" 
 
 The doctor set both hands on the arms of his chair, 
 leaned forward, and stared silently in Carteret's face. 
 
 "Did you know of this thing, Cornerstone?" 
 
 "It is far off now the marriage, I mean. I have 
 put it out of my head as much as possible, seeing that 
 it was unalterable. I heard nothing from her since I 
 received the long letter I told you of prior to her dis- 
 appearance. A little more than a year afterward I 
 read in the paper that she had married that revolting 
 brute." 
 
 "He was there with her." 
 
 "Well? And she has made her discoveries?" 
 
 The doctor was a little pale about the cheeks, and 
 his jaw looked square and black and ugly. 
 
 "She has found out something'' returned Carteret; 
 "some more than ordinary experience has produced in 
 her eyes a certain look of unfathomable sadness. I 
 should call it more than sadness. Some sight she has 
 seen, some shock she has received, has impressed itself 
 permanently on her mind. Of this I feel sure." 
 
 "Did you speak to her? Were you introduced?" 
 
 "I was not introduced. Yet we spoke together." 
 
 "Anything of note?" 
 
 "It was confidential. For once my withered hideous- 
 ness was of service with a woman. She wanted me to 
 sit by her and protect her from the nauseous assiduities 
 of sexual admiration. Poor wretch ! poor wretch ! 
 They educated her into sexuality until it is impossible 
 for her to avoid exciting the corresponding senusality
 
 254 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 in our coarser natures. With me, however, she was 
 safe. She detected it by instinct. And how unerring 
 have her instincts become on matters such as these ! 
 By me she sat contentedly, at rest." 
 
 "How did you know it?" 
 
 Something burned for a moment in the eyes and 
 withered face of Carteret, something that was like a 
 flame from a long repressed smolder of pain at the 
 center of his being. But his voice in replying was 
 commonplace and quiet. 
 
 "Because," he said, "usually women cast a hasty 
 glance at me and scuttle away. I am so accustomed 
 to it, so prepared for the inevitable moment of repul- 
 sion, that the slightest variation appeals to me like a 
 plain word. Lady Heriot's lovely eyes noted me and 
 my deformity as I made room for her to reach a 
 lounge, and as she seated herself she indicated by a 
 look, by a movement of the hand, that the place beside 
 her was vacant. That in itself was an event to a man 
 such as I am. It was a greater when she did not with- 
 draw the trespassing fold of her gown, nor shrink from 
 me into the remotest corner." 
 
 Dr. Cornerstone drew his handkerchief out and dried 
 a drop or two that stood on his forehead. 
 
 "You comprehend," he said, "that the inimitable 
 Jessamine was the most precious of my patients?" 
 
 "Well, as I said, she spoke to me." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "A friend of mine mentioned the name of someone 
 with whom she was once acquainted." 
 
 "That would be me." 
 
 "Just so. There is some tragedy behind some
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 255 
 
 weight on her mind. She found the occasion to send 
 you a message. She whispered in my ear: 'Tell him 
 to call. Tell him to come. Beseech him ! pray 
 him!'" 
 
 The sun was edging slowly out of the sky; nothing 
 but a red half disk remained. Dr. Cornerstone leaned 
 back in his chair and stared at it.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 THE sexes suspect each other. Even the heartiest 
 sympathy falls short of sympathy in proportion as 
 there is therein an admixture of good-natured toler- 
 ance. And much of the sympathy between sex and 
 sex is no more than a purposed toleration of probable 
 weakness little understood. 
 
 There was a note in Jessamine's message pitched 
 too high for Dr. Cornerstone's comprehension. Even 
 his insight into her probable misery could not account 
 for it, and it irritated him. 
 
 "She can go away. She can break the tie. Let her 
 free herself," said he. 
 
 To those not within the delicate meshes of some 
 difficulty action seems always possible. 
 
 "It seems easy, doesn't it? The odd thing is that 
 everybody's individual mess is a sort of charmed circle 
 out of which they do not find it so simple to step," 
 returned Carteret. "Shall you go?" 
 
 "Yes. Hysteria and wretchedness are my business." 
 
 It was getting dusk next day when Dr. Cornerstone 
 found himself alone in the private sitting room of Lady 
 Heriot. A single lamp, covered with a shade, served 
 rather to add to the obscurity than to illumine it, but 
 he saw that the room was furnished with every possi- 
 ble luxury. It gave him a sense of oppression to be 
 there; the wretched hours spent therein by an un- 
 
 956
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 257 
 
 happy soul burdened the atmosphere. There seemed 
 no escaping the infection ; the breath sucked it in, and 
 it lay heavy on the heart. He sat down to await her 
 coming; he thought of her as of one who had left his 
 guidance to learn life's merciless lesson by herself. 
 Some deep experience she had conned alone. But 
 that, he said, is life. And here, after ten years, he sat 
 on her hearth watching the light stealing from the win- 
 dow and giving place to shadows, and the lamp glow- 
 ing more and more to a ruby redness. Loneliness, he 
 said, and isolated experience are the great facts; we 
 may be conscious of the rod above us the rod that 
 falls when errors are made but we spell the lesson 
 alone. The rest sweet mates and the play hour is 
 palliation and exception. It is a dream, haunting the 
 heart against all knowledge to the contrary, when we 
 say to ourselves that one day we shall sit hand-in-hand 
 with some lost beloved creature, the barriers broken 
 between, hearing without reserve at last at last the 
 untold history. 
 
 Oh, groundless hope! he said. Time shakes the 
 sands down in the glass, the thief Age strips us of our 
 opportunity, and Death steals on and hems the way at 
 last ; and still the heart, befooled with visions, holds 
 to its goal and runs. One day so we picture, he 
 said we shall overtake the vanishing moment, catch 
 up the long-sought friend, and, as self to self, bend and 
 listen to the story, feeling no need to pardon, or for- 
 bear, or excuse. 
 
 To visions impossible as these, was there a substance 
 and a counterpart? He thought, perchance, it might 
 be so. He thought that he who silently loves his
 
 258 A SUPERFLUOUS WO MAX. 
 
 friend, without one breath of the word "forgiveness" 
 in between, who wholly loves, accepting utterly, comes 
 nearest for all dividing space and years and facts to 
 that most unattainable and sweetest of dreams. 
 
 A curtain, Dr. Cornerstone observed, hung over one 
 corner of the room. To that his eyes wandered from 
 time to time uneasily. Would it be from such a pall- 
 like symbol of mysterious years that Jessamine would 
 step? He thought of her past as lying huddled be- 
 hind it, and of her face straining toward him in speech- 
 less consciousness of what was hidden there, the eyes 
 full of the eternal voiceless cry of the human creature: 
 "Oh, fellow-soul! There lies the irrevocable thing be- 
 hind me! Is there hope? Has life taught you that 
 there is consolation anywhere?" 
 
 He fancied he caught the faint rustle of a garment 
 a step. No; there was nothing. The air was full of 
 steps; they walked and pattered through his heart, 
 departing departing. As hopes unrealized, that come 
 and pass beside the waiting heart and go, as steps of 
 those that move away, they beat despairing rhythms 
 in his ear. Oh, for the steps that pause and enter! 
 
 He imagined that he heard a sigh. That went, he 
 thought, through a frozen world, wherein the voices of 
 all nature were stilled. Of all earth's once myriad 
 cries there remained only this thin and broken sigh, 
 the lasting thing being grief unresting grief. When 
 Earth is dead, and the sun has perished, some poor 
 belated and lost soul, heaven-banished, hell-rejected, 
 will wander hitherward, and come back, and sigh like 
 that, he said. 
 
 Looking again toward the curtain, he saw now a
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 259 
 
 white hand thrust between a hesitating, timid hand 
 which slid away again. 
 
 His head drooped. So had he seen a tiny promise 
 creep toward a life palled with sorrow, the dull monot- 
 ony of grief fluttered by a beckoning finger, which 
 vanished when the frozen heart began to beat. Strange 
 torturing trick of fate! 
 
 When he raised his eyes again, he became aware of 
 Jessamine's presence. A woman, clothed in a long 
 white gown, held the folds'of the curtain apart and 
 stood between, darkness behind her. When their eyes 
 met, she dropped her hands, and came a step forward, 
 and paused and looked at him again. The weight of 
 years was in her face, and in her eyes questions deep 
 as death. 
 
 He rose from his seat. More startled than he could 
 have conceived possible, he barely managed to mur- 
 mur her name. 
 
 She advanced, and placed her hand in his. 
 
 "It is you at last," she said, in a small, low voice, 
 about which, as on a weak string, hung heavy beads of 
 most impressive tears. 
 
 "Jessamine !" he repeated, drawing through the 
 name the lingering memory of what had once been 
 bright and fair. 
 
 She turned aside as though her little strength gave 
 way, and, sinking down, laid her face against the 
 cushions of a chair, like one for whom the storm has 
 been too cruel. 
 
 Life had its ghosts, it appeared ; the woman before 
 him was but the ghost of Jessamine. He bent above 
 her, searching in her face, and fighting all the time
 
 260 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 against the mournful influences which seemed nipping 
 the heart out of his courage, and his impulses of heal- 
 ing and of help. She turned suddenly, and gazed at 
 him with her dark eyes. 
 
 "Doctor, doctor, doctor!" was all she said. 
 
 At which he found himself forced to walk some 
 paces through the room, oppressed by the distracting, 
 desolating hopelessness which infected him from her 
 eyes and paralyzed his resources. He did not remark 
 that when he turned she rose and followed him, cast- 
 ing as she did so many an anxious, flitting look upon 
 him. When he paused she paused too. They stood 
 together, the slender woman's form against the sturdier 
 male shape the ever symbolical air, whether united by 
 love, friendship, or mere chance position, the world's 
 crudest enigma, the two who hide between them 
 secrets which forever they strive to impart the one to 
 the other, and have not the power to disclose. 
 
 He was startled when she touched his arm, and he 
 heard her voice close beside him. 
 
 "I am not mad, doctor," said she; "my mind is 
 clear. I am not mad." 
 
 "No, no," said he. 
 
 "You will help me?" 
 
 "If a man can. If there be a way." 
 
 "There is a way." 
 
 He placed his arm about her, and led her back to 
 the chair. 
 
 "I try to get this look out of my eyes," she said 
 anxiously, "but I am not able. Once I tried to smile." 
 
 She laid her hand on the lace and cashmere about 
 her throat and bosom, and looked at him,
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 261 
 
 "I understand," said the doctor soothingly; "I 
 know." 
 
 She shrank back against the cushions and moaned. 
 It was like the moan of some trapped animal, and be- 
 yond what is human in its despair. 
 
 "Come, come now," said Dr. Cornerstone; "tell me 
 the whole history. I am here to help you. Do not hide 
 anything. Tell me the whole from the beginning." 
 
 "I shall hide nothing from you." 
 
 "That is well. I was a little overcome at meeting 
 you again at finding you in distress. But there's a 
 way out of the heaviest trouble, you know." 
 
 He drew upon his resources of wholesome cheeri- 
 ness. Yet it seemed to him that the hopes he threw 
 out fell with a hollow sound. In the atmosphere of 
 that room the little lamps, which experience, will, and 
 philosophy light for the human soul, burned low 
 indeed. 
 
 "I have lately seen that there is a way just one," 
 said she. "So far, for many years, I thought that 
 there was none." 
 
 "Tell me," said he, "how did you come to make this 
 marriage?" 
 
 "Ah, why?" said she. "It is too late now." 
 
 "Too late?" he repeated. "It is never too late to 
 pluck up will. We may shake ourselves free from our 
 worst error. I do not say without loss or suffering." 
 
 "Is it so?" said she. "No; there are errors which 
 are as living nerves, into which we dare not cut." 
 
 "Jessamine, my child, you overestimate your sor- 
 row. Your will and strength are broken for a time. 
 Take courage. Tell me all."
 
 262 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN, 
 
 She looked at him with meek eyes of unfathomable 
 moveless grief. 
 
 "Listen," said the doctor, apprehension hurrying his 
 speech: "you think many women do that a marriage 
 is an eternal thing which cannot be broken ; but that 
 is a mistake. We live in the nineteenth century and 
 not in the Middle Ages. You can go away to-morrow, 
 if you wish. Pluck up a will and escape." 
 
 His own words chilled him with an incomprehensible 
 sense of missing the mark. 
 
 "Is that your way your help?" she asked. 
 
 "Jessamine, it is. I do not hesitate to advise you to 
 act as I have said. This bond is breaking you. I find 
 you crushed. Moreover, it is a degradation. Escape 
 from it. I say that it is the only right step left for 
 you. You had better be a crossing sweeper or a 
 scullery maid than remain in this splendor set to 
 this work. Gather together your resources of courage 
 and will.". 
 
 "Escape?" she repeated blankly. "How is that pos- 
 sible? Escape from what?" 
 
 ' She eyed him with perplexity, as one looks at a per- 
 son who introduces an irrelevancy. 
 
 "Other women have done it," he said. 
 
 "Yes. I have wondered," was her simple reply. 
 
 The doctor's lips parted for speech and closed again. 
 An incredible idea stole into his mind. 
 
 "You do not love this man?" he asked, after a little 
 hesitation. 
 
 Something faintly rippled the settled mournfulness 
 of her face; but there was no answer. The doctor, 
 from experience, knew that a woman's heart has strange,
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 263 
 
 deep phases; he knew, too had not Carteret reminded 
 him? that the individual experience is a charmed 
 circle for the individual sufferer, and that no human 
 help can avail until the enchanter who lurks within 
 gives the signal of release. 
 
 "I think I understand, Jessamine," said he tenderly; 
 "the thought of your child keeps you now" 
 
 She cast a shrinking, suspicious glance at him. 
 
 "If that be the case," said he, yet by no means cer- 
 tain that he had touched the right chord, "I think you 
 ought to face the suffering. As the law stands, it is 
 true that the child is the father's, and not yours. But 
 I do not hesitate still to say that it is your plain duty 
 to separate from Heriot to resign a life which is for 
 you a degradation." 
 
 He had been noticing the slim white hands, laden 
 with rings, which lay in her lap. Faint suggestions 
 came to him from the sight of them and touched his 
 heart. He now remarked that the fingers twitched 
 nervously. 
 
 "The child!" she said, in a low, quick voice. "No, 
 no; it is mine too! The responsibility is mine as 
 well." 
 
 By this time dusk had gathered in the room. The 
 glow of the lamp beneath its red shade was scarcely an 
 illumination. He saw Jessamine as a willowy figure 
 in white leaning back in her chair, the dark hair against 
 the cushion, the pale, sweet face beneath with closed 
 eyelids, and the slim hands moving nervously upon her 
 knee. So far he had reached no further than surmise; 
 he must break that mournful reticence if he could. He 
 had no assurance that at present he had found the sore.
 
 264 A SUPERFLUOUS 
 
 "Tell me about it from the beginning," he said 
 firmly; "give me an account of how you were induced 
 to enter into this alliance." 
 
 She roused herself a little, and opened her eyes. He 
 thought that they were always pondering some fixed 
 intense idea. 
 
 "You wish me to tell you about it?" she said. 
 
 "It will be well that you should do so. Was it of 
 your own will?" 
 
 Jessamine leaned her cheek on her hand, and seemed 
 to be thoughtfully considering. 
 
 "It is a long time since then," she said slowly ; "still, 
 I remember. There were things in myself that terri- 
 fied me even then." 
 
 "Yes?" said the doctor. 
 
 "I recall a stupefied feeling a numbness. I recall 
 feeling as though everything were dead as though I 
 were one of those fallen autumn leaves which the wind 
 blows where it will. The wind that blew me on, that 
 kept me moving, was just restlessness no more. I 
 had something unsatisfied, hungry, in myself some- 
 thing that kept driving me into action, display. I 
 wanted to fill to fill what? There was a hollow 
 place where my heart ought to be, a burning confusion 
 where my thoughts should have been. There was 
 nothing to which I cared to put my life. I think if I 
 had fallen into good hands it would have been better 
 with me. But I came back to my Aunt Arabella." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 The doctor's tone was significant. 
 
 "Do not blame Aunt Arabella," said Jessamine 
 gently. "She and I are kin. There lies the root of
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 265 
 
 the evil. What is in her is in me also. If it had not been 
 just so she would have had no power to influence me." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 "She only interpreted my own self to me. It was 
 that which made the dreadful thing happen." 
 
 "Your marriage?" 
 
 "No. Must I tell you this also?" 
 
 "I think it best that you should tell me all." 
 
 "It frightens me a little to recall it, yet I will tell 
 you. Why should you not know me through and 
 through?" 
 
 "It is well that you should tell me." 
 
 "She worked on me when I came back." 
 
 "Came back from where?" 
 
 A crimson wave rushed to Jessamine's pallid cheek 
 and her eyes became suddenly suffused with tears. 
 She threw her hands before her face with a single hope- 
 less sob. Her grief was intense, and yet the sight of it 
 relieved the doctor, because it was the sharp natural 
 grief of a woman, and not that strange, incomprehensi- 
 ble despair. 
 
 "Came back from the thing that killed me," said she 
 in a loud, hoarse whisper. 
 
 "Well, well!" said Dr. Cornerstone soothingly. 
 
 "It does not matter where I came back from," said 
 she when she had recovered her more composed bear- 
 ing. "When I returned I had nothing but this feeling 
 of stupefaction, and and as though I had been braced 
 up to something too high for me a sense of relief in 
 sinking back to vain, luxurious ways. Aunt Arabella 
 worked on this last." 
 
 "I can imagine it."
 
 266 A SUPERFLUOUS 
 
 "I was conscious of degradation, yet had not the 
 force to resist. I am not sure that I wished. I saw, 
 without putting an end to them, all her devices about 
 Lord Heriot my husband. The spring of my desire 
 for goodness had dried up ; I had lost my self-respect. 
 Nothing seemed to matter. Such a vain pursuit of 
 such a miserable social triumph as she placed before 
 me seemed all I was fit for. But there came a day 
 toward the end when my apathy was suddenly fired, 
 when something I know not what rushed over me. 
 She was talking to me ; I was listening or not listening, 
 as the case may be. Then she began to go on and on 
 about my beauty. And all along vanity in me 
 vanity ached like a diseased nerve. She spoke of 
 Lord Heriot being in doubt between me and the 
 blond woman, of what people would say were per- 
 haps saying as to my disappointment. And suddenly 
 I seemed to feel my brain like a spot of fire. Wild 
 anger and hate were in my heart. Hate against her 
 and against myself for being like her, and against 
 Society for turning out such creatures as we were. 
 And I wanted to end it in a moment. I had not any 
 clear thought. I felt as though all the great cruel 
 wrong, whether in me or outside me, was impersonated 
 and stood before me in the figure of my aunt. And a 
 wild impulse of energy against it seized me, as though 
 it were possible to destroy by one blow the devil in 
 myself that was tempting and dragging my life down. 
 At that time I was physically strong and vigorous. 
 Have you ever felt the vanity of words and the neces- 
 sity of flinging out acts instead? Men do, I think; 
 but they disallow it to women. Well, I / flung out
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 267 
 
 at the traitor within, who spoke to me by the mouth 
 of the traitor outside. I felt a blaze in my brain and 
 a blaze in the room. I don't know what I did, but it 
 was over in a moment, and I sank back in my chair 
 with every spark of self-respect dead within me. I did 
 not know whether I had hurt, or perhaps even killed, 
 her. And I did not care if I were hanged. I sat there 
 looking away from her as she lay on the floor, and try- 
 ing to get my own breath back. I think I hoped she 
 was dead, because then the end would come; for I felt 
 that now I had done this there was no more anything 
 to cling to or to live for. I wished to be put out of 
 misery. So I sat looking away from the heap on the 
 floor. But just then we heard James coming, and sud- 
 denly Aunt Arabella sprang up. She looked dreadful, 
 and the first thing she did was to rush to a mirror. 
 The one thing she thought of was that if James saw 
 her with all her toilette spoiled, he would tell. And 
 then I perceived how complete was our degradation. 
 We were too trivial and contemptible, too shriveled 
 and dead in our souls even for hanging. And when 
 she had got her hair right and her collar arranged, and 
 was crouching in her chair, and James had come in to 
 put on the coals and had gone out again, I turned to 
 her and said just this: 'Aunt Arabella, I will marry 
 Lord Heriot as soon as you like.' And at that she 
 began to shiver and whimper, and thanked me, and 
 praised her god." 
 
 "So," said the doctor, "you knocked Aunt Arabella 
 down. And afterward?" 
 
 "Nothing that I recall until one day I woke up from 
 my stupor."
 
 26$ A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "That was after your marriage?" 
 
 "Yes; months after. A tiny ray of hope it was 
 scarcely hope came to me one day. It was a little 
 thought no more than that." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "I caught at it. You do not know the darkness that 
 went before. Sometimes I think men do not guess 
 what settles settles down on a woman's heart when 
 she is hurt that way. But suddenly I saw that it 
 was possible to live a difficult life, but still a life. 
 Something so small, so tiny a link it was, but still a 
 link came to me out of what I had lost." 
 
 "What had you lost?" 
 
 "Hush! Do not ask. Let me tell you my own 
 way. It was for the sake of that I strove to be good 
 again. I realized that I had married Lord Heriot; I 
 thought ' That way my duty lies.' It was all the 
 goodness I had ever learned about. I thought it 
 linked me on to what I had lost. And in that idea I 
 lived. I woke up day by day and clung to it." 
 
 "You do not wish to leave Lord Heriot?" said the 
 doctor perplexedly. 
 
 She put out a trembling hand, and laid it on his arm. 
 
 "Wishes with me are dead," said she; "I find no 
 way save through devotion to my duty. Once I 
 learned something better. I cling to the thought. 
 But I see no chance of faithfulness to that save faith- 
 fulness to this" 
 
 He gazed at her with a frown of perplexity and 
 doubt. Her eyes were anxious; she feared his words; 
 her looks were weighted with deep questions which 
 she shrank from putting.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 269 
 
 "I married him of my own free will. My eyes 
 were wide open wider than you think than you 
 dream. I would not quarrel with him, would not go 
 back on my steps had self-respect enough to keep, 
 not break, this tie even when I comprehended what it 
 meant" 
 
 Her grasp tightened on his arm. She feared he 
 was certain that she feared his words ; yet the sources 
 of her dread were dark to him. 
 
 "One day," said she, "the little cord of hope to 
 which I desperately clung found a fellow. I began to 
 dream of motherhood." 
 
 "Yes," he said "yes." 
 
 "Doctor, did you know, did you guess that I had 
 that feeling that yearning?" 
 
 "No," he said. 
 
 "It was my strongest passion," she said; "even my 
 vanity was second to that. I know that it is so." 
 
 "It will redeem you, Jessamine, my child," he said. 
 
 She looked at him with an awful reproach. 
 
 "Ah!" he hastened to add. "For years you have 
 been disappointed." 
 
 "Disappointed?" She leaned forward and stared 
 at him. "Disappointed? Is that the word? From 
 dreaming over it as a half hope, I have come to think 
 of it with concentrated horror. But I am chained I 
 am chained !" 
 
 "Jessamine," he said, "I have told you that to 
 efforts of the will there are no chains that cannot be 
 cast aside." 
 
 "Death," she said, "will release me death alone. 
 Death is the solver of my problem, doctor,"
 
 270 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "It lies with God," said he, a sudden apprehension 
 in his tone. 
 
 "The only way," she said, "is death. I have con- 
 sidered and found it so at last. What holds me back 
 is cowardice and something further. Oh, doctor, doc- 
 tor! Is it so easy, then? Death even hides his face 
 at times from me. Responsibility holds me like a vise, 
 and breathes an icy breath upon my heart, and kills 
 even that hope. I cannot yet resolve to leave my post 
 and die." 
 
 She rose, and, advancing to the curtain, stood hold- 
 ing the folds back with both hands, and looking at him 
 over her shoulder. 
 
 "fs it so easy, doctor?" she repeated. "Can we by 
 one firm act undo our errors? They gather gather. 
 They strike root within. They live without. Come, 
 come! You shall see the chains that bind me." 
 
 He stood with her on the threshold of a wide and 
 cheerful room toward which she had led him. A 
 woman dressed as a nurse had frowningly objected to 
 his presence. She spoke of his lordship's strict com- 
 mand, of the secrecy of years. Jessamine with gentle 
 firmness and entreaty broke through her objections. 
 And then he stepped forward, and the secrets of the 
 House of Heriot lay before him. The room he stood 
 in was a nursery ; there were one or two attendants 
 more than would be naturally required and there 
 were two children, aged respectively, he surmised, 
 eight and six years. 
 
 He passed with rapid scrutiny and a horror-stricken 
 heart from one to the other. On those frail, tiny
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 271 
 
 forms lay heavily the heritage of the fathers. The 
 beaten brows, the suffering eyes, expiated in them- 
 selves the crimes and debauchery of generations. 
 
 "My children," said Jessamine, with a look into his 
 eyes. 
 
 Once, in a confusion of horror and shock, he put his 
 hand out to touch the drooping head of the elder. 
 And then the mother caught his fingers, and snatched 
 it back. 
 
 "Take care," said she, in a dull and gentle voice; "at 
 times she is malicious. That is my boy," she said, 
 pointing to the other. 
 
 And he saw a poor malformed thing a child who 
 lived in pain, and whose eyes alone answered for him ; 
 and these, the doctor thought, followed his mother up 
 and down the room with an awful look of perpetual 
 reproach. 
 
 Subdued and gentle, Jessamine walked among them. 
 
 No one spoke. The attendants, with their quiet, 
 secret faces, hung back like jailers. 
 
 The silence in the nursery was scarcely broken save 
 for Jessamine's few words, and the aimless scratching 
 of the idiot girl's hand upon a little table by which she 
 sat. Of all the scenes of anguish upon which his eyes 
 had rested, this, in its repressed and concentrated hor- 
 ror, was the most appalling. 
 
 They stood again in the sitting room. Dr. Corner- 
 stone's face was white as a sheet, and he was speech- 
 less. Jessamine closed the door behind the curtain 
 and locked it. Then she went swiftly to the second 
 door and locked that also. After that she returned to
 
 272 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 the hearth, where the doctor stood silent and smitten. 
 He could not look her in the face. 
 
 "You understand me now a little," she began, in 
 the same low, gentle voice the voice whose grief was 
 too deep for outcry. "I told you that when I waked 
 to understand my own deed I accepted it. I took up 
 duty clung to all I knew of that. For the sake of 
 something in the past out of fear of something in the 
 past I made it my aim to be simply a true wife to the 
 man I had married. God knows that I meant rightly. 
 It was what I had learned of right. Do efforts of 
 right-doing turn to fruits like those ? When I saw and 
 understood the face of my first baby when the little 
 hope born of dreary patient effort turned to that do 
 you think I did not have my desperate moment? But 
 there upon my breast lay the child itself, breathing 
 perpetual warning. I dared not stir; terror and hor- 
 ror held me fast. I strove good God, how pite- 
 ously! to do, moment by moment, all the duty and 
 the right I knew of. I came to think and there were 
 reasons more than you know that our first child was 
 my crime, and not his, my husband's. And a little 
 hope and comfort lived on. You see the dreary 
 years the working on in darkness and suspense? 
 The clinging to the only light I knew oh, with 
 such desperate fear! And then the answer. Dropped 
 so slowly, doctor. The awful sameness of reply ! My 
 God!" 
 
 She sank to the floor at his feet in a kneeling posture, 
 bending her head, and crushing her hands against her 
 breast. 
 
 "Jessamine," said the doctor, finding words for the
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 273 
 
 first time, "was it no crime to become a mother by 
 that effete and dissipated race?" 
 
 Whereat she straightened herself a little, kneeling 
 more upright, and seizing his hand and arm, to which 
 she clung convulsively. She had the look of one on 
 whom a dreaded blow has fallen. 
 
 "You say that, doctor?" 
 
 "Alas! what else should I say?" 
 
 "Kill me, then, " said she sharply ; "don't let me live 
 to commit it any more. Give me the means of dying, 
 so that my baby does not see the light of day. I have 
 seen at last that this was the only way. Of my own 
 will I can do nothing. I am bound with chains. Give 
 me the death which is my only release." 
 
 "Will that undo the error?" cried the doctor 
 sternly "that more than desertion?" 
 
 She caught her hands together, and laid them 
 across her eyes and brows, and held them there 
 while she considered. Then she rose softly to her 
 feet. 
 
 "You are right," said she. "It would be useless. I 
 was a coward to think of it." 
 
 He saw her standing for a moment poised in thought, 
 her finger on her lips, her mind concentrated upon the 
 hideous problem of her own creation. 
 
 "The children," she said. "They live on and on 
 when I am gone." 
 
 He stood silent ; words would be fatuous; his uttered 
 phrases struck him now as cruel ; he was without 
 resources. 
 
 She with her facile, undisciplined brain untaught, 
 unguided set to this torturing riddle, face to face
 
 274 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 with a situation so awful and supreme ! He was silent 
 indeed. 
 
 She looked up presently with dark, interrogating 
 eyes, and pointed a question swiftly. 
 
 "You believe in will, doctor?" 
 
 "In will? Assuredly." 
 
 "Ah, then ah, then! You are right. In will. 
 The only safe way is from within, outward. From 
 within" 
 
 She repeated it slowly and emphatically, bowing her 
 head as she did so. 
 
 She approached, and laid her hand gently on his 
 arm. 
 
 "Do you know, doctor " 
 
 "Yes? What?" 
 
 "The crime I think you called it so came from 
 within." 
 
 "Alas ! poor woman !" 
 
 "You said it was a crime? You are right. I see it. 
 A crime /" 
 
 Her eyes darkened, concentrated, and the brows 
 contracted as in strong mental effort. 
 
 "Crimes come from within" she repeated. 
 
 "All is not lost," murmured the doctor. 
 
 "Because," said she with sudden energy, speaking in 
 a loud whisper, and tightening her grasp upon his arm, 
 "I will cancel it from within. I will repudiate it 
 reject it from within. If there is a crime, I will not 
 connive at it. I will throw myself on the side against 
 it. I myself will annul it. I shall will and will 
 and will. God himself shall side with me, and Fate 
 be forced to have mercy !"
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 275 
 
 She paused, sighed, raised her arms high above her 
 head, and looked up. 
 
 "I beat with my willing against the very door of 
 heaven. I will tear my wish out of the center of 
 things," she cried. "Who has a right to his will if not 
 I? And I shall win it! There is nothing," she said, 
 "stronger than a mother."
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 DR. CORNERSTONE sat in Lord Heriot's dining 
 room ; his wine remained untasted beside him ; he 
 leaned his elbow on the table and his head on his 
 hand, and fixed his eyes thoughtfully on the figure of 
 his host. 
 
 There was ample opportunity for observation. Lord 
 Heriot was asleep. He had fallen asleep upon his 
 chair, the table napkin spreading over one knee, his 
 hands dangling, and his legs crossed, the dainty shoe 
 being pointed stiffly and with singular aimlessness 
 upward. His immaculate shirt front, with the dia- 
 mond sparkles at regular intervals, hooped outward, 
 and his head the hair most carefully tended nodded 
 sideways. 
 
 "The best valeted man I ever beheld!" said the 
 doctor. 
 
 All that the tailor and a priceless personal attendant 
 could do had been done to turn Lord Heriot into a 
 reputable figure of a man. If starch, fine cloth, and 
 shaving could have erased the traces of a past, that 
 past would have vanished under the applications as 
 completely as breath on a well-rubbed mirror. But 
 Lord Heriot's past was a long one; it did not begin 
 with himself. There had been a sameness in the his- 
 tory of the Heriots for generations; it was varied only 
 by the differences in manifestation caused by the 
 
 276
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 277 
 
 different tastes and fashions of the time. The lines of 
 the resulting contour cut deep. Violence and exces- 
 sive animation in the first instance the unabashed 
 and muscular tiger who founded the family had, in 
 the inevitable processes of time, degenerated into 
 meanness, irritation, and vice in such members as did 
 not reap their heritage in insanity, disease, and shock- 
 ing malformation. 
 
 That the Heriots had survived at all was the result 
 of the extraordinary advantages in sick nursing which 
 wealth had permitted them to enjoy that is, the hot- 
 bed fostering and care which go to cherish an enfeebled 
 stock. That cause and one other had prevented their 
 natural extinction, the other cause being the alliances 
 into which their wealth and titles had tempted Eng- 
 land's fair daughters from time to time. For genera- 
 tions the Heriots had purchased handsome women as 
 wives in much the same way as an Eastern despot 
 buys the inmates of his harem. Had it not been for 
 these two measures the family would have died out as 
 quickly as the generations of the vicious are said to 
 perish in the slums of London. And in effect the 
 force of the original cause had by this time over- 
 mastered the antidotes, and the natural doom had 
 reached them, settling upon the present representative 
 in a horror which appeared to him inexplicable. 
 
 While he slept Dr. Cornerstone watched him. In 
 imagination he took this instance of the unfortunate 
 semi-criminal loafer and placed him in the position 
 that suited his capacity subtracting him, that is, from 
 the House of Lords and setting him down in the casual 
 ward. Thus clothed upon by circumstance and rags,
 
 2? A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 he presented to the eye of the mind a consistent 
 image. 
 
 Suddenly the sleeping nobleman awakened ; his eyes 
 opened in an empty stare upon a world of which the 
 uppermost reminiscence was of jaded appetite and 
 ennui. Catching sight of the doctor, troubled recollec- 
 tion passed into his face, while his hand betrayed him 
 by seeking the decanter; but he recalled the action, 
 snatching back his fingers, and turning his head nerv- 
 ously aside, the consciousness of temptation being writ 
 in his eye and profile, as in a dog's face one may see 
 the consciousness of a forbidden bone. 
 
 The doctor still perplexed him by his watchful 
 glance, and at last uneasiness waked him up com- 
 pletely, so that he sat upright on his chair. 
 
 "Beg pardon, doctor," said he confusedly. "Been 
 having forty winks, I'm afraid. Trouble. Sleepless 
 nights." 
 
 He opened his red, pale-lashed lids and stared before 
 him at misery. In truth, there were causes and to 
 spare for desolating reflection. A sort of whirlwind 
 had passed over the House of Heriot during late past 
 months, and if the confused mind of the master was 
 still capable of entertaining a ray of hope, it was apt 
 to be obscured or hunted down by images of terror. 
 The truth was that the secret chambers of the mansion 
 were empty and open now. In one moment of fierce 
 horror the brood concealed therein had destroyed 
 itself, the hand of the idiot girl having been lifted sud- 
 denly and dexterously against her helpless brother. 
 After the event the fair mother had sunk into a condi- 
 tion of mental and physical collapse from which she
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 279 
 
 had not yet revived. As to the noble lord himself, 
 only one form of collapse was possible, to which he 
 immediately betook himself; the restraining, guiding 
 hand of his wife being withdrawn, the careful artifice of 
 his reformation tumbled to pieces, and in her enforced 
 absence he plunged into every downward-tending con- 
 solation which his diseased taste could devise. Just at 
 this moment, when he sat under the doctor's eyes star- 
 ing at misery, his conscience crept with memories and 
 superstitious foreboding. 
 
 "Not been called yet, doctor, then?" said he pres- 
 ently, rousing himself and recollecting that he was 
 a Heriot and noble. 
 
 "Not yet," was the obvious reply. 
 
 The doctor's tone was gentle ; this was not a case 
 for abuse; his sympathetic finger was, as it were, on 
 the pulse of that dim bit of humanity before him. 
 
 "Is there any chance?" asked Heriot, setting forth 
 his importunate hope in a nervous question. 
 
 "What of, my lord?" returned the doctor. 
 
 "You know," replied the other after a sulky pause 
 "you know what I want." 
 
 The doctor made no answer. The man's willing and 
 desiring was too lamentable a spectacle in the face of 
 the universe. 
 
 "It's deuced hard on a man to be thwarted in his 
 ambition 'and wishes," went on Heriot, the flood of 
 complaining being loosed. "I seem singled out for 
 misfortune. And yet all I ask to make things com- 
 plete is an heir to my name." 
 
 "Yes," said the doctor; "you seem singled out for a 
 particular misfortune."
 
 280 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 Lord Heriot took the reply for encouragement. He 
 had ideas to lay before the doctor; they seemed to 
 him an imposing logical array, if only he could get the 
 right one uppermost. He took a silver fruit knife and 
 beat with it upon the table to aid his speech. 
 
 "I want," said he "I want her ladyship to pluck up 
 heart and courage. I tell her it rests with her." 
 
 He glanced up cunningly to see if he had said some- 
 thing impressive. The doctor, gazing at him with 
 quiet, speculative eyes, was striving to draw from his 
 appearance a further clew to Jessamine's mysterious 
 faithfulness. 
 
 What hidden argument sufficed to hold the wife to 
 her unloved bond, to make her to this diseased and 
 ineffective creature a miracle of self-sacrificing patience? 
 
 Receiving no answer from his silent guest, Lord 
 Heriot drew out his handkerchief and mopped the 
 moisture from his brow. 
 
 "Lady Heriot has been a good wife, doctor," said he 
 querulously; "I've nothing to say against her. I 
 wouldn't have anything happen to her for half my 
 fortune. When I married her she was a pack of 
 whims; but I liked that. It's wonderful how she 
 changed after. Steadied, you know. Well, I don't 
 mind telling you she set herself to reform me. Hee! 
 hee!" 
 
 He rose a little in his chair, tilted the knife up, and 
 lifted his other hand with the weakly spreading fingers, 
 and showed his teeth in a mirthless laugh at the doc- 
 tor. The latter pursued his silent observation. 
 
 "'I'm not given to sermons myself," continued the 
 noble lord, dropping back to an unbraced attitude;
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 281 
 
 "don't like them. But when it's a pretty woman 
 preaches! Eh? Don't you know?" 
 
 His watery eye, seeking sideways for sympathy in 
 the looser suggestions of his mind, came in contact 
 with the doctor's collected mien. 
 
 "I give you my word, I haven't tired of her yet. 
 Come! Nine years!" he jerked out in a burst of con- 
 fidence, the man within him appealing to what he con- 
 jectured of the man over there. 
 
 "N no?" said the doctor, with uncommitting cau- 
 tion. 
 
 "Fact!" returned the other. 
 
 He drew together the sides of his dress coat and 
 absently fastened the bottom button ; while he con- 
 templated this unusual instance a faint surprise at its 
 existence in himself rose to a noticeable sensation. It 
 gave weight to his following disclosures. 
 
 "Look here," said he mysteriously, "I knew you 
 kneiv / She told me. Well, I didn't want a scandal. 
 See? Kept it all deuced dark. That is why I sent 
 straight for you when the crash came. Now, look 
 here," he repeated, opening one hand the fingers 
 widespread and laying the tip of the other upon it to 
 indicate the logical force of his conclusions, "I don't 
 pretend to be a religious man ; but I believe in a thing 
 or two. I believe in Providence. And when I see how 
 at one stroke Providence cleared away the whole diffi- 
 culty, swept the place clean of trouble, I feel myself to 
 be specially marked out for something or another. 
 Do you see? I believe in Providence. It would be 
 ungrateful not to trust for the best. What did he 
 make a clean sweep of things for? Why, that we
 
 282 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 might begin afresh, of course. I don't pretend to be a 
 religious man, or claim more than I should. But 
 that's how I look at things." 
 
 He pulled his waistcoat down, and stretched his dim 
 eyes at his guest, making them into points of watery 
 light. God ! how the face was marred ! What fright- 
 ful excess was written all over it, what bestial mem- 
 ories! Where had he been during the months that his 
 wife lay ill upstairs? Again, the doctor saw by infer- 
 ence the martyred patience of the woman who had 
 borne the chains of the marriage she had made during 
 the nine years of which he boasted. 
 
 The powerful concentrated gaze which Heriot's 
 attempt at a steady look encountered seemed to swal- 
 low it up. He did not know whether his disordered 
 soul had touched on comfort or not. His eyes wan- 
 dered off shiftily and nervously, the feeble lids flutter- 
 ing with weak apprehension. He started off on a new 
 topic. 
 
 "Yes; she took me in hand," he began. "A power- 
 ful mind, doctor a powerful mind." He shook his 
 head sagely. "I assure you" here he stretched his 
 spreading fingers over the table confidentially "since 
 our eldest was born I've been a reformed man that is, 
 to be accurate, until lately. She regularly talked me 
 over frightened me a bit, 1 don't mind saying. I was 
 deuced cut up when they told me the girl wasn't right. 
 But she bore it like an angel; got me to promise all 
 sorts of things regularly took me in hand. You'd not 
 think a man like I am experienced, you know, doc- 
 tor could be talked over by a woman. Well, I was. 
 Don't mind owning up, either."
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 283 
 
 He rubbed his mouth with the table napkin, and 
 flicked an imaginary crumb off his knee. Though 
 silent for the moment, his lips were parted as though 
 the babbling of his fragmentary thought could scarcely 
 be retained. The massive silence of the doctor shook 
 speech out of him as no questioning could have done. 
 
 "If the brain of the woman had but matched this 
 extraordinary power of endurance, the magnitude of 
 this conception of duty!" thought the doctor. 
 
 "Well, I don't mind saying it over again," babbled 
 Heriot; "she fair frightened me. She's not the bully- 
 ing kind, you know, doctor, or, by Jove ! I'd have made 
 her feel it" a curious impress of his tigerish ancestor 
 crept out on to his mean face. "No; Lady Heriot is 
 the right sort gets hold of a man the right way. 
 Pretty woman, too though I say it that shouldn't. 
 And I promised her there and then. I promised her, 
 if she'd help me to keep to it, and and be good to a 
 fellow." 
 
 Here he wept into his handkerchief, falling suddenly 
 into an access of grief. A slight frown wrinkled the 
 doctor's forehead. He had a shrewd idea that this 
 trickling of tears was as much induced by feeble 
 remorse as anything else, and Heriot presently con- 
 firmed the impression. He stammered out his wretched 
 confessions; they comprised along history of resolu- 
 tions, which in themselves it was a shame to have 
 made, but some of which, under the assiduous care of 
 Jessamine, it appeared he had kept until the illness 
 induced by shock removed her from his side. Oh, 
 then, indeed, he had gayly plunged! 
 
 Every confession of the wretched man was accom-
 
 284 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 panied by praise of the woman whose commiserating 
 care had availed to drag him out of his more con- 
 spicuous wallowings, and to place him even so far 
 on clean, firm ground as he had reached before, 
 that is, her withdrawal lent him the opportunity to 
 relapse. 
 
 "I'm not fit for her, you know, doctor by Gad I'm 
 not! But I mustn't lose her. You must see to that, 
 you know. Only set her on her legs again, and give 
 me my heir an heir to the name of Heriot, you know, 
 doctor," he continued, with fatuous and grotesque 
 pride "and I'll show what I can do in the way of 
 reforming." 
 
 The doctor's frowning silence continued. The 
 important thing was not that Heriot should reform, 
 but that he and his race should pass into annihilation. 
 Virtue itself meets some too late, and the best to be 
 hoped for is painless extinction. But that the pale, 
 exhausted woman upstairs should have pursued 
 through such dark and fetid ways for years a quest so 
 useless wrung the doctor's heart and amazed his intelli- 
 gence. What force had not been expended in kind- 
 ling the tiny rushlight spark to which the titled 
 loafer confessed? What paths of horror had she not 
 traversed in hunting after his worthless soul? What 
 motive lent the impulse to a spiritual expenditure so 
 enormous? 
 
 "Brain," said the doctor to himself " brain is want- 
 ing. This meaningless strength and sweetness excru- 
 ciate the heart that contemplates them." 
 
 As to the wretched creature before him, hardness 
 and contempt were scarcely possible. In the awful
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOAIAN. 285 
 
 degeneration of the race of Heriot, a depth too low 
 had been reached for even the tonic kick of mankind. 
 Besides, mingled though it was with grotesque vanity 
 and selfishness, the sincerity of the broken creature's 
 attachment to his wife was evident, and turned aside 
 severity. 
 
 His lordship, copiously weeping into the fine cambric 
 handkerchief, scarcely seemed to expect a reply to his 
 asseverations. He possibly did not remark the doc- 
 tor's silence. Regaining his composure, he sat quiet, 
 turning his weakened face sideways, and contemplat- 
 ing presumedly bleared images of his own creation. 
 
 When at last the doctor rose to go, he also sprang 
 from his seat, and, nervously seizing his guest's hand, 
 broke into an explosion of incoherent murmurs. 
 
 "Do your best for me, doctor," said he in a helpless 
 appeal, feeling that his moment had surely arrived, but 
 that Providence was, after all, capable of scuttling off 
 in a base desertion, and that in the strong hand of a 
 friendly man was his final trust. "Any pay, doc- 
 tor!" continued he, appealing now to mammon. "I'm 
 inclined to think the other fellows bungled. Do your 
 best." 
 
 The doctor pressed the wretched man's hand 
 quietly, pity and loathing meting out his heart about 
 equally between them. Then he turned toward the 
 door. 
 
 Heriot sank down on his knees by the table in a 
 whimpering access of uncontrollable grief and fear. 
 
 "Don't be long, doctor!" he cried; "help me I 
 mean her. It's it's an important moment. By 
 Gad ! if we fail this time ! Heir. Delicate female/'
 
 286 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAX. 
 
 His words scattered themselves off into sobs. The 
 doctor looked back for a moment at the spectacle. 
 Even Jessamine's singular faithfulness could not endow 
 this titled loafer with any halo. 
 
 "He has been drinking badly badly," said the doc- 
 tor to himself as he closed the door behind him. 
 "He'll rot down to the grave in six months."
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 A SMALL rim of safety and an abyss below. The 
 terror of that abyss was still in her heart ; but a hand, 
 rough and sudden, had plucked her thence and thrown 
 her to this edge. 
 
 So it seemed to Jessamine. 
 
 She still feared what lay below. Down there they 
 had pinned her to a place of torture in the center of a 
 whirl of fire and noise. There were shapes and cries, 
 regiments of creatures, waves of fire, and wide shout- 
 ing mouths with fangs that darted out and fastened on 
 her heart. But the great dread was that which lay 
 behind. 
 
 Somewhere beyond that wheel of discord and suf- 
 fering lurked a shadow small, still insignificant, but 
 containing within itself monstrous possibilities. The 
 consciousness of this was worse than the sharpness of 
 the severest pain ; it lay like a stone, black and heavy, 
 dropped through space from a distant star something 
 that was meant for her, which lay still enough now, 
 but which the pressure of a myriad miles was not suffi- 
 cient to hold down. 
 
 That was the horrible, uneasy dread. Suppose the 
 thing moved, or grew, or uttered sounds? Her heart, 
 bare to those other fangs, trembled at this surmise with 
 unutterable fear. The dread was secret too; she 
 stifled it, kept it down, looked away from it, dared not
 
 288 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 protect herself or confess her horror, lest she should 
 arouse the treacherous shade. And yet, while holding 
 her fear at bay, she knew it was in vain. 
 
 Little by little the tiny murmur began a low, fatal 
 whisper, full of foreboding. Through all the nearer 
 clamor it reached her ear. 
 
 And, then, did it not grow? So small, so shapeless, 
 and so dim, it waxed and increased ! With averted 
 eyes and an agony of will she denied that it was so ; 
 said it lay still and tiny and harmless; was but a stone 
 and nothing more. 
 
 Little by little the murmur increased, and the shape 
 became greater. Her heart was cold with apprehen- 
 sion ; her blood ran ice; her nerves crept and quivered. 
 While the whirl of fire went round and the fangs fast- 
 ened on her, that murmur gathered volume, that shape 
 heaped on vastness, until the heaven itself grew black. 
 
 Then it moved ! Now her secret dread was held at 
 bay no longer. It turned to frantic panic. Better sur- 
 render to the fire and the whirl and the fangs than 
 await that treacherous horror beyond. For she knew, 
 she knew! All that mountain of dismay had been 
 gathering through ages for her and her alone. She 
 was the object, the victim. It came to claim her on 
 and on slowly ; then more swiftly ; and at last with 
 bounds. 
 
 With it drew onward the murmur, and this altered 
 as it neared, and formed a word a single word, that 
 would break over her in a clash like thunder, and let 
 some dreaded secret into her ears. 
 
 Defend her against that word ! 
 
 The Thing overshadowed her! It had wings and
 
 .-/ SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 289 
 
 eyes and claws that fastened on her heart. And then 
 she understood. It was the outward embodiment of 
 what she hid within. The Thing knew about the nerve 
 of nerves, the hidden, sensitive fiber, the secret place. 
 It was part of that, the inevitable, necessary conse- 
 quence. As she had nursed the one into being, the 
 other black and horrible treachery had been coming 
 too ; it intimately belonged to her, it had an irresistible, 
 irrevocable claim. The citadel of citadels was open to 
 that ill-omened shade ; that was its place ; no remotest 
 corner was safe or could be safe from its rifling beak ; 
 bars and defenses, will itself, were vain. 
 
 It was close upon her. She felt it swooping down 
 with wings and claws. Horror and black darkness 
 overwhelmed her. Yet she turned to defy it. She 
 fought the demon with puny hands of unimaginable 
 despair, clutching the red throat open at her. She 
 would stifle the spoken word, choke it in the utterance, 
 break it off though the talons slew^her. Heavens! how 
 she dreaded that word, how the idea of the unknown 
 Thing appalled her! There! A wrench! A crash 
 like thunder in her ears! A shriek that tore the sky! 
 A horrible moment ! And then, when all was lost, the 
 mighty hand rough but merciful snatching her away 
 to toss her here apart on the narrow rim of safety. 
 
 Hell was over. 
 
 She lay still. A sound like the tramping of depart- 
 ing armies, the rustle and beating of hundreds of 
 wings, was all she heard. The orderly, regular tread, 
 the shiver in the air above. But the sound lessened 
 and sank to a quiet, distant hum. After the terror 
 there was peace,
 
 290 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "Jessamine !" 
 
 Whose was the voice? It came from an unimagina- 
 ble distance. Must she, indeed, arise already? Ah, 
 yes! She was too near the abyss. The Thing might 
 overtake her yet. That rim of safety was a small 
 shelf, from which she might fall back. Besides, did 
 she not know that a journey lay before her, and that 
 the way was long and the time too short? Moreover, 
 what was the Secret? The Word that crashed in her 
 ears was overpowered by sound, the meaning lost in 
 thunder. She must seek it yet, seek and find it for 
 herself. She no longer dreaded it ; it was the way she 
 dreaded, the going thither where the Secret lay hid. 
 Her feet were lead, her limbs like those of a corpse, 
 her hands feeble. Yet she must go ; the Way lay be- 
 fore her. How terrible ! how weary ! An upright 
 series of enormous steps, cloudlike, rough-hewn, with 
 no apparent ending. That was the Way. Weak and 
 beaten, up those she must climb and cling until she 
 reached the summit. 
 
 Her feeble limbs essayed the fearsome progress. 
 With leaden, aching efforts, with nerveless hands, 
 stumbles, and hair-breadth escapes, on and on she 
 pressed, clinging, climbing, dragging herself on hands 
 and knees, and this for ages. On and on till Time was 
 gray. Then invisible hands raised her, and the effort 
 was over. 
 
 There was a Plain, wide and desolate, and full of 
 twilight. Afar off lay a range of mountains. It was 
 there that the Secret would be found; and miles and 
 days of weary journeying lay between. She sat alone 
 and mourned, her head in her breast ; she drew the veil
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 291 
 
 closer about her face and sorrowed. It was because 
 of those whom she knew would pass by ; because of 
 the steps that were coming and the eyes that pressed 
 toward her. Fain would she hide from those eyes. 
 
 Behind lay a Vista of the Ages the Ages of the 
 future and the unborn. Faces, little faces, came up 
 from them ; her ears were full of the tread of little 
 feet ; little hands clutched at the veil and dragged it 
 from her; eyes, the eyes of unborn children, looked at 
 her with an awful reproach. They came and touched 
 her with cold hands, and looked and passed. Little 
 feet and little hands and eyes that were dreadful. 
 Each had the eyes of her suffering boy; each had the 
 impress of her husband. 
 
 She rose and tottered on. Tears rained down her 
 cheeks. By her side walked another Shape some- 
 thing unknown, yet intimate. She had no fear, but 
 knew not who it was. Her hand was locked in that 
 other's. And she heard the tread of little feet before 
 her, yet saw nothing. 
 
 "The children!" she said, "the children! I am 
 smitten by the eyes of children!" 
 
 They toiled on toward the mountains. 
 
 And suddenly there fronted her the walls, as it were, 
 of a City with Gates in the midst. And this she 
 neared ; but always before ran the sound of little feet 
 hurrying. 
 
 "The children have gone first," she said, "bearing 
 their accusation. They carry," she said, "my sins 
 my crime !" 
 
 She would have fled and turned back. Fear of the 
 children overpowered her. Fear of the little cold
 
 29 2 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 hands, of the feet that made such haste before, of the 
 eyes that told so much ! But her palm was pressed by 
 iron fingers. 
 
 "That is fate!" said she. 
 
 The Gates swing back before them, and she saw a 
 light beyond. 
 
 "Is it over?" she said. "Am I dead?" 
 
 "Dead," said a voice close to her ear. 
 
 Dr. Cornerstone stood by the bedside of the ex- 
 hausted woman, watching her face anxiously. 
 
 What he saw was a marble-white countenance, with 
 pinched, worn features, lying like a carved ivory wedge 
 between two heavy curtains of flowing, disheveled 
 hair. The white lids and long dark lashes hid the 
 eyes, and only by the tiny, labored, whistling breath 
 did he know she lived. The hand, slim, feeble, in 
 a strangely tired attitude, lay outside the coverlet. 
 Every now and then he took the unresisting wrist in 
 his and laid his finger on the pulse. 
 
 So still she lay, so nerveless and beaten, with so 
 much the look of a creature that has abdicated from 
 her place and resigned all effort the hand itself aban- 
 doning its toil that from hour to hour he could hardly 
 have said whether she lived or not. How should he 
 know the agony of effort through which the poor soul 
 passed, the torment, and the weary expiation? Not 
 all his insight and his sympathy could teach him. He 
 saw only the small, worn face lying between the masses 
 of the hair that tumbled over the pillow. 
 
 From watching her he directed his attention else- 
 where, His patient lay in a spacious room which
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN'. 293 
 
 opened to an ante-chamber. It was night, and the 
 curtains were drawn. The fire and the lamps brought 
 everything to a beautiful subdued glow, and the quiet 
 of a perfectly appointed sick room was only broken by 
 the sound of the fire and the hum of a kettle. On the 
 hearth sat a young woman in the dress of a nurse, her 
 quiet face turned to the glow. She sat significant 
 fact with idle hands. 
 
 A young but experienced nurse she was, with an 
 aptitude for difficult cases, who attended Jessamine for 
 the first time. 
 
 The doctor walked toward her. She rose respect- 
 fully, yet, as it were, tempering her subordination with 
 a sense of merit. 
 
 "She will do for the moment," he said; "but I shall 
 remain until I see clearer signs of consciousness." 
 
 A little hurt dignity flecked her cheek. She knew 
 so well her own capacity, was so ready for emergen- 
 cies! Indeed, in sudden difficult moments she was 
 sure that she excelled. A hundred instances rose to 
 her mind. 
 
 "Certainly, Dr. Cornerstone," she replied with studi- 
 ous gentleness; "but in any case I should know how 
 to evade her questions. I have had cases before where 
 tact was called for." 
 
 "Just so," said the doctor absently, and passed on. 
 
 The nurse rose and hovered near the bed, deftly 
 keeping an eye on the patient without troubling her. 
 Her step could not be heard ; her movements were 
 soothing and wholesome. But her feeling was sore 
 toward Dr. Cornerstone. 
 
 The same room saw the tragedy of Jessamine's soul,
 
 294 A SUPERFLUOUS 
 
 and the small upset dignity of the nurse who was 
 assured of her qualification to treat it. 
 
 About the catastrophes of life play all sorts of tiny 
 shafts of the smaller kind, the little affairs of irrelevant 
 minds all unconscious of the depths they shoot across. 
 
 That is the little worldliness, intermingling itself, as 
 ever, with the mystery and reality of life. 
 
 Meanwhile Dr. Cornerstone, unwitting of the flutter 
 left behind him, raised a curtain and passed into the 
 ante-chamber. 
 
 This, too, was warmed and lighted. And here, too, 
 a second nurse sat idle and silent on the hearth. Not 
 all the warmth nor all the light could warm that which 
 lay within the handsome cradle, coldly pushed to a far 
 corner. The chill of it was in the air. 
 
 He stood contemplating the hundred nursery appli- 
 ances which had been prepared for the last hope of the 
 House of Heriot; the luxuries and comforts which 
 should have coaxed and cosseted the small life onward 
 to its splendid destiny; the material angels which 
 should have carried the heir in their hands over peril- 
 ous years, and landed him securely at last in the 
 heritage of his fathers. 
 
 The heritage of his fathers! He had gathered that 
 already. Dr. Cornerstone walked up to the cradle, 
 which in its baby magnificence was shaped for a lord, 
 and drew the silken curtain aside. The heir and the 
 heritage of the House of Heriot both lay there 
 together. 
 
 Thus had fallen the answer to the will and the 
 designing of man. 
 
 The doctor returned, and took his place by Jessa-
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOA1AX. 2p5 
 
 mine's bedside. No patient in all London needed his 
 care, his consolation, so much. 
 
 The nurse sat by the fire thinking of her merit, and 
 telling herself anecdotes of her past achievements. 
 And so the hours of the night went on. 
 
 After a time, when the silence was heaviest, when it 
 lay like a weight in the midst of the warmth and light, 
 and when like an unwelcome ghost a chill ray of early 
 dawn crept through the closed shutters, she saw the 
 doctor bend close to the face of his patient. 
 
 "Jessamine!" 
 
 The eyes, locked so long beneath the half-moons of 
 their lids, opened and gazed at him in an astonishment 
 that slowly altered to suspense. 
 
 The Plain and her companion had vanished. Jessa- 
 mine's consciousness of earth and of herself had 
 returned. She lay still in her own chamber as she sur- 
 mised, but her senses were numb, so that she could 
 neither see nor hear, neither could she move or speak. 
 Her mental power was, however, the clearer for that 
 darkening of the rest, and her brain conjured up 
 thoughts with a force and directness hitherto unknown 
 to her. Memory especially was active ; pictures of her 
 past life rose before her, clear, defined, yet passionless. 
 The emotion which had accompanied each scene had 
 faded; they lay before her in the calm light of the 
 judgment and reflection. "Here and here," said she, 
 placing the finger of her mind upon this and that, "I 
 stumbled I missed the way; deliriously I chose 
 wrong." 
 
 She went backward from the last scene of all, which,
 
 2r>(> A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAX. 
 
 blurred and terrible, struggled at last into remem- 
 brance the last scene which had blotted out her mind 
 for a time, and from which onward she recalled noth- 
 ing. Slowly, with effort, with shrinking reluctance, 
 she reproduced it the wide, bright nursery, the sud- 
 den unlooked-for fury of the idiot girl, the fear of the 
 helpless cripple, her own falling form, with the flash 
 of tables and chairs and common objects in the last 
 glance of her eyes, and the shrieks that were suddenly 
 silent to her ears. 
 
 Yes; she remembered. From that time onward she 
 must have been ill. 
 
 And now her mind dropped the memory wearily. 
 
 From it she wandered far away to the days when 
 hopes of many kinds, varied, bright-colored and glitter- 
 ing, danced through her heart like noisy children 
 through a playground. In those days all her thoughts 
 were little shouts of laughter and victory. Out of the 
 mirrors of her mind looked the young, fresh, fatal 
 beauty. 
 
 "My bitter fate! The way I missed! Where was 
 the way?" she asked. 
 
 Surely it was where duty lay. With clear, unfailing 
 memory she recalled the nine years of her steady 
 adherence to that path. 
 
 Those who weaved beheld in the woven tissue some 
 reward to their labor; those who plowed and sowed 
 reaped a harvest ; those who persevered reached a goal. 
 But for her nothing; the narrowest, most carefully fol- 
 lowed path led to disaster. 
 
 "What is duty?" asked the sick woman. "Who 
 taught me how to find it?"
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 297 
 
 Her lids were heavy and hurt her eyes; her lashes 
 hurt as they lay on her cheeks. 
 
 "I see nothing; I am too weary," she said. 
 
 One spot of earth, and one alone, was dear to her in 
 memory the very pain of it was sweet. Time dis- 
 criminates for us the reality of our treasures from the 
 show. We may come to take pain as our dearest pos- 
 session, not distinguishing it from happiness, because 
 it is the one thing which, if we lose, we lose, as it were, 
 the Self the Soul. 
 
 That memory lay at the bottom of her heart ; it was 
 a hidden consciousness which for ten years had neither 
 sunk beneath the horizon of vivid recollection nor 
 passed the bars of her lips. For her the pastures of a 
 distant land were ever moist with morning dew, and 
 the harvest was still growing toward completion, and 
 the everlasting hills lying silent above a human drama. 
 
 She retraced that past. One by one the kindly, 
 gentle faces rose before her all, that is, save the one 
 face. His face from the day she had fled to this 
 neither in dreams nor in memory, had she ever been 
 able to summon before her again. It had been blotted 
 out. He walked through her mind, always with head 
 averted. 
 
 She sank for a time into something that seemed like 
 slumber or, rather, it was the unforced wandering of 
 the thoughts. She was back in the heaths and fields 
 of Dalfaber. She felt the sun smite hot between the 
 rows of stooks in the barley field. She heard the wind 
 ringing the music from the nodding heads; she felt the 
 breeze blowing over the heather; the melody of the 
 quivering birch trees was in her ear, the scent of fir
 
 298 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMA.V. 
 
 trees filled a sunny air. And suddenly out of the midst 
 of it all clear, vivid, and real as reality the long 
 lost and unseen face, which her treacherous memory 
 could never conjure, bent over her, looking in her eyes 
 with the smile of his old love. 
 
 "Colin!" 
 
 "Jessamine!" 
 
 That was not his voice. Slowly the vision faded ; 
 but she had had time to learn his features afresh.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 IT was cold, early dawn the gloomy presage of a 
 gloomy day. 
 
 In the ante-chamber the attendant drew back the 
 window-curtain and looked out. A drizzling rain fell, 
 and she saw the leaves of the trees in the square beaten 
 by it and dropping from the twigs in silent, helpless 
 surrender. " Earth to earth " was their birthright ; 
 but they fell on the stony pavement, where no soft 
 mold sucked them in, but where the remorseless gray 
 light found them out with its cold glitter, and warned 
 the unburied things that for them there is no resur- 
 rection. 
 
 In the inner chamber the nurse stirred up the blaze 
 and drew the curtain close over the door of the ante- 
 room, and made a cheerful stir of life and movement. 
 The sick woman lay with her great eyes wide open 
 and fixed on the warm light nestling here and there 
 on the canopy of the bed. The eyes were too con- 
 scious and far too full of thought for the satisfaction 
 of the little nurse, who had made up her mind that the 
 beautiful Lady Heriot should be restored through her 
 good offices to her enviable position in society. And 
 Jessamine obediently turned her head when required, 
 and opened her lips to the food offered her. 
 
 But it seemed to her that the needs of the body 
 were over, that she had dropped life dropped it like
 
 3 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAM. 
 
 a heavy stone down some fathomless well of the past, 
 on the edge of which she herself sat waiting. There 
 was no reason why she should go on living. Life was 
 a memory, a book she had read ; she could turn the 
 leaves and look at it now as though it were the tale of 
 another. 
 
 Every now and then she dozed. Waking, she found 
 Peace, too long a stranger, hovering near her pillow. 
 Peace whispered that it was over. 
 
 The doctor, who had been absent some hours, 
 returned at noon. Jessamine welcomed him with a 
 smile. 
 
 " It feels," said she, " like a fresh spring day to me. 
 The flowers are growing." 
 
 "It is late autumn," said he. 
 
 " No spring," said she ; " the year is beginning." 
 
 He touched her wrist and looked at her features. 
 They were altered and pinched ; an invisible hand 
 molded and prepared them afresh. The eyes grew 
 larger and softer every moment, and there was no 
 longer either horror or terror in them. 
 
 " My life lies back from me as a dream," she said ; 
 " it is something I have passed through. It is all 
 shadows, and they roll away like a curtain." 
 
 " Yes," said he. 
 
 " I am so free," she whispered. 
 
 Later in the day Dr. Cornerstone saw fit to summon 
 into the chamber the incongruous figure of Lord 
 Heriot. Like a beaten hound, conscious of delinquen- 
 cies and of the direst failure, he crept up the magnifi- 
 cent staircase of his mansion and in at the door of her 
 room. He came like a shameful shadow of the past,
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 3 O1 
 
 bringing with him his tainted memories. But she 
 looked at him steadily, nor shrank as he approached 
 the bed, nor resisted when he took her hand in his. 
 Nothing in this present belonged to her any more. 
 He evaded her eyes ; over the hazy something which 
 he called his mind his conscience scribbled scores 
 against him. His shifty glance fell on those mental 
 records with dismay, and he hurried into such refuge 
 as could be found in words. 
 
 " It's an awful business, Jessamine ! " he said. 
 
 And the ready tear, the symbol of unbraced will, 
 stood in his eyes. 
 
 She answered nothing. Their two wills were two 
 whole worlds apart, and hers had triumphed. In that 
 moment she realized what a frenzy of willing she had 
 thrown into her desire that the baby should not live ; 
 fixing her thought on it, clamoring hour by hour 
 against Nature and God, casting the wild gauntlet of 
 her single rebellion against Fate, and filling day and 
 night and space and time with the relentless demand 
 for the extinction of that life and the effacement of 
 her crime. And the baby had not lived ; it had fallen 
 out as she had resolved. Her husband came with 
 eyes red with tears and wine, and face flecked with 
 the pale lines of failure and shame, to meet her looks 
 fixed on him with the first quiet sense of achievement 
 she had ever experienced. 
 
 That frightened him. It set him in so isolated a 
 region. With trembling lips, and shaking hands, and 
 eyes that searched an empty heaven, he essayed once 
 more the refuge of words. 
 
 " 'Pon my word, it's a bad business ! " he stammered.
 
 32 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "There isn't a Heriot left to take up the title ! 'Tain't 
 your fault, Jessamine," he stuttered ; " I married for 
 an heir. And, Lord knows, I thought I chose well ! 
 It's our infernal ill-luck ! " 
 
 She lay in unassailable silence. Death, the Angel 
 of Mercy, had passed his hand here and there and 
 canceled her sins. There were no terrible vistas of the 
 future. The horror was washed out of her eyes. That 
 frightened him more. The one point of union had 
 been their mutual responsibility in parentage. But 
 now her eyes set him apart. His conscience winced 
 at the thought of what a headlong plunge into the 
 mire he had taken, once the prop of her presence had 
 been withdrawn. 
 
 " I feel it badly, Jessamine 'pon my word I do," 
 said he, shivering. 
 
 H'e was astounded to see the look of peace deepen- 
 ing in her eyes, and to feel her hand unresponsive 
 within his. 
 
 It lay there quietly, it is true, for her mind retained 
 its proud habitual attitude of gentle acquiescence in 
 the deed of her own doing. But as she looked at him, 
 she knew that that too was over ; his very appearance 
 dwindled and dwindled to an immense distance, for all 
 their touching fingers. The feet of her soul traveled 
 fast and sure. She was terribly silent. At last she 
 withdrew her hand. 
 
 That frightened him more and more. The perspira- 
 tion stood on his brow, and his hair lifted with dismay. 
 Her solemn fixed eyes were awful, and he looked 
 away from them. A horrible sense of inability pos- 
 sessed him ; the world was in flux.
 
 .-/ SUPERFLUOUS l\'OMA\'. 303 
 
 " You aint going to leave me," he stammered 
 anxiously ; " 'pon my word I can't do without you." 
 
 " We have to stand each one alone," said she. 
 
 Stand ! Why. every footstep was a slough ! There 
 was only bottomless morass everywhere. 
 
 But she looked calm and strong. Her eye in its 
 secret peace forsook him. 
 
 And then confession tumbled out of his soul head- 
 long ; there were neither locks nor bolts left jn his 
 character, and the mere suggestion of a closed door in 
 another mind set the deficient portals of his own 
 flapping. He confessed out of mere ineffectiveness 
 and inability to retain. He tried to catch her hand, 
 but missed the pure, slim fingers, and, burying his 
 head in the pillow, whispered between choking sobs 
 his catalogue of offenses, and the ready promises 
 which were but an added sign of looseness in the soul. 
 She listened tranquilly, her mind withdrawn. That 
 also was part of the dream and the past. It was as 
 though she heard the history of the dead and pitied it. 
 
 Afterward he slipped from confession into murmur- 
 ing complaint. He uttered laments against destiny, 
 and denounced the fate that singled him out for dis- 
 appointment. 
 
 " What is the use of being good when you can't get 
 what you want out of it ? " he asked. 
 
 " There is no use," said Jessamine. 
 
 The doctor stood behind the curtain and watched. 
 
 " Go now," he ordered. 
 
 Heriot rose to his feet. He mopped the moisture 
 from his brow, and looked at the still face on the 
 bed.
 
 304 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 " Get well," he said, "and come down. It's damned 
 lonely without you." 
 
 Vaguely in his mind lingered the ineradicable im- 
 pressions of his superiority as a man, of his prerogative 
 as a husband, of the magnificence of an alliance with 
 the Heriots; it hovered on the surface of his thoughts 
 that he would encourage her with assurances that he 
 still hoped, that he would let her know that she need 
 not b down-hearted, because he intended to be as 
 kind to her as ever, and they would jog on together as 
 before, and so forth. 
 
 Something perhaps the mesmeric eyes "of the doc- 
 tor prevented this speech. He began to want to get 
 out of the room. He was quite ill and weak with the 
 outburst of weeping and confession and the unusual 
 moral exercise ; his mind was already on the bottle as 
 a restorative, his thought stealing to the indulgence 
 and laying hold on it, while the more surface and open 
 portion of his mind lingered on the luxury of good 
 resolution. 
 
 " Ta-ta ! " he said ; " see you again to-morrow." 
 
 And he shuffled to the door, opened it, and closed 
 it again behind him. 
 
 A thin wooden partition it seemed. It was the door 
 of eternal separation. The material click of the latch 
 might have startled him like some magical trick, such 
 untraversable space did it set between him and her. 
 
 When he turned away, she had followed him with 
 her eyes, and in them was a faint astonishment. The 
 husband of nine years was so complete a stranger! 
 More shadowlike than all the shadows, she felt him 
 pass away into annihilation.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 35 
 
 She lay and looked quietly at one place in the can- 
 opy of the bed. The whole of life save one spot of 
 it became more and more to the eye of her mind a 
 colorless region. 
 
 " What do you see, Jessamine ?" asked the doctor. 
 
 " Oh, my good friend ! come here, and I will tell 
 you. Hold my hand." 
 
 Then it was that, for the first time, Jessamine opened 
 her lips upon the story of the Highlands. She told 
 the tale by degrees sometimes with broken utterance 
 but she hid nothing from the doctor. 
 
 " You understand it ? " she said anxiously. " I wish 
 you to know that I am not better than some others. 
 All that was wanting was the skill to win." 
 
 She trembled a little, still shivering under the cold 
 mailed purity of the man who could not guess the 
 nature of her surrender. 
 
 ' " I do not know," she said, " what I was born for. 
 On looking back, I cannot see what path was meant 
 for me. Everything coerced, but nothing taught me. 
 I have been perishing ever since I began to exist. 
 There has never been a way for me at all. I have 
 rushed from extreme to extreme, and found nothing" 
 
 She drew a long, deep breath. 
 
 " Ah, dear Colin ! He hurt me," she murmured. 
 
 The doctor sat staring before him silently. 
 
 " ' Poor woman ! ' " she said. ' That is what came 
 into my mind when I heard of a fall. And / envied 
 them" 
 
 The doctor stared hard at the curtain and said 
 nothing. 
 
 " It took the bitterness out of my heart when I
 
 36 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 went down to them, and sat with them hand in hand, 
 and counted myself one with them. It soothed the 
 pain in time a little" 
 
 The mouth of the doctor was grimly closed. 
 
 " I strove to be better from henceforth, but God 
 knows I meant no harm even then. I have been a 
 dutiful wife to Lord Heriot," she murmured. " It 
 was for Colin's sake. 1 feared to lose Colin out of my 
 soul. God ! the way was long." 
 
 Her voice was weak now. Presently it ceased, and 
 she seemed to slumber. The doctor sat by her, hold- 
 ing her hand. His mind was heavy with thought 
 thoughts of life and death, of choice and conduct, and 
 the ways of men. 
 
 Later he noticed a restlessness and fever about her. 
 He saw a flush in her cheeks, and that her eyes shone. 
 She appeared more beautiful than before, but the 
 white lids had opened with a strange look of expecta- 
 tion. He bent over her, watching her carefully ; and 
 when she saw it something between assurance and per- 
 plexity passed into her face. 
 
 " Lift me, doctor," said she. 
 
 He obeyed, and Jessamine, clinging to his arm and 
 shoulder, made shift to peer anxiously over the side of 
 the bed. In her eyes was the piteous hungry look, 
 and upon that followed a wan look of disappointment, 
 and she sank back upon her pillow as though con- 
 vinced. What had she sought ? What had she im- 
 agined ? A lump rose in the doctor's throat, for she 
 turned her face to the pillow, and he knew that she 
 was sobbing. He took her hand again in his own, 
 and stroked it gently. The new access of grief and
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 307 
 
 excitement perplexed him. Presently the tears ceased, 
 but then he was assured that she looked and listened 
 again, and that for something hidden from himself. 
 
 " Tell me what you seek ? " he asked. 
 
 " Doctor," cried the weak voice of the dying woman, 
 " is there nothing by the bedside?" 
 
 " No, Jessamine no, my dear." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " said she ; " surely there is." 
 
 He replied more warily : 
 
 " And what is it ? " 
 
 " Is there no little child there ? " 
 
 He mistook her idea altogether, and answered 
 quickly : 
 
 " No, no, my dear." 
 
 "Yes," she cried anxiously; "a little ' boy, doctor, 
 with steady eyes of a yellowish brown, and sturdy red 
 limbs, and crisp hair that curls over his brow." 
 
 "There is none," faltered the doctor; "rest, my 
 dear." 
 
 She struggled up again, and clung to him, looking 
 imploringly in his face. 
 
 " Yes, yes," she said ; " it is there. It must be there. 
 It runs by the bedside, smiling. Oh, sweet little face ! 
 I carried it as a baby ten years ago. It lay in my 
 breast. I saw it. It gurgled and smiled. Eyes of a 
 yellowish brown. And all through the years I watched 
 it growing. When I walked alone through the pas- 
 sages, it ran after and tugged at my skirt. Crisp curls 
 over the brows, doctor, sturdy limbs, and a red, red 
 mouth. It grew older. Sometimes its little arms were 
 tight about my neck. At evening, when I was alone 
 and all was still, it sat on a little stool, with its head on
 
 38 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 its hand, reading a picture book. And now it runs 
 round the bed, smiling and beckoning. Surely you see 
 it too! " 
 
 " In in the next world," he faltered ; " yes, I 
 see it too, Jessamine." 
 
 And he turned his head away, stifling a groan. But 
 the half-delirious woman was satisfied. Hearing the 
 last words, she rested in them. She lay with closed 
 lids, a smile parting her Ijps. Presently the doctor 
 saw her feebly very feebly moving her left hand 
 slowly and with effort toward the edge of the bed. 
 She lifted her fingers and dropped them softly, ten- 
 derly, upon the little head she pictured there. And 
 as she raised and let them fall, from the thin finger 
 slipped the wedding ring and rolled away unnoticed. 
 
 The doctor sat by her side, holding the other hand 
 in his. He would not leave her now until the end ; in 
 all London no one needed him so much. No creature 
 was so lonely as this admired queen of beauty. In all 
 London he was the one friend she possessed. 
 
 The nurse sat by the fire and nursed her grudge. 
 She was unjustly robbed of the prestige she had hoped 
 to earn by close attention on the brilliant and envied 
 Lady Heriot. The doctor plainly distrusted her. 
 
 Death, the Great Messenger, was the other inmate of 
 the chamber. He stood there waiting, felt, yet in- 
 visible, with mercy in his eyes.
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 IT was summer again ; and it was summer in that 
 most beautiful of all places, a fir wood. It had been 
 hot for a week, so that the air was full of a most 
 sweet, aromatic odor, and the fallen needles of the 
 pines made a sun-warm bed, and glowing light hovered 
 over every leaf and blade and petal, and the flash of it 
 was carried on the furry backs of squirrels and the 
 wings of birds. In the air was a murmur of insects. 
 Bees droned their music close to the flowers, and the 
 flies made theirs higher in the shadow of the trees, 
 and the wind in the topmost branches was continuous 
 and very soft, with a roll in it like the tumble of far- 
 off seas. And yet the volume of sound thrown out 
 was low to human ears, so that the patter of a dry leaf 
 on the ground could be distinctly heard, and the noise 
 of the squirrels' clinging feet on the bark of the trees. 
 Every now and then came the cooing of a dove, or the 
 cry of a woodpecker, or the scream of a jay. The 
 rooks flew silently save for the rustle of their passing 
 wings and now and then a soft complaint which did 
 not rise to a caw. 
 
 It was the place for a summer holiday, and Dr. 
 Cornerstone, his wife, and friend Carteret had found it 
 out. The doctor leaned back against the trunk of a 
 fir, Carteret was silently measuring the spaces between 
 the branches of a tree with absent eyes, and Mrs. 
 
 309
 
 310 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 Cornerstone, more thoroughly awake than either of 
 the others, was bending her quiet, meditative face 
 full of home memories and peaceful joys over some 
 hand-sewing : and this upon examination proved to be 
 a muslin pinafore, to which she was adding the 
 motherly tribute of embroidery. 
 
 She it was who broke the silence. 
 
 " When you were telling us the story," said she, 
 " you always spoke of her as ' the superfluous 
 woman.' " 
 
 The doctor opened his eyes and glanced at her. 
 
 " And you never told me her name," continued she, 
 still stitching. 
 
 " She was called by the beautiful name of a flower." 
 
 " Then I, if I had known her, would have told her 
 she was no more superfluous than the beautiful flower 
 she was called by. I would have shown her how to 
 believe it." 
 
 " But I am not quite sure that it would have been 
 true," said Dr. Cornerstone. 
 
 Mrs. Cornerstone looked at her husband reproach- 
 fully from beneath soft brown eyebrows. 
 
 " We must be careful," said Carteret ; " it seems we 
 might easily slip into treason." 
 
 " I am just a little fearful that my wife will touch 
 this matter too romantically," said the doctor. 
 
 "Oh.no, indeed!" returned Mrs. Cornerstone, in 
 surprise and with a hint of indignation in her tone. 
 
 " I am rash enough to think so," replied her hus- 
 band. 
 
 " I did not think you would ever call me romantic/' 
 said Mrs. Cornerstone.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 311 
 
 " Prose is so cold and unattractive," said Carteret. 
 " I am afraid "when women discover how prosaic 
 equality is we shall not get them to accept it." 
 
 He glanced at Mrs. Cornerstone with a twinkle in 
 his eyes ; but she, a model of composure, sat on her 
 seat of fallen fir spines without turning her head. 
 
 " I dislike chaff," said she, with gentle dignity ; " but 
 you are both of you better than your own talk, and 
 neither of you mean what you are saying." 
 
 " I think I do," said Cornerstone. " But, come ! let 
 us, then, talk now on an equality." 
 
 She flushed a sudden warm color and paused for her 
 reply, tilting her head a little backward, and contem- 
 plating the light that made the oak underwood blaze. 
 
 " As though we were three men ? " said she, " or as 
 though we were three women ? Go on. I will con- 
 sent to listen. And in the end I shall perhaps decide 
 whether to keep my own standpoint or to condescend 
 to yours." 
 
 " Might we not begin by inquiring what inequality 
 is?" said Carteret. " Define it, Cornerstone." 
 
 " Between men and men the only definition is, 
 artificial inequality of conditions. Between men and 
 women it is enforced inequality of development." 
 
 " Stop a bit ! " said Carteret. " That wants re- 
 defining." 
 
 " I mean that women, as a rule, are socially con- 
 demned to a too exclusive development of one side of 
 the nature. Whereas the object in man is to bring 
 out an all-round creature." 
 
 " Yes," said Carteret, in a judicial tone ; " I think 
 you are right. I believe I agree."
 
 3*2 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 " Wait a moment ! " cried Mrs. Cornerstone in her 
 turn. " Is this natural or artificial ? " 
 
 " This one-sided development ? Oh, almost entirely 
 artificial hot-bed culture / think ! Others might 
 not agree with me." 
 
 Mrs. Cornerstone nodded her head once or twice 
 emphatically. 
 
 " Cornerstone," put in Carteret irrelevantly, " did 
 you ever search the dictionary for the meaning of the 
 word ' honor'?" 
 
 " I don't know that I have." 
 
 " In Webster you will find it defined under two 
 heads. Honor for a man signifies integrity i. e., 
 wholeness." 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " For a woman, however, it means chastity." 
 
 " Is that so ? A man is a man, and a woman merely 
 a function." 
 
 "That is a cruel thing!" cried Mrs. Cornerstone. 
 " Does anyone consider that such a definition is false ? 
 And a false definition may be accepted as though it 
 were something final." 
 
 " It is a cruel thing ! " said the doctor gravely ; 
 " and the meaning of the inequality of the sexes was 
 never better defined." 
 
 " Is anyone to wonder if a woman should adapt her 
 moral conceptions to the idea expressed?" said Mrs. 
 Cornerstone, with unusual heat in her tone. 
 
 " I fancy it accounts for some dry-rot in the ship's 
 timbers all round," said Carteret. 
 
 "Then," cried Mrs. Cornerstone, opening her hands 
 and lifting her face, " I think I want a tempest to come ! "
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 3*3 
 
 Neither of the men replied. Her work dropped on 
 her knee, and lay there in a soft heap ; her thimble, a 
 little bright spot, escaped, and rolled over the fir 
 needles until her husband caught it with his foot. 
 The peace of the summer's day was apt to steal long 
 pauses in between the conversation. A squirrel, hold- 
 ing a cone in its hands, ran along a bough near, peeped 
 at them from its safe position, dropped the cone, and 
 with a simulation of terror scampered away. 
 
 " The Lord will not be in the tempest," said the 
 doctor when the shadows were longer by quarter of 
 an hour. 
 
 " I suppose it is this stillness in the woods, for I 
 protest I am glad to hear you say it. The dastard 
 within me cowers at the thought of turmoil," said 
 Carteret. 
 
 " Why not a tempest? " asked Mrs. Cornerstone. 
 
 " Because," replied her husband, " I do not think 
 that wholeness was ever won by clamor. A woman 
 will conquer just as soon as she is in herself all she 
 would desire to seem to be, and not one hour earlier. 
 Equality is not a thing that can be given ; it has to be 
 won. Once won, I do not think men will resist. For 
 all its fortresses the heart desires conquest, and loves 
 no one like the conqueror." 
 
 " That is a very pretty remark ! " said his wife. 
 " But there are too many ugly things said on the other 
 side for me to be able to believe it." 
 
 " You are right, Mrs. Cornerstone," said Carteret. 
 " Our manly egoism will defend itself against its death- 
 wound." 
 
 " Besides, I do not like fighting," said Mrs. Corner-
 
 3M A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 stone firmly ; " I do not believe good comes of it. 
 What is the use if we women add to the noise and 
 turmoil in the world ? We had better be quiet and 
 safer." 
 
 "Oh, no!" said her husband. "You must not re- 
 lapse into that." 
 
 " It plays," said Carteret rather dryly, " too much 
 into the hands of man." 
 
 " Besides," added the doctor, " I am not sure that 
 the choice is left to you.'' 
 
 " He means," said Carteret, " that the tendency of 
 the age is toward equality, and its main business the 
 break-up of monopoly. And no one can escape the 
 influence." 
 
 " I am sure," said Mrs. Cornerstone, " the spirit of 
 the age cannot tell me to fight." 
 
 " Possibly not in the way you mean! For the same 
 impulse which urges women to take equality urges 
 men to yield it." 
 
 Mrs. Cornerstone took up her work again, and her 
 husband got the little bright thimble back and handed 
 it to her. 
 
 " The aim is not, you know," said he, as she pushed 
 her finger into it, " to take things and places the one 
 from the other, but to have in the character the sort 
 of qualities upon which the possession of them de- 
 pends." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Mrs. Cornerstone, " the struggle is not, 
 then, between women and men, but between women 
 and life." 
 
 " Now, that fires me ! " cried Carteret excitedly. 
 " There was a dream once that God became man. The
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 315 
 
 dream of the future is that all humanity is many-sided 
 man." 
 
 " Precisely ! " said the doctor. " Give them but a 
 headpiece ! " 
 
 " Waif ! " said Mrs. Cornerstone. " All this is still 
 too masculine. You have not consulted me, and I am 
 by no means certain that I am pleased with it. I will 
 have a new headpiece if you like, but I will choose it 
 for myself. And all women shall not have the same." 
 
 Her husband laughed delightedly. 
 
 " That is, of course, what is wanted ! Resist ! re- 
 sist ! and choose your own." 
 
 Mrs. Cornerstone, who had a many-changing face, 
 softly responsive to clear thoughts within, bent over 
 her work and gathered it suddenly to her breast. 
 
 " I have not yet said that I wish I had known the 
 woman of your story. If I had known her I would 
 not have let her be beaten. I would have taught her 
 that no man had a right to call her ' superfluous.' 
 And tell me, in your heart, do you think that she was 
 beaten ? " 
 
 " I have asked myself the question," said her hus- 
 band. 
 
 " There was more in the end of the tale than in the 
 beginning," said his wife, " and that is the most the 
 best of us can attain." 
 
 " Return to the general," said Carteret. " Need it 
 be an execrable thing to be a woman? " 
 
 Mrs. Cornerstone smiled sweetly and leniently upon 
 him. 
 
 " We must really beware of touching the problem 
 too emotionally," said Cornerstone ; " it is favor and
 
 316 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 flattery that blow women up into air bubbles. Give 
 them a fair field and no favor." 
 
 "Hound!" 
 
 Mrs. Cornerstone turned her face soft danger in 
 her eyes and on all the points and tips of her features 
 to her husband. 
 
 " I accept the bargain for the whole sex," said she 
 gravely. 
 
 " I wish the rest of the world were of your mind !" 
 said he. " It is pressure that brings the good wine 
 out, and we must avoid putting too much sympathy 
 into the problem. The mischief with women is that 
 they are too sympathetic. I am convinced it is an 
 indication of contempt. I have remarked that every 
 woman thinks all men beneath her, save the one she is 
 in love with." 
 
 " I am very much shocked at what you are saying, 
 indeed ! " put in Mrs. Cornerstone, blushing, however, 
 in a way that looked as though she recognized some 
 truth in the remark. " Do not mind him, Mr. Car- 
 teret. He does not talk like this when we are 
 alone." 
 
 " But what is the average woman's conception of un- 
 derstanding men ?" continued Cornerstone. "Merely 
 a facile adaptation of herself to his weakness, or pos- 
 sibly to his virtue." 
 
 " The women give us just what our egoism de- 
 mands," said Carteret ; " we reward her by treating her 
 as an angel, and alternating that by snubbing her as a 
 growing boy." 
 
 " Both are exceedingly disagreeable," said Mrs. 
 Cornerstone, " and affect me as bad manners simply.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 3*7 
 
 I feel it difficult to excuse a treatment of myself as 
 something that I am not." 
 
 Her husband laughed. 
 
 " You must be more lenient," said he, " and pardon 
 it. The rougher conduct is merely the sign of the 
 advance of thought, man being more awkward than 
 woman in accommodating himself to a change." 
 
 " I think" said Mrs. Cornerstone playfully, "that 
 we shall be able to teach him we are reasonable and 
 adults." 
 
 " That is precisely what he longs the best part of 
 him to be convinced about. Once make him sure of 
 it!" 
 
 " I have always held," said Carteret, " that intellectu- 
 ality is a necessary ingredient to fine emotion." 
 
 "Yes; human nature is of a piece. What is our 
 best is their best. The joy of earth is in mind. And 
 we have not been choice enough in our pleasures." 
 
 Mrs. Cornerstone listened with parted lips and a 
 half-smile. 
 
 "Adam, yoir see, was the first coward, and was 
 frightened of the apple that Eve dared to gather. 
 He promptly invented the voice in the garden and set 
 her under," said Carteret. 
 
 " Admirable Eve ! Let her steal the apple once 
 more." 
 
 " And it is to be hoped she will give Adam the drub- 
 bing he deserves." 
 
 " I fancy not. Here and there, maybe, of course. 
 But on the whole the creature is of a fine generosity. 
 She has a noble honor. One day she will teach the 
 meaning of integrity to man."
 
 3*8 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "Oh, yes, indeed," said Mrs. Cornerstone softly to 
 herself ; " so she will. Is he as perfect as he assumes ? " 
 
 " We need a lesson ! " exclaimed Carteret, who had 
 not caught Mrs. Cornerstone's murmur. " Do we not 
 judge her life as of less consequence than our own, and 
 her suffering of less acccjunt ? " 
 
 " I am afraid that is true. I am afraid we must con- 
 fess that we shuffle as much of our share of the burden 
 of suffering as we can upon shoulders which it is con- 
 venient to us to name the weaker and to treat as the 
 stronger. True true. I have before now remarked 
 that, so long as we keep in our eye Webster's defini- 
 tion of a woman's honor, and have not trespassed in 
 that particular, we adapt the rest of our honor to the 
 insignificance of the subject as we conceive it. What 
 is a lie in a man's mouth to a man is not a lie to a 
 woman, and the whole masculine conception of integ- 
 rity takes a lower tone when the question stands be- 
 tween him and one of the other sex. So that a 
 man have not seduced the purity of a woman (of his 
 own class), but have left her intact to some other 
 man's thirst, he may cheat her commercially, break his 
 word to her, insult her by a depreciating manner, 
 under-pay her work, add to his own plenty from her 
 penury, accept any sacrifice from her without repayal, 
 cozen her with any sort of false promises, and ease 
 himself cheaply at her expense on any opportune 
 occasion. All this deleterious consequence to our 
 manhood is the result of that Websterian definition of 
 a woman's honor which man's fastidiousness has con- 
 ceived. The distinction lurks at the back of every 
 man's mind. Why, argues he, should I be whole in
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS U'OMA.Y. 319 
 
 my conduct to a creature that has not wholeness in 
 herself, who is there, not for herself or the world, but 
 for me for me ? " 
 
 Mrs. Cornerstone rose to her feet, looking somewhat 
 severe. 
 
 " Your tongue," said she to her husband, " is running 
 away with you. This is really very extravagant lan- 
 guage. Is this the place to debate matters with such 
 extraordinary warmth ? Listen ! I protest I hear the 
 woodpecker tapping. Oh, really, we have lost a great 
 deal through not having sat silent. Do not, Mr. 
 Carteret, allow him to work himself up to a white heat 
 any more. For myself, I am going where I can be 
 still. Is this a London drawing room that we should 
 talk so much ? There have been moments when the 
 sight of the winged creatures over there in the tops of 
 the trees affected me as a kind of warning. ' Only be 
 still,' they seemed to be saying. And, besides" here 
 she glanced upon her husband with a dewy eye " I 
 am convinced that only I really understand the story of 
 that beautiful woman with the lovely name of the 
 flower. I am going where I can think about her and 
 not theorize. Perhaps who knows ? I may discover 
 that she is not so very distant from me, after all. If 
 so, I shall have the opportunity I wish for of telling 
 her that she is not superfluous." 
 
 She glanced .down again at the two men with a 
 mysterious, reproachful look. When with a soft, un- 
 dulating movement she passed down the wood away 
 from them, her skirt turning the leaves and flowers 
 as sh^ went, they followed her with their eyes. 
 
 Upon her departing steps came silence, It was
 
 320 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAX. 
 
 broken by the far-off cooing of a dove a sound which 
 stole the thought away to regions of leafy peace. 
 Evening began to bring her deepening hues within the 
 wood ; every leaf burned with an indescribable ethereal 
 glow; the atmosphere was golden and amethyst-tinted, 
 and the light on the branches of the firs was red as 
 flame. An unspeakable pomp and glory reigned, and 
 neither had an inclination to break the embargo of 
 silence which Dr. Cornerstone's wife had laid upon 
 them. 
 
 Thus passed away an hour of silent enjoyment, the 
 faces of the men changing and softening under the 
 natural impressions. 
 
 At last with a mutual impulse they rose to go. 
 
 " She was right," said the doctor softly ; " I have 
 the sort of perturbation which too much talking leaves 
 behind. Have you any assurance that AVC spoke 
 sense ? " 
 
 " No," said Carteret. " But in the after-silence I 
 felt dreams, like startled birds, flying from my heart."
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 IT was early autumn before Dr. Cornerstone began 
 to make an end of holiday time. And he finished off 
 his unwonted pleasure-taking by a lonely journey to 
 the Highlands, where he penetrated to the remote cor- 
 ner of earth which Jessamine had described to him. 
 
 It seemed to him, when he discovered it, to be the 
 one hidden nook in a world which is too public. But 
 even here privacy was fast being driven from her last 
 retreat ; the place had been discovered by the tourist, 
 and the story of the McKenzies' mysterious farm-help 
 could not have been repeated a decade later than it 
 occurred. The peasant of the district was himself 
 becoming sophisticated ; his canniness began a little to 
 overlap his primitive hospitality, and to threaten to 
 submerge it. Were not the roving folks with long 
 purses in their pockets created to supplement an ungra- 
 cious climate with cash payments? And thus the 
 hunger for relief from town civilization became here as 
 elsewhere its own defeat. 
 
 The hand robs the nest of simplicity, and yet sup- 
 poses that the brood will be reared ; and restlessness 
 chases repose from the land when undertaking to pur- 
 chase it by overbidding in a rising market. 
 
 Moreover, the spiritual outstretch of London, with 
 its mingled good and evil, overflows by degrees to 
 remotest corners. To be unsophisticated is a charac- 
 
 321
 
 3 22 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 teristic of ever-increasing rareness. It falls insensibly 
 from the catalogue of modern qualities, and its posses- 
 sion, though refreshing, begins to argue an intellectual 
 want. In truth, native unsophisticatedness of soul is 
 being exchanged for that less fleeting possession the 
 simplicity which is the result of choice and of deep 
 thinking. As old good things go new good things 
 come, and loss is mingled with gain. 
 
 The Highland village was changed. For one thing, 
 the laird, not at all from a convinced or instructed 
 mind, but out of deference to a force which he began 
 to recognize as compelling, had reluctantly ceased to 
 put up gates and fences where the enterprising Society 
 for the Preservation of Public Rights of Way as per- 
 sistently pulled them down again. The war, begun in 
 bluster, was dwindling to a tacit acknowledgment of 
 defeat ; and the secular " machine " of the peasant 
 farmer rattled over moor roads which formerly were 
 proclaimed, by a sort of religious desolation and 
 silence, to be consecrated to wild and therefore shoot- 
 able nature. 
 
 Moreover, the common London Socialist left his 
 literature behind him, and the peasant farmer picked 
 it up and read. The modern spirit, the conception of 
 thorough emancipation, struck a fruitful root down- 
 ward, and a man's vision became acute enough to 
 detect shoddy in the pretenses of another, and to dis- 
 perse the illusory hallo surrounding purchased or 
 inherited rights, the communal idea intruding upon and 
 effacing the individualistic notion of "his or mine own." 
 
 That stretched the heart and strengthened the nerve 
 fibers.
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 323 
 
 The canny peasant perceived that in a world sus- 
 pended upon Fortune's fickle wheel his own depressed 
 spoke might come up top at last. He cast firmer 
 glances on the expanses of deer forest which would be 
 so convenient for pasture, and his eye was speculative 
 of coming increase. When the glance of a peasant is 
 so, the era of the deer forest is over, even though the 
 fir trees still stand. Not to be so nipped, not to be so 
 harassed, to have a little margin here and there, a little 
 more life, and less expenditure of unrepaid effort 
 that to the long-enduring worker is heaven. 
 
 When Dr. Cornerstone dropped his knapsack at the 
 little inn at Righchar and prepared to walk over to 
 Jessamine's village, Scotland entertained in him as 
 revolutionary a guest as had ever visited her. He had 
 a superfluity of disdain for shams ; he knew of no 
 worth save the worth of a man. Where the laird and 
 his " rights " were concerned, instead of a conscience 
 was a cheery jest ; his sentences dispersed time- 
 honored claims ; and he scattered his intensely modern 
 spirit in words that dissolved the pious pretenses of 
 property. 
 
 As to the genuine grievance and human need, he 
 sought it out by tavern tables and at the wayside, and 
 the sympathy he gave was here, as elsewhere, tonic. 
 He did not soothe with words of resignation and a 
 reference to compensations hereafter, but used the 
 laird's word " rights " in strange contexts, and sum- 
 moned up revolt in the heart by the suggestion of a 
 remedy, leaving in the breasts of Scotch peasants, as 
 elsewhere that he touched, the first dawning concep- 
 tion of free man- and woman-hood the dawning of it
 
 324 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 in minds astonished at themselves for what they began 
 to harbor, but proud and secretly joyful. 
 
 Jessamine had been at rest for nine months before 
 the doctor found his opportunity of fulfilling his wish 
 to visit Colin Macgillvray. The continued existence 
 of the man was a matter of speculation ; but knowing 
 the persistent habit of the Highland peasant, he had 
 little doubt on that score. He plodded over the long 
 white road where Colin and Jessamine had driven 
 together on the occasion of the encounter with the 
 sheep, and where they had sauntered the evening after 
 the sports, without being certain that he followed in 
 her steps. 
 
 And yet he found the road full of her. 
 
 The moors, the hills, the forests, the beautiful and 
 desolate parts, were things on which .her eyes had 
 rested, and he saw them in the light of that thought. 
 When the houses and the hovels became a little less 
 scattered and even to-day that was all which could 
 be said he knew that he neared "Jessamine's village " 
 and her hiding place. 
 
 Pausing by a large field that edged the road with a 
 wire-fence inclosure, he scanned the near country. 
 The fence was spiked to prevent the trespassing legs 
 of truant children or of tramps, and a man drove a 
 mowing machine round the field, and the barley fell 
 with a musical sigh. 
 
 " Mechanism even here," said the doctor. " One 
 would welcome the iron man, did the fruits but fall into 
 the right lap." 
 
 And then he hailed his agricultural fellow-mortal. 
 
 A shouted conversation ensued, in the course of
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN, 3 2 5 
 
 which the doctor seemed to encounter many shades 
 of many McKenzies, the description of none of whom 
 wholly satisfied him. 
 
 "There will be Peter McKenzie living west " here 
 his informant pointed vaguely with his whip in the 
 direction from which the doctor had laboriously 
 trudged " McKenzie Craigowrie they call him ; and 
 there will be Alexander McKenzie south." 
 
 Here he pointed over the valley and the river to a 
 distance, beautiful indeed, but desolating when contem- 
 plated from the point of view of a journey of research. 
 
 " I don't know of any John McKenzie nearer than 
 Muirton." 
 
 That was thirty miles off if an inch. 
 
 " John McKenzie Drynock," said the doctor, falling 
 into the country manner which had been easy to 
 Jessamine's tongue of naming the peasant after his 
 bit of hired land. 
 
 " Drynock ? Drynock ? " repeated the man. " Dry- 
 nock will be yon." 
 
 Here he pointed his whip to the slight appearance 
 of chimney-pots and the side of a barn amid a cluster 
 of birch trees. 
 
 "Willie Macbain owns Drynock. And I'm not 
 knowing any John McKenzie nearer than Muirton." 
 
 Here he lifted his hat, shouted " Hadoof ! " to his 
 horses, and the fall of the barley continued. 
 
 The doctor walked on in the direction of Drynock. 
 
 He found a handsome modern farm-building erected 
 on the ground where the McKenzies' curious dwelling- 
 house, with its superfluity of doors and paucity of 
 windows, had once stood.
 
 326 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 He walked up to the entrance, knocked, and in- 
 quired for John McKenzie. 
 
 " There will be no John McKenzie here. This will 
 be Willie Macbain's." 
 
 The doctor sat down in the porch and wiped his 
 brow, though in truth the day was gray and cold, not 
 raining, but reminiscent of rain, and ready to rain 
 again. 
 
 To all inquiries after John McKenzie, all tentatives 
 toward winning some lingering legend of his farm-help, 
 the woman who had opened the door at Willie Mac- 
 bain's was blank. Then slowly, almost fearfully, he 
 inquired after the man whose name was the last spoken 
 murmur on the dead Jessamine's tongue. The woman's 
 face brightened a little. 
 
 " There will be changes," said she, " and Willie 
 built the farmhouse and the barns himself. He will 
 not be here long, you see, sir. But I'm minding it all 
 suddenly. It was John McKenzie he took the land off, 
 sir." 
 
 "And John McKenzie?" 
 
 " Well, sir, I'm thinking he just went off to Muirton. 
 He has a brother there in the timber trade, sir. And 
 land will be ever very changeable. So he went him 
 and his wife, sir. John will be seeing a bit into the 
 world, whatever." 
 
 " And Colin Macgillvray, what of him ? " pursued 
 the doctor. 
 
 "Oh, Colin, sir?" The woman smiled a little. 
 " There will be changes, but Colin will ever be for 
 sticking. He's slaw, sir." 
 
 The doctor perceived from this that, whatever else
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 3 2 7 
 
 he might discover in Colin, he was certainly not a 
 prophet within his own country. No startling achieve- 
 ment had marked him out for the wondering admira- 
 tion of his fellows, it was plain. And the quality of 
 " sticking " tells chiefly when it is withdrawn. 
 
 Dalfaber, it appeared, was in very measurable dis- 
 tance, and the doctor, turning away, took the same 
 road the little path through the heather which still 
 to his fancy palpitated with the fall of .Jessamine's fly- 
 ing feet. It might be that to another heart than his it 
 ever beat to the same measure. 
 
 The aspect of Dalfaber struck him as dreary. Where 
 all else went on and gathered some of the fruits of 
 modern progress, displaying a new idea in the shape of 
 a good barn or improved implement or better house 
 building, Dalfaber stood arrested. There was precisely 
 the same measure of application as before, without the 
 faintest sign of an advancing notion. The barns, 
 which had been built before Jessamine's day because 
 the still older ones fell down, were there, of course, but 
 the worse for the beating on them of the winds and 
 showers of ten years. And the patch of land the six 
 poor fields and the stretch of moor had the pathetic 
 look which land wears when the tilling is done by 
 steady industry without the aid of inventiveness. Plod 
 and magnificent patience that was the sum put into 
 the land ; mind was absent. 
 
 As to the small stone house with the great chimney, 
 that was as before. Its capacity for improvement had 
 not been taken advantage of ; no additional building 
 had been added, no"r had one square inch of the moor- 
 land been redeemed for a garden. In the same primi-
 
 328 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 tive way as ten years ago the fields were unfenced and 
 unwired, and the straying cattle and hens were shouted 
 off by a hired lad, though the acquisition of such a 
 help must have been a difficult matter. 
 
 Over the clumps of heather, blossoming now into a 
 rich purple, Dr. Cornerstone saw the shaggy, broad 
 heads of the longhorns snatching bits of sweet grass 
 here and there, and looking up now and then with 
 wild, startled, threatening eyes, and the limping 
 shapes of the farm-horses painfully wandering in 
 search of pasture with their fore- and hind-legs tied 
 together. 
 
 Picking his way toward the door of the small stone 
 house, pitched in such astonishing ungarnished deso- 
 lateness on the brink of the moor, the doctor mightily 
 wondered within himself what manner of man this 
 winner and rejecter of the heart of Jessamine Halliday 
 would appear. 
 
 As he approached, the smoke swept down the side 
 of the house from the great gaping chimney in a mali- 
 cious gust. He passed the dim stained window where 
 old Rorie used to descry the nearest glimpses of a 
 world other than his own peat fire, and stood before the 
 ill-hung door and knocked. 
 
 It seemed a great while before his knock awakened 
 any movement from within. Presently he heard a chair 
 thrust backj the sound gave him the impression of an 
 empty house, or, rather, of its being the lonely habita- 
 tion of one. Slow, firm steps were followed by the 
 opening of the door, and a man stood before him, lifting 
 his hand and touching his brow in the distant salute of 
 the peasant. The action waved him off rather than
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 3 2 9 
 
 deferred to him, and the doctor recognized at once 
 a proud and solitary nature. 
 
 He was a majestic-looking man of about forty years, 
 with a brown weather-beaten skin and a broad pair of 
 shoulders having a slight stoop, which appeared rather 
 as a patient inclination toward the ground that nurtured 
 him than a defect in the figure. The face touched the 
 imagination of his visitor at once. Slowness and firm 
 patience were written on every feature a temperate 
 nature with untold powers of endurance. The brow 
 was proud and the lips kindly. As to the eyes the 
 yellow-brown orbs when he opened the door to the 
 doctor, they looked at him full of a long-waiting 
 expectation ; they were the eyes of a person to whom 
 something of import, long delaying, will occur at last. 
 Such, indeed, was the impress of the whole face. 
 
 Save for this it was clear from the signs of mental 
 conflict ; but hours and hours of waiting had writ 
 themselves upon it ; it was a face full of hope deferred 
 and yet courageously cherished. 
 
 These eyes of his changed suddenly when they met 
 the doctor's. They widened, flashed, and settled into 
 certainty. With that, holding them quietly upon his 
 visitor, he awaited from him the first word. 
 
 " I come from London," began the doctor gently. 
 
 " Walk in, sir," said Colin ; " I am most glad to see 
 you." 
 
 His tone was subdued, as is the tone of one to whom 
 the feast of life is solemn. Nevertheless, as he spoke, 
 the doctor knew by the clearer brownness of his skin 
 that the blood had forsaken his cheek, and that his 
 heart was throbbing.
 
 33 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 He followed him into the room into which Jessa- 
 mine had so timidly stepped on the occasion of her 
 first visit, and sat down as she had done, on one of the 
 carved straight-backed chairs. 
 
 Colin stood before his visitor. He clasped the wrist 
 of one hand with the fingers of the other, and looked 
 out of the window, his eyes still finding, as it were, 
 their home and inspiration among the hills. A man 
 of massive strength and staying power both physically 
 and mentally, and slow as he had been described. He 
 did not hurry now, though every pulse beat thunders. 
 He waited, with the same large patience as through 
 ten years he had waited, reluctant to snatch hastily 
 what he knew had come to him at last, reserving and 
 ever reserving himself. 
 
 " You live alone in this wide and airy place ? " said 
 the doctor, who was, indeed, impressed by the sense 
 of boundlessness which Colin's unfenced fields sug- 
 gested, flowing as they did over into the moorland 
 tract, and on from that to the mountains. 
 
 " My father and my mother will be dead," answered 
 Colin. 
 
 " And you are not married ? " 
 
 The yellow-brown eyes slid from the hills, and 
 rested on his visitor a trifle startled. They were, the 
 doctor remarked, too full of light. The Scotch believe 
 in second sight, and these eyes, the doctor thought, 
 possessed the faculty. Macgillvray did not answer 
 the question put to him, but his lips were wistful. 
 Vague poetry, wordless, yet done into ten years of 
 patience, struggled in his throat. It was still torn by 
 the moment of loss ten years ago. But above the
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS W0.}j. 33 l 
 
 unseen wound Colin kept his fancies. When all else 
 fails, the lover finds the unseen bread on which to 
 feed, loaves unmanufactured and unknown, a delicate 
 and growing store that increases with the use ; the 
 guiltless faithfulness that never swerves, and which 
 becomes in the end its own sustenance. 
 
 Colin without reply eyed the doctor, with his face 
 slowly changing under the stirring of deeply repressed 
 sensitiveness. 
 
 " I bring you a kind of message," said the latter 
 huskily. 
 
 " From Jessie ?" 
 
 The long unuttered name the word too ever- 
 present to be spoken loosed itself from his tongue 
 with trembling reluctance. 
 
 The doctor inclined his head. 
 
 " She is dead," said Colin, with conviction. 
 
 " You had heard it, then ? " asked the doctor, both 
 surprised and relieved. 
 
 " I will just be knowing it," he returned. 
 
 And then he seated himself as though he needed 
 support under the strain of this conversation, but 
 motioned with his hand that the doctor should con- 
 tinue his story. And that was a difficult thing with a 
 man who knew one burning chapter off by heart, who 
 was in himself the essence of that chapter, but who 
 possessed no clew to the beginning or the end of the 
 volume. 
 
 Dr. Cornerstone endeavored to hint as clearly as he 
 could what position in the great world had been held 
 by the McKenzies' farm-help. The man listened at- 
 tentively without exhibiting surprise.
 
 33 2 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 " Oh, yes, indeed ! " said he ; " she will not be com- 
 mon." 
 
 The doctor came to her marriage. The patient 
 brows of the peasant changed very slightly. 
 
 " I am just naething but a farmer," said he ; " and 
 he would be a great laird. And will she be loving him 
 best ? She was bonnie enough to be queen." 
 
 His worship disallowed of jealousy. But the crux 
 of the story lay here. With intense painstaking care, 
 cutting the lines at each sentence a little deeper to 
 make the impressions clearer, the doctor strove to 
 render truly the history of Jessamine. He was deeply 
 conscious as he spoke of the incongruity between this 
 troubled complex tale, and the massive simplicity of 
 the nature that had the right to hear it. A silent 
 mountainous greatness it seemed to him, akin to the 
 scene in which the man had passed his days. But a 
 nerve of Colin's nature burned responsive to all that 
 concerned Jessamine, and it is probable the Highlander 
 understood more than the Londoner guessed. 
 
 " It will just open locked doors to me," said he 
 presently, when the doctor had ceased speaking. 
 " Whiles," he added, the sensitive reluctance creeping 
 again into his face when he spoke " whiles I have felt 
 as though it had all been a dreaming and a sleep, and 
 as though I was just on the edge of waking. You'll 
 not be knowing the feel of that, maybe, sir ? I must 
 just be getting up to open the door and look ; I must 
 just be turning my head over my shoulder to catch 
 sight of her slipping away like the wraith that she 
 was. 
 
 " Whiles it has seemed like a great lonely darkness,
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 333 
 
 and me walking in it forever straight on, and nothing 
 at the end. And then when I was fit to lie down with 
 a sore great cry, sir if you will excuse the liberty I 
 would just be feeling a wee bit hand in mine, and a 
 tug against my shoulder. And you'll not know the 
 feel of it, sir the loneliness filled up, and there was 
 ever a flutter of a woman's garment after me in the 
 fields and on the moor. 
 
 " You see, sir, I changed nothing. I was ever fear- 
 ing, indeed, to turn a clod that her wee bit foot had 
 pressed. I was fearing to mend up and alter, lest I 
 should take something that her hand had touched. 
 And I was ever fearing in myself, sir, to lose her from 
 my heart. It will be just there that I was building the 
 new house for her, whatever. 
 
 " The neighbors laugh and call me slaw. . It will 
 seem no great matter to me. I'm thinking whiles that 
 the roof that had her under it will be good enough 
 forme indeed. I'm busy at another kind of worruk. 
 My house and my land will just rot down with my- 
 self, sir, and my Jessie will be in them to the end." 
 
 His hands moved with the first nervous feeling he 
 had exhibited, and the doctor surmised the stirring of 
 mighty repressed emotions. 
 
 " You'll notice what I said of building her a house 
 here, sir?" 
 
 And he laid both hands together with a gentle 
 primitive movement against his heart. 
 
 " Yes," said the doctor. 
 
 " Aweel. It would be one evening last autumn that 
 I was just dozing a bit by my fire after the day's 
 worruk was done. And I will hardly know if I was
 
 334 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 dreaming or not. But, indeed, and I was thinking 
 that I saw her clear face to face again a wee bit 
 white face it was, and it lay before me like a picture. 
 I am not knowing if I was dreaming it or not, but, 
 indeed, I sat looking, and fearing to move lest it 
 should go. But it staid with me, sir. And it was an 
 uplift to a sair, sair heart. And an evening or two 
 after I was sitting here again, and, indeed, I was think- 
 ing and waiting. 
 
 "And there came a little whisper. It will perhaps 
 just be an echo. She would be saying my name 
 whiles long ago with a bit of a laugh at the end of it 
 to get it right she would be saying. And I just 
 heard her voice again in a little whisper: 
 
 " ' Colin Macgillvray Dalfaber! 
 
 " It went like the cut of a sword to my heart, and 
 set me all listening and shaking. I sat still as a 
 mousie listening and looking looking. God ! how a 
 body can look whiles ! I was feeling her just behind 
 me. I was seeing her in the ingle or near the door. I 
 was hearing the rustle of her dress past the window. 
 And then I knew she was running over the moor to 
 my house. So then I sprang up and opened the doors 
 and set them wide, and stood looking into the night, 
 and stretching my arms for her. God ! how a body 
 can look whiles! I thought my eyes would cut the 
 darkness open. God ! how the soul can call when the 
 tongue is still ! 
 
 " I kept the door ever on the latch all these years, so 
 that she could never be saying that Colin's door was 
 barred against her. So that she could feel, wherever 
 in the world she hid, that my door was open. But
 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WO AT AN. 335 
 
 that night I threw it wide, and sat and bided. And 
 presently it seemed to me that the house I had been 
 building was full." 
 
 The man's head dropped suddenly, and he covered 
 his face with a great sigh. 
 
 " You will understand, sir," said he in a low quiet 
 voice, when he had regained his self-mastery, " that I just 
 knew she was dead, and had come to me that way." 
 
 The doctor said nothing ; he stared at the hills. A 
 great silence fell between the two. When Colin spoke 
 again it was with his ordinary composure. 
 
 "And so my Jessie was a great leddie?" said he. 
 
 The doctor marked the quietly appropriating pro- 
 noun. 
 
 " In the world's eye she was so. But not in her 
 own." 
 
 " She was just a wee bit thing, and it would be a 
 sight of turmoil for her." 
 
 " It was a great turmoil." 
 
 " She loved me best ? " 
 
 " She loved you only." 
 
 " I'm just a common farming body. But she was 
 true." 
 
 " As steel." 
 
 Explanations, definitions, excuses, and all the glosses 
 necessary for a less balanced and less deep nature, 
 were, the doctor perceived, superfluous here. Colin 
 had the sort of greatness which can see the thing in 
 its essence without the small despairing restlessness of 
 those who curiously inquire into the imperfection of 
 detail. The lasting and the eternal were enough for 
 him ; the passing flaws went unconsidered.
 
 33 6 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN. 
 
 " It will be a sight of comfort," he said " a sight of 
 comfort. But I was ever knowing it in my heart, 
 though sore perplexed to understand. There will be 
 things," he added, " a body does not go into easily." 
 He made one of his long, slow pauses. " And now," 
 he said as though to himself, " she has come home." 
 
 The .doctor rose. Macgillvray rose also, wearing 
 that hospitable manner which sat well on his proud 
 and lone nature. His visitor murmured something of 
 finding his way there another year. 
 
 " I shall be most glad, whatever," said he, with his 
 gentle aloof air. 
 
 As he stood at the door, Dr. Cornerstone turned to 
 get another glimpse into the yellow-brown eyes, and he 
 saw that they glanced past his shoulder, and rested 
 upon the mountains. 
 
 " The hills look butifully," said Colin. 
 
 And then he raised his hand quietly in the peasant's 
 salute. 
 
 THE END.
 
 " A DANGEROUS AND DIFFICULT SUBJECT FOR A NOVEL." 
 Tke American Woman's llluilrated H'orld. 
 
 THE HEAVENLY TWINS. 
 
 By SARAH GRAND. 
 
 In one large izrno volume of nearly 700 pages. Extra cloth, 
 laid paper. Price $1.00. 
 
 " There is much powerful and beautiful writing in this remarkable 
 and not-to-be-forgotten book." The World. 
 
 " The adventures of Diavolo and Angelica the ' Heavenly Twins' 
 are delightfully funny. No more original children were ever put 
 in a book." The Academy. 
 
 " The moral which the author undertakes to enforce is that the 
 sacrifice of pure women in marriage to men of vicious lives is not 
 only a crime against the individual, but against society itself." 
 Boston Beacon. 
 
 " The work swarms with wise sayings and noble counsels." 
 Methodist Tim-s. 
 
 " This book is one full of talent, and not of talent misapplied, for 
 ' The Heavenly Twins' is strong enough to assert itself and to point 
 a moral." N. Y. Times. 
 
 " Whether or not a pure woman marrying has a right to equal 
 purity in the man she marries this is the problem attempted by 
 Sarah Grand in her heroine's behalf in ' The Heavenly Twins.' It 
 is an earnest book, showing its author's cultured mind on every 
 page." Table Talk. 
 
 " A very curious and interesting novel. . . The burden of the 
 author's song is the emancipation of woman and the establishment 
 of a stricter moral standard for man. From one end to the other 
 it is interesting, in spots intensely and absorbingly so." Kate Field's 
 Washington. 
 
 THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO., 
 
 31 EAST I7TH ST. (UNION SQUARE), NEW YORK. 
 103
 
 Mrs. Alexander's Latest Novel. 
 
 The Snare of the Fowler. 
 
 BY MRS. ALEXANDER. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE WOOING O'T," "WHICH SHALL i-s BE?" 
 ETC., ETC. 
 
 I Vol., ismo, Extra Cloth, $1.00 ; Paper, Cassell's Sunshine Series, 
 50 cents. 
 
 " Few novelists of this century have shown themselves possessors 
 of a more prolific pen than has Mrs. Alexander, nor have any become 
 more popular in our homes. . . Her latest, ' The Snare of the 
 Fowler,' is written with her usual vivacity and is admirably sus- 
 tained." Baltimore American. 
 
 " Full of dramatic interest." Lowell Times. 
 
 " Well written, extremely well written." Chicago Times. 
 
 " The different characteis are outlined with that art of brilliant con- 
 trasts which the author employs with unfailing felicity." Boston 
 Beacon. 
 
 "Will meet with warm welcome." Cedar Rapids Gazette. 
 
 " Certainly one of her best; and perhaps nothing that she has pub- 
 lished, since ' The Wooing O't ' gave her so wide fame when brought 
 out twenty years ago, has so much merit." Boston Daily Traveller. 
 
 " Healthfully pure and moral . . . and of unflagging interest." 
 Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. 
 
 " Mrs. Alexander is a dexterous handler of plots." Boston Courier. 
 
 " Those who have read her previous works will not be disappointed 
 in the present one." Philadelphia Item. 
 
 " Pleasing from beginning to end." Boston Times. 
 
 Ask your Bookseller to show you a copy. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO 
 31 EAST I7TH ST. (UNION SQUARE)
 
 "Racy and forijjiant." London Athenceum 
 
 "I FORBID THE BANNS!" 
 
 THE STORY OF A COHEDY WHICH WAS PLAYED SERIOUSLY, 
 
 -BY- 
 
 FRANK FRANKFORT MOORh. 
 
 I Vol., I2mo, Cloth, $1.00. 
 
 " Needs no recommendation to make it popular." Manchester Chron- 
 icle. 
 
 " Crisp and epigrammatic." San Francisco Argonaut. 
 
 " A book which abounds in good things." London Daily Chronicle. 
 
 " Keen satire, genuine humor, literary ability." Philadelphia Item. 
 
 " There can be but one verdict, and that is distinct success." London 
 Daily Telegraph. 
 
 " A capital and thoroughly original story." Boston Times. 
 
 " No novel more original, suggestive, and entrancing is likely te 
 appear for a long time. " Liverpool Mercury. 
 
 " There isn't a dull page in the book." New York Recorder. 
 
 " The subject is treated in a masterly manner." London Literary 
 World. 
 
 " Exceedingly attractive." Boston Daily Advertiser. 
 
 FOR SALE BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 31 EAST i7TH ST. (UNION SQUARE)
 
 THE EMIGRANT SHIP, 
 
 By W. CLARK RUSSELL, 
 
 'tor of"List, ye Landsmen ! " ''''The Romance of a Transit 
 "The Wreck of the Grosvenor" etc., etc. 
 
 One Volume. 12mo. Cloth. S1.OO. 
 
 " The story is told with excellent directness, and the atmosphere of life aboard 
 an emigrant ship is admirably conveyed to the reader. There is no sea technicality 
 to spealc of, the whole interest of the story being concentrated in the hero's plan 
 to develop a crew among his women passengers. On the whole, ' The Emigrant 
 Ship' is one of the most readable of Mr. Russell's charming tales." New York 
 Times. 
 
 " For a very fine tonic in the way of fiction commend us always to Mr. Clark 
 Russell. The sea never fails to lash itself in a most beautiful manner when he is 
 about. He has, perhaps, as vigorous a vocabulary as anybody now going. He 
 can talk in strong and splendid phrase too of more things than the sea." New 
 York Sun. 
 
 " On the whole, the best which Mr. Russell has produced. It is beautifully 
 bound and makes a marine library without it seem poverty-stricken." Boston 
 Daily Traveller. 
 
 " Is readable from beginning to end. No better sea story has been written." 
 Philadelphia Bulletin. 
 
 " The keen salt breath of the sea flows through all his descriptions, and he 
 makes his readers feel its inspiration as he feels it himself. No one knows better 
 the methods of ocean life, and no one handles its fascination more subtly or skill- 
 fully, while for the reader who loves a story for the story's sake this tale is worth 
 half a dozen of modern ' society ' novels." New York Commercial Advertiser. 
 
 " Will appeal to all such as love the sea and the free and breezy stories of it 
 which are characteristic of this keen student and ardent lover of its moods and 
 vagaries." New York Mail and Express. 
 
 " There is a genuine sea flavor to Clark Russell's stories, a salty taste, a smell of 
 ropes and rigging, and the bracing freshness of the ocean air. There is also the 
 freedom of the broad seas, but with all this there is neither the vulgarity nor the 
 deyilishness which so many nautical writers seem to think it necessary to affect. 
 His sea tales are original to a striking degree, they are never dull, and withal they 
 are clean and wholesome. They make good reading for old boys as well as 
 young." Baltimore Telegram. 
 
 " The sea stories of W. Clark Russell have delighted readers for a goodly num- 
 ber of years, and a new story by the author of ' The Wreck of the Grosvenor ' is 
 always hailed with delight. . . That the story is of thrilling interest and novelty 
 goes without saying." Boston Journal. 
 
 " It is bright, interesting, strong. . . There is more of human nature in it than 
 in any of his previous books." New York World. 
 
 " Where is the boy, old or young, with a heart in him who doesn't know how 
 incomparably well he writes his amazing adventures on the high seas ? Here we 
 have a story which could only by any possible chance proceed from the pen of 
 Mr. ~Russe\\." Philadelphia Press. 
 
 " W. Clark Russell stands without a peer as a master in telling marine stories. 
 He is thoroughly at home at sea, and his new novel, ' The Emigrant Ship,' is one 
 of his best. The plot is fresh and the development is most skillful." Boston 
 Daily Advertiser. 
 
 THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO, 
 
 31 EAST lyxH ST. (UNION SQUARE), NEW YORK. 
 104
 
 University of California Library 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 Phone R 
 310/82 
 
 FEB 1 4 20 
 
 IU/CSO 
 
 DUE 2 WKS FROM DATE 
 
 
 JAN 9 
 
 DUE 2 WKS FROM D 
 
 UULA URL/IL 
 
 nevvais 
 i-9188 
 
 
 003 
 
 JE RECEIVED 
 
 . 
 
 mo?
 
 3 1158 01166 0379 
 
 A 000 443 446 o