y--^ i --
 
 or CAUF. UBRAUY. LOS A 
 
 (
 
 , M 4 t-f^r bJ o If 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HURST & COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
 "THE DUCHESS" 
 
 AUTHOR OF "PHYW.IS," "PORTIA," ETC.
 
 JICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 CHAPTER 1. 
 
 A DYING sunset, a sloping lawn, a rushing, tumbling 
 atream, a clump of giant firs to the right, odorous garden 
 sweets from the left, two forms in God's own likeness, 
 and a roaring, raging ocean down below all seem 
 blended into one artistic whole, calm, almost motionless, 
 save for the quarreling of the turbulent river and the 
 faint dashing of the waves against the rocks upon the 
 barren coast. 
 
 Slowly the early summer sun is setting. Pale, with sad 
 regret, ho quits the lovely earth, and prepares to lay down 
 his arms before night's queen. Already Dian's crescent 
 marks the sky faint yet, because so far away, but march- 
 ing ever nearer, nearer, glad with the certainty of victory 
 assured; the happy wind, that all day long has rioted in 
 bower and " pleasaunce faire," has gone to rest; a languor- 
 ous stillness lies on all around; the air is heavy with the 
 breatli of drowsy flowers. 
 
 "Ah, this dear England!" says a young sweet voice, in 
 a tone of quick delight. "Though I have known it only 
 for a little week, still it seems to me that it, and no other 
 land, means home!" 
 
 The voice belongs to the prettiest lips in the world, the 
 lips belong to the prettiest girl, a slender thing of about 
 eventeen, with a subtle charm about her difficult to de- 
 scribe, and with a face most sweet, most fair, made up 
 " of every creature's best;" a clear broad brow, clear eyes 
 are hers, and a tender loving mouth on which were writ 
 in plainest print the gentle workings of the innocent soul 
 within. 
 
 She is lying back in her garden-chair, with a white 
 shawl thrown across kw whiter fcown. There is a little 
 
 2130482
 
 4 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 touch of languor about her idle hands and her entire pose, 
 a something indefinite to fear in the excessive fairness of 
 her rose-leaf skin; there is indeed a spirituality about her 
 every glance and action, an eagerness, a brightness too 
 great for her fragile frame. Her companion, a tall, arig- 
 tocratic-looking woman of about forty-five, glances at her 
 with some anxiety. 
 
 "I hope you will be happy here," she says, with a little 
 sigh. 
 
 " Happy! Oh, that is nothing! I am always happy. 
 And what a sigh, auntie! I believe you are still pining 
 for your mosquitoes and your garlic." 
 
 The elder woman smiles gently, and pats the small 
 hand extended to her. That she is slave to the owner 
 of that little hand one can see at the first glance. Though 
 ghe is a stern-featured woman, with a face full of possible 
 reservations and certain power, and the lines and marks 
 of long years replete with unutterable grief, there are 
 signs too upon it of natural tendencies bravely repressed, 
 and of self-abnegation that has yet failed to imbitter the 
 strong courageous spirit within. One firm to bear and 
 swift to read and sure to comprehend, she sits here calm- 
 ly with the girl's hand in hers, as though no bitterness 
 from out the cruel past had blanched her soft dark hair. 
 
 "I wonder what our neighbors will be like?" says the 
 young girl vivaciously. " Do you know any of them?" 
 
 "Only by hearsay. Your grand-uncle, during his last 
 illness in Florence where, as you know, I went to attend 
 him used to speak of some of them at times, but only 
 casually, and without interest. At Kingmore which, I 
 take it, must be about three miles from this Sir George 
 and Lady Bouverie live with their two sons, and some- 
 where close to them the Ponsonbys of the Hollows; but 
 this is only guesswork. I hardly know where they live, 
 or if they live at all." 
 
 "Are the Ponsonbys a large family?" 
 
 " No only father and daughter. Mr. Ponsonby is 
 brother to Lady Bouverie, and comes of a good old family, 
 but a poor one. He is a great scholar, I believe, but 
 rather dreamy, and a book-worm; he reads with young 
 men for the army, or something like that. You see I am 
 p. Httle obscure on all points." 
 
 " I am glad he has a daughter, at least; I have so sel<
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 dom had girl friends. I wish, too, Lady Bouverie's fam- 
 ily meant one son and one daughter; don't you?" 
 
 " I don't think so, my dear. Experience has taught 
 me that young men are preferable to young women one 
 joung woman " fondly "excepted." 
 
 " Ah, that is because you are such a sad flirt!" says the 
 girl gayly, at which they both laugh without reservation 
 as at some very superior joke. 
 
 "Alas for one's secret sins; they are sure to find one 
 out!" murmurs the elder woman lightly, running her fin- 
 gers with a lingering fondness through the soft short 
 rings of sunny hair that cover the pretty head so near to 
 her. 
 
 A little laugh breaks from Dolores. She springs to her 
 feet, and, throwing from her the shawl that has shielded 
 her from the evening breeze, as though somewhat impa- 
 tient of the care lavished upon her, runs eagerly to the 
 garden on her left. Here flowers throng her path. Hav- 
 ing made a delicate raid upon them, she returns again to 
 her aunt's side, and flings herself upon the grass at her 
 feet. Her invasion of the summer garden has borne fruit. 
 She now lies with her head well thrown back against Miss 
 Maturin's knee, admiring, with leisurely grace, the tall 
 white lily in her hand, the sweet result of her assault. 
 
 " Tell me, auntie," she says presently, raising her eyes 
 to the pale face above her " how long is it since my 
 grand-uncle died?" 
 
 "Just seventeen years." 
 
 "Why, his death is as old as my birth!" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 As though a shadow from out the long buried past has 
 come to her with the girl's words, Miss Maturin starts, 
 and a quick frown falls upon her brow. 
 
 "Seventeen years!" says Dolores. "What a long, long; 
 time! And yet, though he left you this place, you never 
 once came to see it. How unkind of you to hide its beau- 
 ties from me until now! Why did you not come home 
 sooner, and bring me with you?" 
 
 The shadow deepens on the elder woman's face. 
 
 "Perhaps I had a fancy for traveling," she says, 
 slowly. 
 
 " A lasting one.. urMlp't it? But I wonder you could
 
 6 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 keep away from this place, knowing that it was so beau- 
 tiful." 
 
 "I didn't know it; I never saw it until now." 
 
 " Not when your uncle was alive?" 
 
 " There is nothing so wonderful in that. He waa 
 always abroad, and we had our own place up in the 
 North." 
 
 "As nice a home as this?" 
 
 " No. A bleak, cold, barren place a hateful placef 
 I never wish to see or hear of it again." 
 
 There is suppressed horror in her tone. 
 
 * Why? Did my mother die there?" questions the 
 girl softly. 
 
 " No." Miss Maturin, getting up somewhat abruptly, 
 moves so as to stand behind Dolores' chair, and leans 
 upon the back of it. " Look at that dying sunset," she 
 gays, quickly. " Could anything be more lovely? Mark 
 the clear streaks of orange and crimson such straight 
 pure bars, such " 
 
 "It is as perfect as all this perfect scene; I feel I can 
 never tire of it. But where did my mother die, auntie? 
 Was it abroad?" 
 
 " Yes, abroad. Keep that shawl more closely round 
 your chest, Dolores; there is often a chill in these sum- 
 mer winds. What a pretty little shawl it is! Where was 
 it we bought it? Geneva eh?" 
 
 "No Lucerne. Have you forgotten? It was on just 
 such an evening as this we saw and fell in love with it. 
 But where abroad did my mother die, auntie? In 
 France?" 
 
 " Yes, in France." Miss Maturin looks round her a 
 little helplessly, as if distressed. " About your grand- 
 uncle," she says rapidly "you were asking me about, 
 him just now, were you not? Such an eccentric old man 
 as he was, but not altogether unlovable. He had his 
 heart set on Italy, though why none of us knew. He 
 had no kin there, no friend, no love, and no special desire 
 for art that I could see; yet he declined to be happy out 
 of Florence. When dying, his greatest consolation was 
 in the thought that his bones would lie there forever." 
 
 "I can understand him," says the girl dreamily. "To 
 lie forever at rest in stately Florence would have its 
 charm; but, to me. to clituu such tt land as this } near the
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 7 
 
 waving corn and the scented flowers, with the cool night- 
 wind sighing above my grave, would be a greater happi- 
 ness." 
 
 " Better live in such a land," says Miss Maturin hastily. 
 " And is this an evening on which to talk of death or the 
 grave?" 
 
 " You are right. Let us go back, then, to our original 
 topic," acquiesces the girl gayly, with unconscious cruelty. 
 "Tell me about my mother. But come round here to 
 me first, Lallie; I cannot see your face there." 
 
 Miss Maturin, after a faint hesitation, going back to 
 her seat, turni her face to her niece with a straight but 
 rather forced gaze. 
 
 "Why not rather talk about our coming life here?" 
 she says. 
 
 "To-morrow any other time will do for that; but now 
 I want to know something real of my mother. All vou 
 have yet told me is so little, so vague, so shadowy. But 
 to-day, when we have come to her own land, the longing 
 is strong upon me to know more of her. There must be 
 something in the air to-night which compels me to think 
 of her." 
 
 " There is so little to tell," says Miss Maturin. Her 
 voice has lost its kindly ring, and now sounds constrained 
 and harsh. "A young life cut short in its nineteenth 
 year what should there be of any moment in it?" 
 
 "Tell me," says the girl, leaning toward her, the soft 
 wind roughening her pretty short hair as she moves, 
 " was her marriage a happy one? Was it " leaning even 
 closer to her, the better to watch her face, in glad 
 expectation of her answer "a love marriage?" 
 
 But no answer comes to her. A deadly silence seems 
 to have enveloped Miss Maturin. It lasts for quite a 
 minute a long time when two large gray eyes are watch- 
 ing one in puzzled surprise. At length, by a supreme 
 effort, she breaks it. 
 
 "How can I tell?" she says coldly. "I was not with 
 her at the time; I was in Italy with my uncle. You have 
 surely forgotten?" 
 
 " But you saw her afterward, when you took me a 
 little baby from her arms?" 
 
 "From her dying arms yes; but that wag no time for 
 confidences, or thoughts of worldlv love."
 
 8 DICK'S 8WEETHEAE1. 
 
 "]So tru love can be worldly," says the girl absently; 
 then, with a little playful laugh, " but that I know you 
 would not dare do it," she says, smoothing lightly the 
 hand that lies in hers, " I should say you were trying not 
 to answer me." 
 
 " Why should I do tkat?" 
 
 " I don't know ; perhaps why will you never speak of 
 my mother to me, auntie? Is it is it because you did 
 .not love her?" 
 
 V " Perhaps it is because I loved her too well!" returns 
 Miss Maturin, an ashen tint overspreading her face. She 
 shrinks as she says it, and, stooping, presses upon the 
 girl's slender fingers a tremulous caress. 
 
 A sudden flood of color springs into Dolores' cheeks, 
 her lips quiver. 
 
 "Forgive me!" she whispers, slipping one arm round 
 her aunt's neck. "I was cruel to you? It hurts you, I 
 can now see, to speak of her! How could I urge you so? 
 Our dead are always so precious, and I " 
 
 " It is nothing. Do not distress yourself about it. It 
 is over already. But you are right, child " with a visi- 
 ble effort " it does hurt me to speak of your mother! " 
 
 "And my father?" timidly. 
 
 " All are dead all gone," says Miss Maturin, in a 
 clear cold voice. " Let us not bring them to life again. 
 Let the past lie. The present only is our own; let us be 
 content with it. Beloved child " with a sudden excite- 
 ment "think of the glorious sunset, the sky, the sea, 
 the flowers, all that you tell me you love, but never of the 
 years gone by ! " 
 
 " Dearest, I will think of nothing that can cause you 
 pain; and here, in this happy England, you will forget 
 your early griefs with me to love you; is it not so? You 
 will stay here, auntie? You will not want to wander 
 again?" 
 
 " I hope not" very quietly; but some piercing thought 
 disturbs the treacherous calm. " I hope," she says again 
 suddenly, with vainly chidden passion, " that nothing 
 will ever happen to drive us from this place of refuge." 
 
 "Why, auntie, how strangely you say that!" says the 
 girl. "What is it, then?" softly, with the sweetest 
 anxiety. 
 
 'Mothing, childl Nothing, my beloved one! Bat,
 
 DICK V S SWEETHEART. 9 
 
 when one has suffered much, one has doubts even in one's 
 happiest hours." 
 
 " Must all suffer?" asks Dolores seriously, her eyes full 
 of pitying wonder, not so much for herself, perhaps, as 
 for the world at large. 
 
 " Nay, not all. Some are more fortunate than others 
 yet all must feel the knife. To some it is blunt, to some 
 sharp and poisoned as a serpent's fang. Many have seem- 
 ingly prosperous lives; but there is always death, my 
 Darling the most prosperous cannot conquer that ! Alas, 
 what a bird of ill omen I am to my own bright bonny 
 bird! But you would have me speak ; and, after all, 
 sweetheart, there is only one grief that can quite rend the 
 heart in twain." 
 
 "And that ?" The beautiful childish lips are parted, 
 the starry eyes are opened wide. 
 
 "Is dishonor! But the very breath of it must not 
 come nigh you. It cannot it shall not after all these 
 years! " she exclaims fiercely, but so low that her last 
 words do not reach Dolores' ears. 
 
 " Dishonor ? Ah, yes, that is what would touch one," 
 she said, thoughtfully. 
 
 " It shall not toucn you." 
 
 "No no, of course not; and yet" slipping from her 
 chair down upon her knees, and casting her pretty half- 
 naked arm across Miss Maturin's lap " you speak " 
 glancing at her wistfully " as if it had come near you; 
 and how could it, without touching me?" 
 
 "I was but imagining a case. Tut, child!" with a 
 swift frown. " Must one never converse except of per- 
 sonalities? Once in a way perforce one wanders afield. 
 And, as for suffering of any sort, what has it to do with 
 you while your old aunt is here to protect you ? Come 
 forget this idle conjecturing ; let us rather think and plan 
 for a happy morrow that shall be but the commencement 
 of many happier ones." 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 " I THINK our new neighbors are likely to prove inter 
 eating," says Lady Bouverie, sweeping her black fan 
 indolently to and fro. 
 
 * That means they ar either savages or endowed with
 
 10 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 rarer attributes than most," returns a young mau who ii 
 busying himself pulling the ears of a black-and-tan ter- 
 rier. Another young man, lounging against the open 
 window, says nothing. 
 
 It is a sultry afternoon in mid-June heavy, burden- 
 some, because of its unbroken heat. The wind had for- 
 gotten the earth; the roses its lovers are drooping out- 
 side in the garden, the sunflowers, stately and grand in 
 their long stiff beds, are glowing and sighing in vain. 
 
 "Miss Maturin I thought cold in manner, but aristo- 
 cratic in appearance," goes on Lady Bouverie. " She is 
 of good blood beyond question, the Maturing of Egley, 
 from whom they all come, being quite everything one 
 could desire. They can count as many generations as the 
 ordinary parvenu his years." 
 
 " Can Miss Maturin count many years?" asks the young 
 man with the terrier, half insolently. 
 
 "More than you can, certainly. She is about forty or 
 forty-five, I should say." 
 
 " Alas and alack! And is she the heiress? Are all my 
 fond hopes to be so cruelly dashed? Is there no saving 
 clause? Is she the whole of our new neighbors?" 
 
 "My dear Bruno, do let Fifa's ears alone; I'm sure she 
 can't like that incessant pulling! No; there is a niece 
 such a pretty creature, all warmth and sunshine, the most 
 extreme contrast to the aunt, who to me appeared really 
 rather forbidding. It seems she the niece is the heiress, 
 as she inherits all her aunt's property, which is consider- 
 able, both here and in the North. A charming girl I 
 thought her." 
 
 For an instant her eyes wandered to her elder son, 
 loaning idly half in, half out of the window, and appar- 
 ently indifferent to the conversation. His indifference 
 seems at this moment to cause her some annoyance, she 
 frowns slightly, and taps her foot upon the floor with un- 
 mistakable impatience. She is a tall woman of the bony 
 type, with a cold, haughty expression, an eye like an eagle, 
 and a Roman nose. Her lips are as thin as her sympathies, 
 her eyes as colorless as her sentiments. Neither of her 
 sons, except in height, in the least resembles her. They 
 are both tall, well-knit young men, with sufficient good 
 looks to command a Wcond glance, Bruno, the younger,
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 11 
 
 being a shade darker than Dick, the elder, and perhaps a 
 ehade more companionable to the ordinary acquaintance. 
 
 " I will take your word for it all," says Bruno. " I 
 feel she is the girl for me! Warmth and sunshine and an 
 heiress who is a beauty is as much as any reasonable fellow 
 can expect. At all events, I shouldn't cavil at it." 
 
 " I hope you intend to make a long stay in the country 
 now, Kichard," says Lady Bouverie, turning to her elder 
 son and ignoring the frivolity of the younger. "It is 
 quite time you took some little interest in the estate. 
 Your father, as you know, is useless. His library " with 
 a sudden cold sneer " is his kingdom. There he dreams 
 away his life in imaginary worlds 
 
 '"In moldy novels fancy sees 
 Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs.' 
 
 He fancies there are priceless treasures on those dirty 
 shelves of his." 
 
 " 'His mind to him a kingdom is,'" quotes Dick Bou- 
 verie, speaking for the first time. " Happy is the man 
 who can retain his fancies however foolish when old 
 age has caught him ! Let my father enjoy his books in 
 peace !" 
 
 "It is your part to insure him that enjoyment," says 
 Lady Bouverie, with ill-repressed sharpness. "If you 
 attend to the accounts, or at least overlook Watkins now 
 and then,, there is no 1'eason why your father should not 
 molder away with his books, unmolested by words of 
 mine. All servants require a master's eye upon them." 
 
 "Have you got it, Dick ?"asks Bruno, laughing. "Look 
 at me till I see if I should quail before it. Very poor effect 
 indeed ! If I were yon, 1 should grow one in my fore- 
 head; it would be far more imposing." 
 
 "I thought you said you were going to the stables, 
 Bruno?" says his mother," regarding him with gome dis- 
 favor. 
 
 "No; I am going to stay here and listen to you. The 
 people with whom Fifa and I love to associate seldom 
 drop pearls of wisdom from their lips. Do they, Fifa?" 
 to the terrier, who barks a loud "No," and lifts a fore- 
 paw in anxious expectation of another word of recogni- 
 tion.
 
 13 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 " I hate farming and Watkins and the country gener- 
 ally," interposes Dick, with a gesture of dislike. 
 
 "Still, if your duty " 
 
 " I hate that even more ! What's the matter with Wat- 
 kins ? Why can't he go on alone in his management, as 
 he has done" for years ?" 
 
 "There isn't anything the matter with him," inter- 
 rupts Bruno, " beyond an oppressive smell of corduroy ! 
 He is quite well no ailment of any sort, as far as I can 
 see." 
 
 " He grows decidedly careless and in many ways unsat- 
 isfactory," says Lady Bouverie; " he is, in fact, too old 
 for his post. If I had my way, he should be dismissed at 
 once, and a younger, a more competent man put in his 
 place." 
 
 " But naturally you shrink from discharging one who 
 has served you faithfully for over twenty years," says 
 Dick gravely, flicking a little speck of dust from his 
 waistcoat. 
 
 A dull color flames into his mother's cheeks. The 
 latent antagonism between her and her elder sou springs 
 into life at his words, and speaks through her angry eyes. 
 
 "You mistake me!" I shrink at nothing!" she says 
 haughtily. 
 
 ' It seems a pity," strikes in Bruno judiciously, mark- 
 ing the signs of coming storm, " that my many graces 
 and speaking virtues should have induced my cousin, the 
 admiral, to leave me that little place of mine, or I should 
 have been delighted to give my talents to the overhauling 
 of Watkins. I find him & very attractive old person, and 
 rich in humor when I can understand him. which is sel- 
 dom." 
 
 "He can do nothing," says Lady Bouverie shortly. 
 
 "He can he can take snuff!" corrects her younger son 
 mildly. " I'd back him against any one at that. You 
 underrate him, mother. You should at least " reproach 
 fully "be just, and give the man his due." 
 
 "I hope you mean to give up town this season." says 
 Lady Bouverie, addressing her elder son. "It is now six 
 months since you have been at home; you should spare us 
 a little of vour tim^ It is " coldly " for your own in- 
 terest i*ona X speak, _1 *t vour father's death* you
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEAET. 13 
 
 things all at sixes and sevens, blame yourself, and remem- 
 ber I warned you." 
 
 " Well, I'll think it over," returns Dick discontentedly. 
 " You relieve me, however, when you remind me that my 
 carelessness will make only myself a sufferer. By the bye, 
 I'm going clown to the Hollows this afternoon. Any 
 message for Audrey?" 
 
 " Say I shall be pleased if she will come up and dine 
 with me to-night. I suppose it is only right I should 
 show her some small civility at times," says Lady Bouverie, 
 with a half frown, " although she and I are so totally dis- 
 similar in every way that she perpetually jars upon me. 
 How she can be my niece and still possess her objection- 
 able ways is and always will be to me a mystery. She will 
 expect me of course to ask her here a little, now you and 
 Bruno are at home." 
 
 " I shall give her your message," returns Dick, moving 
 through the window on to the balcony without. 
 
 " As you will be passing Greylands," says Lady 
 Bouverie, regarding him calmly, and, speaking with the 
 constrained air of one who is following up an after- 
 thought, "I wish you would call upon Miss Maturin, and 
 tell her I shall send down to-morrow those pelargoniums 
 she spoke of yesterday." 
 
 "I shall remember," answers Dick, as, with his usual 
 idle step, he goes down the stone stairs to the sward be- 
 neath. 
 
 " I'm rather glad that old place has got a mistress at 
 last," remarks Bruno pleasantly, as he too rises to pay his 
 long-deferred visit to the stables, or the kennel, or some- 
 where. 
 
 " Yes; it is an advantage. It is too fine an old house 
 to be let sink into decay, and moneyed people are always 
 to be desired. We are not sufficiently rich ourselves to 
 regard money with disdain, or rather to pretend to do so-, 
 and Richard, when he marries, should think of " She 
 pauses abruptly. "I hope he will not forget my message 
 about those pelargoniums," she concludes, with careful 
 carelessness. 
 
 " And I hope he will deliver it to the charming niece; 
 don't you?" supplements Bruno innocently, as he strolli 
 out of the room, Fifa at his heels. 
 
 Meantime Dick, sauntering slowly over the fields to the
 
 14 DICK S SWEETHEART. 
 
 Hollows, where his cousin lives, with a frown on hisbrovi 
 and an impatient light in his dark blue eyes a light that 
 kindles there all too readily beneath his mother's touch 
 is thinking of many things. 
 
 It is growing toward evening, and now at last a faint 
 breeze has uprisen, flying inland from the sea cliffs, full 
 of fresh and salty sweetness, to dance merrily among the 
 swaying branches of the trees. It wakes the drowsy birds 
 to sudden life, and thrush and lark and linnet have all 
 come forth to unite in one grand evensong that thrills 
 through wood and vale and bosky dell. 
 
 On the tennis-ground of the Hollows a girl is standing 
 talking somewhat apathetically to a young man of the 
 washed-out type. Seeing Bouverie advancing from under 
 the limes, she says something to this polite nonentity 
 which sends him racing toward the house. She is a tall 
 girl, with a pretty svelte figure, and a face that would 
 be beyond reproach, but for a certain touch of repressive 
 pride and studied insolence arising from education more 
 than nature that characterizes it. The eyes, large and 
 of a pure hazel, look at one out of a haze of haughty 
 doubt; the chin is determined, the hair of a lustrous 
 brown. Poverty, mingled with the traditions of many 
 generations, has raised this cloud upon a brow that should 
 be possessed of contentment only. 
 
 Just now she is advancing toward Dick with a firm 
 step and a prepared smile, and a little involuntary curl 
 about her handsome lips. 
 
 " Ah, my dear cousin you ?" she says, coming slowly 
 up to him, her tone genial, her expression belying her 
 tone. " Why, it is quite six months, I think, since last 
 we met! I hope absence has not lessened your love for 
 me?" Her voice is peculiar clear, distinct, and soft, yet 
 with an echo in it full of mockery that falls upon the 
 heart when the words have passed away. 
 
 " No," replies Bouverie, taking her proffered hand. 
 
 "Or increased it?" Here the mockery overrides the 
 softness. 
 
 "No since you demand the truth," says Bouverie 
 again, not uncivilly, but with an indifference that might 
 well anger any woman. 
 
 "You are candor itself," declares Miss Ponsonby, with 
 a little laugh and a slight shrug of her rounded shoulders.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 15 
 
 " Let me emulate you by telling you what is on mj mind. 
 It is what brought you?" 
 
 '* A message from my mother principally." 
 
 "To beg I will hold myself with greater dignity in 
 church of a Sunday, and so set my father's pupils a 
 worthy example?" asks she, with a little tremulous sneer. 
 " Or is it a hope that I have sought to cure myself of my 
 reprehensible habit of using slang words, 'unfit for any 
 lady's use,' and evidently contracted from the aforesaid 
 pupils?" 
 
 " Neither of these advices has been intrusted to me," 
 says Bouverie coldly. " Why are you always so hard 
 upon my mother?" 
 
 But, even as he says this in a rather lofty mnnner, he 
 reminds himself that he too has been harboring hard 
 thoughts in his mind during his walk hither. 
 
 " ' I hate them that my vices telle me, and so do more 
 of us (God wot) than I!' " quotes the girl, with a little 
 disdainful moue. 
 
 " Whom were you talking to just now as I came up?" 
 asks Bouverie presently. 
 
 "Was I talking to anybody?" 
 
 " I certainly fancied so. I fancied too he went round 
 that corner " pointing to it ** as I came in sight." 
 
 " What an excellent chaperon you would make, Dick I" 
 says his cousin, with suspicious admiration. " One feels 
 positive regret that you should have so few opportunities 
 of exercising your talent. You see " raising her somber 
 eyes with a sudden flash to his "I can't employ you, 
 your mother being more than enough for me. She keeps 
 not only her own eyes, but the eyes of all the neighbor- 
 hood upon my every action." 
 
 "Still you haven't told me about your new friend," 
 persists Dick, unmoved. " See here he comes! Now" 
 . without lowering his voice " may I know who he is?" 
 
 "Certainly one of dad's boys." 
 
 At this " one of dad's boys " stops short, blushes, and 
 looks ineffable things; but, as is his wont, says nothing. 
 
 " Ah," says Bouverie, his eyes on the limp youth, who 
 IB uneasily shifting his lanky body from foot to foot be- 
 neath his steady gaze, " that is an excellent introduction, 
 no doubt. But I think I should like one a little more 
 formal."
 
 16 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 "Too happy, Fm sure!" murmurs " dad's " last boy iu 
 a milk-and-water tone, whilst trying to do impossible 
 things with an eyeglass a late purchase evidently, and 
 dreadfully in the way. 
 
 "That is nonsense," says Miss Ponsonby, sharply. 
 " No one was ever too happy. However, if it will make 
 you a joyful man to know you once looked on Dick Bou- 
 verie, be joyful. Are you ready for your introduction, 
 Dick? Sir Chicksy Chaucer Mr. Bouverie. Feel any 
 thrill of bliss, Sir Chicksy?" 
 
 " Could hardly help that, you know so near you- 
 able to see you, you know, and er that !" chirrups Sir 
 Chicksy, with a feeble attempt at gallantry. 
 
 " You will be able to see me a great deal better if you 
 drop that insane bit of glass," says Miss Ponsonby, calm- 
 ly. " What on earth did you buy it for eh? You have 
 the best sight of any one I know." 
 
 " Been long in the country, Sir Chicksy? " asks Bou 
 verie, coming to the rescue; but Mies PonjBonby's last re 
 mark has overwhelmed Sir Chicksy and left him speech- 
 less. 
 
 "Oh, yes, a long time!" says Dick's cousin, answering 
 for her victim. "Ever so long years, I think! You 
 eame last February, didn't you, Sir Chicksy?" 
 
 " Last April. Seems like yesterday to me," sighs thfe 
 smitten baronet, with a reproachful glance at her. " Very 
 glad indeed to er make your cousin's acquaintance. 
 Any" with a rush " cousin of yours er " Heavy 
 fall. 
 
 "Any cousin?" says Miss Ponsonby. "Will they all 
 make you 'too happy'? Why, you will be surfeited with 
 gladness! Very good; I'll send word to the lot. By the 
 bye, where is that racket I sent you for a moment since? 
 No? Oh, it must be where I said it was!" 
 
 "It isn't indeed. Give you my word; I searched for it 
 high and low," declares Sir Chicksy, growing quite warm 
 through fear of her increasing displeasure. 
 
 " Well, try the pantry. I know I had it in my hand 
 yesterday, when I went there to speak to Mary." 
 
 " I didn't know you had such an old boy as that on the 
 premises," says Dick, when Sir Chicksy had disappeared 
 once more around the corner, with coat-tails flying. 
 
 "That is because you have bee BO long away. Yo
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEAfiT. 17 
 
 and Bruno so seldom visit your home that you giye us 
 time to quite forget you now and then." 
 
 "Not quite, I hope," protests Dick, politely, but impo- 
 litely too, the want of interest in his face being only too 
 apparent. 
 
 " Don't trouble yourself to make pretty speeches to me, 
 Dick. I'll let you off," returns she, with a slight shrug 
 and a peculiar smile. 
 
 " Well, I hope dad's new boy will prove a credit to 
 him," says Bouverie, with the air of one who is laboriously N 
 endeavoring to make conversation. 
 
 "Like 'dad's' old boy," says a fresh voice coming from 
 behind them, " though misunderstood by all but ' dad ' 
 himself! What, you, Dick, old chap? What good wind 
 has blown you hither?" 
 
 "A cab and a down train," replies Dick, turning with 
 a friendly smile to the new-comer, a tall young man of 
 about thirty, with a square face, rather cynical lips, and 
 chestnut hair. 
 
 "How d'ye do, Mr. Vyner, for the second time to-day?" 
 gays Miss Ponsonby, holding out her hand to him it is a 
 beautiful hand, as fair and as cool as a lily. 
 
 Bouverie stares at her. 
 
 "I thought Vyner was always Anthony to you?" he 
 says. 
 
 " So he was " demurely. " But of late " mimicking 
 her aunt's formal tones to perfection "I have striven to 
 conquer that deplorable habit I have fallen into of calling 
 young gentlemen by their Christian names." 
 
 Both men smile. 
 
 " My mother sent you her love, and she hopes you wiU 
 iine with her to-night," says Bouverie. 
 
 " How sweet of her! Are you sure you have delivered 
 your message correctly? Are you certain of the Move* 
 part of it? I think I could do it better. ' Tell Audrey 
 that if sbe will care to dine with me to-night which I 
 greatly doubt, my society being scarcely calculated to suit 
 her I shall be pleased.' Give her my love in return, 
 however, and toll her I am sorry a severe and crushing 
 headache will prevent my coming to Kingmore this 
 evening. 
 
 "Oh, do come;. J*jn*y M welll" says her cousin.
 
 18 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 "Bruno is at home to-night; it won't be quite go slow roi 
 you." 
 
 " Why," asks Vyner, knocking the ash off his cigar, 
 "is Bruno the one in favor now?" 
 
 "I confess to a weakness for Bruno," says Audrey. 
 "But indeed" raising her dark eyes to his "you are 
 all so high in my favor, I could not put one before the 
 other. Still no I shall not leave dad to-night." 
 
 " Happy Sir Chicksy! " murmurs Mr. Vyner inno- 
 cently. 
 
 " It was dad I spoke of, but, if you will have it so, yes. 
 I shall stay here with him and Sir Chicksy," says the girl, 
 just a little defiantly. 
 
 " And a very nice entertaining boy he is to stay with," 
 returned Mr. Vyner, with suspicious cordiality. " Having 
 been frequently in his society of late, I may be considered 
 qualified to speak. He is quite an antique in his way a 
 bit of old English, like his name. By the bye, has he in- 
 herited any of the talent of his great namesake. Taken 
 any rides to Canterbury eh? " 
 
 "No," says Miss Ponsonby rather shortly. She has 
 drawn herself up, and is looking at him with a slight 
 frown on her low brow. 
 
 " Tastes are unaccountable, we all know," remarks 
 Bouverie carelessly; "yet I should have thought any 
 girl would prefer Bruno to that callow youth I saw just 
 now. " 
 
 " Remember how often you have told me I am unlike 
 most girls; and to me Sir Chicksy at present is prefera- 
 ble. He is newer, and therefore better fun." 
 
 "Isn't it hard to know any one?" says Mr. Vyner, 
 with an air of deep surprise. " He doesn't look funny! 
 Sad, I'd call it. Here he is, by Jove, and full of go, aa 
 aiual! 
 
 " ' He comes, he comes, with his flashing eyes. 
 And his cheek of passion's hue!' " 
 
 This quotation is most unfortunately apt, as Sir 
 Chicksy comes panting up to them, rubicund as a peony. 
 
 "I've got it! he says, waving the lost racket triumph- 
 antly above his head and smiling broadly. " Not such a 
 bad messenger, after all am I?" 
 
 " Bad! The verv baitl " savs Miss Ponsonby. suddenly
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. Jl 
 
 nd most unexpectedly bestowing upon him one of hat 
 rare smiles. 
 
 The smile carries Sir Chicksy into the seventh heaven, 
 where he remains for a considerable time. Not that his 
 goddess follows him thither! She moves a little apart 
 from the three men, and, stooping, picks up a ball or two 
 lying near her on the tennis-court. As she bends and 
 rights herself again, it is impossible not to mark the ex- 
 treme grace and beauty of her lissom figure. She is 
 dressed in a style slightly bizarre, but very pretty; and, 
 though there is nothing about her costume to detract 
 from the careful charm of it, still there is something that 
 suggests the idea that new gowns with her are few and 
 far between. 
 
 Mr. Vyner's eyes, as she picks up the balls, follow her 
 intently not lovingly simply curiously, and with that 
 air of studying, of striving to master the secret workings 
 of the hearts of those with whom he finds himself in con- 
 tact which distinguishes him. 
 
 " That's a very pretty gown you have on," he says, 
 presently, without enthusiasm; whereupon Sir Chicksy 
 who has been wildly but vainly endeavoring to float on a 
 conversational sea with Bouverie turns a murderous eye 
 on him. 
 
 "I'm glad you like it," says Audrey, indifferently; 
 "you will the less soon tire of it. As it is my latest, you 
 are likely to see a good deal of it before it finds a worthy 
 successor." As she makes this candid avowal, she laughs 
 a little bitterly. 
 
 " ' Long may it wave' then!'"' says Vyner cheerfully. 
 
 " I must be off!" exclaims Bouverie, looking at his 
 watch. " You won't change your mind, Audrey, and 
 come up to dinner, after all?" He says this earnestly. 
 
 " And so help you to go through a monotonous even- 
 ing?" returns the girl, carelessly throwing her balls into 
 the air and catching them again. " No " with a shrug 
 - "I would do a few things for you, but not that." 
 
 Bouverie laughs in spite of himself. 
 
 " You would have been a help, I confess," he says light- 
 ly. "Will you come to the rescue, Vyner? Does the 
 mater frighten you?" 
 
 "Your invitation comes too late," says Mr. Vyner, with 
 dignity. " You ofEeJMlfld.iaeJiaLf au hour ago by ignoring
 
 20 DICK'S SWBETHEAET. 
 
 suy existence. Now I have made up my mind to dint 
 with ' dad ' and Sir Chicksy." 
 
 " You can't indeed," declares Miss Ponsonby, hurried- 
 ly, letting her balls reach the sward unheeded; "it is 
 qu'te impossible quite!" 
 
 "Nothing is impossible! I'm all alone at Moorlands 
 this evening; and, as you well know, I can't endure my 
 own society. It is useless your regarding me with that 
 forbidding frown, Miss Ponsonby, because I won't take a 
 denial. I shall appeal to ' dad ' himself if you refuse me 
 a hearing, and he will certainly treat me as I deserve. " 
 
 "You can not dine to-night!" says Audrey, with em- 
 phasis. " For one thing " coloring warmly through her 
 pale, clear skin " there is only cold mutton for dinner." 
 
 " Is it a loin?" unmoved. 
 
 "Yes," unwillingly. 
 
 " Then I shall stay. If there is one thing for which I 
 have a settled hankering, it is a loin of mutton, cold; be- 
 gides " lowering his voice, " you have so whetted my 
 euriosity about Sir Chicksy, described him in such glow- 
 ing colors as a wit and all that, that I am bent on improv- 
 ing his acquaintance." 
 
 "You are bent on nothing of the kind!" angrily. 
 
 " I am indeed. Do you think, if I ask him to Moor- 
 lands for the grouse, he will promise not to shoot himself? 
 By the bye, I may come to dinner, may I not?" 
 
 " Oh, you can come if you likel returns she, un- 
 graciously. 
 
 " Then I must go home disconsolate," says Dick, " and 
 listen all through dinner to diatribes against the servants, 
 uttered before their faces, an ordeal greater than which I 
 know not. Good-by, Audrey; I hope this cruelty will 
 be forgiven you. Oh, look here you won't refuse to 
 oome to us on the nineteenth, at least will you?" 
 
 " To Aunt Maria's dance?" 
 
 " Yes. It ought to be a success. My mother, poor 
 oul, has taken such pains about it though why she 
 can't go to town in the season, and give her ' At homes ' 
 in a rational manner, I can't conceive." 
 
 " I shall be at her irrational one, at all events. The 
 Duchess is to be there, is she not? And I quite long to 
 find myself for once face to face with a real live 'big D.' 
 My acquaintance witb^tbem. iu>,tO this has been confined
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEABT. 31 
 
 to that charming lady in 'Alice in Wonderland* who 
 dandled a pig." 
 
 " I'm glad ycu'll come," says Dick, " though I won't 
 gwear you will enjoy yourself. My mother believes her- 
 elf irresistible; but I hardly know any one so universally 
 unpopular. Is it her misfortune or her fault?" 
 
 He is talking now exclusively to Audrey, Mr. Vyner 
 having engaged himself in a desperate argument hope- 
 less of termination with the terrified Sir Chicksy. 
 
 " Far be it from me to decide so delicate a point," says 
 Miss Ponsoriby, with lowered lids and an untranslatable 
 smile. " Good-evening, Dick, if you must go so soon. 
 You leave at least one regret behind you." 
 
 " And that is?" 
 
 " That you can not induce Mr. Vyner to accompany 
 you." 
 
 "Very poor, very poor indeed!" says Mr. Vyner, with 
 open contempt. " It would take thrice that to make me 
 forego the cold loin and Sir Chicksy." 
 
 "Oh, I knew the hint would be useless!" retorts Miss 
 Ponsonby, with a contemptuous gesture. 
 
 "Well, good-by again, sweet coz," says Dick, lightly. 
 " I am off to fulfill a second mission. Let us hope I 
 shall be more successful in that than in my first." 
 
 " The gods grant it!" returns Audrey, piously. 
 
 " Where are you going, Dick?" asks Vyner. 
 
 "To * Castle Dangerous' that is, to Greylands, where 
 Venus embodied lives, as I hear." 
 
 "Ah! To see Miss Lome! Well, you won't be dig- 
 appointed; she is as lovely as a dream! I saw her yester- 
 day." 
 
 " A good reason for seeing her again to-day. Walk 
 so far with me, Anthony." 
 
 " Can't, my clear boy. Must stay here, as I have told 
 you already, to pick up Miss Ponsonby's balls and such 
 sparks of wisdom that fall from the erudite lips of Sir 
 Chicksy. Cultivate the talented at all risks that is an 
 undeviating rule with me." 
 
 " Till we meet igaiFv ^hen !" says Bouverie, fading 
 wiftly from sigh'
 
 22 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A SHORT walk across the sunny meadows brings him to 
 the gates of Greylunds. 
 
 " Beastly bore, my mother's insisting on my taking a 
 message here, to people of whom I know nothing, nor wish 
 to know," he mutters to himself, as he stands outside the 
 gate, hesitating about demanding admittance. "Freshly 
 painted, by Jove," he says, regarding the decent gate with 
 scorn, "and the grass gone from the avenue! What a 
 difference a brush and a scraper can accomplish ! I hardly 
 know the old place now. What a number of years it is 
 since I went through this gate! Never since old Jasper's 
 time, and never then, I think! A short cut through the 
 high grass and the hanging branches was more in my line 
 at ten! Let's see if I could feel like ten now, and if that 
 idewood" with a half laugh "and that rustic gate 
 leading into the garden, still sniff of paradise." 
 
 Turning aside from the principal entrance, he follows 
 the road a little higher up until he conies to a wooden 
 stile; springing over this, he finds himself knee-deep in 
 scented clover, with a vision of leafy shade beyond. 
 Reaching the wooded hollow on the left, he plunges into 
 its mystic recesses with a faint return of the old boyish 
 delight in its glories which once held him captive, and 
 even now awakens a thrill of keenest pleasure in his 
 breast. It is short- lived however; years and the world's 
 scorching touch have killed the freshness that could once 
 find joy prolonged in the secrets of mysterious Nature. 
 
 Even as the perfumed branches press down to bar his 
 path, and myriad forest flowers cry out for notice in the 
 gathering twilight, his mind reverts with an angry im- 
 patience to his mother's last hints and innuendoes. 
 
 To ask a fellow to spend his entire su aimer buried alive 
 in a hole of a place like this! Could there be anything 
 more unreasonable? But women and reason were two! 
 That he had known to his cost for many a day, be the 
 woman mother, or cousin, or 
 
 He had told himself before leaving town that he was 
 enacting quite the part of the model son in accediner to
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 33 
 
 her request that he would be present at her dance on the 
 nineteenth, given in honor of the Duchess, who was a 
 sort of thirty-first cousin of his father. The Duchess, for 
 some inscrutable reason, had elected to go down to her 
 place in Blankshire, about ten miles from Kingmore, at 
 this unholy time, missing her season point-blank, to the 
 astonishment of all her friends. He had indeed felt he 
 had done a good deal in the filial line when he too had 
 gone down to Blankshire, meaning to stay a week or ten 
 days at the outside. And now he linds himself let in for 
 a visit extending over an indefinite period. And what 
 the deuce does he know of accounts or Watkins, or 
 
 There is that dinner at Richmond to which he is al- 
 most bound, and, autres mceurs, that dance at Lady Mille- 
 fleur's, and the time running short now! Well, a week 
 of accounts ought to mean a good many figures, and this 
 is only the fourteenth, and the last week of June and first 
 of July are never half so bad and and of course 
 "duty "is a beastly word, especially when thrust upon 
 one in that uncompromising fashion; but with a sigh he 
 acknowledges this it means something in the long run; 
 and a man, if he wants to keep straight at all, must have 
 some chart by which to steer. 
 
 These glimpses into a profound morality bring him to 
 a small rustic gate studded with iron nails which is sunk 
 in a high wall. There are two steps leading up to it, 
 and, as he mounts them and pushes it open, one can see 
 that six more steps must be ascended before the garden 
 beyond is reached. Closing the small gate gently behind 
 him, Bouverie, with a relapse into his former dreamy 
 state born of the old happy days when he was a boy, 
 and their memories springs lightly up the inner steps, 
 and, looking straight before him, sees, not ten paces from 
 him, something that dispels all boyish visions, something 
 most sweet, most fair and rich in grace and beauty 1 
 
 A little rose-red hammock swung by silken ropes, a 
 childish form lost in lazy tranquil slumber, with, upon its 
 bosom, a great cluster of pale blossoms that rise and fall 
 with the coming and going of the breath that stirs the 
 heart beneath; a pure blue sky that shows through the 
 netted tangle of the branches overhead, a singing of many 
 birds, the fond murmur of a distant stream, and, over 
 and through all these, the rush of a soft wind, laden heavi-
 
 24 DICK'S SWEETHEAKT. 
 
 ly with the perfume of the innumerable roses that 
 throng this enchanted corner ? 
 
 Lightly, too, this scented wind is rocking to and fro the 
 crimson bed ; but still its little, pale, fair occupant lies 
 unconscious. Bouverie, seeing this, his latest, sweetest 
 visioa, moveth not, draws nearer, nearer still, until he is 
 gazing down upon the sleeping marvel so strangely found. 
 Her long dark lashes lie motionless upon her cheek, 
 flushed delicately, her lips are slightly parted ; one arm, 
 half bare, is flung above the shapely head, the other lies 
 languidly lost in part amongst the scattered flowers 
 upon her breast, the slender fingers still sleepily clutch- 
 ing the rosebuds they had been holding when conscious- 
 ness departed. 
 
 So pure, so fragile seems the sudden vision that Bou- 
 verie, afraid to stir lest the faintest sound should drive it 
 from him forever, stands mute before it, wondering. 
 There is a calm beauty about the tranquil face which fas- 
 cinates him. Unbidden comes to him the thought : 
 
 " That, as of light the summer sunn6 sheen 
 Passeth the star, right so over measure 
 She fairer is than any creature." 
 
 Then, all in a moment, as he stands spell-bound fearing 
 to withdraw lest he should disturb her, yet doubting his 
 right to stand here and admire without let, or hinderance, 
 or permission, so fair a thing the soft white lids uprise, 
 and two eyes " sweetest eyes were ever seen " looked 
 calmly into his. Vaguely they look at first, and in nowise 
 coldly, he being as yet but a fragment of the wild dream 
 she has just left : then, with wide lids and growing knowl- 
 edge, she stares at him, and rising on her dainty elbow, 
 lets amazement have full sway, and something else, too, 
 that might perhaps be termed indignant wrath m one 
 with lips and eyes less sweet. 
 
 "How did you come here?" she asks, in a low, clear 
 voice. There is surprise largely mingled with the grave 
 displeasure in her face. 
 
 " By this gate," says Dick Bouverie, quailing beneath 
 the severity of those searching eyes. "I used to come 
 into the garden by it long ago, when I was a little fellow, 
 in your your fa -jfoot Uncle's time* I forgot I was trea- 
 paesing."
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 25 
 
 There is abject humility in his tone and expression; 
 but the lady of the hammock refuses to he softened. 
 
 " This is my own garden; no one comes here without 
 my permission," she says austerely. 
 
 "" I 1 might have asked for permission, certainly," sayi 
 Dick vaguely; "but I didn't know. I " 
 
 " It would have been of no use; I wish to be alone here 
 always," she returns, with distinct meaning. "The 
 .mistake is in part my own, of course; yet I was quite 
 iure I had turned the key in the lock." 
 
 "No, there was no key at all," says Dick. "But, of 
 course, that is nothing. I should not have come here; I 
 should have remembered I could not come in and out now 
 as I used to do when I was a boy." 
 
 "Was everybody in this neighborhood in the habit of 
 coming here when he was a boy?" demands she, increasing 
 anger in her eyes. 
 
 " Oh, no! And some of us were girls then," says Dick 
 demurely, but without daring to smile. 
 
 She regards him fixedly for a full minute, as though 
 haughtily suspecting him of undue levity, and then, with 
 a sudden, light movement, springs to the ground. 
 
 "I am Dolores Lome!" ehe says, standing erect before 
 him, with her pretty head updrawn, us though to let him 
 see who is mistress in this territory. 
 
 Dolores! What a sad little name! With a pang 
 even in this early moment of their acquaintance it is with 
 a distinct pang he feels that in some vague, indefinite 
 fashion the name suits her. 
 
 "And I am Dick Bouverie," returns he; "and very, 
 very sorry I disturbed you." 
 
 " I believe that. And now " coldly "you can go if 
 you like." 
 
 "I don't like. I can't bear to go away without your 
 forgiveness," says Dick, with such earnestness in eyes and 
 yoice as verifies his words and speaks for the depth of his 
 contrition. 
 
 "Oh, well, you may have that!" she tells him, looking 
 down. " And then if if your name is Dick Bouverie, 
 1 suppose it was your mother who called here yesterday?" 
 
 " Did she call?" says Dick, who knows well she did, 
 but, through Tory longing to hear again the low trainanl 
 Toice, pretends ignoraaie. And why has she brought up
 
 26 DICK'S SWEETHEAKT. 
 
 this question about his mother? Perhaps to soften the 
 cruelty of her dismissal; perhaps oh, goodly thought! to 
 do away with the dismissal altogether! 
 
 " I think it must have been your mother," remarks 
 Dolores, reflectively, tapping her red lips with her fore- 
 finger in meditative fashion, "a tall woman very tall 
 with I mean that is" quick confusion covering her as 
 she thinks of what she has so nearly said "I mean a very 
 tall woman!" 
 
 This is distinctly lame. 
 
 " Your description is perfect a very tall woman, with 
 an enormous nose," said Mr. Bouvene, sublime gravity 
 marking every feature. 
 
 At this she grows red, and glances at him shyly from un- 
 der her curling lashes, and looks down again, and up again, 
 and finally they both burst out laughing. Laughter with 
 the young is a quick road to friendship; but Dolores is 
 not as yet prepared to hold out the right hand of fellow- 
 ship. She checks her merriment, and stands back from 
 him a little step or two, and clasps her hands behind her. 
 
 "I think you had better come in and see auntie," she 
 says, with increased dignity " that is, if indeed you 
 meant to pay her a visit this evening" glancing at him 
 suspiciously. 
 
 "Certainly I meant it. I came here purposely to see 
 her with a message from my mother about pelargoniums." 
 
 "What about them?" 
 
 "Well, that's just it, you see," says Dick, with a con- 
 fiding smile. " I haven't the faintest idea. I assure you 
 I knew all about it the moment before before 1 entered 
 this garden; but it is all gone out of my head now. Was 
 she to offer your aunt some, or was your aunt to give her 
 some? She told me she had called, and " 
 
 "I thought" turning large convicting eyes upon 
 him "you said just now or at least you gave me the 
 impression that you did not know your mother had been 
 here at all?" 
 
 "Did I? You see there it is again! I have such a 
 wretched memory," says Dick, mournfully. " At least I 
 have now I hadn't this morning! It must be something 
 4ft the air of your garden." 
 
 "Don't scold my garden! It hat the sweetest air on
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 27 
 
 earth," says Dolores, with decision. " And see there is 
 auntie standing in the window! Come to her." 
 
 With all the demeanor of one escorting a condemned 
 felon to the gibbet she leads him toward the open window 
 of the draw ing- room, where a tall, dark figure can be 
 descried looking in their direction. A few stone steps 
 lead from the terrace to the veranda, and up these per- 
 force Mr. Bouverie follows his captor. 
 
 " I have brought you a trespasser, auntie," says this last 
 awful personage, slipping her hand within Miss Maturin's 
 arm, and confronting Dick with a menacing air. "I 
 found him in my own grounds, without permission, 
 and" 
 
 "I think it was I found you," interposes Mr. Bonverie 
 mildly. 
 
 But his weak attempt at defense is treated with con- 
 tempt. 
 
 " He could give no proper account of himself," says 
 his jailer sternly, "so I have brought him to you, to do 
 with him as seemeth good in thine eyes." 
 
 ' Don't be hard on me, Miss Maturin," entreats Dick, 
 advancing. " I have been so browbeaten and generally 
 frowned down already that I have little resistance left in 
 me. I can just barely remember that my name is 
 Bouverie; but, beyond that, my mind is a blank." 
 
 " Nay, then, I think you have been punished enough," 
 says Miss Maturin, smiling. " Come in, and let us begin 
 our acquaintance under more auspicious circumstances." 
 
 ''That means under the shadow of the tea-tray," says 
 Miss Lome, saucily, turning upon Dick a sudden bright 
 smile that puts formality and unfriendliness to flight at 
 once and forever. 
 
 It is a very pretty room they enter, smelling sweetly of 
 gay Indian mattings. Quaint tables and chairs are scat- 
 tered broadcast, aud Persian rugs of divers colors lie here 
 and there. There are two large Sevres bowls filled with 
 nx-es, cream and white and yellow; and a few red, a still fewer 
 blue monsters standing on carved cabinets, with gaping 
 jaws and goggle eyes; some Nankin china; some hideous 
 Hindoo idols; a few choice modern water-colors on the 
 painted walls, and a good many Eastern and European 
 gimcracks of one sort or another mixed up in a charming 
 confusion all over the place.
 
 28 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 "And where did you find Dolores?" asks Miss Maturim 
 presently, when she has found out that he does like sugar 
 and is very fond of cream. But he is not allowed to 
 answer. 
 
 " In my own garden my sanctuary," says the mistress 
 of that sacred spot. " I was in my hammock, breathing 
 the air of heaven, and lost in dreams," with a little 
 quaint dramatic action of the hand " when he came to 
 me." 
 
 " I'm glad of that glad that you found her resting, I 
 mean," remarks Miss Maturin, tenderly. "She runs 
 about too much, Mr. Bouverie; she overexerts herself. 
 For one moment in the day she will not be still. I have 
 had that hammock put up on purpose for her, that she 
 might take a little rest now and then." 
 
 *' Miss Lome has not been without rest to-day at least," 
 says Dick. ' ' I found her sound asleep in that self-same 
 hammock." 
 
 "Asleep! In the open air! Oh, Dolores, I hope not," 
 says her aunt, with quick dismay. " You know how deli- 
 cate your chest is; and to sleep in the open air! Dear 
 child, how careless of you!" 
 
 "It was but for a little moment" penitently "and 
 indeed I don't know how it happened; but I was lying 
 there blinking at the hot sun as he glanced at me through 
 the rustling leaves, and somehow I lost myself in a day- 
 dream, and a little lulling wind came to me across the 
 roses, and then I knew nothing more until my day-dream 
 became a real one a short one, though, because some 
 kindly fairy whispered to me that an ogre had entered my 
 land; and so I awoke." 
 
 "An ogre! Alas, Miss Lome, have I deserved all 
 this?" 
 
 " Well " with sweet relenting " I will confess to you 
 I was going to say a prince; but I didn't think" mis- 
 chievously "you deserved all that!" 
 
 "If Mr. Bouverie was the one to release you from that 
 treacherous slumber so sure to give you cold I, for one, 
 not only forgive him his trespass, but thank him sincerely 
 for his well-timed arrival," says Miss Maturin. 
 
 "After all, I believe I am grateful to him too," de- 
 clares Dolores lightly. " My dream was of an evil thing, 
 and I was glad te be rescued from it. Was I" turning
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 89 
 
 to Bouverie " frowning when you saw me first, as though 
 frightened, or " 
 
 "No; on the contrary, you seemed to be enjoying the 
 sleep of the just." 
 
 "I should have looked distressed I think I felt it 
 How " with childish curiosity " did J look then?" 
 
 "As though you dreamed of heaven," says Bouverie, 
 with such grave and sudden earnestness that it almost 
 seems as if the words come from him without volition on 
 his part. 
 
 Dolores, as though startled, turns her eyes to his; 
 something she sees there shortens her gaze, and the faint- 
 est tinge of crimson creeps beneath the cream white of 
 her skin. Her long lashes flicker shyly, and then her 
 eyes droop. 
 
 " She stood, and hung her visage down alow." 
 
 Bouverie, angry with himself in a vague manner about 
 something he barely understands, looks out of the window 
 upon the fast-falling twilight that is dusking all the 
 land and casting a gray mantle over the pale ocean down 
 below. 
 
 Meanwhile Miss Maturin who has seen nothing is 
 talking to a disgracefully absent audience. 
 
 " That is where your dreams should come from," she 
 is saying pleasantly, her heart in her words, her eyes on 
 the cream ewer. " All a pretty maiden's dreams should 
 come straight from the skies." 
 
 " Mine came from some other place," returns Dolores, 
 whose faint troubled thought has vanished. " It was a 
 cruel vision, so slight, so shadowy, I could not grasp or 
 put it into words even if I would; but still I know it was 
 framed by evil." 
 
 " Tut, you silly child! What should you have to do 
 with such a word? It should be unknown to you," says 
 Miss Maturin fondly. " Dreams are but reproductions of 
 aur thoughts and actions in one form or another. They 
 are shaped obscurely from our surroundings. Now from 
 what corner of yonr life could you call forth a troubled 
 recollection?" 
 
 " And yet it oppressed me," says the girl dreamily. " I 
 seemed," slowly putting out one hand, "going going 
 parting: from all I .lovad^-ainkinff into No* I can not
 
 30 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 recall it I will not" with a quick shudder "yet I 
 know it prophesied trouble. And your own words, 
 auntie " with a swift glance at her " we must all know 
 ihat, must we not?" 
 
 " Not all," puts in Bouverie impulsively; yet, as he 
 nays it, a cold wave seems to rush across his heart. Does 
 there in the mysterious future live a day when he shall 
 eee those sofb clear eyes dull with grief's knowledge, 
 those warm red lips pale and cold, the whole fair lovely 
 face haggard with a torment that knows no hope? 
 
 " Yes all," says Dolores slowly. " Ask auntie." 
 
 " No, no!" murmurs Miss Maturin nervously. 
 
 " There is no rule without an exception," declares Dick 
 ayly. " Let you," to Dolores, "be the brilliant one." 
 
 e laughs; but to any one intimate with him it would be 
 known that his gayety costs him an effort. " My mother, 
 for example, is another. She has had an uncommon good 
 life, taking it altogether; trouble and she, so far, have 
 been anything but friends." 
 
 "Then her time is yet to come, as is mine," persists 
 Dolores, with a smile that half kills the fatality of her 
 words. 
 
 "If you get through as much of your life as my motner 
 has of hers without coming to grief, you won't have much 
 to complain of," retorts Bouverie, with a persistence al- 
 most as keen as her own. 
 
 " 3Tet she can not escape altogether, if there be justice 
 meted out," says the girl, shaking her head prophetically, 
 "and in truth I do not deem her so entirely fortunate. 
 For myself, I should wish my miseries, if they are to be, 
 to come early, so as to have them over before night de- 
 scended. Of your grace," glancing at Bouverie, with a 
 soft laugh, " pray that for me. The worst evil, to my 
 thinking, that could befall me would be to find myself in 
 my old age if, indeed, wnich may not be, that old age be 
 mine cut off from hop and gladness and content. Let 
 Borrow, if it is to be, come to me now, when I am young 
 and strong to bear." 
 
 "What are you saying, Dolores?" exclaims Miss Mat- 
 urin, rising suddenly from the tiny spindle-legged table 
 on which the tea-tray is set. " What have you to do 
 with sorrow, or pain, or death? Forget such things, and 
 think only of the sun, the flowers, and your friends the
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 81 
 
 linging-birds! Do not tempt fate to shower upon you iti 
 worst gifts." 
 
 " That hammock is badly slung. I am sure of it," 
 ays Bouverie lightly. " If Miss Lome is unlike herself 
 to-day I am of course " hesitating " too new an ac- 
 quaintance to mark a difference in her; but, if " 
 
 " Nay, say what you first intended," interrupts Miss 
 Maturin, giving one of her kindest smiles. " A friend I 
 hope you will be to us." 
 
 " A certainty leaves no room for hope," returns he 
 gracefully. 
 
 There is to him an irrepressible charm in the calm, slow 
 tone* and kindly glances of the elder woman a sense of 
 rest, too, and a knowledge of sure help in time of need iu 
 the quiet power of her dark handsome face. 
 
 " At what shrine did you learn your courtly phrases?" 
 asks Dolores, with a would-be scornful glance. All 
 clouds have vanished from her face; she is again the gay, 
 happy, debonair child of a moment since. 
 
 " You are a saucy baby!" says Miss Maturin lovingly. 
 " Do not heed her, Mr. Bouverie; but if you have still 
 half an hour or so to spare us, fill your pockets with those 
 biscuits there, and come with us to feed our swans." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OUT of the garish day into the cool sweet night, clad 
 with its myriad stars! The windows are all thrown wide, 
 and from within the sound of the plaintive fiddling creeps 
 through them to mingle with the many harmonies that 
 thrill the heart of nature in the dark depths of the sleep- 
 ing garden the rush of tumbling streams, the faint drop 
 of lazy fountains, the sad music of the distant flapping of 
 the waves on the lonely shore. Colored lamps are shed- 
 ding pale tints of red and yellow upon the limbs of the 
 gods and goddesses who are gleaming snow- white in tha 
 moonlight that riots in glade and bower and dell. 
 
 It is the evening of the nineteenth, and the rooms at 
 Kingmore are filled to overflowing, so are the staircases, 
 so are the flower-decked antechambers and the scented 
 conservatories. The Duchess, who is in an exceptionally 
 gracious mood and Quite on her het Behavior her eldest
 
 32 DICK'S SWEETHEABT. 
 
 girl having consented to throw away her yonth upon a 
 modern if moldy Croesus has arrived early, and is now 
 making herself charming to every one she knows; and in- 
 deed without meaning it, to many she does not, her 
 glasses being but a snare to her, and her memory for her 
 country acquaintance but short. 
 
 She is dressed in a mustard-colored gown and a most 
 remarkable but doubtless " distinctly precious" head- 
 gear of daffodils, the originals of which assuredly never 
 grew on earth. She is a huge woman, with a not un~ 
 pleasing face, and quite casts Lady Bouverie, beside 
 whom she is standing, into the shadt by right of her 
 superior proportions. 
 
 " I can't bear those divided skirts!" she is saying, with 
 great acrimony, directing a severe gaze at a distant corner 
 of the room where a young woman who has found herself 
 unexpectedly alone in her "short division" is wishing 
 herself dead. " The princess is specially hard upon them. 
 But see there" waving her fan toward the doorway 
 " who is that just entering? A charming face charm- 
 ing!" 
 
 The owner of the charming face, advancing somewhat 
 haughtily up the room, murmurs a cold word or two to 
 Lady Bouverie and then moves on. 
 
 "What grace what finish!" says the Duchess admir- 
 ingly, whose own daughters have a fatal tendency toward 
 hoydenism. " She is " 
 
 " My niece," says Lady Bouverie coldly " Audrey 
 Ponsonby. You knew her father my brother I think; 
 but you are so seldom at home that Tdare say you never 
 saw her before." 
 
 "Well, I think not. I shouldn't have forgotten her if 
 I had," remarks the Duchess pleasantly. " You are fort- 
 unate in possessing so desirable a niece; she must be like 
 a daughter to you." 
 
 "I am quite content with my sons. ^ have no desire 
 for a daughter; and in no case should I covet Audrey," 
 replies Lady Bouverie stiffly. 
 
 "Ah" her Grace nods slowly "I have often heard 
 that hazel-eyed people are never very comfortable! But 
 he has a face that would do for Kate Hardcastle very 
 nicely, 01 sven for Lvdia
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEAET. 33 
 
 She falls a-musing after this curious speech, and follows 
 Audrey's departing figure with thoughtful eyes. 
 
 " I fear indeed she is more stagey than dignified," says 
 Lady Bouverie, with a subdued sneer. 
 
 To her the girl is utterly distasteful. There is a certain 
 display of insolence in the very droop of Audrey's lashei, 
 an unexpressed yet open determination to revolt at any 
 moment against the would-be authority of her aunt that 
 is known to Lady Bouverie, and galls her at times more 
 than she would care to acknowledge even to herself. 
 An indomitable will matched against another more in- 
 domitable still breeds ill-will ; and Lady Bouverie, 
 accustomed to carry all before her on her own ground, 
 takes it badly that this motherless child of a girl as 
 poor as she is fractious should decline to lay down her 
 arms before her. Her poverty is in itself a crime, be- 
 cause it is a poverty that rubs itself persistently against 
 Lady Bouverie and claims kinship with her. Unkind 
 fortune made this girl's father her brother; and to have 
 almost at one's gates a brother compelled to educate boys 
 and young men as a means toward gaining his daily bread 
 is as a thorn in the flesh of her whom chance has raised 
 beyond such sordid considerations as the possible non- 
 payment of one's butcher or baker, or the consequences to 
 follow on the spending of a shilling more or less. 
 
 Had Providence so ordered it that Mr. Ponsonby's lines 
 had been laid in places far remote from Deadmarsh, Lady 
 Bouverie would have felt devoutly grateful; but Provid- 
 ence so far had forgotten to humor her prejudices, and 
 Mr. Ponsonby ground Greek and Latin and conic sections 
 into the ears of his pupils within a mile or so of the sacred 
 precints of Kingmore. 
 
 Lady Bouverie would gladly have forgotten all thos 
 early beggarly days when she too had struggled with an 
 insufficient income, and had to think many times befort 
 permitting herself the extravagance of a new gown. Those 
 were days in which Sir George then only Mr. Bouverie 
 and a second son, and by no means weighed down with 
 wealth had been considered as a blessed chance of escape 
 from the petty worries of a straitened household; but now 
 well, now she is Lady Bouverie by a fortuitous acci- 
 dent, and even to be reminded of that moneyless unpleas- 
 ant past is hateful to her. She had, by her own exertions
 
 34 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 and the aid of Sir George to his everlasting regret, be it 
 said raised herself from her depressing surroundings to 
 a very much higher estate; and now to be reminded of 
 them daily by this insolent girl and her gentle but scarce- 
 ly less aggravating father is bitter indeed to the ambi- 
 tious woman. With eyes askance, she has gone through 
 life glancing at Audrey, the girl's independent ways and 
 .scornful determination to reject all patronage having an- 
 gered the older woman past forgiveness. Indeed Audrey's 
 dislike to her aunt has spread as far as her aunt's sons; 
 and, though to Bruno she grants a half-hearted friend- 
 ship, she is in spirit unjust to Dick. Between her and 
 him there is ever a smoldering feud lively to burst into 
 flame at any moment. 
 
 Thus unsupported by those who should be her natural 
 protectors, Audrey's strange repellent ways have gained 
 her few friends in the neighborhood. Life in Deadmarsh 
 as this part of the country is called is not easy to the 
 pretty, or to those imbued with that lightest art of nat- 
 ure named coquetry. One must hardly dare here to enjoy 
 one's self without reserve. Laughter must be subdued, 
 originality of speech or thought suppressed, marked action 
 eschewed. To be good is to be decorously dull; there 
 must be no consenting to idle admiration from the oppo- 
 site sex no flaunting of obnoxious fact that this one 
 can command attention where other people's daughters 
 can not. 
 
 Miss Ponsonby, now and then preferring a pathway of 
 her own, is regarded with great disfavor by her neighbors; 
 and indeed it can not be said that she has in any way 
 sought to propitiate their ill-will, certain caustic words of 
 hers that have been bandied from mouth to mouth having 
 scarcely tended to enhance her popularity. There was, 
 for instance, that saucily veiled hint about Mr. Drum- 
 mond's father, who had undoubtedly had a good deal to 
 do with sugar. " Sweets to the sweet," said Audrey to 
 Mrs. Drummond's bosom-friend the vicar's wife, speaking 
 directly of Mrs. Drummond, with a broader word or two 
 still here and there that left no doubt on the hearer's 
 mind that sugar was the "sweet" more particularly 
 meant. The vicar's wife, Mrs. Dovedale, being of a com- 
 municative turn of mind, and herself of unexceptionable 
 birth her father a fourth baronet had, with much uno-
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 35 
 
 tion ant. upraising of brows and the greatest delicacy and 
 hesitation, retailed to her friend all that Audrey had said, 
 and a little more; whereon dire hatred for Audrey had 
 sprung to life in Mrs. Drummond's breast. 
 
 More especially to the matrons, mothers of unmarriage- 
 able girls, is Audrey a bete noire mothers of ugly girls, 
 silent girls, silly girls, who line the walls in pathetic 
 loneliness whilst she dances, or sit in hopeless isolation 
 over dull albums, after dull dinners, watching Audrey 
 with sullen envy where, in some distant part of the room, 
 she is commanding the homage of half a dozen men, each 
 one of whom would think himself doubly fortunate if, by 
 that indescribable movement of the hand which pretty 
 women know, she should draw her skirts aside and grant 
 him the uncomfortable edge of the ottoman on which she 
 may be seated. For those great lambent, hazel eyes, half 
 insolent, half satiric, have a power to charm the ungentler 
 sex that lesser, milder beauties lack. 
 
 "Is there any hope that I may get a dance from you 
 to-night?" asks Mr. Vyner, emerging from a curtained 
 recess as Audrey passes by on the arm of a young and gal- 
 lant Plunger. 
 
 For an instant she hesitates; then she says, slowly: 
 
 " You can have the next," a half tone of unwillingness 
 in the sweet petulance of her voice. 
 
 "The next is a quadrille. Do you call that a dance?" 
 
 "No? Better not have it, then." 
 
 "Half a loaf," suggests he, cheerfully. "Yes, I will 
 have it, though I must consider it the shabbiest bit of 
 dough. Hark to the opening bars! Let us fly from 
 them." 
 
 She lays her hand mechanically upon his arm, lets a 
 stray indifferent smile wander toward the obliterated 
 Plunger, and finally finds herself in a cool retreat on a 
 velvet lounge, with Mr. Vyner beside her. 
 
 " You were early to-night," he says, as an introductory 
 opening to the coming tUe-ci-tete. 
 
 "1 meant to be late," she returns absently; "but Sir 
 Chicksy was dreadfully in earnest. He is young, you see. 
 A dance is still something to him." 
 
 "A dance with you, I dare say." 
 
 "Then dad was fidgety, too. He is always in such
 
 36 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 excellent time himself " with a short laugh "that ha 
 naturally likes to see others up to the mark as well." 
 
 "Have I lived to hear you sneer at ' dad '?" asks Vyner, 
 with an assumption of tragic astonishment. 
 
 A moment later he is sorry for his words. The girl 
 flushes a painful crimson, and for an instant the proud 
 lips quiver. 
 
 " Sneer at dad!" she cries, with angry haste. " What 
 do you mean?" 
 
 " I beg your pardon," says Vyner. 
 
 "Never say that to me again!" exclaims she, with a 
 flash from her handsome eyes. " Do you hear? You are 
 the last who should say it or think it." Then her sud- 
 den grief or passion, whichever it is, dies away, and her 
 face grows even paler than before. " How charming 
 Mrs. Wemyss is looking to-night!" she says, with such 
 calm every-day carelessness as startles him after her late 
 burst of vehemence. 
 
 " That might be said of half a dozen people of you, 
 for example; it is no great thing to say." 
 
 " Her costume at least is beyond reproach." 
 
 "Is it? A little pronounced, perhaps; but of course 
 widows can allow themselves a good deal of license. For 
 my own part, I prefer yours." 
 
 "Mine!" She glances down at her dress and smiles 
 contemptuously. " Why, this gown is an heirloom!" she 
 says, with a faintly bitter smile. " All the county knows 
 it by this time. No " quickly, as though fearing or 
 guessing some thought of his " dad would give me an- 
 other twenty others if he could; but he can't, simply. 
 We are savages, he and I; we live upon the boys, and 
 even they scarcely suffice us. I don't know why I tell 
 you all this; you knew it so well before you should, 
 having been a boy of dad's yourself once." 
 
 "And a very grateful boy, too, for a few other things 
 besides the fact that I have escaped from your cannibal 
 clutches whole and entire. But why abuse your personal 
 appearance? I see no one in the room to-night who looks 
 better dressed than you do." 
 
 " What a pity it is that, to be agreeable, one must so 
 often be a liar!" gays Miss Ponsonby, slowly flicking her 
 fan to and fro.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 37 
 
 " What a dear little speech!" returns Vyner; and then 
 he laughs. 
 
 The water of a small fountain somewhere behind them 
 is dropping musically into its basin; a cool wind is rush- 
 ing through an open window. Miss Ponsonby, still idling 
 prettily with her fan, no doubt appreciates to the full 
 the enjoyment of the moment, because no words fall from 
 her to break its spell. 
 
 " You have carried me back somehow to the old days," 
 says Vyner, presently. "Just now it seems to me that I 
 can see you again as you used to be when quite a little 
 girl, with long soft hair almost down to your toes, and 
 eyes a great deal too large for your face." 
 
 "What a fetching picture!" 
 
 " It was very one seldom sees anything like it now. 
 But, though you were pretty, I don't think you were quite 
 a nice little girl." 
 
 "No: I know I wasn't to you. How I hate those 
 quadrilles from ' Madame Angot! Don't you?" 
 
 "You used to tyrannize over me abominably." 
 
 " That need not trouble you, seeing I can not tyrannize 
 over you now." 
 
 " ft is not poetical justice, however. To have things 
 properly balanced, I should be able to tyrannize over you 
 by this time." 
 
 " * Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere,' w 
 quotes she, with a cold smile. 
 
 " You are still a tyrant, then?" 
 
 " At least I would not submit." 
 
 "Do you remember that day in the orchard," asks Vy- 
 ner, presently, with a laugh of irrepressible enjoyment, 
 " when I was supposed to be doing Euclid, but was in re- 
 ality stealing apples for you, and ' dad ' came in and 
 caught us? and By Jove, how long ago It all seems 
 now!" 
 
 " So long that it has entirely slipped from my mem- 
 ory. There were so many boys off and on, and so many 
 of them stole apples for me." 
 
 " Well, they were pleasant days enough, even though 
 you decline to grant them the small courtesy of a passing 
 remembrance. We were very good friends then, you and 
 I. Do you know" glancing deliberately at her "I 
 think I used to b* *" With jou then?"
 
 38 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 "I'm very thankful the folly did not grow beyond the 
 'then,'" says Miss Ponsonby, raising her lids languidly 
 and gazing at him with a full insolent look. 
 
 " So am I for some reasons. It would hardly hava 
 suited either of us, would it?" 
 
 " It would not have suited me, certainly." 
 
 "Not now; then, at least, you tolerated me. It is ab- 
 surd, almost presumptuous to remember it. But do you 
 know in those by-gone days," says Vyner lightly, " I used 
 to call you my 'little wife ' ? Happy Arcadian days, but 
 very absurd eh?" 
 
 "Very." Miss Ponsonby, with a fatigued air and an 
 impatient gesture, shuts up her fan and frowns slightly. 
 " How uninteresting you can be at times!" she says. 
 " If, as a boy, you were as dull in your tete a fetes as you 
 now are. no wonder I treated you with scorn!" 
 
 "Well, but that's just it, you see; I don't think you 
 did scorn me," says Mr. Vyner mildly. 
 
 At this moment, through the open doorway that leads 
 into the dancing-room, one can see Sir Chicksy Chaucer 
 perambulating aimlessly about. 
 
 "I don't think I ever saw Chaucer in evening-clothes 
 before," remarks Vyner thoughtfully, seeing she will take 
 no notice of his last speech. " How exceedingly er un- 
 comfortable he looks! They shine, but he doesn't; they 
 are new, I suppose." 
 
 " And he isn't! You pay him a very great compli- 
 ment; yet six months should make one quite a dear old 
 friend down here, when one is a baronet, unmarried, and 
 with unlimited means." 
 
 "You see he has kept himself so exceedingly dark for 
 those six months," remonstrates Mr. Vyner. " We have 
 carcely been allowed to see him; now that he has con- 
 descended to emerge into the fuller glare and in his best 
 clothes too we all bow down before him and acknowledge 
 the effect maddening!" 
 
 "I wonder why you dislike him so?" questioned Miss 
 Ponsonby, with a furious smile. 
 
 " Far be it from me to dislike such a bright and shining 
 light as he promises his guardian to be," says Mr. 
 Vyner genially. " His name alone should pull him 
 through it is a miracle of art. Is there its rival, 1 
 wonder P ShakesaejUM lias vyoakly hinted that there is
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 39 
 
 nothing in a name; but he had never heard of Sir 
 Chicksey's. Surely there is much in it! Some name*, 
 we are told, ' mock destruction; they survive the doom of 
 all creation.' Of such is your friend's; indeed I think, 
 if the poet said it Clicked all creation,' he would have 
 been even nearer the mark." 
 
 " ' Much wit hath commonly much froth, and 'tis hard 
 to jest and not jeer too,'" quotes Audrey demurely. 
 "And even Sir Chicksy has his uses. See now what a 
 fund of amusement he is to you! How could you exist 
 without such a one upon whom to strike the brilliant 
 matches of pure genius that emanate from you so fre- 
 quently?" 
 
 " You cover me with confusion," says Mr. Vyner; but 
 he does not look confused. " I should not dare to find 
 amusement in a Chaucer! And besides, you know, I 
 honestly regard Sir Chicksy as a very nice ladylike young 
 man." 
 
 "I know at least you have always a pretty tongue!" 
 returns Miss Ponsonby, with a pale smile and an angry 
 flash from her beautiful eyes. 
 
 " I wonder what he is looking for?" says Vyner pres- 
 ently, as Sir Chicksy again passes the doorway, apparently 
 in ea#er search for something. "Is it for you?" 
 
 "Very likely." 
 
 "I think he will go mad if left much longer in the 
 dark as to your whereabouts. Are you without mercy? 
 Did you note the expression on his face as he passed just 
 now?" 
 
 "Did he pass just now?" 
 
 "Well, you could hardly call it a passing it was a 
 flight." 
 
 " He will the sooner get to where he is going, then. 
 And why should he go mad?" 
 
 " Too much learning! You know what a brain he has! 
 Won't you let him see where you are, and so ease the 
 strain a little?" 
 
 " If you want to go go!" says Miss Ponsonby abruptly. 
 "As for me I shall do very well here. That Sir Chicksy 
 should be looking for me does not concern me." 
 
 "Your cruelty is barbaric." 
 
 " Is it a necessity for you to make silly speeches?" aski 
 the girl, with such profound contempt as to waken som
 
 40 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 faint amusement in the breast of her companion. " I 
 am not cruel. I simply make it a rule to be happy when 
 possible, at all costs to others." 
 
 There is something reckless and defiant in her tone as 
 she turns her eyes to his. 
 
 "A. very sensible sentiment!" returns he blandly; yet 
 there is a note in his voice hardly to be desired. It 
 touches her. 
 
 " Why phould I consider others?" she asks sharply, 
 noting and resenting it. " Do they consider me? Do the 
 silly fools round here who cull themselves ' society' regard 
 me with even scanty favor? They turn aside from me 
 because they have the money that I laok and I the pedi- 
 gree that they lack. They can't forgive me that last." 
 
 "I think you might be content with it." 
 
 " As long as I know poverty, I shall never know con- 
 tent," returns she, in a low voice. " But still that is not 
 it; it is their settled dislike to me, the drawing away of 
 their skirts, as it were, that angers me. They shake 
 their heads and revile me, only because I have a lover or 
 two more than their girls, and because because well " 
 with a frown "because once or twice a recreant knight 
 has deserted their ranks for mine! Do you know what 
 that yellow-haired girl of Mrs. Drummond's called me 
 the other day? 'The recruiting-sergeant,' and all be- 
 cause of Mr. Allonby!" She pales visibly, and tears of 
 passionate mortification rise to her large eyes. " I never 
 spoke to that man twice," she says, "so it wasn't my 
 fault; and, whether or no, he wasn't good enough. But 
 I suppose her hair was too much for him ! They accuse 
 me of making their lovers false. PahS" cries she, with a 
 shrug and a bitter wild little laugh. " I dare say I am 
 not good for much myself; but I'm good for that, any 
 way!" 
 
 "A proud boast!" says Vyner, carelessly. 
 
 "Ah! I have no doubt you side with them," she re- 
 joins, biting her lip; "one goes with the stream because 
 it is least trouble. I don't know why I talk to you like 
 this, unless it is that I must say it to somebody." 
 
 " Thank you," says Vyner. 
 
 "They dare to be uncivil to me because dad takes 
 pupila I detest that sort of person."
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 41 
 
 "If so, I wonder that you care so much what 'that 
 ort of person ' may or may not say of you." 
 
 " That would be the correct feeling, of course, but I 
 have no correct feelings, I think at all events, I do care. 
 Oh, to be rich for once enormously so, I mean to see 
 them all cringe and fawn to me as they do to others, and 
 then spurn them!" 
 
 " To be rich if that is your highest ambition is surely 
 within your reach. Remember " airily " your face. 
 That is a fortune in itself." 
 
 " A poor one!" 
 
 " A rare one." 
 
 " I would gladly exchange it for a better," she says dis- 
 contedly. " It brings me in but poor returns." 
 
 " Utilize it then!" counsels Vyner, turning to her with 
 cold deliberation, and gazing straight into the beautiful 
 dissatisfied face beside him. " If, as you say, money is 
 your idol, gain it at aill hazards. Compel your face to do 
 you service." 
 
 "But how?" asks she, half frowning; her tone is de- 
 fiant, and, as though daring him to answer her question, 
 she raises her eyes resolutely to his. 
 
 " Try Sir Chicksy," replies he slowly, with an involun- 
 tary curl of the lip. 
 
 Across the girl's face passes an expression that would 
 have startled him had he seen it. But, as the insult 
 leaves his lips, he withdraws his gaze, and is now looking 
 steadily at the door beyond. Her lids have half closed, 
 her color has faded to an ashen gray, there is something 
 that is almost murderous within the shadow that has 
 fallen on her great gleaming eyes. 
 
 Sir Chicksy, his boyish foolish face flushed with anxiety, 
 at this instant comes toward her with a fatuous srnile. 
 
 " I I've been all over the place looking for you," lie 
 ays; " and now " growing melancholy "our waltz is 
 almost over." 
 
 " You shall have another one to make up loi it," re- 
 turns she, with such unwonted gentleness that the silly 
 lad's heart beats heavily against his breast. " And the 
 next time I must tell you where to find me, so that there 
 need be no disappointment for either of us." 
 
 She smiles, lays her_kiind ujgott, his arm, and moves
 
 42 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 without a backward glance. When she is gone, Vyner 
 rises too, and stretches his arms over his head lazily. 
 
 ' Well, I was a beast," he says emphatically; " but 
 she deserved it! " 
 
 The final bars of the last waltz have died away into a 
 sobbing silence. The greater charms of cool conserva- 
 tories and empty corridors have weeded out the ball-room 
 so considerably that now one can see without trouble wh 
 is and who is not present. 
 
 Dick Bouverie, moving here and there among the 
 crowd, but chiefly on the staircases and in the halls, for 
 reasons best known to himself, at last catches sight of a 
 little fragile figure that sets his heart beating, standing in 
 a distant corner talking to Bruno. 
 
 It is Dolores. For a long time he has sought her, and 
 now all at once she is there, standing out from all the 
 others, a thing apart, as it seerns to him, smiling, radi- 
 ant. She is clad in a creamy Indian silk, soft and cling- 
 ing, with no sleeves to hide her perfect arms, and great 
 high puffings on her shoulders. So clear is her pure skin 
 that scarce one may say where the gown ends and her fair 
 self begins. Every word and gesture are rounded with 
 soft grace, each glance is full of infinite variety. 
 
 She is talking gayly to Bruno, with parted lips and 
 shining, happy eyes upraised to his. Then, in a moment, 
 she sees Dick, and she wavers in her speech to Bruno, and 
 the glad eyes send to the elder brother a smile of quick 
 welcome. 
 
 Battling his way to her through the crowd of matrons, 
 men, and virgins that separates them, Dick comes up to 
 her presently, breathless but victorious. 
 
 " Why, when did you come ? " he asks, eagerly. " How 
 late you are ! " 
 
 He has quite forgotten to say, " How d'ye do, Miss 
 Lome ?" or anything of that sort. 
 
 " It is quite a long time now since we came, isn't it ?" 
 says Dolores, appealing to Bruno. "Half an hour at 
 least ! Late ? Oh, yes, we were late ! Auntie and 1 
 always are, I think." 
 
 "How could I have missed you all this time? "says 
 Dick, almost indignantly. "1 have been searching for 
 you up hill and down dale for an hour or more it seems 
 like a week or more, li the truth be told."
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEAET. 43 
 
 She glances at him quickly, and a little odd expression 
 crosses her face. She opens her lips impulsively, as if to say 
 8omething,and then repents herself apparently of her inten- 
 tion, for she closes them again without saying anything. 
 But she breaks instead into a faint, low, irrepressible 
 laugh. 
 
 " What is it ?" asks Dick, who can not take his eyes off 
 her face, and has therefore marked her hesitation. 
 
 "Nothing," returns she demurely. 
 
 "Miss Lome wants to tell you, says Bruno mildly, 
 " that to call a search for her up-hill work is rude." 
 
 "Oh, no no, indeed!" contradicts Miss Lome, 
 shocked, flushing warmly to the very roots of her short 
 Bunny hair. "That was not it at ail ! It was only I 
 merely wanted to say that " 
 
 She grows hopelessly confused, and her eyes seek the 
 ground. 
 
 " What ?" asks Dick again gently. 
 
 " Never mind. Ask me some other time," murmurs 
 she, with an almost childish appeal to him not to press the 
 subject. 
 
 " Well," he says quickly, " I hope your card is not full 
 yet, though I am so late in finding you. I dare say" 
 laughing " if I had not sought you so diligently, I should 
 have found you long ago. What dance may I have ?" 
 he has taken her programme from her. 
 
 " Not this," she says " I am engaged to your brother 
 for this but the next, if you will." 
 
 " And the ninth and the fifteenth ?" anxiously. 
 
 She looks undecided. 
 
 "Oh, you will!" pathetically. "They are the only 
 dances vacant. And remember what ill-luck I had in not 
 being able to plead my cause with you at first !" 
 
 His manner was growing positively servile. 
 
 "Don't cry, Dick," entreats Bruno; whereupon they 
 all laugh a little. 
 
 "Miss Lome, if you are going to be unkind to me 
 in this matter, you will have much to answer for," says 
 Dick, persistently. "You would not knowingly consign 
 me to an early grave, would you ?" 
 
 " Don't mind him, Miss Lome," says Bruno. " He is 
 quite too tough for that sort of thing. Yon take my 
 word for it that the grave won't see him for years to come.
 
 44 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 If you put faith in Dick's promises to die, you vr'\\\ be 
 disappointed." 
 
 " Alas, Mr. Bouverie, that your word should be so un- 
 reliable!" says she mischievously. " You do protest too 
 much, it seemeth me. Fewer words and truer would be 
 better. Have you forgotten 'in muche speeche shine' 
 wanteth not'?" 
 
 " Well, punish me if you will," says Bouverie; " though 
 ,1 deny my guilt. But understand, at all events, that, if 
 you refuse me those two dances, you leave me with noth- 
 ing to do all night. Think then of the mischief my idle 
 hands are sure to commit!" 
 
 "Nothing to do? Go and dance with all the others." 
 
 "There are no others." 
 
 " No woman in the room but me?" 
 
 "Not one!" 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Bouverie! It was true then what your 
 brother hinted about about your veracity?" 
 
 " 1 maintain," says Bouverie stoutly, but in a low tone, 
 " that for me there is no woman in these rooms to-night 
 save and except yourself." 
 
 A little smile gathers about her lips. She casts a swift 
 glance at him, and then looks down. Bruno is talking 
 in an interested fashion to some one near them, so that 
 virtually they are alone. 
 
 " You shall have your dances," she murmurs softly, 
 with an adorable blush. 
 
 "To thank you is impossible!" says Bouverie. 
 
 " Now, Dick, do go away!" exclaims Bruno, returning 
 to his charge. "I never saw such a fellow to talk as you 
 are, and Miss Lome and I want to finish our waltz and 
 our conversation, though we have almost forgotten what 
 it was about now. Is my partner the only one in the 
 room that will satisfy you?" 
 
 "It seems so," says Dick, with a quick glance at Do- 
 lores; then he bows slightly, and moves away with a half- 
 formed intention of bribing the musicians to cut short the 
 waltz now playing. 
 
 " What a beautiful old house this seems to be!*' says 
 Dolores, when he was gone, gazing round her. " Is that 
 the picture gallery down there?" 
 
 "Yes. Would jou like to see it by. lamp-light? It is
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 45 
 
 ratner worth looking at when it is lighted as it is at pres- 
 ent." 
 
 They go slowly toward it, guided by the clear light that 
 streams from its many lamps within and makes quite a 
 little pathway of yellow glare all along the shining oaken 
 floor. 
 
 " We've been here, you know, for centuries/' says 
 Bruno, as they move leisurely down the almost deserted 
 gallery " that is not exactly Dick or me, you know, but 
 our people; and there is really nothing in the way of ras- 
 cality we haven't done. We are old enough and disreput- 
 able enough for anything. There that cavalier over 
 there with the villainous squint was hanged for piracy on 
 the high seas; and the one beside him was beheaded for 
 murder in some forgotten reign; and the little innocent 
 simpering thing just behind you poisoned her own hus- 
 band because she wanted to marry some other woman's 
 husband. We have been assassins and swindlers for a 
 sufficient length of time to enable us to call ourselves 
 eminently respectable." 
 
 " I don't think we have any shameful story in our fami- 
 ly," says Dolores, pondering regretfully. 
 
 " Then take my word for it, you are not half so worthy 
 of regard as we are," says Bruno, laughing. " Look at 
 that old colonel over there! Isn't he like Dick? He is 
 his great-grand-uncle, I think, or something of that sort." 
 
 " He is like him certainly." 
 
 " Dick's a good sort, isn't he?" says Bruno, suddenly, 
 turning to look at her. 
 
 " A very good sort, I should say," she replies, smiling. 
 
 "You should not force Miss Lome's hand," murmurs 
 Dick's voice behind them. He looks down at Dolores 
 with an amused glance. " Do listeners hear bad of them- 
 selves? I don't believe it," he says. "This is our dance, 
 Miss Lome, I am glad to know." 
 
 "So soon!" exclaims Bruno. " Well, that was the 
 shortest waltz lever heard them play!" 
 
 'It really was, I think," returns Dick, with an inno- 
 cently thoughtful air. 
 
 Then Dolores lays her hand upon his arm, and goes 
 down the handsome gallery and into the ball-room with 
 him. As she does so, Sir George Bouverie, who has
 
 46 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 draggeu nhu*elf away from hie books to " do the civil " to 
 his cousin, the Duchess, exclaims excitedly; 
 
 " There now who is that with Dick eh, eh? Who is 
 it eh?" 
 
 " A most sweet face indeed!" says the Duchess earnestly. 
 
 "That is Miss Lome the latest acquisition to our 
 society here," answers Lady Bouverie, quite pleasantly 
 for her. 
 
 "A very pretty one," puts in her Grace. 
 
 " Because so freeh; a year will spoil her," declares 
 Lady Bouverie, in her insolent fashion. 
 
 " Meantime I admit she is charming. You remember 
 old Mr. Maturin of Greylands? She is his grand-niece, 
 and an heiress." 
 
 "Is it much?" asked the Duchess. 
 
 " She will inherit Greylands, we hear, and a consider- 
 able property in the North, and all her aunt Miss Maturing 
 money, which amounts to a good sum." 
 
 " A desirable wife for some one," remarks her Grace, 
 smiling; "and what a face and figure for an Ophelia or 
 a " She pauses, as though lost in thought. 
 
 " I hope she will suit Richard," says Lady Bouverie, in 
 her cold measured tones. " He seems very attentive to 
 her. It is the one sensible move I have ever known him 
 make. Her fortune would be of use to him." 
 
 " He will certainly be open to congratulations if he 
 gains her," observes the Duchess, who was a handsome 
 woman in her time, and has still a weakness for beauty. 
 
 " So will she, if she gains him,'' returns Lady Bouverie, 
 with some hauteur, to whom even a Duchess in her own 
 opinion is not a superior. But her Grace, lost in 
 abtruse calculations about a projected theatrical enter- 
 tainment to be given at the Castle to propitiate her 
 engaged girl, does not hear her. Here, in this benighted 
 village, where hope seems hopeless, she has seen two faces 
 full of life and happy possibilities; and, even as she thinks 
 this, she sees the third. 
 
 " Who is that pretty creature over there with er yes, 
 it is your younger son," she says eagerly "a small 
 woman in a queer gown, but with a face full of life, 
 vigor " 
 
 " That is Mrs. Wemyss," answers Lady Bouverie, dis- 
 approbation in her tones. " She is a widow, though
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 47 
 
 not * one indeed' a very frivolous person, and much 
 wanting in respect for her elders. 'Fast Ms, I think, 
 the obnoxious modern word that would best describe 
 her." 
 
 " A very speaking face. What an excellent ' Constantia 
 Neville' she would make!" says the duchess dreamily. 
 " Is she er anybody? Nowadays education and dress 
 so unite the classes that really one doesn't know to whom 
 one is speaking, and one woman looks quite as well as 
 another; though, after all, why should it not be so?" 
 winds up her Grace, who is a large, soft, liberal-minded 
 fraction of humanity. 
 
 "She married the Honorable George Wemyss, and her 
 father was Lord Brandrum," explains Lady Bouverie 
 tersely. 
 
 "Bless me! Is that poor Michael Brandrum's daugh- 
 ter?" says the Duchess, for once forgetting stage effects. 
 "I should have known the eyes. What a ' Lady Teazle' 
 she could be. You must present her to me and your 
 niece and that pretty child, Miss Lome, as well. By the 
 bye, your son seems interested in Mrs. Wemyss." 
 
 "I think your Grace is at fault there," returns Lady 
 Bouverie coldly. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 '* LOOK at those lamps in the garden beyond; how 
 lovely they are! See " leaning eagerly forward " there 
 are people walking up and down! Oh, why shouldn't we 
 go there too?" 
 
 Their waltz has come to an end, and they Dolores and 
 Bouverie are standing on the balcony, from which the 
 distant, scented, lighted gardens can be seen. 
 
 "Why not, indeed?" says Dick. "But first I must 
 get something to wrap round you " looking vaguely 
 about him, east and west. 
 
 " No, no; I hate being muffled up, and the night is BO 
 warm that I can want nothing." 
 
 "Still, even pretense is necessary, as I promised your 
 aunt most faithfully to take great care of you. And see 
 some providence has supplied me with the means! Let 
 me cover your neck wilu this." " This " is a white silken.
 
 48 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 Indian shawl, with long trailing fringes, which is lying 
 on a couch hard by. 
 
 "Che sard,, sard," pays Dolores, bending her neck to 
 the yoke. 
 
 "Now you are like a naiad, a river-nymph," sayg 
 Bouverie, gazing at her with tender admiration when he 
 has wound the shawl round her little form; " and those 
 fringes they are the dropping water." 
 
 " What a fanciful thought!" returns she, with dainty 
 ecorn, though, in truth, she is right well pleased with the 
 compliment. "And the owner of this shawl " doubt- 
 fully " what shall be said to her?'' 
 
 "To avoid the saying of anything, let us make our es- 
 cape while it is yet possible," says Bouverie, taking her 
 hand and leading her toward the steps that will bring her 
 to the perfumed gardens. 
 
 As they go down these steps, some old thought occurs 
 to him. 
 
 " Why is your aunt so careful of you?" he asks slowly. 
 
 " Because my mother was delicate," says the girl, paus- 
 ing and looking at him with regretful eyes. " She died 
 very young, you see. But " the regret vanishing, and a 
 saucy smile taking its place " I think the principal rea- 
 son is that auntie would be quite miserable unless she 
 were making a fuss about me." She pauses here, plucks 
 a little bit of ivy from the wall, and then says shyly but 
 anxiously, " You like auntie?" 
 
 " I could hardly say how much," returns the young 
 man, with such simple heartiness as to convince her of 
 his truth. 
 
 There is an increased sweetness in her face as she turns 
 it to him. 
 
 "lam glad of that," she says, "because" naively 
 "I want to like you, and I could not if you and Lallie 
 were not friends." "Lallie "is her pet name for Miss 
 Maturiu. 
 
 " Well, now you may like me as much as ever you will 
 with a pure heart," returns Bouverie, laughing. 
 
 As he says this, it occurs to him that it is a very pure 
 heart indeed that is looking at him out of those lovely eyes, 
 
 " Eyes of deep soft lucent hue, 
 Eyes too expressive to be blue, 
 Too lovely to be gray."
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 49 
 
 And yet they are gray too, but dark and tender and 
 loving. 
 
 They have descended the steps, have passed the ivied 
 wall of the house, and have now entered the garden's en- 
 chanted grounds, where " low and long the shadows 
 creep" over great patches of silvery moonshine to lose 
 themselves in quaint small beds filled full with lily flower* 
 arow. 
 
 " The moon came down the shining stair 
 
 Of clouds that fleck the summer sky. 
 She kissed thee, saying, ' Child be fair, 
 
 And madden men's hearts, even as I. 
 Thou shalt love all things strange and sweet.' " 
 
 Looking at the pale slender little maiden walking beside 
 him, these words involuntarily come to Bouverie's mind. 
 But silence, born of the beauty of the scene around, has 
 fallen upon them both, and mute as the sleeping nature 
 upon which they gaze, they go through the mists of the 
 night. Then some little movement, some catching of her 
 gown by an enormous rose-bush, kills their silence, and, 
 as though not an instant has flown since his last speech, 
 he says slowly 
 
 " Do you like me?" 
 
 "You know it," replies she very kindly, and without 
 hesitation or confusion of any kind. " See here" stop- 
 ping to lay her fingers lightly on his arm " I will tell 
 you something! I like you better than anybody I have 
 met since I came here." 
 
 A sudden and eager desire to kiss the dainty fingers of 
 this dainty speaker is at this moment conscientiously and 
 valorously overcome by Bouverie." 
 
 "What? Better than Bruno?" he asks, with an affec- 
 tation of lightness, but with real concern. 
 
 "Pouf yes!" exclaims she, with a dainty foreign gest- 
 ure and the prettiest shrug of her shoulders. 
 
 " Yet Bruno is more calculated to please a little light- 
 hearted girl like you than I am a dull fellow like me." 
 
 " Are you dull?" asks Dolores, raising her dark brows. 
 
 " Base flatterer!" says Bouverie, with a sudden pleased 
 laugh. " Yes, I am very dull, as you will in time dis- 
 cover." 
 
 "Ah, well, then" with a quaint sweet glance "I 
 know that dull people^ congenial to me! Yet I do no*
 
 50 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 know" archly " that your last little speech altogether 
 pleases me. * Birds of a feather,' say they, ' flock to- 
 gether.' If your company suits me, that proves me dull, 
 too; your suggestion is not over-polite; is it?" 
 
 "There is another proverb," says he, "about 'ex- 
 tremes meeting/' That should explain my seeming rude- 
 ness; and indeed to be rude to you even in thought would 
 require more courage than I possess Who else in 
 this benighted spot has found favor in your sight? You 
 see, I am only too glad to believe your statement that I 
 have at least a small place in your regard." 
 
 " Many people; but your Cousin Audrey of all my 
 women-acquaintances, I like her best." 
 
 "You will find yourself alone in that fancy, I think," 
 says Dick, who does not get on with Miss Ponsonby. 
 
 "No. Auntie likes her too, and and there are 
 others." 
 
 "Sir Chicksy, for example" with an irrepressible 
 laugh that is suggestive of mockery. 
 
 " He is very kind-hearted," says Dolores, with a touch 
 of reproof. 
 
 " I dare say. I wonder if Audrey means marrying 
 him?" 
 
 "Oh, no, no!" hastily. 
 
 " Why that emphatic ' no'? She might do worse." 
 " She might do much better. And why marry him if 
 she does not love him?" 
 
 " To marry without love is that a crime?" 
 "I think so." 
 
 " It is committed daily then by very estimable people." 
 " Poor things," says Miss Lome, with a gentle sigh. 
 She seems so in earnest in this speech, to feel so deeply 
 the importance of her subject, that Bouverie's eyes seek 
 hers with a swift and rather distasteful curiosity. 
 
 " What do you know of love?" he asks, with subdued 
 sharpness. 
 
 "Why, nothing!" returns she slowly. 
 They have passed over the rustic bridge now, and gone 
 beyond the sound of the laughter and the light fall of 
 footsteps; there is a strange seductive calm on everything, 
 broken only by the rapid rush of the stream as it hurries 
 ever onward. 
 It is the "mid-hour of night, when stars are weep-
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 51 
 
 ing" and the moon's richest rays are cast upon the earth; 
 there is no chill, no damp in all the air, no touch of death 
 in the glad luxuriance of the sleeping flowers. 
 
 The bridge is passed, and under the dark myrtles they 
 saunter slowly by grinning fauns and leering satyrs and 
 wood-nymphs slim and coy. And now they have come to 
 another little stream that no bridge spans, a tumbling 
 merry baby of a river that divides them from a fairy-like 
 spot which, because unattainable, seems to them even 
 more desirable than those through which they have been 
 wandering. 
 
 " I wish we could get across," says Dolores, hesitating 
 on the high bank to look longingly over to where the great 
 amber roses are nodding drowsily beneath Diana's mystic 
 rays. 
 
 " There is a walk that will take us round to the other 
 side, but it is a good deal higher up," says Bouverie; 
 " and it isn't worth while our trying to find it when one 
 spring will land us where we would be. If you will give 
 me your hand, I think it can be done." 
 
 She has gathered up the tail of her white gown and 
 thrown it over a bare soft arm that is even whiter; her 
 other arm she stretches out to Bouverie. 
 
 "But what if I were to jump short?" she says 
 nervously, glancing downward somewhat fearfully at the 
 swift stream dancing so blithely in the moonlight. 
 
 "Trust yourself to me," answers Bouverie assuringly. 
 
 The words, as he says them, are simple ones, and really 
 mean nothing; but when they are said, it seems as though 
 an echo of them comes back to him fraught with deepest 
 intent. In the strange future that lies before her, to 
 whom will she trust herself? And, if perchance to some 
 one like him like him how will he discharge his trust? 
 And, if to another His fingers close with sudden half 
 angry vehemence over hers. 
 
 "Come!" he says; and to himself his voice sounds 
 harsh. 
 
 She leans toward him, still with her eyes upon the mivd 
 little river beneath. 
 
 " Oh, it is further than I thought!" she says, drawing 
 back a little. 
 
 Lightly, but with a certain determination, he slips hig 
 arm round her waist and inclines her toward the stream.
 
 58 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 " Now spring!" he says. 
 
 And then, in another moment, she finds herself stand- 
 ing beside him on the opposite bank, untouched by spraj 
 or running water. 
 
 " Well, you see, you did trust yourself to me!" he is 
 saying, a certain irrepressible gayety in his tone. He is 
 indeed feeling unaccountably, foolishly glad that at the 
 last moment she has not shrunk from him. 
 
 "So I did. And, after all, there was no cause for 
 fear!" returns she, smiling. 
 
 Her hand is still lying within his, clasped firmly. She 
 has perhaps forgotten to withdraw it, and he perhaps is 
 in no hurry to release it. As she stands thus before him, 
 with uplifted chin and laughing eyes and dainty slender 
 figure framed in by yellow roses, she is looking even more 
 than beautiful. 
 
 "Tell me," he says earnestly, "why you hesitated so 
 long about giving me those two dances when we first met 
 to-night?" 
 
 " If I hesitated," she answers, looking down, and shyly 
 moving a pebble to and fro with the point of her shoe, 
 " it was not not that I did not mean to give them." 
 
 " Yet you certainly thought twice before granting 
 them. Were they perhaps intended for some other 
 man?" 
 
 "Oh, no," quickly, " indeed no! You must not think 
 that!" 
 
 " I did think it. I felt so sure of it for one moment 
 that I was very near accepting your hesitation as a final 
 refusal, and going away heart-broken." 
 
 " Oh, well," she says, smiling, "lam glad you thought 
 better of it! If " raising her eyes for an instant to his, 
 with a soft glance " if you had taken me at my word, I 
 should have been " 
 
 " What?" he asks eagerly. 
 
 " Disappointed," she replies slowly. 
 
 " I wish I dared to believe that," says Bouverie. 
 
 " You may. Why" with a little soft embarrassed 
 laugh, " if I must confess it, I had kept them for you! 
 Now you believe?" 
 
 "To disbelieve wouH cost me too much. Though 
 * fairy gold be all my guio ' -nil I pr**-'- to think as you 
 would have me
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 63 
 
 " There is little real faith in all that speech," says Miss 
 Lome, with some slight indignation; then suddenly: 
 " Do you know how long we have been here? Hours, it 
 seems to me. Come, let us return." 
 
 " There is just one thing more," protests he, detaining 
 her. " What was it you would not say to me before 
 Bruno?" 
 
 "Before Bruno?" 
 
 " Yes. I had been telling you of my long and fruitless 
 search for you, when you laughed. I asked you why 
 you laughed; but you would not answer me, and only told 
 me to ask you about it some other time. This is 'some 
 other time.' " 
 
 "Is it?" 
 
 " Isn't it?" 
 
 "What a cross-examiner you would make!" retorts she, 
 with a slight shrug. " Well, let me think about it. I 
 believe " looking down "I am not sure, you know, but 
 I suppose" reluctantly "I was wondering where the 
 necessity was for your searching for me at all." 
 
 "Ah," says Bouverie something in her tone has bitterly 
 offended him "1 dare say it did seem ludicrous to you 
 my anxiety to find you, I mean! It certainly sounds so, 
 as you put it." 
 
 "Now 1 have made yon angry!" exclaims she, with im- 
 patient penitence. "And why? Simply because I want 
 a reason for your having given yourself very unnecessary 
 trouble about me." 
 
 " I should think your instinct might have supplied that 
 reason," replies he coldly. 
 
 "Perhaps I am without instinct then, because I don't 
 know!" declares she petulantly. "At least, I fail to see 
 why it should not seem strange to me, your wasting an 
 hour or so trying to find me." 
 
 "If one coula not see by your eyes that that certain 
 things were impossible to you, one might," begins he 
 hastily, and then as hastily checks himself. "Regard 
 my conduct as a folly, then, if you will," he says stiffly. 
 
 " I am sorry if I have vexed you," says Dolores, look- 
 ing at him strangely. " But yet I meant no uukindness 
 none. And I do not think it is a good thing to loge 
 one's temper about nothing; do you?" 
 
 "But is it about nothing? Do you think I don't want
 
 64 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 you to know to understand!" exclaims he, with some 
 suppressed vehemence. Then he grows suddenly calm 
 again. " If I sought you," he says, with deliberation, 
 " it was because I desired to be with you to see, to hear 
 you. That is plain speaking, at all events, and will pre- 
 rent your being puzzled by me in future, or regarding my 
 conduct as 'strange.' But why did you so regard it? 
 Were there " watching her eagerly "no others in your 
 life to whom your presence meant what it does to me?" 
 
 " A few perhaps," returns she, with slight hesitation 
 a hesitation he misconstrues. 
 
 " For ' few ' read ' Legion,' " he says brusquely. " Well, 
 and did all their insane devotion wake mirth within your 
 breast?" 
 
 "No." She is growing a little nervous now, and the 
 blood is changing rapidly beneath her transparent skin. 
 " Many people have been kind to me," she says, " and I 
 do not think any of them, except you, would have called 
 theif attentions to me ' insanity.' And, as for you, it was 
 not 'mirth' I felt that you should give yourself trouble 
 on my account, but only surprise." Then her manner 
 changes altogether. Her nervousness vanishes, she throws 
 up her little stately head with a proud gesture, and turns 
 her eyes full on his. " To get back to the house, is it nec- 
 essary I should cross the stream again?" she asks calmly, 
 without a trace of anger or any undue coldness yet his 
 heart dies within him. 
 
 " Not unless you wish it. That path I told you of, 
 before we crossed it, will take you even more quickly to 
 the house." 
 
 " That is fortunate. I have delayed too long,'* she says 
 quietly, turning away from him. 
 
 For a little while they are silent as they go along the 
 graveled walk; and then, as though unable longer to ab- 
 stain from expression of his fear, he says, in a low voice 
 full of earnest entreaty: 
 
 "Let there be no coldness between us twol" 
 
 "Neither now nor at any other time," she says softly, 
 turning to him with a suddeu friendly smile.
 
 SWEETHEART. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 hours are flying on fleet wings. Already the pale 
 early summer morning is showing about the dark hill- 
 tops. The Duchess has twice yawned distinctly, but, with 
 an estimable good-nature, has forborne from leaving, leat 
 a general break-up should follow on her departure. 
 
 "Any hope that I may have another dance with you?" 
 asks Vyner, coming face to face with Miss Ponsonby in a 
 doorway. 
 
 "My card is quite full." She has met his eyes for a 
 moment; but now her own are turned contemptuously 
 aside, and it is certainly the wall beyond ahe addresses as 
 she says this not he. 
 
 "May I see it?" 
 
 'Certainly." She lifts the little scented card to her 
 fan, and waves U idly to and fro; for an instant her half- 
 closed lids, insolently lowered, are raised to let the dark, 
 angry beauty of her eyes be seen. " A pretty programme, 
 is it not?" she says. 
 
 " May I see the inside of it?" 
 
 " But why? The inside of one card is quite the same 
 as another." 
 
 " Not always. And I am anxious to see what is written 
 in yours." 
 
 " You are anxious, in other words, to see whether I am 
 or am not telling a lie!" returns she, with a soft, scornful 
 laugh. 
 
 "That is an ugly word I All I want to see is what 
 names are on your card." 
 
 " There is no dance there for you. In that at least you 
 may believe me." 
 
 "I believe you always. What you mean is that you 
 refuse to give me a dance." 
 
 " Is it?" She looks bored, and makes a slight move- 
 ment, as if to go into the ball-room. Sir Chicksy, who 
 is with her, moves too. 
 
 " I suppose you have given my dance away then," gays 
 Vyner, indifferently, drawing back. " I regret very much 
 you should have seen caue to do so."
 
 56 DICK'S SWEETHKJLKT. 
 
 " Did I give you another? I had forgotten it. If so, 
 J regret my seeming rudeness," returns she, studied dis- 
 like in her tone. Then she sweeps away from him in her 
 swaying, graceful, insolent fashion, and is lost in thi 
 throng of dancers beyond. 
 
 " What an insolent air that girl has!" says Mrs. Drum* 
 mond, the sugar merchant's daughter, who, with her dear 
 friend Mrs. Dovedale beside her, has witnessed Audrey's 
 dismissal of Vyner. 
 
 The speaker is a tall, stout, florid woman with a super- 
 abundance of flesh and a toned vulgarity that breaks its 
 bonds occasionally and asserts itself with a triumphant 
 rush. Her companion, Mrs. Dovedale, is as perfect a 
 contrast to her as she Mrs. Dovedale could possibly de- 
 sire. The vicar's wife is a small, fair, childish, innocent- 
 looking little thing, with forget-me-not eyes and a dimpled 
 chin and remarkably thin lips. From those lips, so daintily 
 curved, fall little speeches now and then so wonderfully 
 spiced, so delicately pointed, so cruelly apt, that few care 
 to provoke them. Time has taught her neighbors to treat 
 this pretty little woman with careful respect. Time has 
 also taught them to detest her cordially. Yet, strange to 
 say, there are few people in all Dead marsh so universally 
 feted as quiet Mrs. Dovedale. 
 
 " Yes, insolent," repeats Mrs. Drummond, with vigor, 
 turning to her companion for corroboration. " And how 
 Mr. Vyner detests her! I have frequently noticed his 
 positive aversion. Haven't you, dear?" 
 
 " I'm so wretchedly unremarking!" says Mrs. Dovedale, 
 apologetically. " You will see that when I tell you I have 
 often believed him rather attentive to her than otherwise." 
 She does not really believe this; but the knowledge that 
 Mrs. Drummond looks upon Anthony Vyner as a possible 
 suitor for the hand of her daughter Georgina compels her 
 to say it. 
 
 " You are indeed wanting in penetration if you could 
 think that," says Mrs. Drummond, with a sour smile 
 " such an uninteresting girl as she is, and so reprehensi- 
 ble in many ways! Why, even her own aunt, dear Lady 
 Bouverie, does not countenance her!" 
 
 " I think she is afraid cf her," remarks Mrs. Dovodale, 
 with an irrepressible bugii. " But, of course, one can
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 6? 
 
 inderstand that she is a trial. Such shocking form, as 
 you say quite inadrnissable!" 
 
 "I hate a settled coquette!" declares Mrs. Drummond, 
 whose daughter's lover because of Audrey has proved 
 faithless. 
 
 Here the conversation suffers a slight break, because of 
 Audrey's approach. She passes without vouchsafing either 
 of them so much as a glance of recognition, disappears 
 into a windowed recess near, and sinks upon a cushioned 
 lounge, 
 
 "Audrey,," says Bruno Bouverie, coming up to her, 
 " the Duchess has expressed a wish that you should be 
 introduced to her." 
 
 Audrey flushes. She is out of humor, and indeed in 
 one of her very worst moods. 
 
 "I have expressed no wish to be introduced to the 
 Duchess," she answers sharply, with a frown; and then 
 ghe grows suddenly pale again, and stands erect and 
 defiant, though inwardly shocked at her discourtesy, as 
 the curtains part, and the Duchess herself comes toward 
 her. 
 
 " Muse I then sue for your friendship?" asks her 
 Grace, with a smile. 
 
 "I beg your Grace's pardon," said Audrey, slowly, but 
 with a certain hauteur that belongs to her, and so 
 becomes her. "Your desire to know me must, of course, 
 be regarded as an honor, though the desire itself must 
 forever remain a mystery to me." 
 
 "Tut, child!" returns the Duchess, with an amused 
 glance. "A fair face is ever an introduction in itself, and 
 that yon carry about with you, whether you will or no." 
 
 "Did you mark that?" says Mrs. Drnmmond exult- 
 ingly. "She can nob be civil even to her Grace." 
 
 " Hush! the Duchess is talking again," interrupts Httle 
 Mrs. DovedaJe. 
 
 "I have, besides, a favor to ask of you," her Grace is 
 saying, in her sweetest manner. " My daughter, Lady 
 Florence, has set her heart on getting up some private 
 theatricals whilst staying down here just a short play or 
 two. Will you help her? We want to get up a little 
 company from among our neighbors neve" with a 
 friendly smile "and tour face tells me you will be a
 
 OB DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 great acquisition to our forces if you will consent to 
 join us." 
 
 This is the very essence of graciousness, and Mrs. 
 Dovedale, watching her friend closely, can see that her 
 face grows pale as she listens. 
 
 " Audrey can act most parts, from a dairy-maid to a 
 duchess," declares Bruno, with a little saucy laugh and a 
 glance at her Grace. 
 
 "Very good, then; she shall illustrate me," decides 
 her Grace, smiling. 
 
 At this Audrey raises her eyes, and a slow, pretty smile 
 widens her lips. 
 
 "Oh, no," she says; "but you shall make me the 
 dairymaid, or anything else that pleases you!" 
 
 "I shall promise you a principal part," returns the 
 Duchess kindly. " And there is a little Miss Lome here 
 to-night, and Mrs. Wemyss, whose father was a very old 
 friend of mine; we must get them to join us too. And 
 you must all three give me the pleasure of your company 
 ** the Castle for a week or so, to get things well together " 
 
 " Di'd you hear that?" demands Mrs. Dovedale, with 
 unpleasant vivacity. 
 
 "I heard her," says M:s. Drummond, now grown posi- 
 tively livid. 
 
 "What a pity she didn't ask Georgina too!" murmurs 
 Mrs. Dovedale. 
 
 " I have no doubt she would have done so had she been 
 brought beneath her notice," says Mrs. Drummond, with 
 dignity. 
 
 " Eh oh, I don't think Georgina is beneath her no- 
 tice!" protests Mrs, Dovedale, with generous correction. 
 " Even though she is a Duchess, I don't think" with 
 maddening misapprehension "you need say that." 
 
 " It will be a terrible thing for you, dear, if this slight' 
 deafness grows on you," says Mrs. Drummond tartly and 
 with ill-suppressed rage. " Georgina is a girl whom the 
 queen might delight to honor. I simply meant that the 
 Duchess was unfortunate enough not to see her. Geor- 
 gina is not a bold girl, like some others I could name; she 
 is not one to push herself forward." 
 
 " I don't think it was that," returns Mrs. Dovedale 
 mildly. " Indeed I know for a fact that the Duchess did 
 *tie her; she took great notice of her,"
 
 ' DICK'S SWEETHEART. 59 
 
 "Dirt she indeed?" exclaims Mrs. Drummond eagerly. 
 " Ah, she would, no doubt! There is something striking 
 about my girl." 
 
 " Slie spoke of her. I was standing very near her Uraoe 
 at the time, and could overhear what she said," continues 
 Mrs. Dovedale, with a glance at her friend full of the 
 gentlest encouragement. 
 
 " Yes and what was it you heard, dear?'* asks Mrs. 
 Drummond with a painful but useless effort to appear 
 indifferent. 
 
 " She said ' Who is that big girl over there with the 
 hopelessly uninteresting face?' " returns the vicar's wife 
 very sweetly. 
 
 The color flames into the placid cheeks of her com- 
 panion. She turns venomous eyes upon little Mrs. Dove- 
 dale, only to meet the eyes of that small lady calmly bent 
 on her with an expression in them so open, so guileless, so 
 devoid of harmful intention as to disarm the severest sus- 
 picion. 
 
 " She could not have meant Georginal" says Mrs. 
 Drummond. 
 
 "I. think she did, because I heard Lady Bouverie say, 
 in answer, ' That is a person called Miss Drummond.'" 
 
 The " person " does it! It sounds even worse than all 
 that has gone before, and more humiliating. Mrs. Drum- 
 mond grows limp and loses courage, and literally goes 
 down before it. Alas, alas, will no one ever forget about 
 that sugar? 
 
 And now the final break-up has come. The Duchess 
 has already gone, the carriages are thinning. Dolores is 
 standing in the hall waiting for hers, whilst Bouverie, 
 with slow care, is wrapping her in her cloak of ruby plush. 
 
 " Awhile since I said you looked like a fairy; I wonder 
 now how I had the courage," says Bouverie, as he strug- 
 gles manfully with the fastenings. "In that royal color 
 you look like a queen. Must you go? How I hate punc- 
 tual servants! One .moment!" sinking his voice to a 
 lover-like whisper, " May I call to-morrow?" 
 
 " Of course! It is our day, you know; and and I am 
 sure auntie will be very glad to see you." 
 
 "That assurance pleases me indeed; but there is an- 
 other that if you could give it would please me infinitely 
 more. Will you be srlad^o seg me?"
 
 60 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 " I shall indeed!" She says this very softly and with a 
 shy sweet little blush; then " Good-night" holding 
 out her hand to him. 
 
 "Good-night. Good-bye." 
 
 ** Until to-morrow" smiling. 
 
 "That means to-day," returns he quickly, unmistaka- 
 ble happiness on his handsome face. "But a few hour* 
 lie between now and our next meeting.** 
 
 " Ah, true I had forgotten that!" 
 
 There is a touch of real pleasure in her tone which sets 
 his heart beating, and brings to his lips words not more 
 ardent than his thoughts, but expressive of a deeper ten- 
 derness than he has dared yet to show. 
 
 " A few hours," he repeats unsteadily, "will bring me 
 to you again. And until then, and after, and forever, I 
 shall hold you and you only in my heart." 
 
 Then the carriage door is closed upon her, and her face 
 is hidden purposely turned from him, as it seems to 
 Bouverie, standing remorsefully upon the stone steps, 
 with the chilly morning air beating upon his uncovered 
 head. What madness prompted him to say so much? Has 
 he frightened her? Has she thought him unpardonably 
 rude? And yet what a small, small portion it was of the 
 passionate feeling that is consuming him! 
 
 Was she angry? Looking down, he catches sight of a 
 pale little blossom lying at his feet. It was hers; she had 
 worn it close to her bosom to-night! It now is his! As 
 though it were some fair messenger of peace from her to 
 him, he lifts it gladly and carries it in-doors and up to his 
 own room. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 the upper part of the lawn, near the tennis- 
 ground, a good many rugs and pretty garden-chairs are 
 scattered broadcast. Greylands, lying as it does now in 
 the brilliant June sunshine, is at its best, with its wav- 
 ing trees and its glimpse of the cool green sea, its old grey 
 walls and ivied towers. 
 
 Dolores, in a huge white hat that makes her look like 
 an overgrown fairy, is moving here and there in pretty 
 restless fashion from one viiitor to another, as though last
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 61 
 
 night's fatigue and late hours are all mere hallucinations 
 df the brain. Her restlessness is perhaps a little feverish, 
 jier gayety somewhat strained; but none except those who 
 iove her would notice it, and, as for the rest, they vote her 
 manner even more than usually charming to-day. The 
 soft dark circles beneath her eyes only render them more 
 rich in pathetic beauty, the two warm touches of carmine 
 on her cheek but serve to throw out the dazzling fairness 
 of her skin. She is gracious, courteous, sympathetic, as 
 ever, yet always her glance turns to that corner of the 
 grounds whence new-comers may be expected. 
 
 " She is the very prettiest creature I know," says Mrs. 
 Wemyss, with unaffected admiration, turning to Bruno 
 Bouverie, who is lounging beside her. As a rule, he is 
 always lounging beside her. It is a flirtation of such old 
 standing now between these two quite a year in all that 
 people have almost forgotten to gossip about it and wonder 
 over their tea-cups if it will ever come to anything. 
 
 Cecily Wemyss is a widow, a very young widow, and a 
 very light-hearted one. Indeed, ever since the death of 
 her husband, her spirits have risen to such an abnormal 
 height that it must be uncharitably believed that she was 
 heartily glad to get rid of him. She is small, dark, 
 piquant, a brunette in effect, pur et simple perhaps not 
 very simple with laughing eyes and merry lips, and hair 
 that finds subjugation difficult. 
 
 "I dare say," says Bruno. "But of whom are you 
 talking?" 
 
 " Of Miss Lome." 
 
 " You are right there n with mild enthusiasm *' she 
 is out and out the prettiest girl I know." 
 
 " Is sher 
 
 "The prettiest girl 1" returns Bruno, with careful em 
 phasis. 
 
 "Ah!" says Mrs. Wemyss. Then she laughs a little, 
 and glances at him from under artfully-lowered lids. 
 " That last was clever," she says. 
 
 She unfurls an enormous black fan and waves it to and 
 fro, to the great discomfiture of a big bumble-bee, which, 
 made dizzy by the storm thus raised, falls heavily, sleepily 
 into her lap, and begins explorations there amongst her 
 laces. There is a tremulous tranquillity in all the air 
 which soothes the senses and cinders speechlessness no
 
 62 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 crime, but rather a necessity. Quivering sunbeams are 
 creeping from flower to flower, the swift stream at the foot 
 of the lawn is making sweetest music as it rushes by its 
 shelving banks, where close to 
 
 " The river's trembling edge 
 There grow broad flag-flowers, purple prankt with white." 
 
 " Still thinking of the most charming being you know?* 
 murmurs Mrs. Wemyss at last, closing her fan with r 
 little snap, and raising two great lustrous eyes to his. 
 
 " Yes," says Bruno. 
 
 " She should be flattered. Five, six nay, seven min- 
 utes and all spent on her." 
 
 " I have spent more time than that on her without 
 awakening any gratitude within her breast." 
 
 " It is your modesty that makes yon say that. How 
 can you know what thoughts are stirring in her breast?" 
 
 "I don't believe any thoughts are stirring there; it is 
 too frozen to admit of movement." 
 
 " Oh, how you malign her!" 
 
 " Do I? You should know best!" 
 
 " Then I will prophesy to you that your wooing if 
 you put sufficient heart into it will prosper." 
 
 "If you can assure me of that, it is the best news I 
 have heard for many a day; yet I have my doubts." 
 
 " A true lover always doubts. But why should you 
 believe her ungrateful?" 
 
 " She looks so." 
 
 " I don't agree with you. I think she looks only happy," 
 says Mrs. Wemyss, with one swift glance at Dolores, wh 
 is laughing merrily. 
 
 " That is no good sign." 
 
 " What!" archly. " Would you have your love al- 
 ways on the very verge of despair? That is so like a 
 man! See how much prettier she looks when laughing." 
 
 " She is not laughing." 
 
 "How can you say that? What! Has Cupid indeed 
 made you blind?" 
 
 "I can not see that she is laughing." 
 
 " Why, where are your eyes?" 
 
 " On you," says Bruno. 
 
 " Oh, then, of course you can't see her I" 
 
 "I can, indeed." persists Bruno.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 63 
 
 " Who?" 
 
 " We were talking of my love, I think, weren't we?" 
 lays Bruno, with an assumption of meekness, but with 
 the most glaring audacity; whereupon they both laugh. 
 
 " May the goda grant you sense!" f?ays Mrs. Wemyss, 
 with a little scornful tilting of her chin. 
 
 " And you a kinder mind. Amen!" returns Bruno. 
 
 " Already it is too kind. It is well I am not of a 
 jealous disposition." 
 
 " I would you were a trifle more so; it would betoken 
 deeper feeling." 
 
 "' Out and out the prettiest thing you knewl' " re- 
 proachfully. 
 
 "If you believed that nonsensical speech, it didn't 
 seem to affect you much." Still more reproachfully 
 " You would have made me over to her with a light heart. 
 Perhaps it would have been an easy way of getting rid 
 of me." 
 
 " Whose kingdom is so large that she would seek to 
 rid herself of her best possession?" asks she, in a low tone 
 and with an adorable glance. 
 
 A little shout Irom the triumphant side of the tennis- 
 court breaks upon their left. Then sides are changed, 
 and the game begins again, the abrupt and uncertain 
 noise of the balls falling pleasantly upon the monotonous 
 Bound of nature. 
 
 "You two always seem to be the happiest people in the 
 world," says Dolores, coming up to them presently and 
 sinking into a seat near Mrs. Wemyss. 
 
 "I say, Bruno, where is Dick?" asks Vyner, who has 
 also strolled up to them, more in the wake of Audrey 
 Ponsonby than actually with her. 
 
 " I can't think," answers Bruno. " Perhaps he didn't 
 mean coming." 
 
 "He did!" says Audrey, who is looking really beauti- 
 ful, but listless and cold as usual. 
 
 "He told you so perhaps?" asks Vyner, who seems anx- 
 ious in a lazy sort of way to bridge over the unpleasant- 
 ness of last night. 
 
 "No," returns Miss Ponsonby uncompromisingly, gas- 
 ing not at him, but at something that is not in the "far, 
 far distance." 
 
 " The information \ vaeue. but full of interest," re
 
 64 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 marks Mr. Vyner, unabashed. " It gires us every hope 
 that he has been foully murdered. Miss Ponsonby, the 
 last person who saw him alive, at precisely thirty-five 
 minutes and twenty-one seconds after three A.M., declares 
 on oath that he was then bent on being here early to-day. 
 Has any one telegraphed to Scotland Yard?" 
 
 " I shouldn't wonder if our beloved mother had sent 
 him all the way to Horton to make some modest pur- 
 chase," says Bruno. " It would be just like her, consid- 
 ering the day is eighty in the shade." 
 
 "A warm day, indeed, to go so far as Horton!" gays 
 Dolores, lightly. 
 
 Yet her face had changed at the mention of Dick. Had 
 he kept away purposely? Had he repented him of those 
 few hurried, honeyed words last night? 
 
 " Here comes Mrs. Dovedale," says Cecily Wemyss, 
 suddenly, "and with herjidus Achates, of course, in all 
 her war-paint. How I detest that Mrs. Drummond and 
 her Georgie! I never know which is the more objection- 
 able of the two." 
 
 " Or the three," puts in Bruno. " Mrs. Dovedale is 
 to me as objectionable as the others. Her tongue is 
 sharper than the serpent's tooth. See now how tenderly 
 she smiles upon Miss Maturin. I dare say she has taken 
 her in completely, and made her believe her ' altogether 
 such an one as herself.' ' 
 
 " That would be a simple task," says Dolores, with a 
 fond glance at Miss Maturin, who is smiling her kindest 
 at the vicar's wife. " Auntie is always sure that every 
 one she meets thinks just as she does." 
 
 Here the vicar's wife leaves Miss Maturin and goes trip- 
 pingly across the lawn to some one for whom she has a 
 barbed arrow in quiver. She is therefore looking her 
 sweetest; and she has a simple little Pompadour gown on 
 her, and a baby hat that suits her " down to the ground." 
 
 " How very picturesque and idyllic!" says Vyner, softly. 
 
 " Dear little saint! I wonder what venom lies beneath 
 that simper?" suggests Mrs. Wemyss. 
 
 "I would not be Mrs. Harconrt at this moment for a 
 good round crown," declares Bruno which certainly is 
 not much of a sum, but is evidently meant to represent a 
 fabulous amount, the verj roundness of it being a guaran* 
 tee of its imwensitj.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 66 
 
 ' She's a nightmare," says Vyner; " but still, I think, 
 can hardly hold comparison with her patron in that re- 
 ipect. Oh for that Mrs. Drummond, and oh for her 
 Georgie! Eh ah! How d'ye do, Mrs. Drnmmond? So 
 glad to see you! Your daughter here to-day?" 
 
 " Yes, over there," answers the matron, blandly. "I'm 
 sure she would be glad if you would see her through a 
 game of tennis. She plays well excellently well, I may 
 say but she i& so nervous! Quite a child in many ways^ 
 I assure you!" 
 
 " She looks it," murmurs Vyner, tenderly. 
 
 " By Jove, here's Chicksy!" exclaims Bruno, when Mrs. 
 Drummond has carried herself off. "'Better late than 
 never!' I wonder who makes his clothes? They are the 
 tightest fit I ever saw!" 
 
 " He dresses himself very well, I think," says Mrs. 
 Wemyss, who is good-natured. 
 
 " On the principle that 'fine feathers make fine birds,' 
 Well, he is wise!" says Bruno. 
 
 "Now, I wonder why on earth he wears that eye- 
 glass?" remarks Mr. Vyner, plaintively. " The very 
 mental anxiety connected with the fixing of it, to say 
 nothing of the injury to his sight, must be terribly wear- 
 ing to his constitution!" 
 
 " Oh, don't fret about him!" says Bruno with tender 
 anxiety. "I assure you it does him no harm; he always 
 takes it out when he wants to see." 
 
 " He is very clever, is he not?" asks Dolores, in perfect 
 good faith. " He is very well read, I mean, and likely to 
 take honors and that?" 
 
 At first there is an astonished silence, and then every 
 one laughs involuntarily, forgetful of manners and all the 
 rest of it. Even Audrey, after a swift, curious glance at 
 Dolores, gives way to low but unrestrained mirth. 
 
 " There is no knowing what he isn't going to take," 
 says Mr. Vyner, with a swift glance at Audrey: " but, in 
 accordance with his appearance, which is charmingly 
 youthful, I should say measles first, after that mumps, 
 and so on. We should be proud to have such an erudite 
 youth in our midst. Do you feel proud, Mrs. Wemyss?" 
 
 " I'm too meek a woman for that," laughs Mrs. Wemygg. 
 " Pride and I parted company many a day ago, and I 
 Uve felt much more comfortable ever since." As she
 
 86 DICK'S SWEETHEABT. 
 
 gays thfe she smiles kindly at Audrey, who is moodily 
 trifling with a large moss-rose. " And, after all, it is 
 quite a shame to laugh at Sir Chicksy, because he has 
 more good points than most of us." 
 
 "He has indeed," says Bruno. "If you mean his 
 elbows and knees; I never saw a man in all my life so 
 oppressed with them. Why, they are all over him!" 
 
 " Mrs. Wemyss is right," remarks Vyner, with sus- 
 picious gravity. "Let us cease from evil-speaking. Sir 
 Chicksy is not to be despised. He wears good clothes, 
 has money, a title, and no relations; he is considered 
 clever by one very charming young lady, and is the sworn 
 admirer of another I mention no names, so no actions 
 can be taken and is on the whole a very nice girlish boy. 
 I myself regard him with the very keenest veneratioul 
 Have I summed up all those good points you mentioned, 
 Mrs. Wemyss?" 
 
 "You laugh! But do you know he reads poetry very 
 well indeed?" says Dolores, who is a tender little soul, 
 with whom the absent are always right. " He came up 
 here the other day and read * Locksley Hall ' for auntie 
 And me, and we were quite pleased." 
 
 The two men look at her, and perhaps at the same mo- 
 ment the same thought runs through both their minds. 
 At all events it is a very kindly glance she gets from each. 
 
 " He is fortunate at least in having so sweet a cham- 
 pion," says Vyner gently, with a little graceful bend of 
 the head. 
 
 " He isn't a bad old chap when all is told," acknowl- 
 edges Bruno, with sudden and most unexpected clemency. 
 
 " Here come the Montgomerys!" cries Mrs. Wemyss 
 suddenly. "I wonder if there is any one in the county 
 that isn't here? I expect," turning with a genial smile 
 to Dolores, "that this is going to be the one popular 
 house in the neighborhood. Mine used to be the general 
 rendezvous; at least," with a glance at Bruno, "boys 
 found it a useful place in which to air their griefs and 
 joys. But now I give in to your aunt, I cede popularity, 
 all to her. I may as well before I must. You see, sub- 
 mission is more honorable than defeat." 
 
 " What a cowardly sentiment!" laughs Miss Maturin, 
 who has strolled up to them, her heavier duties being at 
 PA end. She ha? indeed longed secretly at heart to bt
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 67 
 
 with them for an hour or more, silly youth being alwayg 
 dearer to her than sober age. She lays her hand now on 
 Audrey's shoulder, who is nearest to her. " I hope you 
 will all come here just as often as ever you like," she says 
 kindly, with a comprehensive glance. " Not," laughing, 
 4< that I have any right to invite you. There," indicating 
 Dolores with a slight wave of the hand, " stands the little 
 mistress of Greylands." 
 
 " Yes, I am the renl chdtelaine. This is but my slave 
 and vassal," retorts Dolores, saucily, but with the proud- 
 est, fondest smile at Miss Maturin. Slipping her hand 
 within her arm, she presses close to her in a little confid- 
 ing, tender fashion. 
 
 Here the conversation is interrupted by the approach 
 of servants armed with trays and small round tables, and 
 a happy confusion of tea, curagoa, strawberries and cream, 
 cakes, and brandy and soda. 
 
 " Nothing like soda after being up all night," says 
 Bruno, cheerfully. 
 
 " Plain," supplements Mr. Vyner, severely. 
 
 " I don't think I ever saw so many ugly women together 
 as I saw last night," says Audrey, suddenly, without any 
 preface. " I hate unpresentable people!" 
 
 " I thought all the women shockingly fagoUes. certain- 
 ly," acquiesces Mrs. Wemyss, with a shrug. " But what 
 will you? Beauty is a rare weed, and the art of dressing 
 up to one's style almost unknown." 
 
 " I liked that queer-colored gown on the Duchess," 
 eays Dolores. "It was old-fashioned, but somehow it 
 guited her. It was a sort of kindness to her complexion, 
 her choosing that color." 
 
 " What a speech from you!" exclaims Vyner, opening 
 his eyes. " It only shows that the very sweetest of us can 
 sometimes be severe." 
 
 " Was that severe?" asks Dolores, coloring. " I didn't 
 mean it. But indeed it occurred to me that that in any- 
 thing but that shade she might not look her best!" At 
 this everybody laughs a little. 
 
 "A bas Us Jesuitesf" says Bruno, with a downward 
 motion of his hands. 
 
 " What strikes me about the Duchess is this," sayi 
 Mrs. Wemyss " that she makes me feel myself unreal. I 
 am not Cecily Wemyss to her, but only a ' Violet Melrose '
 
 18 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 or a ' Betsy/ as the case may be. It is fatiguing, and 
 productive of a sort of waking nightmare; to go through 
 fife as a perpetual and actual * Betsy ' would be more than 
 weak woman could endure. I wonder what she is going 
 to do with us when she gets us to the Castle?" 
 
 " I anticipate the worst," says Bruno, gloomily. " Dick 
 treats the whole thing as an immense joke; but I fear he 
 Will find himself in the wrong box." 
 
 " Oh, there won't be any boxes!" exclaims Sir Chicksy, 
 kindly, who has just joined them. " Jnst a sort of small 
 theater, you know, and quite a plain stage." 
 
 "<A clear stage and no favor,'" quotes Mr. Vyner, 
 sadly. "What an awful thought! I was thinking of 
 having a few humble friends to applaud me and throw me 
 one or two hundred bouquets at a guinea apiece; but I 
 suppose, from what Chaucer has just said, it would not 
 be allowed. Bless me, in what a tyrannical age we live!" 
 
 " ' Compelled to act against our will,'" begins Bruno. 
 
 "Not against mine," interrupts Dolores quickly. 
 " Do you know I am quite delighted with the prospect of 
 these private theatricals at the Castle; though I'm sure I 
 can't act a bit, never having even tried. You all seem 
 sorry; but, as for me, I think it will be the greatest 
 fun." 
 
 For a moment it occurs to Mrs. Wemyss that the little 
 dove-eyed girl before her may be wickedly satirical; then 
 she repents her of the notion. 
 
 Vyner laughs aloud. 
 
 "I believe we all think just as you do," he says, "and 
 should be miserably disappointed if anything were to 
 arise to scatter our hopes of making ourselves ' fair names 
 and famous' out of these coming plays. But confession 
 is better to us, and we love to play at indifference." 
 
 " As good practice for the coming mummeries," says 
 Audrey contemptuously. 
 
 "Dolores! Come here, and give us some tea," calls 
 Miss Maturin, her voice coming to them from over the 
 soft turf; Dolores, rising, goes to her. 
 
 With little deft slender fingers she pours out the tea, 
 and smiles upon the many naen who throng around her, 
 only too anxious to be her Mercurys. And yet, through 
 all her smiles and kindliest glances, the pathetic strain IB 
 shown, the faint sadness of .a hidden regret, the shadow
 
 DICK'8 SWEETHEAET. C9 
 
 of a ragne disappointment. He had said he would come; 
 she had not so much depended on the delicate tendernest 
 of his look or tone as on his spoken promise; she had 
 been quite sure of his coming, she had dwelt upon his 
 eyident passionate desire to be with her, when, in the 
 mystic calmness of her own pretty room, she lay awake 
 watching the widening of the morn. She had risen in 
 glad expectation of what the full day would bring to her; 
 and now now it is eventide, and all her sweet beliefs 
 have crumbled into unsightly ashes, and the light of her 
 soft hope has grown so dull as to be almost unseen by 
 her a barren hope indeed, productive of naught but 
 secret and painful blushes, born of a hurt self-love, and 
 (something perhaps deeper still. And then, all at once, 
 as it seems to her, he is here is coming to her over th 
 cool sweet grass. With glad quick eyes and eager step he 
 comes to where she is sitting in her white gown, with a 
 gracious smile upon her lips, and "blown soft hair and 
 bright" her pretty hair; it seems to him like the aureole 
 of a saint surrounding that pure and lovely face, as he 
 draws nearer, nearer still, until he is at her side. 
 
 She, seeing him, has grown a little pale, and has turned 
 a disdainful shoulder somewhat in his direction, and let 
 her mobile lips take a sweet, haughty curve that suits 
 them somehow, but should not be there for him. Lean- 
 ing back in her chair she turns up her face in a fashion a 
 degree kinder than usual to the young man bending over 
 her with lover-like assiduity, as it seems to the approach- 
 ing Bouverie. 
 
 He is a very good, harmless young man; but at thia 
 moment he awakens in Mr. Bouverie's breast a hatred as 
 wild as it is unreasoning. He is hanging over Dolores, 
 he is gazing with apparent delight into her eyes; and she 
 she, whom he, Bouverie, had believed above the trivial 
 cruelties of her sex is smiling back at him as sweetly us 
 though he were the male unit in the universe! 
 
 Paler and paler grows Dolores as she hears the ap- 
 proaching footstep; and yet it is with the calmest air in 
 the world, and with the prettiest indifference, that she 
 acknowledges his greeting which now has grown some- 
 what constrained and puts her hand in his. 
 
 " Another cup of tea?" she asks, lazily, as though not 
 clear as to whether she .herself gave him one a moment
 
 70 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 since or not, and is therefore somewhat gurprited at hii 
 fresh " How d'ye do?" 
 
 " I have not had one yet," says he, rather taken aback 
 by this unexpected question. 
 
 " No? What a shame! But I dare say you don't care 
 about it. Men only pretend to like tea, it seems to me. 
 And yet'' drawing up her brows reflectively, the little 
 hypocrite " I did think I gave you some just now." 
 
 "You gave me nothing," replies he, somewhat coldly 
 " not even a welcome," he could have added. 
 
 " It must have been to your brother, then." 
 
 " Very possibly," says Bouverie, white with indignant 
 disappointment, " as I have only just now come." 
 
 " Ah, so," she says, as though slowly awaking to a pos- 
 sible fact, " now you have come now, when the others 
 are all leaving? It was scarcely worth your while, was it? 
 Sugar?" She smiles quite kindly abominably kindly 
 at him as she says all this. 
 
 " No, thank you nothing not even the tea. But you 
 are wrong; it was worth my while to come. I have learned 
 within the last few minutes the meaning of that strange 
 word * mutability.' The others are going, you say? Being 
 only one among the many, I suppose I must go too?" 
 
 " Oh, no!" with gracious indifference. "Not until it 
 quite suits you." 
 
 " This very moment will suit me admirably." 
 
 " Now, here, now gone," says she, with a little pale 
 smile. " Well, don't let me detain you." 
 
 " I never dreamed you would so far trouble yourself- 
 that would be too much to expect. To be allowed to come 
 was the greatest grace to which I aspired." 
 
 " Humility is somebody's darling sin," murmers she, 
 with a fine contempt and flash from her large eyes " That 
 grace you coveted and gained might have enabled you to 
 come here sooner." 
 
 "I think I came too soon!" retorts he, with sudden 
 vehemence, the color springing to his face. " I wish the 
 road to Horton had been twice as long." 
 
 "To Horton!" It is her turn to change color now; the 
 blood recedes a little from her lips and brow. " Have you 
 been to Horton and back to-day?" 
 
 "Yes, "shortly,"
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART, 71 
 
 "It is thirty miles; but" with sudden hope "of 
 3ourse you went by train." 
 
 "Unfortunately," says he, smiling politely, but coldly, 
 
 'the trains didn't suit. It was important I should see 
 
 our man of business before the post went out in Horton, 
 
 and no train from that would bring me home before eight 
 
 o'clock." 
 
 "And wouldn't that have done?" asks Dolores, anx- 
 iously. 
 
 " It would, I suppose; but I didn't think so then not 
 when I was riding there and back, I mean. The only 
 thought that possessed me during those thirty miles was 
 tha tl could not well present myself to to Miss Maturin 
 at eight o'clock." He pauses, and looks at the sky with 
 a rather barren admiration. " What a charming day you 
 have had for the reception of your friends!" he says, "in - 
 diffei-ently. 
 
 She gives him to understand she agrees with him by a 
 little movement of the head; but she says nothing, and 
 stands before him trifling nervously with a spray of steph- 
 anotis. Her lids are lowered; how can he tell then that 
 her eyes are full of tears? 
 
 " You have quite got over last night's fatigue, I hope? " 
 he goes on, cruelly conventional because so sad at heart. 
 Is it possible he should now think of tender things to say 
 to this girl to whom lust night lie gave his heart only to 
 have it trodden on to-day? He is unconsciously cruel! 
 needlessly miserable. 
 
 "Quite, thank you," she says slowly; and she turns 
 away from him, and walks, with a sudden vague longing 
 for comfort, to where Miss Maturin is standing at a little 
 distance. 
 
 Her eyes are dry again now, her head is uplifted, but 
 her face is still pale; and her sensitive lips are toncheds 
 irith a shadowy pain. She had wronged him, that was 
 only too true, she told herself; but how could she have 
 known? He had been cold, bitterly so, and had refused 
 to pee how grieved she was when her mistake had become 
 known to her. He had talked to her in a strange un- 
 friendly voice of the beauties of the day how could he 
 have felt the beauty of it just then? and had hoped she 
 had forgotten last night's fatigue, as might the commonest 
 stranger! Had he quite forgotten that sweet last night,
 
 7* DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 that now seems as though it had never been, and must 
 for evermore be regarded as the mere gilded dream -child 
 of an idle brain? And what was the meaning of that 
 strange accusation he had brought against her that 
 charge of fickleness? Why should he tell her that she 
 had taught him the signification of that sad word '' mu- 
 tability "? Well, it is all over now all is at an end, if 
 indeed one can speak of the end of anything that has had 
 scarce a beginning. Perhaps he had not meant those few 
 words last night; perhaps and yet Yes; it is all for 
 the best, no doubt; but why had he said those words? 
 
 With a secret sense of bitterest self-contempt, she casts 
 a hurried glance to where she has left him standing. But 
 he is not there he is not indeed anywhere. And, with a 
 little catch at her heart, she tells herself that she was 
 right. All what a little all, and how sweet it now 
 seems! is surely at an end between them! 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ANOTHER day is added to the mass of buried ages. 
 Already it is high moon. The world, grown weary of 
 June's jollity, is lying quiescent, lost in a languorous 
 slumber. 
 
 High overhead a tiny speck of quivering brown, grown 
 mad with the mere ecstasy of living, is caroling aloud its 
 fond praise of earth and its Creator. Down below a little 
 dainty figure, clad all in white, and somewhat sad and 
 somewhat dejected in its going, is wading its way through 
 iwented grasses and waving meadow. 
 
 " Crowds of bees are giddy with clover 
 
 Crowds of grasshoppers skip at her feet, 
 Crowds of larks at their matins hang over, 
 Thanking the Lord for a life so sweet." 
 
 A hot and radiant sun is sitting up above, holding a 
 stately revel. All the heavens are spotted with pale 
 Clouds, edged with faintest amber, whose youthful beauty 
 is made even more conspicuous because of the presence of 
 one sad sister, draped all in mournful gray and tipped 
 with gold, that bangs right over the clump of firs. 
 
 Dolores, glancing upward at this forlorn little cloud,
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEAET. 73 
 
 sigha resentfully, and tells herself that she resembles it- 
 sad, despondent, angry. Alas for that sorry yesterday 
 and all its attendant regrets! She clinches one small 
 hand hastily, with a touch of sharpest self-disdain, and 
 throws up her head impatiently. 
 
 All the morning depression Imd sat so persistently upon 
 her that at last it had seemed to her a good thing to bestir 
 herself and go forth into the calm, soft air, to see if that 
 could not banish it. There is still a good deal of ange& 
 in her heart as she thinks of Mr. Bouverie. He had been 
 "Dick" for one sweet night and half a day, but now is 
 " Dick " no more. How eager he had been to accept her 
 small mistake as a willful incivility how determinedly 
 blind to her regret! Perhaps he had not noticed it had 
 thought her cold as himself? Well, a good thing, too! 
 But there is a pang at her heart as she tries to convince 
 herself of this. 
 
 Behind the giant firs there is a little river a brawling 
 noisy river that rushes headlong to the sea. It is a favor* 
 ite of Dolores', and to it she turns her slow feet. The 
 beauty of the day is loat upon hei 1 , the fair sweetness of 
 the growing noontide and all its fuller lights and rich 
 charms perfected, the faint sea-line upon the west, the 
 delicate clearness of the hills, the misty light that floats 
 tremulously low down between earth and sky, and the 
 tender salt breath from the ocean that comes upward from 
 the beach, where the 
 
 " Dark green waves are lying 
 Foam-clad on the distant shore." 
 
 She has gathered a few dog-roses from the hedges, and 
 put to them, in an idle inconsequent fashion, some large 
 marguerites that stare at her unblinkingly. With her 
 white gown clinging to her and her great eyes fixed mourn- 
 fully upon a future dark as midnight, she reaches her 
 destination, and throws herself upon the bank of her be- 
 loved river, at the root of a gnarled old oak. Lifting her 
 hat from her pretty roughened hair, she lays it on tho 
 sward beside her, and, taking her knees into her embrace, 
 prepares to give herself up to saddest thought. 
 
 But she is too young, too innocent for this sort of thing. 
 Close to her is the happy turbulent stream, so full of con- 
 yersation that perforce it carries her .attention away with
 
 74 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 it; and above her head the birds fond little denizens of 
 the branches round her are calling to one another, and 
 to her, in wild glad song that wakes the silence into life. 
 Her thoughts wander; the fears within her eyes, finding 
 themselves forgotten, die an early death. 
 
 All the sounds of nature combine together to rouse thi 
 fair thing from her sad musings. She can not resist their 
 influence. The vague perfumes, the mellow music, all 
 sink into her soul. She is at unison with them; her heart 
 ges out to meet them. Truly this world is still full of 
 great and generous promises, although 
 
 But what is this other sound that comes to her through 
 the silken leaves? It rises above all the rest, and comeg 
 ever nearer, nearer. It moves her as all the others have 
 failed to do; it fills her with a sharp pain and a quick un- 
 rest. It is a voice. 
 
 Her color deepens and then recedes as she recognizes it 
 and knows it to belong to her enemy. To such an awful 
 depth in her esteem has she consigned Bouverie since that 
 last fatal interview not twenty-four hours old. 
 
 Evidently he is not in grief! Yesterday's direful con* 
 sequences have not afflicted him with that terrible mal- 
 ady called "low spirits.''* He is quite happy! He is 
 singing! Dolores is consumed with indignation when the 
 certainty is borne in upon her that he is actually trolling 
 " Nancy Lee " in a clear joyous barytone. If it had been 
 " Love Not," or some such melancholy ditty, she might 
 have forgiven it; but " Nancy Lee!" 
 
 She rises to her feet, and, as he turns the corner all un- 
 consciously to find himself face to face with her, she ad- 
 vances toward him a step or two. 
 
 "You!" says he, startled out of all more conventional 
 addresses, and letting the obnoxious " Nancy '' go to the 
 winds. 
 
 " Yes mel" returns she, icily, and not at all gramma- 
 tically. 
 
 Her very acidity revives Bouverie and restores him to 
 his usual calm. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," he says, politely, pitching his 
 cigar into the river. "I fear I addressed you rather un- 
 ceremoniously; but the fact i, I was so surprised to meet 
 ny one here that I forgot myself not that any amount 
 of surprise could be aa^ excuse for ill- manner*."
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 78 
 
 *"No," says Dolores, indifferently. She is looking away 
 from him far down the little river to where the great 
 sea lies basking in the sunshine and has evidently devel- 
 oped an overpowering interest in a sea-gull that is flitting 
 to and fro upon the tiny wavelets like a fleck of burnished 
 silver. It is as though she has altogether forgotten Bou- 
 verie's presence. 
 
 He makes a movement as if to leave her, and half lifts 
 his hat; then, as though against his will, pauses. 
 
 " Did you walk here?" he asks, in a tone he fondly but 
 erroneously believes to be as indifferent as her own. 
 
 " Yes," says Miss Lome, in just the same uninterested 
 fashion as before. Her shoulder is now turned a little in 
 his direction. 
 
 "Through the meadows?" persists he, some acerbity in 
 his manner. 
 
 "Yes," replies she again. This is too much! 
 
 "Do you always speak in monosyllables? " demands he, 
 wrath f ully. 
 
 " You have known me long enough to be able to answer 
 that question for yourself," returns she calmly. 
 
 "I see. Of course I must understand that you wish 
 me to leave you. But what have I done," asks the young 
 man indignantly, " that you won't even speak to me?" 
 
 "I have spoken to you," says Dolores coldly; but now 
 there is a little something in her voice which does not 
 exactly encourage or hold out hope to him, but yet gives 
 him an incitement to pour out before her his pent-up 
 grievance. 
 
 " Yes but in what a way! How have I offended you? 
 Was it such a crime, my being late yesterday? Or was 
 it " He stops abruptly and looks at her with miserable 
 uncertainty in his eyes. 
 
 " Why should you believe I was offended yesterday?" 
 asks she suddenly. His question had touched her un- 
 pleasantly. A little anger flames into her eyes and deadens 
 the sweetness of her lips. Was her disappointment then 
 so palpable to everybody? She shrinks, as if hurt. "You 
 are wrong," she says, with a little catch in her breath. 
 
 "I suppose so. I hardly dared hope I was right. I 
 should have known that your displeasure did not arise out 
 of yesterday, but out of the night before. Those last words 
 I said to you I should Bet have said them; you had given
 
 76 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 me no right. If you mean me to understand that I must 
 not repeat them " His voice has grown somewhat 
 husky. Closing his fingers more tightly upon the slight 
 gtick he is holding in both hands, it snaps in two; he 
 flings the pieces far from him with an impatient jerk. " I 
 shall never trouble you in that way again," he says, and 
 turns, as if to continue his way through the wood. 
 
 "Do not go because of me," says Dolores, in a low 
 voice. "I Auntie will be expecting me. I must go 
 home at once." 
 
 She is standing upon a little green mound, and, as she 
 speaks, she steps down from it; in so doing, her foot 
 comes upon a sharp piece of broken stone, which causes 
 her such pain that involuntarily her foot turns under her. 
 It is all the work of an instant. She lays her hand upon 
 the trunk of the tree to keep herself from falling, and the 
 very lowest, faintest cry of agony escapes her. It is so 
 faint as to be almost imperceptible; but 
 
 " Lovers' eyes are sharp to see, 
 And lovers' ears in hearing." 
 
 and Bouverie feels she has come to grief. 
 
 " Yon are hurt?" he says, going anxiously up to her. 
 
 "It is nothing," returns she, still coldly, and with de- 
 termined self-possession, though her lips have grown 
 rather white. " I assure you it is nothing." 
 
 "It is certainly something," says Bonverie, quietly, 
 feeling sick at heart as he notices the pained lines round 
 her sensitive mouth. " You have hurt your foot. Yon 
 must allow me to see you home." 
 
 " There is really no reason why you should," says 
 Dolores; " I beg you will give yourself no trouble on my 
 account. See I can walk very well." 
 
 And indeed for one or two yards she manages to move 
 along; but then she falters, and a quick breath tells of 
 increasing agony. 
 
 " You had better take my arm," says Dick, coldly, 
 but with passionately suppressed anxiety. 
 
 "No, thank you. I am sure I can get on by myself," 
 returns she; but though she says it, she seems afraid to 
 take the next step. 
 
 " What is the good of your persisting in this folly?" 
 exclaims Bouyerie, an<'il- " JJo you want to be laid up
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 7t 
 
 tor a month? Take my arm directly; or " ungracious- 
 ly "shall I carry you? Perhaps it will be better " 
 
 " No, no " indignantly " certainly not! I do not 
 want your any help at all!" 
 
 There are tears in her beautiful eyes, and not only her 
 lips, but all her face is now quite colorless. 
 
 "Yes, you do," says Dick, obstinately; and, coming 
 close to her, he passes his arm round her. 
 
 She makes no protest, but it is evident to him that she 
 dislikes his support, Together, and in silence, they go 
 on again for a little while; and then, seeing that she is 
 still enduring great pain, he ventures on another protest. 
 
 " You know you are suffering horribly," he says, with 
 ome vehemance. " Why don't you let me carry you? It 
 isn't such a very long way, and it will be so much better 
 for you. Do try to understand " savagely " that I 
 have no desire whatever to carry you for my own part 
 that I think you would be rather heavy than otherwise 
 but that I can't bear to see any creature in pain." 
 
 To this extremely rude exhortation she makes no reply 
 beyond a faint effort to withdraw herself from his sup- 
 porting arm, which he silently refuses to let her do. 
 
 Yet a few steps further they go, and then all at once 
 Dolores stands quite still upon the woodland path, and 
 gazes at him with wide, agonized, almost imploring eyes. 
 
 " Oh, this is madness!" cried Bouverie; and in a mo- 
 ment, without further leave from her, he has her in his 
 arms and is carrying her with slow care in the direction 
 of her home. 
 
 How light she is! What a frail burden! His heart 
 smites him as he remembers how a moment since he al- 
 luded to her as being probably heavy. Would that she 
 were indeed a little heavier than she is! Why, there is 
 sca'-ce an air of heaven but would blow away this fragile 
 creature! What a poor hold upon its life must this slender 
 frame possess! 
 
 His heart is beating madly as he holds her to it, yet 
 there is a set, angry expression upon his brow, and a dis- 
 
 E leased curve about his lips. Only yesterday he would 
 ave deemed it bliss to be allowed to keep her hand nn- 
 forbidden within his, yet now he had all her sweet body 
 in his arms, no joy is his! Her pretty head, crowned with 
 its soft, short, sunny rings of hair, is lying upon his
 
 78 DICK'S SWEETHEART 
 
 shoulder; her face is very near to his. Oil, uow hard ; 
 thing it seems that love alone should be far from him! 
 
 Once he ventures to look down upon her, to lift her 
 head to a position a degree more comfortable; but, as he 
 does it, he feels that she stirs uneasily in his arms, and 
 shrinks from him. This last mark of her aversion cuts 
 him to the soul. 
 
 " Is my very touch so hateful to you?" he asks, the more 
 roughly because of his love and the misery he is enduring; 
 but she makes him no reply, and only turns her face 
 against the sleeve of his coat so that it is hidden from 
 him. 
 
 What a cold, cruel child she is! Can she not fathom his 
 love? Can not the very greatness of it move her even to 
 pity, that poorest of all consolations to a lover's heart. 
 " So young and so untender!" Great heavens, why was a 
 heart given him only to waste it on a girl who cares as 
 much for him as Well, well, many men have known 
 disappointments of this kind, and have lived through them 
 but surely none so keen as his, for they have not known 
 Dolores! To endure is the lot of all; but to be so deliberately 
 spurned by a mere child! 
 
 Just at this moment a stifled sound breaks upon his 
 ear, and he feels the little form in his arms quiver; again 
 that sorrowful sound, and then all at once he knows that 
 she is crying. 
 
 Despair seizes upon him. Is he born only to distress 
 and grieve this innocent creature? He stands quite still, 
 scarce knowing what to do, and feels that the arms that 
 encircle her are trembling. Then very gently he places 
 her upon the ground, still supporting her strongly so that 
 her injured foot may come to no harm, and looks at her 
 with anguish in his kindly eyes. 
 
 " Oh, Dolores, what is this?" he says, with deep agi- 
 tation. "Am I indeed so distasteful to you? There 
 gee I have placed you on the ground again, and will help 
 you as unobtrusively as I can until I get you home. Think 
 of me as though I were only a stick or a stone either of 
 which, "says Mr. Bouverie, with a sudden burst of misery, 
 " I wish wibh all my soul I were, as then feeling would ba 
 dead within me! Why must my love bring me only un- 
 happiness? Oh, dear, dear heart, take pity on me and 
 try at least not to hate me!"
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEABT. ft 
 
 His voice dies away from him, and he waits in a sort of 
 nervous dread for the answer that may come. It is long 
 in coming, and the silence that follows upon his words 
 grows more oppressive every moment. The birds are 
 hushed as if of one accord, their songs no longer sanctify 
 the air, the soft gurgling of the river grows every moment 
 fainter, lower; as it passes mournfully by to the great 
 ocean, it seems to him to murmur hopelessly, " Dolores, 
 Dolores!" By an effort he rouses himself from the pain- 
 ful apathy into which he is falling. 
 
 "It is cruel to torment you so," he says wearily. " If 
 you must hate me, why, you must!" 
 
 There is a touch of oriental resignation about this iast 
 remark; and indeed he has resigned himself to the worst; 
 but Dolores breaks the spell. 
 
 "Ah, it is just that," she says suddenly, with a quick 
 sob "I can not bear you to think it! It isn't true! Hate 
 you? Oh, no, no!" 
 
 "If not that," says Bouverie, in a strange tone, 
 " what?" 
 
 There is a lengthy pause, then: 
 
 " Oh, Dick," she murmurs, in an agonized tone, 
 " don't you think you could guess it? I couldn't say it; 
 but but " 
 
 "Is it that you love me?" says Bouverie. Even to 
 himself his voice sounds changed ; he tries to put her back 
 from him that he may see her face, but she resists him 
 and hides it away from him upon his breast. 
 
 "Darling," whispers he, in a low impressive tone, "is 
 it my wife I hold?" 
 
 There is a moment's crudest suspense, and then two 
 soft arms steal around his neck, and a little velvet cheek 
 is laid against his a delicate flushed cheek, all warm and 
 wet with tears. 
 
 "Oh, Dick!" sighs she. " Oh, dear dear Dick!" 
 
 It is enough! Upon the spot Bouverie's doubts desert 
 him, and a certainty full of blessedness takes him into 
 its keeping. How changed is all the world! Overhead 
 once more the birds have burst into a joyful paean, the 
 river, erstwhile dumb, is now loudly chanting a psalm full 
 of marvelous delights. Not Heaven itself could grant him 
 a happiness more complete than she has conveyed to him 
 in her fond faltering wordi.
 
 80 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 " But w mustn't forget your foot," he says presently. 
 " Does it hurt much now?" 
 
 " It is better, ever so much better; I really hardly feel 
 it now. Isn't that odd?" says Dolores, opening her 
 eyes in a bewitching fashion. " There isn't half the pain 
 in it that there was before " with a sweet little blush 
 " before we were friends." 
 
 " Lovers," says Dick. 
 
 " Yes, lovers," admits she, with unmistakable delight. 
 "Do you know, I think, when one is miserable in mind, 
 (one feels one's body more! I fancy I am almost well now; 
 see!" 
 
 She places her foot bravely on the ground, and takes a 
 step forward with quite an undaunted front. It is only 
 one step, and it leaves her when completed somewhat 
 flushed, and with a tiny wrinkle on her brow. 
 
 "Ah, it does ache still!" she says, with deep disap- 
 pointment. " You are not so good a doctor after all; it 
 burns like fire. I think perhaps, if I had my shoe off 
 Eh?" 
 
 " Come down to the river, and let me bathe it for you," 
 proposes Dick. " When it is cooler, it will feel better; 
 and I dare say the shoe is pinching it now." 
 
 " It must be then because the foot is swelled," says 
 Miss Lome, glancing at her perfect feet and her Parisian 
 shoes, with their wonderful heels, with a very pardonable 
 pride, "because I assure you," with extreme earnestness, 
 " these shoes are quite too large for me; I can step into 
 them without a shoe-horn 1" 
 
 "Of course you can; they are disgracefully loose," re- 
 marks Dick, who is fast developing into an unimpeach- 
 able courtier. "And what little shoes they are! Why, 
 they would be too small for a baby." 
 
 "They are small, aren't they?" she says, with a burst 
 of irrepressible pleasure. Then she looks ashamed of 
 herself and lowers her head. "Auntie says my mother 
 had little feet, "she murmurs shyly, almost apologetically. 
 There is something wonderfully lovable about the faint 
 touches of diffidence that betray themselves in her now 
 and then. 
 
 " Talking of Miss Maturin," says Dick, " what will she 
 lay to me as a nephew, eh?" 
 " All that is good," declares Dolores, with settled COB-
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 81 
 
 fiction. " She," naively, " she will be delighted with 
 you. It was only last evening that she was running yos. 
 up to the very skies, and calling you all sorts of pretty 
 names." 
 
 "And you, how did you answer her?" 
 
 "Ah!" murmurs she, with a little coquettish grimace. 
 "You must remember that last night I hated you. No 
 name I could have invented would have been bad enough 
 for you. But help me down to the river now, and see 
 what can be done for me. Let us try the cold-water cure 
 before we throw ourselves on auntie's mercies, and frighten 
 her to death." 
 
 The river is but six or seven yards away from them. 
 Having been carefully carried to it, Miss Lome seats her- 
 self upon the bank, and, desiring her companion to turn 
 away his head, proceeds to divest herself of shoe and 
 stocking. It hurts her more than she imagines it would 
 do, and at the close of the operation she says, " Ach!" 
 with a little sigh of relief. 
 
 This rague remark brings him to her side again in no 
 time. Filling his hat with water, he proceeds to bathe 
 the pretty naked foot with all the gentleness of a woman. 
 
 " Is it easier now?" he asks presently. 
 
 " The fierce heat has gone out of it. Yes, it is a great 
 deal easier. Watch my shoe, or it will fall into the river!" 
 
 He rescues it from its impending grave, and then turns 
 it over and over in his hands admiringly. 
 
 " What high heels!" he says, laughingly. " They must 
 add quite two cubits to your stature. Why if they were 
 taken off, you would be nowhere!" 
 
 He says all this most lovingly; but at his words her face 
 clouds. She sighs faintly, and plays with the ribbons on 
 her gown. 
 
 "Dick," she says, at last, nervously, " would you love 
 me better if I were taller? It isn't a good thing to be so 
 Tery small, is it? Perhaps you like great that is what 
 they call ' fine ' women do you ?" She pauses and leans 
 toward him, very deep anxiety in her lustrous eyes. 
 
 " May Heaven defend me from all such!" says Dick, 
 piously. " If there is one thing on earth I loathe, it is a 
 fleshy woman!" 
 
 "Ah, so do I!" laughs she, delightedly, slipping her arm 
 once more round his B@<$* " You can't think what a re-
 
 82 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 lief it is to me to know that you agree with me on that 
 point. Poor big women "with growing pity "they 
 are always in the way, aren't they? And muslins and 
 cambrics are so impossible to them. It is very sad for 
 them, I think, because, after all, they can't help growing, 
 you know, can they?" 
 
 " I'm very much obliged to you for helping it, at all 
 events," says Bouverie, " though, when we come to think 
 of it, we are only talking the most excessive nonsense. 
 Were you taller than the most gigantic Amazon ever 
 grown, with that angel-face of yours, I should still adore 
 you, and hold you in my heart higher than all the world." 
 There is a passion in his manner that subdues her and 
 pales her pretty cheeks. " Dolores," he goes on quickly, 
 some of the old fear waking in him, " are you sure you 
 have no misgiving none? No uncertainty in your heart 
 about your love for me? Think in pity to us both, my 
 beloved think of this now whilst yet there is time. 
 Time!" He rises to his feet, and puts her back from him. 
 " Already there is no time," he says. " My very soul is 
 yours from this day forth, to ruin or to save!" 
 
 "Ah!" whispers she softly, great tears springing to her 
 eyes. " It you could only know how I felt yesterday, 
 when I believed you you did not care for me, you would 
 let no such cruel doubts rise within you! Come back to 
 me, Dick! Do not stand over there as if you hated me. 
 Come" holding out her arms "come at once! Yon 
 know" with a reproachful glance at her foot "I can 
 not go to you." 
 
 "It seems all too good to believe," says Dick, lifting 
 her slender hand and kissing the fingers one by one. 
 "Sweetheart, whose happiness is as great as mine?" 
 
 At this the smile returns to her lips; but still there is 
 a faint regret within her eyes. She bends toward him. 
 
 " Was I very bad to you awhile ago?" she whispers. 
 " Was T very cross to you, my poor boy? What did I say 
 then? What cruel words did I use? Scold me for them. 
 And yet, no my punishment lay in the uttering of them! 
 They vexed me even more than they vexed you. Dick, 
 you did mean it then, after all." 
 
 " What, darling?" 
 
 "What you said to me the night of your mother's ball, 
 (nit as I was leaving about " She pauses, and turns a
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 83 
 
 outton of his ooat round and round between tier fingers, 
 in a nervous confused fashion. 
 
 "About what, then?" He remembers perfectly, but 
 can not resist the longing to hear what she will say. 
 
 "About holding me in your heart," she whispers, so 
 low that he has to stoop to hear her. Yet she raises her 
 head as she says it, and smiles tremulously, though he 
 can see that tears stand thick within her eyes. " You 
 did mean it?" 
 
 " Oh, that I could tell you all I mean!" exclaims he, 
 with passionate fondness. "Dolores, why are there tears 
 in your eyes?" 
 
 " Because of my joy," murmurs she sweetly. Then 
 she puts her hand upon his chest and looks at him curi- 
 ously. "Are you glad?" she asks. 
 
 "Glad!" says Dick. 
 
 " Ah, so am I! Yesterday I was so afraid I had lost 
 you forever, and now to-day you are mine; an hour ago, 
 and all things looked so dull, so colorless, that it seemed 
 to me" dreamily " as if it wasn't much use to be alivol 
 But now " with a quick change of color and a radiart 
 smile "all that is at an end, Dick! Shall I tell auntie 
 all about about yon and me?" 
 
 " Of course," says Dick, with animation; "the sooner 
 the better. All the world should be told, and at onco. 
 The moment I reach home I shall tell my mother." 
 
 Dolores shrinks from him. 
 
 "Oh, no not yet not quite yet!" she says, growing 
 very pale. " Do not tell your mother yet!" 
 
 " But why not, my dearest? How you change color! 
 Surely you are not afraid of my mother?" 
 
 "No. no!" hastily; then, with a sudden shamefaced 
 truthfulness and an adorable downward motion of the 
 head " It is true, though; I am afraid of her." 
 
 "But, darling, how absurd! Why, she will be very 
 proud when she finds what a sweet daughter-in-law I am 
 going to give her!" 
 
 "Oh, it isn't that!" says Dolores, with a sudden faint 
 flush and a touch of dignity that sits very charmingly 
 upon her, and endears her to him the more. I do not 
 dream that she will object to me; but there is something 
 aboat her I can not explain it; but " she pauses, and a 
 little curious light comMLUUo her eves " I am sure the
 
 84 DICK'S ov^EETHEART. 
 
 will do m harm yet!" she says, slowly. " She will bt 
 the one to destroy my happiness to " Again she pauses. 
 She has grown deadly white, and now she raises one hand 
 to her head in a terrified fashion the pupils of her large 
 eyes have dilated nervously. 
 
 "Dolores, what are you saying?" exclaims Bouverie, 
 shocked by her expression. 
 
 Taking down her uplifted hand, he holds it closely in 
 his own. His touch seems to soothe her. She sighs 
 painfully, and then all at once the frightened look van- 
 ishes, and a smile, sweet but languid, returns to her lips. 
 
 " I have been talking nonsense," she says, with an at- 
 tempt at lightness. " But still, do you know " looking 
 at him with a pathetic meaning "I feel very heavy at 
 heart. Do not tell your mother, Dick for my sake! 
 Will not our love be all the sweeter if but known to us 
 two alone?" She creeps closer to him. and lays her cheek 
 coaxingly in a childish fashion against his. " Let our 
 secret be a secret for a little while! Only auntie need 
 know and, after all, auntie is one with us." 
 
 " It shall be all exactly as you wish," says Dick, caresa-i 
 ing her. "But my father? He at least might know. 
 He will not betray us; and he is very dear to me. Do 
 not forbid him to be a sharer in my joy!" 
 
 "Our joy!" she says, tenderly. " "ISfes, tell him. But 
 do not let your mother know for a while." 
 
 " We'll make it an elopement case, if you like, and 
 then she need never know of our engagement at least," 
 returns Bouverie, laughing. 
 
 His change of manner seems to reassure her and rouse 
 her from her vague fears. 
 
 "You grow frivolous!" she says, austerely. "It it 
 time, evidently, to think of home. 
 
 " But how is your foot new?" 
 
 " Really better this time." 
 
 " Well, let me bathe it once more, and then we will 
 think of rising up and going on our way." 
 
 Again his hat, now in a limp and wretched state, is 
 plunged into the flowing river. Again her little foot is 
 tenderly bathed by the most loving hands in the world. 
 When he has dried it with his pocket-handkerchief very 
 carefully, lest he should hurt it, he stoops and imprints 4 
 kisi upon the snowy, arekj)! the jftstep.
 
 ^'Darling foot! My OWL icotr he whispers r ,oit very 
 low. 
 
 Miss Lome draws it away from him with a pretty pre- 
 lense of petulance. 
 
 " If you love my foot more than me, I shall be jealous 
 c* it and lead it a bad life," she says, with a soft blush. 
 "But" starting anxiously "we really must go now! 
 I think" with some embarrassment "if you were togc 
 and sit just over there, on that big stone see it? with 
 your back to me, I could manage to get on my my shoe 
 again!" 
 
 "Get on your stocking," says Mr. Bouverie, who scorns 
 ubterfuge; " but never mind the shoe it will only hurt 
 jou." 
 
 "Go and sit where I tell you!" orders Miss Lome, with 
 sudden dignity, very properly taking no notice of his advice. 
 "And be sure you don't turn your head until I give you 
 leave." 
 
 She manages to get on the shoe in spite of him, but the 
 walk home is a slow one, and rather painful. However, 
 she will not allow him to come with her further than the 
 wicket-gate that leads to the shrubberies and thence to tho 
 house. 
 
 " Why can't I come on with you now and tell Miss Mat- 
 urin all about it?" asks Dick, who can not bear to picture 
 her limping all alone to the house. He lingers hopefully, 
 hanging on to the top bar of the gate, as though loath to 
 let her go. 
 
 " No; it will be a little fcf.ook to her, and I would rather 
 tell her myself. But don't be afraid of that" sweetly 
 " I know she will be pleased; only I have been her baby, 
 you see, for so long that she will hate to to divide me 
 with another. Do you know, Dick " turning to him 
 thoughtfully in the calm twilight, and upraising her lucent 
 eyes to his " I was going to say to part with me; but you 
 would never try to part auntie and me, would you?" 
 
 "I would not indeed," says Dick very earnestly. 
 
 " Good-bye now until to-morrow." 
 
 She stands on tip- toe and slips her arms round his neck, 
 holds up her face to his without a suspicion of mauvaise 
 honte, and kisses him with all the passionate warmth of a 
 loving child. 
 
 Then she turns away and goes slowly down the pack
 
 86 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 that leads her from him slowly always, but presently 
 more slowly still, until at last she comes to a dead stop. 
 
 All this he notes, leaning still upon the little rustic gate, 
 and watching her every movement with a jealous care. 
 
 When she does come to a stand-still, she looks round, 
 and, after a short hesitation, comes back to him, and is 
 once again received within his willing arms. 
 
 "1 have come back," she says, laughing rather shyly, 
 vid very much out of breath from her exertion, " because 
 I felt sure you were feeling lonely without me. I knew 
 that because" she laughs again here rather confusedly, 
 and refuses to let her eyes meet his " because " softly 
 " I felt so awfully lonely without youl" 
 
 " My sweet little soul!" says Dick. 
 
 " Before I go for really," whispers she, smoothing the 
 short hair from his temples with nervous, loving fingers 
 " say say it all over again!" 
 
 " I love, love, love you!" whispers he back, straining 
 her to his heart, with a true lover's instinct guessing the 
 answer to her vague request. There is something akin to 
 thankfulness within his heart as he holds her in his arms, 
 and looks into her beautiful earnest eyes, and knows the 
 power of the pure love for her that has reached a perfect 
 growth within his heart. 
 
 As for her, tremulous tears have risen in her eyes, and, 
 though her smile still lingers, it is now graver, more tender. 
 
 " I love you too," she says, in a low voice; " and shall 
 for ever and ever!" 
 
 There is something that is almost solemn in her glance 
 as she withdraws herself from his embrace and once more 
 moves away. At the corner she turns and waves to him 
 a last adieu. Nothing is left him now but the pale far- 
 off shimmer of her white gown as it gleams here and there; 
 through the trees lighted by the early summer moon that? 
 is already sailing tranquilly through the pale blue ether 
 up above. With an almost absurd anxiety he watches the 
 white robe appear and disappear. Now it is here now 
 gone now is come again, and now indeed is altogether 
 lost! But, all is not lost with it! Hope remains, and 
 love, and the memory of her. 
 
 " My love, mine own spur's heart, more dear 
 
 Than mine own soul, 
 Who hath mv being between the hands of her *
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEAKT. 8T 
 
 A star has come out in the heavens, one pale tranquil 
 thing, above in the vast dome. To Dolores, his heart's 
 queen, he likens it, as he takes his homeward way. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SLOWLY, a little reluctantly, Mr. Bouverie's love makes 
 her progress to the house. She tries to believe she is in 
 mad haste to tell her tale, yet welcomes gladly any delay 
 that kindly nature offers her. Here she stops beside a 
 flower-bed to pluck a glowing " Anne Boleyn," and be- 
 heads it, like its mournful namesake, under a mistaken 
 impression that she wants it to make her room more 
 sweet; and here she lingers to hearken to the singing of 
 some sleepy bird, trying earnestly oh, cruel child 1 to 
 believe it a cry of pain. And anon she stoops to lift a 
 tiny beetle crossing the graveled pathway, and, laying it 
 tenderly upon the scented grass, speeds it kindly home- 
 ward. 
 
 All these delays are so many wily devices of hers to 
 lengthen out her road and ward off for a season tne im- 
 pending interview. It had seemed so easy to say she 
 would tell auntie all about it; but, now that the time for 
 telling draws so nigh, it appears to her terribly hard. 
 How is she to begin ? What words must she use? What 
 if her news should be unfavorably received? For the 
 first time it occurs to her that auntie is tremendously 
 tall! Yes, it will indeed be difficult to approach her. 
 Oh, if she should laugh at her, and tell her she is a silly 
 baby too young a child to know what true love means! 
 What then? "The Deluge!" says Miss Lome to herself. 
 
 At the laurustinus her heart had first begun to fail her; 
 now that she is at the hall-door there is not left to her so 
 much as one poor shred of courage. She mounts the 
 stone steps, and, with her suffering "Anne Boleyn" 
 clasped to suffocation in her little trembling hand, enters 
 the open door and moves quickly up the grim old hall. 
 
 It is half past six by the big clock later than she had 
 imagined. But lovers' hours are long. By this time 
 Lallie will be sitting in the drawing-room lost in her 
 " Times," or perhaps. "^Belinda" most probably indeed 
 the latter.
 
 88 DICK'S SWEETHEAM. 
 
 Opening the door with all the outward seeming of 
 Caesar, but with a quaking heart, she enters the room. 
 Yes, auntie is here with her ' Belinda/' and the fat Skye, 
 and the cat and tea. 
 
 "You have come!" cries Miss Maturin, starting into 
 life, and letting both " Belinda" and the Skye slide from 
 her with a little dull thud to the floor treatment the 
 Skye resents with numerous snuffles and a succession of 
 spasmodic barks that threaten to choke him every mov 
 ment and bring him to an untimely grave. 
 
 " How long you have been! Not long really, I sup- 
 pose; but I am always fussy, you see, and of course I miss 
 you. Foolish old women like me are sure to be trouble* 
 some. Come over here, darling, and have your tea." 
 
 " I thought you would have finished your tea by this 
 time." 
 
 " Well, so I should if you had been with me; but I put 
 it off as long as I could, waiting for you; then I grew 
 greedy " with a soft laugh. 
 
 " Ah, why did you wait?" says Dolores. She draws 
 nearer, and, kneeling down beside Miss Maturin, slips her 
 arms round her waist. " I have been unkind to you, 
 Lallie," she says, in remorseful accents. "I should not 
 have left you alone for such a long, long time." 
 
 "Nonsense, my kitten! I have been as happy as pos- 
 sible. Conceited child! Do you then think I can not live 
 without you?" 
 
 " I do because I know I could not live without you I" 
 In her manner there is a subdued but tender rush of feel- 
 ing. She draws her auntie's face down close to her and 
 folds her in a warm embrace. 
 
 There is something so fervent in the kiss the girl be- 
 stows upon her that Miss Maturin is slightly but uncon- 
 sciously awakened by it to the inevitable ending of this 
 drama. She puts Dolores back from her, and gazes at her 
 earnestly. 
 
 " How sweet you are looking!" she says fondly " but 
 a little pale, as it seems to me. Did your walk fatigue 
 tour 
 
 " Oh, nol w 
 
 "You enjoyed it?" 
 
 "Very, very much," says Dolores, with unthinking 
 force. Then she colottl crunson beneath her aunt's sera*
 
 DICE'S SWEETHEART. 8* 
 
 tiny, and, rising to her feet, goes over to the window, 
 where her features at least are beyond observation. 
 
 Sinking into the cushioned old-fashioned seat, she 
 turns her face eastward and gazes dreamily upon the fast 
 darkening landscape outside. Slowly the shades of gentle 
 night are descending, spreading a flimsy pall over earth 
 and sea, through which the trembling moonbeams soon 
 will make a way. 
 
 Mingled with the soft calm twilight is a tinge of mel- 
 ancholy a birth of sorrow, plaintive, vague, shadowy, 
 but felt. It mingles with the air and fills all the dusky 
 corners cf the rose-garden. There comes a moan from 
 the ocean, and from the village far, far away the solemn 
 tolling of a passing bell. 
 
 Miss Maturin has taken up her knitting. The girl, 
 with bent head and graceful white-robed figure, is pon- 
 dering the subtleties of life and death. A delicate fra- 
 grance of dying flowers comes from the pleasaunce with- 
 out. 
 
 With a little sigh, Dolores raises her slender figure into 
 a more upright position, and prepares herself for the mo- 
 ment that shall make a third person a participator in her 
 sweet secret. 
 
 " Lallie!" she says very slowly, and then pauses; she 
 draws herself well within the shelter of the lace curtains 
 and waits guiltily for some encouragement to proceed. 
 
 "Well, darling?" asks Miss Maturin, plaoidly, picking 
 up a dropped stitch. 
 
 "Were were you ever in love, Lallie?" 
 
 Miss Maturin laughs, with a certain sense of amuse- 
 ment. As yet the truth is far from her. 
 
 " No, my dear never," she says, so promptly as to 
 preclude all possibility of doubt. 
 
 Dolores seems disappointed. 
 
 " I thought perhaps you have such a sweet, sad ex. 
 pression that that " 
 
 "I had been disappointed in love, and was still pining 
 for the refractory one?" supplies Miss Maturin, gayly. 
 " No, no; I never loved any man, I never felt that I should 
 like to love any man. I suppose this confession will make 
 me suffer horribly in your esteem; but the fact is, I had 
 only two offers in all my life, so that my range of choice 
 Was not unlimited,."
 
 9Q DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 " But chose two?" says Dolores, who, being in love her- 
 self, feels of course soft-hearted and inclined to the belief 
 that one of the two discarded ones must surely have been 
 worthy of favor. 
 
 " As for them," says Miss Maturin, with quite youthful 
 vivacity, "why, I remember them as though it were only 
 yesterday!" 
 
 "What both of them?" asks Dolores, curiously. 
 
 "Yes, both," says Miss Maturin, with disgraceful en- 
 joyment in her recollection. "Heavens, what a snuffy 
 old man the first was! He might have been my grand- 
 father then my father even now. He hadn't a tooth 
 in his venerable head, and his gold-headed stick was the 
 only useful leg he possessed," 
 
 "And the other?" asked Dolores; but there is only 
 faint hope in her tone. Had there been any sweet, sad 
 recollection in her past, auntie could not have possibly 
 answered her in that jubilant fashion. 
 
 "The other! Oh, dear me," says Miss Maturin, laying 
 her knitting down to idle upon her knees, and knitting 
 her brows instead, " when I think of that young man, I 
 always wonder why it was he was allowed to go about alone 
 without a keeper. It couldn't have been want of funds, 
 as he was immensely rich quite a millionaire, poor soul!" 
 
 " What was the matter with him?" asks Dolores, dis- 
 carding the protection of the lace curtains in her anxiety 
 to hear the true and unvarnished tale of this sad wooer. 
 "Was he" 
 
 "Yts, he was," says Miss Maturin, agreeably "quite 
 mad! He was about the very worst lunatic any one ever 
 aw out of an asylum. If he had been just one shade nearer 
 perfection in his own line of business, he would have made 
 intimate acquaintance with Colney Hatch; but no such 
 luck was mine; he remained a harmless imbecile just to' 
 torment me." 
 
 With an injured shake of her handsome head, Miss 
 Maturin resumes her stocking. 
 
 The girl's gaze still wanders dreamily outward. 
 
 " What an evening it is!" she says at last, in a low voice 
 full of intensest admiration. " See how those pale clouds 
 have dropped, as it were, into the very heart of the oceanl 
 What a perfect mingling! What a clear, calm light! 
 Look at that opalescent bar over there.'"
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 81 
 
 "A fair evening indeed!" says Miss Maturin, gazing 
 with a deep satisfaction at the far-off horizon. " A most 
 exquisite mingling! A very ' bridal of the earth and sky!' " 
 
 "A bridal?" repeats Dolores, softly, flushing a deli- 
 cate pink. "Shall I ever be a bride, auntie? Do you 
 ever think that some day perhaps I shall?" 
 
 "A bride? No, no, it is impossible! " exclaims Miss 
 Muturin, with sudden curious vehemence. She looks 
 askance at her niece, and a quick pallor overspreads her 
 face. One might almost imagine that it was terror itself 
 had blanched it. She sighs heavily, and sinks back in 
 her chair, as one might who has been touched and scorched 
 by a breath of passing fear. 
 
 " Why, auntie," says Dolores, gazing at her with largt 
 star tied "eyes, "what is it you say?" Then timidly 
 " Why should it be impossible? Other girls get married." 
 
 "Ay, other girls!" said Miss Maturin, in a low voice 
 akin to a groan. She seems to have lost all her self-con- 
 trol, and the words fall from her as though in despite of 
 her will. 
 
 "Am I then different from all the rest?" questions 
 Dolores, with a smile. It is a rather wistful smile. What 
 if Lallie should disapprove of her engagement and look 
 coldly on her Dick? 
 
 " Why should you imagine that?" says Miss Maturin, 
 hastily. "Tut, child. You must not mind me." She 
 is speaking more lightly now, and has evidently recovered 
 in part her usual manner. " Forget what I have said, or 
 remember only that the very thought of parting with you 
 causes me such pain that words slipped from me that 
 that were unmeant. To lose you now after all these 
 years! " 
 
 " We should not be parted," says Dolores, gravely. 
 "Have I not just told you that I could not live without 
 you? We two shall never part, Lallie, be sure of that." 
 
 " Well, well, sweetheart, the subject grows too much 
 for us, and we ourselves are needlessly thoughtful over a 
 dream that may never be fulfilled. 'Sufficient unto the 
 day is the evil thereof.' * Miss Maturin, as she says this, 
 miles faintly. 
 
 "Why should it be evil?" asks Dolores, regarding her 
 arnestly perhaps reproachfully. To call a marriage 
 With Dick an "evill"
 
 92 DICK'S SWEETHEABT. 
 
 "Why, indeed?" says Miss Maturin, with an attempt 
 at lightness. " But tell me of your walk, darling child. 
 Where did you go? Whom did you meet? Nobody, I 
 fear, in this quiet neighborhood. Sometimes I am afraid 
 you will learn what loneliness really means during your 
 solitary rambles." 
 
 " I was not solitary to-day," says Dolores. "I did 
 meet somebody." 
 
 Her pale cheeks glow and he* sensitive mouth trem- 
 bles as she makes this confession; but to deceive Lalliein 
 any way would be not only abhorrent to her, but indeed 
 utterly impossible. 
 
 "I met Mr. Bouverie." She had almost said 
 " Dick," and now feels remorseful at heart, and as 
 though she has in some way been unkind to her lover by 
 the use of his more formal appellation. 
 
 " I am glad of that," says Miss Maturin, unsuspiciously. 
 "I like that young man; he is so bright, so natural! Did 
 you meet him soon after you left me?" 
 
 "As I got down to the river, he came there too," gays 
 Dolores, leaning forward eagerly and speaking with glad 
 interest. Her beautiful eyes are sparkling; she has found 
 a mine of happiness in those words " I like that young 
 man." Yes, yes, she knew it! Who could help liking 
 him? " He stayed there with me all the time," she goes 
 on nervously, "until I said I should come home; and 
 then he walked back with me. And he wanted to come 
 in and see you; but " Her voice dies away. 
 
 Miss Maturin makes no reply, She is feeling numbed 
 and sick at heart. Whatever cruel thing is gnawing at 
 her heart is doing its work effectually; the girl's last 
 words are working into her brain. " Three long hours," 
 she says to herself " three long hours!" An expression 
 of sickening anxiety grows upon her white face, and there 
 is, too, a strange, mournful, despairing look about her as 
 she glances furtively at the pretty dainty figure in the 
 window, sitting with calm, folded hands and with a light 
 as of Heaven within in her happy eyes. 
 
 " Lallie," says Dolores, after a lengthened pause, " do 
 
 you think that people who have never been in love 
 
 themselves can sympathize with or understand those 
 
 who who do love?" 
 
 Grayer and grayer growg Miss Maturin's face. Reluc-
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. % 
 
 tantly she compels herself to gaze upon the girl's flushed, 
 averted features, and then a great change sweeps over 
 her. First there is passionate regret and then desola- 
 tion and then despair. 
 
 But she masters herself! Love, the all-powerful, helpg 
 her to do this; for the girl must never know. It is a 
 wonderful mastery over self however, and proves th 
 strength of the soul within her; but it tears her heart in 
 twain. Her lips are bloodless; there is however a smile 
 upon them as she turns boldly and answers the girl who is 
 f .he sole thing she clings to upon earth. 
 
 " I do, indeed/' she says quietly. Alas for the cruel 
 strain that gives this calm! "Do you mean that I could 
 not sympathize with, let as say, you in such a case? And 
 so you are in love, child?" 
 
 She has risen from her seat, and Dolores has risen too. 
 
 " Oh, Lallie! oh, dear, dear Lallie!" she cries tremu- 
 lously, turning a face now pale as a new-born snowdrop 
 to Miss Maturin. She makes a step forward and holds 
 out her arms. "Ah, love me still!" she cries, a little 
 incoherently perhaps, but with an intuitive fear that Miss 
 Maturin might think herself forgotten, neglected, thrust 
 from the first place in her tender heart. Almost it seems 
 to her that she she has been the one to inflict a lasting 
 injury upon that faithful soul, who has been to her all 
 that her lost mother possibly could be. 
 
 "It is so," says Miss Maturin; she has the frail little 
 figure in a close embrace by this time, and is bending 
 over it in speechless grief, a grief unknown to, unguessed 
 by Dolores. "I am 'dear Lallie' and he is 'dearest 
 Dick' for the future, is not that it?" 
 
 There is no answer, only the soft arms cling to her and 
 the pretty rings of hair stir uneasily upon her breast. 
 
 "How did you know it was Dick?" comes in a little 
 whisper to her presently. 
 
 "Have I no eyes in my head? And yet No, I 
 knew nothing until five minutes ago; your manner told 
 me. "Well, I am content to take second place; at least, I 
 am second is it not?" 
 
 "No," said Dolores firmly, throwing back her head 
 and looking earnestly at her aunt, " not that! These 
 two loves I hold now within my heart are so different, 
 yet both so great, that 1 could not make one second to
 
 94 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 the other. He is first in his, yon are first in yours; you 
 shall never be second, my own Lallie!" 
 
 " Fond little heart!" says Miss Maturin, pressing tho 
 sunny head down once again upon her breast. She is, 
 after all, happier when the child's innocent eyee are not 
 looking into hers. "And so you love him well?" she 
 says. 
 
 "And he loves me. Is it not ail quite wonderful?" 
 She passes over her aunt's question as though it requires 
 no answer which in truth it does not. "He wanted to 
 tell his mother about about it all; but I said only you 
 should know of it just yet; there is plenty of time to " 
 
 "Yes, yes time, time!" says Miss Maturin, with 
 agitation. "That is the principal thing. Let us keep it 
 a secret between us three as long as we can; it it will be 
 so much happier for you for us all no one prying or 
 asking questions or Yes, let it be quite a secret!" 
 She ceases, and laughs almost hysterically. " Don't you 
 see," she says nervously, "how much better it would be?" 
 " So I said," murmurs Dolores eagerly. " It seems even 
 sweeter our love I mean " shyly " when only you and 
 I and Dick know of it; you you are pleased about it, 
 auntie?" 
 
 "I have but one thought about it, and that is what is 
 best for your happiness." 
 
 "Dick is best," returns she, with a coy little laugh. 
 "Don't you think so, Lallie?" 
 "I suppose so, darling." 
 
 "Why don't you say something nice about him then? 
 Is he not the best and dearest fellow in all the world? Is 
 he not handsome? 
 
 " Not so handsome as his brother." 
 " As Bruno? Oh, auntie, what on earth are you think- 
 ing about? Dick not handsomer than Bruno! Why, they 
 are not to be compared in the same breath! Just look at 
 Dick's eyes!" 
 
 She pauses, as though waiting for Miss Maturin to per- 
 form this feat, which, as Mr. Bouverie at the present 
 moment is five miles away, would be a difficult one. Miss 
 Lome's next remark however would lead the unwary to 
 believe that it has been performed. 
 
 " Now I hope you see how wrong you were," she say, 
 with a triumph in voice and eyes. " Why, Bruno isn't
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 95 
 
 fit to be named in the same day with him. Say yon love 
 Dick, Lallie, or I can't be quite happy." 
 
 " I think he is the most charming young man I know. 
 He is the one I would have chosen for you," says poor 
 Miss Maturin, driven to say this with a sinking heart. 
 Then, the tension she has laid upon herself becoming too 
 strong to be longer borne, she gives way a little. "Go, 
 Dolores, go!" she cries faintly. " Go to your room." A 
 passionate longing to be alone is consuming her. She 
 speaks with a studied coolness that is but a remnant of 
 the departing calm. Then, seeing her darling's grieved 
 surprise at the unwonted severity of her tone, she nerves 
 herself once more. " Go, my heloved," she says tenderly; 
 " it is late. You have not dressed yourself and dinner 
 will soon be ready. We can discuss your great news later 
 on." 
 
 Dolores silently obeys her; but, when she gets to the 
 door, almost as she touches the handle of it, some thought 
 strikes her. She wavers, turns, and finally, running back 
 again, flings her arms round Miss Matnrin's neck. 
 
 "You know I love you, Lallie, don't you? You are 
 not jealous of him? You are not lonely, or sorry, or any- 
 thing, are you? That would break my heart. You feel 
 quite sure -of my love?" 
 
 " I do, my dearest child!" Her voice is low and broken 
 with emotion. 
 
 " That is what I am to you your child?" 
 
 " My own child! Truly I feel toward you more as a 
 mother than an aunt." 
 
 " And I am sure," says Dolores, softly, " that, could 
 my mother be given back to me now, I should never learn 
 to love her as I love you." 
 
 When the door has closed behind Dolores, and she is 
 indeed gone, when the very last echo of her light footfall 
 has ceased upon the polished boards beyond, a change 
 comes over Miss Maturin. Her hands fall to her sides, 
 her face grows ashen. All in one pitifully short moment 
 he seems to have become an old woman. Despair shines 
 dully within her eyes, and gives a desolate curve to her 
 lips. Despair, too, is in her heart, and a terror that hag 
 long lain dormant the fear of discovery. 
 
 To possess a secret j* sinlesi one .so far as she herself
 
 96 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 and the creature she loves best on earth are concerned, 
 has been Miss Maturin's doom a cruel secret that ha 
 touched her though from without and burned into her 
 and made her life for many years a burden almost too 
 great to be borne. 
 
 Oh, the days and the long, sleepless nights of anguish 
 and the years of bitter grief, filled to overflowing with a 
 vain regret! There had been, too, wild moments in which 
 passionate anger made havoc of her strength, and in which 
 prevailed a longing for revenge never to be fulfilled. 
 And then had come calm and a strange new love exceed- 
 ing all that had gone before it, born of the clinging arms 
 and the innocent kisses of a little child who had wound 
 herself round her heart-strings, and in process of years 
 had grown into a child with sad eyes as a heritage, and a 
 sensitive mouth, and a beauty exceeding that of most, and 
 a spirit too great for her frail body. Pure, tender, lov- 
 ing, possessed of a heart that had learned " that more 
 excellent way" and knew no guile, and a soul that truly 
 thought no evil of any living thing, the child Dolores 
 had grown into a girl touching upon the borders of 
 womanhood. 
 
 As a little one, she had been gentle and for a child^- 
 wonderfully unselfish. As a girl, she is still more gentle, 
 " believing all things " that will help her to reverence her 
 kind, and " hoping all things "for them a little reserved 
 in manner perhaps, because of her persistent isolation in 
 her childhood from those of her own age, but neverthe- 
 less loving, calm and restful in manner, and with an un- 
 known because untried but terrible capacity for en- 
 durance. 
 
 " most sweet spirit, what place is there for you in 
 this cold sneering world?" is Miss Maturin's thought. 
 
 Miss Maturin, with a little indescribable gesture, 
 rouses herself from her lethargy, and in an angry fashion 
 as though impatient of fate and its sad decrees paces 
 up and down the long drawing-room. Memory, glad and 
 bitter, troubles her; but, above all, the girl's beautiful 
 face and still more beautiful sou] sadden her. " Is there 
 no grace? Is there no remedy?" 
 
 Miss Maturin, coming to a stand-still by the lower win- 
 dow, gazes out absently upon the glories of the dying day. 
 Are all her hopes to die us dies the sun, or is there still a
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 97 
 
 promise for her in the thought that lie will rise again to- 
 morrow? 
 
 " Have pity upon me now, kind Heaven, in this my 
 hour of need," she whispers feverishly, bringing her 
 palms together. "Yet it is for her I pray for her, not 
 for myself. Spare her! Let me be forgotten; but have 
 her ever in merciful remembrance! Let me suffer; but 
 save her!" 
 
 She raises one hand to her head in a distracted fashion. 
 The agony of her mind is reflected upon her face, which 
 is white and drawn. 
 
 " If he must be told if all is to be opened up afresh 
 what am I to say to do? And she ignorant, unknow- 
 ing, it will kill her! Alas, alas my lamb my innocent 
 one!" A sob checks her. " Why need he ever know?" 
 she murmurs, her pale lips growing still more pallid. 
 "Why not conceal it to the end, and trust to chance to 
 befriend her? Who is there here to betray us? And yet 
 if at any time fate should throw in her path one who 
 knew! But there are so few who know. And, once his 
 wife, she would be safe, even should the truth come out. 
 But as to her mind! Knowledge of that sort coming too 
 late would destroy her would break her loyal heart. 
 No; she could not endure the shame to him! Oh" 
 stretch ing out her arms to the darkening heavens " how 
 difficult is life! With what torn and bleeding feet the 
 pure must tread the world! How can I help her how?" 
 
 Her head sinks upon her breast, and for a little time 
 she remains lost in thought; then she sighs wearily and 
 sinks, as though overcome with bitter conclusions, into a 
 lounging-chair. 
 
 " The truth the truth is best!" she murmurs broken- 
 ly. " He shall know the worst before he weds her. For 
 her sake I will run no risks. There shall be no after-dis- 
 covery. To him I shall confide all; but she shall never 
 know; I will not have her sweet life darkened! But, when 
 he hears her story, how will it be with him then? Will 
 his love be strong enough to bear the strain? If so, all 
 will be well; if not " Her voice sinks, and a shadow 
 coming from the gathering night falls athwart the room. 
 'If it must be, so be it," she says at last, faintly. " For 
 her sake I shall bring myself even to the betrayal of my 
 dead. After all" wearily "old griefs are never buried;
 
 98 DICERS SWEETHEART. 
 
 they come to us again and again when we believe ourselves 
 free from them forever. Aud yet I should have expected 
 this. With her angel face some day it should be. Well, 
 I shall speak when the right time comes; but not yet, 
 not yet!" 
 
 A clear voice rings through the hall; the refrain of a 
 gay little French song echoes through the air; the door 
 is suddenly thrown open. 
 
 " Lallie lazy Lallie! Here still?" cries a ringing voice. 
 " Come come this instant and get yourself ready for din- 
 ner! I shall be your maid to-night. A fig for Elizabeth 
 and her old-maidish ways! I alone have the power to 
 make you as lovely as nature intended you should be. 
 Come unless you want cook to case maledictions upon 
 your head!" 
 
 " Go before me, darling," says Miss Maturin, in a low 
 Toice. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE village choir has mercifully ceased from troubling 
 the congregation for the time being. The ancient and 
 much dilapidated organ has sunk into a fitful slumber, 
 out of w.iich it wakens every now and then to give way 
 to a dismal scream, as one after another the windy sobs 
 die out of the wheezy pipes. These irreverent screams, com- 
 ing at uncertain periods, have a distinctly demoralizing 
 effect upon the more youthful members of the choir, and 
 reduce the school-children sitting demurely upon the 
 forms below to such a low state of morality that it re- 
 quires only one shriek more to bring their suppressed 
 mirth to a head and cause a dangerous outbreak. Upon 
 the elder members of the congregation, however, the re- 
 suit of these screams is simply depression. 
 
 The hot sun is rushing through the painted windows 
 and casting bright patches of color here and there upon 
 sober Quakerish bonnets that would scorn such finery if 
 supplied by earth, but must needs bear it when sent from 
 Heaven direct upon poor bald heads and heads most 
 daintily tressed upon the rich and poor, the sinner and 
 the saint alike; upon Dolores, sitting with clasped hands 
 and a rapt angelic face, it casts a brilliant crimson flush 
 that lights up her lovely eyes to greater beauty, and throws
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 99 
 
 rich stains upon her white gown, and is put to shame only 
 by her soft parted lips. 
 
 Sing, song, sing, song, goes the curate. His voice alone 
 on be heard, the words of the second lesson are nowhere. 
 
 Lady Bouverie, in the square pew, is sitting therein in 
 a scrupulously upright manner, with an expression upon 
 her cold face that she fondly believes to be pious, but which 
 is only disagreeable. She is holding a Bible straight before 
 her, and is gazing at it with a severity as forbidding as 
 herself, and with an air meant to impress the congregation. 
 
 With a comfortable complacency she dwells upon the 
 certainty of the growing attachment that exists between 
 her elder son and the pretty heiress of Greylands. There 
 has been no official announcement of an engagement, no 
 taking into confidence of the mother by the son; but the 
 former, for all that, is as cognizant of the love affair as if 
 she had been the chosen recipient of their raptures. Dol- 
 ores to Lady Bouverie is what the fly is to the spider, a 
 thing to be caught and devoured. Money is Lady Bou- 
 Verio's god, and money is distinctly plentiful with Dolores. 
 But one thing perhaps would rank above it in the elder 
 woman's affections, and that would be birth; pride in her 
 ancient lineage older even than her husband's runs 
 through every fiber of her body. But of this too the little 
 heiress can boast; of good people all through she comes, 
 the Maturins being second to none in family, and counting 
 as many generations as most. 
 
 That Dolores, pretty fly, should have so readily fallen 
 into her web, or her arrangements, and that Dick should 
 have followed suit, seems to his mother an unprecedented 
 stroke of good luck. Nothing can exceed her amiability 
 just at this time, or her excessive affability; she seems indeed 
 to have cultivated a serene and placid temper to which most 
 assuredly she was not born. She lavishes upon Dolores 
 who is a' little bewildered by them' all the attentions and 
 caresses of which she is capable. The attentions are sim- 
 ple, the caresses works of art. 
 
 Dolores' fortune, she has assured herself, is by many 
 thousands greater than that of any other marriageable 
 young lady in the county. Dolores, she admits, even to 
 herself, is all that can be desired in manner and appear- 
 ance. Her style is perfect, her taste unimpeachable. As 
 a daughter-in-law, it will be qjiiite possible to be abso-
 
 100 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 lately proud of her. The girl's little dainty, haughtily 
 set head can be seen by her as she turns her glance to the 
 right and looks at her from over the high oaken walls of 
 the Bouverie pew that board her in on every side, and 
 seem to add to her pomp by separating her so entirely 
 from her fellow-creatures. 
 
 To-day the world is a week older than when Dolores 
 and her lover stood by the rushing river and grew glad 
 because of the fire of love that glowed within their eyes 
 and burned so warmly in their hearts. 
 
 There had been a little change in Dick since that day, 
 a change his mother had not been slow to mark the glad 
 abstraction in his face, his many reveries, the happy ex- 
 pectancy that betrayed itself each morning in his manner 
 and spoke of the blessed certainty that soon he would be 
 face to face with " her," the restlessness that grew upon 
 him with the evening when hope of seeing her failed 
 Lim, until long dull hours should have passed away. 
 
 " The god of love, ah, benedicite, 
 How mighty and how great a lord is he I" 
 
 One would be dense indeed not to know when Dick Bou- 
 verie was in love! 
 
 Warmer and warmer grows the day, drowsy and drowsier 
 grows the congregation. Audrey Ponsonby, with a little 
 imperious gesture, bids Sir Chicksy Chaucer open the 
 window nearest her an inch or two more. It is all it will 
 open, and no good comes to her from it, as winds are 
 asleep to-day and breezes dead. 
 
 " You should bring a fan with you," whispers her father 
 to her absently, yet in a tone of loving concern " a fan 
 eh?" 
 
 He is an elderly man, worn, white, with the orthodox 
 stoop of a book-worm. His likeness to his sister, Lady 
 Bouverie, is very striking; but an observer, studying 
 both, would have said she ought to be the man, he the 
 woman. In fact, " dad " is as mild and gentle and sim- 
 ple at heart as she is quite the reverse. 
 
 "I must remember it," says Audrey, in a little, soft 
 whisper, turning upon him a smile that lights up all her 
 supercilious face, and softens it into great beauty. The 
 fact that she possesses but one fan on earth, and tliat ona 
 fit only for evening use, she carefully hides from him.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 101 
 
 Where it he to find money for such frivolities M fang> 
 when books, the food of his soul, are debarred him be 
 cause of the emptiness of his purse? 
 
 In the pew opposite to Audrey's Mrs. Wemyss ia lean- 
 ing back, gazing upon space. That Bruno Bouverie is 
 gazing upon her is a fact of which she appears utterly 
 unaware. Yet, is she? There is something just a trifle 
 too innocent about the droop of her pretty mouth. 
 
 The vicar's wife, Mrs. Dovedale, is sitting, open-eyed, 
 leaning a little forward, as though engrossed with the 
 lesson, of which not one word is intelligible to her. Her 
 friend, Mrs. Drummond, being fat, forty and unwieldy, 
 is sighing heavily, and inwardly anathematizing the 
 scorching sun. Miss Maturin, in an exquisite toilet, ia 
 reading her Bible diligently. Mr. Vyner, in his own 
 pew, somewhat distant from the rest, is apparently sound 
 asleep. 
 
 More and more sleepy grow the people, the sun more 
 vigorous; the whole church seems flushed with its yellow 
 light. Naught can now be heard but the response of the 
 clerk, as he helps the curate through the Commandments. 
 Through all the heat and sunlight and general languor, 
 his voice comes lazily. 
 
 And now comes the sermon. It may be a good one 
 it may be quite the other thing who shall say? Nobody 
 hears it. Nobody wants to hear it, which is very satis- 
 factory, as they could not, oven if they would. The ex- 
 treme heat has reduced most of those present to a state 
 bordering upon insensibility. Even Dolores, with a swift 
 inward sense of remorse, raises her delicately gloved hand 
 to her lips to suppress a yawn. Two only of the whole 
 assembly are thoroughly awake Mrs. Dovedale, who, in 
 a saintly attitude and a big Rubens hat, and with her half- 
 cliildish, half-malicious smile upon her lips, is outward- 
 ly intent upon the sermon that no man can hear; and 
 Audrey Ponsonby, who, leaning back in her pew in an in- 
 dolent fashion, with her great gloomy eyes wide open, is 
 evidently lost in thought, of a character as scornful as it 
 is sad with a vague regret. 
 
 " Lastly " has come; the curate has mopped his brow 
 twice; the organ has wheezed afresh in anticipation of 
 the last voluntary. Mr. Vyner has reached that point iu 
 his slumbers when * snore may__eonfidently be expected.
 
 102 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 when providentially the " Amen " is spoken, and all is at 
 an end. 
 
 "What a delicious day but just a little too much of 
 it!" says Mrs. Wemyss, as every one crowds into the porch 
 outside with an alacrity that betrays their joyfulness at 
 their escape. "I do hope you will all brave the heat, 
 and come and rouse me up this afternoon, or I shall be 
 bored to death. Sunday afternoons are always so oppres- 
 sive." 
 
 She smiles nay, beams on every one; she returns 
 Bruno's warm hand-clasp with a pressure that leaves 
 nothing to be desired. She is perfectly delightful even to 
 Lady Bouverie, who is not quite as fond of her as she 
 might be. 
 
 Yes; most of those she addresses will be charmed to 
 drop in to her during the afternoon. It is her usual day 
 of reception, and is generally well attended. Even Mrs. 
 Drummond, who goes in for the heavier type of religion, 
 and always calls Sunday " The Sabbath " in big letters, 
 and makes that holiest of days a perfect torment and a 
 cause of life-long regret to her household, so far overcomes 
 her prejudices as to go to Mrs. Wemyss' every Sunday 
 evening between the services. But then Mrs. Wemyss is 
 an " honorable," and that, according to Mrs. Drummond's 
 lights, makes such a difference! 
 
 Mrs. Dovedale too is always to be seen here on Sunday 
 afternoons, with her little curious smile, that means 
 nothing or a great deal. 
 
 "So quite too good of you all to come!" says Mrs. 
 Wemyss, rising from her garden-chair about two hours 
 later, to greet Mrs. Drummond, and comprehending in 
 her speech those who have already come. She alters her 
 style to suit her guests at times, and, therefore, occasion- 
 ally makes rather funny little speeches; but whatever she 
 may choose to say at the moment always becomes her. 
 She glances in a quick flickering fashion at Bruno Bou- 
 verie as she thus greets Mrs. Drummond, and there is 
 something about the expression of her eyes suggestive of 
 the idea that she could laugh were she to find herself sud- 
 denly alone. "An hour ago," she goes on smiling, and 
 clicking her huge black fan with as good a grace as any 
 Spanish sefiora, "I feared no one would have the charity 
 to break in upon my monotony^and then I felt suicidal.
 
 MCK'S SWEETHEART. lU8 
 
 At this Mrs. Drummond regards it as her direct duty 
 to enter a faint protest. 
 
 "But you had your books surely," she say?, with a 
 meandering smile " your good books your ' De 
 Quincy ' that I lent you, your * Hall,' your ' A'Beck- 
 
 
 "I had," responds Mrs. Wemyss, promptly; "I had 
 them all in a row. I tried them every one in turn; and 
 that, I am convinced, is why I felt so specially murderous 
 this afternoon! Ah! Miss Maturin, this is a pleasure! 
 And you, top, dear Dolores! And!" with a little mis- 
 chievous smile "of course you, Mr. Bouverie!" Her 
 manner is altogether different now, and full of a tender 
 gladness as she greets these last-comers. 
 
 "It takes but a simple intellect to see how it is with 
 Dick," says Bruno presently, when his hostess is once 
 more seated in her garden-chair they are all out of doors 
 and he is, as usual, lounging at her feet. 
 
 " Why, yes! He seems in excellent health," replies 
 ahe indifferently. 
 
 " I'm not talking about his health," says Bruno, some- 
 what indignantly. " What I mean is that he's quite 
 gone in that quarter." 
 
 He nods lightly to where Dolores is standing, the center 
 of a small group. 
 
 "Gone?" repeats Mrs. Wemyss, innocently. "Dear 
 me, no he isn't over there at all! He is standing quite 
 close to Audrey, on this side. See?" 
 
 " How you amuse yourself! " says Bruno, with a slight 
 shrug and an amused glance. " What I want you to hear 
 me say, then, is that Dick is in leve." 
 
 "Ah!" exclaims Mrs. Wemyss, raising her brows. 
 " You should break your news uiore gently. In love? 
 With whom?" 
 
 "Miss Lome, if you will have me say it. And she, as 
 it seems to me, is quite as empressee about him. There 
 is nothing to choose between them; she is quite as much 
 in it as he is. Don't you think they will make a charm- 
 ing pair?" 
 
 " Dear me! Who would have believed them so silly?" 
 murmurs Mrs. Wemyss, in an accent replete with heart- 
 felt regret. 
 
 " Eh?" says Bruno, who up to thyi has been almost ea-
 
 104 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 thusiastic in his speech. He raises himself upon his 
 elbow and gazes at her earnestly. 
 
 "So foolish of them!" exclaims Mrs. "Wemyss, biting 
 her red lip with considerable force. "But it was to be 
 expected. It is of course the way they would go. No- 
 body has a grain of sense nowadays except myself and 
 you! There that's polite of me, if you like! Have some 
 strawberries? " 
 
 "I don't understand you," says Bruno, stiffly, refusing 
 to be mollified even by the sweet smile she sends straight 
 into his eyes. " Who is foolish, and why?" 
 
 " Your brother and that lovely child. Why, you have 
 just been telling me all about it! " returns she, with an 
 assumption of reproach. 
 
 " 1 said nothing of folly, certainly; I only said they 
 loved each other." 
 
 " Bien, and how could you possibly have said it more 
 distinctly?" A little rippling laugh breaks from her as 
 she presses a strawberry into a mouth that is scarcely less 
 red than it. 
 
 "Love, then, you deem folly? "asks the young man 
 half angrily. 
 
 " The very height of it don't " with a soft coquet- 
 tish glance " don't you? " 
 
 " No, I don't," says Bruno, indignantly; after which he 
 gathers himself up from her feet, and saunters moodily 
 away in the direction of nobody. 
 
 This proceeding carries him into the gardens beyond; 
 but it does not keep him there. It just gives him time to 
 concentrate within his brain the fact that the most ex- 
 quisite flowers are altogether inferior to the society of Mrs. 
 Wemyss; after the imbibing of which knowledge, like a 
 very sensible young man, he returns once more to civilized 
 life. Once more, too, he approaches Mrs. Wemyss with a 
 face wreathed in smiles, and sinks into his old seat beside 
 her. 
 
 "The garden is pretty, isn't it?" says she, with light 
 enthusiasm. "I knew you would like it. I don't wonder 
 you stayed there so long!" It is precisely five minutes 
 and a half since he left her. 
 
 " Was I cross?" whispers Bruno, contritely. " I'm a 
 bear, I know, because you have so often told me so. But 
 you see you upset all one's preconceived ideas so utterly
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 that yon upset one's temper, too. I had been for so long 
 dwelling upon the thought that there really was something 
 out of the common sweet about Dick's love for Dolores 
 that, when you crushed the sweetness, I was startled no 
 more." 
 
 Mrs. Wemyss changes color for an instant; then she is 
 herself again. 
 
 "Ah! And so that was it?" she says, gayly, with a 
 quick glance at him from under her rather roguish lids. 
 
 "Every bit of it." 
 
 " What a temper you must have, then, to get into such a 
 Tage over another man's business! Now, if I had said 
 anything that touched yourself at any point, or concerned 
 you in any way " 
 
 "I should not, of course, have lost my temper," fin- 
 ishes Bruno, returning her gaze steadily for a full minute 
 only a minute, however, then his eyes go down before 
 hers. He sighs. "You do with me what you will," he 
 says, in a low tone, reluctantly, and forthwith returns to 
 his allegiance and the hem of her gown. 
 
 "Miss Drummond, do you remember Mrs. White?" 
 says Mrs. Wemyss, leaning forward. " Old lady who took 
 the Cottage last Novemoer, and had more teeth than 
 Nature ever provided." 
 
 " I remember," answer? Miss Drummond slowly. 
 
 " She married more people than the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury! She was a most determined old match- 
 maker. She married two of my best friends to the wrong 
 people when my back was turned; so I'm not likely to 
 forgive her." 
 
 " I don't believe in match-making," says Miss Maturin 
 suddenly. " It's a mistaken calling, and results in little 
 good. I don't believe any one ever made a good match, 
 as they call it." 
 
 "Oh, there you are wrong!" puts in Mr. Vyner mildly. 
 "Surely you have not forgotten Bryant and May!" 
 
 " Tut!" says Miss Maturin; but she laughs unrestrain- 
 edly with that pretty low laugh of hers that even up to 
 this has kept its youth; and somehow the sound of her 
 mirth puts venom to flight more than all the enforced 
 conversation that could be. 
 
 Miss Drummond, as though it is not congenial to her, 
 rises and wanderg awuj to where tae children are playing
 
 106 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 with the kingcups and the daisies; little mites, too young 
 to know what life means, and happier in their ignorance 
 than they will ever be again. " There are two of " dad's " 
 lery young hoys amongst them, and a little boy from the 
 Parsonage, and the doctor's fairy of a daughter. 
 
 " Mrs. Wemyss, is a cigarette a crime?" asks Mr. Vy- 
 ner. 
 
 "Not here," says Mrs. Wemyss, smiling. "For my- 
 self, I like the perfume of tobacco." 
 
 " Ha, smoke!" cries Mrs. Drummond, who had drawn 
 near. "But don't mind me, my dear," to her hostess. 
 " Of course young men will be young men, and I dare 
 say there are worse things than a pipe." 
 
 "A few," says Bruno, "not that I see a pipe any- 
 where." 
 
 " Look at my Georgina," says Mrs. Drummond, in a 
 perfect overflow of motherly love; " always happiest when 
 with the little ones! Shows such a thorough sweetness of 
 disposition, such a hankering after that divine simplicity 
 that belongs alone to childhood! But, in truth, my 
 G-eorgiana is at heart but a child herself." 
 
 Silence follows upon this maternal rhapsody, a silence 
 that is but the veil to cloak the reprehensible tendency 
 toward laughter that is consuming all her hearers. 
 
 " What are you thinking of, Anthony?" asks Mrs. 
 Wemyss suddenly, to whom Mr. Vyner is an old friend. 
 " You are silent! Tell us of your thoughts." She says 
 this merely to destroy the fear that the real nature of her 
 own silence may be guessed. 
 
 " They were deep," says Mr. Vyner solemnly. " They 
 had much to do with a big bee booming busily by. For- 
 give the alliteration." 
 
 " I lore alliteration," remarks Mrs. Wemyss, calmly, 
 whilst the others smile; "don't you?" to Mrs. Drum- 
 oiond. 
 
 " A a what, my dear?" asks Mrs. Drummond, vacant- 
 ly, which upset all decorum. 
 
 There is one terrible moment during which Mrs. Wem- 
 yss feels that her afternoon is going to be a failure, and 
 that presently Mrs. Drummond will be seen retiring from 
 their midst offended past all hope. Then Bruno, seeing 
 the agony in her eyes, comes to the rescue, and makes 
 ome Tittle passing remark, at which they may laugh if
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 10? 
 
 they will, and at which they do, immoderately, to Mrs. 
 Drummond's undisguised amazement. 
 
 " How quiet you are, Dolores!" says Mrs. Wemysg 
 caressingly, glancing at Miss Lome as she lies back a 
 little languidly in her wicker chair, a thoughtful happy 
 smile upon her lips. 
 
 She has indeed been lost in an unconscious silence full 
 of a nameless charm; but now, hearing herself thus called 
 back into life, she learns for the first time that she is 
 silent, and the sweetness of her musings comes to an end. 
 She colors faintly, and casts a half-shy glance at Bou- 
 verie, who is leaning over her chair. 
 
 " I was day-dreaming," she answers nervously. " What 
 a sunset it is, with its crimson glows and the orange tinge 
 of the clouds! What a lovely neighborhood to live in!" 
 
 " Like Auburn, it is ' the loveliest village of the 
 plain,' " says Vyner; and it is remarkable that there is no 
 trace of cynicism in his tone as he speaks to her. 
 
 "Yes, yes, indeed!" she responds, as though very 
 pleased, and smiles upon him. Her large eyes are full of 
 sweet enthusiasm, her pretty hair, shining like threads of 
 gold, is blown hither and thither by che soft summer 
 wind. She looks like some soft spirit from another world 
 blown into this. 
 
 " How beautiful she is!'* says Audrey, suddenly, look- 
 ing impulsively at Vyner. 
 
 "Very beautiful!" 
 
 " What a pure little face! She is the dearest little baby 
 of a thing quite the angel type! I am sure, if she lived 
 for a thousand years, the breath of scandal could not 
 come nigh her." 
 
 " That is a remark that should be applicable to all 
 women, shouldn't it? To you, as well as to her?" says 
 Vyner, lazily; but something in his tone jars upon her. 
 
 " Some people get things said of them, even though 
 they may not deserve it a bit more than those others of 
 the angelic style," she returns, quickly. " It is unfair; 
 but it is so all the same." 
 
 " 'By some people' meaning yourself," says he, flick- 
 ing off the ash of his cigarette. 
 
 ''Never mind me!" returns she icily. "We were talk- 
 ing of Miss Lome." 
 
 " Still I do mind you," says Vyuer "the more so in
 
 108 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 that you are By the bye, do you know you are IOOK 
 ing very well to-day?" 
 
 "Does that mean I was looking very ugly yesterday ?" 
 
 "I don't think so because I didn't happen to see you 
 yesterday. But to return then to Miss Lome. So she 
 interests you?" 
 
 " No. Nobody does that. I admire her; that is all. 
 I don't find I ever have much to say to her; but, as I told 
 you before, she looks like an angel." 
 
 "Ah, you find her slowl" says Mr. Vyner, an almost 
 imperceptible smile widening his lips. 
 
 " I certainly don't find her fast," replies she, with a 
 quick frown. Then she rises to her feet. " I never talk 
 to you," she says, with sudden repulsion, "that I don't 
 feel the full hideousness of my life!" 
 
 She stares down at him with angry, glowing eyes; but 
 he seems impervious to her wrath. 
 
 " Don't go yet," he says, as evenly and in as friendly a 
 tone as if the flashing eyes above him had been as soft as 
 violets. " I have no one to talk to but you. Don't for- 
 sake me!" 
 
 There is no unwonted eagerness in the manner of his 
 request, and she still stands looking down upon him as he 
 tranquilly smokes his cigarette, with a heart that throbs 
 with unpleasant force. 
 
 " I want to ask you about the old boy," begins Mr. 
 Vyner. Then he stops short, and a flush overspreads his 
 countenance. " I beg your pardon," he says, really 
 horror-stricken at his mistake. " I meant your father 
 dad!'" 
 
 " Call him that first name, if you will. I like it," says 
 Miss Ponsonby, eagerly. All her hauteur has vanished, 
 and a sudden warm, lovely smile changes her cold, 
 haughty face into a vivid beauty. " It makes me feel he 
 is still young; that there is no fear I shall ever lose him," 
 she says, tenderly. 
 
 For a moment Vyner makes her no reply. He is watch- 
 ing the curious, soft light within her eyes, and, perhaps, 
 marveling at it; but, even as he watches it, the fresh 
 light fades, and the first look of resentment returns. 
 
 " You shall speak to me of dad another time; I am 
 not in the humor now," she sa^s, coldly, and moves away 
 from him to where Doloreg is sittiue. calm an.l sweet.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEABT. 101 
 
 Meanwhile Mrs. Druminond is talking confidentially to 
 her friend, Mrs. Dovedale, on a matter that has been 
 much troubling her of late namely, the questionable 
 propriety of her having purposely omitted to send Audrey 
 a card for her ball, that is to take place to-rnorrow 
 evening. 
 
 " Of course, now the Duchess has taken her into such 
 high favor, it makes things awkward," she says to Mrs. 
 Dovedale, with quite a tremor in her voice. "I wish, 
 after all, I had invited her, though her aunt, Lady 
 Bouverie, certainly detests her. Do you think, dear, 
 that if I were to ask her now, even at this last moment 
 giving a proper excuse, of course she would come? Give 
 me your candid opinion now, my love, because, to confess 
 the truth to you, I am uneasy about it. Not that I liise 
 the girl; only " 
 
 "No, no; she is too attractive to be liked," murmurs 
 little Mrs. Dovedale, in her childish treble. " Yes, ask 
 her. If you do, you can, at least, always say she refused, 
 you know, and that it was not jealousy that induced you 
 to exclude her." 
 
 "Jealousy! I am not jealous of her!" exclaims Mrs. 
 Drummond, reddening uncomfortably. 
 
 " No? I thought perhaps Georgina But of course 
 Well, ask her, I say. Her refusal can do you no harm." 
 
 " But will she refuse?" says Mrs. Drummond, indig- 
 nantly. " I don't believe it. She will be only too glad 
 to escape the monotony of her life for a bit. She is er 
 er very poor, you know; and people like that should 
 not give themselves airs." 
 
 Mrs. Dovedale laughs prettily. 
 
 " But rich people may, Js that it?" she asks. " Long 
 ago we that is, my people used to think that only those 
 who had grandfathers generations, tiresomely long gene- 
 alogies, you know could dare to hold up their headu. 
 Now it is all different all the other way round, isn't it?" 
 she laughs again. " But about Miss Ponsonby," she says. 
 " Why, do ask her; it will do her no harm, you see, and 
 you no good. How pretty she looks to-day and how 
 completely she has enslaved Sir Chicksy!" 
 
 " She is artful in the extreme; but I suppose I had 
 better ask her," says Mrs. Drummond, reluctantly, mov' 
 ing away to where Audrey is sitting, to Mrs. Dovedale'i
 
 110 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 discomfiture, who, for some reason or reasons unknown, 
 would gladly have left Miss Ponsonby without even thii 
 late invitation. 
 
 " Dear Miss Ponsonby," says Mrs. Drurnmond, flutter- 
 Jng up to Audrey with a simpering smile upon her inex- 
 pressive countenance, and what, in a wild flight of fancy, 
 she believes to be a genial manner, "so glad to find you 
 alone for a moment!" She hovers round her for a minute, 
 with all sails spread, and then sinks into the seat beside 
 her. 
 
 " I am generally alone," returns Audrey, coldly; then 
 " Do you think you could manage to keep a little more 
 to the left? Ah, thanks! Your umbrella is of such an 
 abnormal size, and I do so hate having my bonnet disar 
 ranged." 
 
 " I have so wanted a word with you," answered Mrs. 
 Drummond, effusively. " That absurd mistake about 
 your invitation for to-morrow night our dance, you know. 
 I can't think how it occurred." 
 
 " No?" questions Audrey, turning clear cold eyes upon 
 her. " But where was the mistake?" 
 
 "Why, not sending you a card, my dear! It was quite 
 an oversight quite! May I hope you will forgive it, and 
 give us the pleasure of your company all the same?" 
 
 " You are really too good!" says Miss Ponsonby, slowly, 
 after a distressingly long pause that brings Mrs. Drum- 
 mond's face to the color of a peony. " And pray do not 
 distress yourself about the mistake there was none. Had 
 you sent me that card you speak of it would have been a 
 betise indeed; but, as it is Would you try to keep 
 your parasol a little more that way? As it is I find it 
 quite impossible to accept your kind invitation." 
 
 "But, my dear Miss Ponsonby " 
 
 " I beg you will not give me the trouble of refusing 
 you twice," says Audrey haughtily, turning from her 
 with the gesture of an offended queen, and with all the 
 air of one who is undoubtedly speaking to some one of 
 rery inferior quality. Mrs. Drummond, more crushed 
 than she cares to admit, rises precipitately, and carries 
 herself and her parasol to a distant part of the grounds. 
 Mr Vyner, who has watched the whole maneuver from 
 afar, slips into her vacant chair, and laughs aloud. 
 
 " I hope you weren't too sevr," he says. " Wh*i
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEA.BT. Ill 
 
 ronld she have said, poor fat soul, to bring down thow 
 wrathful glances on her head?" 
 
 " The insolence of her!" says Miss Ponsonby betwee* 
 her teeth. 
 
 " Yes. She was inviting you to-day to her ball to-mor- 
 row night eh?" 
 
 "You seem to know everything. Perhaps too yon 
 know my answer?" 
 
 "I can guess it 'No.' ' 
 
 " For once you are right." 
 
 "For twice, you mean; though I mnst confess Mrs. 
 Dovedale helped me to my first guess. You won't go?" 
 
 " I have no desire to enter her aristocratic circle. I 
 can actually so poor is my spirit manage to live out- 
 side it." 
 
 " Little girls shouldn't be sarcastic." 
 
 " However, there is one thing," says Audrey, turning 
 to him with a bitter smile "my going or staying will 
 cause no one pain or pleasure. To me all the world is in- 
 different. I have no friends; therefore there is a virtue 
 in my unpopularity. My absence to-morrow night will 
 make no one unhappy." 
 
 " Truel There is'good to be found in everything," re- 
 plies he sententionsly. 
 
 Perhaps she had expected a different answer from so 
 old a friend. At all events, for an instant his wordi 
 throw a deeper shadow on her face only for an instant; 
 then it clears, and she laughs with a sudden sense of 
 amusement. 
 
 " Why, look you," she says, " you are the only one that 
 does me real good! From you one gets the truth, how- 
 ever unpalatable; you are a tonic in yourself. I should 
 always have you near me to say sharp things to me, to 
 help me to keep my balance, and* not lose my head over 
 the world's injustice. There are times, you see, when I 
 am discontented, peevish, and ' sick with hating the sweet 
 sun.' ' 
 
 "Whose son?" asks Mr. Vyner, calm, judicial inquiry 
 in his eyes. He even leans anxiously toward her, as 
 though athirst for information. His frivolity enrages her. 
 
 " There go!" she says, in a low tone full of passionate 
 nger. 
 
 It is a tone he dares not_diaobey. He saunters slowly
 
 Hi* DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 away from her and is soon lost amidst a group at the 
 other side of the lawn. 
 
 "How I hate him!' says Audrey, very softly, letting 
 one hand grow clinched beneath the folds of her gown, 
 where no one can see it, and biting her pale lips to bring 
 them back their color. 
 t 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 A FEW drops of rain begin to fall placidly. First in 
 o^ies, and then in twos and threes they come, until the 
 pattering drops grow too rapid for counting. 
 
 " Dolores, where is your shawl? You are not suffici- 
 ently covered," cries Miss Maturin, anxiously, who seems 
 never for one moment to forget the welfare of her 
 darling. 
 
 ** Yes better come indoors," says Bouverie, bending 
 tenderly over Miss Lome. 
 
 " Let us go and sit on the veranda," says Mrs. Wemyss 
 pleasantly, "until this summer shower be over. Come. 
 Miss Maturin, we will lead the way; and perhaps the 
 servants will be good natured enough to give us our tea at 
 last. Ah, Sir Chicksy, useful always! I'm sure I don't 
 gee how we could ever get on without you!" 
 
 The youthful baronet bestows upon her a grateful glance, 
 and continues his occupation of gathering up all the loose 
 wraps forgotten by eager owners rushing toward the wel- 
 come shelter of the veranda. Now, reaching that happy 
 goal himself, he marches up and down amongst the other 
 guests with his hands clasped beneath his coat-tails. This 
 is a favorite attitude of his, which makes him look like 
 nothing in the world so much as a superannuated jack- 
 daw. Every one is having tea and cake, or wine and 
 fruit, or something, and Sir Chicksy is hopping about 
 amongst them in great contentment of spirit. For is not 
 she here his queen, his " ladye"? By such high-sound- 
 ing titles does he designate in his own mind, his scornful 
 love, Miss Ponsonby. 
 
 "Oh, I say, look here! Tell you the funniest thing I 
 awyesterday man in the street, you know!" 
 
 Here Sir Chicksy pauses somewhat vaguely, whereupon 
 everybody stares at him. Surprise largely mingled with
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 113 
 
 enrioiity i general. Where does the joke come in ? That 
 is what they all want to know, but yet fail to see, except, 
 indeed, Mr. Vyner, who appears radiant with enthusiastic 
 sympathy, and full of understanding. 
 
 " By Jove, that was funny!" he says. " What luck for 
 you! Think he'll be there again?'* 
 
 " He may; I'm not sure. Wait a bit," answers Sir 
 Cbicksy, absently. 
 
 Now everybody is speechless with amazement. Dolores 
 looks concerned, Miss Ponsonby a little shade deeper in 
 color than she was a moment since. Have the poor little 
 man's brains failed him at last? 
 
 Mrs. Wemyss and Bruno are fast approaching that last 
 fatal stage when mirth will have its way, when all at once 
 Sir Chicksy's face shows signs of intellect, and the fire of 
 a knowledge just grasped, glows within his beaming eyes. 
 
 " I have it," he says triumphantly "I've got it! I 
 .knew there was a word for it somewhere, but it slipped 
 me. He was an acrobat my fellow in the street was an 
 acrobat, and I never saw a better. He chewed up every- 
 thing he could lay his hands on from brass buttons to 
 cabbages!" 
 
 "And why?" asks Mr. Vyner, mournfully. " Was he 
 so very hungry then, your soul?" 
 
 "Not at all, not at all!" says Sir Chicksy, in perfect 
 good faith, feeling immensely pleased at the interest he 
 has so evidently created in the breast of Anthony Vyner. 
 "It was only his tricks, you know?" 
 
 " Naughty old man," breaks in Mrs. Wemyss, laughing 
 gayly, "at his age to be so frivolous! But perhaps he 
 wasn't so old, after all. Was he young and tender, Sir 
 Chicksy? Were his features mild and mellow?" 
 
 " They were rather marked," confesses Sir Chicksy, 
 with some reluctance " especially his cheek and his brow; 
 he'd had small-pox, I am afraid. And, as for his nose, 
 why, it was tremendous!" 
 
 " ' Give me a man with a nose/ said the Duke of Well- 
 ington," puts in Bruno, with encouragement in voice and 
 eye. 
 
 " Well, I don't suppose he would have preferred a man 
 without one," says Mrs. Wemyss, saucily, which rather 
 destroys the effect of Bruno's speech. " That's all non- 
 sense you know; even that crusty old person couldn't have
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART, 
 
 been proof against disfigurement of that kind. Welt 
 Sir Chicksy, and what did your man do?" 
 
 "Everything!" answers Sir Chicksy, with growing ex- 
 citement. "But the last thing beat all. He stood on 
 his head and drank a glass of beer without spilling a drop! 
 He did, I give you my word." 
 
 eagerly. 
 
 face! Awfully funny now, wasn't it? " 
 
 "Never heard of anything so comic in all my life!" 
 says Vyner. " Oh, how I wish I could drink a glass of beer 
 standing on my head before an admiring audience this 
 audience, for example!" with a loving smile at Miss 
 Drummond, who goes down before it. 
 
 "So do I," declares Sir Chicksy. " I'd give anything 
 to be an acrobat." 
 
 "Especially on a sunny June day," says Bruno dryly, 
 " with the thermometer ninety in the shade, and the dust 
 on the roadway two inches deep." 
 
 " That would make it only softer for one's poor head," 
 remarks Vyner, with a calmly argumentative air. 
 
 "But, dear Sir Chicksy, surely you would not care to 
 go about posing in the middle of muddy roads? "in- 
 terrogates Mrs. Dovedale. " Think how your friendi 
 would resent it!" 
 
 " Of course I couldn't do it in public," says Sir Chicksy 
 regretfully; " but in a drawing-room now h'm? after 
 dinner with the curtains drawn eh? just to amuse 
 one's friends d'ye see? to cause a a little change eh? 
 Some fellows can be amusing all round," says Sir Chicksy, 
 with a rueful air, " and some fellows can't, you know. 
 But I think any fellow who could stand on his head with- 
 out kicking, and drink his beer without spilling a drop, 
 might be considered to be er doing something er 
 agreeable eh ?" 
 
 At this all the women break into a peal of irresistible 
 laughter. 
 
 "Oh, Sir Chicksy," says Mrs. Wemyss at last, "why 
 need you try to be amusing? You needn't. No acrobat 
 that ever saw the light could make himself as amusing as 
 YOU are now." 
 
 " No, but really though," goes on the baronet earnestly,
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. lit 
 
 fumbling vainly with his eye-glass, which he has foolishly 
 brought into prominence, and now does not know how to 
 get rid of, " 'twas very clever the man's performance I 
 mean extraordinarily clever, I assure youl You'd have 
 been delighted with it." 
 
 " I feel that," says Mrs. Wemyss. 
 
 " Why can't we all go in a body and learn how to do it 
 at once?" asks Bruno. " Where is your conjurer, Sir 
 Chicksy? If we could only catch him, we might buy his 
 ware from him." 
 
 " I don't know where he is," says Sir Chicksy. " He 
 went down the street and away, looking very desolate, I 
 thought. Not a soul was with him, and he limped a 
 little, as though worn out. There had been fifty or more 
 gaping at him when he had been er er acrobatting, 
 you know; but they vanished into thin air when his jug- 
 gling had come to an end. The first fellow he held out 
 his old battered hat to was on the edge of the crowd and 
 he stuck his hand in his breeches-pocket, and stared and 
 gtammered and gave nothing! And, I give you my 
 word, whilst the acrobat waited on him it took only one 
 minute all the other forty-nine disappeared in the 
 twinkling of an eye, as it were. They were gone, I 
 couldn't see where, unless the earth had opened to swallow 
 'em up." 
 
 " Pity it didn't!" says Miss Ponsonby, with a little 
 curious indrawing of her lips. 
 
 " I don't really believe they gave him one farthing." 
 
 * Forty thieves," says Miss Maturin, " to take his good* 
 and give him no payment!" 
 
 " I watched the whole scene from the window at Ben- 
 eon's seed-shop," goes on Sir Chicksy, " and I thought to 
 myself how forlorn he looked trudging lamely down the 
 deserted village street." 
 
 " You shouldn't have left him that way, I mean,'* 
 eays Audrey suddenly, regarding him with a slight frown. 
 " You too enjoyed his performance, though from the 
 secrecy of a window." 
 
 "I had to leave him," explains Sir Chicksy hastily, the 
 severity of his goddess' tone causing him deep tribulation. 
 " I had to get you your books, you know; and there was 
 that message for Mr. Ponsonby besides. I was uncom- 
 mon sorry to see him go away like that he looked so
 
 116 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 poverty- stricken, and so horribly like er consumption, 
 you know." 
 
 "Oh, poor, poor man!" says Dolores softly, her eyes 
 filling with tears. All at once it seems to her that she 
 can see the sweet drowsy June afternoon, the tiny hot de- 
 serted street, the drooping dusty trees, and, at the end of 
 il all, the limping figure of the poor acrobat creeping 
 wearily along, homeless, friendless, alone! Dear Heaven, 
 how sad to feel like that alone! 
 
 Bouverie, unseen by the others, lays his hand with a 
 comforting touch upon the back of her head, and smooths 
 with loving fingers her soft silken rings of hair. 
 
 " All the more reason why you should have done some- 
 thing for him," says Audrey coldly, still transfixing the 
 agonized baronet with a contemptuous glance 
 
 "To help him to another living?" asks Sir Ohicksy, 
 still quite at sea as to her meaning. "He wouldn't like 
 that, you know he'd hate it. He is accustomed to the 
 life he now leads, and would object to another. An 
 acrobat is an acrobat, you know." 
 
 " Hear, hear," says Mr. Vyner, with open approbation. 
 
 " And you can't change a man's mode of life all in a 
 moment," goes on Sir Chicksy earnestly. " You can't 
 make a tinker into an archbishop in five minutes, can you 
 now?" 
 
 This is another incontrovertible fact, and no one seeks 
 to dispute it either. 
 
 " He is getting so deep," remarks Mr. Vyner to his 
 next neighbor, "that if some one doesn't give him a 
 helping hand soon, he'll drown!" 
 
 " You might have shown him some sympathy," says 
 Audrey, still addressing Sir Chicksy. 
 
 "I did. I don't think I ever felt more sorry for any 
 one," answers Sir Chicksy almost in tears. 
 
 " What I mean is," exclaimed Audrey, losing her pa- 
 tience and therefore coming bluntly to her real meaning, 
 "that, instead of feeling so much, you might have given 
 him some money!" 
 
 " Why, of course I gave him money!" says Sir Chicks/ 
 indignantly. " Good gracious! he was jus't the sort on* 
 couldn't look at without giving him money! I gave him 
 five shillings." 
 
 He blushes over this confession. At the time of giving
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 117 
 
 fire ihillings had seemed quite enough; now he feels a 
 sovereign would have been " quite too altogether shabby." 
 
 "Then why didn't you say so?" asks Audrey, naturally 
 much incensed, yet pleased too that her suspicions were 
 unfounded. 
 
 " I didn't know that that was what you wanted me to 
 say," replies he ingenuously. " I thought you would 
 have known." 
 
 At this everybody smiles, and Mr. Vyner, breaking off 
 a little rosebud from the wall near him, throws it into 
 Audrey's lap. 
 
 " It took time, didn't it?" he says carelessly, but with 
 a sparkle of suppressed amusement in his eyes. 
 
 "Even if so, it was worth waiting for," returns she 
 quickly. Then, not angrily, not even unsmilingly, yet with 
 a cold decision, she throws the rosebud back to him. 
 
 Mr. Vyner, catching it, sits down and commences plac- 
 idly to devour it leaf by leaf, speaking no word to any 
 one until its last petal is consumed. 
 
 " Somebody is coming," says Mrs. Wemyss suddenly, 
 "I feel it. Somebody is in the drawing-room. Look, 
 one of you, and say who it is." 
 
 Bruno, lifting the lace-curtain of the open window near 
 him, glances carelessly into the drawing-room. Not so 
 careless, however, in his glance as he once more faces his 
 friends. 
 
 " My mother!" he exclaims, and a general rout is the 
 result. 
 
 Consternation sits on every face; every one at once finds 
 it is very late, and quite time to bid their hostess adieu. 
 Mr. Vyner alone rises gracefully to the occasion and his 
 feet. He welcomes Lady Bouverie amongst them with a 
 subdued effusiveness that creates admiration in the breast 
 of Mrs. Wemyss, and brings the word " hypocrite" to 
 Audrey's scornful lips. 
 
 "No. Would you really call me that?" asks he, with 
 grieved surprise, overhearing her. "Odd, if true, because 
 in reality I am the most straightforward person alive! 
 But these little complications of character Going now? 
 Well, I shall walk home with you then, and explain to 
 you my hypocritical honesty and the honesty of my hypoc- 
 risy as we go." 
 
 " Sir Chicksy can take care of me," says Audrey, icily.
 
 118 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 " And o can I," Mr. Vyner assures her cheerfully. 
 " Two escorts are better than none. Can you deny that? 
 And, besides, Sir Chicksy though quite the most intel- 
 ligent and charming person I know might, in one of his 
 erudite reveries lose his way and lead you into the next 
 county, and then what should 1 I mean what would 
 ' dad 'do?" 
 
 He laughs. She turns impatiently aside; but the little 
 soft light that always creeps into her eyes when "dad's" 
 name is mentioned, comes there now; and, without mak- 
 ing any further objection, she beckons to Sir Chicksy, 
 and, bidding Mrs. Wemyss good-bye, goes down the 
 avenue escorted by the two young men. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 " SOMETIME too hot the eye of Heaven shines," but not 
 to-day. There is a chastened measure in its strength, a 
 little tremulous subduing of its mighty power this after- 
 noon which shows itself in paler sunbeams and in the 
 sighing of the dainty winds that linger on lawn and wood- 
 way. Up from the sea they come, scented with salted 
 spray, laying cool touches upon all they pass, the great 
 calm of the day is rendered even calmer by them, so gentle 
 are they; the constant roar of the waves is hushed to si- 
 lence peace lies on land and water. 
 
 " The winds with wonder whist, 
 Smoothly the waters kist, 
 Whispering joys to the wild ocean, 
 Who now hath quite forgot to rave 
 While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave." 
 
 The world is a day older; the sun is mounted high in 
 his blue kingdom; the roses are a few hours nearer their 
 death happy death, coming with glow of yellow warmth 
 and rushing of sultry winds! 
 
 With half a mind to go to the beach, Dolores left her 
 home an hour agone; but a fond remembrance of the 
 river checked her desire for the more noble sea, and, 
 turning aside, she sought the sylvan shade of trees and 
 the quaint musical murmur of the rippling water, gliding 
 over rugged scenes and past soft bending mosses.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 119 
 
 Now, stooping over its brink, she notes her own sweet 
 image in its quivering depths, and wonders vaguely if it 
 is bearing it away to the limitless ocean beyond. The 
 limitless ocean of life what has that in store for her? 
 Whither is it hurrying her? To what unknown seas, 
 what tempests? She draws her breath quickly, and 
 laughs at her own dismal imaginings. Nay, then, into 
 what calm depths and pleasant harbors is it carrying her, 
 with Dick for guide and lover and guardian? 
 
 Does the thought of him bring him? His voice, far off 
 as yet, pierces the soft air and comes to her, faintly, but 
 unmistakably. It is the accent dearest to her on earth, 
 and she turns gladly in its direction, and waits with eager 
 longing the coming of its owner. 
 
 Evidently he is not alone. His voice is suggestive of 
 question and answer; it rises, fades away into nothing- 
 ness, as if awaiting a reply, and then rises again. A feel- 
 ing that is scarcely jealousy, but is perhaps uncertainty, 
 chills the smile upon Dolores' lips. And now there is no 
 fading away of the voice; it holds its own, without inter- 
 ruption, until it is made plain to the listener that Dick 
 has the conversation all to himself. It is rather a mixed 
 discourse, and has apparently from the little she can 
 hear of it a good deal to do with people of another and 
 an airier clime than this. There are, for example, allu- 
 sions made to an ancient dame whose chief purpose in 
 life it seemed to be to clear the sky of superfluous cob- 
 webs, and to an elderly gentleman an elderly reprobate 
 would be nearer the mark whose only joy consisted in 
 the possession of " his pipe and his glass and his fiddlers 
 three." 
 
 Then all at once the corner is turned, and Dick cornea 
 toward her, smiling the fond eager smile that belongs to 
 her alone, bearing in his arms a little curious bundle 
 pressed kindly to his breast. Across the dewy grasses he 
 comes to her, his unwonted burden clinging closely to 
 him. 
 
 *'* Why, it is a little child!" cries Dolores, going up to 
 him, and turning a frightened, brown, half-tearful face 
 toward her with a gentle palm. 
 
 "Yes, and such a little child!" says Dick, laughing. 
 * I found her in the very depths of the woods, like an- 
 other 'babe,' lost, crying her poor little eyes out. And
 
 120 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 30 wonder too" looking in friendly wise at the littli 
 mite he is carrying, who is gazing back at him with trust- 
 ful but distended eyes " when we remember about poor 
 Eed Ridinghood, and the wolf she met, and all the pixies 
 and giants and " 
 
 " An' bogies!" says the child suddenly, with breathless 
 awe. 
 
 She tightens her arms round his neck. There is plainly 
 a fearful joy to her in this recounting of woodland hor- 
 rors. After one swift glance at Dolores, she has turned 
 from her and clung afresh to her preserver. She is a sin- 
 gularly pretty child, beautiful with all the charm of un- 
 developed youth. 
 
 "Isn't she like a woodland elf herself?" says Dick, ad- 
 miringly. 
 
 "And wasn't it well she met you? Poor little thingl 
 Where does she live?" asks Dolores. 
 
 " Somewhere in the village, as far as I cam make out. 
 But my small captive is exceedingly vague in her replies. 
 Shall I take her up to the house and get one of the serv- 
 ants to restore her to her mother whosoever she may 
 be?" 
 
 "Yes, yes; and I'll come with you. Her mother oh, 
 perhaps she is in misery about her all this time!" 
 
 " It is a long walk there and back. Better stay where 
 yon are, darling, and let me dispose of the little one. 
 Best here upon the bank, and think of me" laughing 
 "until I return to you; I sha'n't be long." 
 
 "Well, hurry then!" she says reluctantly; and, as she 
 raises her face to kiss the child in his arms, he stoops and 
 kisses her as a brief farewell. 
 
 She watches him as he moves with quick strong step 
 toward Greylands, and then, seating herself upon the 
 mossy turf, prepares to wait his return. The day is warm, 
 seductive, languorous wooing to slumber; she leans her 
 head upon the scented bank, and falls into a profound 
 slumber. 
 
 ****** 
 
 Bending over Dolores, fearful of rousing her from her 
 happy sleep, Dick notes with a sudden sense of pain the 
 strange sweet delicacy of her face. One little hand is 
 under her white chin, her rounded cheek is buried in vel- 
 Tefcy mosses; over her head, trailing downward from the
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 181 
 
 gnarled old oak above her, a fragrant branch of the "lush 
 eglantine" is swaying to and fro, its rich scents strewing 
 the air and glowing soft into her dainty dreams. 
 
 How young, how sweet, how guileless she appears and, 
 alas, how frail! How easily too sleep comes to her, as 
 though it is in truth a necessity to her, as if the happy 
 spirit, too strong for the weak body, has wearied it and 
 driven it into the arms of slumber, there to regain its 
 strength! 
 
 Kneeling beside her, he puts back with loving careful 
 fingers the little sunny rings of hair, wind-tossed, that 
 lie upon her tranquil brow. He would like to take her 
 in his arms and feel her head against his breast, but the 
 fear of wakening her is all too strong within him. 
 
 How well he remembers that first day they met, when 
 his eyes had seen her lying in her silken hammock with 
 the seal of Death's twin-sister resting on her as it rests 
 now! It is but as yesterday when he saw her tranquil, 
 unconscious, full of a beauty indescribable that savored 
 more of Heaven than earth. Even then how long it now 
 seems! all his soul must have gone out to her. But how 
 quiet she is now how pale; her breath scarcely seems to 
 part her lipsl A sudden terror seizes him; he lays his 
 hand upon her arm. 
 
 Slowly her white lids updraw themselves, and a gleam 
 from the tender dark gray eyes falls upon his anxious 
 face. First there is a little shrinking, born of uncertainty, 
 in her glance, and then an unutterable sweetness, as she 
 realizes the fact that it is indeed her heart's lover who is 
 bending over her. 
 
 "Ah, it is you!" she says, with a little sigh of deepest 
 satisfaction, and, with a movement full of childish grace 
 and pleasure, she lifts one arm and slips it round his neck. 
 " I was tired of waiting. I fell asleep I dreamed " 
 
 "Of me?" 
 
 " No of something vague, shadowy, unhappy. I was 
 in a darkness, a terrible darkness, out of which no one 
 could rescue me. I was groping in a blind fashion where 
 there was nothing to lay hold of no hope!" She shud- 
 ders violently. " I was glad when I woke," she says, with a 
 quick sigh and an involuntary gesture that draws him 
 nearer to her. " You were not there," she murmurs, 
 sadlj " you did not come to help mel"
 
 133 DICK'S SWEETHEART- 
 
 " Which shows how unstable are all such vapory things 
 as dreams. Where could you be, my beloved, that I would 
 not come to your assistance? Your griefs, your fears are 
 now all mine." 
 
 "There is one thing," says Dolores, raising herself on 
 her elbow, and looking at him with a grave, sweet smile, 
 " that I have never yet told you. It is how much I love 
 you. Do you know how much? With my whole, whole 
 heart." 
 
 " And I how do I love yon?" asks he, with passionate 
 fondness, tightening his arms round her lissom figure. 
 "Listen!" 
 
 "Jnst as I love you," interrupts she, hastily "not 
 less not more. Why should one of us outdo the other? 
 No; our love is equal in its strength. I could not be 
 dearer to you, Dick, than you are to me." 
 
 " I wonder if you know to what a vast amount you are 
 pledging yourself?" says he, smiling. 
 
 " Yesterday " raising shy, but unfaltering eyes to his 
 "I was reading a love-story, and I was wondering if it 
 really was so sweet to have some one who who loved one 
 better than all the world beside. And it was a bad hour 
 with me as I thought of all thi?, and I doubted it; but 
 now now " 
 
 "Yes now?" interrogates Bouverie, eagerly. 
 
 "Ah, now I know!" she says sweetly, laying her soft 
 head, with a little sigh of content, upon his arm. 
 
 "Do you know what you remind me of? "says Dick 
 presently. " Of white violets. You are not like a rose 
 or a lily, but a frail pure violet. I don't know why it is, 
 but you always make me think of that sweetest of flowers." 
 
 "Do I?" She smiles at him as if greatly pleased. 
 "Shall I wear violets in my gown at Mrs. Drummond's 
 ball to-night? Do you know I really think no flowers 
 are so nice as violets? I am glad you think me like them. 
 I ara wearing white as usual. Shall I put purple violets in 
 the folds? They would not be real, of course; but I think 
 they would look pretty. Yes?" She raises earnest eyes 
 to his. It is an important question, this arrangement of 
 the coloring that is to render her fair to-night. " Should 
 I look so nice?" she asks, with pretty anxiety. 
 
 *' Oh, love, how is it you would not look nice? " ex- 
 claims he; and then, with sudden sharp fear "Ob,
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 123 
 
 darling, why do yon look so pale, so fragile? I am afraid 
 for you! A terrible dread that some day you will fade 
 away from me altogether kills half the happiness youi 
 sweet presence yields me." 
 
 " Nay," says she, laughing, and tenderly pushing back 
 the hair from his forehead. "What a silly boy! Am I 
 snow, that I should melt? And all this is because my 
 cheeks are a little pale to-day. Well, I shall punish 
 them." She raises her hands playfully, and pinches her 
 cheeks until perforce the laggard blood rushes into them. 
 "Now shall I fade?" she says, rubbing her lovely flushed 
 face against his. 
 
 ei Poor little face!" Struggling still with a namelesi 
 depression, he draws her closer to him. " I shall not 
 allow you so to ill-use it." 
 
 She is smiling at him now with parted lips and happy 
 eyes, and with two soft crimson spots upon her cheeks 
 brought there by the unkindly touch of her slender fin- 
 gers. She is sitting on the mossy bank, and has taken her 
 knees into her embrace, and is bending toward him. 
 
 " Let us talk of something else," she says. 
 
 " How can we? It seems to me that there is nothing 
 in all the world but you." 
 
 " There you are wrong," says she lightly, laying her 
 fingers with a quick fond gesture on his lips, " because 
 there is you!" 
 
 At this they laugh with a soft lightness, not because of 
 the excellence of their small joke, but jupt for the very 
 love of laughter, they being young and fond and happy 
 withal. 
 
 " Oh, Dolores!" says Dick, gently, but suddenly taking 
 her face between both his hands such a beautiful face, 
 constant and trustful as an angel's! The laughter has died 
 from him now, and there is an intensity of love and pas- 
 sion in his voice, and always too that under-current of 
 fear. Having looked at her for a long minute, he lifts 
 the hand that has touched his lips, and. slipping it round 
 his neck, takes her into his arms and draws her nearer to 
 him until her head rests upon his shoulder. 
 
 "You are still unhappy about something," she says, 
 gently,- with all the sure intuition of a sweet and sensitive 
 soul. "Is it about me? You think I shall die is it 
 not? But it is not death that will come to me. Com-
 
 134 DICK'S SWEETHEAET. 
 
 fort yourself with that thought if it be comfort. It 
 will be something else that will come. I don't know 
 what" a little vaguely "but auntie does. She looks 
 at me so sadly when I laugh or smile. But it will not be 
 death!" 
 
 A strange earnest look has come into her face. She 
 presses her lips to his cheek, and then with a little sigh 
 sinks back into his embrace. It is not a sorrowful sigh, 
 but one full of contentment. 
 
 "Why should anything come to you but happiness?" 
 gays Bouverie. There is a certainty in the way she has 
 declared her disbelief in the advent of death that has 
 somehow comforted him. Any evil minor to that would 
 ^>e to him as naught. 
 
 "Why, indeed?" returns she lightly. "And yet I 
 think it will be so. But" with a pretty pretense of 
 anger " have I not told you to talk of something tlse 
 anything but me." 
 
 " Of our marriage, then/' says Bouverie. " Once you 
 nre really mine, what evil thing can assail you? Then 
 
 ?ur sad little forebodings will die of lack of nutriment, 
 our lips shall take again that sorrowful curve if they 
 dare! Your eyes What eyes you have, Dolores!" He 
 turns up her chin and gazes into the clear depths of her 
 soul's windows with a wondering adoration. 
 
 " ' Beauty lies 
 
 In many eyes, 
 But love in yours, my Nora Creina.' " 
 
 He chants in a low voice. " But I forget!" he cries, 
 presently, with an assumption of terror. "I must talk 
 of anything but you. Of our marriage, then, as I said 
 before." 
 
 " Of our marriage?" She pauses; the color deepens in 
 her face, and 
 
 " From every blush that kindles in her cheeks, 
 Ten thousand little loves and graces spring." 
 
 " Do you know," she says, softly, " I very often think 
 how it will be with us then whether we shall be very un- 
 happy, or I shall be always thinking of you, of course, 
 and wondering how you like" this and that and the other 
 things to be done, and what you like bet for dinner.
 
 DICK'S SAVEETHEART. 125 
 
 That's a man's chief thought, his dinner, isn't it? After 
 me that is, I mean, of course, after the woman he loves?" 
 
 "Is it?" questions Bouverie. There is a materialism 
 about this idea winch affects him disagreeably. 
 
 "Yes," says Dolores, with a little assuring noil. "I 
 shall therefore watch you when dinner begins, and every 
 time you refuse a dish I shall dismiss cook that is, if she 
 is a mild woman and I am not too much afraid of her." 
 
 " You're sure to be afraid of any cook, gentle or simple," 
 declares Dick, laughing, and thinking what a darling 
 little mistress of a house she will be. His house! " But, 
 as I never yet looked coldly on my dinner, cook's all 
 right! But where shall we live, Dolores?" 
 
 "Ah, that!" says Dolores. A trembling silence follows 
 her exclamation; and then "I wan ted to say it to you 
 so many times," she says, with a quivering smile; " but 
 Dick, let us live with auntie!" She has turned to him, an 
 eager pleading in her lovely eyes. " She would not be 
 happy without me," she says, in a low whisper. 
 
 "And you?" says Bouverie, a momentary most natural 
 touch of jealousy in his tone. " Could you know no 
 happiness without her even with me?" 
 
 He has taken her hand, and is gazing at her with a 
 gtrange expression, not to be misunderstood. She turns 
 a little white, and her breath comes in soft, fitful catches, 
 but her great, luminous eyes do not fall before his. 
 
 "I should know happiness," she answers, gently "a 
 happiness too deep for words but not a worthy one. My 
 contentment would be incomplete. Think what auntie 
 has been to me all my life my mother, my friend! 
 Should I be the more sacred to you if I forgot her when 
 my heart was filled with the joy of your love? Were I to 
 forget, Dick, were you to counsel forgetfulness, would 
 that be me? would that be you? Oh, Dick, speak to 
 me!" She burst out crying. 
 
 "I don't know what I said," exclaims Dick, distract- 
 edly, feeling as if each sob of hers is an arrow dividing 
 his body and soul; "I only know I meant nothing that 
 should distress you. Dolores, my own life, we shall live 
 with auntie with any one even with my mother, if you 
 wish it." 
 
 This last awful proposition proves as potent as a magic 
 philter, and instantly, reatores Miss^Lorne to calm.
 
 126 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 "Xot that!" she exclaims, nervously. "But, Dick- 
 dear Dick are you sure you will not object to have 
 auntie as one of your household? She is my mother let 
 her be yours, too." 
 
 " With all my heart," agrees Dick, genially; " though 
 how I'm to reconcile it to my conscience I don't know! 
 Two mothers! AVhy, see what an unconscionable lot of 
 trouble it is giving! You make me feel quite ashamed of 
 myself; but, if you will have it so Now, are your eyea 
 dry, you little baby?" 
 
 " Yes yes!" says Dolores, smiling softly. " It was 
 silly of me to doubt you, was it not? But I was just a 
 little afraid of you at first; and " 
 
 "Afraid," interrupts Bouverie "and of me! Darling, 
 let us have that perfect love between us that casteth out 
 fear; let us be of one mind, and" stoutly "let that 
 mind be yours." 
 
 This arrangement is so eminently satisfactory, that no 
 further argument ensues upon it. 
 
 Upon these two beside the river an exquisite silence 
 falls a silence too fraught with unspoken thought to be 
 oppressive and with thought so sweet! A tiny squirrel 
 in the old oak-tree above them, springing from branch to 
 branch, pauses abruptly over their heads, and, gaining 
 courage from the utter stillness that encompasses them, 
 sniffs daintily at the pretty picture they present the soft 
 head of the girl lying so happily upon her lover's breast => 
 the lover's glad content the white robe, the parted lips, 
 the little jeweled hands and, close to it all, the soft but 
 cruel hurry of the river rushing ever onward to the ocean 
 ther^ is no lingering, no kindly hesitation about it, 
 only a wild, if subdued, hurry to its goal to the end of 
 all things. 
 
 Dolores, marking the deadly monotony of its haste, 
 shivers slightly in her lover's arms. Do all things hurry 
 so? Is there no gracious delay no tender dallying? 
 Are life and death but so many quivering eddies that 
 mark, yet fail to check, the vast on-rush of Fate? And 
 what is Fate bringing to her? Life, is it, or death, or 
 joy, perchance, or perchance 
 
 Ah, what a word to ring in her ears! And yet how 
 loudly it peals through mead and woodland! Shame 
 shame! What can it have, to do with her? Yet "ShameP
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. lt 
 
 is the sound that echoes from sloping hill upon her right 
 to placid moorland down below. 
 
 She flings the echo from her; she laughs inwardly, and 
 nestles a little closer to Bouverie, as though her shield 
 were here. Across the scented grasses a sweet wind is 
 blown a music weird and mystical ascends from the 
 bosom of the impatient river. Deep in the wood the 
 sounds of cooing pigeons may be heard. 
 
 "The summer leaves hungower our head*, 
 
 The flow'rs burst round our feet, 
 And in the gloamin' o' the wood 
 The throssil whistled sweet." 
 
 By an effort she rouses herself from the reverie into 
 which they both have fallen. 
 
 " Of what are you thinking, recreant sweetheart," 
 she murmurs, gayly, withdrawing herself from his em- 
 brace and turning his chin by a loving touch in her own 
 direction, " that no word has escaped you all the long, 
 long time?" 
 
 " Why, of my lady-love, be sure!" 
 
 "And she who may she be?" 
 
 "One Mistress Dolores Lome, by your grace, madam, 
 an' if it please you." 
 
 " By my halidame, sir, an j it does please me! An* 
 Oh, Dick, how nice you look with that stern courtier-like 
 air upon yon! But would you " she hesitates the ad- 
 miration so lately assumed dies altogether from her eyes, 
 and a certain fear takes its place " would you ever look 
 at me like that?" she asks, nervously, quite forgetful of 
 her momentary appreciation. 
 
 " Am I not looking at you now?" 
 
 " Oh, no not at me! You imagined me some one else, 
 i it not? But it came to me that, if in the years to come 
 you were ever to regard me like that, I should " 
 
 "What, beloved?" 
 
 " Die perhaps " laughing; then " tell me," she says, 
 leaning toward him " are you ever really stern like thabP 
 Are you " leaning even closer " ever like your moth- 
 
 CJT 4 
 
 " How can I be sure?" returns he, slowly. " She is my 
 mother. Why should I then positively declare that there 
 is no likeness between ns? And ;yet "
 
 128 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 "Yes?" she says hopefully and breathlessly. 
 "I know that I can love, whilst she Do you thin* 
 I would chance anything with you, Dolores? Whatever 
 demon 1 may have inherited, it is not so strong as the 
 angel that has come to me since first my eyes fell on you. 
 I could not risk anything with you. I could not forget 
 the greatness of the gift you have given me your own 
 sweet self. I dare say I've got a bad temper. My moth- 
 er " with a little bitter laugh "reminds me of it often 
 enough to make me sure of it. But tell me " gazing 
 anxiously into her luminous eyes " that you know I 
 should never be anything but gentle with you." 
 "Yes; I know it." 
 
 She rises slowly to her feet and stretches out her arms 
 with a soft languishing gesture toward the setting gun. 
 Then all at once she laughs, and, turning to him, lays 
 both her small palms against his, and gives him a loving 
 but vehement little push. 
 
 " And this is how I know it," she says, with the mos^ 
 charming assumption of sauciness. " It is because you 
 wouldn't dare to be otherwise so now!" 
 
 She shakes her dainty head at him her pretty head 
 with all its soft, riotous rings of hair that tremble like gold 
 in the dying sunshine. Her parted lips are full of laugh- 
 ter, " her eyes are as eyes of a dove." 
 
 " I must go," she says, suddenly, lightly unfastening 
 the chains that bind her. 
 
 " Not yet. Why, it is quite early." 
 " Nevertheless my last hour has come. I have prom- 
 ised Audrey to give her her tea this afternoon, and it is 
 now half -past four. At five I am due. Give me my 
 hat." 
 
 " Give me some tea, too." says Mr. Bouverie, eagerly. 
 "I never felt so thirsty in all" my life! I'll come home 
 with you and help you to pour it out. That will be doing 
 you some good." 
 
 " No. Audrey doesn't care for you, and you don't care 
 for Audrey. I can't bear conflicting elements." 
 " I won't say a word that " 
 
 " Good-bye," says Miss Lome, with decision. " I have 
 Been quite enough of you for one day, considering I am 
 :x>utul to meet you again to-night. Till then, adieu/
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 Yet stay; as far as the first turn in the avenue counts, 
 you may come with me, but not a step beyond." 
 
 " And all this is because of Audrey! * Oh, my cousin, 
 shallow-hearted,' how I detest you! But for you I should 
 be allowed to enter Paradise!" 
 
 "Goto! Your wits wander!" says Miss Lome. "And, 
 if you won't come with me to that first turn, why, good- 
 bye then until to-night." 
 
 " " Oh, I'm coming," cries Bouverie " to the hall-door, 
 if I may! There is no false pride about me. And about 
 to-night? You will not be later than ten? You will give 
 me the first dance?" 
 
 " If you are in time for it." 
 
 " Don"t comfort yourself with the thought that I *ha'n't 
 be. If, on your arrival, you hear of any burglar being 
 secured in the coal-cellar for prowling about the premises 
 during the earlier part of the evening, remember it is I, 
 * being in time." 
 
 " You sha'n't stay there long after my arrival," says 
 Miss Lome, fondly. " With my own hands I shall release 
 you, be there a thousand Drummonds in the way." She 
 slips her hand through his arm, and squeezes it confi- 
 dentially. "Do you ever think, Dick, how strange a 
 thing it would have been if we had never met and loved?" 
 
 "A terrible thing!" 
 
 " Should we have met and loved some other people 
 odious people! or should we have gone to our graves 
 unwed?" 
 
 " Unwed," says Dick, with conviction. " How one event 
 changes one's whole life! I suppose if my uncle had not 
 fallen over that precipice somewhere in Switzerland, you 
 and I would now have been as apart as though two differ- 
 ent spheres held us." 
 
 "He was killed?" asked Dolores, with some awed in- 
 terest. 
 
 " Yes. We were poor people at the time it occurred; and 
 his death made such a tremendous difference gave rny 
 father the title, property, and all! I remember my uncle 
 slightly a quiet man like my father, very timid, very 
 silent, and in great awe of my grand-uncle, from whom 
 the money came, as well as the title." 
 
 " Why was he afraid of him?" asked Dolores, some 
 vague contempt in her tone.
 
 130 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 " Because the property was not entailed all through 
 and an empty title is a barren honor. However, the old 
 man died shortly after the accident that killed my uncle, 
 and left all to my father. I think at the time it happenti 
 I was sorry about that accident; but I am not sorry 
 now. If it had not occurred, you and I how impossible 
 it sounds! would be strangers to each other." 
 
 "Poor man! It was sad though!" says Dolores, with 
 a sigh. "Now here is our boundary-line," she adds, 
 standing at the curve of the avenue and holding out to 
 him a dismissing hand. "Not a word not an entreaty! 
 Your doom is sealed!" 
 
 " Well, yon needn't stand so far away from me," says 
 Dick, aggrieved. "There isn't anybody looking, and 
 therefore nobody can see. Say good-bye to me in a more 
 dutiful way than that." 
 
 "You are sure sure" glancing round nervously 
 "that there is no Oh, Dick there! Indeed you 
 should be more cautious! And Good-bye again!" 
 
 There are several "agains,"and then she runs away 
 from him down the long avenue, and is soon hidden from 
 him by the jealous laurestines. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 DOLORES has barely time, after parting with Dick, to 
 tnrow off her hat, make herself a degree prettier than she 
 was even a moment since, and enter the library by the 
 upper door, when a servant, throwing open the lower one, 
 announces Miss Ponsonby. 
 
 " Ah, I am so glad I was home in time!" says Dolores, 
 ingenuously, running to her and kissing her warmly. Be- 
 tween the little heiress who has never known a grief or 
 felt a cynical thought, and the cold, self-contained girl 
 always so bitterly resentful of the poverty to which she 
 was born, a strange friendship has arisen. "I was so 
 afraid I should be late, I have only just come in myself. 
 Take off your hat." 
 
 " You were walking?" 
 
 "Yes, with Yes." She blushes faintly, and busies 
 herself drawing forward a low lounging-chair for her 
 risitor's comfort.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 131 
 
 *' With Dick," says Audrey, calmly. " Well, he is more 
 fortunate than most." 
 
 "Because I walked with him?" laughs Dolores, light- 
 ly, raising her brows. 
 
 "That, too. But I was not thinking so much of this 
 hour's grace accorded him as of the fact that probably you 
 will let him walk through life beside you. Now that is a 
 speech that requires no answer. If I am right, so much 
 the better for him. If I am wrong, why, then I can al- 
 most find it in my heart to pity him, though his race are 
 not altogether dear to me! What a perfect day it has 
 been! What an evening it is!" 
 
 "Why should we waste it indoors?" said Dolores, 
 gayly. " The orchard is a happier hunting-ground than 
 this can be. There may be some strawberries still left, 
 and I'll tell them to send us out some extra cream for 
 them with our tea; but perhaps" with a hesitating 
 glance at the cool room she has spoken of abandoning. 
 
 " No," answers Audrey; "you need not be afraid of 
 that. What room even the loveliest can bear compar- 
 ison with the summer air? ' Stone walls,' so far as I am 
 concerned, always ' a prison make.' " 
 
 "Auntie has gone to the town; so we shall be all 
 alone," says Dolores. 
 
 Slowly sauntering toward the orchard they enter it pres- 
 ently through its ivied gateway and fling themselves, with 
 a glad sense of youth and freedom, upon a mossy bank 
 beneath a gnarled old apple-tree. 
 
 " How cool it is here how quiet no noise!" said 
 Audrey, clasping her arms behind her head and gazing 
 upward at the liquid blue of the evening sky. 
 
 "No boys!" returns Dolores, laughing. 
 
 "It means quite the same thing." 
 
 *' Sometimes just at first, when I knew you I used 
 to think, whenever you spoke of the boys, that you meant 
 your brothers." 
 
 "No; my mother spared me that infliction at least 
 
 " ' I am all the daughters of my father's house 
 And all the brothers too.' 
 
 I suppose I should speak of them as * the pupils;' but 
 somehow * the boys ' comes more naturally. What a tor- 
 ment they are what a grinding horror! And yet"
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 with some remorse " it is a shame to be so hard on them. 
 Sometimes even to them I confess I am grateful to 
 them. They mean so much to as in many ways. Where 
 would dad be without his books, for instance? The fact 
 is, dad and I are carnivorous animals, and live on the 
 boys." 
 
 " Still, young boys I dare say are " 
 
 "Young!" For an instant Miss Ponsonby glances at 
 her, and then she laughs faintly. "They aren't always 
 ao very young," she says. "I would they were; they 
 would be just half the trouble then. It is big boys that 
 worry. We have them at seventeen, twenty, twenty-one, 
 and so on. Once we had one at twenty-seven. He was 
 the dullest boy of the lot so dull indeed, that I don't 
 think he will ever be anything else. Perpetual youth is 
 his lovely portion." 
 
 " What became of him?" asks Dolores, who has been 
 secretly wondering if she means Sir Chicksy, but is at 
 last comforted by the reflection that certainly twenty- 
 seven summers have not passed over that gentleman's 
 flaxen head. 
 
 " We kept him only four months, as, beyond laying his 
 exceedingly large hand and small fortune at my feet every 
 second day and eating unlimited jam-tarts, he did literally 
 nothing." 
 
 " How tiresome!" 
 
 " It wasn't not exactly. He did both things so thor- 
 oughly, and always at full length under the big acacia, 
 that he ceased to trouble us after a bit. I almost missed 
 him and his proposals when he went. Perhaps I missed 
 the tarts even more! He was most generous in his distri- 
 bution of them." 
 
 " Do all the boys propose to yon?" asks Dolores, who is 
 much "fetched " by this idea, and is regarding Miss Pon- 
 sonby with an irrepressible smile. 
 
 " Pretty nearly," says Audrey, with imperturbable 
 gravity; then, all in one moment, she gives way to a 
 merry burst of laughter very unusual to her. " You see, 
 dad has the reputatfon of being so clever, and indeed is so 
 clever," she says, with loving pride, "that they send him 
 all the forlorn cases as a last resource; and sometimes he 
 does manage to push them through in spite of Dame
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 188 
 
 Nature. But why they must all arrange to believe them- 
 selves in love with me is the amusing part of it." 
 
 " It sounds amusing certainly. Just fancy a youthful 
 regiment on its knees to one all day long!" 
 
 "Sometimes it is unpleasant," confesses Audrey, with 
 a change of feature "sometimes" looking earnestly at 
 Dolores and speaking in a low tone " they weep, and 
 that's hateful! I've known them get so damp and so 
 limp that, after indignantly refusing them, I have had to 
 support them back to the house; and then, when they 
 used to sit through dinner without eating a morsel and 
 with their eyes and noses as red as fire, dad used to ask 
 me what it all meant, and, when he found out, he would 
 be very angry and want to send the luckless boy away; and 
 of course that was awkward, you know, as as well, of 
 course you understand" a little impatiently " that the 
 money the poor boy paid was of great importance to us." 
 
 " Of course," says Dolores, with the simplest, most 
 business-like tone in the world. It soothes the other and 
 drives the little frown from her brow. 
 
 " Whatever you do," she goes on, smiling again at 
 Dolores, " don't encourage a lover who looks even inclined 
 to cry; it will imbitter your life. But I forget; my advice 
 is not wanted here. I don't believe Dick could cry even 
 if he tried." 
 
 "You should know, being his cousin," says Dolores, 
 coloring sweetly at the mention of his name, as she 
 always does, but looking in no wise embarrassed. " But 
 what an irrelevant remark of yours! What's Hecuba to 
 me or I to Hecuba?" 
 
 " You alone can answer that question." Audrey is 
 silent for an insignificant time, and then, reverting to her 
 first topic, " There is one thing redeeming," she says, 
 "about the boys they all love dad! Even when they go 
 away they don't forget him. But that" with a swift 
 brightening of her rather oold and haughty face " is not 
 to be wondered at." 
 
 "No," returns Dolores, with a subtle touch of sym- 
 pathy "I have seen him." 
 
 " Does it ever occur to you," exclaims Audrey, grow- 
 ing suddenly animated, " how he can be Lady Bouverie's 
 brother? What faintt connecting link is there between
 
 134 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 them? She so insolent, so overbearing, he so tender, 
 go " Her voice falls, and a beautiful dreamy expression 
 comes into her eyes. 
 
 "Your Cousin Dick was telling me to-day of how Lady 
 Bouverie once was quite poor," says Dolores. 
 
 " Yes; I expect the sudden unexpected rise to a title 
 and a decent rent roll was too much for her. She hasn't 
 recovered from it yet, you see. That word 'lady' is an 
 everlasting delight to her. I can fancy how openly glad 
 she was when that poor man fell over that cliff, or what- 
 ever it was. I remember him myself but very slightly I 
 was only a child then, a mere baby an aimless, helpless 
 sort of man, just like Sir George, and very good-natured. 
 I think for the one week I knew him I lived on lollipops. 
 Papa always speaks very kindly of him, but then he 
 speaks kindly of his sister Lady Bouverie too; so that 
 his word doesn't go for much. Yet I don't wish you to 
 think that," she says, smiling, " because I would have 
 you believe that the pretty things he says of you he really 
 does mean, and that he likes you more than most." 
 
 "It is only fair that he should like his daughter's 
 friend," replied Dolores, feeling strangely attracted to her 
 because of this great love for her father which is betray- 
 ing itself in every word and glance. 
 
 "There is one thing that gives me deep pleasure one 
 thought rather," goes on Audrey, turning her face slowly 
 until her eyes rest on Dolores. " If you should chance to 
 marry Dick dad will be your uncle." 
 
 "And vou my cousin." Dolores, coloring warmly, 
 holds out her hand to her, and then all at once a grim 
 little look of comic dismay desolates her face. " And 
 Lady Bouverie my mother-in-law!" she adds slowly. 
 
 "It does take the gilt off doesn't it?" says Audrey, 
 laughing. Then, after a moment's silence " ' How happy 
 some o'er other some can be!' I wonder if Dick knows 
 how lucky he is? It will be the happiest thing for him!" 
 
 " Why should it not be the happiest thing for me, too? " 
 asks Dolores, gently. " We have not spoken of our en- 
 gagement yet to any one, except to auntie, and now to 
 you; but, of course, all the world has seen how it is with 
 us. And I am glad they have seen " with a little sud- 
 den quickening of the breath, and a sudden paling of her 
 lovely face. " Why should one seek to hide one's joy?
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 135 
 
 Yet actually to speak of it, to put it all into words, that 
 is difficult." 
 
 " My aunt does she know? " 
 
 " Not yet. I told Dick to keep it a secret from his 
 mother for yet a little while; but I suppose she has made 
 a good guess at it. She she has been very one doesn't 
 know what to call it," says Dolores, laughing " very 
 affectionate to me of late. At least that is what I am 
 gure she has meant to be." 
 
 " Very! " says Audrey, dryly. 
 
 " If I were to become a Cinderella to-morrow, I wonder 
 how it would be with her then?" 
 
 "You would be 'Miss Lome* then, not her 'pretty 
 Dolores,' and when she met you it is amazing what an 
 amount of eyeglass she would require to be able to see 
 you, and her tone, when she hoped you were quite well, 
 would be sufficient to make you quite ill, and her hurried 
 but frozen adieu would bring you to death's door; and 
 besides " 
 
 " The picture is complete! " interrupts Dolores, laugh- 
 ing. " Your style is decidedly graphic. Let us rejoice 
 in the fact that I shall never be called upon to enact the 
 r6le of a modern Cinderella Oh, by the bye, Audrey, 
 I am so sorry you will not let us call for you to-night! 
 But you were right yesterday. In your place I should 
 have rejected Mrs. Drummond's invitation just as you did." 
 
 " Every one detests me so," says Miss Ponsonby, frown- 
 ing, and plucking a daisy to pieces. " Yet what have I 
 done to any of them?" 
 
 " You are so much prettier than they are!" 
 
 " Yet so are you; and they all profess nay, they all 
 io like you. There must be something morally wrong 
 with me; yet how to change when my fault is unknown 
 to me? Perhaps I should be more meek, perhaps I should 
 have accepted Mrs. Drummond's words in a different 
 spirit, though they were spoken at the eleventh hour, and 
 only because the Duchess thought me worth a word or 
 two and an invitation to the Castle." 
 
 "Mrs. Drummond made a mistake; I think you were 
 right in showing it to her," replies Dolores, quietly. " Ig 
 Sir Chicksy going?" 
 
 "About him I have been more worried than I can tell 
 you. He declares nothing will iuduce him to go; and,
 
 136 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 absurd as he looks, he is really very difficult to manage in 
 small affairs of this kind." 
 
 " His not going will look rather marked." 
 
 "That is what I told him, but he seemed to think that 
 reason for his going only an extra inducement to stay at 
 home." Miss Ponsonby laughs a short joyless laugh, and 
 gives the soft frill round her neck a vicious little pull. 
 
 " He is very much in love with you," says Dolores, 
 gravely; "and sometimes I do not understand whether 
 that pleases or annoys you. He is a kindly young man, 
 I know he he has many " 
 
 " Don't say good qualities," interrupts Audrey, calmly. 
 "That would be the finishing stroke to whatever chance 
 he may have." 
 
 "Chance! Tell me" looking earnestly at her "do 
 you mean to marry him?" 
 
 " Well, why should I not? He is an excellent parti," 
 says Audrey, defiantly; " and he has no father, or mother, 
 or sister, or brother to consult, or to be furious with him 
 for marrying a girl without a penny. About family there 
 is no question," she says, with a proud gesture "on 
 either side." 
 
 "You think of marrying him, then?" interrogated 
 Dolores, a little carefully suppressed surprise, a little 
 well-bred regret, in her tone. She blushes up to her very 
 brow as she asks the question, and looks abashed at her 
 own temerity. When, a moment since, she has asked the 
 same question in the different words, she had expected 
 the answer to be a straightforward " No," and had found no 
 difficulty in propounding it. But now, as the immense 
 truth dawns upon her that in reality Audrey may bring 
 herself to wed Sir Chicksy, she feels strange toward her, 
 and a little upset as to her former calculations. She hes- 
 itates; but, as no reply comes from Audrey, something 
 within her something pure and true compels her at all 
 hazards to, conquer cowardice, or fear of giving offense 
 Raising her lowered eyes she says impulsively, " He is noj 
 good enough for you." 
 
 "I wonder if I am good enough for him, or any othei 
 man?" returns Audrey, with quick bitterness. "Do yo^i 
 think I care whether he be good or bad? I tell you" 
 leaning toward her, and pushing her dark hair in an im- 
 patient manner from her forehead " I only cared to know
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 137 
 
 whether his rent-roll was really what he said it was; that 
 I have ascertained to be the truth, and so no hesitation is 
 left to me. I am mercenary; I love money; I would, I 
 believe, sell my soul to be rich and great in the world's 
 eyes." 
 
 "How can you so deliberately lie about yourself ?" says 
 Dolores, calmly, though the other's suppressed excitement 
 has its influence upon her. 
 
 "There you see I have shocked you! Good little girls 
 like you," exclaims Audrey, with a reckless laugh, " who 
 have never known what poverty means, or the scorn society 
 amasses to pour broadcast upon those who lack this world's 
 goods, can'not understand such natures as mine. Yet it 
 is the very society of which you are a member that forms 
 such natures. I think I hate rich people!" She pauses, 
 and then a revulsion of feeling comes to her, and she goes 
 on again quite calmly. " You think Sir Chicksy is not 
 good enough for me; but you won't to-morrow, when you 
 dwell on the knowledge of me that I have given you; and, 
 besides besides, he can give dad his books the claret I 
 can not give him the South of France life!" Her voice 
 fails her; yet, though she is as pale as death, and her eyes 
 are heavy with miserable tears, she looks straight at 
 Dolores frowuingly, as though forbidding her to offer any 
 sympathy. 
 
 But Dolores is not to be forbidden! Audrey has put 
 out her hand as though to bar any approach, yet Dolores 
 creeps up to the antagonistic hand, which is in truth but 
 a very frail barricade, and slips her arm round Audrey's 
 neck. 
 
 " I always thought I liked you the best of my many 
 friends here," she whispers, softly. " Now I know it; 
 but, oh, dear, dear Audrey, why need you make this sacri- 
 fice? Other people are rich; other people love you!" 
 
 " Oh, no, no, no!" cries Audrey, paling, and shrinking 
 from her. 
 
 " There is one," says Dolores, in a quick, hurried tone, 
 tightening her clasp " one to whom you are unkind, to 
 whom you show yourself in all your most unlovable moods. 
 And, as for him I can not always understand him in- 
 deed; but this I know that you are well beloved by " 
 
 With a passionate exclamation, Miss Ponsonby, spring- 
 ing to her feet, pushes the grrj^back from her, and fron
 
 138 DICK'S SWEETHEAET. 
 
 an assured distance gazes at her with crimson cheeks ana 
 flashing eyes. 
 
 " How dare you speak so to me?" she says, in a low 
 panting tone, scarcely audible. " How dare you take 
 aiich a liberty? There is no one that loves me; it is an 
 insult a " 
 
 She turns away abruptly, and walks in a rapid inconse- 
 quent fashion down the garden path, increasing the dis- 
 tance between herself and Dolores with all the speed of 
 which she is capable. Her every moment is full of a sup- 
 pressed agitation, born of passionate fear and a feeling 
 she believes is anger, and a vague horror of herself. 
 
 Dolores, stricken dumb, stands motionless upon the 
 mossy sward, with the boughs of the apple-tree swaying 
 above her head, and just a glimpse of the eternal blue of 
 heaven beyond. What has she done? What was it she 
 said? A pang of terrible self-reproach shoots through 
 her tender heart as she watches the tall haughty figure 
 hurrying away from her toward the garden gate. When 
 she has disappeared through the ivied portals, will she 
 ever return? 
 
 Dolores, looking pale as a small ghost, clasps her hands 
 together and feels as one might who has just committed a 
 murder of the most cold-blooded description. She takes 
 a step forward with the intention of overtaking and com- 
 pelling that determined figure to believe her innocent of 
 studied offense, when all at once Audrey pauses, hesi- 
 tates, and finally, turning sharply round, comes back to 
 her. 
 
 " Forgive me!" she says abruptly, her face very white. 
 " I should not have spoken so to you. It was rude, and 
 besides that, absurd. There is no real reason why you 
 should not speak to me of him as well as of Sir Chicksy." 
 No name has been mentioned between them of this second 
 suitor, yet both seem to understand. "And I should 
 have remembered," continues Miss Ponsonby, growing 
 even paler, "' how impossible it would be to you in any 
 case to be the offender." Great tears rise now and glisten 
 in her eyes. 
 
 " Audrey," says Dolores, going up to her and laying 
 her arms loosely round her neck, so that she can lean 
 back and study th other's face as she speaks, " at least
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 139 
 
 believe this of me, that my liking for you is sincere enough 
 to prevent my saying a hurtful word to you." 
 
 " It is the living of my whole life in this narrow place 
 that has spoiled me," murmurs Audrey, faintly smiling. 
 " I grow more morbid, suspicious hateful, if I dare con- 
 fess the truth. But only to you, Dolores, will I do that. 
 Just now you were speaking of Anthony Vyner, were'iyou 
 not?" 
 
 " Yes. What fault do you find in him that you should be 
 so incensed with me for my bare mention of his name?" 
 
 "The greatest fault of all his inability to appreciate 
 my many charms!" She laughs softly but bitterly. 
 " Don't say they are not many," she goes on quickly. 
 "Recollect, the truth, if rude, is always salutary." She 
 smiles again. " The fact is, Mr. Vyner detests me nearly 
 as much as I detest him. There is an antagonism between 
 us that T believe only life can end." 
 
 " Speak of your own repulsion, "returns Dolores, quiet- 
 ly; "that is, of course, to you understood; but Mr. 
 Vyuer's feelings are not to be so lightly canvassed. I do 
 not think you judge him aright. You say I am wrong in 
 thinking he loves you; I admit my error in that respect, 
 if indeed it be one; but that he hates you no, no! He 
 certainly does not hate you. I think he likes you." 
 
 A sudden passionate color flames and dies in Miss Pon- 
 lonby's cheeks. 
 
 "How good that is of him!" she says, in a carefully 
 modulated voice. " Poor Anthony! It must be an ever- 
 lasting trouble to him to like me, considering how well 
 he knows me. It is indeed too much. But see, Dolores 
 who is that coming through the arched gateway?" 
 
 " Tea," declares Dolores, in a gratefully explanatory if 
 a scarcely grammatical manner; " and Wylde. What have 
 you there, Wylde?" addressing the gray-haired butler 
 who is approaching them, followed by an attendant satel- 
 lite. 
 
 " Small bottle of champagne, miss; thought you'd like 
 it with your strawberries. Tea is only just made, so it 
 can wait a bit." 
 
 " Oh, thank you, Wylde!" says Dolores, looking with 
 tender friendship at the old man who has followed her 
 fortunes through the half of Europe. " Do you know 
 you have brought us tha yerv thing for which Miss Poth
 
 140 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 sonby and I hare been sighing? And, Wylde "calling 
 after him as he beats a smiling retreat "be sure you let 
 me know when auntie returns." 
 
 " Sure to, miss," bows Wylde, with a deferential, if 
 confidential gesture. 
 
 CHAPTEK XIV. 
 
 AT the stuccoed mansion of the Drummonds the fiddles 
 are sounding, and bright forms are making the most of 
 the glad hour accorded them. Fountains are dripping 
 musically; the air is heavy with the breath of dying flow- 
 ers; it is twelve o'clock, and the ball is at its height. The 
 music grows sweeter, softer. One begins to take to heart 
 the languorous, numerous meanings of the floating per- 
 fumed fans. 
 
 Down far below, in the valley, a girl, tall, but spirit- 
 broken, is standing in an open window. She is clad in 
 a wide clinging gown, and is gazing eagerly with great 
 sad straining eyes at certain yellow lights that, two miles 
 away, can yet be caught through the still haze of the 
 summer night. 
 
 After all, was she so wise in refusing that invitation? 
 Dolores had said she was; but Life is short! Why not 
 take from it the very meager enjoyment it offers to the 
 hungry seeker after distraction? And yet How chilly 
 it grows! How long it seems since last she heard the 
 human voice that some mistaken person once called 
 "divine!" 
 
 There glancing at the pale yellow lights so far away 
 every one no doubt is happy, regardless of everything but 
 the present moment. Ah, happy present! What more 
 natural than that they should lose themselves in it? If 
 she were there, she too doubtless would be cruelly regard- 
 less of all the outer world. But then 
 
 The night is still, beyond all imaginings. The scent 
 of the tall white lilies outside burdens the air. "Un- 
 pavilioned heaven is fair," rich in its countless stars, 
 
 "And through the dim wood Dian threads her way." 
 
 Tho girl leaning against the shutters of the open win- 
 sighs a little, and her beautiful haughty face takes a
 
 DI-CK'8 SWEETHEART. 141 
 
 mournful droop. Her lips curve downward, her eyes 
 grow sad and moist; yet always the yellow lights gleam 
 in the cruel distance, and almost the sound of the fiddles 
 comes to her on the ambient air. She stirs impatiently 
 and tightens her fingers, as if unconsciously, upon the 
 soft crimson rose with which she has been toying. It 
 shrinks and dies beneath her pressure, and one drop of 
 moisture, blood-red in her imagination, as though dis- 
 tilled from its heart, crawls over and under and through 
 her white fingers as though in protestation against her 
 idle deed. 
 
 But to her it is as though the rose never existed. Her 
 eyes are ever fixed upon the lights so far removed from 
 her, and a sense of desolation overpowers her. The tears 
 gather in her eyes, and blot out those vexing, shining 
 lights and blot out, too, the figure of a man who, 
 advancing rapidly through the shrubbery, enters the 
 second window, and, crossing the room, is at her side 
 before she has time to recognize him. 
 
 It is Anthony Vyner, a little heated from his run, 
 with his hair ruffled and quite a triumphant light in 
 his eyes. 
 
 Audrey, moving backward involuntarily, seizes the cur- 
 tain with one hand, and gazes at him in speechless 
 amazement. 
 
 "You?" she whispers, breathlessly. 
 
 " Is it?" inquires Mr. Vyner, genially. " Perhaps so! 
 No doubt you'd know. I seldom understand myself, so 
 there can be nothing remarkable in the fact that I don't 
 always know myself! I thought I was at Mrs. Drum- 
 mond's, but if " with a delicate deference to her opinion 
 "yon insist on saying this is I, why I'll take your word 
 for it!" 
 
 "What brought you here?" asks Audrey, who has 
 grown very white from the suddenness of the shock his 
 unexpected appearance has caused her. 
 
 " Now that I come to think of it," says Mr. Vyner, 
 airily, " I don't know. I never go into my own motives. 
 Long, long since I found they weren't worth it. Lovely 
 night, isn't it?" 
 
 "What brought you?" persists Audrey, unflinchingly. 
 There is a little flash in her somber eyes, her hand tight- 
 ens on the curtain.
 
 142 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 ..." If, " answers Mr. Vyner, plaintively, "I now stated 
 Jo you an incontrovertible fact, and told you the simple, 
 beautiful truth, and said it was my ten toes and my two 
 heels, I dare say you would think me rude, eh?" 
 ,:.-" You are always rude," says Miss Ponsonby, calmly; 
 ?'iso that goes for nothing. Still, I must ask you to 
 answer my question. What brought you here at this 
 hjur?" 
 
 7 " It is impossible to be sure. But I suppose it is what- 
 Ver brought me here at any other hour." 
 
 J "Will you answer me or not?" demanded she, angrily. 
 .,.. " How can I? It is so awfully hard to find out! If 
 eVen human love be not the growth of human will, how 
 shall I know what strange force drove me abroad to-night 
 to wander amidst Cimmerian darkness and meditate 
 troon " 
 
 '" " Now that you hare come, and refuse to give a reason 
 for your coming, I must only beg you will go again," says 
 Audrey, haughtily. 
 
 ,She drops the curtain and turns disdainfully toward the 
 door; but, when she is only half way to it, Mr. Vyner 
 springs to his feet and hurries after her. 
 
 " Eureka!" exclaims he, with the triumphant air of 
 one who has proved himself victorious over some brain- 
 worry. " I've found it! What a fortunate thing isn't 
 it?" looking to her for sympathy. "And just at the 
 List moment, too! Another hesitation and I should have 
 been lost; you would have gone!" 
 
 " Well," says Audrey, severely, standing a good way 
 back from him and gazing at him with unfriendly eyes, 
 "well?" 
 
 It is plain she is not to be done out of the desired ex- 
 planation. 
 
 " My presence here, Miss Ponsonby," begins he, with 
 an artless candor, "at this unseemly hour was caused, I 
 have just discovered, by an overpowering desire to see " 
 
 Miss Ponsonby frowns. 
 
 " Wait a bitj" exclaims he, hastily. "To see to see 
 anything that was far away from Mrs. Drnmmond! 
 There you can not object to that, can you?" 
 
 " 1 don't object to anything," says Audrey, just a little 
 wearily. 
 
 She has come back to her window again, and is now
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 148 
 
 leaning ont toward the scented darkness, as though wooing 
 a touch from the cool night wind. Far down below, in 
 the woods of Greyland, the nightingales are singing their 
 wild sweet catches, answering each other from branch to 
 branch. It is a heavenly harmony that beats upon the 
 heart, and seeks as though it were the herald of peace 
 to enter there. But sometimes pulses throb too madly, 
 and sad hearts are too full to admit any new-comer, what- 
 ever name he bear. 
 
 " Yes, I was saturated with Mrs. Drummond. I thought 
 I'd leave whilst yet there was time," goes on Mr. Vyner, 
 after a brief glance at her. He too is leaning out of the 
 window beside her, being no doubt as smitten with the 
 beauty of the night as she is. " I felt, if I stayed a sec- 
 ond later, that my hour would be come. And, as a 
 mother-in-law now, do you think she would be nice?" 
 
 " I never think of her," says Audrey, her head turned 
 away from him as she gazes into the cool misty mysteries 
 of the summer night. 
 
 " I would that I were you!" says Mr. Vyner. "She 
 preys upon my brain, although " with a sudden brilliant 
 change of tone and a benignity of countenance " it 
 must be acknowledged that our dear friend is a very sweet 
 creature such an affectionate disposition, such a flow of 
 goul eh?" 
 
 " Did anything else flow to-night?" asks Miss Ponson- 
 by, turning upon him suddenly, with a suspicion of wrath 
 in her dark eyes. " Have you had too much of their ex- 
 ecrable champagne? The idea would suggest itself. 
 What occasions your high spirits? What has induced 
 you to leave your partners to come here?" 
 
 "Haven't I told you?" returns Mr. Vyner, reproach- 
 fully. " It was pure fright that drove me from the pala- 
 tial halls of the people beyond. How their lamps shine 
 through the density that parts us! Why, they put the 
 very stars to shame! But what's the good of being a, par- 
 venu if yon can't outshine your neighbors eh? Yes, it 
 was f right pur et simple that bade me beat a hasty retreat. 
 They were all getting too fond of me too sugary. By 
 the bye, perhaps it is the old fellow's the grandfather's 
 molasses that makes them all so sweet?" 
 
 " What an opinion you hare of yourself!"
 
 144 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 Audrey, with a curling lip. " Do you indeed think that 
 all the world is so anxious to marry you?" 
 
 "Oh, not all the world!" He looks at her fixedly, and 
 she returns the look. "I have the very best reasons for 
 knowing that all the world is not so favorably disposed 
 toward me," he says presently. " Now you, for in- 
 stance " she moves away impatiently, and a faint expres- 
 sion that is either amusement or uncertainty or annoyance 
 crosses his face "you would not, I know, deign to look 
 at me were I to lay my allegiance at your feet!" 
 
 " That is a good thing for you to know," returns she, 
 coldly. "Perhaps if you came to the same knowledge 
 about many other women of your acquaintance, you would 
 find yourself on a safer level than you are at present. You 
 think Miss Drummond " 
 
 " I don't think that; I'm sure of it. When she had for 
 the third time done me the honor to ask me to be her 
 partner, I felt I must run for it. And then I thought 
 I'd come down here and ask you what she meant." 
 
 "Even if she did make up her mind to marry you," 
 said Miss Ponsonby, surveying him with leisurely con- 
 tempt, "she would be miles too good for you." 
 
 " That's just what I thought/' smiles he, equably 
 " so I flew. ' Never,' said I to myself, ' shall I be the 
 cause of bringing down misery upon the head of this ad- 
 mirable girl. Were I to be the means of rendering her 
 unhappy, I should never forgive myself. No; even though 
 the determination cost me my life, I will be generous in 
 this matter; I will not marry her! And then, as you 
 know, I arrived here in a state of mind bordering upon 
 coma. You remember I couldn't give you so much as a 
 decent answer to a most simple question. Yon recollect 
 that? I say, Audrey, couldn't we find some supper some- 
 where? I'm right down hungry; self-denial of the sort I 
 have just described and suppressed affection and all that 
 are very exhausting, and er very appetizing." 
 
 "Certainly not," says Miss Ponsonby, with stern de- 
 cision. "If you want supper go back to Mrs. Drum- 
 mond." 
 
 "Not if I were starving! Do you think I'd risk Geor- 
 gina's blandishments again? Don't be brutal, Miss Pon- 
 sonby. 'Tis ill fighting with a hungry man. What had 
 you for dinnerF"
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 145 
 
 "Roast beef," confesses she, reluctantly. 
 
 " Cold roast beef," says he, meditatively. "Worcester 
 sauce, fresh bread and butter. It might be worse far 
 worse! Come along " jovially tucking his arm bon- 
 samarade fashion into hers " and we'll make a night of 
 it!" 
 
 "Come where?" demands she, making an ineffectual 
 effort to untuck herself. Evidently "dad's" old boy is 
 not to be lightly got rid of. 
 
 "Into the pantry, of course," returns he, unabashed. 
 
 " You have made a mistake," says Miss Pousonby, 
 stubbornly resolved not to yield an inch. " Into the pantry 
 I don't go. Go back to the Drummonds!" 
 
 " I have told you already why I can't. Would you 
 thrust me into the arms of Georgina? Is this your vaunt- 
 ed affection forme?" 
 
 "Affection for you!" exclaims she, regarding him with 
 withering scorn. 
 
 " You would deliberately fling me into the prepared 
 pitfall. Was it for this you kept Chaucer at home? I 
 dare say you knew if he had been there my danger would 
 not only have been lessened, but have been nil! A baro- 
 net is dearer to their souls than a commoner could ever 
 be. A title counts. Your studied cruelty is more than I 
 ean bear. Would you have rne marry Georgina?" 
 
 " I don't care whom you marry," exclaims she, with a 
 passionate stamp of her little foot; "only go away!" 
 
 "I can't," says Mr. Vyner, sinking into a chair; "I'm 
 too far gone. The walk home would be too much for me. 
 Do you think ' dad,' if he knew it, would send me hungry 
 from his door?" 
 
 At this she struggles wildly with a rising force within 
 her, and at last they both burst out laughing. It does 
 her good. When the small paroxysm is over, she sighs 
 heavily, aod looks at him. 
 
 " By the bye, where is 'dad'?" asks he. 
 
 " In bed two hours ago." 
 
 " Sleeping the sleep of the just, no doubt; if not, no 
 one ever did it. And Sir Chicksy?" 
 
 " In bed too, I trust." 
 
 " So do I. For once we are agreed. And an excellent 
 place it is for him. Jj*?J? e his dreams are rose-colored.
 
 146 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 I'm so fond of Chaucer that I'd always have him in bed, 
 if I couldn't have him in Heaven. Servants in bed also?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Do you mean to say," with a quick glance at her pale 
 profile, " that you have been keeping a lonely vigil here 
 for nearly three hours?" 
 
 " I didn't find it lonely. Do you think" with an 
 angry contraction of her brows "that I am a child or a 
 fool, to be terrified by the mere fact of being alone?" 
 
 "Ah, true! I forgot that mind of yours the amazing 
 strength of it! But even that, I suppose, can not keep 
 you from feeling the pangs of hunger at times? Do say 
 you could eat something now, if only to please me!" 
 
 In truth the girl is looking very wan and tired and dis- 
 heartened, in spite of her efforts at control. 
 
 " If I am not, you are," she says evasively. " Come to 
 the pantry then, since you won't go back to Mrs. Drum- 
 mond. As you say " wistfully " I suppose dad would 
 not like you to leave his house hungry." 
 
 "I expect 'dad' is my saving clause. You have no 
 bowels of mercy. Never mind; I forgive you. By the 
 way, why didn't Sir Chicksy turn up at the Drummonds ? 
 to-night?" 
 
 " Because I declined to go." 
 
 " Well done himself! Now who says * men ave dd- 
 ceivers ever constant to one love never'? William 
 Shakespeare, I despise you! Your supposed knowledge 
 of human nature is a big swindle! But stay I forget! 
 He never knew our Chicksy that perhaps accounts for 
 it. I say, Audrey, you've got a new lock to the pantry 
 since I was here! The last ones at least, the one I 
 knew used to wobble so! Remember? By the by3, 
 I'm not a bit surprised, you know, that Sir Chicksy is so 
 head over ears in love with you!" 
 
 " No? Neither am I," says Miss Ponsonby indiffer- 
 ently. 
 
 " Good girl!" murmurs Mr. Vyner. 
 
 Whereupon Audrey, stirred by some secret emotion, 
 foreaks into a low gay laugh a laugh very different from 
 the mirth of a moment since, which indeed had been half 
 vexatious. She is of those people whose laughter is in- 
 frequent, and therefore her mirth, when heard, is more 
 infectious than that of most.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 14? 
 
 'Dear me!" exclaims Mr. Vyner, with concern, gazing 
 At her with exaggerated amazement. " Are you ill? Has 
 anything hurt you?" 
 
 " No; still my laughter has done me good; it has opened 
 my heart. To prove it, I will confess that, if you un- 
 fasten the door of the safe over there, you will find not 
 only the beef I spoke of, but a chicken." 
 
 " Ye gods," cries Mr. Vyner, " why don't ye come 
 down from Olympus?" He opens the door of the safe. 
 " And a very nice plump chicken too!" he remarks ad- 
 miringly. " After all, I'm rather glad the gods have not 
 responded to my call. It will be just enough for you and 
 me." 
 
 Miss Ponsonby, with the most astonishing rapidity, has 
 covered the small table near her with a white cloth. Not 
 the very faintest suspicion of mauvaise honte is discernible 
 in her movements not even the knowledge that ;it Mr. 
 Vyner's own home servants in livery perform for him all 
 such services as these has the power to render her awk- 
 ward or self-conscious. Anthony Vyner was far too many 
 years one of "the boys" though during his time she 
 was but a tall slender impetuous child, only half conscious 
 of the existence of anything save fruits and flowers ever 
 to be considered a stranger by her, no matter how an- 
 tagonistic she may feel toward him now that the waves of 
 time have rolled a little further on. 
 
 Just at this moment he is on his knees before a small 
 cupboard, searching it diligently for something that evi- 
 dently is not there. To even an unobservant looker-on it 
 might suggest itself that it is not the first time he and 
 she have supped together in this pantry. 
 
 " You won't find them there," says Audrey at last, be- 
 coming aware, after a prolonged patting of her cloth to 
 take out certain creases, that her guest is still sprawling 
 on the floor in his evening-clothes and with his head lost 
 in the dim recesses of the cupboard. " We always keep 
 the forks and spoons in the big press now." 
 
 "Do you?" says Vyner, scrambling to his feet once 
 more. " So much the better; an affair like this, with its 
 lower shelves almost on the ground, is very trying, and, 
 besides, it is such a rickety old thing!" 
 
 " It is not a bit more rickety now than it was then," 
 declares Miss Ponsonby. injin offended tone; yet there i
 
 148 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 just now a little softness about her anger that would nava 
 been foreign to her in more orthodox moments. 
 
 "Not a bit, not a bit!" acquiesces he cheerfully. "As 
 you say, I defy it to be more unstable now than it was 
 then then!" repeats he, with a sigh. Is it a real sigh, 
 or only part of his usual idle, careless manner, which is 
 never more than half earnest? " What a very dear little 
 girl you were," he says, "in that pleasant far-off * then!'" 
 
 " There is one thing I would say to you," says Miss 
 Ponsonby, standing very still and very upright on the 
 other side of the table, with a salt-cellar in one hand and 
 a mustard-pot in the other, "and I would have you re- 
 member it for all your days; it is this: I object to com- 
 pliments in every shape and form, whether they refer to 
 my past, my present, or my future. You will be so good 
 as never to forget that." 
 
 " I shall be so good," promises Mr. Vyner amicably, 
 who for his part is armed with a loaf of bread, a carving- 
 knife, and a decanter; "I promise you most faithfully 
 never to forget." 
 
 There is a slight depth in his tone that causes her to 
 glance at him suspiciously. Just then, as it happens, he 
 too is looking at her; her brows contract. 
 
 " No, really," he says gayly, " there is no occasion for 
 distrust; I mean it; I shaVt forget, ever. That is obey- 
 ing you, is it not? And fortunately my memory is excel- 
 lent. Why, it seems to me now only as yesterday since 
 I, an overgrown lad, used to carry you for miles through 
 heather and stubble, and think myself richly rewarded at 
 the last if you what a little tyrant yon were! would 
 give me a kiss for my reward!" 
 
 " Ah!" says the girl. She lays her hand upon the back 
 of a chair and gazes at him with a pale face and with an 
 expression of concentrated wrath within her eyes. 
 
 "Well, what if you did kiss me then?" persists he, 
 with a little laugh, raising his brows. '' You were but a 
 willful child of nine, and you don't kiss me now, worse 
 luck," laughing again, "so why look at me like that? 
 But come to supper, I entreat you, with what appetite we 
 may. By the bye, how is it with you?" 
 
 " I feel as if I hadn't eaten anything for a week," con- 
 fesses Audrey with a sudden revulsion of feeling, she 
 finds herself smiling bask at hinu After all, what is to
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 149 
 
 be gained by encouraging disdain, or nursing one's wrath 
 for a creature so indifferent to one's love or hatred? And, 
 besides, what comes of one's joys and griefs? An end 
 once attained, how poor it appears! All life's big designs 
 are so many glittering myths only put forward to tempt 
 one to a betrayal of one's sad weaknesses, to show up the 
 very poverty of one's so-called strength. She will forget 
 for a little hour her poverty, her secret sorrow that is 
 scarce acknowledged even to her own heart, that little 
 dread about " dad's" health everything, and take the 
 good the moment gives "Just imagine if Mrs. Drum- 
 mond were to see you now," she says, with a bright, 
 eager light upon her beautiful face which is very seldom 
 seen there, " despising her ball, her guests, her " 
 
 " Daughter, the fond Georgina and all for you ! There 
 would lie the sting. I'm sorry only for one thing," says 
 Mr. Vyner thoughtfully, " and I must say it was amiss of 
 me; why on earth didn't I think of secreting a bottle of 
 her champagne about my portly person before quitting 
 her ancestral bovvers?" 
 
 A little shade falls on Audrey. 
 
 "Ah!" she says. "You see you should have stayed 
 there; you would have had a so much better supper." A 
 vivid fixed crimson springs into her cheeks, an expression 
 that may be termed shy creeps into her downcast face. 
 It is not so easy, in spite of strong resolution, to forget 
 that terrible bugbear the want of money. 
 
 " You don't often make silly speeches," remarks Mr. 
 Vyner calmly, after a long minute's silence spent in con- 
 templation of the wonderfully new and pretty diffidence 
 upon the face opposite; " but just now you have managed 
 it. Let me assure you that the supper is not known upon 
 earth that would tempt me from the one now before me." 
 
 She makes him no answer; and again he loses himself 
 in a lengthened study of her expression. To make an 
 analytical examination of every character that might come 
 beneath his notice has been his almost unconscious habit 
 for many years. And what a programme she has present- 
 ed him with to-night, what a hurried list of most of the 
 deeper emotions dignity, gayety, reproach, anger! And, 
 after all, this strange sweet embarrassment that has fallen 
 upon her, this most childish of all the emotions, this girl- 
 ish shyness, this ia^t :ihase of her varied humors hag
 
 150 DICK'S SWEETHEAST. 
 
 suited her best. How pretty she looks! iow uwauti 
 fully white are her hands! How Pshaw! 
 
 "To return to our first thought," he says lightly. 
 " You were wondering what Mrs. Drummond would say 
 if she could now look in upon me. I turn the tables 
 upon you, madam. I ask you how would it be were Sir 
 Chicksy at this awful juncture to look in upon you?" 
 
 " Well, what if he did?" coldly. 
 
 "I should be afraid to think. Would he you know 
 him well would he murder me? Fancy an apparition of 
 Sir Chicksy standing in yonder doorway armed with a 
 claymore he is a Scotch baronet, is he not? and with a 
 dangling night-cap on his sunny head! By the bye, he 
 wears a night-cap, doesn't he?" He pauses, and gazes at 
 her as if for information. 
 
 " What!" cries Miss Ponsonby, considerably taken 
 aback by his rather suggestive question; then " I'm sure 
 I don't know!" she says indignantly. 
 
 " Then, as none of us know, I'm absolutely positive he 
 does!" declares Mr. Vyner, unmoved. "A high one, 
 generously tasseled! I believe it would be a tassel that 
 would bob over his aristocratic nose a most confounding 
 tassel of abnormal stoutness and unparalleled length! I 
 feel I should go down before it I should go " 
 
 " Go home?" suggests Miss Ponsonby. 
 
 "Oh, not yet! Do not make your gentle hint more 
 apparent; I have not yet half finished this paragon 
 amongst chickens. Now tell me why you would not go 
 to Mrs. Drummond's to-night?" 
 
 " First, because she did not choose to ask me until she 
 found the Duchess was in my favor. But the joke of this 
 part of my story lies in the fact that she might quite as 
 well have given me my invitation at the proper moment, 
 ac I should undoubtedly at any time have refused it." 
 
 "But why why?" a little impatiently. 
 
 " ' Because I could not so 
 
 Be drest 
 As I were going to a feast/ " 
 
 replies she with a faint flush. " I might perhaps hav got 
 the money to buy a new gown, if I had asked dad for it, at 
 the expense of his denying himself half a dozen of the little 
 trivial things that go to make his life sweet. He would
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 151 
 
 gire me every penny he possesses; he would probably sell 
 some of his dearest possessions his books to get me a 
 few yards of muslin in which to pretend to enjoy myself 
 ^or au hour or two. But do you think I should enjoy 
 those two hours, knowing how they were procured P 
 What a purgatory they would be!'" 
 
 " They would indeed." says Vyner, softly. He does 
 her full justice in this matter at least. He understands 
 ^perfectly the loyalty of the affection that could find no 
 happiness in a pleasure secured at the expense of one 
 beloved. 
 
 " The boys are bother enough to him," she goes on re- 
 gretfully. " Why should I add to his worries? At this 
 affair at the Dutchess' it will be different, as she has insisted 
 upon giving all the dresses, and we are to wear our stage- 
 costumes during the evening. But you now see" with 
 a wavering smile " that I could not have gone to-night, 
 though my very heart had been set upon it." 
 
 There is silence for a full minute; then Mr. Vyner, 
 pushing back his chair with a rather ungovernable haste, 
 rises to his feet. 
 
 " The scales of this world are too uneven," he says, in 
 a low voice. " One has everything that he wants, and 
 then wants everything! And and there are those who 
 would alter this injustice yet dare not!" 
 
 He raises his eyes to hers with an effort. 
 
 " No, they dare not," returns she very distinctly. 
 
 " It seems past belief hard that, when you have so few 
 enjoyments, you should be denied even one." 
 
 " This one would not have been an enjoyment. Con- 
 sole yourself with that thought. Even you " with an 
 expressive gesture and a smiling glance at the impromptu 
 supper-table "did not find it so." 
 
 " But any break in upon your monotony should count." 
 
 "Tut!" says she, shrugging her shoulders with the 
 vehement half-foreign gesture she has inherited from her 
 mother. "Monotony is a thing for which we must all 
 prepare ourselves. 
 
 " ' We dance like fairies in a ring, and 
 
 Our whole life is but a nauseous tautology.' 
 
 And now good-night." She holds out her hand to him. 
 " Come with me at least as far as the hall-door," en- 
 treats he.
 
 152 DICK'S SWEETHEAKT. 
 
 Throwing wide the door when they come to it, they let 
 in a flood of moonlight that brightens up the somber hall 
 and lies in a silver pathway across the gravel. The stars 
 have come out even more brilliantly in the clear sky, and 
 a soft wind plays upou Audrey's cheeks as she steps into 
 the pale porch hung with sleeping roses, whose perfume 
 makes sweet the passing hour. A few thin luminous 
 clouds crossing the horizon darken it momentarily; other- 
 wise the tranquil expanse of heaven is undisturbed. 
 
 " I suppose I shall see you to-morrow at the Castle ntjout 
 these rehearsals?" says Vyner, holding her hand. 
 
 " Who shall say?" returns she, stepping back from him 
 and releasing her fingers. 
 
 " ' To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow 
 It is a period nowhere to be found, 
 Unless, perchance, in the fool's calendar." 
 
 She moves away from him, the moonlight following and 
 catching amorously at the trailing folds of her soft gown. 
 At the door, almost as she is lost in the infolding dark- 
 ness of the house beyond, she looks back at him and 
 waves her hand. One ray from Diana's throne, more vent- 
 urous than the rest, falls into her liquid eyes as they turn 
 slowly to where he still is standing on the gravel. Are 
 there tears in them? Again she makes him that mute 
 adieu, and then is gone. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 "An! You, Dick?" says Dolores, with a little fond 
 flush and a gesture of glad surprise. She has stepped 
 through the armory door that opens upon the western end 
 of the garden, to find herself almost in her lover's arms. 
 
 The sun, shining generously upon all things, is dancing 
 attendance in quite a pointed fashion upon the soft cream- 
 colored folds of the Indian silk in which she has encased 
 her dainty body, and is reveling in her sunny locks and 
 in the happy innocent eyes so like forget-me-nots. Lace 
 ruffles of an olden day come barely to her elbow; but long 
 Su6de gloves of a pale color lie in pretty wrinkles upon 
 her rounded arms. Of a hat she is guiltless, disdaining 
 it in this glorious weathcri but her lovely face looks np
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 153 
 
 at him from under a cream-tinted umbrella that seems as 
 an aureole round a face so pure, so calm, so sweet, as to 
 be almost saint -like. 
 
 *' Oh, love," aays Bouverie to himself, as he gazes mutely 
 at her exceeding beauty, " what am I that I should have 
 gained not only your pure face, but your heart, that is 
 even still more pure?" But what Dick really does say to 
 Dolores has nothing whatever to do with the adoration 
 for her of which his soul is full. 
 
 " You, Dick?" says she, in her glad surprise. 
 
 " You have guessed aright," returns he gayly, taking 
 and holding the little hand she extends so readily. " But 
 why this blush, Miss Lome, and why this suspicious con- 
 fusion, and why this very fetching array? If 1 am in 
 the way, if I am to come under the head of 'trumpery,' 
 say so, and, whilst there is yet time, let me depart with 
 my broken heart." 
 
 "I think I see you going even then," says Miss Lome, 
 making him a contemptuous little moue. " But my gown 
 do you really like it? I I fancied you might come 
 up this afternoon; and Lai lie" a little shyly " says I 
 look so nice in it that I thought I'd show it to you. But 
 I didn't dream you would be here so early." 
 
 "You should have dreamt it then; you should never 
 dream of anything but me! " 
 
 " Perhaps I did not dream at all." 
 
 "A paltry way of getting out of it! Be it known to 
 you, madam, that, according to some great thinkers, the 
 brain is never idle; and so, in your sleeping moments, 
 dreams of something or some one must have entered into 
 it!" 
 
 "But I wasn't asleep," says Dolores, drawing up her 
 brows. " Now where does your argument go to eh? Bah! 
 What a goose you are! " All this she says with the most 
 open and flagrant want of respect, and having said it, she 
 slips her hand into his, and rubs her soft cheek up and 
 down in k ; *tenish fashion against his sleeve. " What a 
 sweet day it is," she says, in a little sighing whisper, " and 
 how happy I am." 
 
 A passionate tenderness floods the young man's face. 
 
 " Really really?" he whispers back to her. " Then I 
 can make you happy?" 
 
 "Dick," says she, with a iudden change of tone her
 
 154 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 smile fades, with a little clinging half-frightened gesture 
 she slips her arms round him " I hope I am not too 
 happy." She sighs. " When people are too happy, what 
 then?" She trembles. 
 
 " Nonsense! " exclaims he rather roughly, but pressing 
 her slender form very close to him. " No one is too 
 happy. What ridiculous fancies you get into your head! 
 Arid, even if one were, why, one would go on being so, of 
 course! And now let me look at your gown" putting 
 her a little way back from him. " How charming how 
 delicious! It is yes, it is really worthy even of yon! " 
 
 " What a base flatterer! " protests she, recovering her 
 spirits and laughing gayly. "And now tell me what 
 brought you up here ' in the morning, oh, so early* ? " 
 
 "I hardly know. I felt restless, unsettled, and as 
 though I must see you once again. I thought a decent 
 visiting hour would never arrive, that I might start for 
 Greylands. Oh, for the time," says Bouverie, drawing 
 her hand within his arm as they walk along together 
 through the scented rows of roses and giving it a loving 
 squeeze out of the fullness of his heart, " when I need not 
 come visiting ycu at all when the longest journey from 
 me to you will be from the stables or the library to your 
 loudoir! " 
 
 " Ah, I often think of that!" says Dolores, with such 
 sudden, sweet, genuine good faith, that regardless of con- 
 sequences and the long line of windows, he stoops and 
 kisses her upon the spot. 
 
 " How did you enjoy last night?" asks she it is the 
 morning after Mrs. Drummond's ball. 
 
 "Altogether, when dancing with you; not at all other- 
 wise. The whole affair was slow, I thought. It dragged; 
 it wanted something." 
 
 "It wanted Audrey," says Dolores. "I missed her 
 more than I can tell you.'* 
 
 "Did you? The rest of us missed Vyner. Where on 
 earth did he disappear to? He never put in an appear- 
 ance until twelve, and was no sooner come than gone. 
 Mrs. Drummond was furious about it at least, so Mrs. 
 Wemyss told me and so was * my sweet girl ' "Mrs. 
 Drummond's open-air name for her daughter. 
 
 ^ " Dick," says Dolores, giving him a very gentle little 
 pinch, " how dare you call any on ' sweet ' but me? But
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. I5f 
 
 what was Mr. Vyner's reason for his strange behavior? 
 He came up to me and spoke to me for a moment, look- 
 ing very handsome but very cross, and " 
 
 " Dolores." interrupted Dick, "how dare you call any 
 one handsome but me! As to Vyner, I believe he was 
 afraid Miss Drummond would do him the honor to pro- 
 pose to him." 
 
 " He doesn't seem to me to care much for any one 
 does he?" says Dolores, making her assertion with all the 
 air of one who hopes and expects to be contradicted. 
 
 "No. Vyner is not a marrying man," asserts Dickc 
 He is looking the other way, so does not notice the quick 
 Bhade of disappointment that crosses the face of his little 
 companion at his words. " Regular old bachelor, I should 
 say! I couldn't imagine him writing sonnets to his mis- 
 tress' eyebrow, for example, or otherwise playing the fool." 
 
 "Then you really think," murmurs Dolores a little 
 plaintively, "that, if a man honestly loves a woman, as 
 vou say you love me, he must necessarily play the the 
 fool?" 
 
 "Now, once for all," says Mr. Bouverie, promptly, 
 "let me lay down the law for you on this point our 
 law. You and I, to begin with, are altogether different 
 from the rest of the world. If I choose to crawl in an 
 abject fashion at your feet, to feel really obliged to you if 
 you will trample upon me, to experience the most intense 
 invard gratification if you ask me to perform the smallest 
 service for you such as standing on my head, or cutting 
 my throat, or anything of that sort if, in short, I feel il 
 a finer thing to be your slave than any other woman's 
 king, why, all that is not folly: it is merely what is fit 
 and proper between you and me! But in anybody else it 
 would be Well, my judgment is not always sound, but 
 I dare say it might be considered a little weak but not 
 in me, remember, because you are you, and there is n< 
 one in all the world to be compared with you see?" 
 
 "No, I don't see at all!" exclaims his paragon, with 
 startling decision and a somewhat grievous note in IKV 
 voice. " 1 never listened to such folly? And you mussr 
 know I don't want you to crawl, Dick, just like a horrid 
 worm, and that I wouldn't trample upon you for anything 
 you could offer 1"
 
 156 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 " Well, never mind," says Bouverie, airily; "let us g* 
 on to the next paragraph. Did you ever see any one so 
 in love as Brnno?" 
 
 "With Mrs. Wemyss? It is as apparent as the day? 
 And I'm very " She stops short and glances at him 
 from under the huge umbrella. "Are you glad about 
 it?" she asks, anxiously. 
 
 " If she will have him yes, very!" 
 
 " Then so am I," said Dolores, with an adorable smile 
 and an air of deep relief. " And, as to having him, I 
 know she will! Her eyes! Did you ever watch her when 
 she is looking at Bruno and he doesn't know it?" 
 
 " I have better eyes than hers to watch," says Dick 
 " your eyes." 
 
 " Then you must be forever looking in the glass," re- 
 turns she, with mock reproach they have seated them- 
 selves upon a mossy mound, and as she speaks she takes his 
 chin into the hollow of her little palm and compels him 
 to look at her "because your eyes are mine now, and 
 mine yours. Oh, you conceited boy! Out of your own 
 mouth I condemn you." 
 
 She laughs a soft tuneful laugh, in which he joins. 
 
 " What book is that in your pocket?" asks Dolores, 
 drawing it into fuller view as she speaks. " Swinburne? 
 Corns, and read something to me. You read well and 
 your voice is the sweetest in the world to me." 
 
 " It it's not always easy to get a thing one likes out of 
 him," says Mr. Bouverie, with mild confusion. 
 
 "Go on! Read me the first thing your eyes may light 
 upon. Do you know, I have never read any of his works, 
 though I have read a great deal of him, and know that 
 the praise of him is unlimited. Goon!" She leans back 
 lazily, and clasps her hands behind her sunny head. 
 
 " Well, but I hardly know what to choose," protest* 
 Bouverie, vaguely. 
 
 "I have told you. Open at hap-hazard, and begin at 
 the very first line your eyes may meet." 
 
 With a mental reservation, Mr. Bouverie proceeds to 
 obey her. There is comfort in the thought that he can 
 hit the book fall in the most carelessly accidental manner 
 possible if his first glance at the printed page is not er 
 that is well, exactly to his liking. He opens the book,
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 157 
 
 his eyes fall upon the page, he obeys her order, and reaaa 
 from the first line they meet: 
 
 "The time of lovers is brief 
 
 From the fair first joy to the grief 
 That tells when love is grown old, 
 From the warm, wild kiss to the cold; 
 From the red- to the white-rose leaf 
 They have but a season to seem 
 As rose leaves lost on a stream, 
 
 That part not and pass not apart, 
 As a spirit from dream to dream, 
 
 As a sorrow from heart to heart." 
 
 He would have gone on; but a low sigh escaping from 
 her stops him. 
 
 " ' The time of lovers is brief/ Is that true?" she 
 says. "Must it be true? Alas, what a sad song you 
 chose!" 
 
 " I did not choose it!" exclaims he earnestly. " I was 
 to read the very first thing " 
 
 "Yes, yes. And how unlucky!" says she dreamily. 
 " Did he know? Will it be true in our case?" 
 
 "My darling, no! Dolores, look at me. Is it me you 
 fear, or is it yourself? I shall not be flattered if it is the 
 latter. My dear, dear heart, nothing shall part us, never 
 never! What, are you superstitious, you silly child, 
 and depressed because of a few words that can have 
 nothing to do with you or me?" 
 
 "It is foolish, isn't it?" she says, smiling languidly. 
 " Yet I doubt the fulfillment, the continuance, of my 
 happiness at times, you know only at times. There 
 seems ever to be a cloud above me." She draws her 
 breath quickly, and, by a swift, light action gives an 
 expressive illustration of her meaning over her head. 
 Then her frail little hands drop into her lap again hands 
 so frail that the many diamonds and pearls that cover 
 them his gifts seem to weigh them down. 
 
 " I wish you were not so fragile," says Bouverie, paling 
 a little,. " If you were stronger, no such morbid thoughts 
 would distress you. What a little hand! How warm it 
 is how listless! And how pale you are! You seem to 
 me as unlasting as the dew." 
 
 " No, no; do not liken me to the dew," murmurs she, 
 softly. " I should have to leave you, then, and so soon, 
 so soon! Why, what a little life you would give me!"
 
 168 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 He has his arms round her, and, as she says this, she 
 turns her face to his in caressing fashion. But there is 
 something in her tone, her light words, that tortures him. 
 He does not speak, but, in a little agony of love and fear, 
 presses his lips to her pretty hair. 
 
 "No, I am like white violets. You remember? They 
 are what you first told me I resembled. I will not have 
 your first fancy slighted, or changed." She pauses for a 
 moment; and then, as though half unconsciously, fall 
 from her lips the words: " 'Violets for a maiden dead!'" 
 
 "Dolores!" exclaims he, sharply, putting her almost 
 angrily from him, and springing to his feet; " I forbid 
 you to talk like that; do you hear? I forbid you!" 
 
 " I was not talking," returns she, a little startled. " It 
 was only a thought that came to me. But it shall be as 
 you wish" holding out her hands to him "I shall 
 never even think of that line again if I can preveht my- 
 self. Come back to me, Dick." 
 
 Of course he comes back to her; but there is still a 
 great sadness in his face, born of vague fear and an un- 
 defined possibility too cruel to be brought into a more 
 forcible light. Ever since his heart first woke to a knowl- 
 edge of its love, his affection for her has been tinged with 
 a nervous dread of something intangible but terrible 
 that may arise to part him from her or her from him. 
 Even in small things he has found food to sustain this 
 lover's torment. A sudden pallor arising from the extra 
 sultriness of a summer day, and he would believe her 
 dying; a little natural petty languor, and his spirits died 
 within him. There was indeed one day in which she had 
 had a cold a very slight cold, a mere trifling affair 
 when he told himself his heart was broken. His love for 
 this gentle beautiful creature is an idolatry keen and 
 iweet, redolent of all things pure. In her is centered 
 every hope he has, every thought, every dream of a happy 
 future. 
 
 "Your mind is still wandering away from me," she 
 gays presently, in a half-jealous tone, marking the shade 
 upon his brow. "Are you thinking" looking at him 
 with a sudden smile "of my 'cloud,' my 'little rift'? 
 I think of it too; but nothing comes of my thought. I 
 don't know what it is. All my life I have lived with it; 
 but" with a comical gesture of despair "I know lew
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. lfl& 
 
 of it to-day than any one. It is not death of that I am 
 eure; but that is all." 
 
 " Are yon sure?" asks Bouverie, ii a low tone, his voice 
 rather husky. "Can any one be sure? What what 
 did your mother die of your father?'' 
 
 "Of no disease that might fall upon me nothing 
 hereditary. Auntie has assured me of that, and auntie 
 never lies. No, it will not be de?*:hj but sometimes it 's 
 borne in upon me that it maybe ^ /ef." She pauses foi 
 a moment, and then, turning toward him with a sweet 
 trust within her eyes, lays her hand on his. "Since I 
 have met you I have cared less for that thought," she 
 says; "I shall have you to share it with me." Then sud- 
 denly another, a new fear seems to strike her; she turns 
 pale. "But what if you could not share it?" she says. 
 
 " Well, then 1 should be oat of the land of the living," 
 returns he, cheerily, pressing the hand he holds to his 
 lips. "Nothing but my final departure from this present 
 world could prevent my sharing with you both your griefs 
 and joys. What is my life for, unless it be to make youra 
 happier?" Then he quotes a little tender verse to her, 
 very tenderly: 
 
 " ' Bein? your slave, what should I do but **&d 
 Upon the hours and times of your desire? 
 I have no precious time at all to spend, 
 Nor services to do till you require.' 
 
 But why worry yourself at all, my darling, about an 
 unknown woe that may be nay, that must be purely 
 imaginary?" 
 
 " It is not that," she says, slowly shaking her head. 
 " I have felt the shadow of it too long to disbelieve in it; 
 yet I have never sought to solve its mystery. Why should 
 I? Some day I shall know! but the further off that day 
 is the better. Come let us. forget it!" exclaims she, 
 gayly, throwing up her charming head with a sudden 
 pretty impatience that suggests a desiro for freedom from 
 unpleasing reflection. " There are moments when I can 
 not know discontent, and this is one of them. I have the 
 glad sunshine, the long, sweet day before me. and, above 
 and beyond all, you!" She bends toward him impulsive- 
 ly, and gives him, of her own loving accord, a soft caress. 
 "I am always happy on a sunny day like this. See," 
 criei ghe, suddenly,, "look at that butterfly! What a
 
 160 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 beauty!'* She springs to her feet; all her late touch ol 
 languor, her pensive glances have vanished; she is a care- 
 less child again, ignorant of secret care or sorrow. " There 
 he is!" she whispers, stealing cautiously, but hopefully, 
 toward the rose-bush whereon the child of the sun she has 
 so fancied is resting with quivering wings. But, light as 
 her footfall is, it startles the pretty winged trifler; and, 
 spreading itself, it soars aloft, far, far beyond her reach, 
 and, hurrying sunward as it were " a flower that floats 
 on air" is soon lost even to sight. "How provoking!" 
 cries she, with a gay laugh. " You saw how it eluded 
 me? Ah, my hand has lost its canning! There was a 
 time not so long ago, either when I should have been, 
 as good as he. Pretty little wretch! That was when I 
 wore sun-bonnets; those great big muslin things, you 
 know, like white coal-scuttles. But of late years I 
 Well " quickly "it is not correct to run about so much 
 when one is quite grown up, is it now?" She seats her 
 Belf beside him once again, and pushes her fingers int* 
 his. "Let me tell you your fortune," she says, stooping 
 to pluck a great-eyed marguerite growing at her feet 
 
 " My future is told. I shall wed you, and live happj 
 ever afterward." 
 
 "Perhaps you won't," retorts she, willfully. "Well, 
 let us see this year next " 
 
 He lays his hand over the flower. 
 
 " See if you love me first. How could there be any 
 true fortune unless there was love in it?" he protests, re- 
 proachfully. 
 
 " I forgot," murmurs she. " Our love seems so sure, so 
 certain a thing that Now attend." 
 
 She goes through the old world formula. 
 
 " * She loves you a little, indifferently, passionately 
 not at all ' " plucking carefully leaf by leaf the doomed 
 marguerite, as all true lovers have done before her, time 
 out of mind. It stops at " She loves you." " And that 
 is best of all," she assures him with a little nod. " If I 
 love you as you know I do it means everything. Good 
 little flower! Now I shall put you through your facings, 
 Dick, and see if all your loving oaths are true, or if, per- 
 cfcance, you have protested too much." 
 
 But the second flower is faithful as the first^ and givei
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEAliT. 16J 
 
 its last petal to the self-same words that ended the life of 
 its com rude. 
 
 "Is not that charming?" laughs Dolores, her eyes 
 gloaming with real pleasure. " Who shall say there is no 
 truth in these things? Bah! They are skeptics who 
 have no right to breathe the air with us. And was not 
 this poor flower after all, I am sorry I killed it! even 
 more worthy than its predecessor? It might have been a 
 proud flower disinclined to follow another's lead; yet, you 
 see it conquered its pride, overcame its inclinations, and, 
 like a good Christian, adhered strictly to the truth." 
 
 "It is my turn now," declares Bouverie, gayly, pluck- 
 ing another flower. " I shall see when v:e shall be mar- 
 ried. If it doesn't say this year, I sha'n't believe in that 
 strict adherence to the truth of which you have been 
 boasting." 
 
 " You must believe what it tells you," says Dolores, 
 leaning over his shoulder to watch his manipulation of 
 the flower, and see that there is no foul play. " Go on!" 
 
 " * This year, next year, three years never!' " 
 
 They both grow rather anxious as the last petals are 
 approached, and, when they cease upon the fatal " never" 
 they are silent, and for a moment refuse to look at each 
 other. 
 
 " It is all nonsense," exclaims Bonverie at last, flinging 
 the stalk from him with an angry movement " utterly 
 insane rubbish! Let us try it again, if only to prove the 
 absurdity of it." 
 
 "No, no," says Dolores, staying his hand. ''If, as 
 you say, it is nonsense, why try to prove it so? Of course 
 there is nothing in it and yet " 
 
 " Well what?" demands he defiantly. 
 
 "Perhaps it did tell us the truth perhaps we never 
 shall be married! Who can tell what lies before us?" 
 
 " A long life together," he declares stoutly. " Little 
 raven that you are, I will not listen to your croaking,' 
 And, as for these marguerites, I shall hate them for ever 
 and ever!" 
 
 "Even though they whispered to you of my love?" re- 
 minds she gently. " Poor things! I requited them but 
 ill to give me pbnsant tidings they died!" 
 
 " Was their lust message then go pleasant?" asks he,
 
 162 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 with a short laugh. "Pshaw! Why take the trouble 
 even to think of it?" 
 
 "Still I wish it had said something else even thai 
 long three years." She turns her eyes upon him with a 
 iittle troubled glance in their soft depths. " Sometime? 
 foolish things, like these marguerites, do truly foretell 
 the future by a mere silly chance, as it were. What if 
 we should be parted? What if " with a very sad and 
 wistful attempt at a smile " that ' little rift 'of mine 
 should be the means of " 
 
 " Dolores Dolores," cries he, losing all self-control, 
 " can you really love me and talk thus coldly of even an 
 impossible parting? The very word means death to me! 
 What should I do without you? In all this wide world 
 where should I find me a place? I tell you that heart 
 and soul I am so wrapped up in you that there could be 
 for me without you no such thing as existence. Without 
 you!" He repeats hie own words with such a mournful 
 cadence c,nd in such despairing tones that involuntarily 
 she draws nearer and throws her arms around him. 
 "What words!" she says, in a low tone. "But they 
 have no meaning none!" He presses her more closely 
 to his heart. "Darling my beloved," he whispers 
 "say once again that you love me! Let me hear you 
 say it!" 
 
 " J love you!" returns she, with an intensity that satis- 
 fies him. 
 
 They cling to each other in silence. Is there some 
 faint touch of despair in that mute embrace? No word 
 escapes them. From across the far lawn there comes the 
 sighing of the chestnut-leaves, and in the scented wind 
 are subtle whispers that no man may learn, but that all 
 sad hearts must feel; over everything lies the odorous 
 
 breath of the dying roses. 
 
 ******* 
 
 A day far spent, as already evening has come and gone 
 and night is at hand a night fraught with many emo- 
 tions weal for some and woe for others, and change and 
 loss of that dear hope that makes our sad life glad. 
 
 It is the night set apart for the theatricals at the Castle 
 --perhaps most of the actors therein feel some natural 
 nervousness as the hour of performance draws nigh. But 
 for Dolores the hour has no terror. She, standing beforu
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 163 
 
 the mirror in which her charming image is depicted, is 
 lost in a happy reverie in which Dick alone has place, 
 and is hopefully wondering whether he will be pleased 
 with her costumes, and if indeed in this present one she 
 will seem good in his sight. In many ways she is still 
 but a child, and the longing to seem fair to her lover is a 
 paramount feeling with her. No part has been assigned 
 her in the play that is to open the proceedings at the Cas- 
 tle; but she is to appear in the tableaux later on in some 
 character unknown to all save those who are behind the 
 scenes. Even to her aunt Miss Maturin she has been 
 forbidden to reveal the secrets that are to be kept sacred 
 until the night of representation. 
 
 It is a very charming reflection that meets her gaze a^ 
 shs glances thoughtfully into the mirror fair shining 
 eyes and pretty yellow locks and small mouth soft and 
 sensitive, lovely dimpled arms bare to the shoulder, and a 
 throat of marvelous beauty. She seems to rise out of the 
 white lace that enshrouds her like a very dream of rapt- 
 urous childhood hardly as yet awakened to a knowledge 
 of the world's storm. A string of priceless pearls encir- 
 cles her neck her only ornament, save the diamonds that 
 flash upon her little snowy hands. There is glad expect- 
 ancy in her glance and in the smile that curves her lips 
 this smile widening with some happy thought of him 
 who fills her being her lips part, and suddenly, with a 
 suspicion of coquettish shyness most sweet to see, she 
 covers her face with her hands. 
 
 " There is no touch of sun or fallen rain 
 That ever fell on a more gracious thing." 
 
 " Ha, conceited lady! At last I have caught you,'* 
 says Miss Maturin, entering her room, "standing in an 
 entranced attitude before your glass. And indeed," with 
 loving admiration, "no wonder! Darling child! That 
 ,gown suits you so! You look just like a picture." 
 
 " Of what? Prosperity?" asks Dolores, with a laugh 
 full of amusement, and she remembers how she will have 
 to enact the other side of the picture very shortly. But 
 that is a secret known only to her and the Duchess and a 
 very select few. 
 
 " No, no; as But I must not make you vainer than 
 you are. By the bye, would it not have been better to
 
 164 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 dress at the Castle, as you must change this gown for the 
 mysterious garments that are to astound me later on?" 
 
 " Well, I thought of that; but, you see, as 1 am not to 
 be in the first part of the entertainment, and as Audrey 
 is acting, I thought I should like to see it. And and 
 Dick," with a sweet shy blush, " would be there too, and 
 I thought I should like to look nice when first he meets 
 me." 
 
 " Eeasons ' as plenty as blackberries,' " quotes Miss 
 Maturin gayly; " but the last is the reason, eh? However, 
 that is neither here nor there. 'I would give no man a 
 reason upon compulsion,' if I were you. Well, it is ag 
 pretty a gown as ever I saw! That woman is a Jewell 
 Nothing like getting ones things from a good place, after 
 all! 'A good place a good price!' cry some. But, tut, 
 nonsense! cry I. What does a penny or two matter more 
 or less, so long as one is pleased? Dearest heart, you are 
 as sweet a thing as ever eye did rest upon!" 
 
 "You think he will like me, that is it?" asks Dick's 
 betrothed, with an anxious air and a conspicuous blush, 
 and an elaborate gesture toward her gown. 
 
 "If he doesn't, he ought to be ashamed of himself! 
 But even the doubt wrongs him." Then she grows silent, 
 and the fond appreciation of the beautiful girl before her 
 dies from her eyes, and she seems lost in a painful reverie. 
 "So long ago it seems," she says; " and yet to-night it is 
 so near! Just in such a gown I have seen her, with those 
 very pearls around her neck! I am thinking of your 
 mother, child your counterpart and all the past rises 
 within my heart and fills me with dread." 
 
 "With dread, auntie?" 
 
 "Ay, child! Has any one lived a life-time to find no 
 dread in their past? But" hastily " half my fears are 
 imaginary, as they always were. Let us forget them." 
 
 "I am like my mother, then?" says Dolores, looking at 
 herself once more very earnestly in the long mirror. 
 
 " Strangely like. Yet I think I never noticed the 
 resemblance so much before. What is it" impatiently 
 " that brings back to me the past to-night with such 
 terrible vividness! I seem to hear and feel and see, as 
 though it were before me, all that should be forgotten! Is 
 it a presentiment of evil?" Then, seeing the girl's rapt 
 inquiring look, she checks herself by a strong effort and
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 165 
 
 sinks into a chair. "Tut! What a brain I have!" shs 
 says, with a light laugh. " Does it ever rest, I wonder? 
 Come, darling; the carriage will be round soon. Come 
 to the library, and have some tea before starting." 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE theatricals at the Castle are like all other theatric- 
 als, neither better nor worse, with one great nay, start- 
 ling exception. It is given to Audrey Ponsonby positively 
 to electrify her audience by a display of histrionic talent 
 that, with culture, might make her fortune on the stage, 
 and is only too good for a private performance. 
 
 From first to last she is the one person who claims and 
 holds a hushed and undivided attention. Her beauty 
 alone undisputed as it is would not suffice for this; it 
 is the absolute force and passion of her acting that carry 
 all before it. She is superb, unrivaled; there is a touch 
 of insolence about her face that accords well with the 
 character chosen, and raises her far above all her com- 
 peers. 
 
 Some old play was selected, after all, in which kings 
 and queens and all the mightiest of the earth hold 
 chief parts, and Audrey, in her white-and-gold draperies 
 which seem to cling to her and make one with her slender 
 exquisite shape, looks like a queen indeed, with a golden 
 crown upon her head and gold chains hanging from her 
 gemmed girdle, and all her beautiful hair let loose to hang 
 far below her waist in a waving glittering mass. 
 
 There is a restless fire in her eyes, and a strange pallor 
 on her cheeks. She enacts her part almost indeed cre- 
 ating it with a verve, a passion for which no one there is 
 at all prepared. Some are subdued, some a little shocked, 
 all are fascinated. A more utter transformation than has 
 taken place in her could hardly be conceived. The girl, 
 so haughty and reserved in her ordinary life, has for once 
 thrown aside all constraint, and is in turns a fond impas- 
 sioned woman, a queen stern and offended a being made 
 meek by love's power, made mad by jealousy. She holds 
 every brain captive while she stands upon the mimic stage. 
 
 And now it is all over, and, glad, radiant, she passes
 
 1*6 DICK'S SWEETHKJLKT. 
 
 away from the plaudits that still follow, her bare lovely 
 arms filled with flowers. 
 
 "To praise is almost an impertinence in thig case," 
 gays Vyner, going forward to meet her as she enters the 
 greenroom; "yet I must speak or die! You were perfec- 
 tion that rarest of all things. Let me congratulate 
 you." 
 
 " Was dad looking at me? Had he a good place? Was 
 ;he pleased?" asks she hurriedly, ignoring his words as 
 though unheard, and speaking with an intensity of long- 
 ing that betokens her desire to get affirmations to all her 
 questions. Plainly her whole soul is in them. 
 
 " Yes; he could see you. And he was pleased, I know. 
 Once, when you were more than usually pathetic, I a&w 
 tears in his eyes." 
 
 " Dear dad!" says the girl, pressing her flowers to her 
 bosom, and whispering his name very softly. " He taught 
 me my part," she says, looking up at Vyner; " I used to 
 say it over and over again to him every morning. Such 
 trouble as he took with me! But now I hope" smiling 
 "he thinks this last pupil of his has not disgraced him. 
 Did 1 really get through it well? What did you think 
 of me?" 
 
 The excitement of her success, the warmth of the ap- 
 plause is still with her. She has not yet gone back to the 
 old reserve. There is a distinct touch of coquetry in her 
 beautiful eyes as she half raises them to his and glances at 
 him from under her long lashes. 
 
 " For years I have been trying to answer that question 
 satisfactorily to myself without the faintest result," replies 
 Vyner, slowly. " And, as for to-night, when one has 
 fallen beneath the spell of an enchantress, where is the 
 time for any serious reflection? Thought was beyond me; 
 I could only sit still and humbly admire." 
 
 "Where is Mrs. Wemyss?" calls somebody, rushing 
 frantically through the room. " Seen her anywhere, any 
 one? She's wanted for the first tableau; they are all ar- 
 ranged, only waiting for her." 
 
 " She was here with Bouverie a moment ago. Try the 
 little anteroom beyond." 
 
 The little anteroom beyond, being tried, yields up its 
 treasure. Mrs. Wemyss, gliding out from it into the 
 more brilliant room outside, in a quaint but seductive
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 167 
 
 costume of crimson-and-gold and literally hung wifch se- 
 quins, asks in the mildest of tones if any one is looking 
 for her, and is instantly captured and carried off by the 
 frantic young man to be posed in the coming tableau. 
 
 There are only four or five tableaux in all, put on as 
 little bits of light and coloring, seen through a gauze 
 mist, to finish off the play pictures to represent in living 
 form some already seen upon canvas, but which will live 
 forever. They are all exquisitely arranged, a celebrated 
 B.A., a friend of her Grace, having taken them in hand, 
 and are all exquisitely portrayed. 
 
 As the velvet curtains part, and Dolores, in a gilt frame, 
 stands revealed in all her sad beauty, a thrill of delight 
 runs through the audience. To many of them she is un- 
 known, and to them her sweetness is a revelation. 
 
 But through Miss Maturin there runs a shiver of unex- 
 pressed agony. She sinks back in her seat, as though she 
 would escape from the vision before her, and at last a few 
 incoherent words are forced from her. 
 
 " Oh, no," she murmurs, indistinctly almost uncon- 
 sciously; " they should not have given her such a part as 
 that no, not that!" 
 
 Her voice, subdued though it is, is miserable, and 
 strikes upon Mr. Vyner's ear, who happens to be her 
 nearest neighbor. Glancing at her, he notices how thor- 
 oughly unstrung she looks, and what an ashen pallor has 
 overspread her face; and, with a desire for a more minute 
 criticism, he again turns his gaze to the representation 
 before him. 
 
 Dolores as " Adversity!" Alas, how the character suits 
 her! It seems as though the feeling of it has sunk into 
 her very soul, so sadly resigned she looks, so replete with 
 gentle melancholy. Leaning against a wall, with her 
 mournful eyes looking straight before her into a possibly 
 aappy past now gone forever, with one soft arm upraised 
 and a pale bunch of flowers in the small clinging fingers, 
 with a divine resignation upon her perfect face, she ap- 
 pears before them all, more sweet, more sorrowful, than 
 words can tell. 
 
 "It is horrible!" mutters Miss Maturin through her 
 pale lips. 
 
 " A mere bit of exceedingly pretty acting, after all," 
 aays Vyner cheerfullr. _ " Dear me, how wonderfully well
 
 168 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 she looks the part! Rather spoils the effect to think how 
 she will be laughing over it in a minute or two eh?" 
 
 He feels a strange tenderness toward the woman beside 
 him as he notes her pain, and tells himself how she can nof 
 endure even in imagination to see her darling so distressed. 
 
 " Yes, yes, no doubt!" says Miss Maturin, recovering 
 herself with an effort. " It is only that I can not bear to 
 gee her look like that." 
 
 She draws a heavy breath, and turns her head with a 
 smile that is almost tragic tc her companion. This change 
 of position brings her glance toward the other side of the 
 room. She raises her eyes 
 
 And then all at once she is unaware of Vyner's vicinity 
 The very walls of the room seem to fade away from her, 
 the mists of twenty years are pushed aside; there is noth- 
 ing now in reality but the earnest, piercing gaze of two 
 dark eyes. 
 
 The owner of them bows to her. Afterward it seems 
 impossible to her; but in truth she does return the salute. 
 How many years have come and gone since last she and 
 this etranger who still is not strange thus gazed at 
 each other, and to what a time his presence carries her 
 back to what miserable hours, what moments fraught 
 with shame! Once in that terrible past this man had lived 
 in the old village where her home had been, where she and 
 her sister had dwelt. 
 
 Great Heaven, how it all comes back! First the happy, 
 quiet, quaint old days, with no disturbing element, with 
 no griefs, if no great joys, in them days perhaps now the 
 bitterest of all to dwell upon; and then the break-up of 
 the calm household, her flight into Egypt, as it were, and 
 her fond vain hopes that all who knew of her or hers then 
 might haply be dead ere her return to England; and, 
 lastly, the return, and with it now the discovery that, 
 after seventeen long years of silence and growing blessed 
 forgetful ness, one lives who is here smiling at her, remem- 
 bering as he smiles, no doubt, and ready to betray. 
 
 Oh, the cruelty of it the bitter cruelty of it- to escape 
 for so long, to be at last undone! Like the lost spirits it? 
 the shades, she has been forever grasping aftw the waters 
 of oblivion, and, like them, her eager hands have failed 
 to seize them. 
 
 And still Dolores stands there a too perfect "Advep
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 160 
 
 sity " a thing most beautiful, bat to her Miss Maturia 
 positively repellent. How has the girl caught that 
 mournful expression? Is it only acting, or is it real the 
 faint growing shadow of what will one day rest upon her 
 face forever? A desire to rise and cry aloud to her, to 
 command her to cast from her this miserable counterfeit 
 of a grief that may yet touch her, almost overcomes Miss 
 Maturin. 
 
 She conquers herself, however; but, oh! the relief of it 
 when the curtains close and the pretty drooping figure 
 and sad face are hidden away behind it, and she can lean 
 back on her chair and lose herself in a semi-insensibility 
 that yet is not strong enough altogether to kill the ter- 
 rible thrilling sense of pain that runs all through it! 
 
 The other tableaux are unseen by her, although her open 
 eyes appear to rest upon them. She is hardly awake to 
 anything going on around her, until two soft hands are 
 laid upon her shoulders, and Dolores, clad once more in 
 her clinging lace gown, stoops over her with a little low, 
 happy laugh. 
 
 " So far, so good," she gays, merrily. " Business first, 
 you know, and pleasure afterward. Business is at an 
 end, and now for the other thing. Well, Lallie, and 
 what do you think of your lovely niece to-night? She 
 laughs again saucily, and pats Miss Maturin's shoulder. 
 "Did I look sufficiently forlorn?" she asks, gayly. 
 
 " It was horrible!" says Miss Maturin, huskily. " You 
 must never do it again, child never! Do you hear?" 
 
 " Why, my success then has been a genuine one!" ex- 
 claims Dolores, with a bright laugh. " I have positively 
 impressed you." 
 
 " You are really happy, darling," asks Miss Maturin, 
 with curious irrelevance, tightening her hand convulsively 
 upon the girl's fingers "quite happy? There is noth- 
 ing no thought or fear of coming evil no " 
 
 "Really happy, Lallie," says Dolores, turning her little 
 hand, palm upward, within Miss Maturin's, and giving 
 her a loving squeeze. "I never felt so sure of being 
 happy as I do to-night. The very sweetest luck will 
 attend me; all good sprites are near me; I feel it I know 
 it!" She turns a radiant glance upon her aunt, and a 
 latgh of pure youth &djmioiQnt issues from her lip?.
 
 170 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 "Ah, Mr. Vyner," she cries, catching sight of him 
 "you again i When is the dancing to commence?" 
 
 ""Almost directly. They are giving a few minutes 
 to Lady Gertrude to change her dress; she was in the last 
 tableau. How d'ye do, Mrs. Drummond? Charming 
 affair all through, wasn't it?" 
 
 " I am not a judge, perhaps," says Mrs. Drummond. 
 solemnly, who, with her friend and rather doubtful allyj 
 Mrs. Dovedale, has drawn close to where he is standing. 
 "But, to my eyes, the exhibition of to-night vra* 
 extremely painful." 
 
 " You you forgot your glasses?" asks Vyner, a little 
 uncertainly, perhaps, but with unquestionable politeness 
 and the gentlest regret. 
 
 "It was no question of glasses," says Mrs. Drummond, 
 reddening rather furiously. " I can see perfectly, Mr. 
 Vyner, without the aid of art, a fact I never had reason 
 to deplore until to-night." 
 
 " You mean to tell me that something occurred suffi- 
 ciently distressing to make you wish yourself blind?" 
 
 " Perhaps that is putting it a little strongly," objects 
 Mrs. Drummond; "but this much I can say, that, when 
 1 find myself forced to witness the forward conduct of 
 of people with whom I am on speaking terms, and of 
 whom I would wish to have a better opinion, I confess it 
 both shocks and grieves me." 
 
 " People!" echoes Mr. Vyner, anxiously. " How many 
 of them? Have the whole lot of us sunk in your esteem? 
 Must I too consider myself undone? ' Forward,' did yoq 
 say? Oh, I hope I wasn't 'forward'!" 
 
 "When the word * people ' escaped me, I spoke unad- 
 visedly/' corrects Mrs. Drummond, still on the solemn 
 tack; " though it was through a kindly desire to shield 
 one of whom we all know that I used it. But sometimes 
 kindness is mistaken. Had I given utterance to the word 
 'person,' I should have been nearer my real meaning." 
 
 " Oh, yes, much nearer!" murmurs Mrs. Dovedale, 
 weetly. 
 
 " Bless me, this is terrible!" exclaims Vyner. " I had no 
 idea Lady Gertrude had so offended against good taste aa 
 to convey to her audience the impression of being bold and. 
 forward! Forward? Yes; that was the word, I think. 
 I am sure, Mrs. Drummond, were the Duchess to heaf
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 171 
 
 on disapproved of her daughter's conduct, she would 
 
 " Grossly offended with Lady Gertrude, " puts in Mrs. 
 Dovedale mildly from behind her fan. 
 
 "Oh, pray hushl" entreats Mrs. Drummond, looking 
 fearfully around her Mr. Vyner's tone has been in no 
 wise subdued. " How could you imagine I was alluding to 
 dear Lady Gertrude, who is in all respects what a gentle- 
 woman should be? No; I was speaking of Miss Ponsonby. 
 Her dress, her unrnaidenly attitudes, her evident and very 
 distressing craving for admiration, her boldness and 
 effrontery, all pained me to the last degree!" 
 
 " We could all see that," murmurs her friend, in her 
 soft childish treble. " We all noticed your open distress 
 and your brave efforts to conceal it efforts so great as to 
 make you look at times almost out of temper. You see 
 how one suffers for one's good actions! But, then, fortu- 
 nately, we all know you," says Mrs. Dovedale, with a 
 sweet little caressing smile, "and exactly how you felt.** 
 
 " How grieved Miss Ponsonby would be were she to 
 hear this!" says Vyner, pathetically, "Your opinion, 
 Mrs. Drummond, weighs with her so much that an ad- 
 verse word from you would, I think, cause her to foel 
 despair." 
 
 The concern upon his face is deep and earnest, jet 
 Mrs. Dovedale's infantile glance, turning quickly upsn 
 him, grows sharp. 
 
 " I am sure you agree with all I have said," goes on 
 Mrs. Drummond heavily "you who so well know what a 
 true lady should be " here she casts a speaking glance at 
 a distant corner, where stands the florid and somewhat 
 underdressed Georgina " can not fail to understand my 
 sentiments." 
 
 " 1 do indeed fully understand them," says Vyner sym- 
 pathetically. 
 
 "And then that undisguised flirtation with Captain 
 Grevillel" continues Mrs. Drummond, warming to her 
 work, and turning up her eyes to the ceiling with quite a 
 lamentable display of pious grief. Now or never, she de- 
 cides hurriedly, is the time given her to put an end forever 
 to Audrey's interference with her plan of making Georgina 
 Mrs. Vyner. Now or never! She braces herself afresh. 
 " Ah, how immodest, how 8*lf-<*mfident was that wretched
 
 172 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 girl's conduct all this evening! I am sure I most sincerely 
 pity poor Lady Bouverie! " 
 
 "Anything wrong with her?" asks Vyner, changing 
 his glass from one eye to the other, and regarding Mrs. 
 Druminond with what seems to her like growing anxiety. 
 
 "Everything, when she is compelled to own that girl 
 as her niece. There is nothing in such bad taste as a 
 flirtation carried on before the eyes of the world." 
 
 " You would recommend one, then, carried on behind 
 its back? Oh, fy, Mrs. Drummond," exclaims Vyner 
 lightly "such sentiments from you. Does Miss Drum- 
 mond'share them?" 
 
 " Yon at least, I think, understand my sweet girl," says 
 the "sweet girl's" mother, with gentle reproach. "She 
 indeed possesses a soul that lifts her far above all such sad 
 frivolities. To trifle with a human heart is out of her 
 power." 
 
 " Oh, quite! " acquiesces little Mrs. Dovedale, with 
 enthusiasm. " To enslave a man, to keep him chained to 
 her side for an entire evening, as others can, is a thing 
 *ht3 could not do!" 
 
 "And so you think Miss Ponsonby is trying to break 
 young Grevile's heart?" asks Vyner, laughing. 
 
 " I have no doubt she is trying to entrap the infatuated 
 young man into a marriage," returns Mrs. Drummond, 
 spitefully. " He is heir to a baronetcy, and is an excellent 
 parti in every way. Her open encouragement is shame- 
 ful !" 
 
 '' They have been together a good deal, certainly," hes- 
 itates Mrs. Dovedale, mildly; "but I was standing near 
 fchem for a long time, and their conversation was entirely 
 about the play and the costumes." 
 
 " That is really nothing," says Vyner, with a genial 
 smile. " I once knew a fellow who was talking to a girl 
 about asparagus, when suddenly he turned and proposed 
 to her. So you see you never can tell." 
 
 " Well, to me it is a most melancholy spectacle to see a 
 young woman evince such an ardent desire for adulation," 
 sighs Mrs. DrumBtiond, with marked Christianity. She 
 looks quite sorry for the benighted object of her remarks; 
 thus she lays a thin coating of religious veneer over the 
 raging vindictiveness beneuth. " Now, Georgina ig m 
 different!" she says.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 " Trne, true," agrees Vyner, eagerly, with a tender 
 glance at the distant fair one. "I could hardly imagine 
 any two people so utterly dissimilar." 
 
 Mrs. Dovedale looks at him. 
 
 " Yes; I have many things for which to be grateful," 
 says Mrs. Drummoud, meekly. " My Georgina is so 
 gentle, so retiring; she claims nothing; she does not put 
 herself forward in aoy way. Her very dearest desires she 
 leaves for time to grant." 
 
 " She does indeed leave much to be desired," says Vyn'fcr, 
 with a smile so affectionate, so almost filial, as to allay 
 the suspicions that this extraordinary speech has very nat- 
 urally aroused in the breast of Mrs. Drummond. 
 
 But Mrs. Dovedale's innocent lips widen, and her eyes 
 light up marvelously. 
 
 "What a funny little speech!" she says, artlessly; a'ad 
 he makes a mental note of the "funny speech," to be 
 retailed again by and by to her friend, with kindly com- 
 ments thereupon." 
 
 " I am so glad, dear Mr. Vyner, to find you agree with 
 me in my estimate of Miss Ponsonby," says Mrs. Drum- 
 mond pleasantly. " A fast girl is my abhorrence." 
 
 "Ah, here comes your abhorrence!" exclaims Vyr>er 
 cheerfully, as Audrey, a lovely creature in her white-ard- 
 gold draperies, sweeps slowly up to them. 
 
 Mrs. Drummond starts perceptibly; her color changes, 
 and she tries with a violent effort to bring the ghastly 
 semblance of a smile to her lips. After all, this objection- 
 able girl is Lady Bouverie's niece, and it will not do to 
 offend her hopelessly. She smiles therefore and puts out 
 her hand, which Audrey manages not to see, acknowl- 
 edging her presence only by a bow as coldly graceful as it 
 is disdainful. 
 
 Mrs. Drummond, discouraged, falls back a little; but 
 Mrs. Dovedale, who is all smiles and pretty glances, 
 presses forward. 
 
 " I can not tell you how you have charmed us all, Misi 
 Ponsonby," she snys airily "Mrs. Drummond especially. 
 You really should have prepared us for such perfect 
 work; and you and Captain Captain ah, what is it? 
 I mean your lover, your" with childish confusion 
 "your stage lover, of course were infinitely superior to 
 til the rest of the actors. How stupid I am about re<
 
 174 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 membering names!" with r smile replete with corcrt 
 insolence. " It takes me quite a long, long time to learn 
 them." 
 
 " It takes some people a long, long time to learn any= 
 thing," replies Audrey, with a pale smile equally inso- 
 lent, "even common manners." 
 
 She half raises her drowsy lids and regards the rector's 
 wife as one might a person of very inferior quality in- 
 deed. Mrs. Dovedale quails beneath that glance, and, 
 an affectation of seeking somebody, fades slowly 
 
 Then Audrey turns to Vyner. 
 
 " And so you spend your time," she says with a con- 
 temptuous shrug of her white shoulders, "with such 
 people as those! You find them amusing?" 
 
 " Intensely so Mrs. Drummond more especially." 
 
 " One would, of course," says Audrey, curling her lip. 
 " Was she giving you a list of Georgina's virtues?" 
 
 " Not all the time." 
 
 " Then she was giving you a list of my vices?" 
 
 "They tell one it is rash to contradict a woman twice," 
 replied Vyner, calmly. 
 
 " Which means I guessed correctly. And yon listened 
 to her? You found such talk amusing?" 
 
 "Good, honest vituperation is interesting at all times; 
 and, to do Georgina's mother justice, she can * give the 
 bastinado with her tongue.' Is that Mrs. Wemyss over 
 there? What a charming laugh she has! Shall we join 
 her?" 
 
 " As you will " indifferently; then her whole face 
 changes. "Ah, you, Captain Greville?" she says, smil- 
 ing, and flushing faintly as she turns to Greville, who hat 
 just come up to her with a programme in his hand. 
 
 " For you," he says, giving it to her. "And now fflO; 
 your trusty messenger's rewardthe first waltz?" 
 
 She smiles an acquiescence. 
 
 " And the second and " 
 
 "Don't be greedy," interposes she softly. "Let ns 
 put a full stop after the second for the present at least. 
 I am going now to speak to Mrs. Wemyss." 
 
 " Why, so I think sm II" says Greville, laughing and 
 accompanying her and Vvnar as tkey cross the room to
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 17ft 
 
 where Mrs. \Vemyss, Bruno Bouverie, and a rather 
 oonsolato Sir Chicksy are standing. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 "WHAT a day we're 'aving!" says Bruno, as they come 
 np. " Audrey, my congratulations though poor, they 
 are sincere. But every one makes allowance for my in- 
 tellectual defects." 
 
 " Mrs. Drummond was delighted with you," laughi 
 Mrs. Wemyss mischievously, giving Audrey's hand a sur- 
 reptitious squeeze. Perliaps she is the one woman in the 
 world whom Audrey's cold manner has never repelled, 
 " Oh, the joy in the dear old lady's eye when your suc- 
 cess was assured, and when the Duke flung you that out- 
 rageous bouquet! Her smile was a perfect sunbeam." 
 
 " So warm that it withered all around, "says Vyner. 
 
 " By the bye, has any one seen the fair Georgina?" asks 
 Bruno. 
 
 " I did. I caught a passing glimpse of her; but I was 
 afraid to look again," says Vyner. 
 
 " She was with Bob Haverly," puts in Sir Chicksy, in 
 a moody tone. He was in a low state, indeed, before 
 Audrey arrived with Captain Greville; but now he looks 
 murderous. 
 
 " In default of a better," says Bruno. " Poor stagger- 
 ing Bob! I hope he was sober." 
 
 " I hope he wasn't," remarks Vyner. " If slightly in- 
 distinct in yiews and manners, he would not so entirely 
 realize the misery of the situation." 
 
 " Ah, true! After all, you are a better friend to him 
 than I am. A discreet intoxication might help him 
 through. A small matter, and really no trouble to him." 
 
 " Little things make up the sum of life," says Mrs. 
 Wemyss solemnly, upon which they all laugh. " There 
 will b a flower, a kiss, a vacant seat, a temporary aberra- 
 tion like our poor Bob's; and there is no knowing what 
 will come of it all." 
 
 " There is no knowing what will come of anything!" 
 groans Sir Chicksy from out the utmost gloom. This 
 remarkable speech is so obscure as to call for no answer 
 from any man.
 
 176 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 "What is the matter with him?" asks Mrs. Wemysa. 
 in a low voice, turning to Vyner. " He has been in quite 
 a desperate state for the last hour. Was there ever so 
 miserable a creature? It isn't toothache, or earache, or 
 neuralgia, because I suggested them all, and got three 
 ' Noes ' for answer, and not another syllable thrown in 
 even for friendship's sake. What can it be?" 
 
 " It is Greville ' the forward youth that would ap- 
 pear.' And what is friendship beside jealousy? A paltry 
 shadow! Poor Sir Chicksy! If he has pinned his faith 
 to Miss Ponsonby, I doubt there is trouble before him. 
 However, 'sorrow may endure for a night, but joy cometh 
 in the morning,' that is a fair division, is it not? And, 
 after all, one can't be always on the grin, at least, most of 
 us can't. Few" with a smile "are as triumphant 
 over their jars and frets as Bruno." 
 
 " ' He hath indeed a merry note,' " quotes Mrs. Wemyss, 
 smiling. It is a pleasant smile, warmed by a delicate 
 blush. 
 
 "Ah, there go the fiddles!" exclaims Greville, turning 
 eagerly to Audrey. 
 
 " Then there goes my last chance of happiness," says 
 Vyner. "Now to approach my partner with the smiling 
 face that hides the breaking heart. I've been trying not 
 to see her for the last ten minutes; but I experienced a 
 considerable difficulty in the effort since I discovered her 
 whereabouts." 
 " Where is she?" 
 
 " Glaring at me from the opposite wall. See her? Big 
 bony girl in gridelin gown." 
 
 " What on earth did you do it for?" asks Bruno in 
 open amazement. 
 
 "Let in for it, of course. But I sha'n't forget my debt 
 to her chaperon. Yet, after all it might be worse; it 
 might be Georgina." 
 
 " Miss Ponsonby," says Sir Chicksy, coming awkwardly 
 to the front, "may I have the pleasure of this?" 
 " I am engaged for it unfortunately." 
 "The next then?" 
 
 " Is not a waltz; and I never dance anything else." 
 " The next waltz then?" desperately. 
 "Is promised also/*
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 177 
 
 " Ah !" says poor Sir Chicksy, falling back discouraged, 
 and casting a withering glance at the successful Qreville. 
 
 Perhaps Audrey feels for him; perhaps it is that she 
 finds it impossible, like most women, to loosen her hold 
 on a slave. At all events, she leans a little toward him, 
 and beckons him once more to her side with a slight 
 wave of her fan. 
 
 " Would the third be of any use to you?" she asks 
 coldly, but with one of her rare smiles. "Yes? Then 
 take it. By the bye " with a sudden determination to 
 strengthen his chains, or else to throw off her power to 
 the others " how is it that you, of all my acquaintances, 
 have been the only one to give me no pretty compliment 
 to-night?" 
 
 " I don't suppose anything I could say would be pretty," 
 sighs Sir Chicksy despondently. 
 
 "Try," says Vyner, the finest encouragement in his 
 tone. 
 
 " I have tried " gloomily "and I might as well have 
 let it alone. She forgets all about it. It's only natural 
 she should, you know; I'm not one to be remembered. 
 But, as it happens, I was one of the very first to con- 
 gratulate her when she came off the stage." 
 
 " Ah, so you were!" says Audrey lightly. " I forget now 
 what it was yon said; but I know you were very kind." 
 
 "Kind!" repeats the infatuated youth, with bitterest 
 self-disdain. " Who am I that I should presume to be 
 kind to you? I'm glad you have forgotten all about it. 
 * My words that would praise thee are impotent things."' 
 
 "Good gracious, Chaucer! Eecollect yourself!" ex- 
 claims Bruno, giving him a warning nudge and a shocked 
 glance. " However badly you may feel, learn to restrain 
 yourself; and, at all events, never give way to bad 
 language!" 
 
 r< Eh?" says Sir Chicksy, in a stupefied tone. 
 
 "To say 'impudent things' to Miss Ponsonby! My 
 dear fellow, what madness! I really can't see my way to 
 the end of this sad affair." 
 
 "I didn't say that!" exclaims Sir Chicksy, with wild 
 
 wrath, growing more and more desperate as he sees his 
 
 idol disappear in the distance with the more favored 
 
 Greville. " Nothing of the sortl The word I used was 
 
 impotent 'P*
 
 178 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 " Very impudent," persists Bouverie gravely. " As 
 Miss Ponsonby's near relative, I must ask you to with- 
 draw it to apologize to " 
 
 " Oh, go it!" cries Sir Ohicksy, hysterically. " I'm not 
 bad enough as it is, I suppose, that you must try to mad- 
 den me! But I'll have satisfaction from somebody; F1J 
 have it out of one of you for this! I'll have my revenge, 
 or" 
 
 Here his knee-joints coming in contact with the sharp 
 edge of an ottoman, he perforce gives way and sinks 
 upon it. 
 
 "A seat," says Bruno, finishing his sentence for him. 
 "Well, it is the better thing of the two; though how you 
 presume to talk of vengeance is " 
 
 " Bruno, be silent," interposes Mrs. Wemyss, in a low 
 tone, but with authority. "You are really too bad. Let 
 the poor boy alone. Between you all, you will drive him 
 out of his mind." 
 
 " His what?" asks Vyner, mildly. 
 
 " Have you forgotten, Mr. Vyner," says Mrs. "Wemyss 
 severely, " that your gaunt partner is awaiting you?" 
 
 "No; I was remembering it all the time," returns Mr. 
 Vyner, sweetly. " I am helping her to a perfect frame 
 of mind. To possess one's soul in patience is a rare merit. 
 I think however she has now possessed it long enough in 
 that state, and I fly to her." 
 
 "For me," said Bruno "am I to understand that you 
 forbid me speech? am I to hear my own cousin cruelly in- 
 sulted, and take no steps to punish the offender?" 
 
 " You are to cease teasing that boy." 
 
 " Very good; I sha'n't play any more," says Bruno, rising 
 with an injured front. " And for the future, Mrs. Wem- 
 yss, you will be kind enough to remember that we are 
 not upon speaking terms." 
 
 " Oh that I might dare to hope it!" exclaims she, laugh- 
 ing, and turning to seat herself beside the disconsolate 
 baronet. " Why so pale and wan, fond lover?" murmurs 
 she archly. " Anything the matter that I may hear?" 
 
 " Matter!" cries the poor fool, something that is almost 
 an expression coming into his face. "Everything's the 
 matter! It is all up with me and and her! I don't 
 mind about anything else; that ass Bouverie doesn't 
 with mel He is an ass, isn't he?"
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 179 
 
 "The greatest I know!" says Mrs. Wemyss, with satis- 
 factory emphasis, and in a tone mischievously distinct, 
 Bouverie being within hearing distance, and of course 
 listening to every word that falls from his " lady's " lips, 
 as a true lover should. 
 
 " But, oh, Mrs. Wemyss, how I love that peerless creat- 
 ure!" goes on Sir Chicksy, tearfully. "And I'm nothiu' 
 to her nothin'! Ah, there lies the sting! I'm less that 
 the dust beneath her feet! I wish," cries Sir Chicksy, with 
 a sudden burst of tragical sorrow, " that I was the dust 
 beneath her feet; anyhow, I could touch her then! I 
 could cling to her shoe; an' an' she'd have to carry me 
 along with her wherever she went!" 
 
 There is a suspiciously smothered sound somewhere 
 near; but, when Mrs. Wemyss glances in its direction, 
 Mr. Bouverie is to be seen plainly wrapped in happy 
 thoughts of his own, and is bowing and smiling in a most 
 affable manner to somebody at the far end of the room. 
 It is a crowded end, and, of course, it would be impossi- 
 ble to single out the fortunate object of his attentions. 
 
 " Mr. Bouverie," says Mrs. Wemyss, with ominous 
 mildness, " to-night's theatricals seem to have got into 
 your head. When you have ceased to enact the part of a 
 nodding mandarin to a purely imaginary audience, I shall 
 
 be glad if you will take me to the next room." 
 
 ******* 
 
 Two hours are as nothing when one is young and engaged 
 for every dance before the fiddles have well got through 
 their first dismal tuning. To Audrey, still flushed with 
 her great triumph, they are as rare moments that fly by 
 her fraught with a gay intoxication. 
 
 She has laughed, with a gayety. a freedom from con- 
 straint strange to her. Born with a spirit unsuited to 
 poverty, she has drifted year by year into a state of feeling, 
 false and imbittered; that has rendered most people dis 
 tasteful, or, at the best, objects of suspicion in her eyes. 
 Only her " dad," her best-beloved, is entirely without 
 fault in her sight. 
 
 To-night, however, the unwonted excitement of an as- 
 sured success has raised her above her lower nature. Her 
 enjoyment of the passing hour is not forced; she enters 
 into the spirit of it with an eagerness that would have 
 surprised even herself had ihe suured, time to Uiink of it.
 
 180 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 and that delights her "dad," who, dragged from his se- 
 clusion and his book to witness her triumph, has been 
 more than rewarded by the smiles and blushes he has seen 
 mantling her beautiful face. 
 
 She has perhaps danced rather more than is correct 
 with Captain Greville, and has let the world see in a 
 somewhat reckless fashion how abject is his submission. 
 
 " My dance, 1 think," says Vyner, going up to her a 
 little before supper. 
 
 "Is it?" She has been smiling prettily at Captain 
 Greville the moment before; but, as she answers Vyner, 
 her smile fades, and the old, tired, listless, discontented 
 expression returns to her. "Let us not dance it then! 
 Is there no place where one can sit it out? " 
 
 " More than I need recount," replies Vyner, with a 
 Blight shrug. ' ' Let me make you wise as to one of them. 
 And so you have at last known happiness!" he says to 
 her presently when they are seated in a little flowered 
 recess, sweet with the perfume of dying daphnes. A 
 colored lamp, faintly lighted, sheds a pale crimson glow 
 above their heads. 
 
 " It has been a better evening than most," returns she 
 indifferently. 
 
 "Until now, you would say," retorts he, with a short 
 laugh. " Well, endure me for a while, if you can, if only 
 for the sake of appearances." 
 
 "Appearances?" She colors haughtily, and turns her 
 gaze full upon him. 
 
 " You see/' says Vyner, shaking from the gold of her 
 gown a little crawling spider that has dropped from the 
 leaves above her, and taking no notice of her question, 
 '' if admiration and conquest be happiness, you have 
 gained it to-night." 
 
 "I am no happier than I was yesterday," returns she 
 oldly. " But you spoke of appearances just now. What 
 was it you wished me to understand?" 
 
 "That it is not altogether well to dance for an entire 
 evening with one man." 
 
 " You are as careful of my reputation as Lady Bou- 
 verie," says she, with a low scornful laugh. Then she 
 ghuts up her fan suddenly, with a sharp angry click, and 
 throws it upon the cushion beside her. " Did you notice 
 hur face when every one elseJTAS congratulating me?"
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 181 
 
 she ys. " It was a picture! It told its own story. 
 What malicious eyes she has! I wish she were not my 
 father's sister, that I might dare to offer her insolence be- 
 fore which hers to me would sink into insignificance!" 
 
 She draws her breath quickly, and her lips part. There 
 are, he thinks, tears in her dusky eyes; but her lashes fall 
 and rise so swiftly that it is difficult to be sure. 
 
 " You exaggerate her feeling toward yon." 
 
 " Her hatred, you would say. Is it not a strange thing 
 that mere poverty should breed dislike? She can not for- 
 give dad in that he was born without that lucky silver spoon. 
 A man who must take in pupils to help him to eke out his 
 daily bread is a distressing acquaintance at all times; and 
 to feel that such a man is her brother is gall and worm- 
 wood to her." Her charming voice has grown impetuous, 
 and is tinged with even a deeper shade of mockery than is 
 usual to it. " What a tiling is poverty!" she says. 
 
 " A conquerable thing, however. You are now, I should 
 say, in a fair way to escape its thraldom. Greville, very 
 properly, has fallen in love with you." 
 
 " Has he?" 
 
 " Hasn't he? He seemed to me as miserable awhile 
 since, as any woman could possibly desire." 
 
 " You must have been studying him very closely." 
 
 " There was no occasion for that. He wears his chains 
 with a most engaging openness. I am so old a friend of 
 yours that I suppose I may make myself agreeable, and 
 ask you any questions I please? Tell me, then you mean 
 to marry him?" 
 
 She hesitates. The color fades altogether, and she grows 
 a little pale beneath his gaze. 
 
 " I may," she says, at last. 
 
 " You may? Surely you have given him cause to think 
 you will." 
 
 " Oh, I know what all that means!" exclaims she, im- 
 patintly, giving him an angry half glance. "Are a few 
 kind words and a smile or two equivalent to an accept- 
 ance of the handkerchief whenever my lord, after due 
 deliberation, may choose to throw it? It is all too absurd. 
 One is called a coquette if one smiles and then declines to 
 accept a man; one is sneered at if one smiles and the man 
 fails to come to one's feet. I am tired of the whole 
 theory."
 
 183 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 " There has not been much ' due deliberation ' on the 
 part of Greville." 
 
 " How can you tell that?" 
 
 She glances at him keenly for a moment from under her 
 long lashes. 
 
 "I have already told you that I think him the most 
 ingenuous youth I know. He wears his heart upon his 
 leeve." 
 
 "For me to peck at?" with a low unmirthful laugh. 
 " Am I then indeed a bird of prey? It is well to know 
 how I stand with you. And so I owe this Captain Greville 
 some return, you think." 
 
 " I am sure he counts upon your acceptance." 
 
 "That may be so indeed. It would be too much to 
 expect of any man that he should believe a woman could 
 reject him! 
 
 She leans back in her seat, and lets her lids droop until 
 her eyes are altogether hidden; a little carelessly sup- 
 pressed smile full of pretty malice curves her faultless 
 lips. 
 
 " You are bitter! " says Vyner slowly. 
 
 He has not once removed his gaze from her mocking 
 downcast face, so fair, so cold, so full of clashing possi- 
 bilities. 
 
 "I am as nature made me," returns she. 
 
 "Nature should be congratulated; you are indeed a 
 masterpiece. 
 
 " ' There is no one beside thee and no one above thee; 
 Thou standest alone as the nightingale sings.' " 
 
 Miss Ponsonby, raising her white lids with slow grace, 
 gazes at him in an astonishment half feigned, wholly 
 scornful. 
 
 " You do not know how to utilize your time," she says. 
 "But to rehearse to me! I think it only fair you should 
 reveal the name of the happy being for whom all this 
 rhapsody is really meant." 
 
 " ' Some other time, some other day,'" quotes Vyner, 
 carelessly. " My affairs are too intricate to be discussed 
 all in one moment. Let us return to Greville. A mar- 
 riage with him would please your aunt. You complain of 
 her coldness; this might propitiate her." 
 
 "Pah!" she says. " What a stranger I am to you in
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 183 
 
 reality, in spite of the years that bind us! Of all in this 
 world, I am the very last who would seek to propitiate 
 Lady Bouverie. Be assured I shall not marry to please 
 her." 
 
 "Whom, then?" bending rather eagerly toward her 
 "'Dad?'" 
 
 " No " coldly " myself! In doing that I shall please 
 dad, too. You at least understand him sufficiently tr 
 know I speak the truth when I say that. But, as to 
 pleasing Lady Bouverie, I owe her too many little elegant 
 insults to be on her side." 
 
 " Does she owe you nothing?" 
 
 "Really, 1 don't care whether she does or not," says 
 Audrey, with rather undue warmth. " Take her part 
 as much as ever you like; I expect nothing better of you. 
 1 dare say she is the most estimable of her sex, and that 
 it is my lamentable want of taste that makes me think 
 otherwise." 
 
 "I don't take her part," says Vyner, losing his self- 
 control, so far as to let an angry gleam come into his eyes. 
 " I take no one's part for that matter." 
 
 " You are right. There is nothing so safe as neutrality. 
 True wisdom consists in looking carefully after the inter- 
 ests of number one. I am truly wise." 
 
 " I hope so; but you must pardon me " curtly " if I 
 confess 1 don't think so. If you considered Lady Bou- 
 Terie's relationship to you a little more than you do, ifc 
 might, I think, be of some use to you." 
 
 There is silence for a very short minute; and then 
 
 "It is such a pity," says Miss Ponsonby slowly, " that 
 you can not cure yourself of that shocking habit you have 
 of lecturing me. If, in all the years we have known each 
 other, you could ever once congratulate yourself on the 
 certainty that yon have done me any good by your preach- 
 ing, I would say by all means continue it, objectionablt 
 though it be; but can you?" 
 
 " No; therefore I must beg your pardon," says Vyner. 
 with ill-suppressed mortification, " whilst feeling that my 
 presumption precludes the possibility of your granting 
 it." Then, in a moment he recovers himself, and throw- 
 ing himself back against the cushions, laughs a little. 
 "I deserved it, didn\I," he says lightly, " to rush upoi
 
 184 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 my fate like that? But how little mercy there is in you! 
 I>o you know I dread a woman without a heart?" 
 
 "'So do I," with a little shrug; " that is why I take 
 such care of mine; I can tell you I wouldn't be without 
 it for the world, though you are always advising me to 
 dispose of it to Sir Chicksy or Captain Greville, or, in- 
 deed, it doesn't seem to matter to you whom." 
 
 " You mistake," says Vyner coolly; " when I did so 
 far presume as to offer you advice, I alluded to your hand, 
 not your heart. For my own part, in spite of your words 
 just now, I do not believe you have a heart at all." 
 
 " Have you?" asks she quickly, turning to him. There 
 is an angry defiance in her eyes. 
 
 " No," with a chill smile. " It is gone from me lost 
 never to be regained!" 
 
 Silence follows upon his words* They seem to have 
 established even a greater coldness, a deeper chill in the 
 conversation, than existed before. A certain sternness 
 liad come into Vyner'a face, which, as a rule, is utterly 
 foreign to it. When the stillness has become insupport- 
 able, Audrey by an effort breaks it. 
 
 " Your advocacy of my aunt was unfortunate," she says 
 quietly. " Let us never discuss her again, She jars 
 upon me. He:* conduct toward me is that of an enemy. 
 She keeps her eyes upon my lightest action." 
 
 " Why should your actions be light?" asks he slowly. 
 
 When his words are beyond recall, he would gladly have 
 them back again; but it is then too late. Her very lips 
 grow white as she turns her face with a startled passion 
 to his. For one second she looks as if she could kill him 
 as he sits there, apparently so calm, so indifferent; then 
 an anguished sound breaks from her, a sigh that grows 
 into a hushed sob of concentrated anger. 
 
 "You mean " she says, in a choked voice, her slender 
 fingers tightening convulsively upon a fold of her white 
 gown. 
 
 It is too late for retreat or apology. 
 
 " I mean that I saw you in the conservatory half an 
 hour ago," says Vyner, his face now nearly as white as 
 hers. 
 
 *' Ton are a spy!" returns she, in a low strange voice. 
 
 "I am not!" says Vyner, with a quick flush and a 
 touch of dignity. " It was the merest chance the
 
 DIGK'S SWEETHEART. 185 
 
 greatest misfortune and I was there for a moment only 
 But he was kissing your hands he was on his knees I 
 shall never forget his face! And yet now you tell me 
 you give me to understand at least that you mean noth- 
 ing! What am I to think? But perhaps you only lied to 
 me as women will, and you do care for him?" 
 
 He lays his hand roughly upon hers. Every vestige of 
 color is now gone from his face. He has evidently felt 
 that betise of his more than he knows. 
 
 "I did not lie!" returns she, in a low tone. She draws 
 her hand from his and turns away her face. 
 
 " I am sorry I said that," says Vyner presently. He 
 is looking moodily upon the ground. 
 
 "About my actions? It is nothing." A rather wan 
 little smile curves her lips. " I am accustomed to hard 
 speeches," she says. "And, after all, * sound is only 
 broken air ' so think no more of it." 
 
 " I shall never cease to think of it until I am sure I have 
 obtained your forgiveness." 
 
 " Be sure of it then. Let us say you but jested. ' Life 
 is a jest, and all things show it.' ' She laughs in a tune- 
 less way that is very mournful, and moves her head from 
 side to side with a fretful weary gesture. "Shall we re- 
 turn the ball-room?" 
 
 She half rises as she speaks; but he detains her. 
 
 " I wonder how you regard me?" he says, earnestly, his 
 hand upon her arm. " As a friend an enemy?" 
 
 "An enemy? No. That would be too great an exer- 
 tion. And, besides " quickly " I do you the justice 
 to say that I believe you aro one who would not willfully 
 or of a set purpose injure any one." 
 
 "As a friend then?" 
 
 " Oh, no "with a little bitter smile" not that! 
 Yon do not love me, you could not hate me. Sometimes 
 lam an amusement to you; but always yon are as indif- 
 ferent to me as I am to you." 
 
 " In one particular you wrong me," says Vyner, drop- 
 ping her arm. " I could find it the easiest thing in the 
 world to hate you at times." 
 
 She laughs, and turns toward the door that leads into 
 the room beyond. The sweet, subtle sound of the dis- 
 tant music comes to them on the scented air, soaring, 
 dying, thrilling as it passes them, to fade away amongst
 
 186 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 the leaves beyond. No human voice is near to mm its 
 harmony or kill the sad charm of it. The melancholy 
 drip, drip of a small fountain blends with it. rising and 
 fulling with it in gentlest sympathy, with a little plain- 
 tive sobbing, sad, but pleasant to the ear. They two are 
 as much alone as though leagues, not paces, separated 
 them from a laughing, glittering crowd and even more 
 apart in soul than in body are they from each other, so 
 strangely do their spirits jar, so wide is the gulf that 
 yawns between her heart and his. 
 
 "You are rested?" he says, following her. 
 
 "And refreshed. You can not think what good you 
 have done me," returns she, glancing at him with a 
 mocking light in her beautiful eyes. "To sit awhile and 
 listen in tranquil silence to the voice of friendship is " 
 
 " A truce to all that," interrupts Vyner, with an impa- 
 tient wave of the hand. Then he comes closer to her. 
 " And so you really don't mean to marry Greville?" he 
 says calmly. 
 
 "No" carelessly. "That affecting scene you wit- 
 nessed in the conservatory awhile ago meant my refusal." 
 
 She stoops to give her train a little careful set, and 
 then moves forward into the more brilliant antechamber 
 outside. Having gained the ball-room and an anxiously 
 expectant partner, sh tarns and dismisses Vyner with a 
 little polished inclination of her haughty head. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE night is waning; the stars are growing faint; the 
 sweet, sweet summer dawn is near at hand. In the per- 
 fumed darkness of the garden the lanterns are dying out 
 one by one. Already the flower-laden breezes of early 
 morn are waking midst the slumbering leaves, and, 
 though as yet " the stars make gold of all the air," a 
 whisper of the coming birth of blessed day quivers through 
 garden and yew-bound alley. 
 
 "What a scene!" says Dolores, in alow happy voice. 
 " See those great luminous stars up there! How they 
 gleam! What a tremulous beauty is theirs! Oh, how I 
 lore the night!" 
 
 She stretches out her arm* in childish admiration to
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 187 
 
 the gentle darkness; with all the chastened rapture of a 
 pure spirit, she seems to drink in the exquisite loveliness 
 around her. 
 
 "Naughty child!" says her lover tenderly. "How 
 often have you read that darkness must not be preferred 
 to light!" 
 
 They are standing alone in the quiet garden, with only 
 the drowsy flowers for company and the sanctity of the 
 near dawn full upon them. As he speaks he possesses 
 himself of her pretty extended arms, and, by a little be- 
 seeching movement, induces her to lay them round his 
 neck. 
 
 <S I will have you love nothing but me," he says, with 
 fond, foolish jealousy. 
 
 "'A willful man will have his way,'" quotes she 
 prettily. 
 
 " Is that so. Shall I have mine? I shaVt mind being 
 called willful if such an end be gained." He presses one 
 little delicate pink palm to his lips, and then "You 
 have been happy to-night?" he asks, more with sure hope 
 in his tone than anxiety. 
 
 " Too happy," says Dolores, with a bright flush. " A 
 little while since some thought flashed across me, and I 
 felt afraid of it all. Why should the world give me only 
 good, ad to others so much misery? What am I that I 
 should be so blessed above my fellows? See " running 
 her slender fingers with a loving, lingering touch through 
 his hair " let me recount my riches. I have you you! 
 That" with a little quickening of her breath and a rais- 
 ing of her charming face to his " means everything; 
 but, besides, how many other joys are mine!" 
 
 To this sweet speech he makes her no reply; but he 
 lays his lips upon her bonny head and draws her yet closer 
 to him. 
 
 " All this," says Dolores, with a comprehensive wave 
 of her hand to the moonlit scenery around, " reminds me 
 of some other night when we were abroad auntie and I. 
 But it was not so nice a night as this " rubbing her 
 cheek softly against his "because you were not in it." 
 
 " I hate those other nights," says Dick. 
 
 "Oh, no, you mustn't! They were delicious in their 
 own way. I owe them nothing but the very sweetest 
 memories."
 
 188 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 "Tell rne," says Dick "if I wasn't with you there 
 there wasn't any other fellow, was there?" 
 
 " Oh, yes, very often!" with a merry laugh. " What? 
 Would you have had me live upon a desert island, or 
 spring into life full-grown, say yesterday? We knew 
 many people. There was a little prince auntie specially 
 affected, and he came with us everywhere; but there was 
 no one, there is no one in all the world like you." 
 
 " I wonder you didn't want to be a princess," says he, 
 moodily. 
 
 " I wonder I didn't," retorts she, mischievously. " What 
 a pity the idea never entered my head until now, when y,ou 
 put it there! Poor little prince; perhaps he is still un- 
 married and pining for me!" 
 
 " Dolores, don't talk to me like that!" says Bouverie, 
 giving her an angry little shake that would hardly have 
 disturbed the repose of a fly. 
 
 "Then don't you talk to me like that. One would im- 
 agine you really believed it would be a finer thing for a 
 woman to be a princess than your wife!" 
 
 " True. How absurdly silly of me!" says Bouverie, 
 with a laugh. "My excessive modesty is a positive 
 affectation. Oh, love, love, to think you will really be 
 my wife some day! It sounds too good to be true. There 
 never mind me; I'll say that it is not too good if you 
 wish, and that it shall be true." 
 
 "Hush!" whispers she, with a sudden vague tremor in 
 her voice. "Do not be so entirely sure. How can we 
 tell, how can we know, what lies before us? It is un- 
 lucky to speak with such a boastful certainty." She 
 shivers a little, and clings to him. 
 
 " I am sure," persists he, boldly, " nothing unless it 
 be death can come between us. And why think of 
 death on such a night as this? Think, instead, of the 
 happy life that lies before us. It shall be as beautiful, 
 as tranquil as this scene on which we gaze. Look up 
 and think of the eternal stars above us, and remember 
 that our love is eternal even as they. Now what shall 
 part us?" 
 
 He laughs aloud, and kisses her with a triumphant fer- 
 vor. And she smiles back at him and returns his caress, 
 and forgets f ,he shadow that for years has followed on her 
 path.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 189 
 
 "Now tell me of those 'other nights/" he says, gayly. 
 ' 1 defy them I no longer grudge them to you. Go on!" 
 
 " The telling would carry us into another week. And 
 just now only a flitting vision of them is with me. Again 
 I seem to be creeping along in a gaudy gondola beneath a 
 moon that Pouf! Even that sweet thing over there," 
 cries she, pointing to the far horizon where Diana, pale 
 and spent, is preparing to lay down her bow, " is but as 
 ' water unto wine ' compared with it!" 
 
 " When you talk to me of your former life," says Bou- 
 verie, holding her somewhat back from him that he may 
 the better look into those mystic eyes of hers that never 
 cease to hold their charm for him, "it makes me marvel 
 to think so frail a creature could have traveled so much 
 and so far." 
 
 " It was a strange fancy of auntie's to keep me from 
 my native land until I was quite grown up. Perhaps she 
 thought with some people that traveling gives the most 
 liberal education of all." 
 
 "I dare say. And she is right, I think." 
 
 "She is always right yes. And indeed I loved our 
 wanderings. The skating in Vienna; the Alpine climb- 
 ing oh, how auntie hated that! the Venice sunsets; 
 and the pretty cooing pigeons on the piazza of St, Mark.' 
 I used to feed them every day, and they do you know 
 they came to know me quite, and would strut after me 
 tail downward whenever I appeared. All, the yellow sun- 
 shine and the wonderful gray shadows, they all return to 
 me they do not permit me to forget! To me Italy is a 
 very dream! Dick" laying her hand beneath his chin 
 " will you take me there when we are married? Your 
 our England is of course the dearest place to me; but 
 yet I do want to see my Italy again." 
 
 " When shall we start?" asks'Bouverie, with eager ani- 
 mation. 
 
 "For the house?" asks she demurely. " Indeed you 
 remind me, Mr. Bouverie, that we have already outstayed 
 our time, and that our absence will cause comment. 
 Come then!" 
 
 "* At a touch sweet pleasure melteth,'" quotes Dick 
 rui.'fully. " I had forgotten there was a world ir-doors. 
 Wliat a pity to leave this glorious light for the more glar- 
 ing one within! Don't let us gojn yet."
 
 190 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 "I am afraid we must." 
 
 "Are you in haste to leave me?" asks he, with foolish 
 reproach in his tone. 
 
 "Are you never to be convinced?" whispers she. 
 
 She is leaning against him, gazing up at him, looking 
 pale as the petals of a lily in the soft fading moonlight 
 snch an exquisite face, warm with love's light and pensive 
 with sweet thoughts born more of Heaven than earth. 
 
 With a heart that throbs with thankful joy, he holdn 
 her to him. It seems so strange that this sweet thing 
 should be his own, her life at least half his, and she will- 
 ing that he should dedicate ail his to her. There is a 
 humbleness about his devotion that perhaps, unconsciously 
 to herself, renders him even dearer to her. His life has 
 been purified, rounded, completely, since this little saint- 
 like girl, with her happy childish eyes, has crept into his 
 heart. 
 
 Still and more silent grows the hour. Over the hill 
 comes the slow dawn, with dainty tread. 
 
 " A sense of heavy harmonies 
 Grows 011 the growth of patient night 
 More sweet than shapen music is." 
 
 Bouverie, turning up her face, looks at her long and 
 earnestly. Were ever eyes and soul so sweetly matched? 
 How good! how pure! 
 
 " A maid so smooth, so white, so wonderful, 
 They said a light came from her when she moved 1" 
 
 "You love me?" he says, presently, in a voice so low 
 that the nervous passion in it almost hides the words. 
 But she hears him. 
 
 " With all my soul, sweetheart!" she answers back, 
 raising her head till all the shadowed sweetness of her 
 eyes is bare to him. 
 
 " I envy no man on earth," he says, after a long pause, 
 lifting her soft palms and laying them reverently, one 
 after the other, against his lips. 
 
 *' And I no woman," returns she, gravely. 
 
 ******* 
 
 Still with the happy lamps of love lighted within her 
 beauteous eyes, Dolores regains one of the reception-rooms, 
 and, finding Mis? Maturiti thejre* seated on a cushioned
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 191 
 
 lounge, near an open window, she goes to her, and, 
 leaning over her, whispers some merry nonsense in her 
 ear. 
 
 As she does so, she attracts the attention of a spare, 
 elderly, hungry-looking little man at the further end of 
 the room, the same man whose presence, in the early part 
 of the evening, so unnerved Miss Maturin. 
 
 He is sitting beside Lady Bouverie, whose guest and 
 cousin he is, and has been, up to this, engrossed with old 
 family topics. But now his mind wanders; his eyes con- 
 centrate themselves upon the tableau in the distance the 
 pretty girl bending, with laughing lips, above the woman 
 who was so well known to him in the olden days. There 
 is something about the fresh, innocent sweetness of 
 Dolores that draws the minds of most to her. Unfort- 
 unately, now it compels the admiration of Colonel 
 Oswald. Who is this girl, so like, yet so unlike 
 
 "See that girl over there?" he says suddenly to Lady 
 Bouverie. " She reminds me so strongly of some one. 
 Pretty girl who posed as 'Adversity,' I mean just novr 
 talking to Miss Maturin." 
 
 " Ah, that is Miss Lome! Very pretty as you say, 
 and charming as well." Lady Bouverie's tone is com- 
 placent. She smiles her one smile, which at its best is 
 wintery, and looks calmly important. " She is Miss 
 Maturin's niece, and her heiress. Very good fortune 
 indeed better than good almost colossal." 
 
 "Miss Maturin's niece?" repeats Colonel Oswald very 
 slowly, very much as though he disbelieves, for the first 
 time, in the perfect hearing on which he prides himself. 
 
 "Her sister's child. Lovely creature, isn't she?" 
 
 "Ah, I had no idea there was a child!" says Colonel 
 Oswald thoughtfully. "Dear rue bless me!" 
 
 He seems overcome with surprise. He puts his glass 
 carefully in his left eye and examines Dolores minutely 
 as she stands over there, cairn and smiling, a world of 
 rapturous content in her innocent face. That other face 
 that he remembers through her was it fairer, sweeter? 
 The man caught and bound by age, gazing at this tender 
 girl just entering upon the unknown sea of life, seems 
 wafted backward, as by an impetuous breeze, to the glad 
 young years when love was ;dl in all and hope meant cer- 
 tainty/ But the love that even then was but half- wounded
 
 192 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 vanity is now without its sting, and is remembered only 
 as a curious experience never to be forgotten. 
 
 "You knew the Maturing perhaps?" says Lady Bou- 
 verie, with unsympathetic manner. "Yes? Oh, there 
 was a child, of course Mrs. Lome's baby that pretty 
 Dolores over there!" 
 
 " It must have complicated matters a good deal," says 
 Colonel Oswald, still rather dreamily. " Yes, it was a 
 sad affair altogether." 
 
 " Sad?" Lady Bouverie searches his face for a moment, 
 and then arranges his thoughts for him. "About the 
 poor child being left an orphan so young? Yes, of course, 
 But then she has really missed so little; her aunt's care 
 has been to her quite that of a mother." 
 
 " No doubt," says Colonel Oswald, with a little acqui- 
 escent bow. He seems singularly attracted by Dolores. 
 "By Jove!" he says once under his breath, and then 
 aloud, "her name? * Lome' I think you said it was." 
 
 " Dolores Lome." 
 
 " Dolores! What a sad name! How significant! Poor 
 girl, poor girl! But why 'Lome,' I wonder?" 
 
 " Why, you ridiculous man, because it was her father's 
 of course!" says Lady Bouverie, with a short laugh. 
 
 There is some offense in her laugh. It has dawned 
 upon her that Colonel Oswald is hardly giving to her con- 
 versation the undivided attention to which she has grow 1 
 accustomed. 
 
 " Well, I suppose it is as good as another," remarks he. 
 
 " It is a very good name indeed," rejoins Lady Bouverie, 
 now distinctly affronted. " The Lornes have always been 
 good people; they have ranked for generations with the 
 very best of our county families. And Dolores, as you 
 may see, is thoroughly well-bred." 
 
 "A beautiful face indeed!" says Oswald thoughtfully. 
 "But to see her here here! I used to tell myself I was 
 too old to be surprised at anything; but this is just the 
 little too much! And the Duchess, who is so very exclus- 
 ive!" He has fallen into a muttering tone, and Lady 
 Bouverie scarcely follows him. Then he rouses himself 
 from his reverie. " How old is she?" he asks absently. 
 
 " You forget the flight of time," says Lady Bouverie, 
 nodding her head. " If you knew her when a baby, no 
 wonder you are surprised to see her now breaking into
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 193 
 
 womanhood. The past seems but as yesterday to you and 
 me until gome little fact like this compels us to a knowl- 
 edge of the truth. She will make a lovely woman. Her 
 age? Seventeen or eighteen, I should say not a day 
 more." 
 
 "Ah, that would he about the time!" remarks Colonel 
 Oswald. All his carefully cultivated small-talk seems to 
 have deserted him. 
 
 "1 must tell you," says Lady Bouverie, turning to him 
 suddenly, and tupping him on the arm with her fan with 
 an elephantine attempt at playfulness, " that I hope I 
 think Indeed to let you into a secret; I feel sure 
 there is something between her and Richard." 
 
 If she has complained of his want of appreciation of 
 her communications before, there is certainly now no 
 longer reason why she should do so. As though suddenly 
 touched by an electric battery, Colonel Oswald springs 
 into life at her words, and gazes at her in blank dismay. 
 
 " Yes," continues she, nodding emphatically, quite 
 pleased by the sensation she has at last created; "some 
 day I hope to call that sweet child my daughter-in-law. 
 Only to such an old friend as you would I confide this 
 hope, because as yet she has been very modestly reticent; 
 but I have little doubt the affair has actually arranged 
 itself." 
 
 Colonel Oswald, straightening himself from his loung- 
 ing position, gazes at her with horrified eyes. An expres- 
 sion not permissible, and, fortunately, too low to be 
 heard, passes his lips; it is the outcome of an agitation 
 not to be suppressed. The pride of birth is strong with 
 him, and this woman is his cousin. 
 
 " My dear madam, do you know what you are saying?" 
 he says at last, with quite a wonderful politeness, con- 
 idering the state of his mind. 
 
 " Why, yes, I hope so!" answers Lady Bouverie, laugh- 
 ing. "It may be rather precipitate to talk of it, as the 
 young people themselves have not as yet chosen to make 
 the engagement public; but I am positively certain there 
 is something between my son Richard and the girl you 
 have been" archly "so persistently admiring for the 
 iast half hour. I am sorry to blight your hopes, Arthur, 
 but such, I feel sure, is the case." 
 
 "I hope so with all my soul I" says Colonel Oswald, 
 
 I
 
 194 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 with extreme vehemence. "I hope there is so much be- 
 tween Miss Lome and any son of yours as will prevent 
 their coming together for all eternity." 
 
 " You mean?" interrogated Lady Bouverie, turning very 
 pale. 
 
 " That that poor child over there is the victim of a 
 cruel wrong." 
 
 "Go on!" gays Lady Bouverie, with blanched lips, 
 tightening her fingers upon her fan until the ivory pieces 
 snap in twain. 
 
 f * I mean that she may Heaven pardon those who 
 wronged her! was never born in wedlock! She is name- 
 less i llegi ti mate !" 
 
 Lady Bouverie rises to her feet. 
 
 " I can not grasp it all so suddenly," she says, hoarsely. 
 " There must be some mistake. I must know more alll" 
 
 " When and where you will," answers the colonel, ris- 
 ing too. 
 
 " Follow me into one of these anterooms," says Lady 
 Bouverie, in a choked tone " and quickly. I feel as if 
 this horrible doubt could never be soon enough allayed." 
 
 "Lead!" returned Oswald, briefly. 
 
 Unconsciously her hurried footsteps carry her past Dol- 
 ores, who is still standing by her aunt, smiling as one at 
 rest with all the world, a look of the most heavenly peace 
 upon her lovely face. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 GRAY sea, gray sky, and barren rock; above, a sullen 
 heaven; below, a chilly mist that, creeping ever onward, 
 covers all the land as with a shroud. The sun is dead; 
 with heavy wings the sea-gulls beat the air, and sail inland 
 to tell of coming storms and storms just past. 
 
 There are glints of watery light upon the pale ocean 
 now lying spent and wan from last night's passion. Near 
 the shore great walls of foam are still dashing themselves 
 over the small black rocks; there is even yet a furious 
 anger in the waves as they rush inward to waste away in 
 yellow foam upon the beach. A weary, moaning, swish- 
 ing sound comes from the caves, a sound of wrath and 
 pain repressed.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 195 
 
 Dolores, pacing up and down upon the desolate shore, 
 looks out to sea and marks how the sullen clouds hang 
 pon the very verge of the horizon. 
 
 "More rain," she says, " and a coming storm." 
 
 She looks a little sad, a little dejected. All last night 
 she lay awake listening to the howling of the wind and the 
 distant roar from the ocean, mingled with other sounds 
 nearer and sadder; they all combined to wreck her slumber. 
 Sleepless she lay, troubled by the angry night and the 
 Bound of wet leaves against a window-pane, and a wind 
 sobbing through a rainy dawn. 
 
 Two morns have come and gone since that happy night 
 when she and Dick stood together in the garden at the 
 Castle, beneath the rays of the dying moon. 
 
 Presently she seats herself upon a smooth piece of rock, 
 and with a stick begins to draw in idle fashion letters on 
 the sand letters and then words, and then that dearest 
 word of all "Dick." 
 
 From this it is but a simple thing to come to herself 
 " Dolores Bouverie." How pretty it looks and sounds. 
 She is still staring gravely at it when somebody, coming 
 noiselessly up to her on the soft sand, places his hand 
 beneath her chin and turns her face to his. 
 
 "Ah, Dick!" she says, with a little rapturous blush, 
 holding out glad arms to him. 
 
 "Is it for your sins you wander here a/lone on such a 
 dismal day, my ladye faire?" asks he, gayly, seating him- 
 self beside her, and is all this writing" gazing at the 
 sand "a penance? Why, what is this? 'Dolores Bou- 
 verie!' Oh, I say how lovely it sounds!" 
 
 "Doesn't it?" says Dolores,* flushing with genuine 
 pleasure; then all at once she grows rather pale. " But 
 it is unlucky to do it, isn't it?" she asks, nervously. 
 
 " Stuff!" says Mr. Bouverie, with undiminished spirit. 
 " If you once begin to believe in omens, you will never 
 again know a satisfactory moment. True, I assure you! 
 My love, how cold your hands are! You shouldn't stay 
 here so long on such a day; and your face what a sad 
 little face! Has anything vexed you, darling?" 
 
 " No, no, I am not vexed; it is only the effect of last 
 night's storm, I suppose. Yet there is a weight here " 
 laying her small, chilly hands upon her breast " that I 
 can not account for."
 
 196 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 "Don't try to," counsels Dick, comfortably, drawing 
 her nearer to him and tucking both her hands inside his 
 coat by way of warming them. 
 
 " But I wish I could," says she, miserably. "It is a 
 horrible depression that has seized upon me, and and it 
 frightens me. Oh, I wish I hadn't written my name so 
 in the sand! Perhaps," tears rising in her eyes, " I shall 
 never marry you now." 
 
 " Won't you, indeed!' cries Dick, indignantly. "Don't 
 try to get out of it in that way, my lady, because it's no 
 good your trying. What a baby you are, Dolores! I be- 
 lieve YOU find a real luxury in making yourself wretched." 
 
 " Indeed you are wrong," says she, earnestly. "I hate 
 being wretched; but there is something within me to-day 
 that forbids my being happy. What is it, Dick? A warn- 
 ing?" 
 
 " Digestion," says Dick, prosaically. " What did you 
 have for breakfast eh?" 
 
 "An egg," answers his fiancee, thoughtfully, "and 
 after that some hot cake just a little wee hot cake no 
 more." 
 
 " 'Tis the hot case," says Mr. Bouverie, with decision. 
 " Hot cake is the very It is, I do assure you; I give 
 you my word it is." 
 
 But, though he tries to laugh her out of her depression, 
 he yet looks at her very keenly, and grows secretly anx- 
 ious because of this change in her. It is so unlike his 
 little bright love to talk in this dolorous way. 
 
 Then suddenly it occurs to him in a most unlucky 
 moment that a little wholesome scolding will do her a 
 world of good. The very thing! No doubt she has never 
 had one in all her life before, so that it will have the virtue 
 of novelty. It will rouse her, and and perhaps frighten 
 her a bit, and bring her to a healthier frame of mind. 
 
 "Look here!" he says, with quite an air. " I've been 
 jesting up to this; but, do you know, I feel positively 
 ashamed of you I do indeed! One would think by your 
 manner you were the most unhappy girl on earth, whereas 
 you have everything your own way, as it seems to me; 
 you have an aunt who positively adores you, a lover who " 
 
 "A lover indeed!" interrupts Miss Lome indignantly. 
 " Do you call yourself a lover? Oh, dear, to think that 
 you should so ill-treat me you, whom I trusted!"
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 197 
 
 Quite a new light has come into her lucent eyes an 
 angry light. The result of Mr. Bouverie's late maneuver 
 is perhaps a trifle more pronounced than he has counted 
 upon, and just at this moment he is probably quife as 
 " frightened " by his "scolding" as he had hoped she 
 would have been. 
 
 "If you are going to be cruel to me,*' goes on Miss 
 Lome, with undirninished wrath, "you had better go 
 Hway; I didn't come here to-day to be accused of all sorts 
 of wicked things. To-day too when I was so miserable! 
 Oil, it is more than one can endure!" 
 
 " I really," begins he, trying fearfully to put in a word 
 or two. 
 
 But it is of little use for him. She treats him as the 
 atom he has been taught by certain writers to believe him- 
 self, and hurries onward with her reproaches like a small 
 tornado. 
 
 "What have I done to you?" she says. "No doubt 
 you are tired of me!" 
 
 "Dolores!" exclaims poor Dick; but she repulses his 
 warm hand-clasp and looks at him to the increasing of 
 his misery with large eyes drowned in tears. 
 
 "Oh, go from me, forsake me, if yon will!" she sobs. 
 "You are ashamed of me, you say! There take back 
 your ring! You are all my happiness; but I resign you, 
 I return you to yourself, as you will have it so!" 
 
 She has taken the sacred ring from her finger and now 
 tenders it to him with tremulous lips. 
 
 " Oh, fling it into the tide," says Dick "good enough 
 for it! If you don't want it, where is its use?" 
 
 Then all in an instant, the touch of temper that is so 
 strange to her and has BO torn her soft heart, vanishes. 
 
 " Oh, Dick, oh, Dick," she cries, holding out her gen- 
 tle arms to him, and breaking into an agonized burst of 
 tears, " I don't mean it. How could I be so bad to you, 
 my own, own boy? I don't know what is the matter with 
 me to-day." 
 
 She sobs unrestrainedly as he gathers her to hig heart. 
 
 " It is all your headache," he says soothingly, " and 
 this beastly day. I don't feel particularly lively, myself, 
 do you know. Nothing so deoressing as the sea and 
 murky clouds and so oul"
 
 198 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 A sudden color flames and sinks in her face, and her 
 J ips part. 
 
 " You are too good for e," she says, in a tone scarcely 
 audible. "Even when first I saw you I knew that, yet 
 my heart went out to yon, not knowing 
 
 " ' For it was love who came to me, 
 Who might not know his name.' " 
 
 " Yon know it now," says Dick gently. 
 
 " I have made bad use of my knowledge then. I have 
 been unkind to my love. Oh, Dick, do you think you 
 still love me?" 
 
 "Do you think I still live?" says Dick. "My death 
 alone will end my devotion to you. Every tear you shed, 
 Dolores, causes me a far keener anguish than it causes 
 you." 
 
 "But you must think me so ill-tempered," remarks 
 Miss Lome miserably. " I have been so horribly unjust. 
 Now do say you think I am the most ill-tempered person 
 you ever met. I'm sure" tearfully "I deserve it." 
 
 " Indeed I shall do nothing of the kind," says Bouverie 
 indignantly. " What a likely thing! I believe, if there 
 is an angel upon earth, it is your own sweet self." 
 
 "Ah, but there isn't!" says she, slipping her hand into 
 his. "So now, what do you say?" 
 
 "Not another word will you get out of me to your dis- 
 paragement," returns he, laughing. 
 
 She is silent for a little time after this, leaning against 
 him and looking out to sea, to where the sullen clouds 
 have dropped upon the horizon. 
 
 "I wish I could paint the scene," she says presently, 
 " just as it is now, with you and me together hand in 
 hand. I should call it " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " I was going to say ' The Farewell,' " murmurs she, 
 with a swift upward glance; "but that would not suit us, 
 would it?" she sighs. 
 
 "No; there shall be no farewell between us two," says 
 Bouverie steadily. " What ails this day, sweetheart, that 
 it should fret you so? What is there about it " 
 
 " Yes, what? " she asks eagerly. " It is in the air and 
 all arousd me; I feel it. * An odor as of love and love's
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 1W 
 
 doom.' Oh that I could tell what lies before me, that I 
 could read my destiny!" 
 
 " I'll read it for you a long and happy life with me. 
 And now, to put an end to this fit of idle speculation, let 
 us think of something rational something that will really 
 put an end to it forever. Let ns name our wedding-day." 
 
 He had expected some slight opposition; but, to his sur- 
 prise, she agrees eagerly to his proposition. 
 
 " Yes, yes," she says quickly. 
 
 " This day month?" 
 
 " Not this day month," she says, recoiling from him 
 with a little shiver. "Let our wedding-day have no 
 connection with this one; I mistrust it. Laugh at me as 
 you will, Dick," looking at him with feverish earnestness, 
 " but I tell you I shall never forget this day to the hour of 
 my death?" 
 
 "Don't, my dear," says Dick, " if it gives you the least 
 satisfaction to remember it. To me it seems rather a 
 poor affair; but, if you admire it, why that is everything! 
 But to return to our subject; to-morrow month then?" 
 
 " If you wish." 
 
 "If you wish, darling. There is no doubt about me." 
 He regards her somewhat anxiously. " You will be glad 
 to marry me, Dolores?" 
 
 " Yes; I think so nay, I know it!" says the girl, rest- 
 lessly turning to him and laying her head upon his breast. 
 "With you I shall be safe safe and happy." 
 
 " That is right," says he, great cheer in his tone. 
 "And now to break to my mother this mighty secret that 
 she already knows so well." He laughs. " I can see her 
 face when I speak; her exact intonation is in my ears. *I 
 am rejoiced, Richard, that your choice has fallen upon 
 Miss Lome; I have always had grave doubts about your 
 making a marriage that would please me; your tastes and 
 mine are er so utterly dissimilar; but Dolores is all I 
 could possibly desire.' ' 
 
 His imitation of his mother's cold repellent manner is 
 perfect; Dolores smiles faintly. 
 
 " You flatter me," she says. " When first "softly 
 " you told me of your love, a fear of your mother rose 
 within me an undefined fear; but it told me she would 
 be the one to mar our joy. This fear is with me again 
 now more strongly than before; there is a terrible doubt
 
 200 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 at my heart." Her voice falters. " Dick, don't tell he* 
 to-day!" 
 
 "Pshaw!" says Mr. Bouverie, giving her a loving little 
 shake. " I decline altogether to listen to any more of 
 your croaking. Come, let me take you home and mind 
 you get a glass of sherry the moment you go in. I won't 
 let you stay by this cruel crawling foam any longer." 
 
 At the wicket-gate that leads into one of the avenues of 
 Grey lands they part. 
 
 " I'll be with you again this evening," he says, fondly, 
 AS he gives her a last caress, and sees her safely inside the 
 gate. 
 
 But she runs after him when he has gone a little way, 
 and, of her own sweet will, throws her arms round him 
 and kisses him with a loving innocent ardor that delights 
 him. 
 
 " See here, Miss Lome," he says, holding her a little 
 from him. " Now that our engagement is to be made 
 public, I must beg of you to cultivate a greater dignity of 
 demeanor. To run after a young man in the way you 
 have just done and to throw yourself unsolicited into his 
 arms oh, I blush for you!" 
 
 "I can do it for myself, thank you," retorts she saucily, 
 though she colors vividly as she says it, and glances shyly 
 at him. "Oh, Dick, it wasn't so much to kiss you I 
 wanted, as to say that I hope you aren't angry with me 
 about the ring! You know I didn't mean it, don't you? 
 You know " confusedly, turning the button upon his 
 coat round and round with a pretty nervousness " I 
 would not have given it back to you no, not even if you 
 had asked for it!" 
 
 " Well, that's a bargain," says Dick, gayly. " Remem- 
 ber, you have promised not to release me from my allegi- 
 ance until I ask you to do so, and not then either! 
 There!" taking both her hands. "Good-bye for a little 
 while, you baby, you love, and think of me only as I shall 
 of you until we meet again." 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 CBOSSING the hall on his way to his mother's apart- 
 ments, Bouverie comes in contact with Bruno. Later on 
 he remembers how Bruno started at the meeting, and
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 301 
 
 what a strange change passed over his face a great com- 
 passion mingled with honest regret. 
 
 " Our mother wants to see you, Dick," he says, witb 
 an assumption of easiness evidently forced. 
 
 But Dick, full of his own happy thoughts, fails to 
 notice it. 
 
 " For once, then, we shall be well met," he says, gayly. 
 " I was just on my way to seek her." 
 
 He nods and passes on, but in a moment is aware that 
 Bruno is following him. 
 
 " You want me?" he asks, kindly, stopping short 
 again. 
 
 Whatever words may have been on Bruno's lips, this 
 direct query prevents his giving them voice. 
 
 "A cigarette, if you have one," he says, somewhat 
 lamely, in a rather faltering tone. " Thanks." 
 
 Still he hesitates; but, seeing that Bouverie is now be- 
 ginning to regard him with open astonishment, he draws 
 nearer and compels himself to speak. 
 
 "She'll be beastly to you, Dick," he exclaims, with 
 nervous haste " perfectly beastly! But don't take it to 
 heart too much! Whatever you may decide and I think 
 it will be against her I'll back you up." 
 
 He turns away abruptly, but not before Dick has seen 
 that his eyes are full of tears. 
 
 "Those wretched accounts again, no doubt," muses 
 Bouverie, looking after him, "and diatribes against the 
 old steward! Well, if she must rail, she must. But what 
 a good fellow Bruno is to have my interests so near! And 
 so I'm in for a scene with the mater! What matter? 
 What does anything matter, with happiness so close at 
 hand?" 
 
 He almost laughs aloud in real gladness of heart as he 
 turns the corner of the corridor that brings him to his 
 mother's door. 
 
 She is sitting before a davenport, an open letter in her 
 hand. There is something in her expression as she turns 
 round slowly to acknowledge his presence which suggests 
 danger to Dick. 
 
 " Somebody has been at it again!" he mutters to him- 
 self, as he comes forward with a courte^s smile upon 
 his lips. 
 
 " At last you are here!" aavs, Ladj[ JBonveric coldly.
 
 203 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 " I have sent messengers for you everywhere even to 
 Greylands, where I believed you might be found; but " 
 
 "A most natural conclusion," interrupts Dick, laugh- 
 ing. " Mother, we owe you perhaps an apology for so long 
 concealing our love from you; but " 
 
 "We! Who?" asks Lady Boaverie, stepping back a 
 pace or two, and laying her hand heavily upon the arm of 
 ufauteuil near. 
 
 " Dolores and I," says Bouverie gently. " Of our 
 affection for each other you have been of course aware, 
 but the public declaration of it has been delayed until 
 now. I have come here to tell you that she has done me 
 the honor to accept me, and that we are to be married n 
 
 "Never!" exclaims Lady Bouverie, with curious dis- 
 tinctness. 
 
 Her tone is neither hurried nor excited. The fatal 
 word drops from her in a cold prophetic way that startles 
 him more than he is aware. He raises his head to speak; 
 but she checks him by an imperious gesture, and before 
 he has time to recover himself, has poured into his ears 
 the sad, sad story Colonel Oswald has related to her. The 
 truth is indeed thus rudely thrust upon him before he 
 has had time to realize that there is a truth to be revealed. 
 
 " Who told you this infamous story?'* he asks at last, 
 in a tone that unnerves her a little, clothed about though 
 she is with the armor of an utter heartlessness. Bouverie 
 has grown deadly pale; he is leaning with downcast eyea 
 against the marble mantel-piece, and is biting his lip as 
 if to compel the return of blood to it. 
 
 " Colonel Oswald." 
 
 " Oswald! What should he know of her?" 
 
 " Fortunately for you, he was mixed up with the Matur- 
 ins at one time, or this wretched conspiracy to get you 
 to marry the girl and give her an honest name might hare 
 been successful." 
 
 " Fortunate for me?" says Dick. A low bitter laugh 
 breaks from him. He clinches his right hand until the 
 nails almost force the blood from the palm, and stands 
 rigid, waiting for what he yet must hear. Ah, how he 
 had feared death for her! But shame, shame! 
 
 "It appears that Oswald was actually in love with this 
 girl's miserable mother at one time. She threw him. over, 
 I believe, or something of that sort, and "
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 205 
 
 "Ana now he is having his revenge a noble one! 
 Vengeance on the poor dead! The more one knows of 
 Oswald the more one gets to respect him." 
 
 " Melodrama is out of place here," says his mother 
 icily. "And you should remember he has done you a 
 service by exposing this disgraceful plot, for which you 
 should be eternally grateful. 
 
 " Have you only this man's word for all this?" 
 
 " Knowing the obstinacy of your disposition, I was pre- 
 pared for that question. If you wish further proofs, I 
 have decided on going to Miss Maturin myself unpleas- 
 ant though such a duty must naturally be to demand 
 the truth from her own lips." 
 
 " She may deny it," says Dick, eagerly, a gleam of hope 
 illumining his pale face fora moment. It is a very faint 
 gleam, and dies almost as it is born. 
 
 "She will not" coldly. "This morning I induced 
 Oswald to go to her." 
 
 " To go to her? To speak to her on such a subject as 
 that?" exclaims Dick, starting back from her, horror and 
 aversion in his gaze. " Good heavens! And she said " 
 
 " Nothing to the purpose, except that she would receive 
 me at any hour I might appoint to go to her; no more 
 than that. 'But her manner,' he said, 'was sufficient. 
 She looked stricken to death!' As well she might!" 
 sternly. " The discovery of such a scandalous deception 
 should cover any woman with everlasting shame! When 
 we do meet I shall certainly tell her what I think of her," 
 concludes Lady Bouverie, with calm vindictiveness. 
 
 " Is that part of your duty, too?" says her son, in a 
 curious tone. Then he covers his face with his hand. 
 "Oh, poor soul," he mutters, "how she loves that girl! 
 And now " 
 
 A little dull color has crept into his mother's cheeks, 
 faint crimson lines that tell of deepest anger. Her pale 
 eyes take a steely shade. Yet there is, too, a miserable 
 smile of half-pleasurable excitement upon her cold face. 
 Evidently this encounter with Miss Maturin is not alto- 
 gether so distasteful to her as she would have it seem. 
 
 " Colonel Oswald tells me she was a most pitiable spec- 
 tacle," she goes on, regarding her son fixedly. "If I 
 were you, Kichard, I think I should reserve niy sympathy
 
 204 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 for some one better than an exposed s windier 1" A low 
 sneer curls her lip. 
 
 "Oswald is a brave man!" says Bouverie, with a harsh 
 unmirthful laugh the latter part of his mother's speech 
 has passed unheard by him. "I wonder what most men 
 would have required to perform such a service as that for 
 you!" 
 
 " You can regard his conduct in any light you will," 
 returns she, with a shrug. "He fortunately knew but 
 little of your infatuation for this young lady, or perhaps 
 he might have withheld his story. Your engagement, of 
 which I was allowed to know nothing" with an injured 
 wave of her hand " was also of course unknown to him. 
 Now, as it must necessarily come to an end, perhaps it 
 was as well we were all so willfully left in ignorance of it." 
 
 "To an end?" repeats Dick, dreamily; he hardly 
 knows what he says. Once more he is back again with 
 his darling on the stormy beach, listening to her sad 
 yoice, her plaintive forebodings that, alas, alas, have been 
 so cruelly verified ! 
 
 Seeing him thus, calm and apparently convinced, Lady 
 Bouverie mistakes his silence for submission, and her 
 heart beats high with the hope of coming triumph. 
 
 " Certainly to an end," she says. " In a little time you 
 will learn to forget you ever had the misfortune to meet 
 her." 
 
 "Shall I?" questions Dick still dreamily, still with his 
 soul filled with the last words his little pretty love had 
 said to him. 
 
 "We have now only to consider," ponders Lady 
 Bouverie thoughtfully, " the best way to get out of it." 
 
 " The best way to break her heart, you mean!" slowly 
 raising his head. 
 
 "I beg 'you will be sensible," returns his mother, 
 severely. "All this is a great worry to me, and I must 
 really ask yon to help, instead of hindering, me in my 
 efforts to assist you out of a most unpleasant affair. You 
 have brought it all upon yourself, remember; I have been 
 purposely kept in the dark all along, for reasons perfectly 
 apparent to me now; Miss Maturin's machinations have 
 been brought to light, and you should certainly thank me 
 for my readiness to give you any help in my power. Not 
 that I look for gratitude from you* Richard; that would
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 205 
 
 be too much to expect. All my life I have been deeply 
 grieved by a want of sympathy on your part* Still, when 
 occasion arises, I can not forgot I am a mother!'* 
 
 She pauses after this, and tries to conjure up a tear; 
 but tears and she have been strangers for so long that 
 now they refuse to answer to her call. 
 
 " I don't imagine you will have any difficulty in break- 
 ing off your friendship with her," she goes on presently, 
 seeing Dick makes no effort to reply to her. "She will 
 see at once that this marriage can never take place." 
 
 " No," says Dick, in a low tone; " and yet she is the 
 same perfect creature she was yesterday, without spot or 
 blemish!" 
 
 "Spot blemish!" repeats Lady Bouverie, regarding 
 him with angry contempt. "Considering all things, I 
 must say your words are very inappropriately chosen. Do 
 you fully understand the hideousness of the story you 
 have just heard?" 
 
 " Why can not it be hushed up?" says the young man, 
 raising his haggard eyes to hers. 
 
 Once more, in the dull misery of his face, she reads 
 victory, and rejoices in it. But his mind has again wan- 
 dered far from his present surroundings, and is lost in a 
 mournful speculation as to how best to keep this wretched 
 story from Dolores' ears. Oh, horrible! If this vile 
 thing should chance to come to her, to darken, to sully 
 forever her fair soul! 
 
 " Of course it must be hushed up," says Lady Bouverie 
 magnanimously. " None of us will repent it. Your 
 family should be the last to blazon it abroad; and I sup- 
 pose Miss Maturin will have the grace to leave Greylandi 
 as soon as possible. You must contrive to end your ac- 
 quaintance there in some plausible, honorable way that 
 will spare the girl." 
 
 "Oh, as for the honor," says Dick then, changing 
 his tone with such rapidity that she scarcely heeds the 
 sharp vehemence of his first words, he continues quietly, 
 " What I fail to see is how this news affects Dolores, how 
 it changes her, what alteration it makes in her nature, 
 her" 
 
 "Social position perhaps?" puts in Lady Bouverie, 
 with insolent cruelty. " None, except that society is un- 
 fortunately prejudiced ui favor of people born in wedlock.
 
 206 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 True, she has the same eyes, the same hair she had 
 day; but for the rest Pah! My dear Richard, let us 
 be sensible! When I believed this girl to be as well born 
 as she has been treacherously represented, I was quite 
 willing you should pay your addresses to her her fortune 
 being all one could desire; but now!" she spreads out 
 her hands in an eloquent fashion that makes further ex- 
 planation unnecessary. 
 
 " Besides her hair and eyes she has that fortune still," 
 says Dick, making a last attempt to smooth matters for 
 his poor love. 
 
 " Had she the mines of Golconda I should refuse to 
 receive her as my daughter!" declares Lady Bouverie, 
 haughtily, rising to her feet. 
 
 Dick breaks into an odd defiant laugh and flings out 
 his arm impulsively, as though thrusting from him some 
 hateful vision. 
 
 " That is a pity," he says, distinctly, " because 1 shall 
 most certainly marry her! 
 
 The silence that follows upon his words is so deep that 
 it is almost painful. Lady Bouverie, still standing, and 
 pale to the lips, regards her son with flashing eyes. This 
 is a greater mutiny than she has ever dreamed of. She 
 has counted on hesitation and vain pleadings, but such 
 rank rebellion never! 
 
 "If this be acting it is admirable," she says at last, in 
 a voice scarcely audible, " but ill-timed. Marry! Marry 
 her, with this slur, this stigma upon her?" 
 
 " Ay, were the slur as great again. What is she to 
 be condemned and cast aside she, with her white soul and 
 gi-ileless mind because of of " He hesitates. 
 
 Lady Bouverie laughs aloud. 
 
 " Yes, it is difficult of expression, is it not?" she says, 
 with a cruel sneer. " Yet you will have to put it into 
 words sooner or later; your friends will naturally be anx- 
 ious to hear all about your wife's parentage. But this is 
 only a sorry jest of yours!" exclaims she, turning upon 
 him fiercely. " You would not dare to do this thing!" 
 
 " Do not mistake me for a moment," says Bouverie, 
 calmly. " I aeldom jest never on subjects close to my 
 heart." 
 
 " Are you mad?" exclaims she, moving a little nearer
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 30! 
 
 to him. " Would any sane man contemplate such a 
 deed? What glamour has been cast upon you?" 
 
 " I love her, and she loves me," says Dick, simply. " It 
 is the glamour that rules the world and makes it sweet." 
 A little rapt look comes into his face. "Soon it shall be 
 my joy, my privilege, to shield her from all scorn." 
 
 " When you speak so it is mere folly. The world is 
 all around us, and through the very deepest love, the 
 most careful guarding, its scorn will pierce. And do not 
 dream she will outlive this thing. The shame born with 
 her will cling to her until her dying day!" 
 
 " The more reason why I too should cling to her," says 
 Bouverie, steadily. " Poor little innocent child!" 
 
 " You stand there before me, and presume to tell me 
 you really mean marriage with her?" 
 
 " Certainly I do." 
 
 " And yon will bring this girl, this outcast, this 
 pariah " 
 
 Her burst of vehement insolence is brought to as vehe- 
 ment a conclusion. Bouverie, striding forward, lays his 
 hand with a sudden vehement pressure upon her wrist. 
 His nostrils are dilated, his whole face k white with un- 
 repressed rage. At this moment it is impossible not to 
 notice the strange likeness that exists between mother 
 and son. 
 
 " Be silent," he says, in a low voice. " Not another 
 word! I forbid you to use such epithets again toward the 
 woman I lovel" 
 
 " A eon forbid a mother!" frowns she, shaking her arm 
 free of his grasp. " I have yet to learn that I owe you 
 obedience!" 
 
 " Perhaps I am wrong," returns he, with a terrible 
 weariness, raising his hand to his head; "but misery is 
 overcoming me! Oh, mother, if this thing should come 
 to her ears! If she should hear of it " 
 
 His voice fails him. There is an agonized entreaty in 
 his eyes that must have touched any heart but hers. 
 
 " She need not hear of it," she says, coldly. " If you 
 so dread pain for her, you can easily avert it." 
 
 " But how?" asks he, regarding her piteously. His 
 own mother, surely she will have mercy! 
 
 " By putting an end at once to this most mistaken en- 
 gagement," answers she, with cold emphasis. " Agre
 
 208 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 to this scheme, and the girl need know nothing. Persist, 
 and I shall feel it my duty as a mother to go to her, ex- 
 plain all, and ask her to release you." 
 
 " You would go to her!" cries he, falling back as though 
 stricken; then, recovering himself, he straightens his 
 figure as one might who is just recovering from some fool- 
 ish fright, and looks at her kindly. '-'Dear mother, un- 
 say that, at least!" he says, a thrill of indescribable horror 
 in his tone. " I know you did not mean it!" 
 
 " You are wrong then; I do mean it," returns she, un- 
 moyed. 
 
 "Are you a fiend or a woman," cries he then, with A 
 burst of uncontrollable passion, " that you can thus cold- 
 ly even think on such a thing? To go to that child, to 
 pour into her ears words that will poison all the fresh- 
 ness of her young life, that will kill forever all the sweet 
 happiness that thrills through every vein! Oh, no, it is 
 not possible! You you to do this thing! You, who 
 have looked into her innocent eyes and marked the happy 
 smile upon her perfect lips! You, who only last week 
 extolled all these charms and made open mention of them! 
 You, who knew of our love " 
 
 " You forget" icily. "Of your own free will you 
 k^pt me in the dark; I knew nothing of it. Always re- 
 member that. I knew nothing!" 
 
 " To your mercy," says Bouverie, after a lengthened 
 and curious gaze at her, " I no longer appeal. It has failed 
 me. Before we part, however, I would tell you that my 
 allegiance to my love can know no change. And now 
 a last word. I do not think I do not accuse you of 
 really meaning all that you have said; but" his face 
 grows rigid and his teeth meet "but hear me if by 
 your means this unfortunate tale should come to Dolores' 
 ears, remember this, that you willfully and of your own 
 accord broke between us all ties! I shall be no longer 
 your son; I shall forget that you were ever my mother!" 
 
 Lady Bouverie's hands tremble slightly as they rest 
 upon the chair near her; but her face remains impassive. 
 
 "For this dutiful speech," she says, " I have to thank 
 
 Miss I mean the girl Dolores. Really" with au 
 
 insolent smile " one forgets at times that she no longer 
 has a name!" Then, pointing imperiously to the door, 
 "Go I" she says. " I have done with you!
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 209 
 
 Lady Bouverie's threat to her son to go down to Grey- 
 lands and interview Miss Maturin on the subject of this 
 Bad tragedy that lias fallen into his life, proves no idle 
 one. To order her carriage, dress herself with almost 
 unusual care, and start on her unholy expedition, is but 
 the work of a few minutes. No womanly hesitation, no 
 godly shrinking from such godless work, stays her. An 
 overpowering desire to bring down shame upon the head 
 of her rebellious son urges her forward. She will either 
 gain the victory over him or leave him abased in the eyes 
 of the world so dear to her. 
 
 As she enters the library at Greylands Miss Maturin 
 rises instinctively to her feet. She is looking pale and 
 haggard. There is a world of expectant misery in her 
 face, a strange outward gaze at things that she would 
 fend from her, were that possible. 
 
 Fear and misery mark her. It seems indeed as though 
 a life-time has swept over her since last she and Lady Bou- 
 verie stood thus face to face. The old, proud, sweet gra- 
 ciousnes? is gone from her. and she looks crushed, despoiled 
 of hope, of peace, of all that makes life pleasant to the 
 soul. 
 
 But yesterday, and she had been a comely, smiling 
 woman, holding old age that barren desert as still far 
 away from her in a region as yet untraversed. To-day 
 she is feeble, broken, already entered on the unloved 
 heritage, standing shrinking on the outskirts of it, with 
 the last shreds of youth and hope lying well behind. 
 
 She makes no attempt to greet her visitor beyond that 
 involuntary uprising; she makes no step toward her. All 
 her bravery and her high courage have forsaken her, and 
 there is something almost terrible in the timidity of the 
 glance she casts at Lady Bouverie. 
 
 She stands, irresolute supplication in her whole form, 
 her head bowed upon her breast, her body slightly bent, 
 her hands clasped together with a convulsive pressure. 
 
 To see her stand thus humbled, speechless creates 
 in Lady Bouverie's breast a sense of vindictive pleasure. 
 The poor soul is pleading voicelessly for the happiness of 
 the creature who makes her happiness, waiting hopelessly 
 for a mercy that some kind inner spirit warns her will 
 not be granted. To Lady Bouverii it is even exhilarating
 
 210 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 to know that the waiting is hopeless, and that the most 
 passionate prayer for mercy will fall on sterile ground. 
 
 "This is a very unpleasant affair," says Lady Bouverie, 
 at last breaking the silence, and speaking in her clearest, 
 most staccato tone. 
 
 Miss Maturin, raising her melancholy eyes, regards her 
 wistfully. 
 
 " A very sad one," she murmurs, in a voice scarcely 
 audible. 
 
 She unlocks her fingers and points to a chair. Lady 
 Bouverie sinks languidly into it. 
 
 " Ah! Doubtless it is so from your point of view," she 
 gays, indifferently, unfurling her fan. " How warm it is 
 to-day quite tropical! No, thanks, no one window is 
 sufficient. Well, you see it was to talk over this er 
 ' sad ' affair" with a little bow meant as a recognition of 
 Miss Maturin's " point of view " " that I have come over 
 here to-day. I think it always better to get to the root of 
 an ugly matter at once don't you?" 
 
 If she were discussing the last new poaching affray with 
 a companion as unconcerned in the affair as herself, she 
 could hardly display greater coolness. Miss Maturin, as 
 though incapable of speech, makes some faint movement 
 with her hand which stands for a reply. 
 
 " No matter how distressing a thing may be to me, 1 " 
 goes on Lady Bouverie, in a self-righteous tone, ' I never 
 shrink from my duty. And really I have suffered more 
 through this er uncomfortable report than I can des- 
 cribe. Very great annoyance has been mine." She leans 
 back in her'seat, and there is almost an audacious claim 
 for sympathy in her highly uplifted brows and drooped 
 lips. " Now, you, who know all about it, will kindly give 
 me an exact idea of how the true story runs." 
 
 " What is there to tell?" says Miss Maturin, wearily. 
 
 " The truth " promptly. " Whatever it may be I have 
 tutored myself, as a mother, to hear and receive it. I 
 assure you " with a self-regretful shake of her head 
 " I should not dream of mixing myself up with such a a 
 forgive me, questionable imbroglio as this, did I not feel 
 it to be imperative upon me, for my son's safety, to listen 
 to a sucoincL account of th<* whole matter from reliable
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 31] 
 
 "Colonel Oswald's lips are reliable," says Miss Maturin, 
 without lifting her head. 
 
 "Ah, but vours, fora headstrong boy, carry so much 
 more weight!" remarks Lady Bonverie, with a careful 
 smile. " And you may perhaps have noticed " dropping 
 into quite a confidential tone " that my son Richard has 
 of late imagined himself to possess a some what exaggerated 
 friendship for Miss for your niece." 
 
 "Not friendship!" says Miss Maturin softly, 
 
 " Don't depreciate it; it is, I assure you, a great, friend- 
 ihip," returns Lady Bouverie, still smoothly smiling. 
 " But, great as it is, I fear it must cease from to-day." 
 
 Miss Maturin starts, and, if possible, grows a shade 
 paler than before. 
 
 " Yes, from to-day," repeats Lady Bouverie, the cold 
 society smile still upon her lips. " And to insure this 
 arrangement I look to you for assistance." 
 
 "To me?" says Miss Maturin faintly. 
 
 "You! Of course," goes on Lady Bouverie, shutting 
 up her fan with a little click. " You see it is absolutely 
 necessary that Richard should be convinced that no falsity 
 lies in the statement made to me by Colonel Oswald about 
 Miss Lome. You are the one to confirm all that he has 
 said." 
 
 She leans back i her seat and gazes with calm, scrutin- 
 izing eye upon her victim. A dull color flames into Miss 
 Maturin's cheeks. Hitherto she has been standing; now 
 she sinks upon a lounge near her, as though physically 
 unable longer to support her own weight. 
 
 , CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 " YOTT would have me be my child's murderer!" Miss 
 Maturin cries, in a choking voice. Then, a moment 
 later, "It is impossible!" She covers her face with her 
 hands, and a dry sob bursts from her. " Yet stayl" she 
 says suddenly, a feverish light coming into her eyes. " I 
 am wrong. You shall hear all the pitiful tale of my 
 child's birth; and make what evil use of it you may. Her 
 happiness," solemnly, "lies not in my hands or yours, but 
 in his your son's keeping. Let him be true and all 
 the world false, and still some ioy may be hers!"
 
 SIS DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 " You mean," begins Lady Bouverie angrily, forgetting 
 her assumed role of calmness, and half starting to her 
 feet. 
 
 " What I have said," says Miss Maturin, slowly, ab- 
 sently. "Let him hear the entire truth; let nothing be 
 withheld. Then, if the strain be too great, why, then " 
 An expression of agony crosses her face, but she does not 
 continue the sentence. " But, if, when he hears all," she 
 goes on, hurriedly, " he still remains faithful, there is 
 hope before heryet!" She ceases abruptly, as though lost 
 in some train of happy thought too bright for the soul's 
 comprehension. 
 
 " I trust I misunderstand yon," breaks in Lady 
 Bouverie, with haughty displeasure, "but if you really 
 imagine that any son of mine would wittingly ally himself 
 with dishonor and disgrace, you wofully miscalculate, and 
 raise within yourself false hopes that no earthly power can 
 realize." 
 
 " And yet there is something about him Dick," says 
 Miss Maturin dreamily, " that still bids me hope. And, in 
 truth, madam " turning to her with sad dignity " there 
 is that in the mournful story I am about to relate to you 
 which might well soften any heart toward the innocent 
 chili who alone survives the storm, to battle with the 
 shame connected with it. But I crave no pity from you!" 
 she exclaims, breaking off abruptly. " Hear this story and 
 repeat it to your son if you will, and let him decide if 
 love be strong enough to crush the fear of the world!" 
 
 Lady Bouverie flings her fan upon the table with a little 
 crashing noise, and leaning back in her seat, folds he? 
 hands tightly. 
 
 "Now for your story," she says, contemptuously. 
 
 "Nineteen years ago there came to the village near 
 which I and my sister lived, a young man. He called 
 himself an artist, and certainly did some pretty dab- 
 bling in water-colors. He was, as I have said, young; 
 he was handsome, in a womanish fashion, and of pleasing 
 manners." Here she ceases speaking for a moment, aa 
 though compelled, and then breaks forth again. "He 
 was a demon!" she says, in a low voice, quick with con- 
 centrated cassion. It is as though these last words are 
 wrung irom ner anguished nearc. 
 
 "Oh, pray be calml" gava Lad? Bouverie, with a lady*
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 213 
 
 like shrinking from a scene of any kind. " It is all very 
 er horrible, no doubt; but let us be calm, whatever we 
 we. Nothing is to be gained by violence." 
 
 "His name was James Belton," goes on Miss Maturin, 
 precisely as if she had not heard the other's delicate ap- 
 peal, as doubtless she had not, being lost in miserable 
 memories of her own. 
 
 "' Tames Belton?'" repeats Lady Bouverie, thought- 
 fully, as one committing something to memory. "But 
 why not 'Lome/ my dear Miss Maturin? Your niece's 
 er assumed name is " 
 
 " Entirely different from his," interrupts Miss Maturin, 
 feverishly. " I tell you I would forever have obliterated 
 his name from the earth, if such a thing were in my power; 
 and to let her bear it would have seemed to me like dese- 
 cration !" 
 
 She grows quieter again, presently, and her eyes go 
 back to their old monotonous unseeing contemplation of 
 the carpet. 
 
 " Well, he came; and through the vicar of our parish 
 we got to know him. My sister was fond of painting, and 
 an intimacy sprung up between them. She was a young 
 girl then, gentle, innocent, devoid of all knowledge of 
 intrigue. But he was a subtle teacher! What he really 
 was, or who, I never knew then or later, except that the 
 sun never shone upon so fair-faced a fiend! Just at that 
 time I was summoned to Home. My uncle, an old man, 
 lav dying there. He was wealthy. To secure greater 
 advantages to the sister I so lored, and, in truth, because 
 I pitied the friendless old man, I obeyed his summons and 
 hastened to his sick-bed. He lingered longer than one 
 would need for the commencement and termination of 
 many a love-tale or tragedy; and, when at last kind death 
 released him and me, and left me free to seek my English 
 home once more, it was to find that time, in my absence, 
 had created tragedy for me, and that home was home no 
 longer. An empty nest awaited me! It was shorn of its 
 brightest treasure. The being who had been all in all to 
 me since my mother's death had betrayed me. She had 
 gone away unwedded with James Belton. Oh. the 
 shame of it!" she cries, in a voice sharp with pain, fling* 
 ing out her hands in *m unconscious protest against fata,
 
 %14 PICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 There is at this moment strong upon her a crnel reflex ot 
 that terrible far-off time when first dishonor came to her. 
 
 " Very unpleasant really distressing! " murmurs Lady 
 Bouverie. " You perhaps followed her?" 
 
 " There was no clew nothing only a line or two from, 
 her, to say she had been compelled to fly with him, as his 
 uncle, from whom he had expectations, and who had ar- 
 ranged a marriage for him with some heiress, would dis- 
 inherit him were he to disobey his orders; so, for the sake 
 of worldly gain, he sacrificed a human life." 
 
 "I beg you will not excite yourself," says Lady Sou- 
 rerie, applying a dainty smelling-bottle to her aristocratic 
 nose. "It is, after all, only a very ordinary occurrence 
 belonging to every-day life it is, I assure you, though I 
 grieve to acknowledge it of the world in which I hold a 
 part. Women are so mistaken!" 
 
 " And men are so wicked! " supplements Miss Maturin, 
 sternly, though perhaps no woman born was ever kinder 
 or a better friend to young men than she. " But it is not 
 to moralize that I so stand before you. Hear me to the 
 end. When a whole miserable year had dragged by with- 
 out word or sign from my sister, when I had come to the 
 conclusion that all my searchings were of no avail, a let- 
 ter came to me in her handwriting, but so faint, so feeble, 
 as to be almost illegible. It was addressed from a small 
 Tillage in Brittany. I went to her. That journey, short 
 as it may sound to you, will live in my brain forever- 
 ay, death itself will not quench the remembrance of itl 
 You see my hair!" cries she, lifting her hands to her 
 iron-gray head. "I was but twenty-six then; yet, when 
 I got to that journey's end, it was no less white than it ia 
 now." 
 
 "And, when did you arrive," asks Lady Bouverie, care- 
 less of the other's anguish, and anxious to know only the 
 result of the meeting, " what did she say?" 
 
 " She was dead," says Miss Matnrin. 
 
 A singular silence follows this solemn announcement, 
 broken at last by Miss Maturin. 
 
 "Quite dead," she gays, in a dull way "dead for an 
 hour at least. Such a little time it seemed, but yec it car- 
 ried her beyond all recall. I stooped over her, and, as I 
 did so, a faint cry came to me. I pulled down the clothes; 
 the^e there a baby lav upon her breast! It was alive.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 215 
 
 ft la impossible to describe to you the sense of comfort, 
 of hope, of courage, I sustained when I heard that feeble 
 cry issuing, as it were, from the very dead herself. It was 
 part of her a recognition to me from her from that in- 
 Tisible untraversable land to which she had gone. I lifted 
 the baby and laid her upon my heart; and there she has 
 lain ever since." 
 
 " No doubt Providence is all-wise," remarks Lady Bou- 
 verie, with a pious but protesting lifting of her brows; 
 "but, if that poor infant had shared its er most incon- 
 siderate mother's grave, how much better it would have 
 been for itself and every one else." 
 
 "Not for mo," says Miss Maturin slowly. "I thank 
 God for the day when, in His great mercy, He gave her 
 to me to be the joy and solace of my life. But let me 
 give you the termination of my sorry tale. There was 
 nothing amongst my unhappy sister's clothes to prove 
 from where she had eome to this foreign land. Her 
 clothes were not poor there was indeed no sign of poverty 
 in all her surroundings; yet how could I doubt but that 
 she had been forsaken, abandoned, cast aside, when some 
 newer toy arose? In death she was lovely. There were no 
 marks of waste or disease. She had simply given her life 
 for the child, which knowledge somehow I can't explain 
 it made the child even dearer to me. It was as if the 
 mother's spirit, tender, repentant, had passed into the 
 frail creature she left behind her when she sought the 
 world of shadows. I saw her buned. I then took the 
 child; and shortly afterward I went abroad." 
 
 "A wise precaution; yet here it has failed, most fort- 
 unately for my son," observes Lady Bouverie, who has 
 listened to her companion's narrative without so much as 
 one throb of pity. Every point in the case she has care- 
 fully taken into her brain, to be retailed to Dick later on. 
 Her purpose in coming is still her purpose now to present 
 to her son such a succession of disgraceful details as will 
 kill within him all desire to ally himself with any one 
 closely connected with them. 
 
 '* Your son must answer for himself," says Miss Maturin 
 slowly. 
 
 "My son will hardly care to commit a betist that must 
 necessarily separate him from his family." 
 
 "Would it be separation?" asks Miss Maturin, passion'
 
 3JI6 DICK'S SWEBTHEABT. 
 
 nte entreaty in her eyes. " Is society inexorable? She 
 IB so beautiful she has the nature of a very saint! Will 
 not these things plead for her?" There is a wistfulnesa 
 in her gaze that might have melted a heart of stone, but 
 not Lady Bouverie's heart. 
 
 "She is like her mother, I presume," she says coldly. 
 It is probable that this is meant more for a reminder than 
 a sneer, but it maddens Miss Maturin. 
 
 " She is like all that is good and true and innocent!'* 
 she cries vehemently, her dark eyes flashing. " What- 
 ever be the story of her birth, she is herself a perfect 
 creature beyond all price!" 
 
 " That depends on the price," says Lady Bouverie, 
 with an insolent smile; "you forget she inherits her 
 mother's blood!" 
 
 The entire coarseness of this remark hardly reaches 
 Miss Maturin, who has grown confused with the day'* 
 misery; but that something has been said to disparage her 
 idol is clear to her. 
 
 " Whatever her story may be," she says, rising to her 
 feet and advancing toward Lady Bouverie, " I must insist 
 that you will treat her absent or present with respect." 
 
 "Her story!" exclaims Lady Bouverie, throwing down 
 the gauntlet at last, and in turn pushing back her chair 
 and standing haughtily erect. " I wonder you are not 
 ashamed to allude to it. Knowing " with a wicked 
 sneer "this story, you brought her here! You allowed 
 my son to make love to her! You deliberately planned a 
 marriage between them a marriage with her her!" 
 
 No words could express the insolence that her emphasis 
 on the pronoun conveys to Miss Maturin. 
 
 " It was a fraud, a swindle!" goes on Lady Bouverie, 
 carried away by her loosed passion, so long pent up. 
 "You threw her into the decent society around you, 
 knowing well it would recoil from her as from a pesti- 
 lence, were the truth known to it. You inveigled my son 
 into an acquaintance here. You drew him into your net, 
 hoping to wed him to this nameless girl, and so cover her 
 ehame by bestowing upon her the shadow of a stainless 
 ancestry. You would have forced upon us this base-born 
 girl with " 
 
 Miss Maturin. laving her hand suddenly upon Lady
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. J17 
 
 Bouverie'g arm, checks her words and forces her back- 
 ward until once again she sinks into her seat. 
 
 "Not another word!" she says hoarsely. ")f me 
 what you will; but of her nothing!" She loosens her 
 grasp and stands back a little, though without removing 
 her eyes from her adversary. "If the concealment was a 
 sin," she says deliberately " if it was a crime to seek to 
 restore that poor child to the position to which she should 
 have been entitled why, sin I did! But, mind you, I do 
 not repent it. I feel no remorse; I am disheartened only 
 in that I have failed." 
 
 ."It was a crime," declares Lady Bouverie, with slow 
 yindictiveness, "for which I am almost certain you could 
 be punished by law." 
 
 For a full minute Miss Maturin's eyes rest searchingly 
 on hers. Then: 
 
 "Go home, woman," she says, with cold contempt, 
 "and pray upon your knees to God to grant you a better 
 mind!" and she turns from her. 
 
 " Let me fully understand you," insists Lady Bouverie, 
 a dark flush rising to her face. "Do you decline to put 
 an end to this engagement between my son and your 
 niece? Do you absolutely refuse to deny him access to 
 your house? 
 
 " Absolutely," says Miss Maturin. "Let him act as 
 he will. I shall neither help nor hinder him." 
 
 "This is your final decision?" 
 
 "It is." ' 
 
 " Then I shall have recourse to other means to save my 
 son," says Lady Bouverie, in a low threatening tone. " If 
 such means prove displeasing to you, remember, you 
 brought them on yourself." 
 
 Silence, and then a little rush as of cold air, the sound 
 of soft footsteps on the balcony outside, a fresh sweet 
 voice lilting some happy lay, and Dolores, stooping daint- 
 ly to get beneath the half-raised sash of the central win- 
 dow; steps into the room. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 WITH soft roughened hair and smiling eyes, she advanced 
 toward them, some gaudy wild-flowers in her hands. The 
 day seems to have grown suddenly dark, there is the scent
 
 218 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 of storm near and vehement in the air that comes with 
 her through the window. The clouds are massed to- 
 gether in a sullen grandeur; there is a fearful stillness iti 
 the shrubberies a strange pause as if nature were gather- 
 ing herself together for some mighty effort. A frightened 
 bird fluttering past the open space hides timorously in the 
 branches of the myrtles. 
 
 Advancing to greet Lady Bouverie, Dolores happens to 
 glance at her aunt, and is so startled by the wild look of 
 horror upon her face that involuntarily she stands still 
 and glances irresolutely from Miss Maturiu to her visitor, 
 and back again. 
 
 "What is it?" she asks at last, in a low troubled tone, 
 the nervousness that has followed her all day growing now 
 almost unbearable. 
 
 Lady Bouverie turns as though to address her; but 
 Miss Maturin, by a sudden passionate movement, checks 
 her. 
 
 " Not a word to her not a word!" she cries, fiercely. 
 
 "Stay, auntie," says Dolores, softly, raising one little 
 hand and holding it out from her palm way a with all the 
 pretty slender fingers extended as if in childish protest. 
 " Let Lady Bouverie speak. What can she have to say to 
 me " with gentle dignity " that I may not hear?" Iler 
 voice is sweet and low and plaintive as usual; but her heart 
 is beating wildly. 
 
 " I have that to say that you must hear,*' says Lady 
 Bouverie remorselessly. 
 
 She is untouched by the girl's gentleness. The pale 
 pathetic little face stirs within her no feeling of compas- 
 sion. Pity, that heaven-born thing, is unknown to her. 
 
 "Do not listen to her, Dolores do not listen!" ex- 
 claims Miss Maturin vehemently, who seems to have lost 
 all self-control. As she speaks, she steps between Dolores 
 and Lady Bouverie with her arms extended toward the 
 former, as though she would protect her from all evil. 
 
 "She shall listen!" says Lady Bouverie imperiously. 
 "Take it well to heart, madam, that she has now to learn 
 the miserable truth from a comparative stranger." 
 
 "Dolores," breathes Miss Maturin, with a last faint 
 effort at calmness, " I command you to leave the room." 
 
 " And I command you to stay," retorts Lady Bouverie, 
 fixing hei gaze upon the poor pale child standing before
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 919 
 
 them with trembling lips and large bewildered eyes. 
 *' You have been too long kept in ignorance of the truth. 
 It is time you should know that you are no fit wife for 
 any well-born man!" 
 
 *' Madam," says Dolores, drawing up her slender figure 
 with a slow haughtiness that becomes her, and turning 
 cold offended eyes upon Lady Bouverie, " I can say 
 nothing to such a charge as that. I have only to wait 
 and hear what wretched mistake has induced you to utter 
 such cruel insolence, to to so far forget yourself!'* 
 
 Her smile has long since faded, and her color has fol- 
 lowed it. All the fresh sweet flush of youth has died 
 away into that grasping grave that is so soon to swallow 
 every other touch of gladness that she knows. Her parted 
 lips are pale as death itself. All the frail scented wild- 
 ings of the wood she so cherished on her homeward way 
 now fall from her nerveless grasp as all her fondest 
 earthly hopes are falling to lie crusned and dying at her 
 feet. Yet even at this very last moment she rallies a lit- 
 tle, and some thought of angry pride flings a crimson tint 
 into her pallid cheeks. 
 
 Miss Maturin, marking this sign of emotion and mis- 
 taking it, lays her hand upon the g-rl's arm. 
 
 " Go," she says with deepest entreaty. 
 
 " It is too late," returned Dolores, with a curious smile, 
 never removing her gaze from Lady Bouverie. 
 
 " Hear the truth then," says Dick's mother, in a quick 
 tone; " and let any," with a slow triumphant glance at 
 Miss Maturin, "deny it if they dare." 
 
 And then, all at once, coldly, with no attempt at 
 palliation, the terrible truth has been laid bare to one who 
 up to this has been almost ignorant that such sad dis- 
 honors might exist; and now her own mother. 
 
 Where now is the crimson blush, the sweet haughty 
 glance? Alas for the happy chi-ldish soul that shall know 
 the riches of its first unhurt youth never again! 
 
 A sickly pallor overspreads her cheeks, her eyes dilate. 
 Ah, how true had been those sad forebodings those 
 warnings they may he called that had haunted her as she 
 sat awhile agone beside her lover, watching the incoming 
 of the sad sea-waves! At last the indefinite shadow, the 
 intangible cloud, that has lain so long and in such a 
 yague fashion uupn her young life, has been lifted only to
 
 220 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 lay bare to her shrinking soul the hideousness of the secret 
 it has covered. 
 
 Still she stands motionless before them, making no 
 effort to hide her blanched face, but all her gracious 
 brightness seems killed. She looks tired and worn and 
 broken. Making a violent effort, she removes her shocked 
 gaze from Lady Bouverie and turns desperately to Miss 
 Maturin. 
 
 " It is not true, auntie not true! " she gasps, in a choked 
 Voice, holding out her little hands in a forlorn fashion t 
 her. "Oh, speak speak speak !" 
 
 But no comfort comes to her; Miss Maturin's lips part 
 indeed, but only a groan issues from them. She tries to 
 form a sentence a word even but power is denied her. 
 Seeing her agitation, Dolores knows that hope indeed is 
 at end. But even at this supreme moment love sways 
 her; noting the agony in her aunt's face, a divine pity 
 fills her breast. 
 
 "Ah," she cries, with sharp but sweet haste, "do not 
 say it! I know all." 
 
 "This explanation so in iquitcusly withheld from you 
 for so long a time is necessarily very painful," says Lady 
 Bcuverie nervously. 
 
 For once her self-possession seems to have deserted her. 
 She appears absolutely afraid to raise her eyes and mark 
 the result of her day's work. As she so stands with down- 
 cast lids, battling indignantly with this absurd new nerv- 
 ousness, she and Dolores seem to exchange places, She 
 is the culprit, the pale stricken girl before her the accuser. 
 
 " I should not," she goes on in a stammering fashion, 
 " have felt it my duty to be the one to waken you to so 
 sad a fact in your life's history but that that "* She 
 pauses, at a loss for words to complete her cruel task. 
 
 " You have something to say to me say it," says the 
 girl coldly. Even to herself her voice sounds strange, 
 fur off, strained. It is as entirely without passion how- 
 ever as it is without hope. 
 
 " It is about Bichard," replies Lady Bouverie, growing 
 i .re and more confused beneath the steady gaze of those 
 lustrous melancholy eyes. "The relations existing be- 
 tween you and him of which however " hastily " I 
 know nothing, not being taken into your confidence, 
 though I am his mother " She breaks off suddenly
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 2SI 
 
 here, and beats her foot angrily against the floor. The 
 anger is self-directed. How is it that she finds herself in 
 her hour of need so utterly devoid of the cold smooth elo- 
 quence that has undone so many a foe? 
 
 " You allude to our engagement," says Dolores, very 
 calmly, though her heart seems to have been caught in a 
 udden cold grasp. " Yes go on." 
 
 " If it was an engagement," says Lady Bouverie, 
 sharply, "as I have said, I know nothing it must nov 
 come to an end. It must be an engagement no longer.' 
 
 Dolores, lifting her hand to her head with a sudden 
 passionate movement, runs her fingers through her soft 
 hair, as though action of some sort is forced upon her. 
 This little gesture is full of the keenest despair. Her 
 lips are steady, but her eyes grow large and wild. It is 
 all so difficult to realize. Is it true true? A sharp sigh 
 breaks from her. Is everything to go from her name, 
 hope, honor, and now her lover? 
 
 "I have spoken to Richard," says Lady Bc/uverie, in 
 her usual chilling tone like all mean natures, she has 
 acquired strength from the sight of another's weakness. 
 "But he only gave me to understand that he could do 
 nothing. As an honorable man, he persists in consider- 
 ing himself bound to you still. He can not, of course, be 
 the first to speak of dissolving the tie that connects you 
 with him, however willing he may be to be released." 
 
 " He is not willing," says the girl, interrupting her, 
 quietly; " that I know. I entreat you not to wrong him. 
 Let me help you, madam, to a more honest solution of 
 your trouble. 5Tou wish me to be the one to break all 
 ties between us, as he will not. Is not that so? You 
 dread a marriage that must necessarily drag him down 
 to the sad, sad level of the woman he loves?" No words 
 can describe the despair of her calm voice as she says this. 
 " Disgrace is part of me; you fear his sharing it. I, too, 
 would prevent it. You love him, no doubt; he is your 
 son. I, too, love him; he is rny all!" 
 
 At this a low cry breaks from Miss Maturin, and she 
 turns in a breathless fashion to Lady Bouverie; surely she 
 will have mercy now! 
 
 " Her all!" she echoes, passionately; but Dolores, by a 
 glance, hushes her once more into silence. 
 
 " Not a word, auntie," ghe says* gently. " This matter
 
 223 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 must now be arranged between me and Lady Bouverie 
 finally, and to my hurt." 
 
 " You mean " questions Lady Bouverie eagerly, bend- 
 ing forward common decency is forgotten in the desire 
 to know of her son's emancipation. 
 
 " That I shall never marry your son," says the poor 
 child, bravely. 
 
 " I have your word?" asks Lady Bouverie, pressing the 
 matter to its final tension. 
 
 " Would you have me swear?" cries Dolores, turning 
 upon her with a miserable vehemence. " Hear me, then. 
 He is dearer to me than to you; yet I swear to you he 
 shall be nothing to me nothing forever!" Her head 
 droops; her hands, clasped before her, are tightly clinched. 
 
 " That is an oath,' says Lady Bouverie, regarding her 
 fixedly " and oaths are sacred." 
 
 "You fear my strength!" exclaims Dolores once more, 
 raising her head. "Fear your own rather, for mine is 
 greater than yours. For his sake, I give up hope and 
 love and all that makes life precious, for his sake" her 
 voice sinks to a whisper " I cast myself willingly adrift!" 
 
 A sob bursts from her overwrought heart, and she 
 flings out her arms as though in renunciation of happiness. 
 
 " To-day you feel like this; but to-morrow " 
 
 Lady Bouverie pauses. She has altogether failed to 
 fathom the intensity of the other's meaning. 
 
 " To-morrow shall be as to-day," says Dolores firmly. 
 "And now will you go?" 
 
 There is no d'iscourtesy in her tone only a weariness 
 that makes itself felt. Lady Bouverie, glad of her dis- 
 missal, knowing that she bears victory away with her, 
 rises to her feet and rustles toward the door; but the 
 frou-frou of her silken skirts breaks the spell that has 
 held Miss Maturin. 
 
 " Stay," she cries, advancing a step or two toward Lady 
 Bouverie, as though she would forcibly detain her but 
 indeed her voice alone would have stopped IKT -"'stay 
 and rejoice in your work! Look at her look!" repeats 
 she fiercely, pointing to the stricken girl, who with pale 
 face but unlowered head is still gazing at them. " See 
 what a wreck you have made!" 
 
 And in truth it is a wreck. Even as she speaks, 
 Dolores* head sinks upo_n her breast, and a terrible ex-
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 323 
 
 preesion, born of fear and undeserved shame, covers her. 
 Scarcely to be recognized is the happy blithesome child 
 of yesterday in the forlorn despairing girl of to-day. 
 
 "Ay, look and gloat upon her!" goes on Miss Maturin, 
 smiting her thin hands together. A frenzy of rage and 
 grief lights up her somber eyes. " You have killed her!" 
 she cries, " you have slain the best of her! Oh, where 
 shall recompense be found?" She pauses, and glances 
 eagerly at the girl, who is no longer with them, but lost 
 in the sad imaging of a parting scene, that must be irrev- 
 ocable, with her lover. "Dolores," she calls gently, 
 " my darling, my little one!" 
 
 But no answer comes to her. For once the girl is deaf 
 to her voice, dead to all but her misery. Miss Maturin 
 devines this, and then all her passion blazes forth. 
 
 "Oh, just God," cries she, directing a baleful glance 
 at Lady Bouverie, "is there no help from Thee? How 
 long, how long will it be before Thy vengeance falls upon 
 this woman? Do not hold Thine hand, I beseech Thee! 
 Let me live to see Thy justice!" 
 
 She seems to have grown gaunter and grayer. Going 
 up to Lady Bouverie, she lays her hand upon her arm, 
 and shakes some sudden fear into that selfish breast. 
 
 " You shall look at her!" she says, turning her unwilling 
 visitor in the direction of Dolores. "On your death-bed 
 think of this hour, and of how you deliberately ruined 
 one human life! All my days I have spent in shielding 
 her, in protecting her, in loving her, for you at last to 
 destroy! She was my child, my own, my very soul. Go, 
 woman, before I do yon some injury!" 
 
 She has her large powerful white hand upon Lady Sou- 
 verie's arm still, and again she shakes her. In vain Lady 
 Bouverie seeks to free herself 'the grasp only tightens. 
 There is indeed a growing light in Miss Maturin's eyes 
 that might be well termed dangerous, and that creates a 
 wild fear in her visitor's craven breast. Silently they 
 gaze upon each other. Lady Bouverie trembles, shrinks. 
 Suddenly a soft broken voice, scarcely audible, reaches 
 Miss Maturin's ears. 
 
 " Lallie, come to me!" 
 
 Her grasp relaxes. When indeed has she ever been in- 
 different to that sweet voice? She turns away from Lady 
 Bouverie, as though almost forgetful of her presence,
 
 324 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 and, falling upon her knees before Dolores, encircles het 
 with her arms. 
 
 ****** * 
 
 Upon the sullen day a sullen twilight has fallen. With- 
 in the deep recesses of the leafy wood it is now almost 
 dark. Thick shadows lie among the brandies. There is 
 no song of birds in all the air to break the unearthly still- 
 ness that reigns around. A sense of impending storm 
 weighs down everything. For one sad mind there vies 
 with this a sense of misery completed, of a sorrow too 
 heavy for assuagement. 
 
 Already a sickly moon has climbed the heavens, a dull 
 thing, poor and faint, a tearful Dian, in harmony with 
 the lifeless evening. Pale disks of light lie upon tree 
 and herb; yet 
 
 " There is tempest in yon horned moon 
 And lightning in yon cloud." 
 
 To this dim lonely spot in the dark wood Dolores has 
 hastened as might some wounded creature on that first 
 awful awakening to the fatal truth. Here she has come 
 to mourn in silence and secrecy over her wrecked life, 
 over that greatest of all losses loss of hope. 
 
 Flinging herself face downward upon the grassy sward, 
 with her sad arms outstretched and her little delicate 
 fingers clutching convulsively at the long tangles of the 
 rank verdure, as though in a perfect agony of shame and 
 grief, she gives herself up to the bitterest despair. One 
 intangible watery moonbeam is lying, as though touched 
 by her grief, upon her half-bared arms, another as if in 
 benison upon her forlorn little head. But life's moons or 
 suns, its warmths, its chills, can be nothing to her again 
 forever. The vague, wild, simple joy of living is gone 
 from her. There is only the bitterness of death remain- 
 ing, and desire to escape and cover her face and hide 
 from all her kind. 
 
 Out of the day and night 
 
 A joy has taken flight, 
 Prefih spring and summer and winter hoar 
 Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight 
 
 No more oh, never . u>rel" 
 
 Thus woe-begone she rests at full length upon the 
 ground, her little shapely head, wind-tossed and rough*
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 225 
 
 ened, lowered to the earth the pretty proud head that 
 only yesterday carried itself so sweetly and with such a 
 natural dignity! Now and then u moan breaks from her, 
 a shattered prayer, a dry sob of keenest anguish. 
 
 "0 kind Father Father of us all have mercy hare 
 pity! Must everything be given up? This thing per- 
 haps, sweet Lord? But yet not this? .Oh, leave me 
 something! Thou, who art all love, leave me my little 
 share of worldly affection! Surely I need not surrender 
 all, name and fame and lover too!" 
 
 Is her prayer answered? 
 
 There is a sound of hurrying footsteps on the cool 
 sweet grass, a smothered exclamation; then two strong 
 arms, mighty with this love she has been imploring, 
 stoop to her, weave themselves round her; and Bouverie, 
 lifting her bodily from the ground, turns her face to his. 
 Seeing her lying so, all sad and disconsolate, the mourn- 
 ful certainty has been borne in upon him that she has 
 been lying thus because her heart is broken. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 As Dick lifts his sweetheart in his arms, her expres- 
 sion changes. She shrinks from him, and makes a vafn 
 effort to reloase herself from the loving bondage of his 
 embrace. 
 
 " Oh, not you," she says, in a little panting whisper 
 "not you, of all people! I had made up my mind that 
 it should never be you again." 
 
 "To comfort you?" asks he, terminating her sentence. 
 "If you are in trouble, who would there be but me to 
 help you? Your trouble must always be mine, my owe. 
 sweetheart!" 
 
 He tightens his clasp round her; but she, pushing him 
 from her, lays her hands outspread upon his breast, and 
 in her lovely eyes there grows a very agony of protest. 
 Seeing her so persistent, he releases her gently, and let& 
 her stand back from him a step or two. ^ 
 
 " It is useless; it must all end now," she says faintly, 
 and again hides her face within her hands. 
 
 " Death alone can end some things," returns he, slowly, 
 c but Time is more merciful. It can put a finish evn to
 
 226 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 such grief as yours, my own; but, as for our love, neither 
 Time nor Death can put an end to that! It will go with 
 us through life, and to the grave, and thence to the world 
 beyond." 
 
 When lying in passionate pain upon the fresh sward, 
 s>he had closed her fingers on some tender grasses. Now 
 he turns them listlessly in her cold hand, and gazes at 
 them as one might when considering some question far 
 remote from them. 
 
 " She was right," she says at last " your mother,! mean. 
 For all the days of your life you must speak to me never 
 again. It was terrible all that she said; she called me 
 base-born a cruel word!" She shivers as though with 
 intense cold, and clasps her fingers tightly together. 
 "Base-born!" she repeats, almost unconsciously. "Yes 
 yes, it was a cruel word!" 
 
 " Curse her!" says the young man, with sudden fierce 
 passion, gazing at the pale face before him, the stricken 
 glance, the drooping, hopeless figure. 
 
 " Oh, no, no," cries she, piteously; " she is your mother! 
 Even as to mine, were she alive, I would not so speak; and 
 mine " She pauses abruptly. " But to the dead there 
 is only forgiveness," she says, brokenly; and then 
 "You know all? You have heard?" 
 
 "Yes, all! That you should have heard it, and from 
 such a source, is what I shall never forgive. I have told 
 her so." 
 
 " Your mother?" in a little thrilling whisper. 
 "The relationship has ceased to exist for me," returns 
 he, with a curious laugh. " But of course I understand 
 sufficiently to be able to give you an answer. Yes; I have 
 told Lady Bouverie that I shall never forgive her conduct 
 to yon." 
 
 " I am twice unfortunate," says Dolores, mournfully. 
 " Besides my own intolerable load, must I also bear the 
 knowledge that I have created discord between a mother 
 and her son?" 
 
 " Nothing matters," answers the young man, steadily 
 pressing her fingers to his lips, "except what personally 
 concerns you. Forget the rest, and be assured that Lady 
 Bouverie can manage excellently without either you ci- 
 rri e. My beloved, how you must have suffered!" 
 
 His tone has changed. Now there is thrown into it a
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 227 
 
 great wave of the most tender sympathy, before it had 
 been hard and somewhat cynical. 
 
 "There is no need to talk of that," says she, with a 
 passionate attempt at calm; "do not talk of it! There 
 is only one thing now for me to say to you; I say it I 
 give you back your troth." She turns to him, pale and 
 rigid, and compels herself to meet his eyes. 
 
 " You will give me what I will not accept a poor 
 gift! " returns he, as pale as herself. " Well, what else?" 
 
 " All is over between us," says the poor child, sadly, 
 her sweet face looking worn and changed in the dull 
 moonlight. "Oh, do not make things harder to me 
 than they are! You will give me up? " 
 
 " Never! " answers Bouverie coldly. " Let that be per- 
 fectly understood between us. Never! I have your prom- 
 ise to be my wife; I shall hold you to it till the last day 
 of my life." 
 
 " Then you will leave all the pain, the trouble, to me?" 
 says Dolores, reproachfully. " Ah, how unkind that is! 
 Well, I give you up, at least." 
 
 " That you can not do," returns he, quickly. 
 
 " What, do you think I am not stronger than yon?" 
 He lays his hands lightly on her slender shoulders, as 
 though to prove to her the difference between them. 
 "Dolores, do you think you could live without me?" he 
 asks, softly; and with the knowledge full upon her that 
 she lies beyond redemption in her answer, she murmurs, 
 " Yes," her eyes on his. 
 
 " Say that again," says Bouverie, holding her a little 
 way from him that he may the better mark the changing 
 of her eyes. " Say it now." 
 
 " Yes yes yes!" cries she sharply; but the tension is 
 too great for her. She falls forward upon his breast and 
 bursts into tears. 
 
 " Well, I couldn't without you, you cruel child," re- 
 turng he, caressing her with a careful love; " and, after 
 all, I don't believe a word of it." He says this last softly, 
 pressing her little silken head against his breast. 
 
 But her despair is too strong to admit of comfort even 
 from the one beloved nay, the very sweetness of the com- 
 fort offered seems only to add to the poignancy of her grief. 
 
 "Oh that we two were dead!" she cries, her pent-up 
 sobs breaking forth. "Now together!"
 
 228 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 There is a sudden trembling of her slight limbs; in- 
 stinctively she clings to him. To be buried, lost, forgot- 
 ten beyond the ken of all humanity is the one sweet long- 
 ing that remains to her and with him. If they might 
 only be permitted to share this everlasting exile to go 
 together whither no man may follow, past tear and an- 
 guish and despair and all desire! 
 
 " I wish we were dead together to-day, 
 
 Lost sight of, hidden away out of sight, 
 
 Clasped and clothed in the cloven clay, 
 Out of the world's way, out of the light, 
 
 Out of the ages of worldly weather, 
 
 Forgotten of all men altogether 
 
 As the world's first dead taken wholly away, 
 Made one with death, filled full of the night!" 
 
 " There is something as good as death before us," says 
 Bouverie, steadily; "there is life a long life of happi- 
 ness, I hope and believe! Let no false suspicions of evil 
 mar the perfection of it." 
 
 " The perfection! Where can that come in? You you 
 pretend too much!" exclaims she, with a little burst of 
 irritable passion born of her acute suffering. S( Perfec- 
 tion can never more apply to anything connected with 
 me. I am tainted!" 
 
 She raises her head. " White like a white rose " is the 
 face to which she compels his regard. But, in spite of 
 all her self-control, her lips quiver. The sight of those 
 quivering lips is torture to him. 
 
 "I must ask you not to talk like that," he says sternly. 
 " I regard you now I have regarded you for some time 
 as nothing less than my wife. I shall not listen to even 
 one derogatory word uttered about her." 
 
 His tone subdues her for the moment, but after a little 
 mental confusion, the faithful spirit within her fragile 
 body reasserts itself. 
 
 " Your wife I shall never be," she says, softly, but de- 
 cisively. There is an exquisite pain in her face and voice. 
 Her small fingers, interlaced, are crushed against each 
 other until a white outline is marked upon her hands. 
 " Beloved, would I do you such an injury as to let you 
 wed one who whose birth " 
 
 " Be silent, Dolores!" cries the young man, suddenly. 
 
 " But, indeed," sayi she, weeping bitterly again, " I
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 829 
 
 san not be silent. It must be said; and it will be, too 
 J. not by you or me, at least by all the rest of the world. 
 Alas, dear heart, how you yourself recoil from the bare 
 mention of it!" 
 
 "You wrong me very much," says Bouverie, with deep 
 emotion. "I silenced you only lest your word should 
 hurt yourself. I hold you so above taint or shame of any 
 kind, that I defy the world to find a flaw in you." He 
 turns to her and encircles her with his arms. " My stain- 
 less lily," he says, laying his cheek to hers, "my little 
 queen! 
 
 The moon even in its saddened state has grown older, 
 more brilliant; from over the hills a faint wind is come to 
 them. A rushing rivulet is at play somewhere in the dis- 
 tance. The whole world around seems peaceful, save 
 only these two hearts. The coming storm is still so dis- 
 tant as to be unimportant. It may and it may not be, it 
 is unsure; but the misery of the sure humanity is cruelly 
 apparent. The moon is slowly turning the twilight into 
 night, yet still day lingers a most grievous day, better 
 lost in forgetfulness, but still alive. 
 
 "Love, will you listen to me?" says Dolores, softly, 
 holding out her two cold hands to Bouverie. " I beseech 
 you to listen! It is my irrevocable decision that we must 
 part; so hear me! It is my own decision." 
 
 " And you are mine. Your decision is, therefore, only 
 partly your own, I have a share in it. And No; 1 
 will not listen to it!" 
 
 " Your mother has my promise," says the girl, with a 
 sad little smile. "I gave it to her willingly, for your 
 sake." 
 
 " My mother!" 
 
 " Yes. She she was not altogether ungentle with 
 me," says Dolores. "I owe her something for that; 
 but Nay, never mind the 'but,'" she breaks out im- 
 patiently. " She was right in all that she said. We 
 might both have repented afterward when it was too late." 
 
 "Speak for yourself. I should not." 
 
 " Do not let us go into it." she interrupts gently. " It 
 can not be altered now. Be merciful to me, Dick, and 
 accept this decision of mine." 
 
 " Are you merciful to me?" 
 
 "lam lam indeed!" saya she pitifully. " Ah, be-
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 \ieve it, I would go further still if I could, and bear all 
 the pain of parting; but I know," gazing at him with a 
 wistful tenderness, " that that is denied me you too 
 must endure!" 
 
 "That is nothing," declares Bouverie. " Forget that; 
 it is my business to see that you do not carry out your 
 imad scheme. It seems a simple thing to you to abandon 
 me, but how if I will not be abandoned?" 
 
 "Your strength is insufficient," says the girl, sol- 
 emnly. " You must submit." 
 
 There is a nobility in her look which silences him for 
 the moment. An exquisite flush lights up her face, and 
 her fingers, lifted to her breast, lie there convulsively, as 
 though to stay the throbbing of the heart beneath. 
 
 "Must I?" says Bouverie unsteadily. 
 
 She mistakes these words for a yielding on his part, 
 and the flush dies upon her cheeks and her pale lips grow 
 paler. 
 
 " At last you understand," she says, raising her 
 blanched face and sorrowful eyes to his "at last! Yes; 
 it must be so!" Then all at once her calmness quite for- 
 sakes her; she lies like a broken lily in his arms. " Oh, 
 love, oh, love!" she murmurs faintly, clinging to him as 
 though she feels the final parting is indeed at hand. 
 
 He returns her embrace only m part, his mind having 
 gone to other matters. 
 
 " You speak lightly of our ended love," he says, coldly. 
 " But still there is something to be said. Suppose some 
 happy chance should lift this cloud that hangs above 
 you," in his soul he does not believe that any such blessed 
 uplifting is possible, " suppose it should be so. How 
 then?" 
 
 "Ah, then!" 
 
 She has caught the infection he desired. She looke 
 transfigured. He knows now to a certainty that the hap- 
 piness of her life depends upon the improbable chance 
 he has described to her. Her lips tremble, a great wave 
 of color sweeps across her face, lingers a second or so, and 
 then disappears, as harsh sense reasserts itself, only to 
 leave her whiter than before. 
 
 " You are cruel," she says, pathetically. 
 
 Wherais the use of answering her? Is not the whole 
 thing cruel? His arms still hojd her against a heart that
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 231 
 
 i as surely breaking as her own. Night is descending, a 
 somber threatening night made only more menacing by 
 the dull moon that betrays it. Beyond are the stately 
 pines, and there " where the moonnse breaks the dusky 
 
 ray," are the tremulous beeches, their pale young leaves 
 rooping beneath the warm breathings of the circumamb- 
 ient air. 
 
 Placing his hand gently beneath her chin, he lifts her 
 face and gazes silently upon it. What a transformation 
 is here! The pretty lips erstwhile so prone to laughter 
 are now closed, yet eloquent with a silent melancholy. 
 Her drenched eyes, with their tears still lying heavily on 
 the long dark lashes, speak to him in mournful numbers. 
 It is a most grievous thing to see her standing thus, 
 crushed, disconsolate, dishonored. 
 
 "I have listened to you; now hear me," he says, sud- 
 denly, though without suspicion of haste. " All that you 
 have said to me counts just as nothing. We stand to-day 
 as we stood yesterday. You are my affianced wife now, 
 AS you were then." 
 
 She would have spokeu again, but he prevents her. 
 
 "No, not a word," he says quickly. "I will hear no 
 further protest. It is useless. Time will prove to you 
 that my will is stronger than yours. Yet, believe me, 
 dearest, it is the one time in our lives in which I shall 
 refuse to defer to you. Come let me take you home I 
 This trouble has been too much for you! " 
 
 " Yes; I will go home," says the girl monotonously. 
 
 "You will let me see you again this evening; I must 
 come up to Greylands to speak to your aunt. It will be 
 better that we should aee each other again." There is 
 anxiety in his tone. 
 
 " Whatever happens, however it may be, you will be 
 kind to auntie? "says Dolores, laying her hand with a 
 feverish earnestness upon his arm. "You will not re- 
 proach her? Think think how she has suffered, and all 
 for me. Oh, if you have loved me, think of that! " 
 
 " As I do love you, I shall think always of what is most 
 pleasing to you," returns Bouverie. " But in truth I 
 should be good to Miss Maturin irrespective of my love 
 for you, if only because of the affection I bear her; and 
 shall I, your loTer 4 not honor her the more for the tend**
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 ness she has displayed toward you. But ansvrer me. i 
 shall see you again to-night? " 
 
 " Yes," after a moment's pause. 
 
 After all, another meeting, another hour of agony is 
 not very much when added to the great whole! And 
 and it need not affect her resolve in any way. And to see 
 him once again for the last time! There is a meagre grain 
 of sweetness in the misery of this thought. She might 
 indeed bring him something to keep to remember her by 
 in all the coming years. Death, when courted, is reluctant; 
 and there will probably be many years. 
 
 " Yes," she says again faintly. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 "I TELL you it will kill her!" says Miss Maturin 
 vehemently. 
 
 She is standing in her boudoir, looking pale and gaunt 
 after the day's exhaustion. The little ormolu clock upon 
 the mantel-piece is on the stroke of ten. 
 
 " Can I see her?" asks Bouverie, with downcast eyes. 
 
 "No, I think not; it will be better to leave her to her- 
 self. She knew you were coming this evening, and, if 
 she wishes to see you, she will come of her own accord, 
 without your sending for her. She looked feverish, and 
 thoroughly undone. I hope she has gone to sleep. 
 Extreme mental depression often produces unconscious- 
 ness." 
 
 " But she promised to see me. She may think it strange 
 my not coming until now, at so late an hour," says the 
 young man, nervously; " but so many things prevented 
 me. There were final matters to be arranged." 
 
 " You have left your home, then, for good !" 
 
 "Forever. I shall not return there again; that is 
 decided. I wish to say nothing against my mother, bnt 
 to live beneath her roof again would be an impossibility." 
 
 "She is a fiend!" says Miss Maturin, without the 
 faintest trace of excitement, bnt with a certain cold 
 conviction. " I am glad you have decided on shaking off 
 her influence." 
 
 "As for the influence," returns Bouverie, "it is hardly
 
 DICK'S SWEKTHEABT. 233 
 
 worth speaking about; nor is she. Let us talk, instead, 
 of the one thing who is all the world to us; let us talk of 
 Dolores!" 
 
 "There is so much to be said, anrT yet so little," says 
 Miss Maturin, walking restlessly to "and fro. "You 
 know all the first part of her wretched story; I need not 
 recount it to you; bat there are some later, some minor 
 details, that you alone may hear; they are not for the 
 satisfaction of vulgar curiosity. "With Dolores' birth my 
 story to Lady Bouverie ended." 
 
 "You made some effort to find her mother?" 
 
 " One unceasing effort that filled my life for two long 
 years. At last I found a clew, as you have heard from 
 your mother; a letter came to me. You know of my 
 journey to Brittany, my adoption of my dear girl, and 
 our long wanderings in foreign lands." 
 
 "What I do not know," says Dick, "is your subse- 
 quent knowledge of Dolores' father." 
 
 " Ay," says Miss Maturin; " he came to me prior to 
 my leaving England for many years with my young charge, 
 and demanded an interview. I refused it. Eemorse 
 doubtless stirred within him; but it was remorse that 
 came too late. I could not entertain it. My whole soul 
 revolted from the man. When I looked at my little in- 
 nocent, lying in my arms speechless, unable to utter a 
 protest for herself, I enlisted myself upon her side and 
 swore I would defend her from him at any risk. I left 
 home abruptly, carrying my child with me. Then there 
 came a letter from him. It was forwarded to me a mad 
 letter, full of grief grief when she the woman who 
 should have been honored, but was now, by his willful act, 
 Dishonored lay moldering in her shroud! He asked me, 
 What of his child? It was evident he had heard of my 
 sister's death; but of the child he knew nothing, except 
 that I had taken it. I answered him that tke child was 
 dead!" She ceases, abruptly, and, sinking back in her 
 chair, sits for a moment rigid, her hands clasped tightly 
 in her lap. "Dead as her mother!" she says; then slow- 
 ly " That was the message I sent him. Dead as the girl 
 whose death lay at his own door! It was n lie! But what 
 of that? You think I regret it/ No a thousand times 
 qo! After all these years, 1 would do again now as I did 
 then. I would rescue the ciiild at any price from the vile
 
 B1XJK8 SWKETHEAR-r. 
 
 hands of one whose soul was blackened by a crime 
 redemption!" 
 
 " You have never heard of him since?" 
 
 "Never! Dolores knows .nothing of him. She be- 
 lieves him dead as her mother; so he is to her. Whether 
 he still roams the earth, or has gone to meet his just re- 
 ward in the land beyond the grave, is unknown to me." 
 
 She is silent for a little while; and Bouverie does noi 
 care to interrupt her, being lost in an absorption of hig 
 own creating. When two minutes, scarcely noticed by 
 either of them, have died into the past, she speaks again. 
 
 *' What horrible evil has fallen into our days," she says 
 " hers and mine, I mean!" 
 
 "And mine," observes Bouverie, " for her sake, though 
 I will not acknowledge that evil will be the end of it." 
 
 " You are a faithful soul," says Miss Maturin, in a low 
 tone; "and yet I feel bound to tell you that you are free. 
 You may go; you may drop us honorably into your past; 
 no stigma will attach itself to you, no touch of shame 
 will haunt you for it. Go, whilst there is yet timel" 
 
 " Pshaw I" exclaims Dick. " What do you take me for? 
 Am I a fool? Am I likely to resign for a paltry reason 
 the best gift that God can bestow? Even if I would, I 
 could not give up Dolores; and, as for all you have said, 
 why, it counts to me as nothing, but only as an incentive 
 to be better to her than even I meant to be!" 
 
 Miss Maturin, rising, suddenly turns upon him a gaze 
 illumined by a very immediate knowledge of his worth. 
 
 "I have done well by her," she says softly. She con- 
 tinues to regard him with extreme tenderness for a few 
 minutes; then, as though recollection returns to her of 
 its own accord and without encouragement, she starts and 
 her eyes falter before his. " Resistance is useless," she 
 jays. " We are not strong enough to fight the world. 
 And yet submission will be her death ! She will die," says 
 Miss Maturin, in a cold constrained voice. " She is not 
 strong, and the pressure will be too much for her." 
 
 "Not when she hasn't to bear it alone," interposes 
 Dick quietly. " I flatter myself I can endure a good deal 
 of pressure. She shall feel none when I am near. Can I 
 see her to-morrow early?" 
 
 "I don't know" uncertainly; "she looked so white, 
 so still, go forlorn, when she bade me good-night that J
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. S 
 
 carcely know what to think. She faels this thing," cries 
 Miss Maturin, with a sudden passion of grief, "more 
 than you or I may know! I tell you it will kill her! Oh, 
 what forgiveness can be accorded her who first destroyed 
 the righteous gladness of her soul?'' 
 
 " None," answers Bouvene sternly. 
 
 " There is no help for Dolores," says Miss Maturin, 
 nbduing her active grief in part, and yet giving her visit- 
 or an even more certain knowledge of her misery in her 
 nforced quiet than in her outspoken despair. " She is 
 cast down, lowered to the earth. She is indeed 
 
 " ' All bereft, 
 
 As when some tower doth fall. 
 With battlements and wall 
 And gates and bridge and all, 
 And nothing left ! ' 
 
 There is nothing," says Miss Maturin, who has made her 
 pitiful quotation half unconsciously, as one might who 
 has been thinking of it and dwelling on it also uncon- 
 sciously for many an hour. 
 
 " There is myself," says Bouverie, not so much assert- 
 ively as with a sort of eager pathos. 
 
 "Ah, yes, there is you!' ? she sighs heavily. "Well, 
 you will be true," she says presently. " Let us wait and 
 see what a day may bring forth." 
 
 "I think, if I could see her " begins Bouverie, re- 
 flectively, his eyes on the ground. " But, as you say, it 
 is too late, and she may perhaps be sleeping. Well, till 
 to-morrow then!" 
 
 He stretches out his hand, and Miss Maturin clasps it 
 eagerly. 
 
 " To-morrow!" she echoes, faintly. 
 
 Leaving the room, he closes the door after him with 
 extreme gentleness; some other door upon this corridor 
 may hide behind it his sad little love, and to rouse her 
 again to a quick remembrance of her grief would be hor- 
 rible. In accordance with this train of thought, he treads 
 the polished floor lightly, going with down-bent head and 
 steps so carefully picked as to suggest the idea of sick- 
 ness somewhere; and truly sick at heart she must be, 
 sleeping or waking. 
 
 Far away in the dim distance a lamp is burning; it v
 
 236 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 so remotely placed as to be almost without reflection m 
 this corridor; but ite feebleness is amply compensated for 
 by the rays of a liquid moon straying through the oriel 
 window. Just now 
 
 *' Mooned Ashtaroth, 
 Heaven's queen and mother both," 
 
 has reached her highest po\nt of glory. In a cloudless 
 realm she reigns supreme, surrounded by the tremulous 
 stars, which pale and scintillate before her presence, 
 throwing out soft lusters of orange-green and opal. 
 
 Bouverie stands for a moment to gaze upon the eloquent 
 heavens and to drink in some quietude from the silence 
 and calmness of the night. He is fast losing himself in 
 an endless reverie, when a slight sound, coming from the 
 extremity of the corridor, rouses him from his dreaming. 
 
 Slowly recovering himself, he turns, as though to as- 
 certain the cause of his disturbance. Eaising his hand 
 to his brow to ward off the strong moonlight, he seeks to 
 pierce the darkness beyond. It divides. Something 
 comes from out it with vague uncertain steps, with a 
 strange lingering. He leans forward. It is an angei, her 
 spirit, or 
 
 Slowly she comes to him over the shining boards, in 
 her white clinging draperies, with loosened hair and with 
 sad eyes, and cheeks all pale and wan. Oh, sorrowful 
 Dolores! She lays her hands in his. Diana's brilliant 
 fire lights up her mournful face and tints the darkness of 
 her eyes. 
 
 " How long you have been!" she says gently, calling up 
 a forlorn little smile that only makes more complete the 
 utter misery of her appearance. 
 
 " Long, darling!" 
 
 "Yes; I have been waiting waiting! I knew I should 
 gee you as I passed by here; and I could not rest until I 
 had spoken to you. I told you I promised you to meet 
 you again to-night." 
 
 " I remembered; but I hoped you had given my rendez- 
 TOUS to sleep, I fancied you in your bed an hour ago," 
 says the young man tenderly. 
 
 How fair she looks, how frail too frail to battle with 
 the waves surging beneath her feet.' Her hands are lying
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 237 
 
 passively in hie; and now he knows that one of them is 
 losed tightly upon something. 
 
 "Oh, no, I was not sleeping!" she says, in a subdued 
 yoice. "There were so many things to think of so 
 many unhappy things" with a sigh. "But there was 
 another thing that kept me sleepless too the desire to 
 see you and give you this." She glances at her closed 
 hand, which she has withdrawn from his. "I found it 
 to-day, after you left me; and I remembered how you 
 had once said it always reminded you of me." Her lips 
 quiver. She slowly unfolds her fingers, and lets him see 
 a drooping violet, white us herself, lying upon her palm. 
 " It is an odd time for it to bloom, is it not?" she says 
 wistfully, without raising her eyes indeed they were too 
 heavily charged with tears to allow of her showing them. 
 
 For a little while they both stand gazing silently upon 
 the violet, which is large and sweet as it might be in its 
 usual birth-month, though in reality it is born out of due 
 time. 
 
 " It will help to remind yon of me," she says at last, 
 as though following out some thought known to her alone. 
 
 " So it will, though I sha'n't need anything when you 
 are near," returns Bouverie, attempting to give a light- 
 ness to the situation which it does not possess. 
 
 "Take it then, and keep it safely," murmurs she, 
 smiling too. " See I shall place it here myself, lest you 
 should lose it!" She runs her slender fingers into one of 
 the pockets of his waistcoat, and, taking out a pencil- 
 case, places the violet there instead. " I have tied it 
 with my hair," she pays " it and the leaf together. 
 Such a shabby little lock, so short!" She smiles pensively. 
 " But keep it keep it!" She sighs again, and gives a 
 last glance at the sweet flower she has laid out for its ap- 
 proaching death. 
 
 There is in her face such unutterable sadness that Bou- 
 verie loses his self-cornmand. 
 
 "Darling, darling," he says, "don't look like that! f 
 know of what you are thinking. But does it really sc 
 much matter? We can go away, if you desire it, beyond 
 reach of cruel tongues and crueler hearts, and make a 
 foreign home for ourselves, and live and die for each, 
 sther." 
 
 " To get away to escape that in it," she says, with
 
 338 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 sort of panting eagerness. " Oh, help me to it! Gire 
 me the strength to go where no one would know where 
 one might after a while be forgotten by those who once 
 loved" 
 
 She ceases abruptly and covers her eyes with her hand. 
 Such a small transparent hand! As the silver moonbeams 
 fall upon it, it seems almost devoid of blood. 
 
 Miss Maturin's words a while since " This will kill 
 her" recur to Bouvorie with an awful clearness. Will 
 it? Can this fragile form bear up against the horror of 
 the shame so rudely betrayed to her? Or will she give in 
 and fade and droop? 
 
 With an anguish more acute than he has ever yet known, 
 he catches the childish hand within his own, and holds it 
 in a grasp that is almost painful. 
 
 " Dolores," cries he, sharply, "everything shall be just 
 as you willl Let us go to Italy to any place that has 
 seemed most pleasant to you. We shall be happy with 
 each other." 
 
 " We!" For a while she gazes at him, as if not under- 
 standing. Then " Ah, yes!" she says, with an effort. 
 "I had forgotten yes." 
 
 She seems still dreamily absent from the passing events 
 of the moment. 
 
 "Does the knowledge of my changeless love bring no 
 comfort to you?" asks the young man, sorrowfully. " You 
 look so sad! Can I do you no good?" There are tears in 
 his eyes. " One would imagine you had come here to bid 
 me an eternal farewell," he says, after a brief pause, with 
 an effort at careless speech which does him credit. 
 
 As he says this, a curious change passes over her face. 
 She shrinks from him a little. And then all at once she 
 rouses herself and breaks into a soft, low laugh. It is 
 uch an utter change from her dejection of a moment 
 since that Bouverie stares at her. 
 
 " Farewell," she repeats, with a mirth that is almost 
 wild. "Why should you speak of farewell? Is the wish 
 father to the thought? No, no, of course, I did not mean 
 that! Do not believe it. "Our last thoughts that is, I 
 mean every thought ours must be full of tenderness." 
 She leans her forehead against him. So standing, her face 
 is hidden. " I am so tired," she says presently, in a 
 tone. " And jet I felt that I must see you again.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 239 
 
 You were right, you see, when you used to accuse me of 
 capriciousness." She raises her head, and, laying her 
 hands upon his arms, bends buck from him suddenly and 
 fixes her eyes upon him with a strange persistency. " I like 
 you in that gray suit," she suys, with a peculiar smile. "Do 
 you know, whenever I think of you in the future and it 
 will be often often I shall always see you dressed just 
 as you are now, and with the moonlight falling on your 
 face sol Turn a little more this way now." 
 
 "What a fantastic fairy? Am I always then to wear 
 but one color to gratify you? Are evening clothes to b 
 abjured? And I? How am I to remember you?" 
 
 " Do not remember me," she says quickly; and then, 
 her face blanching "Ah, no, I did not mean that? At 
 times it will do you no harm. Think of me, call me to 
 mind," she breaks off incoherently, and lets her hands fall 
 to her sides. 
 
 " Not much harm, at all events," says Bouverie, with a 
 careful laugh. "But what am I to call to mind? Your 
 willfulness, your tyranny, the many malignant devices you 
 have invented for my undoing?" He seeks by his own 
 
 fayety to rouse her from her sad mood. "But why should 
 promise to think of you at all?" he goes on tenderly, 
 taking her into his fond arms. "lean rejoice in the cer- 
 tainty that the one thing closest to my heart will also be 
 the one thing before my eyes forever. We shall always be 
 together, sweetheart, you and I." 
 
 She makes him no answer; but the small hand pressed 
 against his shoulder tightens its grasp convulsively. There 
 is a long silence. Holding her, as he does, against his 
 heart, he can feel how hers beats, wildly, passionately. 
 But no word or sigh escapes her. What are her thoughts? 
 Of him, or of that most grievous tale that has darkened 
 her young life? There is a sharp frenzy of despair in the 
 clutch of the little hand. He stoops to lay his lipg 
 upon it. 
 
 At last the violence of the voiceless emotion she has 
 been fighting with dies away; a long, long sigh breaks 
 from her. She raises her head. 
 
 " Dick!" she says, very gently. " You love me, Dick?" 
 
 " It would be but a poor thing to say better than my 
 life," replies he, gravely. " Where is there room foi 
 doubt, my darling.?"
 
 240 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 " If," she says, softly, with lowered lids and lowered 
 tone "if I were ever to disappoint you, how would it b 
 then?" 
 
 " Disappoint me?" 
 
 "Yes, yes!" with just a faint touch of impatience in 
 her sad voice. 
 
 Why will he not understand? And yet she pales and 
 hrinks back within herself as some thought occurs to her; 
 h, if he should understand! 
 
 " I might do something unexpected," she goes on, 
 feverishly; "something which < ou might disapprove, 
 something " 
 
 " Dolores, what do you mean?" asks he, gravely, puz- 
 led by the vehemence of her manner. 
 
 " Why, nothing!" says she, with a miserable little laugh. 
 " It is only that it occurred to me how often one does a 
 thing that that might not look altogether lovely in the 
 eyes of others. Now if I were to do a thing of that 
 sort, eh?" 
 
 "Nothing you could do would alter my love," says the 
 young man, earnestly. 
 
 "Not even if I forsook you?" asks she, with a forced 
 smile more sorrowful than any tears. 
 
 "Not even then," says he, distinctly, perhaps a little 
 coldly. He is feeling puzzled by her manner, and un- 
 certain. 
 
 " Oh, but it would, it shall!" cries she, with a sudden 
 burst of passion. "At all events, I hardly know what I 
 say, but at all events, if I ever should be the cause of grief 
 to you, tell me it would not be lasting grief, that your 
 love for me, tried too severely, would by degrees lessen, 
 decrease, fade away into a kindly remembrance. All," 
 with a quick sob, " it should be kindly! Tell me you 
 would, for instance, after a little while, not feel so pained 
 about me in your thoughts as you did before." 
 
 " I can not follow you," says Bouverie, slowly. " I only 
 know that nothing you could ever do would make me 
 love you less. I am yours body and soul. Do not mis- 
 take me for an instant. You speak of love's decay, its 
 decrease, which means its death. Oh, darling, my best 
 beloved, what words from you to me!" He strains her to 
 his heart, and looks down upon her with a face made pals 
 by passionate reproach. "It is hard of you," he says.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 241 
 
 " It is hard," she answers, dreamily. She draws herself 
 /way from him, and glances at the moon through the 
 illuminated window. " To-morrow will be fine," she says, 
 calmly. 
 
 " I think so, the night is so undistuibed." He is won- 
 dering at the sudden alterations of her moods, from quick 
 grief to apparent indifference. " If so, it will be a great 
 change/' he says. 
 
 " Yes; to-morrow will brkig a great change," returns 
 she, absently. 
 
 Bouverie's gaze grows keener as he turns it upon her. 
 
 " You are tired," he says, immediately. "I insist on 
 you going to bed at once! You are overwrought. But, 
 before we part " tenderly " tell me I shall not see that 
 little aad brow with you in the morning." 
 
 As he speaks, he smooths with loving fingers the fair 
 soft sunny hair from her forehead. 
 
 " I promise," she says, in a dull voice, without raising 
 her eyes, "you shall not see this sad brow to-morrow." 
 
 "Good-night then, my own. lam cheered by your 
 
 Eromise." says Bouverie, drawing her to him, and pressing 
 is lips to hers. 
 
 She hardly returns the pressure. He is perhaps a little 
 hurt by her seeming coldness; but who shall fathom the 
 depth of the anguish she is enduring? Who shall describe 
 the strength of the constraint she has laid upon herself? 
 It is all a burden too heavy for her to bear! 
 
 A little wounded, he holds her away from him and tries 
 anxiously to read her face; but she has so lowered her 
 head that scrutiny is impossible to him in the dim sweet 
 light of the moo.n. Then comes back to him all she has 
 suffered since first this day dawned, and he forgives her, 
 censing himself the while of a cruel want of sympathy. 
 
 " Good-night," he says tenderly, and, with a last em- 
 brace, turns to leave her. 
 
 Mute and cold, she stands there where they have parted 
 until he has reached the very furthest end of the corridor. 
 Then all at once the studied quiet of her face breaks up. 
 Is he going forever thus for all eternity? Not knowing, 
 a terrible cry parts her white hps; she stretches out her 
 arms to him. 
 
 " Oh, Dick, come back to me come back!" she cries 
 desperately. " Say good-night t me, if only once again ! *
 
 242 DICK'S SWEETHEABT. 
 
 And then, she runs to him and flings herself upon hig 
 breast, and twines her gentle arms around his neck, and 
 clings to him, as though she would never let him go she, 
 who has ever been so chary of her caresses! 
 
 There is something in the very abandonment of her 
 grief something so unlike her usual radiant little self 
 that frightens Bouverie. 
 
 "My soul, what is it?" he whispers caressingly; but 
 she scarcely seems to hear him. 
 
 She throws back her head and looks at him; it is a long 
 earnest look, such as one might direct upon the well-be- 
 loved dead ere yet the coffin-lid has closed upon him. 
 
 " Good-night, good-bye/' she murmurs brokenly. " Oh, 
 darling, darling, darling!" 
 
 ******* 
 
 Sitting at her window all night long, sleepless, motion- 
 less, Dolores watches for the dawn. 
 
 A weary vigil. Slowly, reluctantly it comes at last, 
 with a tremulous sigh, as though sorrowing still for the 
 death of gentle night. And yet it breaks upon the world 
 with a glorious promise. All the passion of yesternight 
 is forgotten, all the storm and rain and hurrying tempest. 
 There is now nothing left but a suggestion of peace to 
 come and a most blessed calm. 
 
 The darkness severs, light grows upon the sky; another 
 day is born only to die. 
 
 " Dawn skims the sea with flying feet of gold 
 With sudden feet that graze the gradual sea." 
 
 With grief and misery within her heart, she has sat and 
 mourned throughout the livelong night; but, though she 
 mourned, she never wavered. Her promise has been 
 given to his mother; it must be kept, if only for his sake 
 alone. He will be true; but she, for his sake, must be 
 false, and false alone to him in whose keeping lie all her 
 truth and hope and love. 
 
 To the opening streaks of crimson light upon the sky's 
 face her eyes cling, wearied as they are from their long 
 unrest. She hears the first soft rush of the scented moru 
 as it touches the sleeping earth and wakens the drowsy 
 flowers in its headlong flight o'er meadow, vale and hill. 
 
 When the tender lights have grown into more estab- 
 lished dawn, and this^am has jgiyen place to gaudy day,
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEAJIT. 843 
 
 Dolores oestirs herself. Rising half mechanically from 
 her low geat, as though unwillingly compelled to the doing 
 of some act long ago determined upon, she moves abouS 
 her room and puts together a few trifles in a pretty fanci- 
 ful little basket. At the bottom lie, in tissue-paper lov- 
 ingly folded, a few faded flowers, a miniature, a letter, a 
 necklet, golden and fragile her first gift of jewelry from 
 Miss Maturin. Her first! Yet it seems only as yesterday 
 when it was clasped around her neck by fondest fingers. 
 Even now she can hear the kind voice wishing her again 
 "many happy returns of the day." Ah, why had she 
 not died then? Why had she lived to see her latest birth- 
 day? 
 
 All was in preparation since last night. All now is 
 soon arranged. She has not removed the white gown she 
 wore yesterday, but slips over it a light-colored ulster of 
 thinnest texture, and covers her sunny curls with a small 
 hat that, after all, succeeds only in very partially conceal- 
 ing them. But in the poor child's distracted mind there 
 is no room for the thought of concealment. 
 
 Taking up her basket, she opens her bedroom door and 
 steps out upon the corridor in the broad still light of the 
 early morning. Miss Maturing door lies directly opposite 
 to hers. Swiftly she goes to it and lays her hand upon 
 the handle. Then she hesitates. Her lips quiver. Must 
 she go without even one silent farewell, one last glance at 
 the dear familiar face that has rever shown her anything 
 but the lines of deepest love? 
 
 She stifles a passionate sob, and, bending forward, 
 presses her lips lingeringly to one of the oaken panels. It 
 is a last, a final adieu! Yet no tears stand within her 
 miserable eyes as she upraises herself and gives a rapid 
 glance around. 
 
 Perhaps there is an involuntary delay in her gaze as it 
 comes to that spot where he and she had stood together 
 last sight, and had "kissed and kissed and parted," to 
 meet again ah, never! 
 
 She turns away, and, going with gradual steps down 
 the great staircase, crosses the hall, and, as though in a 
 dream, unchains the hall-door and steps out into the 
 thrilling sweetness of the young and growing morn. The 
 mists are rising from the valley, and are clambering up 
 the sides of the hills in inerrv haste. It seems as though
 
 344 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 they, of all the world, were clamoring for death, calling 
 aloud upon the sun to come forth to them and cause their 
 dissolution. And as though in speedy answer to their 
 prayer, he comes, slowly, majestically, with a resplendency 
 of glory that lights up mountain and vale. On the in- 
 stant the heavy mists arise and flout in dainty clouds into 
 the far heaven. And then all at once the sea lies bare 
 the opaline sea that, lying there sun-smitten, trem- 
 bles and sways beneath the magic touch of fiery Sol. 
 
 The paths have grown golden; the hedge-rows, made 
 thick by growing summer, are sending out far and near 
 their dainty sweets. The birds are giving voice to their 
 first joyous matin. 
 
 " Sunbeam by sunbeam creeps from line to line, 
 Foam by foam quickens on the bright'ning brine, 
 Sail by sail passes, flow'r by flow'r gets free. 
 
 The day has indeed arisen in perfect beauty. 
 
 As one lost in a vague dream, Dolores takes her way 
 through brier-grown lanes and scented wood. Her path 
 lies between dim hedges, with faint suggestions of a wide 
 country lying far beyond, broken by giant ferns and tall 
 dog-roses that top the banks as she walks along. The 
 bushes are full of twittering birds that, waking into life, 
 make the air resound again. The first stiff grayness of 
 an early dawn is dying away, and the land is gaining in 
 color with every minute that makes the young day older. 
 Through the country, pale and ghost-like, goes the small 
 solitary figure with bent head and sad unseeing eyes. The 
 wondrous beauty that surrounds Dolores is lost upon her 
 feverish sight; only when she draws near the little way- 
 side station, and sees the wreaths of smoke that rise from 
 the panting engine, does she at all show any sign of ani- 
 mation. 
 
 She raises her head then, and, increasing her speed, 
 enters the gate, and is soon standing upon the platform. 
 A little nervous tremor passes over her as she moves for- 
 ward deliberately to take her ticket. The man in the 
 office is well Known to her; he will probably recognize 
 her, will perhaps ask a question or two, and worst of all, 
 may retail an account of her sayings and doings to those 
 she leaves behind! Her trembling increases as she draws 
 nearer to the small opening behind which her innocent 
 enemy may be standing.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. $45 
 
 But chance favors her. A face quite strange meets her 
 gaze, and, with a sigh of relief, she takes up her ticket 
 and seeks refuge in one of the carriages. The porter she 
 has successfully avoided; and now, as the train moves and 
 she finds she has really set forth on the journey the end 
 whereof is unknown to her, she sinks back in her seat and 
 draws a long, long breath of thankfulness. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE teain speeds onward with Dolores, London is her 
 destination. In that great city she hopes to lose herself 
 BO effectually that the mightiest effort on the part of aunt 
 or lover may not discover her whereabouts. 
 
 But London that universal hiding-place is very far 
 removed from here Dead marsh. 
 
 Leaning back against the cushions, she tries to sleep; 
 but no such comfort comes to her. Sleep ever shy when 
 most besought flies from her now, leaving her with wide 
 and saddened eyes. 
 
 One station is reached and passed at last, and now an- 
 other. There is no one to share with her the monotony 
 of the first-class carriage in which she has seated herself. 
 In spite of the slenderness of her resources, all of which 
 lie to-day in her pretty basket, it has not occurred to her 
 to travel by any lower class. Custom has cheated her. 
 To want money that is a lesson as yet to be learned by 
 Dolores. 
 
 How fast the train seems to go and yet what little 
 ground it covers! It is now half past seven, and still 
 what hours and hours must elapse before London is 
 reached! A sun that is almost tropical is pouring its 
 beams in through the window. 
 
 When the fourth station is passed she grows restless. 
 This isolation is intolerable; it gives too much room for 
 thought! She paces impatiently up and down the empty 
 carriage. So hot! So dusty! Why, it was cool in com- 
 parison with this at But no, no, she must not think 
 of Greylands There shall be no past for her only a 
 future. Alas, how sweet her future was to think on only 
 two days ago! 
 
 She clasps her hands tightly together. Yes, this mo-
 
 246 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 notony is intolerable she will put an end to it. And 
 then all at once she tells herself she can bear the train no 
 longer. What does it matter that she has taken a ticket 
 to London? What indeed does it matter about anything? 
 She will get out at the next station. To walk, to move, 
 no matter where, will be better than this; and she can go 
 gome where anywhere! 
 
 She is growing somewhat confused. Her mental misery, 
 combined with the last long terrible night of cruel sleep- 
 lessness, is now telling upon her delicate organization. 
 Was it indeed only last night she lay awake waiting for 
 dawn? Was it only yesterday that Lady Bouverie spoke 
 to her; or was it a year ago since first she heard that she 
 was was 
 
 She shrinks back into her seat, and her lips grow deadly 
 white. Oh, no, not that! She will not think of that! 
 It is all over now and done. Nothing can undo it. Why 
 torture one's-self with memories that serve only to crush 
 and kill the already broken spirit? 
 
 She rouses herself and looks out of the open window 
 upon the sameness of the green fields as they fly past her 
 aching eyes, clad in their summer verdure. The growing 
 desire to leave this terrible inactivity presses sorely upon 
 her; the compulsory quietude of it becomes an agony at 
 last. Oh to leave it! When will the next station be 
 reached? 
 
 She feels no anxiety about quitting the train, and thus 
 finding herself on soil strange to her. She will meet some 
 woman so run her unspoiled thoughts some kind 
 woman who will befriend her and tell her where to go, 
 and who may perchance offer her employment. Up to 
 this she has found all the world kind; and why should it 
 Hot be the same now? No one in all her short sweet life 
 has given her so much as a chilling glance or a cruel 
 word, except Lady Bouverie. She shivers, as though 
 stricken with mortal cold, as she remembers her, and lays 
 her head back wearily against the cushions. 
 
 With a slackening of speed the train steams into the 
 station a little insignificant "pick-me-up " of a place, 
 hardly worthy of notice, but pretty nevertheless because 
 of the gay creepers that cover the gray walls of it, and the 
 red pots containing redder geraniums which stand upon 
 the sills of the waiting-room.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 247 
 
 Dolorea, without any hesitation, steps on to the plat- 
 form. It is a spot where very few alight, except on cer- 
 tain occasions; and presently the train rushes away again, 
 leaving her behind. 
 
 Bewildered, she looks round her. Not a living soul 
 save herself is on the platform. For the first time she 
 feels the hideousness of being alone. Fear seizes upon 
 her. How terrible it is to be in this strange place, not 
 knowing whither to turn. 
 
 A man, advancing toward her, accosts her very civilly; 
 but, still possessed by this new fear, she steps back, makes 
 him some little cold, indistinct rejoinder, and moves away 
 from him; then, appalled by the uncertainty that lies 
 before her, and knowing how hopeless a thing it will be 
 to set out upon her adventure without advice of some 
 kind, she tarns back to him, and asks timidly where the 
 nearest town may lie. 
 
 " The village is just here," he tells her, with a bend of 
 his thumb in the meant direction; but, seeing that such 
 news is not desired by her, he widens his information. 
 "If you mean Dorminster," he says, leisurely, alluding 
 to the largest town nearest to him, " it is about five miles 
 from here; and there's the road to it yonder." 
 
 He points, as he speaks, to a dusty line that spreads 
 eastward and travels ever onward, until far away it looks 
 like a pale ribbon dividing the green fields on either 
 hand. 
 
 Thanking him softly, Dolores leaves him, and is soon 
 lost to sight behind a curve on the dry road. 
 
 A long road! Dolores, spent and weary by her night's 
 vigil, toils over it bravely, whilst feeling, without 
 acknowledging it, the fatigue that already is growing too 
 much for her. There had been, beside the sleeplessness, 
 that terrible walk in the morning to catch the train, 
 accompanied by scathing recollections crueler than death. 
 
 She has passed upon the road a cottage or two, but has 
 felt no inclination, though by now very footsore and sad 
 at heart, to entreat the hospitality of their inmates. 
 Were ever five miles before so heavy a task to be accom- 
 plished? Her feet are aching; through her thin shoes 
 the sharp stones cut; each step grows painful. It is now 
 past noon, and she has had no breakfast, but this last 
 thought does not distress her; she feels no desire for food
 
 248 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 of any kind, only a longing to go further, ever further, 
 and lose herself in the bustling unconcern of some large 
 town. 
 
 But now her strength gives way a little, and, seeing a 
 small, ivy-covered cottage on her right hand, a few yards 
 in advance of her, she timidly makes up her mind to dravr 
 nigh to it and ask for permission to rest awhile. 
 
 Coming to the door of this small oasis in her wilder- 
 ness, and finding it open, she crosses the threshold, and 
 there stands looking irresolutely to her left. 
 
 She can see a kitchen, a blazing fire, and near it some 
 one who is plainly the good wife of the house moving 
 to and fro. 
 
 " May I come in?" asks Dolores at last, in her low soft 
 voice. 
 
 The woman turns. 
 
 "Just fci a little moment," says Dolores hurriedly, 
 tears in her voice. " I am so tired!" 
 
 " Why, surely, yes, miss!" answers the woman, regard- 
 ing her with intense surprise and a good deal of honest 
 kindness. "Come in, dear." She gazes with strong 
 curiosity, oddly mingled with admiration, at the dainty 
 little stranger with the pale sad face. " Sit you down," 
 she says heartily, "and find rest for yourself awhile." 
 
 " Find rest!" repeats Dolores dreamily. She looks at 
 the woman absently, as though her thoughts had flown 
 away from her, leaving only her body behind. She sighs 
 heavily. 
 
 "Ay, dear, rest!" says the woman gently. "I think 
 you had better come into the parlor; it is cooler there." 
 
 She takes the girl's languid hand within her own and 
 leads her into a carpeted apartment made gay with crim- 
 son moreen curtains and decorated profusely with the 
 orthodox bead-work and many- tinted shells. This room 
 is evidently the pride of the good woman's existence, and 
 it is with an ill-concealed pleasure she ushars her unex- 
 pected guest into it. 
 
 Dolores, sinking into a chair, draws a long breath of 
 extreme exhaustion. 
 
 "Eh, but you are done up!" says her hostess 
 passionately. "Come a long way, perhaps?" 
 " A long, long way!" murmurs Dolores, 
 she a Machiavelli in petticoats, she
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 24t 
 
 laid nothing more calculated to mislead the mind of her 
 interrogator. To that stalwart dame the five miles more 
 or less the girl has traveled would seem as a mere nothing. 
 " A long, long way " and uttered so pathetically must 
 mean a day's journey at the very least. And a day's 
 journey it has seemed indeed to poor Dolores. 
 
 Her face is haggard; already the ravages of excitement 
 and grievous recollection have made their marks upon it. 
 Her eyes, grown delicately large and dark, look out with 
 a singular incongruity from the pallor of their surround- 
 ings. Beneath them lie like shadows fatigue-lines tinted 
 with palest purple. Something in her whole mournful 
 appearance appeals powerfully to the woman's heart. 
 
 She notes the traces of gentle breeding in the girl's air, 
 and marks, when the light ulster opens at the end, where 
 the pretty costly white dress peeps out. She is not insen- 
 sible either to the soft frills of Mechlin lace that cling to 
 the rounded throat and fall over the slight wrists; the 
 little ten-buttoned gloves are in themselves a revelation. 
 
 " If you have run away from home, dear," she says, 
 bluntly, but with evident kindly intent, glancing reflect- 
 ively at the blanched cheeks and darkened lids before her, 
 " why not go back? If they have been angry with you " 
 
 " No one has been angry," interrupts Dolores, hur- 
 riedly. 
 
 "Eh, now!" says the woman, regarding her keenly. 
 " And yet something tells me you are not altogether as 
 happy as you might be." 
 
 "Ah, that is true, indeed!" cries Dolores, with a sud- 
 den passionate agreement, covering her face with her 
 hands. " But I do entreat you," she murmurs, brokenly, 
 " to ask me no questions." 
 
 " I will not," says the woman, hastily. " Keep your 
 secret, my dear, whatever it be. There's no great harm 
 in it, I warrant! And now what shall I give you? A cup 
 o' milk and some bread and butter? 'Tis handy to me; 
 and I can see you are main tired and badly in want of 
 food." 
 
 " I am not hungry," declares Dolores, very truthfully. 
 
 " Then you onght to be. I'm thinking 'tis a long hour 
 since last you broke bread. What would you say to a 
 beaten egg now with a drop o' brandy in it?" asks this 
 good Samaritan, with %uite an insinuating air. " My
 
 250 DICK'S SWEETHEAKT. 
 
 John he do say as how a beaten egg and brandy is the 
 finest cure known for all the woes o' the world. Have it 
 do 'e now, dear!" 
 
 " No, no; I will not trouble you," says Dolores, gently. 
 " See how good you have been to me already!" 
 
 "Tut, my dear! Let me now do something really for 
 you," entreats her hostess earnestly. 
 
 " If you will then," says Dolores timidly, blushing 
 warmly "if you will be so very kind, let me bathe my 
 feet; they ache so!" Her voice quivers slightly. " The 
 road was very hard," she goes on tremulously, raising 
 pathetic eyes to the face of her new friend, " and my 
 shoes, I think, are very thin though I never found that 
 out until to-day. A little water is all I want. I shall 
 give you no further trouble, I" eagerly "can bathe 
 them myself." 
 
 The very anxiety with which she says this would prove 
 to the dullest observer that such a task will be new to her. 
 Her hostess laughs the idea to scorn. 
 
 "Indeed as if I should let you, miss!" she says. 
 "You just lie back in that easy-chair and wait until I 
 come to you again." 
 
 She leaves the room on the instant, and presently re- 
 turns, bearing in both her hands a huge bowl of tepid 
 water. Depositing tkis upon the floor, she departs again, 
 only to reappear this time with a small tray on which lie 
 a plate of bread and butter and a tumbler half filled with 
 some opaque compound. 
 
 "Now, just to please me, you'll drink this," she says 
 coaxingly. 
 
 Dolores' eyes fill with tears. She leans toward her 
 hostess. 
 
 " Have you a daughter?" she asks, irrelevantly as it 
 seems; but her train of thought is followed by the good 
 woman of the house. 
 
 " One, miss; but she's away from me most of her time. 
 She's a very likely girl is my Susan, and as good as her 
 looks. She's clever enough too, and engaged to as decent 
 a young fellow as ever stepped in shoe-leather." 
 
 " She has a lover?" asks Dolores involuntarily, with a 
 Sadden false brightness. 
 
 Jn a moment the deceitful elow fades; the swift pain-
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 251 
 
 fnl flash that has dyed her cheeks, now ebbing, leares her 
 only one degree ghastlier than she was before. Alas for 
 her own lover! Where is lie now of what thinking? 
 She checks by a supreme effort the sob that rises in her 
 throat, and tries to listen to the answer to the question. 
 
 " A lover indeed!" says the mother, with a pardonable 
 pride she is kneeling before Dolores, and, being in the 
 act of untying her silken shoe-string, is blind to the agony 
 in the young face above her. " Such a deal as he thinks 
 o' my Susan!" she says. " But the fact is, miss, they're 
 too poor to marry until he has a certain sum in hand. 
 He can rent a farm well enough, but he must have money 
 to stock it, you see. So our Susan she said as how she'd go 
 into service a bit and save her wages and that. And he 
 said he'd work himself to skin and bone until the sum 
 was made up. It seems as how he's going to serve for 
 his Rachel, too, miss, don't it?" 
 
 "Is it much the money, I mean?" asks Dolores. She 
 has recovered herself during the good woman's speech 
 and now feels sufficiently interested in this honest love 
 affair to wish to hear somewhat more of it. To her it 
 seems strangely horrible that mere money should be the 
 means of parting two true lovers. Money! What a bag- 
 atelle it sounds! What an easily surmountable difficulty 
 it seems when one thinks on the other things such cruel 
 things that no power on earth can overcome! 
 
 "Two hundred pounds," says her hostess, sadly. 
 "Eh, but it do sound so big a loomp! I doubt but my 
 Snsan will be many a year older before she is Mrs. Joe 
 Easier now, dear eh?" 
 
 She has drawn off the thin shoes and the silk stockings 
 some time since, and is now busied in bathing with all a 
 mother's tenderness the little white bruised feet. 
 
 " The water feels like satin," says Dolores gratefully. 
 " Oh, the relief of it! What a kind, kind woman you 
 are! I wish your Susan had that two hundred pounds. 
 Perhaps" slowly "she may some day." 
 
 "Oh, some day, yes!" returns the woman, with gentle 
 cheerfulness. "In the meantime she must only work 
 and hope. Hope is a great strengthener. Well, and 
 have you taken that drink of John's? Ah, that's goo(J 
 now! And, if you must, as you say, set out again, why, 
 it will do you a world o' good! And where be you bound
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 for, miss, if" smiling "I be not asking a cross-ques- 
 tion?" 
 
 " For Dorminster," says Dolores. "I must, I think, 
 be near it now, because, when I asked the man at the sta- 
 tion, lie said it was only five miles away, and I have been 
 walking for many hours." 
 
 " Dorminster! Dear heart alive, what has brought you 
 this way? " exclaims the woman, uplifting her arms in 
 consternation. "Why, you be ten miles from it nowl 
 You must have come the wrong way!" 
 
 "Ten miles!" repeats Dolores faintly. "How could 
 I have come the wrong way? He pointed it out to me." 
 
 Then all at once she remembers how she came to a cross 
 where four roads joined, and was not sure of her turning. 
 Doubtless, in her ignorance, she took the wrong one. 
 
 Oh, it is too cruel! But she will not give in. She is 
 vet too near her home. She must go on, on, until all 
 trace of her is lost. 
 
 " Would no other town do you for the night? " asks the 
 woman, with sagacious concern; she has secretly clung to 
 her first wise belief in the fact of the girl's having run 
 away from home. 
 
 "Is there one nearer than Dorminster?" asks Dolores 
 anxiously. 
 
 " There is Thurston; it is but six miles from this if you 
 take the northern road." 
 
 " I had better go there," says Dolores, in a low voice. 
 
 The thought of the six miles lying before her, to follow 
 OP- the five miles lying behind, quite overcomes her. She, 
 who has never been accustomed to hardship of any kind, 
 to be now compelled to trudge along the lonely road 
 alone! She smothers her fear however, and, with a 
 bravery strange as it is pathetic, looks up at her hostess 
 with a faint smile. 
 
 "Come with me to the door," she says, "and point out 
 to me the direction in which Thurston lies." 
 
 The woman, accompanying her to the threshold, gives 
 her full directions as to her route. 
 
 " But ask as you go along," she says gravely, " that no 
 mistake be made a second time. And, if you grow too 
 tired, my dear, why, come back to me, and you shall have 
 a bed here, though no doubt a rough onel""
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 25S 
 
 Dolores, turning to her suddenly, throws her arms 
 around her neck, and kisses her warmly. 
 
 " Good-bye," she whispers softly; "I shall never forget 
 you never! And some day I think I know we shall 
 meet again!" 
 
 She loosens her embrace and goes from her quickly. 
 Without so much as one backward glance, she disappears 
 up the hot and dusty road. 
 
 "Poor little heart!" says the woman, watching her as 
 far as the bend in the road which presently must hide her 
 altogether there is an honest anxiety in her tone. 
 
 Just at the very last Dolores turns and waves her hand, 
 
 " God grant she come to naught but good!" says the 
 woman, fervently, returning that last adieu with a strong 
 pang of regretful uneasiness at her heart. "But whre 
 be her friends where?" 
 
 Another moment, and Dolores is out of sight. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 IT is seven hours later and Dolores is still walking along 
 the lonely highway. But not now is her step light and 
 impatient as it was in the early morn. It is slow and 
 languid, and as the step of one who has given house-room 
 to despair. 
 
 Where is she now how far advanced toward her jour- 
 ney's end? Alas, she knows not at this moment where 
 her journey's end may be! She has lost her way, and is 
 walking onward mechanically, stupefied in mind and 
 worn out in soul i:r,d body. 
 
 Not that she has been actually moving all this time. 
 Some hours ago, conquered by a desire for rest, she 
 turned aside into an adjoining field, and, overpowered by 
 weakness, crept under the shelter of a friendly haycock 
 and sunk into a slumber unsatisfying, fretful, and broken 
 by cruel dreamings. 
 
 Unrefreshed, she arose from this but half-unconscious 
 sleep to find the day far spent and noontide merging into 
 night. Twilight darkened the air, and a faint dull mist 
 springing from a watery marsh far down below in the hol- 
 low was rendering even more desolate the unutterable 
 melancholy of the dying light, . It burdened the very
 
 254 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 passing breeze, which yet was heavj with an intolerable 
 heat. But on on! Her early watchword clung to her 
 then, echoing in her ears and urging her to further dar- 
 ing. Springing to her feet, she stepped out again upon 
 the thirsty road, but indifferently touched by the soft 
 mist, and looked eagerly around her. 
 
 Here, too, the roads joined. A sense of confusion filled 
 her tired brain. No one was in sight, no help near. 
 Miserable, purposeless, she took the nearest way, almost 
 unconsciously, and toiled with heavy footsteps and forlorn 
 hope along the isolated road. 
 
 And now how her head aches, how weary are her limbs! 
 She will seek the very next cottage, and, in spite of her hor- 
 ror of being questioned a horror that has kept her aloof 
 from every house since she quitted that, first kind soul 
 who had so well accepted her will crave from the owners 
 of it a night's shelter. 
 
 With stumbling steps and quickened breath and poor, 
 sad eyes, half blinded by dust and drifting mist, she fights 
 her way onward. She is almost at the end of every hope, 
 when at last a small, ugly dwelling upon the wayside 
 looms in sight. She hastens toward it as fast as her tired 
 feet can carry her. Whilst yet some little way from it, 
 angry voices rising on the clouded air come to her. Reach- 
 ing the rustic gate that guards it from the road, she 
 glances nervously through it, and sees, a few yards from 
 where she stands, a large, angry-looking woman. 
 
 She is larger than anything in female shape as yet 
 imagined by Dolores. She is standing very upright, with 
 her head thrown well back, and is brandishing in her 
 right hand a huge broom. The other hand is fixed, as if 
 immovably, upon her hip. She is scolding with might 
 ^nd main, and without the faintest intermission, a stolid- 
 looking girl, who gives one the impression of being accus- 
 tomed to this sort of thing ever since she saw the light, 
 and who is leisurely shaking the dust from a small strip 
 of carpet as she listens, or is supposed to be listening. 
 
 There is an indifference about this girl's face and entire 
 bearing that might have made her a study to Dolores at 
 another time. Now she is to6 filled with fear and nervous 
 anxiety to note aught but the angry woman and the sug' 
 gestive broomstick. Some little motion on her part makes 
 the woman turn toward her.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 256 
 
 "Will you " begins Dolores, desperately; then the re- 
 quest, for a night's rest dies upon her lips. How could 
 she find rest here? " M;iy I," she murmurs, faintly, 
 " have a glass of water? It is so hot I am so " 
 
 "No! Get you gone!" shrieks the woman furiously, 
 with an oath. " I have had enough to do with idle hus* 
 sies lately to spare time for tramps!" 
 
 Dolores, though hardly comprehending the words, 
 shrinks backward; a cold chill strikes to her heart. She 
 sways a little, as though some unexpected blow had been 
 dealt her, and then, with a fictitious strength born of 
 acute fear, she flies the spot. On, on! 
 
 A deadly languor is creeping over her; with a wild 
 energy she battles with it, but all in vain. Her wearied 
 feet almost refuse to move, her hands, hanging limply by 
 her side, have lost all feeling. This strange sensation 
 threatens every moment to overpower her, to drag her to 
 the dust. And still she creeps onward through the fast 
 deepening twilight, faintly, uncertainly, as one might in 
 a strange dream. 
 
 Oh, if Dick could only see his darling now, with hei 
 drooping head and pale dejected face and lips full of 
 earth's keenest misery! Her eyes are dull and lowered; 
 for some time she has forgotten to raise them from the 
 ground; her pretty white gown is soiled and draggled. In 
 one dainty shoe a large rent is visible; already the stones 
 hurt the fender foot it holds. From her parted lips comes 
 a sighing sound, weak and low, that might be born of one 
 who is enduring mortal pain the pain of a broken heart. 
 All this long day she has been haunted by miserable 
 thought. It is the only thing she has had to accompany 
 her upon her weary way. 
 
 Night is descending fast; the shadows have caught her. 
 And now at last, when hope is at an end, her vision fails 
 her too. Every nerve quivers, and her sight begins to 
 play her fantastic tricks. A common bush rising between 
 her and the lowering sky sends a horrible fear into her 
 inmost soul. She shudders and comes to a standstill und 
 cowers before it, so large it seems to rise against the dull 
 horizon, so fantastically shaped is it to her distorted fancy. 
 
 She drops back step by step into the darker seclusion, 
 of the high grassy bank that guards her side of the road, 
 and stands there trembling. Then all at once, as it were,
 
 256 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 her vision clears, and this terrible apparition resolves itseir 
 into a mild elderbush, out of which peep two pule dog- 
 roses. Did she mistake them for the eyes of some resent- 
 ful monster? 
 
 She rouses herself and again presses forward. Her tirec. 
 feet almost refuse to obey her. Again that curious dim- 
 ness oppresses her, blotting out the landscape and casting 
 an opaque veil over the nearest objects. 
 
 The wonderful courage that has sustained her all througk 
 does not desert her now; but it has sunk into a dormant 
 state, heavy of rousing. 
 
 " Oh that I might find some resting-place!" she mur- 
 murs to herself faintly. " Only a little place to 
 
 Something has met her with a sudden violence. She 
 staggers back weakly, and puts out her hands with a sen- 
 sitive haste, as though to ward off the approach of this 
 new enemy. Her hands come in contact with a stone 
 wall. 
 
 At this discovery she breaks into an hysterical laugh, 
 and asks herself half humorously why the wall should 
 have chosen to arise from its place and advance upon her 
 of all people a foe so unworthy of his strength! This 
 strained mirth of hers is sadder than all tears. Her smile 
 is wan and melancholy. At this moment it occurs to her 
 with a cruel distinctness that she would be glad if she 
 might only cry. But such a luxury as tears is denied 
 her. 
 
 Once more she continues her way, this time with her 
 hand against the aggressive wall, as though seeking its 
 support. How weak she has grown how dependent! 
 Again that terrible growing unconsciousness attacks her, 
 and again she overcomes it; but each victory leaves her 
 weaker than before. 
 
 Is she to meet and battle with death here on the broad 
 highway, in the very heart of rnild and happy summer? 
 It would be more picturesque, she tells herself, with a last 
 return of the old girlish gayety that was hers when? 
 How many years ago? 
 
 She sighs heavily. The wall coming suddenly to an end, 
 *he finds herself before a small graveled entrance, with a 
 small iron gate before it, and a small avenue beyond. At 
 the end of this avenue, a pretty house, ivy-clad, may be 
 seen, small, too, but exquisitely kept, with trailing roses
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 257 
 
 covering it, and the green shoots of an early Virginian 
 creeper just showing themselves, which later on will blos- 
 som into vivid hues of orange and crimson; and at the 
 sides a purple jacmana just bursting into flower. 
 
 An ideal cottage, kindly, hospitable! Dolores, faint 
 in body and sick at heart and bereft of all hope, clings 
 tremblingly to the iron railings of the gate, and longs pas- 
 sionately for the rest and calm that lie beyond it; but the 
 memory of her last cruel repulse still lives with her, and, 
 in spite of the failing consciousness that bids her stay, she 
 shudders and turns aside. But Nature, the all-powerful, 
 stronger than pride, greater than sensibility, the mother of 
 all, now asserts herself. She cries aloud for succor for this 
 sad child of hers. Doloree, obeying her mandate, comes 
 back, and, by a sudden impulse, lifts up the latch of the 
 gate, und goes mechanically down the tiny avenue. As if 
 in a dream she goes, and presently finds herself standing 
 beneath the rose-crowned portico of the house. 
 
 The door is open to admit the warm summer breeze. 
 Across the hall a woman is passing leisurely a short stout 
 woman of the housekeeper type, with a back generously 
 broad. 
 
 She neither hears nor sees Dolores; the light steps of the 
 forlorn little wayfarer have not reached her ears. Dolores, 
 laying one hand upon the lintel of the door, raises the other 
 and holds it out imploringly to the departing figure of the 
 woman. Alas, her back is turned and she can not see! 
 Swiftly, swiftly she goes from her! Another moment, and 
 she will have turned the corner, and Dolores' last chance 
 will be gone! 
 
 Tightly clinching her hands, the poor child tries des- 
 perately to give utterance to the words burning within her, 
 only to find that she can not. Something terrible has hap- 
 pened to her! She can not speak! Her voice is dumb 
 dead! At the very last moment it has failed her! A pro- 
 longed nightmare of horror and misery and fatigue has 
 rendered her mute. 
 
 She struggles with her failing powers; an agonized ex- 
 pression convulses her face. Her last hope is escaping her, 
 yet she can not call aloud to it to stay! She shivers from 
 head to foot. Another instant, and this unknown woman 
 who yet is human, and may perhaps be her savior will 
 have turned the corner and disappeared. She can not gee
 
 258 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 the trembling hand outstretched or note the pitifulness of 
 the face. Deliberately ignorant of the pain that lies be- 
 hind her, the housekeeper continues her way, humming a 
 simple ditty as she goes. 
 
 Dolores, desperate, makes one last violent effort to 
 overcome herself. A cry breaks from her, low and bitter 
 exceedingly; the woman, startled, turns. 
 
 " One moment!" cries Dolores hoarsely, holding out 
 both her hands to her now. " One!" 
 
 That strange clond is again enveloping her; she seems 
 ver falling, falling; and her voice how strange it 
 sounds! Is it her own voice? 
 
 " Help me!" she whispers faintly. 
 
 " Bless me!" exclaims the woman in a frightened tone. 
 
 She flings aside the feather duster she has been carry- 
 ing, and rushes toward the girl with arms nervously ex- 
 tended. Another instant, and Dolores has sunk into 
 
 them, exhausted, insensible. 
 
 ******* 
 
 It is a week later; six whole days have grown and 
 shrunk and died before men's gaze since first the terrible 
 sense of loss unspeakable, the knowledge of desolation, 
 fell with a crushing violence upon Miss Maturin and Bou- 
 verie. She has gone from them the one they loved gone 
 forever! Already their belief in her possible recovery 
 grows languid; hope is almost at an end. 
 
 First there had been an incredulous amazement when 
 her room was found vacant, and the hours came and went 
 without bringing a sign from her who filled all their 
 thoughts to overflowing. The little lace-edged bed had 
 not been slept in that they knew at once; the satin 
 coverlet of palest blue was stretched out calmly, un- 
 wrinkled by lightest touch; her hat and cloak were miss- 
 ing. But all this was as nothing. She had probably 
 passed a sleepless night, torn by distressful thought, and 
 had gone out of the house in the early morning to clear 
 her sad brain and refresh her tired spirit with the sweet 
 satisfying dew. She would return presently and explain, 
 and be happier doubtless for her slow night's communing, 
 and stronger to bear up beneath this ill that had fallen 
 upon her. 
 
 But she did not return; and, when morn had worn 
 into afternoon, and that again had given place to signs
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 259 
 
 of coming night, great fear smote upon Miss Maturin's 
 heart. 
 
 " kind, kind Being who rulest over all, subdue and 
 kill this torturing fear, and grant that her sweet body 
 till holds within it the life we know and prize!" So she 
 prayed. 
 
 Again her room was searched, in the hope that it might 
 afford some clew to her disappearance; but even the ortho- 
 dox few words always to be found upon the dressing- table 
 of the newly flown were absent here, and there was liter- 
 ally nothing to give the mind food for further search. 
 The servants, only a degree less interested than the prin- 
 cipals in this sad drama, went about softly on tiptoe, 
 whispering to each other at unfrequented turns in the 
 many corridors, with faces pale and sympathetic. 
 
 As night fell upon that terrible day that rose upon 
 Dolores' flight, Miss Maturin grew distracted. But 
 Bouverie, who had not left her all day, except to wander 
 wildly through the woods and such quaint spots as had 
 drawn Dolores toward them in her careless wanderings by 
 stream and lawn, still professed himself almost passion- 
 ately certain of her return. 
 
 But, as the dying hours waned and faded, and still no 
 tidings of her reached them, Bouverie too became half 
 maddened, and, rushing forth, penetrated far into the 
 dense woodlands, seeking her who he could not yet be- 
 lieve had finally deserted him. 
 
 The morning light saw him at the railway-station; but 
 the clerk at the ticket-office could tell him nothing. He 
 had been absent yesterday, unavoidably detained by ill- 
 ness, and the young man who had filled his place was now 
 many miles away, returned to his own post. He was not 
 much of a young man no perspicuity, no nothing so he 
 ran on. 
 
 But Bonverie cared for none of these things; he thought 
 only of what was next to be done. Could the young man 
 be telegraphed for? Certainly. He was telegraphed for, 
 but could not come until the next day; so that a whole 
 Taluable twenty-four hours was lost. 
 
 But when he did come he knew something. Yes, he 
 remembered the young lady perfectly well a young li\dy 
 with a gray ulster and a face as white as death. She was 
 small short he called it with very fair hair. She seemed
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 quite composed when asking for her ticket, but sail-like, 
 and she 
 
 For what place had she taken her t'cket? For London. 
 Oh, yes, there could be no doubt about that! He remem. 
 bered it as clearly as though she took it only an hour ago. 
 He had wondered a good deal at the the time about the 
 fact of a young lady starting for town at such an hour. 
 But she was evidently a swell, and swells are forever doing 
 something "contrary," and are not therefore to be won- 
 dered at at all. 
 
 Would he know her again? Why, surely, yes, unless 
 his eyes played him false! Being shown a photograph of 
 Dolores, he at once declared it was " herself, and no mis- 
 take," the young lady in the gray ulster with the sad facet 
 When he had said this, Bouverie had fallen back a bit. 
 She was alive then! Alive! He drew a deep breath, and 
 grew even a shade pale. Emotion overcame him. A 
 woman in the same circumstance would have burst into 
 tears. But such poor comfort was denied him. To know 
 even this however, that she still lived, although parted from 
 them, it was a most blessed relief. What horrible thoughts 
 had been his during those past interminable hours, he never 
 divulged to any man. 
 
 And now his search for Dolores was begun in earnest. 
 Even the vastness and vagueness of the field of labor 
 did not dishearten him. London, that huge reservoir for 
 all sorts and conditions of men, how should he find her 
 there? 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 DAT after day passes, and still there is no result. It 
 is now the seventh day since Dolores' flight, and, tired 
 and worn both in body and spirit, Bouverie enters the 
 drawing-room at Greylands. He has returned from a 
 second unsuccessful search in London, and feels despond- 
 ency making its prey of him as he sinks heavily into a 
 chair. "No news again?" says Miss Maturin, rising un- 
 consciously from her seat. There is no expectancy in her 
 voice, only a mute protest against the evilness of her fate. 
 
 She looks old and thoroughly broken down. No one 
 but he or she who has undergone it can fully appreciate 
 the absolute horror of inactive suspense, the wearing
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 261 
 
 iety, the enforced quietude, the turmoil of flying thoughts 
 linked to the trembling body so eager for pursuit, yet so 
 cruelly compelled to be inert. 
 
 All this Miss Maturin has learned to endure; but the 
 study of it has told upon hor. Whilst Bouverie has been 
 hurrying hither and thither with wild and restless persis- 
 tency, she has had to sit impatiently at home waiting for 
 what may never come, watching each day fading into 
 night, each night brightening into day, without bringing 
 her any hope. If she too were to quit Greylands and en- 
 ter on the search, how would the end be? What if the 
 child should return in her absence, and find no one there 
 to receive or welcome her? 
 
 Detectives have been employed nay, are still and will 
 be ever employed, until such time as hope shall be proved 
 to be without foundation. They have been singularly 
 kind and sympathetic, touched no doubt by the genuine 
 grief of those who have employed them. They have now 
 and then even held out hopes; but London certainly was 
 troublesome, deep very deep. No knowing what dodge 
 the party might be up to when the lair was London! 
 Eventually no doubt they would come upon her tracks; 
 but the field was wide. It was an artful thought. Still 
 there was hope, et ccetera. It was poor comfort, and the 
 word "artful " went to Miss Maturin's soul. 
 
 She advances now toward Bouverie, looking jaded and 
 heart sick. His tale is soon told a very barren one. No 
 comfort is in it; as regards hope it is poverty-stricken in 
 the extreme. 
 
 " I bring you nothing, you see," he suys at last, fling- 
 ing out his arms with a certain recklessness. " You 
 should get somebody else to help you. I am evidently 
 out of luck. All my love for her does not bring me one 
 jot nearer to her; I am beginning to despair." 
 
 " Oh, not that, Dick!" she entreats feverishly. If 
 you do that, what is left to me?" It is a tacit acknowl- 
 edgment that despair has been hers long since. " In your 
 belief I live, and " passionately " there still is hope 
 there must be!" 
 
 "Where then," demands he half irritably "in what 
 direction does it lie? Seven whole days, and neither 
 word nor sign from her! Gun it be that she would will- 
 fully condemn us to the torture of misery we are endur-
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEABT. 
 
 ing? If it be proved so, I shall know that the girl I called 
 Dolores never existed." 
 
 " Do not wrong herl" exclaims Miss Maturin, sinking 
 as if from a blow. " Not now when we know so little! 
 Afterward" she pauses, and her hands involuntarily 
 meet and clasp each other " afterward," she says, in a 
 sinking tone, "you may regret it." 
 
 " I do not wrong, I do not blame her," says the young 
 man, hastily. *' As you say, we know so little. ]lut to 
 live, and let us suffer like this, seems n 
 
 " Ay, if she lives," murmurs Miss Maturin. 
 
 The agony in her face is so vivid that it startles him; 
 it angers him, the more terrible in that her awful insinu- 
 ation seems to give life and reality to the haunting dread 
 that has been consuming his own soul all these past 
 dreary days and hours. In the sudden, horrible fear that 
 now seizes him, he lets his ungovernable rage against fate 
 turn upon her. 
 
 ''If'?" he repeats, with a frowning vehemence that 
 would be abominable if it were not so sadly miserable; 
 t jf >j>> Why should there be a doubt thrown upon it? 
 Of course she lives. It only wants time to find her time 
 and patience nothing more." 
 
 "We shall never find her," says Miss Maturin, a 
 curious monotony in her tone, turning her haggard eyes 
 to his '* never; she is dead I" She raises her hand in a 
 somewhat aimless fashion to her forehead, and lets it fall 
 again. " Deadl" she repeats; and then her tone grows 
 harper. "Oh, my little one," she cries aloud, "my 
 pretty child, my little, gentle, pretty girl!" 
 
 " She is not deadl" exclaims Bouverie, fiercely. Rising 
 to his feet, as though it were impossible to him longer to 
 sit still, he begins, with rapid strides, to pace the room. 
 " How can yon let such a thought pass your lips? There 
 is no truth in it. To lose hope even the last shred of 
 it is to lose all. Life then would cease to be a possi- 
 bility. It was absurd, my speaking of despair just now. 
 There shall be no such word for me." His short-lived 
 courage dies, and his tone changes. "It is this cruel 
 inaction that is so terriblel" he criee presently. "I wish 
 I had not left town, but I knew you would be craving to 
 lew me. I would I were back again to those full but 
 Mtndleas street*., walking up and down, up and down, ad
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 263 
 
 ft were, forever! In the very moving hope seemed to 
 Ve. Morning, noon and night I trod those hot pave- 
 ments, looking for her, and waiting for news from the 
 detectives, until every wretched stone in the neighborhood 
 eema burned into my brain I" 
 
 Coming to a stand-still before the mantel-piece, he leant 
 Bpon it, and lets his face fall forward upon his arms. 
 
 "Dick!" says Miss Maturin, anxiously, unnerved by hit 
 ludden break-down. Then all at once her own fortitude 
 forsakes her, and she bursts into tears. 
 
 It is all so miserable. Is the child senseless or cruel to 
 leave them to suffer untold torments thus; or is it, as she 
 truly believes, that she has passed beyond the world's ken, 
 its love, its censure, for evermore? Is she now lying 
 quietly within her grave arms folded upon the marble 
 breast, and sunny hair all dull and fading? 
 
 A sharp exclamation breaks from her. 
 
 " Oh, Dick! Oh! the sweet smile of her!" she cries 
 out, trembling and paling. '* I see her now before me as 
 he used to be in her little white frock, and with her 
 gentle pensive expression and her loving eyes. No, no, 
 no; I tell you, were she living, her tender heart would 
 hold her back from inflicting this pain upon us! She 
 would have written. There would have been some kindly 
 word, however vague. But there is nothing. She is 
 dead, I tell you, dead!" 
 
 " If she were, I should know it," says Bouverie, coldly, 
 growing, however, ghastly pale. " With my mind fixed 
 eo immovably upon her, it is impossible but that I should 
 feel some sense of irretrievable loss as her spirit fled from 
 earth to heaven. And I have felt nothing yet but the 
 Bame old uniform misery. No; she is hidden away some- 
 where in that great Babylon of ours, alone, friendless, 
 perhaps, but living." Then he turns suddenly, and forcei 
 himself to meet Miss Maturin's eyes. " What what 
 money had she?" asks he, suddenly, compelling the hate- 
 ful question to pass his white lips. 
 
 Dear Heaven, to picture her to himself without money 
 in those crowded garish streets! To what indignities 
 might she not have been subjected! What soiling winds 
 must have rushed past her pure white soul! He sets hit 
 teeth hard, and a strong shudder shakes him. 
 
 "She could not hY had *UW returns Miss Ma-
 
 64 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 turin, wretchedly. " Whenever she wanted money, she 
 asked for it and got it; but she was such a simple child 
 that her wants were few, and, as for her gowns, when 
 she chose them, I paid for them. She hated bills, she 
 used to say; and all indeed she ever wanted a check for 
 was to help some poor soul out of trouble or render the 
 hearts of little children glad. She had a most sweet and 
 perfect nature!" murmured Miss Maturin, a spasm cross- 
 ing her face. 
 
 I " Why do you say ' had '? What perversity it is!" crifi 
 Bouverie, with a second burst of unreasonable anger. " 1 
 tell you she still lives; this very moment,as I idle here, there 
 may be news for me!" He glances nervously at his watch. 
 "I must go," he says, impatiently, although there is still 
 quite a long hour before the next train can start. " I may 
 hear news of her; and, when she is found " turning ea- 
 gerly to Miss Maturin "let me impress this upon you 
 she must not be chidden! No unkind word, no reproach 
 however delicately veiled, must be administered to her. 
 Has she not known unhappiness enough? What are our 
 sufferings to hers?" 
 
 " Alas!" says Miss Maturin, just looking at him. 
 
 "I know what you would say," he hurries on feverish- 
 ly " that my chances of recovering her are small; yet I 
 still cling to my faith in the belief that, if she were were 
 gone from us, I should know it. She is surely alive, in 
 London somewhere " 
 
 "Is there any greater consolation in that thought?" 
 asks she, in a low voice, her head sunk upon her breast. 
 "In the long night-watches my eyes seem ever striving 
 to follow her, and sometimes I see her lying quietly with 
 folded hands within her shroud " 
 
 " Oh, no, no!" interrupts he wildly. 
 
 "And sometimes she is wandering, weary, foot- sore, 
 lost, through the dimly-lighted streets. I have seen tears 
 falling from her eyes in these nightly vigils; I have seen 
 her little gentle, gracious figure sin-inking from the touch 
 of passers-by, and yet moving ever onward seeking for 
 rest and peace, one white pure spot on the dark ground 
 of the picture. I think I shall go mad!" murmurs Miss 
 Maturin very softly, rising suddenly to her feet and rais- 
 ing her hands to her head. 
 
 " This is no time for madness," says Dick, gently, draw-
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 265 
 
 Jng down her arms again and regarding her fixedly "for 
 work, rather, and untiring energy." 
 
 "The energy is all yours You do not comprehend 
 what it is to stay here as I do, counting the hours as they 
 pass, and wearing out my heart with gnawing anxiety. 
 Oh, the thought of that gaudy town, with its glare and 
 its false glitter, and my little tender girl wandering 
 through it! Who was there to pity her, to give her shel- 
 ter? The world is hard. When I think of her" raising 
 her worn face to Bouverie "as I ever do, first finding 
 herself alone in that cruel town, when I see the dawning 
 terror on her young face, I tell you I " 
 
 "Don't!" interrupts Bouverie, sharply. "Are we not 
 already bad enough without such imaginings as those? 
 I can not endure them. I too have felt maddened when 
 I thought of her alone there!" He draws his breath 
 with difficulty. "Surely the intolerable anguish we are 
 bearing now is enough?" he says again more quietly. 
 
 " It is not!" cried Miss Maturin vehemently. "There 
 is another thing that weighs upon me; I must speak of it. 
 If she is dead, why do I live? Am I insensate, heartless, 
 that I can so easily discuss even her probable death with 
 you? "Oh,'" smiting her hands together " how is it 
 that I still draw breath, whilst she " 
 
 " She lives!" repeats Bouverie doggedly. 
 
 Miss Maturin attempts no more to contradict him; she 
 falls into a profound reverie. Presently however she 
 raises her head and looks at him. 
 
 "You are tired?" she says. 
 
 " Yes wearily deadly tired." 
 
 " Let me get you something," exclaims she, contrition 
 in her glance; " and forgive me if my mind, being so 
 cruelly occupied at times, forgets. What shall it be?" 
 
 " Brandy, then, if anything," replies he moodily. 
 
 "Oh, no, my dear, not that!" says Miss Maturin ner- 
 Tously. " Say something else anything " 
 
 " Pshaw!" "interrupts he, with a short, unmirthful 
 laugh. " Do you think I shall come to harm of that sort? 
 Nothing could affect me now nothing save news of her! 
 However, as you will some coffee then. I have touched 
 nothing since yesterday." 
 
 " Come and have something to eat, Dick," says Miss
 
 266 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 Matui-m, in a tremulous tone, an almost imploring 
 laying her fingers on his arm. 
 
 " I couldn't indeed. It is of no use asking me." 
 
 " Where did you sleep last night?" 
 
 "Nowhere," returns he, briefly. 
 
 " And all those other nights? Have you been home?** 
 
 " I have no home," says Bouverie. " Do you think I 
 could find rest beneath the roof of the woman who drove 
 her into exile? Even to see her would be more than I 
 could patiently endure. Believe me, we are better apart. 
 There was one night I was wandering by the side of Deru. 
 Lake, and Mrs. Wemyss was driving by she must hav 
 seen me from the road, I think. I can't remember now; 
 it seems all a century ago," he says, pressing his hand 
 distractedly to his forehead. " But I know she was very 
 kind. She made me get into her carriage she was re- 
 turning from some dinner somewhere; I can not recollect; 
 but she was wonderfully kind, and she made me sleep at 
 her house that night. The next morning I went up to 
 town again; but she comforted me at the time I can re- 
 member that; and she spoke so tenderly of Dolores. Yes, 
 I remember all that!" 
 
 "For the future, Dick, this is your home," says Miss 
 Maturin, " if you will take pity on a most unhappy old 
 woman. I have no one to talk to about her, except you. 
 Come to me whenever you can, and consider this house 
 your own." 
 
 "It is the only place I ever think of as home," returns 
 Dick, brokenly. " Once it was hers!" 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIIL 
 
 THB morning has lengthened into noon. Through 
 the jealously-guarded windows the garish sunlight is 
 forcing its way, in spite of blinds and curtains closely 
 drawn. 
 
 Two or three rakish little beams are frolicking upon 
 the coverlet of the sick-bed, dancing over the small lan- 
 guid hand, and nestling cozily in the short masses of the 
 su^o^ 7 hair. They are playing too upon the melancholy 
 ;ut lightly, more delicately, as though in their own 
 fft/olous fashion they understood Dolores' sorrow and 
 wouK. fain grieve with hei;
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. $67 
 
 Kow she opens her eyes. These last three weeks, in 
 which she has lain buttling with death, have been interm- 
 inably long. She has fought with the Great Victor as 
 only the young and strong can fight; and when at last she 
 woke to consciousness, it was to tell the anxious watchers 
 round her that at least there was hope a faint one. Pale 
 us a little snow-drop, she lay speechless, exhausted, rais- 
 ing to them in silent but eager inquiry great hollow eyes 
 that only served to render more emaciated the while faco 
 that held them. 
 
 " Ah, so you are awake!" says now a strong but kindly 
 Toice that seems to come from behind the curtains. A 
 face that suits the voice follows it, and looks with very 
 interested eyes upon the spent and broken little form 
 within the bed. "Well, you have had a nice long sleep, 
 and " with a scrutinizing glance " you are better yes, 
 decidedly better." 
 
 Dolores opens her lips, and turns wistfully toward her. 
 
 " No, not a word," says her new friend hurriedly. " It 
 is forbidden." Then, seeing the growing anguish on the 
 young face, she relents. " Well, get your question over 
 as quickly as you can," she says begrudgingly. " Rest is 
 the only thing allowed you not speech, believe me." 
 
 "You," says Dolores, feebly, fighting with weak mem- 
 ory " you came to me across the hall when " 
 
 " When you sunk fainting into my arms," interrupts 
 Mrs. Edgeworth, quickly. " Quite so. Goodness knows 
 how you brought yourself to such a state of weakness; but 
 never mind that. When you are stronger you can tell me 
 all about it." 
 
 " How long?" asks Dolores, vaguely. 
 
 Speech, after all, she finds is difficult to her. She 
 slowly stretches out one hand and feebly slips it into that 
 of the housekeeper. Mrs. Edgeworth, in spite of the 
 strong-mindedness written upon her broad brow, is not 
 proof against this weak entreaty. 
 
 " Since you entered this house in such dismal fashion?" 
 she replies]! cheerily. " Why, three weeks, I should say, 
 or a day more or less." 
 
 "Three weeks!" repeats Dolores, paling. " Three?" 
 
 " Yes, quite three," says Mrs. Edgeworth. "But" 
 noting the misery on the pretty emaciated face " never
 
 868 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 mind that. Soon you will be able to write to your friends 
 and tell them all about it." 
 
 She looks keenly at the girl as she says this, curiosity 
 not being unknown to her; but Dolores, with a subdued 
 cry, turns from her and hides her face amongst the laven- 
 der-scented sheets. 
 
 Two days later finds her stronger, more able to converse 
 on trying subjects. 
 
 "Who is in the house besides you?" she asks Mrs. 
 Edgeworth one morning, detaining her as she receives 
 from the housekeeper's hand the breakfast to which she 
 now begins quite to look forward. 
 
 " The master, Mr. Mildmay, for one," returns she, 
 with a smile; "for another, myself; and, for a third, Mary 
 Jane, the kitchen-maid. But she don't count, my dear, 
 as she is of no value whatsoever. And then, if you must 
 have a fourth, why, there is you," says she, giving the 
 girl a kindly tuck up in her little bed; " though perhaps 
 you didn't quite know that you belonged to us." 
 
 " All," says Dolores, tears starting to her eyes, " how 
 good you all are to me, a stranger! But but I am un- 
 happy about one thing. I have not seen Mr. Mildmay; 
 I have not thanked him for all his kindness." 
 
 " Well, you shall some day." 
 
 "You I can never thank enough in words!" goes on 
 Dolores, looking at her with clear earnest eyes. " But 
 perhaps in time you will know how grateful I am." She 
 leans her head back on the pillow and looks up at the 
 housekeeper wistfully. 
 
 " Why, bless you, child, I don't want time to tell me 
 that!" says the good woman, sitting down and cuddling 
 the little hand in true womanish fashion. " Do you think 
 I am blind? No words could be so eloquent as your pretty 
 eyes. Deary me," she says, with a quick sigh, "'tis 
 many a year since I saw those that were like them! Coma 
 now and tell me then. Do you really want to see Mr* 
 Mildmay? He has seen you often enough, I warrant," j 
 
 " Seen me?" 
 
 " Ay. Couldn't be kept from the room after his first 
 sight fell on you. And well I know the reason, poor gen- 
 tleman!" She rises from her seat, with another sigh that 
 has nothing to do with Dolores or any one of her generation. 
 '* If yoa wish to see him, dear, I will tell him so," she
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 269 
 
 gays gently, gazing down absently at the fragile figure in 
 the bed. 
 
 " To thank him," murmurs Dolores, softly. 
 
 In a little while becomes to her. The door is opened 
 with extraordinary slowness, and a tall man, bent some- 
 what, and of a very elderly aspect, creeps into the room; 
 he advances toward her on tiptoe with the nervous tread 
 of one to whom illness is unknown. 
 
 With great care he parts the heavy curtains of the 
 gaunt old four-poster, and looks down upon the pale 
 child resting on the pillows. Then all at once, as it 
 seems to Dolores, she knows that some at least of her 
 feverish dreams were realities. Not once, but many 
 times, this same worn face had gazed at her during her 
 illness. And now she recollects that ever with the sense 
 of his coming had come too a strange certainty of peace. 
 
 In those half-unconscious hours he had stolen into her 
 room, seeming to her, in her miserable incoherency, to 
 blend and make one with the motley crew that hedged 
 her in on every side and made havoc of her mind. During 
 those sickly visions he had appeared to bend over her; a 
 few words had fallen from him. Now those words come 
 back to her again; some ring clear and thoroughly dis- 
 tinct. Again she seems to be listening to them, although 
 throughout the whole of this last orthodox visit he is sin- 
 gularly silent and distrait. 
 
 "Ha, dear me! Bless my soul! Tut, tut, tut!" So 
 Mr. Mildmay used to mutter on every occasion when he 
 appeared at her bedside. The rich eloquence of these 
 remarks was never improved upon; perhas there was no 
 room for improvement. They were always the same, and 
 filled with a vivid concern that used to bring comfort in 
 some odd fashion to the little languid sufferer. The ab* 
 surd formula never altered, but it never, too, lost its 
 sweetness for her. Somebody felt for her; in that lay the 
 charm. 
 
 Now, as he leans silently over her, she can aee him 
 more clearly, can convince herself more positively of his 
 reality. He is a tall man, bent more by the scourging of 
 fate than by years a man certainly more ginned against 
 than ginning, but nevertheless bound in chains of some 
 sort. There is a weakness, a suspicion of nervous irreso- 
 luteneas about the lower jaw which strikes one
 
 270 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 but the clear large eyes are open and full of kmdlinewi. 
 About his whole aspect there is a savor of unworldliness, 
 and the air of one who for many years has withdrawn 
 himself from his fellows and found his sole companions in 
 the voiceless children of nature. 
 
 " I hear you are better," he says, at last, breaking 
 through a sudden reverie that had evidently arisen out of 
 sight of her. " The thought is a great comfort to me. I 
 felt for jou. Yes, yes." 
 
 His tone is awkward. He does not find easily the wordi 
 he would gladly use. 
 
 "Ah, Mr. Mildmay, come here!" says Dolores, with 
 some of her old impulsiveness. 
 
 She rises upon her elbow and pushes back the cretonne 
 curtains that help to shield her from the glare of the 
 afternoon sun, that she may the better look upon her host 
 with the gentle gratitude that is overfilling her. 
 
 " Come here," she says, with pretty insistence, " that 
 I may thank you properly." 
 
 " No, my dear, no! No thanks are necessary," says 
 Mr. Mildmay nervously. 
 
 Even while saying this, a curious expression crosses his 
 face, a vague wonder, a painful uncertainty that renders 
 him mute. He had a rather pretty speech to make to 
 her arranged in the study before he came up; but now 
 it forsakes him, and he stares at her profoundly, no words 
 upon his lips. 
 
 " But yes, indeed," says Dolores, tears rising in her 
 eyes. "I have been a great, great trouble to you. All 
 the gratitude of my life is owing to you, because you have 
 saved that life. It almost belongs to you, doesn't it? At 
 least, I feel it so," she ends sweetly. 
 
 "Tut, tut! You must not speak Jike that. But get 
 well, get strong. That will show gratitude," says Mr. 
 Mildmay, knocking his eyeglass against his forefinger in 
 a desultory fashion; indeed, hi-s words are desultory too. 
 
 He glances at her furtively. Again the strange reflect- 
 ive look covers his face. It seems as though he is strug- 
 gling with some force that would keep back from him a 
 memory lying hidden in the troubled past. Is it a memory 
 of some one whom she, Dolores, resembles? 
 
 The odd part of it is that he too seems familiar to her. 
 Is the transmigration theory true? And have they per-
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 371 
 
 chance hobnobbed in gome earlier existence? This thought 
 brings a smile to her pale lips. 
 
 Certainly there is some little indefinable expression 
 about him that reminds her of some one. She puzzles 
 over it. Is it that sensitive movement of the lips, or that 
 idle contraction of the e} r ebrows? Beyond doubt he is 
 like some one she knows but who? That is it. The tor- 
 ment of not being able to " place" her discovery irritates 
 her foolishly, as she lies there weak and powerless. 
 
 Then some sounds strike on her dulled senses, and she 
 knows that Mr. Mildmay has been talking to her for some 
 time. 
 
 " You have been a good child, very good," he says. 
 "So Mrs. Edge worth tells me. Excellent woman eh? 
 But she says, too, you are not to talk." 
 
 "Ah, but 1 must talk to you!" says Dolores, holding 
 out to him an imploring hand. " You are my preserver. 
 May I not tell you how " 
 
 "No, no; tell me nothing," interrupts he hurriedly, 
 "except that you are on the high road to recovery." 
 
 " Yes, I shall recover," says Dolores brightly. " I feel 
 quite equal to getting up already. I am young, you see, 
 and so strong." 
 
 It is almost laughable to hear her say this such a little 
 frail waxen lily as she looks, smiling up at him out of deli- 
 cate pillows. 
 
 But Mr. Mildmay fails to see the joke. An expression 
 of intense sadness makes itself discernible upon his mobile 
 lips and sensitive brows. 
 
 "Ay, youth is ever strong," he says; "yet there have 
 been sad, sad exceptions." 
 
 Again his voice grows dreamy, again that strange con- 
 centrated gaze fixes itself upon the fragile invalid. Be- 
 neath it she grows nervous. Is this kindly old man 
 eccentric, or or insane? An irrepressible pang of fear 
 eizes her for an instant, and then dies away, never to 
 return. Surely there is no insanity in the gentleness of 
 the glance directed at her, or in the almost womanish 
 sweetness of the benevolent smile! 
 
 " And now I must leave you, child," he says presently, 
 rousing himself from his abstraction, " unless I would 
 mndergo a scolding at the hands of Mrs. Edgeworth. Get
 
 172 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 well, get strong, and then you shall tell me the story of 
 how it was you were driven hither." 
 
 Dolores shrinks from him. A great terror grows within 
 her eyes. The delicate hand lying upon the coverlet be- 
 gins to tremble convulsively. Is he asking her to deliver 
 up her secret? Now now, when she has endured so far and 
 so heavily? Would he have her undo all her work in one 
 swift moment, and cast the agonies of many hours that 
 have been longer than the longest years to the winds? 
 Oh, no, not that! To be again the cause of shame and 
 misery to those two to whose happiness, when weighed in 
 the balance of her soul's reckoning, her own happiness is 
 as naught! It must not be, even though by her refusal to 
 speak the sum of her soriows be increased a thousandfold, 
 by the thought that gross ingratitude will be imputed to 
 her. 
 
 Mr. Mildmay, noticing the instant change in her expres- 
 sive face, is shocked by it, and by the knowledge it betrays 
 to him. Poor child! Does she imagine he would heap 
 another grief upon her already overburdened heart? 
 
 " Do not mistake me," he says hurriedly. " Whatever 
 you wish to keep sacred to yourself shall so be kept. I 
 seek to know nothing but what you desire to tell. All I 
 would hear is how I can serve you. " 
 
 He pauses abruptly. He is evidently greatly distressed 
 by her want of confidence in him, and very anxious that 
 she should know how good a friend he means to be to 
 her. 
 
 " Ah, sir!" says Dolores. 
 
 No words come to her save these, though she would 
 gladly have made larger acknowledgment of his goodness; 
 but in her gentle eyes there lies a world of thankfulness. 
 Her hand has ceased to tremble, and, though her sensitive 
 lips still quiver sorrowfully, her whole face is expressive of 
 the very keenest gratitude. 
 
 "Tell Mrs. Edgeworth how it is with you as far as you 
 can," says her new friend gently, "and how we can help 
 you, and be guided by her, my dear, where it is possible 
 to you, because she is a good and kind woman, and the 
 advice of a such a one is always of the extrernest value." 
 
 "I will obey you as far as I dare. I would that I could 
 tell you all," says Dolores, with emotion. " But my 
 accret is not all mine; itipjrolves the happiness of others.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 873 
 
 The telling of it might destroy their peace. Do not think 
 me ungrateful if I withhold much from you; but it ig 
 all so cruel!" she breaks out, miserably clasping her hands. 
 "Even the consolation of speech of sympathy is denied 
 me! I want to tell you everything, but I can not! I have 
 suffered terribly oh, how I have suffered! bat I must be 
 firm to the end." 
 
 Her low voice is choked with grief. Mr. Mildmay 
 draws neare v to her. Since first he saw her lying insen- 
 sible his determination to keep ar.d comfort her hW 
 been a strong one; now, he tells himself, no earthly con- 
 sideration shall turn him from that first hastily but hon- 
 orably formed resolve. But some ground to commence on 
 must be formed. 
 
 " Have you a father a brother?" he asks delicately. 
 Even to himself he can not explain the almost passionate 
 interest he feels in the history of this little outcast whom 
 the world has flung upon his hands. The waves of life 
 have stranded her upon his threshold; shall he not there- 
 fore succor her? 
 
 " My mother is dead; I do not know if I have a father, " 
 replies she sadly. It is an intense comfort to her to be 
 able to answer him so far. To have a refusal forever on 
 her lips for this kind friend would be specially painful. 
 
 "You have a guardian?" he goes on, still very gently, 
 asking his question in a tone meant to assure her that he 
 will not be offended should she decline to answer. 
 
 " Yes," says Dolores, lingeringly, thinking of the tender 
 gracious woman at home whose love had created the sun- 
 shine of her life since first her eyes opened on the world 
 and she knew the difference between night and day 
 Heaven grant that now she deems her dead. 
 
 "Has he been kind to you? Do you love him?" 
 
 "It is a woman," says Dolores simply, " and I do love 
 her with all my heart!" 
 
 "Why, that is well!" exclaims the old man cheerfully. 
 " Love is a great brightener of life's troubles. And now 
 tell me if love be in your heart for her, it must be there 
 for others also I would fain see hope for you in the 
 future and there are other friends, are there not? You 
 love some one else besides your guardian?" 
 
 He stops abruptly, startled by the sudden change in the 
 girl's face. All at once, in a flash, as it were, there comes 
 
 > <-*J -^-*~
 
 274 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 to her a strange, a most vivid vision of Dick, as he stooJ 
 before her in the moonlit corridor, on that last memor- 
 able occasion when their parting was so nigh during that 
 last sad interview which he had so little known to be their 
 last. Again his eyes, so full of love and hope, gaze fondly 
 into hers; again her hand grows warm within his grasp; 
 and once once more her heart throbs wildly against his. 
 
 The blood recedes from her brow, her heart grows chill; 
 but the vision still is there. Smiling, as though in the 
 flesh, Bouverie stand? before her, tall and eager, with the 
 old glad light within his eyes now now when she is 
 lying here so far from him, weak and lonely! 
 
 She tries desperately to conquer the illusion, but her 
 strength is insufficient for her. The room in which she 
 lies, Mr. Mildmay, all fade from her, and again she is 
 walking up that pale corridor with her true love awaiting 
 her in the light of the moon's rays. He is clad in that 
 gray suit which she had told him then would be forever 
 allied to her memory of him in the future. How lightly 
 at that last moment he had treated those words of hers; 
 but now does he remember them now? 
 
 He had laughed, she recollects, but had made no excuse 
 for appearing before her at that late hour in morning- 
 dress. But she had understood it all; she knew that his 
 love for her had prevented his re-entering his mother's 
 doors that day. He had not dined beneath her roof. He 
 had taken it in very bad part, the cruel telling of the 
 cruel truth to his best beloved. 
 
 Yes, yes, she was his "best beloved." Be life from 
 this day forth the worst thing possible, she has at least 
 the blessed certainty that once she was to him the dearest 
 thing on earth! He loved her, and she loved him ay, 
 will ever love him, even to the sacrificing for him all hope 
 and peace and joy. Oh, darling, darling! 
 
 A little heartbroken cry bursts from her, and, with the 
 sound of her voice comes the dissolution of her sad 
 vision. Bouverie fades away from her; her mad dream 
 diet. She is no longer with her lover, but only lying 
 here, faint, ill, despairing, crushed in soul and body, 
 lowered to the very verge of the grave but, alas, alas, 
 Hot dying! 
 
 She raises her eyes to Mr. Mildmay. 
 
 '*Yes, it is true," she sayi, with a painful effort.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. J7I 
 
 "there i another whom I love!" And then suddenly 
 she breaks into bitker weeping, and turns her face to the 
 wall." 
 
 Tears rise in the eyes of Mr. Mild may. He lays hia 
 hand tenderly upon her shoulder. 
 
 "Poor child, poor child! And is it so?" he says. 
 " But take comfort. There may be hope somewhere. 
 That his love and yours are mutual I feel sure. And, 
 perhaps, whatever difficulties be in the way now, in time 
 you will be again united." 
 
 " No," says Dolores with a passionate shudder, " not 
 now, or in the future, or ever!" 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIX. 
 
 " So like, so like the resemblance is terrible!" mut- 
 ters Mr. Mildmay, as he paces up and down his study in 
 a nervous abstraction. His hands are clasped behind his 
 back, his head is bowed. The belief that he is alone is 
 gently broken in upon. 
 
 "Yes, she is strangely like," says Mrs. Edgeworth, 
 thoughtfully. 
 
 He starts and rouses himself from his reverie. 
 
 "Ah, you here, Edgeworth?" he says, with a sigh. 
 "I imagined myself as alone in body as I ever am in 
 spirit. And so you, too, have noticed this marvelous 
 likeness?" 
 
 "Ay, sir. Who, having once seen her face, could fail 
 to have noticed a resemblance to it. They are the same 
 eyes, the same lips, and the hair has the same little touch 
 of gold in it, though hers would reach down far below 
 her waist in its straight, sweet folds. You will "emem- 
 ber-it?" 
 
 " What smallest thing do I forget?" He runs his hand 
 across his forehead, and draws his breath heavily. Evi- 
 dently memory contains no charms for him. "How is 
 our invalid to-day?" he asked, abruptly. "I thought 
 when last I saw her she looked flushed, excited eh?" 
 
 " She was thinking of her old life perhaps. The re- 
 membrance of it worries her at times, I can see; yet she 
 won't speak of it. She holds her secret fast, whatever 14 
 may be go fast that one might well wonder at the power
 
 276 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 that lies in that slight little frame of hers. But that 
 there should be anything wrong connected with such an 
 innocent as that lamb upstairs no, never!" says Mrs. 
 Edgeworth, with startling vehemence. "I won't believe 
 it." 
 
 " Wron, wrong!" repeats her master obtusely. The 
 meaning of her words fails to come home to him. He 
 sinks into a chair. " Wrong!" he says again; and then 
 all at once he comprehends and knows that his worthy 
 housekeeper is defending the character of the poor child 
 above. This defense somehow rouses great wrath within 
 him. " It is only a wicked mind," he declares, with 
 much agitation, " that could connect even the idea of 
 wickedness with a face such as hers." 
 
 " And indeed that is my own thought too, sir," says 
 the housekeeper, gently. " But we must needs think, 
 for all that, if only for her own sake, poor young lady. 
 That she has fled from her home is certain. But why she 
 fled is not so clear. Belike they had tried to force her 
 into a marriage with one whom she could not love." Mrs. 
 Edgeworth, who is well up in the "penny dreadfuls," 
 says this feelingly. " I have heard of such things my- 
 self," she concludes, with dignity, and a good deal of sen- 
 timentality. 
 
 " It may be it may be indeed, poor child!" says Mr. 
 Mildmay, sorrowfully, thinking of that great outburst of 
 grief on Dolores' part a few days ago, when he had but 
 lightly touched upon the subject of love generally. What, 
 if loving one man, she had been coerced and driven to- 
 ward marriage with another, until only flight seemed 
 possible to her as a means of escape? 
 
 "Her spirits are dreadful low," says Mrs. Edgeworth, 
 tapping the table with her forefinger " dreadful ! I can't 
 bear to see her like that. 'Tis true we know nothing of 
 her; but still my heart goes out to her because of that 
 strange look of hers, and because too it is a lonely place, 
 sir, and a young lady anything young makes such life in 
 the house." She glances furtively at her master, as though 
 to see what he thinks of her last words; then she goes on. 
 "When she leaves us, we shall learn her loss," she says, 
 in a low tone. He has seemed so silent, so unsympathetic 
 up to this that she ia losing heart, and a strong affection
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 277 
 
 for the lonely child whom fate has flung to her has grown 
 up within her heart. 
 
 "Leaves us! That shall never be! She told me she 
 had now no home. Why should she go?" says Mr. Mild- 
 may, waking into more eager life than she has seen in him 
 for years never indeed since that far-off sad event that 
 had left his house desolate unto him. 
 
 "Her mind is made up to it then," she says, grimly. 
 " Only an hour agone she was discussing with me the chance 
 of getting her living in some large town." 
 
 " Her living! Her death rather!" exclaims Mr. Mild- 
 may, strangely agitated. "She can not go she shall 
 not! What! Expose one so young, so gentle, to the 
 temptations, the miseries of poverty! It shall not be, I 
 tell you'." insists he, turning upon his faithful servant, as 
 though she too were in league against him. " The world 
 is a horrible place; she is not fit to battle with it." 
 
 "I said all that to her," says Mrs. Edgevvorth, earnest- 
 ly. "As far as I might, without having the word from 
 your own lips, I told her there was no great hurry about 
 her leaving this house, that you would make her gladly 
 welcome; yet go, she says, she will!" 
 
 " She is a wayward child," returns her master, im- 
 patiently; " she must be reasoned with. A little girl of 
 her age should have no determinations; one commanding 
 word from her elders should be sufficient to reduce her to 
 obedience." 
 
 The utter absurdity of this remark, as coming from 
 Mr. Mildmay's lips, is patent. The boldness of his at- 
 tempt to look stern strikes even the housekeeper, as she 
 looks upon his gentle yielding face and his nervous 
 trembling fingers. 
 
 " I think with you. sir I quite think so," she says de- 
 murely, tapping the table again with her bony knuckles. 
 " But who is to say the commanding words? Will you?" 
 
 "I? Oh, no oh, dear, no! It will come mucn bet- 
 ter from you a woman," declares he falteringly. 
 
 "I have spoken, sir, and failed." 
 
 " Well, if I must exercise my authority, I will," sayg 
 Mr. Midmay, in a rather quaking tone. " Tut tut! 
 Surely she owes me something? I am her guardian, in a 
 fashion, appointed by Fate herself. I shall therefore 
 forbid her not too sternly, you understand, Edgewortk
 
 278 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 . I hare read that tyranny always defeats its own par. 
 pose but I shall certainly give her firmly to know that 
 she shall not leave tny house unless it be to return to her 
 friends and equals." 
 
 " You will know wh.it to say to her, sir," says Mrs. 
 Edgeworth admiringly, who really, after all these years, 
 half believes in him. " And when will you speak to her, 
 air now?" 
 
 "Now? My good Edgeworth, surely there is no such 
 great haste?" 
 
 "I think the sooner the better, sir. She seems quite 
 bent on leaving us with as little delay as possible.' 1 
 
 " But why? She has been very content here apparent- 
 ly for three weeks nearly four. Why why," says Mr. 
 Mildmay, looking at his housekeeper and speaking in a 
 low confidential tone, as if half afraid of the step he is 
 about to take " why should she not stay always?" 
 
 " Ah, why not indeed " 
 
 " We can keep her!" 
 
 " If she will be kept. Go to her, sir go to her! She 
 will listen to you, I hope, I believe. Already her young 
 heart has warmed to you, as though you were he'r own 
 father." 
 
 " Ah, Edgeworth," says the old man, regarding her 
 mournfully, " had Heaven been merciful, just such a one 
 as she might have had her home within my heart today!" 
 
 "Perhaps now, even late as it, Heaven has sent you a 
 substitute in that pretty child upstairs," says Mrs. Edge- 
 worth tearfully. " Ah, dear sir, go to her, and persuade 
 her to remain! It will be terrible if she leaves us now!" 
 Here the good woman throws her apron over her head and 
 
 breaks into loud and healthy sobs. 
 
 ******* 
 
 Sitting in Dolores' room the pretty morning-room that 
 has now been allotted to her since the doctor gave her 
 permission to move from one chamber to another Mr. 
 Mildmay seeks vainly for a successful method of com- 
 mencing his mission. The " word of command " is still 
 far from him; the stern power that is to reduce her to 
 obedience is deplorably wanting. The haughty guardian 
 " appointed by Fate " ii in a low and depressed state of 
 mind. 
 
 For quite three minutes he has been absolutely silent,
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 971 
 
 A weak endeavor to produce a speech that will at least 
 introduce his subject is rendering him dumb. Dolores* 
 oft low voice, breaking in upon his distressing reverie, is 
 welcomed by him as a blessed relief. 
 
 " There is one thing that torments me," says the girl, 
 almost solemnly; " it is that I am afraid you do not think 
 I understand how good you have been to me." 
 
 "Good? Tut tutl Nothing of the sort," returns he, 
 in his nervous fashion. 
 
 He takes off and puts on his spectacles several times 
 after saying this, and, finally rising to his feet, goes over 
 to the window. 
 
 "To take in one of whom you knew nothing, to tend 
 her so lovingly! Through a dream, as it were, it all 
 comes back to me now," says Dolores. "I remember 
 little things, tender acts, gentle glances. Ah," she draws 
 a long breath " indeed I am not ungrateful!" She looks 
 at him with dewy eyes. " In all the long future that I 
 fear lies before me you see even this fear has not killed 
 me I shall bear a lasting memory of you." 
 
 " But, my child, besides this future of which you speak 
 so sadly, you have a past," remarks Mr. Mildmay, gently; 
 "and in that past lie friends; you told me the other day 
 of two at least." 
 
 " Yes two only," says Dolores, dreamily. All the 
 rest of the world has vanished from her, leaving only the 
 vivid realization of her lover, and of her who had been to 
 her almost more than a mother. 
 
 " And they " He pauses. " Forgive me, my dear, 
 if I hurt you," he goes on, presently, " but they may mis- 
 take your silence; they are ignorant of your illness; they 
 may perhaps Consider, consider, my child," says he, 
 with a sudden burst of nervous eagerness, " how unhappy 
 they must be!" 
 
 " Oh, don't!" cries the girl, vehemently. 
 
 She buries her face in the cushions, and a wave of pas- 
 sionate terrifying grief sweeps over her. This is the 
 thought that has been rendering her wretched night and 
 day since consciousness returned; yet she will not undo 
 her work. Three weeks an eternity when one is in sus- 
 pense have gone by since she left her home. But for 
 this luckless illness she would indeed have written some 
 small trembling line* when she was nafe from pursuit, to
 
 380 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 tell them of her being still alive; but now how is it with 
 them now? Do they deem her bad, ungrateful, unloving, 
 or only dead? 
 
 Ah! A sudden spasm seems to contract her heart and 
 draws all the blood from her face. Why if they believe 
 her dead, there need be no more sorrow, no more shame 
 for them; they will let all that sink with her into her sup- 
 posed grave. But to be quite forgotten, to be thrust alto- 
 gether out of mind, to be perchance in time supplantedl 
 A bitter sob breaks from her. 
 
 " You are grieving," says Mr. Mildmay, anxiotisly; 
 " my careless words have brought back sad scenes to your 
 mind; but, though, perhaps those with whom you lived 
 seemed at one time harsh" that suggestion of Mrs. 
 Edgeworth's about her being forced into a hated alliance 
 is now strongly before him " still they " 
 
 "No, no!" interrupts Dolores, eagerly. By an impul- 
 sive gesture she stops him and turns to him a pallid, a 
 most hopeless face. "They were not unkind," she says, 
 with a curious energy; " believe that; there was nothing 
 but love always love!" 
 
 She brings her hands together with a touch of uncon- 
 trollable agony, and moves so that her face can be no 
 longer seen. 
 
 "Yet you left them?" suggests Mr. Mildmay, with 
 ever increasing gentleness. 
 
 ' For their sakes! Believe that too!" entreats the poor 
 child, in a smothered tone. " To save them further pain, 
 I left my home. They had endured too much already, yet 
 they could have endured more, so I left them." 
 
 "You will return?" 
 
 " Never!" says Dolores quietly; but her soft low tone 
 is so full of a strange heart-broken resolution that her 
 host looks at her keenly. " I have of my own free will 
 abandoned my people," she goes on, "and now that time 
 has grown into weeks, no doubt they think me dead/' 
 Her voice falters and dies away. "If so, it is well with 
 them," she whispers, making a last expiring effort at 
 composure. 
 
 " That is impossible," says Mr. Mildmay, taking one 
 of her little pale bloodless hands and stroking it tenderly. 
 " They must be sad for you; their hearts must be borne 
 down with grief. If you_ had been my daughter, if I had
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. tSl 
 
 lost you, how I should have suffered! I had a little 
 daughter once," continued he simply, " but death bore 
 her from me. So young she was, I had never even seen 
 her! My grief for her that unknown babe was great; 
 how much greater then must be theirs who have lost you 
 a child grown, a creature loving and to be loved?" 
 
 "It is all over," declares Dolores despairingly; " I can 
 not go back. As I have told you, of my own doing I de- 
 serted them for their good oh, do remember that and 
 therefore I have no longer a home." 
 
 Mr. Mildmay makes a slight movement. 
 
 " You have," he says gravely. " If you will accept it, 
 this can be your home." 
 
 Dolores, pale and bewildered, regards him anxiously. 
 
 " Here?" she murmurs. 
 
 "Yes; it is a dull place," says the old man gently, 
 " unfit for the young, no doubt, but there is at least peace 
 in it and rest." 
 
 " Rest!" Mechanically she repeats the word after him, 
 lingering over it as though comfort lies in the very sound 
 of it. 
 
 " You will stay?" 
 
 " Ah, if I only might!" says Dolores, a delicate flush 
 dyeing the pale face. " But what claim have I upon 
 you?" 
 
 "I will tell you," says Mr. Mildmay, gently. 
 
 He seats himself beside her, and, again taking her hand 
 in his, regards her long and earnestly. 
 
 " You wonder at my sudden-grown affection for you," 
 he says, at last. " It is natural you should, not knowing 
 the thoughts of long ago that your presence has not so 
 much revived, for they have never died has brought out 
 from the secret recesses of my heart into a more open 
 prominence. You recall to me you, with your sunny 
 hair and gentle face another face gentle as yours that 
 once was nay, that always must be the one fond remem- 
 brance of my life!" 
 
 He grows silent a while, as though recollection, if sad, 
 were still sweet to him. 
 
 " I loved her," he goes on, presently. " To all who 
 knew her indeed she was inexpressibly dear. The whol* 
 of the world bowed in homage before that pure soul. And 
 yon resemble herl Your eyes art as hers; such gold wat
 
 S82 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 in her hair-, through such lips as yours her sweet breath 
 might have come and gone. Now it is gone forever!" 
 
 All this has been said more in a sort of reverie than as 
 if he had known himself to be holding converse with the 
 young girl who is watching him with shining eyes. 
 
 " Stay with me !" he says, at last, with a sudden long- 
 ing that startles her. It is a cry wrung from his heart. 
 "I will be a father to you!" exclaims he. " Why should 
 you seek to brave the world? You and your secret will 
 be safe here. I am a lonely old man without a hope in 
 my life. Give me one! Let me help you, comfort you, 
 protect you, do for you all that a father might do! Look- 
 ing upon you, I seem to see her again, rescued, as it were, 
 from the cruel grave!" He checka himself, and, stilling 
 the agitation of his voice, appeals to her again in a voice 
 so low that she can barely follow it. " You see how I 
 desire your presence," he says. " Do not disappoint me!" 
 
 " I will stay with you," said Dolores, softly. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 " IT is a most disgraceful affair altogether," says Mrs. 
 Drummond, in a shocked tone, drawing up her head and 
 shaking it in a manner replete with pious horror. 
 
 She and a good many other of her friends are assem- 
 bled together in Mrs. Wemyss' drawing-room on this par- 
 ticular Thursday of hers. 
 
 " And to think she should have mixed with us! Why, 
 we positively entertained her!" adds the fair Georgina, in 
 a shrill tone, and with quite a little shiver. " Oh, if 
 the dear Duchess only knew!" 
 
 " Why don't you tell her?" says Audrey Ponsooby, 
 from her seat in the window. She is very pale, and she 
 clinches her fingers somewhat tightly as she speaks. 
 
 "Poor child! What a pity it all is!" murmurs Mrs. 
 Wemyss sadly. 
 
 "Yes yes, indeed," says Mrs. Drummond, who has 
 beard only the vanishing sounds of the last words, and 
 who believes Mrs. Wemyss to be on her side. " Yes, 
 quite so. Poor Lady Bouverie indeed! How pitiably 
 she has been taken in! But who could cope with such 
 each miscreants? Why, ghe had Dogitively selected that
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 283 
 
 audacious girl for her daughter-in-law, to the exclusion 
 of all others! Good gracious, if such a thing happened 
 to me, I should never be able to hold up my head again!" 
 There is a little touch of apite in these last two remarks. 
 " Poor thing!" she goes on. " I'm sure I quite feel for 
 her!" 
 
 "I'm sure my mother would be intensely gratified if 
 Bhe could only know that," says Bruno gravely. 
 
 " And as for that girl Dolores to be so young, yet so 
 depraved! Really the knowledge of her half spoils one's 
 belief in all truth and honesty," winds up Mrs. Drummond 
 severely. 
 
 "Ah, do let us be charitable!" cries little Mrs. Dove- 
 dale, clasping her small hands and leaning forward. 
 " She is indeed, I greatly fear, the very wickedest person 
 we have ever known, and will surely if she does not 
 mend her ways go to destruction; but, oh, do let us be 
 charitable! There is no virtue so grand as charity is 
 there, Mr. Vyner?" asks she mildly, turning up to him 
 her large innocently open eyes. 
 
 "Not one!" says Vyner. " You can not think what a 
 solace it is to me to see you so carefully practicing it!" 
 
 "Ah, yes, yes; charity is a grand thing!" pipes Sir 
 Chicksy, in a distressed tone, from a distant corner he 
 had liked Dolores in his own small fashion, and is honestly 
 grieved to hear her thus maligned. " It clothes the mul- 
 titude." 
 
 This extremely rare and unique rendering of St. Peter's 
 greatest truth is received by everybody with a silent amaze- 
 ment. By Mr. Vyner indeed it is treated with an undis- 
 guised admiration. 
 
 " For warm weather it would be admirable- so cheap, so 
 comfortable, so delightfully simple," he is beginning, 
 with a beaming smile, when he is cut short by Mrs. Drum- 
 mond. 
 
 "Some sins should not be covered," protests that 
 matron, in a commanding tone, having conquered Sir 
 Chicksy's meaning "though I both honor and esteem 
 you, my dear Sir Chicksy, for your innocent desire to hide 
 the shortcomings of that most pernicious girl." 
 
 "Pernicious! Oh, come, I say, you knowl" murmurs 
 Sir Chicksy vaguely. 
 
 " How energetic one can be even on a warm day, when
 
 284 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 there is an absent friend to be abused!" says Audrey, rais- 
 ing her brows superciliously, and addressing herself to Mrs. 
 Dovedale, who happens to be nearest to her. To-day there 
 is full upon her the only half-veiled insolence that has 
 rendered her so unpopular with her gossiping neighbors. 
 
 " You see this terrible scandal that has fallen into our 
 midst has naturally excited the public a good deal," says 
 Mrs. Dovedale. "That unhappy girl! How I wish we 
 could wake some morning and find all this miserable story 
 of hers but a troubled dream!" 
 
 She sighs very well indeed and glances at Audrey in 
 a sorrowful reluctant way through flickering barely lifted 
 lashes. 
 
 " Do you?" says Audrey with an undisguised sneer. 
 
 " Yes, dear! So melancholy to think we should have 
 welcomed her amongst us and shown her every kindness, 
 and entertained her, and, in fact though unconsciously, 
 be it said to our credit assisted her designs in every 
 way!" 
 
 " Perhaps, after all, she entertained us more than we 
 did her," says Audrey, whose large dark eyes are now afire. 
 " We partook very freely of her hospitality, so far as I 
 can remember, and made very much of her." 
 
 She stares coldly at Mrs. Dovedale, knowing her 
 never to have asked Dolores, or indeed anyone else, inside 
 her doors in her life. " The dear rector so objects to 
 frivolity of any sort, even of the most harmless kind" 
 et- cater a. 
 
 "Ah, perhaps so," she says, now coloring faintly. 
 " That idea is even more objectionable than mine. To 
 think she should have entertained us, and that we have 
 been harboring an adventuress all this time! " 
 
 "That word could never apply to Dolores," says Audrey, 
 flushing passionately. " To any one so pure, so sweet as 
 she, such an epithet is merely a meaningless insult. You 
 should consider the exact signification of your words before 
 using them." 
 
 " Yes? Is then the word wrong? " asks Mrs. Dovedale, 
 with mild interrogation. 
 
 "Is it not?" insists Audrey, paling. "Adventuress! 
 Think of it!" 
 
 " I am thinking; and I now see I did not mean it in 
 its widest sense," savs Mrs. Dovedale, with a little ex-
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 285 
 
 postulatory movement of her haods. *'In that class there 
 are so many grades " 
 
 " Are there? You seem to know a great deal about 
 ' that class,' as you call it far more than I do! " says 
 Audrey contemptuously. "Tell us about it." By an 
 indescribable gesture she includes Vyiier in the " us," and 
 a pale smile crosses her lips, 
 
 Mrs. Doved ale's eyes flash; but she still manages to 
 maintain her coolness and the little pretty surprised look 
 she has sustained all through. 
 
 " I don't think I am as clever as you give me credit for," 
 she says sweetly, fixing Audrey with a direct gaze; " I 
 merely spoke of her as being one of those who seek to 
 entrap rich young men into a marriage unawares, because 
 of their money and position." 
 
 As if unconsciously, her eyes now turn and fall first 
 upon Sir Chicksy Chaucer, who is nursing his leg in the 
 distance in a sort of deadly stupor, and then upon Mr. 
 Vyner, who is close to her; finally they wander back again 
 to Audrey, where they rest calmly, searchingly. Has her 
 shaft told? 
 
 However Audrey may feel, it is at all events unknown 
 to any one save herself; she controls herself perfectly, and 
 returns Mrs. Dovedale's impertinently concentrated" gaze 
 with a careless ease that somewhat puts out that accom- 
 plished little gossip. 
 
 '* Being ignorant then of the story now so unhappily 
 attached to her, and being beyond all doubt heiress to a 
 large fortune, it is quite impossible Miss Lome should be 
 accused of seeking to entrap any man," she says slowly. 
 
 ''Miss " Mrs. Dovedale looks quite at a loss, and 
 regards Audrey with a puzzled air. Then, as though all 
 at once suddenly enlightened, she lets a glance of dawning 
 knowledge spread over her face. "Ah, yes, of course!" 
 she says. " Forgive me my stupidity; but, do you know, 
 I have grown so accustomed to think of that poor girl as 
 possessing no name that er positively for the moment 
 I didn't understand to whom you were alluding. No Name 
 you remember that charming novel by Wilkie Collins 
 which bore that title? Pretty book eh?" She has sud- 
 denly fallen back into the ordinary light conversational 
 tone, as though already the sad subject in hand had slid, 
 from her. being of no oonseauence whatsoever.
 
 886 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 Audrey turns upon her. Angry tears are rendering her 
 /arge eyes larger. 
 
 " Oh, you cruel woman!" she says, in a low tone full of 
 condensed bitterness. 
 
 It is so low from emotion as to be almost inaudible, 
 and Mrs. Dovedale very wisely declines to take notice of it. 
 
 "H'm!" she murmurs prettily, as if anxious to catch 
 her words, and feigning a convenient deafness. " Cruel? 
 Ah, yes, the whole thing is cruel! But," with seeming 
 nervousness " I am afraid I have really hurt you. I had 
 no idea she was such a friend of yours; and and was it 
 really so very wrong of me " glancing up at Vyner, who 
 has been an emotionless observer of the scene, with a care- 
 ful artlessness "to speak before Miss Ponsonby of de- 
 signing women who seek to induce rich young men to 
 marry them?" 
 
 "What a little cat she is!" says Vyner to himself, re- 
 garding her from under his half- opened lids; but he 
 makes her no reply. 
 
 " It hurts me always," answers Audrey calmly, " to 
 hear a friend maligned, more especially one BO perfect in 
 soul and body as Dolores." 
 
 "Yes; I felt I had hurt you," says little Mrs. Dove- 
 dale mournfully; "but really I meant nothing. What- 
 ever I may think, I am always most careful to say nothing 
 prejudicial; and, after all, the world is full of women 
 such as I have described. Is it not, Mr. Vyner?" 
 
 She turns to Vyner pathetically, as though imploring 
 his assistance to get her out of an innocent scrape. 
 
 Such studied insolence as this is hard to bear, harder 
 jo resent. Audrey rises slowly to her feet, and, moving 
 aer head slightly, for the first time to-day fixes her eyes 
 on Vyner. But apparently he does not see her; his 
 glance is directed to Mrs. Dovedale. 
 
 " Is it?" he says lightly, in answer to her question. 
 t: I'm sure I don't know. I shouldn't dream of contradict- 
 ing you, however, as your knowledge of the world seems 
 to be vast. Permit me to compliment you on it; for 
 myself, I am hopelessly ignorant!" He raises ttis shoul- 
 der deprecatingly, and brushes down his mustache with 
 one hand. He has never once removed his eyes from Mrs. 
 Dovedale's. "Shall I sink very much in your esteem," 
 he asks pleasantly, " if I confess to you that a young
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 woman such as you have described so graphically has never 
 yet come beneath my observation?" 
 
 Audrey, as he ceases speaking, moves away slowly to 
 where Mrs. Wemyss is sitting, at the further end of the 
 room. In going she gives Vyner neither word nor glance. 
 
 "Now that was very good of you," says Mrs. Dovedale, 
 when she is out of hearing, smiling up confidently at 
 Vyner. 
 
 " Was it?" says Vyner. "It is an unspeakable joy to 
 me, Mrs. Dovedale, to know that I have found favor in 
 your sight; but where does my goodness lie?" 
 
 " You are modest! But if I must explain, why, it lief, 
 then, in your defense of " 
 
 Her pause is full of eloquence, and conveys to him her 
 real meaning as nearly as though she had spoken. 
 
 " Well?" demands he, coldly. 
 
 " Of all our sex," finishes she, prettily, with a coquettish 
 smile. " You have released us from the imputation of 
 being intriguantes I " 
 
 " Which you were the one to make." 
 
 " Ah, yes, I am indeed too candid!" returns she, with a 
 little sad smile. "It is one of my faults. What I think 
 and feel to be true, that I must say at all risks." 
 
 "An unpleasing propensity," returns Vyner, slowly; 
 and, straightening himself from his lounging position, he 
 steps past her and crosses the room. 
 
 Thus he brings himself into the full storm of the con- 
 troversy that still rages within. 
 
 " And, as to her having run away from home," Mrs. 
 Drummond is saying, excitedly, " why, the idea is absurd! 
 It is a mere canard set floating to deceive the world and 
 to raise sympathy. For my part, I decline to be so easily 
 deceived. She may have run indeed; but it is with the 
 full knowledge of that arch -conspirator, Miss Maturin, 
 who really should be punished by law for imposing such 
 an acquaintanceship upon us. Beyond doubt she was 
 cognizant of the whole affair, and thought it wiser to get 
 the girl out of the way until the popular and most right- 
 eous indignation of the neighborhood should calm a 
 little. At least, that is my opinion," winds up Mrs. 
 Drummond, with all the air of one who tirmly believes 
 that the fact of lU being, her opinion settles the matter.
 
 288 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 " A wrong opinion," says Bruno Bouverie, courteously 
 but distinctly, "and certainly not mine." 
 
 " You would support her cause?" exclaims Mrs. Drum- 
 mond somewhat shrilly. " She seems to have all the men 
 on her side, at all events." She makes an attempt at 
 laughter that only betrays to every one the depth of her 
 irritability. 
 
 " It reminds me of a novel," breaks in her daughter, 
 with a little vicious simper; "the whole thing hangs so 
 well together. Each move fits in so admirably with the 
 others; and the denouement is so satisfactory so absolute- 
 ly flawless. First we have the adventuress, then her pre- 
 meditated crime, then the unexpected enemy who turns 
 uj> at the right moment, like Colonel Oswald, from no- 
 body knows where, and then, at the very last, exposure, 
 just when success seemed most certain. It is quite a 
 romance." 
 
 "Dear girl, how clever she is! I have often suggested 
 to her to write for " Temple Bar." or " Macmillan," or er 
 But she always says writing is so low," says tke "dear 
 girl's" mother, with an expansive smile. "Ah, yes, my 
 dear Georgina! But, though your description of it sounds 
 very charming, still we should never forget that there is 
 nothing lovely about vice." 
 
 " Weil, I call it a delightful story!" says the sprightful 
 Georgina, with her unvarying smile. " Don't you, Mrs. 
 Wemyss?" turning to her hostess with a gushing gayety 
 that sits deliciousiy upon her thirty summers. 
 
 "Delightful? Well, hardly! It is a little cruel, is it 
 not? It would be terrible if it existed in the realms of 
 reality," says Mrs. Wemyss, gently, dropping a lump of 
 sugar into the cup held out to her by Bruno. 
 
 " What! You can see cruelty in justice!" cries Mrs. 
 Drummond, turning to her with a curious trembling 
 about her lips which denotes extreme indignation. " You 
 would shield this impostor? Why, where is your moral- 
 ity, my dear Mrs. Wemyss?" 
 
 " Just where it always was," says Mrs. Wemyss, resting 
 her eyes upon her whilst smiling quietly. "And now 
 may I be allowed to say one word about this 'delightful 
 story'?" 
 
 " A thousand if you will," declares Mrs. Drummond 
 effusively.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 '- Seven will do," returns Mrs. Wemyss gently. "I 
 don't believe one word of it." 
 
 " Bless me!" exclaims Mrs. Drummond, falling back in 
 her seat and beginning to fan herself vigorously. 
 
 " Not one word," persists Mrs. Wemyss, smiling, but 
 earnest. " I think you will find that, after all, it is one 
 gigantic mistake the whole of it. I have no real reason 
 lo go upon; but something tells me that anything s 
 sweet as Dolores must have had an irreproachable be- 
 ginning." 
 
 Audrey, who is close to her, lets her hand slip from 
 the chair by which she is standing to Mrs. Wemyss' 
 shoulder, and presses it gratefully. Mrs. Wemyss, put- 
 ting up her own hand, acknowledges the gentle pressure 
 by entwining her fingers in those or Audrey. At this 
 moment a common love for the absent girl unites them in 
 a lasting bond of good-fellowship. 
 
 "You are sanguine," says Mrs. Drummond, with an 
 unpleasant intonation and an assumption of mirth that 
 is a trifle hysterical. 
 
 " She is of those who bear no false witness against their 
 neighbor," says Bruno gravelv 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 THE days wear on, and still no tidings of the lost girl 
 come to Deadmarsh-by-the-Sea. 
 
 To Miss Maturin, wandering idly, purposelessly, by 
 lawn and flowered place, this unbearable suspense is a 
 living death. To Bouverie alone can she cry her sorrows 
 aloud; and he is seldom with her now, being ever on the 
 move between Greylnnds and the noisy world of town, 
 seeking everywhere and ever vainly for his soul's desire. 
 
 Alone then she treads the perfumed paths that erst- 
 while echoed with her beloved's laughter, and, strolling 
 half unconsciously along those paths, has conjured up a 
 thousand times the sweet words and sweeter smiles and 
 most dainty caresses of her who was her all in all. Who 
 can describe the unutterable melancholy of such hours as 
 these? 
 
 Two people only has she permitted to enter upon her 
 solitude Audrey Ponsonby and Mrs. Wemyss. Both had 
 10 *"
 
 290 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 been beloved by her. As for Audrey, her grief, though 
 almost unexpressed, has been excessive. A strange but 
 very real affection for Dolores had grown with her increas- 
 ing knowledge of the now unhappy girl. Ah, if she could 
 only reinstate her in her former position and lift from her 
 the tongue of calumny! Her pale and sorrowful face has 
 touched Miss Maturin and opened her heart to her. And 
 day by day Audrey walks up to Greylands to leari if in- 
 deed there be any hope for those who so miserably wait 
 for tidings of the lost one. And day by day she learns 
 that hope is nearly dead. 
 
 Just now, coming up the valley from her home on her 
 accustomed errand, she finds herself face to face with 
 Bouverie. She is a little startled by the change in him. 
 He has grown fitful and uncertain in temper; and this, 
 joined with his unceasing grief, has rendered him emaci- 
 ated in appearance. Time, so fraught for him with evil, 
 has told upon him both in body and mind. 
 
 Stopping short when he would have passed her with a 
 hurried bow, she lays her hand upon his arm. All the old 
 enmity has died away from her, and only an unspeakable 
 pfty remains. 
 
 "Stay with me a little while, Dick," she says ever so 
 gently. 
 
 " Ah, it is some time since we met, isn't it?" he says, 
 making a heavy effort to speak with his ordinary com- 
 posure. 
 
 " Too long a time. There are now so many things I 
 would say to you, but can not in an interview that must 
 be short. Where are you going? To the station?" 
 
 "I hardly ever go anywhere else now, do I?" returns 
 he, with a joyless laugh. " I am becoming quite an in- 
 stitution on the platform, a sort of movable advertisement 
 about the excellence of the company's arrangements: and, 
 for all the good I do" with a quick sigh " I might ai 
 well stay at home to eat my heart out." 
 
 " No. Action is in itself a cure." 
 
 " Oh, as for a cure!" says he, turning away. 
 
 There is something so forlorn in his tone and the little 
 gesture that accompanies it, that Audrey's eyes fill with 
 tears. 
 
 " Don't go yet, Dick I" ghe entreats again. " There i
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 291 
 
 plenty of time to catch the five train if you leave this half 
 n hour hence." 
 
 " Time! Yes; there is always so much time now," aayg 
 he, querulously, "and nothing done." With an impa- 
 tient movement he pushes back the hair from his brow. 
 " What is to be the end of it?" he says, with a quick little 
 burst of despair. 
 
 His face is white, his eyes are haggard and blood-shot. 
 He seems as one to whom sleep has long been a stranger. 
 
 " A little more, and this will mean brain-fever," says 
 Audrey to herself, regarding him thoughtfully. 
 
 Again she lays her hand upon his arm to rouse him, 
 and presses it slightly. 
 
 " Dick," she says softly, tremulously, " I want to say 
 something to you. You may have thought perhaps at 
 times that I did not like you. You are your mother's 
 son, you know; but that is nothing to me now nothing 
 nothing! I loved her Dolores! I, who never before 
 loted any woman, let all my heart go out to her. After 
 dad, I think I loved her best. Oh, the sweet little man- 
 ner of her!" She covers her face with her hands, and a 
 tearless sob escapes her. 
 
 " What are you crying about?" asks Bouverie, with sud- 
 den roughness, through which a crushing anguish is dis- 
 cernible. "One would think she was dead, the way you 
 speak!" He stops short and a gray pallor spreads itself 
 over cheek and brow. " What a horrible thought!" he 
 says, faintly. " Who gave rise to it you?" He moistens 
 his lips; and struggles to say something more, but speech 
 dies from him. 
 
 "If I did," says Audrey, "if I had begun at last to 
 think of that little saint as being in Heaven, who shall 
 blame me? Is she not happier there? What home so 
 meet for her? She is dead," she says, solemnly. " I feel 
 it. She was too gentle a soul to bear the buffeting of a 
 careless world. Yes " dreamily "surely she is dead." 
 
 " Be silent! " exclaims Bouverie savagely. " How dare 
 you speak so lightly of what means ruin to at least two 
 people Miss Maturin and me?" He throws up his 
 head hurriedly. " She is all I have," he says slowly 
 "all-all!" 
 
 "Nay, Dick, do not be angry," says she, sobbing. 
 " Remember, I loved her too."
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 " I remember," he returns more quietly. Then he 
 walks away from her, and, as she makes no effort to stay 
 him, soon disappears behind the low encircling hills. 
 
 Walking ever hurriedly onward, scarce knowing whither 
 he goes, he comes at last to a large patch of water, deep, 
 yet scarcely wide enough in circumference to be given the 
 title of a lake. Something in the fascinating stillness of 
 its surface attracts him. He stops, and gazes curiously 
 down upon the unfathomable blackness of its bosom. 
 
 Here, in such a place as this, she might have sought and 
 found her death. A shudder convulses him. She, his 
 pretty love! He stoops over the bank and peers into th 
 motionless waters, and fancies how her sweet dead face 
 would look there staring up at him, without knowledge 
 or remembrance of that strange great love that lay be- 
 tween them. Poor sweet dead face almost he sees it. 
 
 " Sweet still, but now not red 
 "Was the shut mouth whereby men lived and died; 
 And sweet, but emptied of the blood's blue shade, 
 The great curled eyelids that withheld her eyes; 
 And sweet, but like spoilt gold, 
 The weight of color in her tresses weighed ; 
 And sweet, but as a vesture with new dyes, 
 The body that was clothed with love of old." 
 
 A cry breaks from him. Encircling the sapling oak 
 near him with a trembling arm, he gives himself up to 
 saddest thought. His eyes are riveted upon the swaying 
 water; his brain, unsettled by his lengthened vigils, hur- 
 ries from thought to thought, having for the ground- work 
 of its imaginings only her only Dolores. 
 
 Alas, the little graceful head, with its bright sunny 
 curls, its soft wind-tossed locks, shall he ever again behold 
 it? Never, never! Low in the earth it lies, its glories 
 sullied, its beauties shorn. 
 
 " Ah, dear Heaven, why must such things be? I, who 
 have believed, have trusted in Thee, have pity now 
 on me! See, Lord, how in my secret soul, when many 
 men of my generation have turned from Thee and 
 reviled Thee, I have held firm. I have clung to Thee, 
 found pleasure in Thee; now now do not Thou forsake 
 me, now in my sorest need; and hear me, Lord! It is but 
 a little thing I crave of Thee, one poor, frail, most sweet 
 life! Oh, have mercymercy!"
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEAKT. 393 
 
 He lets his tired head fall forward on his arms, and a 
 dry, agonized sob bursts from him that seems to rend soul 
 from body. 
 
 Can nothing be done? Is money, that great lever, 
 powerless, in this case, to lift the veil that hides her from 
 him, and betray to him the spot wherein she is? Is this 
 habitable globe so large that one's hiding-place is safe, 
 secure? Or is it, as he fears, that death has crept in and 
 borne his darling from earth's woes and joys? 
 
 " Oh, that it were but possible 
 For one short hour to see 
 The souls we loved, that they might tell us 
 What and where they be!" 
 
 But that it is not possible comes home to him with a 
 bitter certainty. A great gulf that may not be crossed 
 lies between the living and the dead. No, there is no 
 hope. She is gone from him forever. The dreary days 
 must pass him one by one, and still hope may not be his. 
 Desolate winters, joyless summers, he will endure; but, as 
 for her 
 
 He flings himself down amongst the fallen leaves and 
 buries his face out of sight; his overtired spirit has for- 
 gotten that time is running on, that trains wait for no 
 man; he thinks only of her, his lost love. A groan 
 breaks from him; a sigh is lifted upon the evening breeze 
 and borne onward into space- 
 
 " Dolores, Dolores! Oh, my heart's idol; shall I see 
 thee never again ?" 
 
 ****** 
 
 By that sad lake's waters Bouverie lingers, dwelling 
 upon the lost joys of his life, until he grows sad as those 
 poor Israelites whose griefs are known to all. 
 
 At length a sudden fear, even more painful than those 
 gone before, stirs him into remembrance of the living mo- 
 ment. He springs to his feet. Glancing at his watch it 
 u '.Is him that he has overstayed his time, and that the com- 
 pelling of sad thought has drawn him from his allegiance 
 to the passing hour. Already five o'clock has struck 
 within the village tower. The train for London has 
 sturtcd. He is late for his journey to-day. 
 
 This knowledge in his present strained state of mind 
 is terrible to him. iU has been false to his trust, a
 
 894 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 laggard at his post he, who has so sworn to find hfir 
 be she alive or dead! 
 
 And now even now she may have been found, may be 
 awaiting him. A curious certainty that at last she has 
 been discovered just when he has proved himself ap- 
 parently cold in his oearch takes full possession of him, 
 To get to town by any means is his first thought; but 
 action, he soon discovers, is beyond him. To charter a 
 special train would not be possible in this small place, to 
 drive to town would be more impossible still, with any 
 hope of getting there in time; there is therefore nothing 
 for it but to wait for the night-mail. But how to bear 
 the suspense to be endured between then and now? Still 
 half dazed in mind and wearied in body, he retraces his 
 
 steps to Greylands, the only home he knows. 
 
 ******* 
 
 Audrey, after her encounter with Bouverie, turns 
 aside from her intended visit to Greylands, and wanders 
 idly away into the deepening woods upon her left, lost in 
 sad thoughts of her own making. But as the shadows 
 grow longer and ever longer, and evening thrusts itself 
 upon her, she rouses herself from her gloomy dreamings, 
 and, mindful again of her original purpose, once more 
 with hurrying footsteps hastens to Miss Maturin. 
 
 Almost at the gates of Greylands she raises her eyes, to 
 encounter Anthony Vyner. She is feeling dull and dis- 
 heartened, and it is without a greeting smile that she ex- 
 tends her hand to him. 
 
 " What have you been doing with yourself?" asks he, 
 regarding her attentively. 
 
 " Thinking!" returns she, with a sigh. 
 
 He has never seen her in this mood before, and there 
 is a touch of surprise now in the gae he has not with- 
 drawn from her. 
 
 " I shall walk up the avenue with you," he says pres- 
 ently; " but I never go in now; I can't bear intruding 
 upon her grief." 
 
 " No; every one distresses her, I think." 
 
 " Except you," says Vyner quickly. 
 
 " I think perhaps she knows how I loved Dolores iu 
 truth, almost as well as she deserved to be loved. And, 
 you see, she must talk to some one." 
 
 " There is Bouverifr"
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 295 
 
 "Yes; but one wants a woman sometimes." 
 
 " That is true," says he. There is a little silence be- 
 tween them after this, and then " I would go even 
 further than you," he says; "I should say there are one 
 or two people who want some particular woman, not 
 sometimes, but always." 
 
 " Ah, perhaps!" she sighs again, and goes with him 
 after that all the length of the goodly avenue, without 
 vouchsafing him another word. 
 
 She seems lost in thought, and glancing at her from 
 time to time, he can not but see that such thought for 
 him contains no place. 
 
 As they reach the flight of stone steps that leads up to 
 the hall floor, a woman disappears through the portal* 
 into the dusky hall beyond; a young man is about to 
 follow her, but something perhaps the crunching of the 
 gravel beneath their feet causes him to turn his head. 
 Kecognizing them, he runs down the steps again and up 
 to them. 
 
 It is Sir Chicksy Chaucer, in a high state of heat and 
 excitement. 
 
 "So glad you've come," he says, addressing Audrey 
 in a voice ecstatically pitched and very nervous "so 
 glad! You ought to know, you know. Always been a 
 friend of hers. Yes, yes such a day as we've been hav- 
 ing!" He stops short and wipes his softened brow. 
 "Yes, of course you really ought to know, you know." 
 he repeats impressively. 
 
 " We! Of whom are you talking of Dolores?" ask 
 Audrey, growing very pale; her voice trembles percepti 
 bly. "Is is she with you?" 
 
 " No, no, bless me not at all! It is Mrs. Wemyss, you 
 know. Excellent woman Mrs. Wemyss so superior, so 
 sensible, so everything, you know!" 
 
 "I can't see what it is I need further know about Mrs. 
 Wemyss," says Audrey coldly. Her sudden hopes have 
 died as sudden a death. 
 
 "You don't understand!" exclaims Sir Chicksy, strug- 
 gling wildly with his fragile intellect. "We've brought 
 home the story, she and 1. Such a chance as it was! Yes, 
 you really ought to know, you know. Come up, come up- 
 stairs; she'll tell you all about it she's got her wits about 
 her,"
 
 DICK S SWEETHEART. 
 
 "Thank Heaven!" says Mr. Vyner, with a sigh of heart- 
 felt gratitude to beneficent Nature. 
 
 " Tell us what?" demands Audrey, in an agony. " Is 
 Dolores dead? What is it? What have you heard?*' 
 
 She is so pale now and so imperious in manner that the 
 miserable little baronet loses the last remaining fragment 
 of that poor thing he calls his mind. He grows visibly 
 distracted; he appeals vaguely to Vyner, who is regarding 
 him with unexampled amazement. 
 
 " She ought to be prepared," he says, " she ought in- 
 deed; shocks are very bad things. Now do be prepared," 
 he entreats feebly, turning again to Audrey. 
 
 It is quite plain to both his listeners that he has alto- 
 gether forgotten what it is he wants to say. 
 
 "Ah, then it is all over!" murmurs Audrey brokenly. 
 
 " No, no, not yet not quite; it may never be all over," 
 says Sir Chicksy, gesticulating madly. < ' We don't know, 
 we can't say, we can't be sure; but you ought to be pre- 
 pared." 
 
 " Who is to prepare me?" exclaims Audrey, in a tone 
 of deep grief largely mingled with irritation. "Oh, let 
 me get to somebody who can speak English!" 
 
 She rushes past the bewildered Chaucer, who is still 
 combating with his unfruitful brain, and enters the 
 house. 
 
 "Look at that look at that now!" exclaims he ac- 
 cusingly, turning a hostile glance upon Vyner. " She's 
 quite upset by all this; she ought to have been prepared, 
 I said so. Why didn't you tell her?" 
 
 "Tell her what?" 
 
 "Why, all about it!" 
 
 "All about what?" almost roars Vyner. 
 
 "About what we've been talking of, of course!" shouts 
 back the small baronet indignantly. 
 
 "Oh, go to the deuce!" says Vyney; and, pushing him 
 to one side, he follows Audrey up the broad oaken stair- 
 case to the pretty sitting-room above, where instinct tells 
 them both Miss Maturiu and her visitor are to be found. 
 
 Here a little scene presents itself that is never after- 
 ward forgotten by Audrey. Mrs. Wemyss, pale and im- 
 passioned, with the pretty gayety that usually distin- 
 guishes her thrust into the background, and with teara 
 starting from hereyis, is standing opposite to Miss Maturiu
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 29? 
 
 upon the hearth-rug. She is talking to her in a low and 
 rapid tone, and is using a good deal of expressive gesture. 
 
 Miss Maturin, gazing intently at her, is as one turned 
 into stone. Is she glad or sorry? Of that Audrey, regarding 
 her eagerly from the doorway with a view to ending her 
 own suspense, can not be sure. She looks so still, so 
 mute, so inexpressive, she has her hands tightened upon 
 the back of the chair close to her, and the pressure put 
 upon them has reduced the nails to an absolutely snowy'l 
 whiteness. 
 
 Audrey moves forward. The sound of her coming and 
 the steps of those who follow her break up the unnatural 
 quietude that has seized upon Miss Maturin and loosen 
 the tension of her nerves. A great wave of emotion too 
 long suppressed sweeps over her face. She loses all self- 
 control, and, sinking upon a lounge near her, covers her 
 face with her hands. 
 
 "Oh, if there should be any mistake!" she murmurs, 
 in a tone of terrible fear. 
 
 "There is none," declares Mrs. Wemyss triumphantly 
 " at least so far as Sir Chicksy and I have gone. What 
 lies beyond our discovery is of course as yet unknown. 
 But I look for a happy ending to our beginning; and, at 
 all events, there is hope." 
 
 " Audrey, do you hear that?" cries Miss Maturin, hold- 
 ing out her trembling hands. "There is hope, they tell 
 me. Hope! Oh, most blessed word!" 
 
 "Hope?" stammers Audrey, who can not yet divest her- 
 self of the fear caught below from Sir Chicksy's blunder- 
 ing explanation. 
 
 " Yes; didn't I tell you so?" whispers that youth at her 
 elbow. 
 
 " They have brought me tidings of my child," says 
 Miss Maturin, with deep agitation. " She may yet be 
 found. There is hope, I tell you hope!" 
 
 She clings to the word. It seems as though she is de- 
 termined not to lose her hold upon the sacred thing that 
 for so long has been denied to her. She recurs to it again 
 and again. 
 
 " You have had news of Dolores?" falters Audrey, and 
 then all suddenly her proud reserve vanishes from her, 
 she turns aside, as though with a yam desire to hide her- 
 self, and bursts into tears.
 
 298 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 They are the first tears any one there has ever seen her 
 shed. Some people seem born to shed tears; to others it 
 seems impossible that such sad weaknesses can ever be 
 known. Audrey, proud, reserved, insolent, has passed 
 among her kind as being one of those who are literally 
 devoid of feeling for the joys or woes of their fellow- 
 .creatures. Her grief now is a revelation. To one of 
 those standing in Miss Maturin's boudoir, the girl thus 
 bowed down with tender solicitude for her friend- looks 
 sweeter far than ever yet she seemed to him in her brighter, 
 gayer hours. 
 
 "Tell her all !" says Miss Maturin, laying her hand on 
 Audrey's arm. 
 
 The touch seems pleasant to the girl. She acknowl- 
 edges it, and, sinking upon her knees beside Miss Mat- 
 nrin's chair, hides her face in her gown. To see Audrey 
 now thus clinging with such an utter abandonment of 
 herself one would hardly recognize her. 
 
 " There is so little to tell," says Mrs. Wemyss, who is 
 still gladly excited. " But I can not help thinking even 
 this little may lead to something good. You see, I had 
 started to see a friend at Loans. This morning I went, 
 and at the station met Sir Chicksy. He seemed so idle 
 that I asked him to come with me most fortunately I 
 asked him!" says this good-natured woman. " He came. 
 We arrived at Loans. I didn't quite know the way to my 
 friend's house; so I sent Sir Chicksy to make inquiries of 
 the station-master. Instead of that, he fell intoconversa- 
 tiou with the station-master's wife, and well yes, she 
 Dolores had been seen by her she had seen her there a 
 pretty creature in a dust-colored ulster and a white gown. 
 What led to the conversation between the woman and Sir 
 Chioksy has never transpired; but I went back myself 
 and cross-examined her, and it was certainly all true. The 
 description exactly answered to Dolores the little fragile 
 figure, the nervous childish manner. Yes, yes" Mrs. 
 Wemyss breaks down a little " I know it was she," she 
 says, with a suppressed sob, " and so I rushed back to 
 tell you all of this faint clew to her hiding-place." 
 
 Here Sir Chicksy, who is in a fever of excitement, 
 breaks into the conversation. 
 
 " Most 'stornary thing!" he says. " I asked her if the 
 girl she saw wore a white gown, A white gown, mind
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 2DS 
 
 you! I remember how Miss Lome always wore white. It 
 fetched the old woman in a hurry. ' White?' says she. 
 ' Yes, I saw her from the window as she talked to my 
 man, and her gown was white, sure enough.' 'Stornary 
 thing I should have thought of askin' that eh? Leadin' 
 question eh? I declare to you, when I heard her answer 
 an' thought of Miss Lome," says Sir Chicksy, with tearful 
 joy, " I was as glad as if I'd got And Ah hem ha!" 
 coughs Sir Chicksy, retreating into melancholy and the 
 background with his mistake and his confusion. 
 
 " You are a good fellow, Chaucer," says Vyner, grasp-' 
 ing his hand and wringing it warmly. 
 
 " Yes, yes; when I heard all I forgot my friend and 
 hurried back to you," goes on Mrs. Wemyss. "But"- 
 nervously "this maybe all! Do not dwell with too 
 great certainty upon this tale we bring; disappointment 
 following upon such certainty would be too terrible." 
 
 "Do not speak of disapointinent!" exclaims Miss Mt- 
 urin, rising suddenly to her feet. She has her hand 
 still upon Audrey's arm, and by a slight pressure compels 
 her also to rise from her kneeling position. " Where is 
 Dick?" she asks, looking round upon them. "He must 
 be found at once." 
 
 "He has gone up to town," says Audrey, conquering 
 her emotion. 
 
 " He must be telegraphed for!" 
 
 " I'll do it," says Vyner, with such unwonted energy 
 for him that they all stare. " Give me his address!" 
 
 But no one, it seems, is aware of his present address. 
 His clubs are known of course; but then he would be un- 
 likely to go to them with misfortune so full upon him 
 and his heart and brain afire with ever-increasing misery. 
 
 "What is to be done?" demands Mrs. Wemyss, with 
 nervous impatience. What evil genius drove Mr. Bou- 
 verie to town this morning? Oil, if he were but here 
 now, all might yet be well!" 
 
 Hardly has this oracular speech passed her lips, when 
 the door is thrown open quickly, and Bouverie himself 
 enters the room. 
 
 A little cry from Miss Maturin a movement toward 
 him! She makes a violent effort to speak, to explain; 
 bat words fail her. 
 
 **Tell him!" she sais to Mrs. Wemyss, in a low whisper*
 
 300 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 He has come slowly into the room, and, haying greeted 
 those nearest to him, has sunk into a chair, weary and 
 dispirited. 
 
 " Dick," cries Audrey, coming up to him with her 
 cheeks all aglow and her long lashes still moist with that 
 strange shower of tears that fell from her a moment sinco 
 " Dick, they tell us there is news of Dolores!" 
 
 Bouverie starts as though shot. 
 
 " Oh, no!" he says, raising his hand, as though to ward 
 off a blow. "One should not jest on such subjects. Why, 
 you yourself, not an hour ago, told me she was dead!" 
 
 He sighs heavily, and, rising from his seat, moves 
 toward the open window. 
 
 "But indeed it is true," says Mrs. Wemyss, half sob- 
 bing, coming up to him with her great soft eyes quite full 
 of tears. 
 
 And then she tells him all her story a strange story, 
 and singularly incomplete; but it makes a new man of 
 him. Already he looks ten years younger, and his eyes 
 are all afire. 
 
 " The hour?" he asks, turning feverishly to Vyner, 
 without even vouchsafing one word of thanks to Mrs. 
 Wemyss but she forgives all that. " When does the 
 next train start?" 
 
 " In twenty minutes," says Sir Chicksy, chucking a 
 " Bradshaw " he has been studiously examining into 
 Vyner's hands as he speaks. It is a book that he has 
 taken from the waiting-room at Loans and has been 
 studying ever since. 
 
 "If you hurry, you'll catch it, old man," says Vyner, 
 kindly. 
 
 But the words have hardly ceased upon the air when 
 Bouverie is gone, leaving only the sound of his departing 
 footsteps behind him. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 Ag the train steams slowly into the little station at 
 Loans, Bouverie steps out hurriedly and walks impatiently 
 up and down the diminutive platform until at last the 
 engine hurries on again, leaving the station-master free. 
 
 Going up to him, Bouverie lays his hand upon his 
 arm. Now that he has come to the point, he feels cold
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 301 
 
 and hopeless and utterly out of heart. The station- 
 master, turning to him with some surprise depicted upon 
 his fat face, gazes curiously at the eager, haggard young 
 man looking down at him. 
 
 "Yes, I distinctly remember having seen a young 
 'ooman a child a'most she was. This is the second 
 time to-day I've been asked about her. Begging your 
 pardon, sir, are you bound on the same inquiry errand as 
 them that came in the morning?" 
 
 In a few of the most prosaic words in the language 
 Bouverie gives the station-master to understand thafc hia 
 heart and soul are bent on the successful ending of his 
 quest. 
 
 "Ah, just so! Well, I saw her sure enough. Only a 
 minute, as it might be, she lingered on the platform, 
 looking about her as if a bit bewildered. I went up and 
 asked her if I could do anything for her, for she looked 
 quite the lady; but she answered 'No' short-like, timid- 
 like, and moved away from me. But, after a little while, 
 she came back again to ask me where that road " point- 
 ing to a dusty line in the distance "led to. * To Dor- 
 minster,' said I. * A secluded place?' asked she, or some- 
 thing of that sort. 'Ay, all that,' said I, and then she 
 thanked me with the prettiest air in the world, and went 
 away from me right up the road." 
 
 Was that all he could tell? Yes, it was all. He had 
 followed her with his eyes until she was out of sight, not 
 being altogether easy about her, she being delicate-like, 
 and not looking as one might who was accustomed to 
 walking upon stony roads; but he did not see her again, 
 and heard nothing since. 
 
 " But " here his face brightens, as if with some fort- 
 unate thought " perhaps my wife could tell you some- 
 thing more. She too saw the young lady go by from her 
 window. My house is only a mile or so from this, and 
 she had watched her going by. Would you like to ask 
 her a question or two, sir?" 
 
 The gentleman would. He turns and follows the man 
 to his home; but from the little trim woman who cornea 
 out tc meet him there is very little to be learned. 
 
 "Ah, sir, what a pretty lady and so sorrowful! I saw 
 her as she went by this way, passing almost upon the very 
 ipot, sir, where you now stand."
 
 302 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 Bouverie starts perceptibly and his eyes seek the ground. 
 
 " This very spot?" 
 
 Did her tender wandering feet indeed touch this place 
 on which he now is standing? 
 
 " I watched her, sir, until I could no longer see her. 
 Look! Do you notice, sir, where the roads join over 
 there to the west? Mayhap not. But I can. I was alwayc 
 a sharp one with my eyes from a youngster. Well, I fol- 
 lowed her until she came there, and then I saw she took 
 the road that did not lead to Dornrinster. I didn't know 
 sir, until my good man came home that she meant to go 
 to Dorminster, or I'd have found some way to tell her o' 
 the mistake she was making I felt that sorry for herl 
 Such a pretty young lady she was!" 
 
 " Where does the other road the one the young lady 
 took lead to?" asked Bouverie. 
 
 " To Thurston, sir. A good town too so far as vege- 
 tables goes, but nothing to Dorminster." 
 
 "Have you a trap of any sort a horse?" asks Dick, 
 turning with ill-suppressed impatience to the station- 
 master. 
 
 " A horse, sir? Yes, but not for harness." 
 
 But it is all the same to Bouverie, to ride or drive, BO 
 long as he is getting nearer to her. To arrange matters 
 with the station-master about the loan of his horse is but 
 the work of a moment. There is no question about 
 terms. Leaving his card and a sufficient sum of money to 
 buy the melancholy animal presently produced, as surety 
 for its return, Bouverie starts upon his journey. 
 
 It is still hot noon, and as yet the sun, though sinking, 
 has not made a near approach to the end of its race, when 
 Dick pulls rein before the wayside cottage where Dolores 
 craved a rest. 
 
 The good woman of the house, coming forward, 
 courtesies gravely to the strangely pale young man who, 
 dismounting, steps quickly up to her. 
 
 " Some time since a long time since a month," begins 
 he nervously " a young lady might luxve come by your 
 place she might, I say. Did you see her? Do you know 
 anything of her? If you do," gazing with heartfelt en- 
 treaty into her eyes, "I implore you " Here he breaks 
 down for a moment, and, turning aside, makes some 
 transparently unnecessary effort to alter hia horse's girths.
 
 SWEETHEART. 303 
 
 " Can you tell me anything?" he says presently, in a low 
 broken tone. 
 
 "A young lady? Ay, truly, it would be a month come 
 yesterday since a young lady walked in here to me and 
 asked if she might sit for a bit. A young lady she were 
 certainly, an' quite a young thing too purty, but so 
 silent, and with a sad, sad story in her eyes the while; 
 perhaps it is her you look for, sir?" 
 
 " Yes," says Dick hoarsely. 
 
 " Ay, so! I guessed she come of decent people, she was 
 that quiet an' reserved." 
 
 "Did she was she how did she look?" blurts out 
 Pick at last, still employing himself with a fictitious ex- 
 amination of the paltry housings of the animal he has 
 bestridden. 
 
 " Main bad, sir an' sorry I am to tell it to the likes o' 
 you, an* of her main bad! Her face was white as the 
 driven snow, an' her little hands were trembling; an' her 
 feet " She hesitates, checked by something in his face. 
 
 He has turned completely round, forgetful of his agita- 
 tion. 
 
 " What?" he demands imperiously. 
 
 "They were bleeding! Ay, indeed, the poor little 
 goul!" says the woman, subdued almost into silence by the 
 terrible look in his eye. 
 
 There is a silence that seems long, and then 
 
 " It can't be her of whom you speak!" he says, in a low 
 vehement tone. "It is impossible!" His face looks 
 ghastly. " Her feet her little, poor, pretty feet!" he 
 murmurs faintly the very despair in his voice kills the 
 thought that he finds anything to disbelieve in her state- 
 ment. "She could not have been much hurt! Not 
 much say it!" cries he, turning suddenly upon the 
 woman with a passionate agony of grief in his eyes. 
 
 Then, as suddenly as it came, all the passion dies from 
 him, and, letting his arm fall upon the seat of his saddle 
 and his head on his arms, he burst into tears. 
 
 "An' the best thing that could happen to him!" says 
 the excellent Mrs. Burnet to herself; and, as if to show 
 how sincere she is in her belief, she takes his recipe her- 
 self, and, covering her face with her apron, sobs unre- 
 strainedly for several minutes in the most comfortable 
 manner possible.
 
 304 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 "''Take heart, dear," she says, after awhile. " Whilt 
 there's life there's hope, you know, an' she may be found 
 yet leastways, if you an' I be thinking of the same young 
 lady. A white frock she wore, with ribbons on it blue as 
 her eyes, bless her! Pale blue they were. May happen 
 her eyes were gray to some." 
 
 " iTes, gray," says Dick, then, with a forlorn reproach 
 in his tone " Why didn't you keep her till we found 
 her?" he asks miserably, 
 
 i " Because she was bent on going," says Mrs. Burnet. 
 <t An' who was I to try an' stop the likes o' her? She was 
 forever startin' an' turnin', too, an' lookin' up an* down 
 the road, as if expectin' some one to overtake her. You 
 you don't mean her ill, do you?" says the good woman, 
 regarding him searchingly. 
 
 " I don't know how I could," says Dick, simply, " when 
 I love her as I do." 
 
 "Ay, so!" says Mrs. Burnet, admiringly. "An' are 
 you her man?" She pauses awhile as if lost in the vast- 
 ness of this new knowledge, and then " I wish I could 
 help you, sir," she says, sadly; " but indeed I have no 
 more to tell you. She left me without a word that could 
 give me a hint as to where she was goin', except that she 
 asked me how far it was to Thurston. She was the Bweet- 
 est creature I ever saw, so gentle, so grateful for the little 
 I could do for her. Here at the door, when she was 
 goin', she turned an' kissed me." The good woman 'i 
 eyes fill with tears again at the recollection, and she wipes 
 them hastily with her apron. 
 
 "Thurston?" repeats Dick, quickly. 
 
 He flings himself into the saddle. He has long since 
 squeezed something into Mrs. Burnet's hand, and now 
 rides up to her gate, eager to pursue his search afresh. 
 But, as he stoops to lift the tiny latch with his whip, he 
 hears her voice calling after him, and sees her running 
 toward him as fast as age and a comely stoutness will 
 permit. 
 
 " Stay, sir," she says; " there is one thing it comes to 
 my mind now. A while ago I heard, through one of the 
 neighbors, that a strange ycmng lady had come to stay at 
 a house about four miles from this. I asked about her, 
 being curious-li ke, an' it seemed to me that she was like
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 305 
 
 ths young lady who came here. Had she relations in 
 those parts, sir?" 
 
 " No," says Dick, " no, it could not be she." 
 
 " Still what they told me of her was like her," persists 
 Mrs. Burnet eagerly, " an' there seemed to be something 
 mysterious, too queer, as it were. 'Tis on your way, sir; 
 why shouldn't you see if it might be she?" 
 
 " On my way?" 
 
 " Yes, sure, to Thurston. I had thought many a time 
 to go over there myself to the Cottage, I mean that's 
 what 'tis called to see if it might be my young lady 
 beggin' your pardon, sir but 1 have so much to do that 
 spare moments is almost unknown to me. An old gentle- 
 man lives at the Cottage; very charitable he be, enough 
 given to solitary habits, an' never mixin' with tne neigh- 
 bors round; and so I thought as how " 
 
 " Yes, I'll go there," says Bouverie. 
 
 Turning in his saddle, he smiles down at her. There 
 is a brightness in his face she has not seen there before 
 a sort of vague unsatisfactory hope that still has comfort 
 in it. 
 
 " Why, there now I'm glad to see you smile at me!" 
 says she, kindly. Then "Go your ways," she says, 
 waving him onward, "an' I'll pray Heaven you may have 
 eome'at better than me to smile at before you find your 
 bed this night." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 THE dying sun is glinting through the waving trees, 
 casting warm patches of light upon the mossy sward. 
 There is no sound upon the calm evening air save the 
 murmur of the stream and the gentle movement of the 
 boughs and grasses. . Just here the lawn is lost in a dense 
 shadow cast by the branching trees that grow low down 
 until their drooping leaves reach even to the water's bosom. 
 
 The inexplicable sweetness of the air, the softness, the 
 purity of tone, the depth of the greenness that lies within 
 that charmed range of firs upon the right hand, who shall 
 give voice to it all? It is, indeed, a perfect evening, a 
 lingering remembrance of a most perfect summer. 
 
 " Sorrow's crown of owow ig remembering happier things."
 
 306 DICK'S SWEETHEAET. 
 
 Dolores, standing in the foreground of this charming 
 picture, with her hands clasped listlessly before her, looks 
 as though her pale young head had been already bound by 
 that sad wreath. A slight willowy figure she appears, 
 gazing with sorrowing eyes into her past, and forgetful 
 for the moment of a future that can contain for her no 
 hope. 
 
 She is clad in a white gown the same white gown in 
 which she left her home, now made fresh and pretty again 
 as Mrs. Edge worth's hands could manage. The last beams 
 of the sun are dancing brilliantly about her head, which 
 is scarcely a degree less sunny than they; on every branch 
 the birds are chanting their even-song, but all unheeded 
 by her. Her thoughts are far away lost in mournful 
 memories of home of him! 
 
 Her gaze is fixed upon that tiny speck of the great ocean 
 that shows clearest through the break in the beach-trees. 
 Is she thinking of a day now gone, when she walked hand 
 in hand with one most dear to her along a gleaming shore, 
 alovelightin her eyes brighter than "saint-sedncinggold"f 
 
 She is quite motionless. Not a movement betrays the 
 fact that she is living. Her soul is wandering, and the 
 body waits in silent ecstasy for its return. Her fragil ef orm 
 resists the evening breeze; her face too thin, alas, and 
 worn, and too full of spirituality for this gross earth! is 
 slightly raised, so that one watching may mark the ravages 
 that grief and illness have laid on it. There are no teara 
 within her eyes; but there is a sad wistfulness about her 
 earnest mouth more pitiful than any weeping. 
 
 Now she sighs faintly, and her eyes wander to the yel- 
 low hills beyond, on which already the mists of evening 
 are descending. Perhaps, there, just behind them, lies her 
 home dear word! and all that made life sweet. 
 
 How long is it since last she dwelt with those she loves? 
 Four weeks? Nay, a century, rather! What a world oi 
 time has passed her by since then! Must all her coming 
 days be dreary as these last, all colorless, all blank? She 
 trembles as she pictures to herself the terrible monotony 
 of the gray existence she has sketched out for herself an 
 existence barren of love and tender ties, and such fond 
 trivial things that serve to make life bearable. 
 
 Well, it is better so! The twining fingers clasp each 
 other with a fiercer warmth, and the throbbing heart beats
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 30? 
 
 back a growing sob. And it is all so long ago now, and 
 no word, no sign. 
 
 Yes, they must deem her dead! No doubt they now 
 think of her as one lying in her quiet grave, with all 
 life's torments ended, and that sad stain npon her name 
 lost, left behind in the world's hurry as it marches ever 
 onward in hot haste. 
 
 And indeed, if by this time they have begun to think 
 her as dead, they have not so very far exceeded the truth. 
 Another faint deepening of that heavy fever, a few days 
 more of exhaustion, and she might have been reckoned 
 with those who are no longer amongst the living. So 
 near she was to the end of her life's journey that almost 
 they might believe she had reached it. 
 
 Oh, how cruel were the kindly hands that had pulled 
 her back from the grave! What an irreparable injury 
 did these good Samaritans do her when they raised her 
 from her sick-couch and rescued her from the arms of 
 Death, into whose embrace she would willingly have 
 sunk! Now, even now, she might have been at rest, 
 lying with straightened limbs and feverless brain, with 
 nothing to press upon her heart save the cool earth and 
 the throbbings of the gently-growing grasses. Under 
 the dewy sod she would be resting in a great peace, her 
 soul in heaven. 
 
 She clasps her little slender hands and sighs convul- 
 sively. In heaven home might have been found again, 
 and the Dear Father of all would have forgiven her sins. 
 She had been wicked, perhaps yes, often; but indeed she 
 had tried to be good only there is so much always to be 
 longed for here, although so little to be gained. 
 
 " To live as we should always die, 
 
 It were a goodly trade; 
 To change low death for life so high, 
 
 No better change is made. 
 For all our worldly things are vain, 
 
 In them there is no trust; 
 We see all things awhile remain, 
 
 And then they change to dust." 
 
 Hovr still it grows! How long the shadows lie! Al- 
 ready Apollo has sunk in a crimson glory behind the 
 nearest hills. How quickly the stars are coming out to 
 deck the summer skyl la it as being behind those scars
 
 308 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 that they dream of her at home? Has even Dick come 
 to think of her as dead? Oh, dear, dear Dick! Did he 
 know how she loved him that it was for him to save 
 him from the dull burning pain that will live in her own 
 heart forever that she left all, all? 
 
 A dry but passionate sob breaks from her. It seems to 
 agitate all her delicate frame. The eager longing of her 
 spirit is almost past control as she dwells on what is and 
 what might have been, had not those past days, so rich in 
 gladness, being overshadowed by BO cruel a cloud. 
 
 With a little gesture full of despair, she turns as though 
 to go in-doors. Her sudden movement prevents a young 
 man, who for a long time has been watching her in a 
 nervous anxiety that has checked his desire to advance, 
 from falling back into the shadows of the evergreens be- 
 hind him. Thus surprised he wisely stands still, and lets 
 his longing eyes seek hers. 
 
 Then all in a moment she sees him. Her mind flies 
 back from distant thoughts of him to the knowledge that 
 he is here before her, standing over there in this most 
 blessed twilight. 
 
 He comes quickly up to her and holds out his arms, an 
 agony of love upon his face. She runs to him; she flings 
 her innocent arms around his neck, and clings to hini as 
 a tired child might cling who in its weariest hour has 
 regained its parent's breast. 
 
 No tears fall from her; no word escapes her. She lies 
 within his arms quiescent, her breath hardly seems to 
 pass her lips. 
 
 " My darling, my soul! " exclaims the young man, with 
 uncontrollable emotion. " Speak to me, let me hear your 
 voice! " 
 
 As though the sound of the old well-loved tones has 
 power to rouse her, she stirs within his arms, and a heavy 
 sigh escapes her. For a moment she regains consciousness. 
 
 " It has been a long, long time! " she whispers, so 
 faintly that he has to stoop to hear her. 
 
 "Too long!" returns he, with vehemence. 
 
 He might perhaps have said more, but something 
 some slight lessening of the hold of the gentle arms tells 
 him the truth. Gazing with anxious haste into her face, 
 he s?es that she has fainted. 
 
 Lifting his shadowj burden and holding it close to his
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 309 
 
 f 
 
 heart, Bouverie moves toward the house. Holding thus 
 the thing he loves best in the world, he learns, with a lit- 
 tle pang of sorrow, how light his burden is so light that 
 it can hardly so be called. How white she looks how 
 still! Is it only unconsciousness, or is it With a look 
 of terror upon his face, he hastens his footsteps. 
 
 Perhaps it is the rapid movement through the air, per- 
 haps the beating of her lover's heart so near her own, or 
 the mere consciousness of his presence, that revives her; 
 at all events, before he has half covered the ground that 
 separates them from the house, she is restored to life 
 again. 
 
 She struggles faintly to her feet, and, still leaning 
 heavily against him, sighs softly: 
 
 "It is you, then, Dick, and no dream?" she whispers 
 at last. 
 
 " It is I, my darling." 
 
 " Don't take me to the house at least not yet. The 
 soft air does me good; and there are so many things I 
 must say to you alone." 
 
 She sinks upon a garden-seat near her, and he, wrapping 
 a loose shawl that is lying there, very tenderly around 
 her, seats himself beside her. They are so hemmed in by 
 the rhododendrons that they are quite hidden from the 
 outer world. 
 
 "You are sure you are better here than in- doors?" he 
 asks her. anxiously. 
 
 " Quite sure. It was only a momentary weakness. It 
 is gone now. You startled me a little" with a wan 
 smile " not you so much, perhaps, as the strange fear 
 that what I saw was merely a vision, and that I should 
 wake from it presently to find you as lost to me as you 
 were before." 
 
 " You have been ill?" says the young man, abruptly, 
 unmistakable anguish in his "tone. 
 
 " Yes, for a short time. But never mind that now. 
 Tell me of" 
 
 " I. must mind it. What is it that has made you the 
 wreck you now are?" 
 
 " A fever of some sort. But it was nothing much, or 
 I could not be so well as I am now. YOU can see that fo~ 
 yourself."
 
 S10 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 " I can see that you are but a shadow of your former 
 self." 
 
 " A very substantial shadow. Oh, Dick, hear me! I 
 will tell you all you want to know afterward; but first tell 
 me of Lallie." 
 
 " What of her?" 
 
 "She is well?" with tremulous anziety. 
 
 " Well as a distressed mind will let her be. You alone 
 fill all her thoughts night and day. Think then if she can 
 be altogether as well as you could wish hsr." 
 
 " You are unkind," says the girl, with a quick sob. 
 
 "Just now she is buoyed up with a hope, which, thank 
 God, will not prove an altogether vain one. But, if I had 
 failed to find you Oh, dear, dear love." cries he, with 
 passionate reproach, " how could you so have trifled with 
 what was all the world to us, your life?" 
 
 " I didn't invite the fever to visit me," returns she, in 
 quaint defense. " It wasn't my fault that it came, though 
 in truth I am very much obliged to it in many ways. 
 Those first days of happy unconsciousness, and those 
 others, when I was too weak to feel anything but indiffer- 
 ence, killed the time that lay for me between then and 
 now. Had I been in my proper senses all those intermina- 
 ble hours, I should have been driven to my death by fret- 
 ting and worrying and longing for you! But yet "- 
 steadfastly " believe me, I should never have sought you 
 or recalled you never. I would have lived my pain 
 through even though my life should be its cost. And 
 now " sadly " it has all to be done over again. My past 
 trouble goes for naught." Sue catches her breath heavily. 
 " Tell me," she says presently, "how it was I failed, how 
 you discovered me." 
 
 " It wasn't I/' says Dick. Then he laughs with an ir- 
 resistible merriment. " I give you a guess," he says, " as 
 to who was the real finder." 
 
 "Audrey?" 
 
 "No Sir Chicksy. There! Did you ever think he 
 would rise to such a height to be regarded as a person 
 of vital importance, the actual discoverer of our little 
 deserter?" 
 
 "You musn't call me names," murmurs she, with a 
 faint return of the old pretty, mischievous spirit. 
 
 This gleam from the far-off days strikes with a certain
 
 KICK'S SWEETHEART. 311 
 
 sense of pain upon Bouverie's heart. His eyes fill with, 
 tears 
 
 " I have answered all your questions," he says. " Now 
 answer mine. Tell me how it is you are here, and with 
 whom " 
 
 In a few words she makes him master of all her actions 
 from the hour she left Greylands until now. With sim- 
 ple, but earnest, gratitude, she dwells upon the tender 
 care showered upon her by those strangers into whose 
 life she has fallen. 
 
 " Without a hesitation, not knowing who or what I 
 was," she concludes, " they took me in and tended me 
 with a carefulness, a sympathy, not to be surpassed. So 
 long as I live I shall bear in my heart the memory of their 
 good deeds to me." 
 
 " It is well to know that their reward is sure," says 
 Bouverie, solemnly. 
 
 There is silence for awhile, and then suddenly, as 
 though some thought he has been harboring has been too 
 strong for him, he turns to her with a curious anger in 
 his eyes, which is still overpowered by love. 
 
 " What did you mean by treating us as you did?" he 
 says. "Did you understand? Did you do it willfully? 
 Or is it possible you could not guess at the depth of t'lie 
 misery to which you consigned us? It was a living death 
 we endured from day to day. Did you know how we 
 Buffered?" He lays his hand upon her shoulder, and com- 
 pels her to meet his burning eyes. 
 
 " Yes, for I suffered too," returns she, gently. 
 
 " Not one-hundredth part so much as we did. I tell 
 you it was horrible, the doubt, the despair, the everlast- 
 ing fear!" 
 
 "Ah, do not scold me!" entreats she lovingly. She 
 nestles closer to him. She steals one hand round his 
 neck, and with the other turns his sad face to her own. 
 " Dear good Dick!" she whispers wooingly, and presses 
 upon his lips a little soft fond kiss. There is a pause, and 
 then " I do think," she says, with flattering conviction, 
 " that you have the very handsomest and nicest face in 
 all the world." 
 
 What man could withstand this? Bouverie, in spite of 
 his stern endeavor to the contrary, smiles broadly. 
 
 "There now see how conceited we canlookl" says his
 
 312 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 temptress, meanly taking advantage of his slight derelic 
 tion from the cold paths of virfcue. As she apeaks, she 
 blusbes generously and laughs aloud. 
 
 But this very giving voice to her mirth murders it. 
 She starts as though struck by some unknown hand. The 
 mere sound of her own merriment has frightened her. 
 She checks it and pales again. 
 
 " I do not think I have laughed," she says, in a troubled 
 whisper, "since last I saw you." Some painful recollec- 
 tion returns to her, and she shudders. " Oh, those last 
 days!" she says. "If I could only forget them! If I 
 might blot them from my happy past! But they spoil 
 
 " Our past may not be altered," says Bouverie. " But, 
 to compensate for it, there is always the bright possibility 
 of a glad future." 
 
 " The future! To me it brings no comfort," returns 
 she, with lowered eyes and tone. 
 
 "It shall!" says Dick stoutly. 
 
 At f^is moment a voice comes to them across the scented 
 lawn. 
 
 " Miss Dolores, Miss Dolores!" 
 
 " I am coming," returns Dolores, quickly. 
 
 "Oh, come, come, come! Do, my dear! The dew is 
 beginning to fall." 
 
 "It isn't, you know," says Dolores, softly smiling at 
 Dickf " but Mrs. Edgeworth hates to see me out after 
 sundown." 
 
 "She is right. Yes, come in!" exclaims Bouverie, re- 
 pentantly. " How mad of me to keep you out all this 
 time! Come, darling!" 
 
 " Not until you say you have forgiven me. You were 
 angry with me a moment since. I can not bear that. If 
 I have caused you pain, Dick, try try to learn that it 
 was for your own sake I inflicted it." 
 
 " I suppose you meant it so. But what a mistake it 
 has all been! And how could you keep silence for so long? 
 "Why did you not write?" 
 
 " I have told you. I wished you to forget me! And 
 then I fell ill; and then then I hoped you would believe 
 nae dead." 
 
 "What cruelty can lie behind a little saint-like face!" 
 ea^aims Bouverie, taking the "saint-like face" between his
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 813 
 
 hands and regarding it long and earnestly. " My sweet- 
 heart, how pale you are!" he says presently. "Surely 
 the cruelty I spoke of has recoiled upon yourself! Oh, 
 my poor little pallid love!" Then with a sudden tri- 
 umphant change of tone " But what does it all mat- 
 ter," cries he, " since you are alive alive, and in my 
 arms?" 
 
 With a rush of the most impulsive, tenderest passion, 
 he catches her to his beating heart, holding her there 
 closely, as though to assure himself that it is indeed she, 
 the woman he adores, changed perhaps and saddened by 
 her swift glance at life, but still her very own self. 
 
 " Come in," he says, presently; " you must not remain 
 here any longer." 
 
 " Well, now let me introduce you to Mr. Mildmay," 
 returns she; and, slipping her hand into his, she conducts 
 him across the lawn and through the tiny garden to 
 where the glass door stands that gives access to Mr. Mild- 
 may's study. Two stone steps lead up to his door. 
 
 " Keep a little behind me/' she whispers, with a pretty, 
 half-mischievous smile; and then, opening the glass door, 
 she steps lightly into the room. 
 
 At her entrance an old man as he appears to Dicfc 
 rises from his seat and advances to greet her, with the 
 gentle smile of welcome upon his lips he always has for 
 her. 
 
 " I have come to bring you such news good news 
 really great news!" says Dolores, with charming excite- 
 ment in voice and manner. She throws out her hands 
 a little. "Dick has come," she says, "Dick!" She 
 is evidently of the opinion that "Dick "is a person of 
 world-wide renown. " He has found me out! He is 
 here see!" as Bouverie comes slowly into view, smiling 
 also. " This is Dick!" It is with unconcealed pride she 
 thus introduces him. "Cornein, Dick; you may come 
 quite in. Oh, dear, dear Mr. Mildmay, aren't you glad?" 
 She throws her arms around Mr. Mildmay's neck as she 
 says this, and gives him a warm hug in her great joy. 
 
 " Some one from your old home? This is indeed 
 happy occasion," says Mr. Mildmay gently, though per- 
 haps he does not look altogether so happy as he could 
 wish. Is his little bird of passage to be so soon borne 
 away from the strange meat? There is something almost
 
 314: DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 dismal in the careful gayety of his glance as he turns it 
 full on Bouverie. " I bid you welcome, sir, although 
 our little friend," patting her soft curls with a loving 
 hand, " has omitted to tell me aught of you except your 
 Christian name." 
 
 " My other name is Bouverie," says Dick, with a court- 
 eous bow. 
 
 But the word has scarcely passed his lips when a change 
 comes over Mr. Mildmay. He starts as if hurt, and a 
 leaden hue covers his face. He tries to say something, 
 but fails; and then all at once Dolores feels him grow 
 heavy as he leans against her. He shudders, and, but 
 that Bouverie catches him as he sways forward, would 
 fall inertly to the ground. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 MR. MILDMAY is still only half conscious. Mrs. Edge- 
 worth, bending over him, is applying some nostrums of her 
 own decocting to his mouth and nose; Dolores is holding 
 his hand and gazing at him with the keenest anxiety in 
 her lovely eyes. Bouverie, at a little distance, is also 
 watching him, with a fascinated intentness he does not 
 disguise even from himself. Who is it that this old man 
 resembles? He, as well as Dolores, has discovered in Mr. 
 Mildmay a remarkable likeness to some person or persons 
 unknown. 
 
 "What caused the faint, miss? What happened to 
 him?" asks Mrs. Edgeworth of Dolores, in a low tone. 
 
 "I don't know I haven't the faintest idea," returns 
 Dolores, in deep distress. " He came there to the door to 
 greet me as kindly as usual. I brought in my friend, 
 and How was it, Dick?" turning to Bouverie. "I 
 think I had just barely time to introduce you to him 
 when he fainted eh?" 
 
 "Ay, so!" says the housekeeper curiously. She has 
 taken hardly any notice of Dick up to this; but now she 
 regards hiin with open scrutiny. 
 
 " Your name, sir?" she asks quietly, with the utmost 
 rtspect. 
 
 " Bouverie," says Dick, fixing his eyes on her. 
 
 $he turns her head abruptly aside, pretending to busy
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 315 
 
 herself with her patient, but not before Bouverie has 
 noticed the dull red that has flamed into her cheeks and 
 the trembling of her lips. 
 
 " I must regret that my name is my name," he says 
 calmly, still watching her, " if, as I must believe, it has 
 been the cause of your master's illness." 
 
 " The name certainly is known to him," returns Mrs. 
 Edgeworth, in a constrained tone. " In former days he 
 was was connected with it in some way, and sorrow has 
 attached itself to those days. But, doubtless, sir, there 
 are many of your name so many that we need not con- 
 nect you with those who whose lives were once mixed up 
 with Mr. Mild may's." 
 
 Her hesitation is apparent. That she has found a 
 difficulty in pronouncing her master's name is felt by 
 both Dick and Dolores. 
 
 " I wish," she begins, and then breaks off abruptly to 
 turn her attention to Mr. Mild may, who has now suf- 
 ficiently recovered from his unconsciousness to be able te 
 recognize those around him. 
 
 As if instinctively, his glance wanders to Bouverie. 
 
 "I fear I have distressed you," says Dick, advancing 
 to him and speaking regretfully. " Perhaps it will be 
 better for me to " 
 
 " No, no; I beg you will stay where you are," says 
 Mr. Mildrnay, rightly interpreting his meaning. "You 
 have done me no harm. A sudden thought the remem- 
 brance of some old ties now severed the hurried return 
 of some lost memories all helped to upset me; and my 
 heart is perhaps not altogether so strong as it once was. 
 I am to-day an older man, sir, than I should be!" 
 
 Bouverie is about to speak again, but he checks him. 
 
 "I beg you will stay with us to-night, and as long as 
 you remain in the neighborhood. Mrs. Edgeworth will 
 get you a room eh?" turning to the housekeeper. 
 
 " Certainly, sir, if the gentleman will not object to 
 putting up with some trifling inconveniences. The hous 
 is small," says Mrs. Edgeworth, with lowered glance. 
 
 "I only hope yon will give yourself no trouble on my 
 account," says Dick pleasantly. "I thank you very 
 rauch, Mr. Mildmay, and " with a hurried glance at hia 
 little love " should like you to know that I shall b 
 happier here than anywhere in the world."
 
 316 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 "That is well," says Mr. Mildmay. "I had hardly 
 time to understand much, but I think Dolores said you 
 were a friend of hers?" with a keen but exhausted look 
 at the young man. 
 
 " More than that," returns Dick, smiling. " I am 
 her affianced husband!" 
 
 " No, no, Dick," says the girl with a warning gesture; 
 but Bouverie declines to notice it. 
 
 " So, so!" says the old man, thoughtfully. He holds 
 out his hand to Dolores. * Come here," he says, gently. 
 
 She obeys him, and, kneeling down by his side, lays her 
 cheek against his shoulder in one of the pretty caressing 
 fashions that belong to her. 
 
 Bouverie, turning aside, engages Mrs. Edgeworth in a 
 whispered consultation about the postal arrangements in 
 this part of the country. 
 
 " So you take up the thread of your life again?" says 
 Mr. Mildmay, laying his hand upon Dolores' shoulder. 
 "This young man you will return with him? You will 
 go back to your people? I shall be again bereft." There 
 is iu his voice the most mournful intonation. ( ' You were 
 like her," he goes on, musingly; " all my heart went, out 
 to you. " If my little daughter had lived, she could not 
 have been dearer to me; and now I lose you, too. I shall 
 not see you again. I am too old to push my way once 
 more into the unfriendly world, and you " an expression 
 of indescribable melancholy steals over his face "you 
 will forget," he murmurs, with sad prophecy. 
 
 " No, no, my more than father!" whispers the girl 
 tremulously. " Do not thus misjudge me. To forget 
 such Jove as yours would be impossible. My secret is as 
 yet unknown to you; but, believe me, this coming of my 
 friend has not altered my determination to separate my- 
 self from from those who are to me the dearest upon 
 earth." 
 
 Her voice falters; but her spirit, as seen through her 
 clear eyes, is still steadfast in its sad renunciation. 
 
 "You will stay here, then?" asks he, eagerly. 
 
 " That would be impossible! I must leave you, if only 
 to hide myself again from those who would seek to per- 
 suade me to return home, to their own detriment. How 
 hard it is to explain, hampered as I am by the fear of dis-
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 covery!" cries she, with a sudden burst of sorrowful im- 
 patience. 
 
 " I have told you I would not seek to inquire into your 
 history," murmurs Mr. Mildmay, somewhat wistfully. 
 "Bat" 
 
 " Yes, yes! I have decided," interrupts she feverishly. 
 " I will confide in you. You shall know all when when 
 he is gone again, and I shall be left alone!" 
 
 The touch of utter desolation in her eyes as she says thiL 
 goes to the old man's heart. 
 
 " Poor child!" he whispers faintly. 
 
 He leans back in his chair, and again the ashen hue 
 overspreads his face. By an effort he rouses himself, and, 
 motioning to Dolores to rise to her feet, turns to Bouverie. 
 
 " I fear I must ask you to excuse me, sir, for the even- 
 ing," he says, in an exhausted tone, but with gentle dig- 
 nity. "I feel a good deal shaken; that little nervous 
 attack of a moment since has so unstrung me that I am 
 afraid 1 can not in person minister to your comfort to- 
 night. But I leav eyou in able hands." He smiles kindly, 
 with a gesture of the hand toward Dolores. "Our little 
 friend will entertain you," he says, gently; " doubtless 
 you and she have much to say to each other after so long 
 and so trying a parting." 
 
 He touches the girl's hand affectionately, and then, with 
 much apparent difficulty, rises from his chair. He looks 
 old and enfeebled; Bouverie, going hastily to his side, 
 draws his hand through his arm, and leads him to the 
 door. 
 
 " I thank you, sir," says Mr. Mildrnay, courteously. In 
 some little odd way it now becomes apparent to all present 
 that he avoids using Bonverie's name when addressing 
 him. " I have indeed become an old man," he says, with 
 a sigh " older than I should be." 
 
 At the door he comes to a stand -still and regards Dick 
 long and earnestly. 
 
 " Not a feature, not a feature!" he mutters to himself; 
 and then, aloud " Your face is unfamiliar, sir; I see no 
 likeness none, though I had fancied I might have traced 
 some small resemblance. What " A question is plainly 
 hovering upon his lips, but he suppresses it. " Enough, 
 enough!" he iays, hurriedly. "Tut, tut, tut! What
 
 318 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 foolish thoughts we have! To- morrow, perhaps, to-mor- 
 row !" 
 
 He salutes Bouverie with old-world courtesy, and, tak- 
 ing the housekeeper's arm, quits the room with her, thus 
 leaving the lovers alone. 
 
 The long, long conversation that ensues between them 
 has not as yet shown even the first signs of wear when 
 Mrs. Edgeworth returns to them, accompanied by a 
 "neat-handed Phyllis" bearing a tea-equipage. 
 
 Acknowledging her presence to be a fatal barrier to fur- 
 ther love-dreams, Bouverie, with a sigh, comes back to 
 the present, and shakes himself clear of the light, happy, 
 but, alas! too fragile bands that hope has been weaving 
 round him. He had been lost in an ecstatic future, where 
 Dolores' slight shadowy figure moved as queen a future 
 he had ever pictured to himself before the blight descend- 
 ed upon them and that cruel bolt had fallen from out the 
 blue of their lives to blast their fondest desires. 
 
 Mrs. Edgeworth, standing respectfully, pours out their 
 tea and carves the fowl (while Bouverie cuts the delicate 
 ham into thinnest shreds), and presses the dainty hot 
 cakes of her own making upon the pleasant-voiced young 
 man who has in so short a time made an inroad upon her 
 matronly heart. 
 
 There is, too, amongst all her other virtues, an inward 
 sense of sympathy that compels this worthy woman to 
 hasten over her duties at the tea-table. She refrains from 
 lingering; she cuts many small usual, but useless 
 services short. She, in a word, helps the lovers to that 
 renewed solitude where alone a memory born of her by- 
 gone days assures her they can be entirely happy. 
 
 "There is one thing you can do for me," said Dolores, 
 somewhere in the fond desultory talk that follows on 
 Mrs. Edgeworth's second disappearance. " You remem- 
 ber that woman we were speaking of just now, into whose 
 cottage I went on my way here the woman who directed 
 you to this cottage? Mrs. Burnet, I think, you said her 
 name was?" > 
 
 " Yes Mrs. Burnet." 
 
 ' Well, she was kinder to me than I can say, and 1 
 should like to do her a kindness in return. She has a 
 daughter who loves some one, and by whom she is beloved; 
 but they can not marry because of an obstacle that stands
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 319 
 
 between them. It is not so bad a one as that which 
 separates us," says she, raising her lustrous eyes to his, all 
 heavy with sudden tears; "but still it keeps them apart; 
 and I would lower it if I could/ 
 
 " What is the obstacle, my love?" asks he softly, taking 
 her hand in both his own. 
 
 " Money. They have none, and I want to give it to 
 them! Lallie, if you tell her of it, will give them the few 
 hundreds they require, for my sake." 
 
 " You shall tell her yourself, and you shall take the 
 money yourself, too, to Mrs. Burnet's daughter." 
 
 " Oh, no, I shall not be in a position to do it! I have 
 separated myself from you all. I shall never go horns 
 again." 
 
 "As you will about that, darling. Home, after all, ig 
 only where those are whom we love. We can go away 
 together, you and I. I have some money, you know," 
 smiling, and we will see if we can not cheat starvation 
 with it when you are my wife." 
 
 " Not that word, Dick any other word but that! I 
 shall never be your wife. Do not mistake me about this." 
 
 " What a little tyrant! Would you then condemn me 
 to the miseries of an eternal bachelorhood?" demands 
 he lightly, with an assumption of gayety he is in reality 
 far from feeling. 
 
 There is a pause; and then 
 
 " As for that," says she, in a low tone and with averted 
 face, " I suppose in some one of the far-off years you will 
 hardly remember the thoughts of to-day. You will marry 
 somebody who will not be me." A heavy sigh breaks from 
 her. " Why should you not?" she says. " Some day, when 
 all this will be regarded by you as a very old story, you 
 will perhaps love and be loved by some sweet woman, and 
 let her be to you what I can never be." 
 
 Her voice fails her; but bravely she conquers the mo- 
 mentary emotion that has arisen out of her heart's agony, 
 and gently raises her face to his. 
 
 " One thing, Dick," she says brokenly " one thing, 
 remember she she will not love you more faithfully 
 than I do!" 
 
 Here he would have spoken; but she checks him. 
 
 " I know what you would say," she murmurs; "but It 
 if useless. Yes, I have thought it all over, and I know
 
 320 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 that in time you may forget. But " piteously, breaking 
 down a little " it will not be for a long time, will it, 
 Dick?" 
 
 "I hope not," says Bouverie, steadily, "us it will be 
 only when death overtakes me." 
 
 In spite of herself, her face changes at this passionate 
 answer; a happier gleam illumines it, and her hand trem- 
 bles within his. 
 
 " You must tell Lallie everything," she says presently; 
 " and, when we are again separated, be good to her. Yes, 
 you must be the one to tell her all." 
 
 " You, darling not me. To confess the truth to you, 
 I made Mrs. Edgeworth promise to send a telegram to 
 Miss Maturin an hour ago; that will bring her here to- 
 morrow, I don't doubt." 
 
 "Ah!" She flushes warmly, and her hand tightens 
 upon his; then the warm color fades, and a deathly pal- 
 lor takes Us place. 
 
 Bouverie watches her anxiously. Has his intelligence 
 been too much for her? She raises her head presently, 
 and a deep sigh escapes her. 
 
 "To see her so soon!" she whispers faintly; but he can 
 see that the light of a great content is making her face 
 glad. 
 
 " So be prepared for a scolding," he says, with affected 
 lightness. " I warn you in time that she will bring you 
 to your senses, though I failed, and will show you what a 
 little sinner you have been. Do you think she will coun- 
 tenance your hard-hearted scheme of condemning me to 
 a life of single wretchedness?" 
 
 " Ah, do not make things too hard for me!" she entreats 
 mournfully. "Let us talk of that no more; believe me, I 
 shall never be nearer to you than I am to-day." 
 
 She lets her eyes meet his in sorrowful earnestness, and 
 so marks the shadow that at last he has found it impos- 
 sible to banish from his face. Upon this her tortured 
 heart knows yet another pang. 
 
 " Darling," she says, bending toward him, " do not look 
 like that! Even if I can not be to you what you will, still 
 I do not deny to you that I feel it a most sweet and blessed 
 thing to have you near me as you now are. In all the 
 barren hours that lie before ug we shall at least have this 
 one to remember."
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 331 
 
 To make her any rejoinder just then seems to him im- 
 possible; yet something perhaps he would have said but 
 that Mrs. Edgeworth reappearing at this moment with a 
 mall tray holding wine and biscuits, puts an end to senti- 
 mental phrases. 
 
 She comes in with quite a little bustle, and in a few 
 minutes has put the lovers to rout with great slaughter. 
 Having administered her wine and biscuits, she takes 
 captive the younger and weaker of them, and bears her 
 on* in triumph to the dungeon upstairs, where she tucks 
 her safely into her bed, in spite of all protests. 
 
 " I'm not going to have you laid up on my hands again 
 for any one no, not if he was as handsome again!" she 
 says sternly, beating up the pillows as if it were Dolores* 
 own self she was in the act of punishing. 
 
 " Wake me early," begs the captive feebly. 
 
 " If I hear of your getting out from between these 
 sheets till ten o'clock to-morrow, I'll know the reason 
 
 why," retorts the jailer fiercely. 
 
 ******* 
 
 " Which I've always said it, and I'll stick to it," says 
 Mrs. Edgeworth to herself, later on, when she hag bidden 
 Dick, too, good-night, with a respectful courtesy, on the 
 threshold of his door, " that there's nothing like having 
 young people in a house; and, of all sorts, give me lovers!" 
 She smiles a genial smile. " But Bouverie, Bouverie?" 
 She ponders awhile, standing still in the middle of the 
 passage, candlestick in hand. " Well," she says, present- 
 ly, as though relieved, " he's not like the old baronet in 
 any one feature that's certain. Let's hope he's got 
 nothing to do with that family, at all events!" 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 To gaze with unseeing eyes upon a sun-smitten land- 
 BV jpe through a half-open window has been Dolores' sole 
 eo ipation for the last fifteen minutes. To those waiting 
 in ^nrful expectancy for what may bring them certain joy, 
 tim drags in slothful style. 
 
 Hour many times has she glanced at the aged clock 
 that siands upright in the hall, as if defying its very self? 
 How often has its stolid face assured her that sixty seconds 
 u
 
 8JW DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 run to every minute, and not one? Its incorruptibility 
 prey* upon her. 
 
 Not even Bouverie is here to whisper comfort and con- 
 vince her that she is not impatient. He went a good hour 
 ago oh, what an interminable hour! to the nearest rail- 
 way station to meet Miss Maturin and bring her hither. 
 But has she come? Will she? He might have brought a 
 thousand aunts here by this time! Even as this extraor- 
 dinary reflection occurs to her a swift step in the hall 
 may be heard. Dolores, paling, leaves her place at the 
 window and advances inward. The door is thrown open 
 hurriedly; some one enters. Yes, it is Lallie but how 
 strange, how altered! She is white as death itself, and 
 is trembling in every limb. 
 
 " Child child darling!" she murmurs, brokenly. 
 
 She holds out her arms, and in a moment has folded 
 Dolores within them. It is a supreme moment her lost 
 treasure has been regained! 
 
 "Ah, I have been very wrong! I have done what I 
 should not I see it now!" sobs Dolores, clinging to her. 
 
 Oh, the blessedness of having that kind bosom near her 
 once again to be the recipient of her griefs! All last 
 night she had lain awake, preparing herself for the re- 
 proaches, the upbraidings that at last she has come to feel 
 are alone her due; and now now! 
 
 " Not a word not a word, my darling!" cries Miss 
 Maturin, the tears running down her cheeks. "I will 
 not have you accuse yourself in any way. Oh, to think 
 f all you have suffered, my poor little pretty one!" 
 
 Such sweet condonement of her fault, such generous 
 forgetful ness of all the miserable hours in which she, 
 Miss Maturin herself, had so suffered, pierces Dolores' 
 heart. With a low but vehement sob, she throws back 
 her head and gazes into Miss Maturin's eyes with almost 
 a tragic meaning in her own. 
 
 " Have you nothing else to say," she says "no angry 
 word? Until I saw Dick yesterday, I never thought how 
 you and he would have to endure as well as I. I meant 
 to save you from further evil; but I only hurt, and grieved 
 almost to death the two for whom I was giving up my 
 life. I have been selfish cruel! But still ah, what is 
 it I must do now?" cries ghe, with a fresh burst of de- 
 spair.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 323 
 
 1 Oh, hush, my child!" whispers Miss Matnrin, leading 
 ker to a couch. 
 
 Drawing the girl down beside her, she presses the little 
 oft shiny head against her bosom and seeks to soothe 
 her with tenderest words. 
 
 Not in vain. The voice of her who from her earliest 
 infancy has ministered to her wants brings balm to the 
 wounded soul of Dolores. Growing calmer presently, she 
 gives Miss Maturin a condensed account of her flight, her 
 illness, and the unspeakable kindness of Mr. Mildmay. 
 
 " I must thank him!" exclaims Miss Maturin, rising 
 hurriedly from her seat as the broken voice ceases. 
 
 " Come with me then, says Dolores, rising too. " I 
 long to make you known to him my friend my pre- 
 server!" 
 
 " God bless him wherever he goes!" murmurs Miss 
 Maturin, in a low tone full of intense feeling. 
 
 She tightens her hand upon the girl's, as it lies lovingly 
 within hers, and follows her across the tiny hall to Mr. 
 Mildmay's study. Here it was he had received Bouverie 
 here too he is destined to meet Dolores' aunt. 
 
 With an eager step Miss Maturin crosses the threshold 
 with an eager tearful smile she goes forward to greet 
 her darling's friend. He is sitting in his usual chair as 
 she and Dolores enter the room; he rises their eyes 
 meet. 
 
 There is a smothered ejaculation from somewhere, and 
 then the pleasant smile dies from Miss Maturity's face, 
 the light from her eyes. She looks as though she had 
 been suddenly touched into marble by some invisible 
 hand as she stands there motionless, her gaze immovably 
 fixed upon Mr. Mildmay with a horror in it indescribable. 
 
 As for Mr. Mildmay, from the moment his glance met 
 hers a terrible change has passed over him. He is watch- 
 ing her with a strained half-unbelieving air, his face 
 blanched, his hands trembling. In his whole appearance 
 there is a curious sense of fear, vague but unmistakable. 
 
 " You!" says Miss Maturin at last. 
 
 Her voice is not loud, there is no violent passion in it. 
 It is indeed low. Almost in a whisper the one word falla 
 from her, yet it thrills through all the room. 
 
 " Lallie," says Dolores, touching her affrightedly, aa 
 though to demand her attention.
 
 324 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 Very timidly she lays her hand upon her arm; but fer 
 the first time in all her life and the last Miss Maturin 
 repulses her. 
 
 "Have you been living under this man's roof ?" she 
 asks, in a voice no one would recognize as hers, so harsh 
 is it, and filled with so condensed a hatred the hatred of 
 a life-time. " You have eaten of his bread! Did instinct 
 tell you nothing, girl? Speak!" 
 
 "Tell me what?" asks Dolores, faintly. "Oh, Dick, 
 come here!" as Bouverie walks into the room through the 
 glass door opening into the garden. " There is something 
 wrong," says Dolores, a little wildly. "I do not under- 
 stand who who " She pauses, and points breathlessly 
 to Mr. Mildway. " Who is this?" 
 
 " Your father!" answers Miss Maturin, in a cold, 
 measured tone. 
 
 Bouverie places his arm round the half-sinking girl. 
 But in a moment she rallies from her weakness, and 
 rushes forward as though to throw herself into Mr. Mild- 
 may's arms. All is forgotten the shame, the disgrace 
 of her birth; she remembers only that her father stands 
 before her, that she has found a parent in the man who 
 so tenderly shielded her when the world frowned. 
 
 "Stay, Dolores!" cries Miss Maturin, seizing her as she 
 would have passed by, and forcibly detaining her. " Have 
 you forgotten all?" 
 
 Mr. Mild may, pale as death, advances a step or two, 
 and raises his hand as though to command a hearing. 
 
 " Her father!" he says, with difficulty. " What strange 
 tale are you telling her? A father? I? Nay, through 
 your own lips I condemn you. I have no daugher. She 
 died when " 
 
 " She lived!" interrupts Miss Maturin, sternly. " She 
 stands before you now; but I adjure you, for your soul's 
 sake, to keep back from her, to break all connection be- 
 tween you! Think of her mother think!" 
 
 " Have mercy!" says Dolores, with soft, but passionate 
 entreaty, marking how the old man's head has fallea 
 forward on his hands at the mention of the dead. 
 
 "Did he show mercy?" demands Miss Maturin, turn- 
 ing almost fiercely upon the gentle pleader. "And are 
 yon the one to crave pardon for him? 1 tell you, you 
 should rather curse him," cries eho, vehemently; " that
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 325 
 
 man who stands there now cowering before ym the 
 traitor who destroyed the one who loved and trusted him! 
 Corse him, girl I desire yon!" 
 
 " Oh, no,no, no!" says Dolores, shuddering convulsively. 
 
 " The bitterest curse you could lay upon him would be 
 too light," persists the elder woman, carried away by * 
 passion grown strong and irrepressible by the suppression 
 of many years. " Your mother he ruined body and soul' 
 and now you he would ruin too. Call to mind all he ha* 
 done for you he, your father! Has he not killed for yon 
 all chance of love and hope and joy? Truly" with a 
 scornful laugh "he has been your best friend! Show 
 him no mercy none," cries she, with increasing horror,* 
 " but call for Heaven's vengeance on him, lest he escape 
 again!'* 
 
 "'I can not," says Dolores, falling upon her knees and 
 covering her face with her hands. "He is my father." 
 
 " You had a mother too," Miss Maturin reminds her, 
 in a low tone full of concentrated bitterness. " Is her 
 blighted memory nothing to you? Am I alone to be the 
 one to remember her and her wrongs this day?" 
 
 She draws back from the kneeling girl, as though re- 
 signing her, and raises her eyes to heaven. 
 
 "Ah, do not forsake me, Lallie!" cries Dolores, piti- 
 fully. " My heart is torn in twain! He has been very 
 good to me, and see see" pointing to Mr. Mildmay 
 " how pale he looks and how despairing! " 
 
 " Who is this child?" asks Mr. Mildmay, in & hollow 
 voice, indicating Dolores. 
 
 " Yours," returns his adversary icily. 
 
 "You told me she was dead," says Mr. Mildmay, a 
 Hidden sharp color tinging his pale features. " You 
 swore it. How am I to believe you now? " 
 
 " To save her from you I lied! Don't think I shrink 
 from this avowal! " exclaims she eagerly. " Be assured 
 rather that I glory in it. I would have perjured myself 
 nt any time and thought it a good deed, if by so doing I 
 could have saved that angel there from the contamination 
 of your presence. I would gladly have laid her in her 
 innocent grave rather than resign her to your care you 
 who destroyed her mother!" 
 
 " Hear me!" says Mr. Mildmay, coming forward with a 
 certain dignity in hii Bearing, though his lips are trem-
 
 326 DiCi'8 SWEETHEAfcT. 
 
 bling and his face is ashen gray. "Is secrecy so foul a 
 crime? Her mother," indicating Dolores by an almost 
 imperceptible gesture, " was to me as a saint from Heaven! 
 I lived but for her. I had no thought that I wronged 
 her and her child so irretrievably as you say I did when I 
 induced her to consent to a private marriage." 
 
 " Marriage!" 
 
 The word breaks from Dolores with a low cry. Her 
 first thought is for her lover. She runs to him. straight 
 into his arms, and nestles there. Not for a moment does 
 she doubt the blessed truth. Now she may give herself 
 to him sans peur et sans reprocJie; now she may have and 
 hold him as her own forever and forever! 
 
 "How what is this? What am I to understand?" 
 Mr. Mildmay is stammering feebly. Then all at once the 
 truth flashes across his mind, and he nolors deeply as a 
 girl might, and turns his wide surprised gaze upon Miss 
 Maturin. " Can it be, madam," he asks, in a trembling 
 fcone of keenest reproach, " that you have so wronged in 
 thought that sinless creature now lying in her grave?" 
 All thought of himself is forgotten. 
 
 " Sir," says Miss Maturin in a broken voice, " if you 
 can prove to me that I have wronged her, I shall feel that 
 no punishment is heavy enough for me to bear; but I 
 shall know also that you have made me the happiest being 
 upon earth!" 
 
 For all answer he unlocks a drawer near him, and in 
 silence hands a folded paper to her a paper yellowed 
 and soiled by years, but unmistakably a marriage-certifi- 
 cate. She is so agitated, her eyes are so dim with tears, 
 that she can be sure only of so much. All is blurred and 
 indistinct. 
 
 " There was a marriage then?" exclaims Bouverie, with 
 strong excitement, laying his hand upon Mr. Mildmay'B 
 arm. " Speak!" 
 
 " What is there to say?" asks the old man, be- 
 wildered. " We were married yes. That paper there 
 will tell you so. It was my fault solely that we hid the 
 marriage. There were reasons worldly reasons then 
 that suggested the necessity for concealment. I wish now 
 with all my soul that such reasons had not found weight 
 With me; but she was in nowise to blame." 
 
 " la it true? Can it be J,rue, after all these years?"
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART, 
 
 gasps Miss Maturin, piteously. " Oh, all those miserable 
 years! But even now I fear to believe " A shiver passes 
 over her, and then a more trustful look gleams in her dark 
 eyes. She turns away from them she seems to have for- 
 gotten their presence. She clasps her hands with a fervid 
 gesture. " She is saved!" she murmurs brokenly. " My 
 child, my beloved!" 
 
 Dolores, creeping up to her, slips her hand timidly 
 around her neck. 
 
 " Dear Lallie." she whispers softJy, " now I may love 
 my father, may I not?" 
 
 With a return of the old graceful elasticity that was one 
 of her many charms, she moves swiftly across the room, 
 and throws herself into her father's arms. Tenderly he 
 embraces her. 
 
 " Ah," she says, presently, raising her head and smil- 
 ing through her soft dewy eyes, " now I am no longer 
 Dolores Lome I am Dolores Mild may." 
 
 " No," returns her father, gravely " Dolores 
 verie /" 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 THERE is an astonished pause. Dolores, glancing in- 
 voluntarily at her lover, blushes warmly. As for Bou- 
 verie, he laughs aloud. 
 
 "Dolores Bouverie!" be says, addressing Mr. Mildmay. 
 "Not quite yet, but certainly as soon as ever we can 
 manage it!" 
 
 " No at this present moment," returns the old man, 
 quietly. " My name is Bouverie. I have reason to think, 
 sir" regarding Dick reflectively "that in you I see a 
 nephew." 
 
 " I am afraid you err a little there," says Dick. " The 
 only uncle I ever bad fell over a precipice in Switzerland, 
 and was never heard of after." 
 
 "You hear of him now," says Mr. Mildmay. "The 
 fall from that precipice was but a poor affair when all is 
 told, yet it served my purpose. It helped me to bury 
 myself out of sight of a world that had grown distasteful 
 to me. When I picked myself off the ledge of the rock 
 upon which most providentially I had fallen, and found 
 my guides had disappeared, no dubt in the full certainty
 
 328 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 of having been present at my death, I determined to be 
 dead from that day forward so far as my people were con- 
 cerned. I took another name the name you know me 
 by and for eighteen years I have lived a hermit's life." 
 
 " But, sir, what had my your people done that you 
 should so blot yourself from their remembrance?" asks 
 the young man, with some vehemence. 
 
 " They were part of an unhappy past a past from 
 which I have never been able to dissever myself. But for 
 my uncle's whim, that would have driven me into mar- 
 riage with a woman whom I abhoi'red on pain of being 
 disinherited, I could have openly married this child's 
 mother" laying his hand upon Dolores' shoulder, who is 
 gazing info his face with wide expectant eyes. " The 
 title would by law come to me in course of time; but very 
 little of the property was entailed, and what there was of it 
 would be of small use to me in the keeping up of the old 
 name. He, the late baronet, was my guardian as well as 
 my uncle, and I was his presumed heir." 
 
 He pauses, as though overcome by some vague recollec- 
 tions. 
 
 " Go on!" says Miss Maturin nervously, 
 
 " He pressed upon me this marriage with an arrogant heir- 
 ess, until, to avoid his importunities, I left my house, and, 
 knapsack at my back, wandered into the Northern coun- 
 ties. My love of painting drove me ever onward to the 
 bold rocky coasts that border Scotland. To escape further 
 from him and his plan, and to place it out of his power 
 to persecute me with letters on the same distasteful sub- 
 ject, I changed my name and traveled everywhere through 
 the towns and villages under an assumed cognomen. 
 So traveling, I found her my fate! Of that I need say 
 no more. I loved her, and she loved me. We cared not 
 for consequences, Yet I could not bring myself altogether 
 to disregard the chance of gaining an inheritance that 
 might enable me to give to the woman I adored all those 
 luxuries that go so far to sweeten life. I confided in her; 
 I told her all; I described to her the hard, narrow-minded, 
 obstinate old man who was seeking to force me into a 
 detested bondage. She consented to fly with me, to sub- 
 mit to a private marriage, to give herself in effect as ab- 
 solutely to me as anY lover's soul could desire. I rewarded
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 329 
 
 her with all I had the ungrudging devotion of my whole 
 heart! Ah, those happy days!" 
 
 As though lost in recollection of the time when youth- 
 ful ecstasy and divine rapture alone filled his days, the old 
 man ceases speaking and gazes with rapt eyes upon the 
 faded garden outside. 
 
 "Well, father?" says Dolores, touching his shoulder 
 gently, and so compelling his return to earth. 
 
 " Yes, yes, I must finish," murmurs he, with the long- 
 drawn sigh of one newly awakened from a pleasant trance. 
 *' When you, my child, were about to be born, your 
 mother grew delicate, She pined a little, and at last I 
 suggested change to her. She grasped at the thought, 
 and went with me willingly to a small village in Brittany. 
 Hardly was I there when I received a letter from our faithful 
 servant, Mrs. Edgeworth, then a young girl and my wife's 
 maid, telling me of my uncle's approaching death, and 
 forwarding to me letters desiring my presence at his bed- 
 side. 
 
 "How could I go? Your mother" all through he has 
 addressed himself to Dolores "comprehending how I 
 suffered, being thus torn in two between my desire to be 
 with her and my fear of losing all that I had striven so 
 hard to retain, urged me to go to England and present 
 myself to my dying uncle. She had never felt better 
 she declared earnestly than she now felt, and why should 
 we risk losing all for the sake of a mere cowardly fear! 
 And baby, he she had all along persuaded herself it would 
 be a boy would suffer more than either of us if disinher- 
 itance were to follow on my refusal to visit the old man's 
 sick-bed. 
 
 "I went, to find my uncle lying sick, nigh unto death, 
 but fully alive as to his affairs. He seemed to find pleas- 
 ure in my presence, and from day to day kept me near 
 him, occupied with law-papers, signing my name to this 
 and condemning that, and so on. A wearisome waiting! 
 The days grew into weeks; and at last there came a time 
 when the letters from my wife grew fewer, and then 
 ceased altogether. 
 
 " A sense of nervous horror overcame me. I made 
 some wild excuse to my uncle, and left England again to 
 seek the town in Brittany that contained for me all that 
 made life worth having. Alas, it no longer contained
 
 330 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 it! I arrived, to find my honse left desolate unto me. 
 She my wife was dead nay, buried ! Every hope I had 
 was quenched within that hour. I no longer lived; my 
 being sunk into the grave with her, there to find the only 
 rest it has ever known since until to-day!" 
 
 Again his hand seeks Dolores', and rests there. 
 
 " I found that at the very last she had telegraphed tc 
 her sister not so much in fear of death as to have some 
 woman she loved near her during the hour of her coming 
 trial. To me she had sent no message, dreading lest she 
 should do me injury with the churlish old man by draw- 
 ing me from him when he most needed me. She knew 
 that no earthly consideration would have held me from her 
 then, had I only known!" 
 
 His voice breaks, and it is some momenta before he can 
 proceed. 
 
 "She was gone from me deadl Nothing was left! A 
 child had been born, they said; but a strange lady had 
 taken it away with her, and had left no address behind, 
 no name, no sign by which a clew to her dwelling-place 
 might be discovered. But that she was English was be- 
 yond all doubt. All that had happened then became clear 
 to me. I left France, and sought you!" 
 
 Here he turns his eyes fully upon Miss Maturin, who is 
 sitting motionless, scarce breathing, with down-bent head. 
 
 " You/' continues he, his voice sinking almost to a 
 whisper, "refused to see me. With my heart freshly 
 torn and bleeding from my late cruel, incurable wound, 
 you drove me from your door! I was not so to be re- 
 pulsed; I returned again and again, always .to receive the 
 iame imperturbable reply. I demanded news of my child, 
 of that last frail link that still bound me to the sweet 
 s.-iint who had soared so far above me. A cold abrupt 
 message came to me, saying the child was dead! What 
 then was left to me? 1 broke off all connection with this 
 country and went abroad. 
 
 " Who shall blame me if there I courted death in many 
 A form, if I sought thus to obtain oblivion from the griefs 
 that each hour seemed to make more keen? Vainly 1 
 endeavored to gain the peace only to be known by those 
 who have deliberately renounced the world by separating 
 themselves from it. Of all who had once known me, to 
 Mrs, Edgeworth alonej[ gave my confidence, and in her I
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART, 331 
 
 was not mistaken; she has been to me a true and \oyal 
 friend from that hour until now." 
 
 He ceases speaking, aa though half unconsciously, and 
 sits gazing absently into space, with Dolores' hand still 
 held tightly between both his own. Miss Maturin, with 
 the tears running down her cheeks, rises from her chair 
 and goes up to him. 
 
 " I have indeed misjudged you," she confesses, brok- 
 enly; " I have wronged her too, my innocent girl; even 
 when she lay dead within my arms, I wronged her! But 
 her gentle spirit has forgiven me long ere this. For your 
 forgiveness, sir, I dare not ask!" 
 
 " You kept the child from me," cries he, in great agi- 
 tation; "in that thought lies the deepest sting! All 
 these years you have robbed me of what would have meant 
 to me life indeed the possession of a treasure such as 
 this!" 
 
 Softly, caressingly, he lays his hand upon Dolores* 
 sunny head as it lies upon his breast. But at his touch 
 or is it at his words? the girl starts into life. 
 
 " You must not blame Lallie, she says, vehemently; 
 "no unkind thing must be said to her remember that!" 
 
 She shrinks in part from him, and holds out her hands 
 to Miss Maturin, to her who has been her life's mother, 
 and, who can never now be supplanted in the first place in 
 her affections. 
 
 "She kept from me the only sunshine that could have 
 gladdened my sad hours," says Mr. Mild may or rather 
 Sir Richard Bouverie in a stern tone " that is yourself!" 
 
 " Am I so much to be blamed?" demands Miss Maturin, 
 passionately, stepping back a little, and speaking as one 
 might who is addressing an imaginary audience, a jury 
 who is to decide upon her life or death. " What could I 
 think?" 
 
 "No one shall blame you, Lallie," exclaims the girl, 
 softly, leaving her father's embrace to run to Miss Maturin 
 and fling her arms lovingly around her " no one, whilst 
 1 am present!" 
 
 " It was such a cruel mistake," says Miss Maturin, sob- 
 bing, but holding the pretty slight form eagerly to her 
 breast " cruel to me as well as to her! Listen, sir!" she 
 cries again, addressing Sir Richard. " When I found my 
 sister dying nay, dead there was upon her hand no
 
 333 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 wedding-ring. Like a flash of unalterable truth it came 
 to me that whwt I had dreaded all along was true. Ah, 
 what terrible hours that false belief has given me! As I 
 have already said, I wronged her, and for iny fault I have 
 been justly punished. Be merciful to me now, I beseech 
 you!" she murmurs, gently, thinking with bitter remem- 
 brance upon her lifelong grief, upon her many lost hours, 
 when happiness might have been possible to her but for 
 this slur upon her darling's birth. 
 
 " The ring! It must have been stolen then from her 
 poor hand!" says Sir Richard, with pale lips. " But" 
 turning again to Miss Maturiu " had time no power to 
 soften you? Did you never think that a father had some 
 right in his child?" 
 
 " Believing what I then believed, I thought a total 
 separation from all things connected with her unholy 
 birth the one thing to be desired. I took her; 1 said I 
 would be a mother to her, in place of that poor lost one. 
 To her," cries Miss Maturin, flinging out her hands toward 
 Dolores, " I leave it to say if I have fulfilled my trust!" 
 
 "Lallie!" cries the girl, pathetically, trying to reach 
 her; but Mis* Maturiu waves her back. 
 
 "Nay, satisfy him; do me justice!" she exclaims, her 
 Yoice vibrating with emotion. 
 
 " I will," murmurs the girl, tenderly. Then she turng 
 to her father. " It is enough," she says, fervently, " to 
 tell you that in all the years I have spent with her 1 never 
 once remembered that I was motherless." 
 
 " Yes, she has been indeed a mother to your child," 
 interposes Bouverie, eagerly. 
 
 Sir Richard starts slightly as the young man speaks. 
 Perhaps he has forgotten his presence; now, however, he 
 turns to him. 
 
 " You see," he says, graciously, "as I told yon, I have 
 to da^ regained not only a daughter, but a nephew!" 
 
 " A nephew!" The young man repeats his words vague- 
 ly, as though absent or puzzled. " It is all so confus- 
 ing," he says, breaking off with a curious laugh, but 
 Siling perceptibly. " To think that you you should be 
 olores' father!" 
 
 Miss Maturin, who has been scarcely listening, turns 
 now to the elder man. 
 
 " If you are Richard Bouverie," she says, slowly, aa
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 333 
 
 though following out a train of troublesome thought, 
 " why, then, you are the elder son; to you the baronetcy 
 belongs you are Sir Richard !" 
 
 " So it might be," returns he dreamily. " But I have 
 given up the world; it is no longer anything to me; and 
 why should I disturb others? A title has long since ceased 
 to have any attraction for me." 
 
 " But, now now that you have a daughter," cries Miss 
 Maturin, eagerly, " your child surely is worthy of all 
 thought! You must rouse, assert yourself, and give 
 yourself to the world again under your right name, if only 
 for her sake hers! Come forth, I tell you, from your 
 obscurity it is your duty and lift the cloud that hangs 
 over her young life! You must claim your title, your 
 home, your position." 
 
 Dolores turns upon her a glance of agonized reproach. 
 As for Dick, he has been standing quite apart, his head 
 lowered. Perhaps he alone has quite understood what a 
 terrible change this news has made to him. From being 
 heir to a large property he has suddenly dwindled into a 
 very poor young man indeed, without a profession, with- 
 out a hope of ever rising out of an unenviable mediocrity, 
 and with a title that, like all barren honors, will ever 
 hang as a millstone round his neck. And she, his cousin, 
 will be heir to the money and estates very little of either 
 is entailed without which the title will be but an empty 
 vaunt! And of the title even can he be sure? His uncle 
 may marry again. Why should he not? And Dolores 
 Dolores! He clinches his hands. Poor as he is, they 
 could not be cruel enough to take her from him now, to 
 look for a higher alliance to which her sweetness and 
 beauty might well entitle her, to take her from his very 
 arms! 
 
 "Dick," says a soft little voice "Dick, look at me!" 
 She steals her slender fingei's into his, and compels him 
 to return her tender glance. " Dear father," she says, 
 addressing Sir Richard over her shoulder, " if you get all, 
 what is to become of Dick?" 
 
 " Your husband will be my son," returns he senten- 
 tiously. 
 
 "And and Lady Bonverie?" asks the girl nervously. 
 
 "Tush!" says Miss Maturin bitterly. "One in this
 
 334 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 case is bound to go to the wall; who is fitter to be sent 
 there than she?" 
 
 " Ah, poor Lady Bouverie!" exclaims Dolores, a strange 
 quiver in her voice. Her lips grow sad with grief. 
 " Must she suffer?" All remembrance of her late unhap- 
 pineesand the cause of it seem obliterated from her mind; 
 she can see only Dick's mother in direst trouble, torn from, 
 the high position that has been more to her than life and 
 its affections. She grows sorely distressed; her eyes run 
 over suddenly with bright hot tears. 
 
 " Surely charity never faileth !" murmurs Miss Matnrin; 
 and then aloud " Come here to me, you most sweet 
 angel!" she cries, holding out her arms to Dolores. " How 
 could any evil thought dwell in the same place with you? 
 For your dear sake, then, we will give that cold-hearted 
 woman one more chance of redeeming herself from the 
 charge of utter heartlessness; but enough now. You are 
 overstrung, my darling, by all these discoveries, and so is 
 your father; at another time we will decide upon the meas- 
 ures to be pursued; but, for to-day, no more. Dick, 
 
 take her into the fresh air for a little while." 
 
 ******* 
 
 But Dick, when he has taken her there, is still very sad 
 and silent. For a little while she watches him furtively, 
 and then 
 
 " Are you sorry I have supplanted you?" she asks, her 
 voice vibrating with gentle agitation. 
 
 "I am sorry that I have now nothing to offer you." 
 
 " Oh, Dick, are you going to tell me then that youf 
 love is no longer mine?" asks she, with a careful pretense 
 at a belief in her own accusation. 
 
 " Not that never that! But everything is so changed; 
 you have all, I have nothing." 
 
 " Well, I can't see it in that light," exclaims she, with 
 sudden sprightliness. "I was always an heiress, Dick, and 
 you had always a title in perspective. I can't see, then, 
 how things are so terribly changed as you would make 
 out." 
 
 " An empty title is of small account," says Dick 
 gloomily. "It seems horribly selfish of me to keep you 
 now to an engagement that can not benefit you in any 
 way." 
 
 " fou are not keeping me."
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 335 
 
 Dick regards her with a sudden fear. 
 
 "I thought perhaps you might still feel yourself bound 
 to " 
 
 " Not in the least bound. I feel as free as air! " says 
 Miss Bouverte, blowing a little dainty kiss from the tips 
 of her fingers to Miss Maturin, who appears for a moment 
 at an open window and then vanishes. 
 
 "You don't mean to tell me," exclaims Dick, turning 
 upon her fiercely, " that you mean to throw me over now?" 
 
 Dolores breaks into a merry heartfelt laugh. 
 
 " Ah, Dick, you were never meant to tread the boards," 
 cries she saucily; " your acting is not up to the mark at 
 all! Why, you forgot all about your part when the tragic 
 moment arrived! Now confess that, in spite of all your 
 eilly pretending, you would not give me up for the world." 
 
 " Not for a thousand worlds! " returns Dick, laughing; 
 and after that there is never any further mention made of 
 a desire to resign her to any wandering duke or reigning 
 prince who, coming that way, may chance to be enraptured 
 by her charms. But, just before they go in, a slight 
 mention is made of another topic altogether. 
 
 " I think we ought to get married as soon as ever we 
 can," says Bouverie, with quite a business-like air. 
 
 " Well perhaps so," returns she, hesitating slightly. 
 
 "I shall never be quite happy until I get you into my 
 own possession," goes on Dick, when sundry lover-like 
 proceedings have been gone through. "I feel now al- 
 ways as if I dare hardly take my eyes off you, lest I should 
 lose you again. Even when yon are my wife, I know I 
 shall never let you out of my sight." 
 
 " Do you hope I shall run away from you then?" asks 
 she, pinching his ear. " Are you counting upon that as 
 a sure way of getting rid of me? Don't. There isn't a 
 chance for you there. I shall stay with yon just as long 
 as you live." 
 
 " I wish I could live forever," says Dick. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 " A LETTER from that woman at Greylands," sneers 
 Lady Bouverie, throwing the missive in question, with a 
 contemptuous gesture, to her younger son. 
 
 " She has returned then?"
 
 336 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 "So it seems." 
 
 " Any news of " He runs his eyes lightly over the 
 paper. " * To go toGreylands as soon as you can conven- 
 iently manage' odd eh? I hope she has not got to 
 communicate to you the news of that poor child's death." 
 
 " I hope she has," returns his mother coldly; " though 
 why to me? What have I to do with the living or dying 
 of her disreputable relatives?" 
 
 " On Dick's account." 
 
 "Richard and I have no interest in common," returns 
 he icily. " He has chosen to renounce me and join him- 
 self to those whom it would be a disgrace even to know. 
 Let him abide by his choice." 
 
 " When a man is in love," begins Bruno earnestly, 
 " he hardly calculates the whys and wherefores. You 
 should remember that he " 
 
 " I remember nothing, except that he has elected to 
 cast in his lot with people who have willfully withdrawn 
 his allegiance from his mother. But" with a touch of 
 anger " that is not the subject in hand." 
 
 " No. You will go to Greylands?" 
 
 "Why should I? What an impertinence, her summon- 
 ing me to her presence!" She rises, as though involun- 
 tarily, to her feet, and her fingers close with a remarkable 
 clinch upon a fold of her gown. She stands thus looking 
 into space for a moment or so, and then her humor 
 phanges. " After all," she says reflectively, " I think I 
 shall go. Her asking me to visit her at Greylands is 
 hardly so supreme an insolence as would be her attempt- 
 ing to force an entrance here into my own house. Ad- 
 venturess that she is, has she tired, then, of my son? Is 
 he no longer of any use to her now that the girl is dead?" 
 
 " Her death is a mere supposition on my part," says 
 Bruno quickly, a shade of intensest feeling crossing his 
 face. 
 
 Br.t Lady Bouverie is not attending to him. 
 
 " Yes, I shall go," she says, " if only to let her know 
 how thoroughly en rapport I am with her maneuvers." 
 
 "If anything has happened to Dolores, it will be* 
 death-blow to her," says Bruno, rising from his seat in 
 some agitation. "I implore you to be gentle with her." 
 
 Lady Bouverie shuts up her fan with a vicious little
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 83? 
 
 lick, and lets a curious smile widen her lips for a 
 moment. 
 
 ' And now too," goes on Bruno nervously " now 
 when Dick must be in such sore grief, if my surmise 
 prove correct will be the time to regain his affection. 
 A little kindly word, a word of sympathy dropped when 
 the heart is wounded, does more good than " 
 
 " Is it a prescription?" asks his mother, with a little 
 cruel laugh. " My dear Bruno, you should have been an 
 open-air preacher! But, even if you do mean to coach 
 for that lofty position, I must beg that at least you will 
 be good enough not to practice your maiden efforts at 
 goody-goody eloquence upon me. Spare me at least 
 that!" 
 
 "I was only suggesting to you a proper line of con- 
 duct," says Bruno, coldly. He speaks now without an 
 attempt at the conciliatory manner of a moment since. 
 A vague affection for her, mingled with a sense of duty, 
 has held him true to her up to this. There has been no 
 dependence upon her, as he became heir to a considerable 
 property on the death of a distant cousin almost as he 
 entered upon his twenty-second year. 
 
 "Do you imagine I want to win back Richard?" de- 
 mands his mother, angrily. "Understand me now once 
 for all. I have done with him. I no longer regard him 
 as a son. From his earliest infancy he was antagonistic 
 to me now he is insufferable!" says she, with a sudden 
 change of tone that is full of a concentrated and most 
 bitter dislike. 
 
 " Still, he is your son your child." 
 
 " And ' blood is thicker than water,' " interrupts she, 
 contemptuously; " that is what you would quote to me. 
 So it is. It is capable of holding more hatred, more 
 accumulated contempt, than any such weak thing as 
 water! Cease your support of Richard; it carries no 
 weight with it. Let him cling to the woman who, with 
 the aid of a pretty, base-born face, enticed him from his 
 allegiano* to his mother!" She makes a movement toward 
 the bell, and then checks herself. " Order the carriage!" 
 she says, peremptorily, as though longing to drive him 
 from her presence on any pretext. 
 
 "Bless my stars, what a volcano she is!" mutters 
 Bruno, with a deep breath of relief, as He quits the room.
 
 338 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 As Lady Bouverie enters the morning-room at Grey- 
 lands, Miss Maturin rises to receive her. In doing so she 
 happens to pull one of the lace curtains of the upper vrin- 
 dow a little aside, so that Lady Bouverie's sharp eyes sud- 
 denly become aware of the presence of a man who is 
 walking, with solemn tread and slow, up and down upon 
 the balcony outside. The curtain has fallen back into its 
 usual folds before she has gained sufficient knowledge of 
 the figure to know if it be friend or foe. But of one thing 
 she assures herself it is not Kichard. 
 
 "You wished to speak to me?" she says to Miss Matu- 
 rin, when she has made her the slightest and most distant 
 salutation. 
 
 " Yes about my niece about Dolores." 
 
 " Ah 1" says Lady Bouverie. 
 
 By an insolent uplifting of her brows she gives Miss 
 Maturin to understand that the proposing such a subject 
 to her is almost an insult. 
 
 " There have been many and great changes since last I 
 saw you. We have discovered her father," goes on Miss 
 Maturin, with a painful effort. She would have liked to 
 say more, but words fail her. She grows almost dumb in 
 the presence of this cold haughty woman, as she thinks on 
 what the disclosure of her secret will mean to her. 
 
 " I really fail to see why I should be expected to take 
 an interest in the discovery of that very disreputable per- 
 son," says Lady Bouverie, with icy distinctness. 
 
 " It makes a difference " begins Miss Maturin. 
 
 " A sorry one," interrupts Lady Bouverie. " So far as 
 I can judge about such an unpleasant affair, I should say 
 that the appearance on the scene of so disgraceful a parent 
 would be but another shame to hang round the neck of 
 that unfortunate jgirl your niece." 
 
 " He will not shame her," says Miss Maturin in a low 
 voice, her eyes on the ground, 
 
 " I merely," says Lady Bouverie, " gave you my opin- 
 ion," indifferently shrugging her shoulders. " I did not 
 expect you to think with me. Of course it is disagreeable 
 mixing one's self up with a low affair of this kind, even in 
 the most delicate way; but when you seemed in such want 
 of advice, I felt it my duty to waive a point or two and 
 let you have it." She half rises from her seat. "Any- 
 thing else?" she asks, in a tone of ineffable impertinence.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 339 
 
 " One moment," says Miss Maturin. " I have said there 
 will be no shame attached to her through her father. 1 
 repeat it now. Many things have come to light beyond 
 and above everything the fact that my sister was married 
 to the man who loved her. Dolores is honorably born." 
 
 " Yes?" says Lady Bouverie, in the polite tone of one 
 who is inexpressibly bored. She is still standing, as 
 though eager to grasp at a decent chance of taking her 
 departure. " Well?" 
 
 The word is a question. The manner repudiates the 
 word altogether, and gives Miss Maturin to understand 
 that she hopes sincerely she will not answer it. But Miss 
 Maturin declines to notice her manner. 
 
 "Well," she repeats firmly, "as things are now so 
 altered, as Dolores is proved to be of birth honest as your 
 own, I have asked you to come here, to know if you will 
 not take pity upon her and upon your son, and sanction 
 an engagement between them." 
 
 " Why should I sanction it?" 
 
 " Because of their love," says Miss Maturin in trem- 
 bling tone. 
 
 " You must be mad," declares Lady Bouverie, in a low 
 measured tone, " even to dream of such a successful end- 
 ing to your scandal! To give consent to the marriage of 
 my son to a girl whose name has been a by-word in the 
 neighborhood, who has indeed been held up to contempt 
 by the entire county, whose father doubtless is a man of 
 such obscure origin that you shrunk from associating her 
 with him, and held him aloof until circumstances com- 
 pelled you to produce him, if only to save a deeper dis- 
 grace! No! Bather first would I see my son within his 
 grave!" 
 
 " Listen, madam M 
 
 "I will not! You may cajole him into marrying her 
 that I can not prevent. You have been, so far, so success- 
 ful in rendering him undutiful to his parents that I can 
 well believe your genius for intrigue will enable you to 
 carry him that step further; but my consent to this most* 
 iniquitous match you shall never have!" 
 
 "You distinctly decline, then, to befriend your son in 
 this matter?" asks Miss Maturin calmly, who has given 
 no acknowledgment of the insults offered her save the 
 growth of a sudden caller that has spread from cheek to
 
 340 DICK'S SWEETHEART, 
 
 broir. " Think, madam, before it is too late! Clemency, 
 even at the last moment, would be accepted, would re- 
 store the former relations existing between you." 
 
 As though a shadow has fallen upon her. Lady Bou- 
 verie becomes aware that the silent figure outside upon 
 the balcony has here come to a stand-still near the open 
 window. Is he listening? Can it Richard, after all? 
 The evil spirit within rises high at the thought. If he is 
 there, let him take her answer. 
 
 " I think you mistake this affair," she says, with a 
 alight smile full of contemptuous scorn. " I am surely 
 not the one to take the initiative in it. A rebellious son 
 such as you have made Richard should be taught to 
 crawl to my knees" pointing to her feet with lingers 
 tremulous with passion " before I would grant him par- 
 don! And, as to the clemency you speak of, why should 
 I so wrong him as to show it? I consider a marriage with 
 the girl you call your niece would be the ruin of any man. 
 I hope I have made myself quice clear?" 
 
 "Quite clear," says Miss Maturin. 
 
 " Do you know what the world is saying of your niece," 
 goes on Lady Bouverie, turning upon her adversary with 
 the first touch of open anger and triumph she has as yet 
 shown " of a girl who was bold enough to quit the 
 shelter of her home and wander alone unguarded through 
 the streets of London? Have you heard? Truly her bad 
 blood is betraying itself." 
 
 " There is no bad blood," begins Miss Maturm faintly; 
 but the angry woman will not listen to her. 
 
 "Find consolation in nothing if you will!" she says, 
 with a short laugh. " But, pray tell me, has she satisfied 
 you as to where and how she spent her time from the 
 hour she left you until she chose to be discovered again? 
 A month is a long time. A month in London, with no 
 possible Means of support decent means is an incon- 
 veniently lengthy period to spend incognita." 
 
 "May Heaven forgive you!" says Miss Maturin, very 
 lowly and very solemnly. " As yet I can not. In the 
 evening of the day my poor child left my home driven 
 into exile by your taunts she found a resting-place be- 
 neath her father's roof." 
 
 "Ah, sol Then she knew of his existence, in spite of 
 all we have been so carefully taught to the contrary? J
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 341 
 
 must compliment her upon her diplomatic powers. T 
 be so young, yet so skilled in the art of deception deserves 
 a public recognition." 
 
 " Oh, no, no!" exclaims Miss Maturin, putting up her 
 hands as though to ward off from herself the odious sus- 
 picions of the other. " She knew nothing. We all be- 
 lieved him dead. It was the care of a most merciful 
 Providence who never fails us in our need that drove 
 her into his arms. I entreat you not to wrong her so! 
 She is as a very angel of goodness; deception is unknown 
 to her. The discovery of her father was almost a mir- 
 acle." 
 
 " Miracles nowadays are somewhat out of fashion," sayi 
 Lady Bouverie, with a cold smile. 
 
 *' That may be; but I beg you to listen to what I have 
 now to tell you about Dolores." 
 
 " Ah, spare me!" exclaims she insolently, raising her 
 head and drawing back a little, as though imploring Miss 
 Maturin not to subject her to a certain boredom. "I 
 have already listened to so many details of the er re- 
 markable history of your niece's life that I must really 
 beg you to keep anything further from me. You must 
 not think me rude. I assure you I feel myself quite un- 
 equal to the comprehending of any more horrors. I am 
 far from strong. Such coarse allusions to the vices of 
 the lower classes are very distressing." 
 
 " I fear you will have to listen to me whether you will 
 or no," says Miss Maturin coldly. " Her father " 
 
 " Of him I will not hear!" exclaims Lady Bouverie, 
 biting her lip and growing white with indignation, f* I 
 shall not submit to insult. I confess I was not prepared 
 for insolence when I foolishly decided upon acceding to 
 your wish to see me here to day." 
 
 " Nevertheless" the truth must be told to yon," says Wist, 
 Maturin, unmoved. " Hear it now, I advise you " 
 
 She would have said more, but that at this instant the 
 door is thrown open, and Dick, with Dolores, enters the 
 room. 
 
 "I have told your mother all all but the very last^ 
 Dick," cries Miss Maturin, with vehement emotion. " Bat 
 she will not hear me. Sneak to her, you." 
 
 " Mother," exclaims Bouveric, advancing toward her,
 
 343 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 'for the last time I entreat you to receive Dolores as 
 your daughter." 
 
 "And for the last time, as I hope," returns she bit- 
 terly, " I refuse!" 
 
 " I tell you I warn you you will repent for it forever 
 if you now persist in your decision," says Bouverie sternly. 
 " I give you one more chance; I again ask you to listen 
 to her pleading and mine." 
 
 "Ah, madam!" murmurs Dolores, drawing near to 
 her, her soft eyes, suffused with tears, fixed longingly 
 upon the remorseless features before her. Her appeal is 
 almost a sigh it is so low, so timid; but her glance is 
 eloquence itself. 
 
 " I still refuse!" says Lady Bouverie, disdainfully waving 
 the girl back from her, as though fearing contamination 
 from her gentle touch. " Nay, more," she exclaims, sud- 
 denly facing Dick " I refuse to acknowledge you any 
 longer as my son. I discard you!" She pauses to look at 
 him with flashing eyes. " Go," she continues, in a stifled 
 tone, " and connect yourself with these people who are 
 without shame as they are without merit!" 
 
 The young man turning white with anger, steps back 
 from her and involuntarily places his arm round the 
 shrinking form of Dolores. Indignation renders him 
 dumb. He appeals to Miss Maturin with his eyes. By 
 an adroit movement she intercepts Lady Bouverie's ad- 
 vance to the door. 
 
 " Since all entreaty has failed," she says, in a low tone, 
 " hear the worst. Dolores' father is " 
 
 She hesitates some sudden emotion checks her utter- 
 ance and, before she can recover herself, the man who 
 has been walking up and down upon the balcony outside 
 enters the room. He parts the lace curtains with both 
 hands and stands motionless, looking fixedly upon Lady 
 Boaverte! 
 
 " Richard !" A sharp cry comes from her lips. " Rich- 
 ard Bouverie!" The words die from her, a ghastly pallor 
 overspreads her face, she clings to the nearest chair as if 
 for support. It is she who has concluded Miss Maturiu'a 
 speech and declared aloud Dolores' parentage. 
 
 " Yes, it is I," said Richard Bouverie. 
 
 "That story about .Switzerland, then, was feigned it
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. $48 
 
 was a mere canard?' It is with difficulty ghe forces these 
 words from between her white lips. 
 
 " Yes," returns he again. She looks so haggard, so ut- 
 terly discomfited that lie finds it impossible to add to her 
 dismay, to reproach her in any way. 
 
 Something in the silence, in the lowered faces around 
 /her, touches her arrogant spirit and rouses it to fury. 
 (Throwing up her head with a haughty gesture, she turns 
 'her gaze full upon her son. 
 
 " So," she says, with a low insulting laugh, "you have 
 secured yourself, I see. The ruin of your family wfll not 
 touch you. The world will deem you cleverl" 
 
 "My world is here!" returns the young man, in a tone 
 as haughty as her own, taking Dolores' hand in his. "I 
 do not fear its verdict. And, as for that other world 
 of which you speak, from it too I fear nothing. It knows 
 how I loved and sought Dolores when sorrow was her only 
 portion as dearly as I love and seek her now, when no 
 cloud rests upon her life!" 
 
 "Still I congratalate you!" says his mother with a bit- 
 ter smile. She looks steadily round upon them all until 
 her glance falls upon Miss Maturin; there it rests. " You 
 have, I presume, no other dramatic points to make?" she 
 says, with a supercilious smile. "I have perhaps your 
 kind permission to retire?" 
 
 " Lady Bouverie, do not leave us like this!" exclaims 
 Dolores, starting forward with hands tightly clasped and 
 soft eyes full of tears. " Consider, I beseech you. Ah, 
 can nothing be done? If I could only think of some- 
 thing that would have power to make you love me!" 
 
 " As for yon, Richard," says Lady Boaverie, turning to 
 her brother-in-law and speaking as calmly as though the 
 girl's impassioned appeal had been unheard by her, "1 
 suppose you will let your brother hear from yourself of 
 your strange resuscitation?" 
 
 "My daughter spoke to you," says Sir Richard sternly. 
 
 "Did she? I did not hear her," returns she stonily. 
 
 Dolores has fallen back sobbing into Miss Maturin'a 
 arms. All her innocent efforts have been repulsed mosC 
 cruelly slighted. Lady Bouverie moves toward the door, 
 gains it, and passes through it to the anteroom ontside. 
 Already she must hart nearly traversed the long halls,
 
 344 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 must now be near the open door, will soon have crossed 
 the threshold. 
 
 " Oh, father, follow her!" cries Dolores frantically. 
 "Do not let her go alone! Assure her that we are all her 
 friends, if she will have it so. and not her enemies! Tell 
 her you will divide everything with her! Ah, it is hor- 
 rible to think that she should lose all! Go go to her!" 
 she entreats, sobbing wildly. 
 
 Sir Eichard leaves the room. 
 
 " Oh, tender heart!" murmurs Miss Maturin, bending 
 over the little trembling figure in her arms. 
 
 SOFTLY blows the sweet September wind, although the 
 end of this fair month is nearly reached, and chilly Octo- 
 ber lies crouching on the confines of it. 
 
 The decline and fall of Lady Bouverie, the ascent and 
 rise of Dolores, have been received with widely different 
 feelings by the many in Dead marsh and the surrounding 
 country. But Audrey Ponsonby at least is on the win- 
 ning side. 
 
 She had gone up to Greylands the moment she heard of 
 Dolores' return, knowing nothing of the happy change 
 in her fortune, and had taken the girl into her arms and 
 kissed her with a warmth that had something of solemnity 
 in it. She had said little, but there was a light in her 
 great somber eyes that convinced Dolores forever of the 
 reality of the affection she had brought to life within her 
 breast. 
 
 Dolores had kissed her back again, smiling through her 
 tears, and then the great news was whispered to her. It 
 was wonderful, romantic! So Lady Bouverie was not 
 Lady Bouverie, after all! And Dolores Dolores, the 
 despised one was to take her place! The poetical justice 
 of it was complete! Miss Ponsonby hurried home to carry 
 the astounding intelligence to " dad," Dolores standing 
 on the stone steps of the hall door to wave a last farewell 
 to her as she went down the avenue. Never afterward 
 did she forget how Audrey had been the very first to come 
 to her, while still believing in the cruel tale that had fora 
 little time cast her young life into shadow.
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 345 
 
 "Did you ever hear anything more enchanting, dad?" 
 cries Miss Ponsonby, when she tells the story in turn to 
 her father. " It has all the sublime satisfaction of a fairy- 
 tale. To think that her crest should be lowered!" 
 
 "Hush, my dear! Remember, it isyouraunt of whom 
 you are speaking, over whom indeed you are, as I might 
 say, exulting." 
 
 " * Exulting' is the word," Miss Ponsonby says, laugh- 
 ing. "To have her taken down a peg or two it is de- 
 licious! No dinner for me to-day, I thank you, dad. I 
 have, I consider, dined most luxuriously off her discomfit- 
 ure." 
 
 " My dear, you should recollect. It is hardly Christian 
 eh?" 
 
 " Therefore you are the more bound to admire it, if ' it ' 
 means my appreciation of madam's downfall. Anything 
 Pagan, 1 know, enlists your sympathies at once. Witness 
 all these musty old tomes over which you are perpetually 
 poring. But the truth now, dad!" seating herself on his 
 knee and turning up his chin with her hand. " I chal- 
 lenge you! Is there not something soothing to the spirit 
 in my news? Ah, say there is, or I sha'n't half enjoy it!" 
 
 "Well, she certainly was aggravating in many ways!" 
 confesses the indulgent "dad." "But yet, my dear, we 
 should not openly rejoice over " 
 
 " Openly no! But in the bosom of one's large fam- 
 ily!" says Miss Ponsonby. Then she pats her chest light- 
 ly. " Here it is," she says. "I'm glad, do you know, 
 that I'm all the family. I should have been jealous of 
 any companion in your love." 
 
 Mrs. Wemyss, too, is glad at the girl's return, though 
 somewhat harassed by Bruno, who shows himself very 
 low-spirited over his mother's changed prospects when, 
 first the discovery of Sir Richard's existence is made 
 known. 
 
 But this soon ceases. Sir Richard and his brother 
 meet. There is a very joyful recognition between them, 
 in spite of all things; and then presently it becomes 
 known that "the late" Sir George and his wife are to 
 take possession of a house belonging to the estate in one 
 of the northern counties, with an income sufficient to 
 maintain them in very good style, if not altogether in 
 such as they have hitherto been accustomed to. But to
 
 846 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 the book-loving George Bouverie this change brings few 
 regrets, while his wife, true to the haughty spirit tht 
 governs her, says little, and seems only passionately anx- 
 ious to hasten her departure from amongst those who have 
 witnessed her former glories. 
 
 Bruno remains behind in the pretty home left him by 
 the will of an ancestor, paying his parents every now and 
 then short visits, the shorter perhaps in that he finds it a 
 difficulty to tear himself away for any lengthened period 
 from the presence of Mrs. Wemyss. 
 
 Of his mother Dick has seen nothing since their part- 
 ing in the drawing-room at Greylands, but of his father 
 he has taken an affectionate farewell. A sullen animosity 
 that threatens to last for all time exists toward him in 
 the mind of the ci-devant Lady Bouverie, an animosity 
 closely copied by her son. But, with the little gentle 
 aoul beside him who is so soon to be his life's companion, 
 it is only reasonable to suppose that an amnesty of some 
 sort if only for his father's sake will be patched up 
 amongst them sooner or later. 
 
 With Mrs. Drummond and persons of that class dire 
 is the dismay consequent on Dolores' triumph. A sense 
 of utter failure pervades them. They had resolutely re- 
 fused to make hay while the sun shone, and now the rain 
 is descending upon them. Too late is their submission, 
 too late the hurrying to and fro and the casting of the 
 offerings at the idol's feet! 
 
 A ball is given at Greylands by Miss Maturin, a kind 
 of informal introduction to the county of Sir Richard and 
 his daughter, the young fiancee, at which the Duchess 
 and all the best people in the neighborhood make a point 
 of being present, but for which Miss Maturin forgets to 
 end Mrs. Drummond an invitation. 
 
 "I think I want to give a little dinner in honor of all 
 these marvelous transformation-scenes," says Mrs. Wemyss, 
 standing on the lawn at Greylands and addressing those 
 around her. " You will come to me, Miss Maturin, and 
 you, Sir Richard, with Dolores? And you, Miss Ponson- 
 by " turning gracefully to Audrey, who is talking idly 
 to Sir Chicksy on her right hand. 
 
 " I never go anywhere, thank you," returns Audrey,
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEABT. 34? 
 
 lowly, letting the late rose-leaves in her hand fall sys- 
 tematically to the earth one by one. 
 
 " All the more reason why you should come to me," 
 returns the pretty widow brightly; " and the Elms is 
 really no distance at all. Though why the 'Elms'? 
 That name is the one unanswerable conundrum I know." 
 exclaims she, turning to Bruno and laughing gayly. " It 
 exercises me more than I can say. Was it meant in irony? 
 Did they give my unfortunate home that name simply be- 
 cause there wasn't an elm within a mile of it?" Then, 
 with a sudden change of figure that brings her again face 
 to face with Audrey " You will come, Miss Ponsonby?" 
 
 "I really never go anywhere," persists Audrey, but 
 very gently. 
 
 " Except to a Duchess or a Dolores," returns Mrs. 
 Wemyss, laughing. " Make me your third exception." 
 
 There is something so irresistibly friendly in her man- 
 ner, her smile, and her little nez retrousse, that Audrey 
 hesitates. 
 
 "Ah, yes, dear Audrey!" whispers Dolores, slipping 
 her arm through hers. 
 
 " Thank you. I shall be very glad to come to yon," 
 says Andrey, impulsively, raising her head and smiling 
 one of her rare smiles at Mrs. Wemyss. 
 
 " So glad she has consented to come to me!" murmurs 
 Mrs. Wemyss, presently, turning to Vyner, who happens 
 to be standing near her. "She is such a charming girl! I 
 like her more than I can say. Don't you?" 
 
 "N-o, not more than I could say." His tone is dis- 
 paraging, whatever his words may be. 
 
 Mrs. Wemyss glances at him quickly. 
 
 " But you do like her?" she asks, with pretty persist- 
 ence. 
 
 "Do I?" 
 
 " I am asking you the question." 
 
 "Ah! Well, now that you compel me to think of it," 
 says Mr. Vyner, reflectively, " I don't believe I could 
 honestly make my answer ' Yes.' No, ' like' is not the 
 word." 
 
 " Too weak perhaps?" suggests Mrs, Wemyss; but she 
 bites her lip slightly and regards him with distinct dis- 
 appointment. 
 
 " Or perhaps too strong."
 
 348 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 "Your taste then is not to be depended upon!" ex- 
 claims she, with a shrug of her shoulders, castingat him 
 a half-contemptuous glance that seems to amuse him 
 highly. " She may seem a little overreserved and cold, 
 but au fond she is worth a dozen of most girls." 
 
 " An ordinary dozen or a baker's dozen?" questions he, 
 teasingly. 
 
 "How full of purpose she is, and what a splendid 
 daughter she makes!" goes on Mrs. Wemyss, declining 
 .haughtily to notice his frivolous interruption. "What 
 care she takes of that dear old bookworm! Why, he 
 could not have fewer wants thanks to her never-ending 
 though tfulness if his small income were treble what it 
 really is! I call her devoted. And just imagine what a 
 cruelty it must be to a girl like her, with her beauty and 
 finish and naturally high aspirations, to be compelled to 
 the perpetual counting of the cost. I can't think why 
 she doesn't make a good marriage and put an end to it 
 all." She pauses, as though in expectation of an answer, 
 or perhaps to take breath. 
 
 " Neither can I," says Vyner, returning her steady 
 gaze in kind. "A withering contempt for our sex, no 
 doubt! She is as you say so very superior." 
 
 " There is Sir Ohicksy Chaucer," continues Mrs. 
 Wemyss, darting a keen glance at him, which he receives 
 with the most admirable fortitude, and then returns to 
 her again. " He has been at her feet, as we all know, 
 for ages proposes to her once a week, without fail, I 
 hear; yet she won't even look at him." 
 
 "Ah, that accounts for it!" says Vyner. "If she did 
 look, you see, she wouldn't be able to refuse him!" 
 
 "Yon may scoff if you will" a little warmly; "but I 
 can tell you that, after all, he is not so very muoh to be 
 despised." 
 
 " After all no!" 
 
 "His rent-roll is enormous; it would cover a multitude 
 of sins with most women," says Mrs. Wemyss, a trifle 
 vehemently, as though nettled by his tone. " And then 
 there is the title! He is as good a match as I know." 
 
 " Excellent! Why don't you have him yourself?" asks 
 Vyner, laughing, who is a sufficiently old friend to be 
 able to say what he likes. 
 
 " Well, she won't have anything to say to him," says
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 349 
 
 Mrs. Wemyss, plaintively. "I call it a clear throwing 
 away of one's opportunities. And if it was only Sir 
 Chicksy; but there was By the bye, did you hear of 
 young Drummond's affair?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " I'm not breaking confidence, you will understand, if 
 I tell you; because Georgia a and Mrs. Druramond were 
 go furious that any one should dare to refuse their 
 'darling Reggie' that they posted that poor youth's re- 
 jection all over the place could not keep from talking of 
 'that Miss Ponsonby's impertinence!' even to save hit 
 blushes." 
 
 " What was he blushing about?" 
 
 "Audrey's indignant rejection of his advances. He 
 came down here, you may remember, about a month ago, 
 just before you went up to town, and fell head over ears 
 in love with her. But she would none of him. Foolish 
 girl, say I! He will have a princely fortune by and by 
 a good thing at any time even though ' grandpapa's ' 
 sugar may have helped to make it. And really, when 
 one could manage to forget the whiteness of poor Reggie's 
 lashes, he wasn't at all a bad young man." 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Wemyss, consider what you are saying! 
 Bad! I have always understood that Reginald Drum- 
 mond was endowed by a beneficent Nature, as a set-off to 
 his lack of ancestors, with a disposition replete with mo- 
 rality. Don't destroy my fond impressions; don't malign 
 the absent. He is, too, the very image of the good Geor- 
 gina. I can't tell you how I admire him," 
 
 " Satire is a poor thing," says Mrs. Wemyss, curling 
 her dainty lip. " And, at all events, I think Audrey is 
 playing fast and loose with very capital chances. A fool- 
 ish thing, for youth won't last forever. I wonder " with 
 another swift glance at him "why it is she won't marry?" 
 
 "Is that a riddle?" asks he, airily. "If so, I can't 
 help you to a solution of it. It is one that I myself have 
 onght for years to solve in vain." 
 
 "Yet there must be a solution, for all that." 
 
 " I dare say; at any moment it may dawn upon us. I 
 knew people who took in Vanity Fair they called them- 
 selves the ' Tootsie-Wootsies ' and they took it in very 
 much indeed! They used to guess all the conundrums 
 straight off. I wish we had them here now, don't you?"
 
 850 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 " No, I don't," says Mrs. Wemyss rather wrathfully; 
 "and I don't see either what they have to do with 
 Audrey." 
 
 " Oh, no, they haven't anything to do with her!" ac- 
 knowledges Vyner, mildly. " So far from that, I don't 
 believe she has ever even heard of them. Oh, dear no! 
 But, talking of Miss Ponsonby, do you know I I have at 
 last formed an idea." 
 
 " Good heavens!" exclaims Mrs. Wemyss tpagically. 
 
 "Now who is satirical?" reminds he, reproachfully. 
 " But just listen to me; at this very moment something 
 has occurred to me." 
 
 He squeezes his glass into his eye and turns upon Mrs. 
 Wemyss a confidential glance. It is so confidential that 
 she warms to it. His voice sinks to a whisper. 
 
 " I have it!" he says. 
 
 "Ah, you have at last guessed!" cries she, excitedly. 
 She bends forward to receive his belief. 
 
 " Yes at last the truth has suggested itself to me." 
 He glances round him cautiously, as though afraid of be- 
 ing overheard, and then rests his earnest gaze upon her. 
 "Look here!" he says, impressively. "You take my 
 word for it; she has her eye on Bruno Bouverie!" 
 
 He lets his glass fall. In spite of himself, a mischiev- 
 ous laugh falls on the air. Turning abruptly upon his heel, 
 he walks away leisurely. 
 
 Mrs. Wemyss, her cheeks a charming red, gazes after 
 his retreating figure; that he is laughing as he goes is ap- 
 parent to her. After a prolonged observation she, too, 
 gives way to a subdued merriment. 
 
 " I owe you one for that, Master Anthony!" she says to 
 herself good-humoredly. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 THE dinner at the Elms is a great success. Dinners, 
 of all entertainments, seldom are; but this one at least is 
 all it ought to be. Every one is in the gayest spirits. 
 The women's gowns are exquisitely toned, the wines be- 
 yond dispute, the entrees hot; what more oan be desired? 
 Even Sir Richard has come out of his accustomed reserve, 
 and chats with open interest with his pretty neighbor, 
 who of course happens to be his hosteis too.
 
 DlCl'8 SWEETHEART. 351 
 
 Dolorei it looking radiantly happy. Her eye* art 
 shining; her curled hair, that has 
 
 " The wave of sea-water 
 
 And the sea's gold in it," 
 
 is nestling about her white brows and throwing gentlo 
 ihadows into the gentler orbs beneath. She looks so 
 young, sc true, so lovable, that all hearts go out to her. 
 
 " She is the very sweetest thing in all this fair round 
 world," thinks her lover, as he watches her with fondly 
 eager eves from the other end of the table. 
 
 But a seed from grief's full pod falls everywhere! To 
 Sir Chicksy Chaucer alone is it permitted to present the 
 inevitable contrast that is wanted to show off the fullness 
 of the dominant joy. He does the part to perfection. 
 
 All through dinner he sits glowering upon space, with 
 now and then a relaxation that enables him to fix upon Mr. 
 Vyner, who happens to be seated next to Audrey, a most 
 malevolent eye and a glance full of deadliest enmity. 
 Vyner, in the course of time becoming aware of the eye 
 and the enmity, is at first surprised by them, and then 
 intensely amused. Presently however, growing tired of 
 the little baronet's spasmodic glances, he turns to his com- 
 panion. 
 
 " Well, are yon satisfied?" he asks, in a low tone full 
 of a half-contemptuous pleasantry. "I have been hear- 
 ing a good deal about you of late, and, from what I have 
 gleaned, your harvest is great; everybody has asked you 
 to marry him is it not so? Your scalps must be consid- 
 erable." 
 
 Audrey looks at him curiously for an instant, and then 
 her lips widen into a smile curious as her glance. 
 
 "No, not everybody," she answers coolly, slightly 
 mimicking his tone. " So you see my cup of joy is not 
 yet quite full." 
 
 " How many yet remain to be undone?" 
 
 "One." 
 
 " And that one?" 
 
 Miss Ponsonby raises her straight brows and looks at 
 him with audacious amusement in her glance. 
 
 "You!" she says distinctly. 
 
 For a moment Vyner is disconcerted; then, in spite ot 
 himself, he laughs^out loud.
 
 352 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 "Am I the defaulter?" 
 
 "Yes, you alone of all have forgotten to go down 
 before my charms," returns she mockingly. She shrugs 
 her shoulders and turns from him, as though to end the 
 matter by entering into converse with her neighbor on the 
 other side. 
 
 " My fault must be remedied," says Vyner, not hastily, 
 but just in time to prevent her opening conversation with 
 Bruno Bouverie. " I would not have it said that your 
 mission in life was a failure! Your roll-call should not be 
 incomplete. Now, on the spot, let me make amends for 
 my remissness. Miss Ponsonby, will you marry me?" 
 
 He is still smiling somewhat superciliously; but his eyes 
 are fixed on hers, and there is a strange gleam in them she 
 has never seen there before. It puzzles her. 
 
 "Yes," she says nonchalantly, in answer to his question 
 whilst still studying the strangeness of his expression. 
 " You know what you have said?" asks he. 
 " Why should I not?" calmly. "You know what you 
 said." 
 
 "Beyond a doubt." 
 
 She smiles again. But it is, for all that, clear to him 
 that she has grown extraordinarily pale. She lets her eyes 
 wander slowly from his, and now indeed gives her atten- 
 tion resolutely to Bruno, who has something to tell her of 
 his mother, not being able to devote himself exclusively 
 to Mrs. Wemyss, who is making herself charming to Sir 
 Richard. Bruno might indeed at this moment have let 
 himself grow a little jealous of the old baronet but for the 
 sweet glances his hostess gives him every now and then, 
 tiie sweeter for the fear that they may be intercepted. 
 
 Vyner, slipping a ring from his little finger a huge 
 and almost priceless diamond that has been in his family 
 for generations lays it, under cover of the table-cloth, on 
 Miss Ponsonby's lap. Starting a little, she looks first at 
 it and then at him, with such open amazement in her 
 eyes that he is compelled to speak. 
 
 " You remember what you said," he whispers quietly. 
 " Wear that, and I will believe you." 
 
 " Seeing is believing," returns she carelessly. " Well, 
 which finger?" She looks at her ten pretty slender fin- 
 gers as she says this; then, as though she has forgotten 
 him, the ring, and everything but her present thought;
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 " Do you know what Bruno has just told me?" she asfcs 
 lightly. 
 
 " Never mind Bruno. We were talking of that ring. 
 You will place it on your engaged finger, of course. It 
 is the usual thing." 
 
 " You are inexhaustible; you will see your farce out to 
 its very end," she says, smiling. 
 
 Displacing one or two old-fashioned rings upon her left 
 hand, she places his ring there instead. 
 
 Just at this moment one of the servants offers her an 
 entree. Leaning a little back to help herself, the diamond 
 meets the light and flashes conspicuously. 
 
 " What a beautiful stone," she says presently, when the 
 man has passed on "beautiful enough to be remarkable! 
 Every one will see it." 
 
 "If you meant that 'Yes* of awhile since, what need 
 that matter?" 
 
 "And if I did not?" 
 
 " Why, then I shall be even a greater fool than all the 
 others that have gone before me a sorry reflection! 
 Must it be mine?" 
 
 " You see," says she reflectively, " that is a word could 
 never be applied to you." 
 
 " You can be kind when you like, it seems." 
 
 "And unkind, too. Women, they say, have a passion 
 for diamonds; perhaps this one of yonrs has softened me, 
 momentarily. Now take it back. See, it is too large for 
 me; I am afraid I shall lose it." 
 
 " It would be lost in a good cause, and I certainly 
 fihaVt take it back." 
 
 " Will you take the consequences then instead? Some 
 exchange is due to you." 
 
 " Yes, I'll take the consequences." 
 
 " It is a bargain?" 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 "I think I've the best of it," says Miss Ponsonby, 
 laughing. 
 
 " I'm so very glad you think so," returns Vyner, with 
 gome emphasis. 
 
 Gradually, in spite of the butler, dinner draws to a 
 close, and, the men risiyrg with the women, they all soon 
 
 find themselves in the diuwing-room. Tiie windows are 
 is
 
 354 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 thrown wide open, and through them rush the balmy 
 wind and the first clear streaks of moonlight. 
 
 " What a lovely night! Shall we go and see how the 
 gardens are looking?" asks Mrs. Wemyss. " Sir Chicksy,'' 
 addressing that woe-begone youth with considerable em- 
 pressement, " will you come out with me? Do! I am 
 sure you have a bad headache, and the cool night-wind 
 will do you a world of good." 
 
 Sir Chicksy, who by this time is awfully far gone in 
 melancholia, says never a word grief has laid too heavy 
 a hand upon him to permit of careless speech; but he 
 follows her obediently down the stone steps of the balcony 
 and across the grass to where the gravel walk checks 
 them. Here he strikes an attitude suggestive of dispair, 
 and smites his breast with an impartial hand. 
 
 " It wasn't a headache,'* he says at last, just as she be- 
 gins to grow frightened, " it was she!" 
 
 " Who?" demands Mrs. Wemyss not because she doei 
 not know, but because she wants to gain time. 
 
 " Audrey," returns he, in a ghastly tone. " You mark 
 my words," cries this wretched young man very feebly; 
 " she will be the death of me! I know it! I feel it here!" 
 striking with a clinched hand his unoffending forehead, 
 which sends out, as if in answer to him, a hollow rever- 
 beration. " Remember my words when I shall be no 
 more!" he whispers, wildly. "My death will lie at her 
 door; something within me tells me so." 
 
 Again he strikes his manly brow, and looks as though 
 he were going to call upon all the gods of Olympus to wit- 
 ness his sufferings and his secret convictions. 
 
 "Nonsense! Never mind your brains," says Mrs. 
 Wemyss, coolly and very sensibly; " no doubt they are 
 telling you something utterly absurd. Forget them, and 
 confide in me this thing that is distressing you." 
 
 "You see before you a blighted being!" declares the 
 love-lorn baronet, running his fingers through his pallid 
 locks until they stand straight upright on his head and 
 give him the appearance of being even a little farther gone 
 than usual upon the road that leads to the nearest asylum 
 for lunatics. " For me life no longer possesses a charm. 
 The grave the grave alone I sigh for!" 
 
 "But why sigh at all?" says Mrs. Wemyss, comfort- 
 ably. " And. as for the grave* mv dear Sir Chicksy, take
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 3o5 
 
 Hiy word ror it, you'd find it a most unpleasant place. It 
 is all very well to abuse the world; but a coffin is an 
 odious thing when one comes to think of it." 
 
 " I would I were lying in mine!" protests he in a hol- 
 low tone. " What is life without lovs? A mockery, a 
 delusion, and a snare!" 
 
 "Are you going to tell me what is the matter with 
 you?" demands Mrs. Wem.yss, just one little note of 
 sharpness in her soft voice. Who shall blame her? " You 
 will feel any amount better if you will just get it off your 
 mind, whatever it is." 
 
 " I've told yon. It's Audrey!" says the woful knight, 
 sighing deeply. " I took your advice and proposed to her 
 again. It was the seventh time! I said to myself, 'This 
 is the mystic number; now I shall succeed soon I shall 
 call my love my own!' With high hope and a beating 
 heart I approached her footstool. I knelt to her. At her 
 feet I poured out all my soul, I laid bare my innermost 
 thoughts. She heard me; she listened yea, to the very 
 end; and then " 
 
 He pauses, as though overpowered by his feelings. 
 
 "Well?" eagerly. 
 
 '' She sort of told me to get out," winds up Sir Chicksy, 
 somewhat insufficiently, and with a dolorous sniffle; "she 
 would none of me! She wouldn't hear of me as a husband 
 at any price! She wouldn't so much as look at me!" 
 
 Here he falls a-weeping. 
 
 "Don't do that!" exclaims Mrs. Wemyss, indignantly. 
 "It's it's abominable of you! Haven't you any self- 
 respect?" 
 
 " Not a particle!" declares he, still crying noisily. "Why 
 should I? What good would it do me? All my hopes 
 are ' dear departeds '; there's nothing left to me! I'd as 
 aoon bo dead as alive-!" 
 
 " Or sooner, perhaps." suggests she, with a suspicion of 
 a smile, speedily checked. "But why give in at only a 
 seventih repulse? Try it again!" 
 
 "She wouldn't stand it; she as much as told me so. 
 Even as I knelt before her that last time, phe said, coldly 
 as a beautiful sorceress, 'If ever you even hint at this 
 hateful nonsense again, I'll turn you out of the house!' 
 'Hateful' that was the word that she used toward my
 
 S56 DICK'S SWEETHEABT. 
 
 devoted affection, I give you my honor!" says Sir Chicksy, 
 beginning to weep afresh. " Now what d'ye call that?" 
 
 " Barbarity," decides Mrs. Wemyss, promptly, who is, 
 however, consumed with a desire for laughter. "I won- 
 der you don't abuse her like a pickpocket! Oh, what a 
 senseless girl, to be blind to such charms as yours!" 
 
 " Couldn't you say a word for me?" entreats Sir Ohicksy 
 miserably, taking her hand and pressing it convulsively. 
 "Do, do!" He is gazing up at her in the misty moon- 
 light, his eyes swimming with grief. His fingers have 
 played such havoc with his head by this time that he 
 looks for all the world like the fretful porcupine, as he 
 stands, miserably disheveled, waiting for her answer. 
 
 " ' How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night, 
 Like softest music to attending ears!'" 
 
 breathes Mrs. Wemyss, half as a safety-valve to her sap- 
 pressed mirth, half with the hope of gaining time. 
 " Dear Sir Chicksy, you know I am always your friend. 
 I will do what I can." 
 
 This is hardly hypocrisy on her part, as she has indeed 
 many a time and oft dropped hints about Sir Chicksy's 
 wealth and position to the irresponsive Audrey. 
 
 "Ah, but what will you do?" demands he anxiously, 
 who is perhaps only half such a fool as he looks. 
 
 Whilst Mrs. Wemyss hesitates as to what proper answer 
 she shall make to this pertinent question, the sound of 
 an advancing footstep comes to her aid. 
 
 " Another time you must discuss this matter with me," 
 she breathes confidentially, gathering up her long train, 
 as though to emphasize the fact that departure from the 
 spot on which they stand is imperative "another time, 
 and soon. Till then Somebody is coming," she says 
 quickly " you hear? This spot is growing too popu- 
 larized for confidences. Adieu, then, until fortune favors 
 us again !" 
 
 She glides away from him, and is soon lost to sighc 
 amongst the encircling foliage. Sir Chicksy is about to 
 follow her example and disappear in another direction, 
 whon a solitary figure stepping out upon the balcony at- 
 tracts his attention. 
 
 It is Audrey! Approaching the iron rails that bound 
 the balcony, she leans UDO-II them , and gazes down upon
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 85 
 
 the semi-darkness below, where Mr. Vyner is walking up 
 and down smoking a cigar. 
 
 " Mr. Vyner!" calls she softly. 
 
 Hearing her, Vyner conies to a stand-still beneath the 
 balcony, and looks up at her, cigar in hand. 
 
 " Here catch!" she says, lowering to him a beautiful 
 arm white as snow, which gleams in the moonlight and 
 has a little hand at the end of it holding something 
 fightly clinched. 
 
 " Are you going to throw me something?" asks he cart- 
 \essly. " If so, don't. I could not see it." 
 
 " Join your hands then, and hold them out; you will 
 jurely see this!" 
 
 " That's where your intellect fails you. I can see noth- 
 ing. It is quite an Egyptian darkness down here. Are 
 you going to make me a present? If you think it is my 
 birthday,'' says Mr. Vyner slowly and with an honorable 
 effort, " 1 feel it only honest to let you know that my 
 natal day is not now it comes with the snow and the 
 fcleet; still, if you are bent on giving me something hand- 
 some, why, come down and do it!" 
 
 Slowly, daintily, Audrey descends the stone steps to 
 meet him, awaiting her upon the grass beneath. 
 
 " Take it!" she says, extending her hand to him palm 
 uppermost, on which his ring is lying. 
 
 " Why, that is yours!" says he. 
 
 A vehement gesture, expressive of anger, escapes her. 
 
 " Take it!" she says again, with an impatience that is 
 almost fierce. 
 
 " I can't indeed," returns he calmly, flinging his cigar 
 far from him. " It is quite out of the question. Why, 
 it is hardly an hour ago since you accepted not only it, 
 but me! I fear you will have to keep us both." 
 
 She pales very perceptibly beneath his steady look, but 
 her gaze refuses to falter. Her dark eyea look at him out 
 of her colorless face with a strange but unvarying light 
 that is perhaps even a little contemptuous. 
 
 " A jest prolonged is but a poor thing," she says, with 
 a flickering smile that has no mirth in it. 
 
 "There I agree with you; though I confess I can not 
 see where the jest conies in here. I have your word, the 
 word that gave you to me, and I intend keeping you to 
 it, whether you will or whither jgu won't." Then his
 
 368 DICE'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 whole manner changes; an inexpressible Tenderness alters 
 iind characterizes it. "You did mean what you said?" 
 he asks very gently, almost beseechingly. 
 
 No answer coming to him, he lays his hands with a 
 certain suddenness upon her shoulders, and turns her 
 .slight figure to where the moonbeams can fall upon it. 
 
 " Speak!" he says, with a closer scrutiny. 
 
 It is possible that in his anxiety he may have given her 
 a gentle shake. She does not resent it, but her eyes fill 
 with tears. 
 
 " Ah," says Vyner, " even though you refuse to accept 
 me, still I tell you you are mine! I will give you up to 
 no man on earth!" He leans a little forward, still with 
 his hands upon her shoulders, as if keeping her in cus- 
 tody. " Now I am going to kiss my wife," he says, with 
 determination. 
 
 Audrey, laying five little outspread fingers upon his 
 chest, presses him from her. Her face is ashen white, 
 her lips are quivering. 
 
 "Anthony, what is it you mean?" she whispers, in a 
 voice so changed by tremulous agitation as to be a breath 
 rather than a voice. 
 
 " That I love you," replies Vyner earnestly; " you 
 must have known it, and that you love me too, though 
 not perhaps so deeply as I love you; still I dare to believe 
 that I am better in your eyes than any other man." 
 
 He encircles her with his arms and draws her toward 
 him, she unresisting. There is a long pause, fraught 
 with many thoughts; and then she lays her head upon his 
 breast. 
 
 "At last at last I am happy!" she whispers a little 
 wildly, and bursts into a passion of tears. 
 
 CHAPTEE XL. 
 
 HALF an hour has gone by, giving time to a very 
 stricken young man to steal away and lose himself, but 
 not his indignant misery, amongst the laurels and the 
 rhododendrons in the shrubbery, and still Audrey and 
 Vyner are standing in a very lover-like attitude, forgetful 
 of time, forgetful of everything but themselves, when a 
 sudden rustle of draperies, a faint footfall, rouses them
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 359 
 
 from their fairy-dream and warns them of impending 
 danger. 
 
 With a sense of guilt they start hastily apart and glance 
 in the direction of the coming sound. 
 
 And now a pretty daintily clad form is discernible 
 through the moonlit gloom. It is Mrs. Wemyss of that 
 they are immediately aware her somewhat bizarre cos- 
 tume rendering her very conspicuous upon the graveled 
 pathway. 
 
 " It might have been worse," says Vyner, pressing 
 Audrey's hand reassuringly. 
 
 That Mrs. Wemys has seen them is manifest by the 
 very way in which she comes to a stand-still and wavers 
 openly as to whether she shall or shall not swoop down 
 upon them. She makes a step toward them, then pauses, 
 and finally like all those who hesitate she is lost, and 
 turning away from them, commences a hasty retreat. 
 
 " Let us intercept her," whispers Vyner; and, still 
 holding Audrey's hand, he hurries after the departing 
 figure of their hostess. 
 
 " As you witnessed the first act, you might have done 
 us the honor to wait for the last," he says, reproachfully, 
 as they came up with her. 
 
 "But how then?" demands Mrs. Wemyss flinging out 
 her hands and laughing gayly. "How could I? You see 
 I had forgotten to ask the bishop to dinner." 
 
 At this merry retort they all laugh. 
 
 "I knew how it would be," says Mrs. Wemyss, pres- 
 ently looking whole volumes of congtatulation at them 
 both. "I could have told you all about it months ago. 
 I am so glad about it!" 
 
 She kisses Audrey with sincere warmth; and Audrey 
 kisses her back again with an abandon she would have 
 been incapable of a week ago. 
 
 " It wasn't Bruno, after all, you see!" says Vyner, mit- 
 chievously. " It was I!" 
 
 " So I see. Well, I'm delighted though what I'm to 
 say to that melancholy Sir Chicksy, after the encourage- 
 ment I have given him only this very night, I don't know." 
 Then she smiles again, and points toward the gardens be- 
 yond. " It is too early to waste time on outsiders," she 
 says, regarding the lovers with sympathetic eyes. " Don't 
 do* it. Go into the jcarden; vbu will find a seat there
 
 860 DICK'S SWEETHB1.KT. 
 
 somewhere, and a very marvel of a moon rioting madly 
 among my stately hollyhocks." 
 
 They are not slow to take her hint; and scarcely have 
 they disappeared when Bruno comes upon the scene from 
 behind a protective hedge. 
 
 "To whom were yon talking?" asks he, drawing near. 
 " I heard voices as I came along on a wild-goose chase for 
 you which has lasted for a mortal hour. Have 1 driven 
 my rival away?" 
 
 He looks, in spite of a careful self-suppression, very 
 decidedly inclined toward jealousy. 
 
 " I was listening to a charming confidence," says Mrs. 
 Wemyss, gayly, who is too anxious to reveal her news to 
 stay to indulge in coquetry; "Audrey and Anthony Vyner 
 have been with me; and guess " 
 
 " You saved them from annihilating each other like the 
 Kilkenny cats; is that it?" 
 
 " Wrong, Thersites! On the contrary, they came to 
 me as cooing doves might come, to tell me that they are 
 engaged to be married!" 
 
 " What? Why, I thought they hated each other!" 
 
 " There are so many kinds of hatred. You will remem- 
 ber, perhaps, that extremes meet; so that, if one hates a 
 person very, very, very much, why, in time they will get 
 to the other end of it, where the adoring begins, and will 
 wind up by loving each other very, very, very much!" 
 
 " Would they?" questions Bruno. " Then I wish with 
 all my heart that you hated me 'very, very, very much!'" 
 
 " There is something in the air, isn't there, asks Mrs. 
 Wemyss, reflectively, ignoring his remark "something 
 magnetic that suggests love? At least one might reason- 
 ably suppose so, as everybody seems to be proposing mar- 
 riage to everybody else to-night. I wish somebody would 
 ask me to marry him. I feel a little out in the cold." 
 
 "You needn't. On an average, I think I have been 
 proposing to you morning, noon, and night for the past 
 six months." 
 
 " Well, but you haven't to-night," says Mrs. Wemyss 
 carefully. 
 
 "The night is very far from being spent yet, and such 
 an accusation shall not be cast in my teeth. I'll do it now 
 again, or die! Would v.uu prefer a declaration standing 
 or kneeling?"
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 861 
 
 "You have so often done it both ways that " 
 
 " That it must be easy to decide." 
 
 "No, difficult. If there were only a third way, it 
 might contain a charm. But one grows weary " 
 
 " Of saying ' No ' ? quickly. " Say ' Yes* then for a 
 change." 
 
 4 ' Oh, impossible!" laughing, blushing, and warding 
 off her lover as he draws closer to her by holding up to 
 him two pretty pink palms extended. " If I said 'Yes' 
 now, I should always think it was I had proposed to 
 you. And, besides, you should marry some pretty little 
 girl ever so much younger than you. As for me, I am no- 
 body." 
 
 " Yon are all the world to me, at all events; don't 
 make it a wilderness to me." A moment elapses in which 
 he has defied the resisting hands and drawn her to his 
 heart. " Say you will marry me, Cis," desires he, in a 
 somewhat masterful tone. 
 
 " I shall pay you off for this later on," whispers she, with 
 A soft laugh. " But, if you will have it so, why, then, 
 yesl" 
 
 " You mean it?" asks Bruno, tightening his grasp. 
 
 " I mean that I have been most shamefully coerced," 
 returns she, smiling. " But yet " 
 
 " What, darling?" 
 
 "I am glad of the coercion." 
 
 " Drowsy night grows on the world," 
 
 the heavens become more fair by reason of the increase of 
 their otarry gems, the earth beneath is full of the reflex 
 of their glory. Under the rays of the great moon, Dick 
 and his soul's desire are pacing to and fro upon a secluded 
 pathway hedged in by flowering myrtles and the scented 
 boughs of pale walnut-trees. 
 
 Dolores, with head thrown back against her lover's 
 breast, is musing thoughtfully on many happy things 
 that are, on many sorrowful things that yet have been; 
 but no grief dwells upon her gentle face, no shadow dima 
 its brightness. The purity of her soft lips and eyes is 
 nnmarred by cankering care. Hope is her guest to-night 
 hope and the knowledge of a great love that with fair
 
 362 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 face and sweet has stolen into her inmost heart and made 
 an everlasting lodging there. 
 
 Dick is her own again, her love, her dearest heart! His 
 care will be as a girdle round her always. She will be 
 his, to have and to hold forever, to guard, to cherish, to 
 Jceep back from her the very winds of heaven, lest they 
 gmite her too severely. 
 
 A glad smile full of beauty overspreads her face as thus 
 her thoughts wander into regions replete with joy. No 
 memory of her late misery stirs her soul. All trouble is 
 forgotten, all unquiet recollections are laid in their sullen 
 grave. Who remembers the night when the morning 
 dawns? Past griefs grow dim when present joys abound. 
 
 A long sweet sigh escapes her, a sigh of the very deep- 
 est content. She raises her eyes to her lover, only to find 
 his gaze riveted upon her in the clear languorous moon- 
 light. 
 
 " Of what are you thinking, darling? Of me?" asks 
 he, in a low tone. 
 
 " For once, no," confesses Dolores, smiling and rubbing 
 her cheek softly against his. " Of some one far less dear, 
 yet who still has a claim upon my affection. I was think- 
 ing of Mrs. Burnet." 
 
 "Ah, that good woman!" 
 
 "I was recalling to my mind how she looked this morn- 
 ing when I gave her the money that will enable her 
 daughter to leave service and marry the man she loves. 
 Such a heavenly delight showed itself upon her face, such 
 joy, such gratitude. It was almost too much; it made 
 me cry." 
 
 Tears are standing within her loving eyes, but there is a 
 gmile upon her lips. 
 
 " Ah," cries she, " I am so happy myself that I would, 
 if it were possible, see all true lovers happy also! And 
 that poor mother's glance of joy is a thing never to be 
 forgotten. Yes," with a little sigh of intensest satisfac- 
 tion, "I have certainly succeeded in making some one 
 truly glad to-day! " 
 
 " To-day's success makes two. Do I not count with 
 you? Have you not made m happy?" 
 
 He receives his answer, not in words, but in a tender 
 deed. 
 
 " I never think of vou von are myself," she whispers
 
 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 363 
 
 presently. " And, besides, in such a matter u this we 
 are quits. I could give you no larger share of bliss than 
 you have given me. 
 
 "Beloved, does no cruel memory of the sad past days 
 torment you now?" asfcs he, regarding her with fond 
 anxious eyes. " You feel nothing." 
 
 "Nothing," returns she, dreamily. Her arms steal 
 round his neck, she lays her head upon his breast, and 
 for awhile is very silent. Then " I feel only this," she 
 ays at last, as though she has been revolving his question 
 in her mind, "that I am with you now, and shall be so 
 forever, and that I am at rest, and very, very thankful." 
 
 There is a pause for a long while; but they, standing 
 thus together, feeling the beating of each other's hearts, 
 take no heed of the rapid flight of time. She is in his 
 aif?ns, the one thing precious to him, a possession before 
 which all the choicest glories of the world pull. 
 
 " You are growing stronger your old, pretty color is 
 Doming back to you," he says, presently, regarding her 
 with a most thankful criticism. " You feel better?" with 
 lover-like anxiety. 
 
 "I am altogether well," returns she, smiling; "body 
 and soul are free from pain. Peace alone belongs to me. 
 You need not be frightened about me any longer, Dick " 
 raising her beautiful, laughing eyes to his. " Only 
 yesterday Mrs. Edgeworth told me she hoped I should not 
 grow too robust, as stoutness was a terrible fault in a 
 young lady." 
 
 They both laugh. 
 
 " Dear old thing!" says Dolores. " I am so glad she is 
 still pupa's housekeeper. She told me she was a little 
 uneasy at first, when the great change was made, lest she 
 should not be considered 'grand enough ' for the situation. 
 But I soon set her mind at rest about that." 
 
 " You would have everybody's mind at rest if you had 
 your way," pays Dick, caressingly. "Do you remember 
 how I used in the old days to compare you to a white 
 violet?" 
 
 " I remember." 
 
 " I was wrong, I think; I have" looking at her very 
 tenderly "a better comparison for you now. You are 
 more like a spring daisy so fair so white, BO delicate, 
 with such a heart of
 
 164 DICK'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 She glances up at him with parted lipa, a J eyes alight 
 v~ith love. His arms tighten round her slender form; his 
 eyes meet hers. 
 
 Far, far above them the floating moon glides on, and 
 through the idle trees a wooing breeze comes quickly, 
 playing with her sunny hair and kissing her perfect 
 mouth. The air is full of myst:c sounds; from the forest 
 below the sad belling of a straying deer may be heard; and 
 to the lovers there comes across the dew-bespangled sw ard 
 the voice of one calling: 
 
 " Dolores, Dolores! Come in, my darlingl" 
 
 It ie the voice of Miss Maturin, and it reaches them 
 Iranght with fond love and keenest anxiety. 
 
 "Yes, yes: we must go in indeed!" says Dolores. "A 
 pity, tool" she sighs, with a lingering glance cast into the 
 dark sweetness of the autumn night. ''Good-night to 
 you, dear stars!" she cries, with a little childish wave of 
 her slender fingers toward the heavens. " A fair good- 
 night to all this lovely world I" 
 
 Still fora moment she lingers, smiling a soft adieu, then 
 slips her hand within her lover's arm, aud P;OC\S with him 
 across the flowering grauea.
 
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