ft! i FOR LIFE AND LOVE BY CHARLOTTE M. BRAEME Author of "Dora Thome" " The Duke's Secret? " Thorns and Orange Blossoms," etc., etc. NEW YORK HURST & COMPANY PUBLISHERS FOR LIFE AND LOVE. CHAPTER I. A DRAWING-ROOM in a somber house in a gloomy London street unmistakably the drawing-room of a lodging-house. A girl sitting before a piano an Erard, hired, by the month looking at the music on 'the desk before her and yawning undisguisedly, it being no breach of politeness to yawn when there is nobody but one's self in the room. The drawing- room is the drawing-room of the house No. 33 Carieton Street, and the girl is myself. My name is Allie Somers Scott, and I have come up to London for the purpose of having singing- lessons. I had a lesson this morning, and I have gone over it again and again till I am tired to death of words and music both. But I have set it up be- fore me now with the laudable indention of going over it once more before it grows too dark to see. To that end I play the prelude through conscien- tiously, and then I left up my voice and sing " He thinks I do not love him ! He believed each word I said: And he sailed away in sorrow Ere the sun had left its bed. I'd have told the truth this morning, But the ship was out of sight. Oh, I wish these waves would bring him Where we parted yesternight ( Ob, I wish " 4 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. A knock at the street-door, and a knock wherein the knocker gives no uncertain sound. I hear it through the melancholy wail of my own high-pitched voice, through the pianoforte accompaniment. I leave the instrument and rush to the window. Olive Deane promised to make her mother set her down here, instead of going to the Rollestons* " At home " in Berkeley Street. I hope it may be Olive, though I had given her up half an hour ago. 1 have spent such a stupid afternoon cooped up in this dingy room that more than once I have been tempted to break my promise to Uncle Tod and sally forth into the street. Why Uncle Tod thinks it quite permissible to go out in the morning for my music-lesson, yet out of the question that I should put my head out of doors alone in the afternoon, passes my comprehension. I suppose he knows, or thinks he knows, more about London than I do. Poor dear Uncle Tod ! That is not the Deanes* carriage, that hansom drawn up before the door. Xor is this Olive Deane running up the steps, I draw back from the window infinitely disappointed. It is horribly unkind of Olive not to come ; she does not know how lonely I am in these stupid old lodgings, how long the after- noons and the evenings are. She cannot compre- hend a feeling of loneliness, with that great houseful of brothers and sisters in Dexter Square. But she might keep a promise when she makes one. I shall scold her when I meet her at the singing class to- morrow, and tell her she does not embody my idea of a friend. " But, if it is not Olive, who is it ? The hansom has driven away, but the door has not yet been opened ; and I flatten my nose against the glass to see the doorsteps, which are partly concealed by the open ironwork of the balcony, A young man FOR LIFE AND LOVE. is standing below waiting, patiently or impatiently the top of his round felt hat gives no clew to hia mood until such time as Mrs. Wauchope's maid-of- all-work shall see fit to ascend from the basement- story to open the street-door. He is coming to stay, evidently, for he carries in one hand a black leather valise, in the other what looks like a large picture, in a kind of rough wooden case. Of himself I can see nothing but a dark over- coat and the round hat already mentioned, except the gloved hand which holds his valise, his figure, as visible from my standpoint, being so foreshort- ened that it presents very little beyond the felt hat and the toes of his boots. I wonder who he is ! Scarcely a tradesman, though at first I had fancied he must be a glazier, with his tools in the black bag and his pane of glass in the wooden case. And cer- tainly not Mrs. Wauchope's son, for he is a small boy of eleven and to my certain knowledge does not wear a round hat ! He may be related to the two maiden ladies whom the maid-of-all-work calls " the parlors," as I sup- pose she calls me " the drawing-room " when relat- ing all she knows of my affairs to everybody else. I can distinguish the initials " G. B." painted in white on the black bag. " G. B." stands for noth- ing that I can think of on the spur of the moment but " Ginx's Baby." The name is not satisfactory, nor are my surmises likely to lead to any appreciable result. I leave the window convinced on this point, just as Mary Anne opens the door and admits the stranger, without a question apparently, and cer- tainly with but little delay in closing the door behind him. I glance at the open piano, but I cannot bring myself to sit down and finish that song. I had been longing to learn it j the Deanes raved about it, 6 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. but I have had enough of it. It was unkind of Olive not to come we could have had a pleasant chat and drunk tea together Mary Anne has carried up the tea-things, the teapot stands under that hideous dark blue knitted cozy on the little square table near the fire. I do not care to drink tea all alone. I wander away from the window and round tho room aimlessly, my hands clasped behind me, my long blue gown trailing over the carpet the ugly shabby old-fashioned room which is " my doleful prison this sixth of May," as poor Anne Boleyn wrote in the Tower three hundred and fifty years ago. Not that this is the sixth of May. This is the sixth of March, and dear old tlncle Tod's birthday. He is seventy-two to-day. Not that I am in prison here either. Nobody wanted me to come here I came of my own free will. Indeed a great many people wanted me not to come, Aunt Eosa among them, who thinks it very outre for a young girl like me to live in lodgings in London all by myself, and she objected very mnch to my coming up to town, even for the laudable purpose of improving myself. 1 know these furnished lodgings to be eminently respectable was not Mrs. Wauchope housekeeper at Woodhay Manor when I was a child ? and I have promised Uncle Tod to be very steady, and not to go anywhere without the Deanes. " Why, Allie, you look exactly like Mr. Millais'a picture of ' Yes or No.' " I turn my head. Olive Deane is standing in the doorway, with her gold-rimmed glasses on her saucy nose, laughing at me. " You wretch ! " is my salutation. " Where have you been all the afternoon ? " " At the Rollestons' mama would not let mt FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 7 cff. But I got her to put me down on her way home, and she has promised to send Fred for me at half-past five." An hour and a half ! It is an eternity of enjoy- ment to look forward to. I put Olive into my own hammock-chair, and take off her fur tippet. " I intended to give you a great scolding," I con- fess, laughingly. " But, 'now that I have got you, I can't find it in my heart to say anything." " But it wasn't my fault, Allie ; mama would have me go ; and, oh, I've got an invitation for you you're to come with us to the Kollestons' dance on Friday. "Won't that be fun ? " " But I have no evening-dresses here, Olive ! " " Then you must send down for one, unless you choose to buy a new one." " Oh, I can send down for the dress I wore at the Hatchells ' ! We don't go out much at the vicarage, so don't be shocked when I tell you that I have only one ball-dress in the world." " That's why I want you to come on Friday. You haven't been at a dance since you came up to town." " I don't know what Aunt Eosa will say. I came np to town for singing-lessons." " She can't say a word when mama is chaperon- ing you. It is not to be a grand affair, you know only a nice little carpet-dance. We'll call for you in the carriage at nine." " But Aunt Kosa will object to it," I say, shak- ing my head. " As if you really minded your Aunt Rosa ! You know it's a shame you haven't regularly ' come out," Allie mama says so, and everybody." "Uncle Tod doesn't care for London society." " But you must take a season or two when yon come of age." 8 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. "If you mean a season or two of balls and garden-parties, I certainly shall do no such thing." " But why, Allie ? You don't mind their old- fashioned notions at the vicarage ? " " My dear Olive, I don't care a pin about balls and garden-parties." " That's because you know nothing about them." " Oh, is it ? I've been to balls and garden-parties at the Towers and at Dunsandle. They were enough for me." " But you ought to be introduced into society. Allie." " Yes, if I were a beauty perhaps, and likely to make a sensation. But I'm not a beauty quite the contrary ; and, besides, it would be a joke to ' come out ' at one-and-twenty." " Ellinor is to come out next season, and then mama will have three of us on her hands," Olive says meditatively. " But Poppy is engaged." " Oh yes, Poppy is engaged ! And I'm going to retire into private life and take up asstheticism or women's rights 1 " Olive laughs, taking her cup of tea out of my hands. " I can't compliment you on the beauty of your tea-service, Allie. You won't find it very hard to ' live up to' that teapot ! " " Or the cozy ! " I say, holding it up for her in- spection. " Isn't it < utter,' Olive ? " "Utterly hideous !" Olive answers, looking at it through her glasses. " Why don't you throw it behind the grate and work a new one for yourself in crewels on peacock velveteen, like what I am mak- ing for Ellinor ? " " I don't do crewel-work ; and, besides, I don't want to insult Mrs. "Wauchope. She made that cpzy herself." *< So I should have supposed. You must find it FOR LlFfc AND LOVE. $ lonely here in the evening, Allie " looking round the room. " Lonely ! " I echo. " You may say so, my dear ! I never felt so lonely before in my life." " Then why do you stay here, you ridiculous girl ? " " Oh, because I wouldn't give Aunt Rosa the satisfaction of going home before the end of the month ! She would only tell me for the hundredth time that it was a pity I didn't know my own mind." " Then why don't you come to us ? " (( And practise scales half the day for your delecta- tion and that of your visitors ! No, thank you, my dear. I came up to get singing-lessons, not to amuse myself ; and, having put my hand to the plow, I won't turn back yet awhile. And it's not so bad here after all, only a little lonely and the music-lessons are great fun/" " How do you like the new song ? " " I have murdered it till it threatens to haunt me for the rest of my life," I laugh, glancing at the piano. Then, struck by a sudden recollection " Oh, Olive, I've a piece of news for you ! We've got a gentleman -lodger at Number Thirty-three." " A gentleman lodger ?" "Yes. He arrived about twenty minutes ago, with a black valise and a huge wooden case." " Who is he ? " " I don't know. Mrs. Wauchope never told us a word about him. She said there was nobody in the house but those two old maiden ladies down-stairs." " Well, he wasn't in the house then, I suppose ! " Olive says laughing. "What is he like, Allie? Young or old, dark or fair ? " " I can't tell you that either. Young, I think, aad dark j but I'm not sure." IO FOR LIFE AND LOVE. "A, " Why don't you ask Mary Anne ? " " She has not been up here since he came into the house." " Then ring for her now, and we'll cross-question her," Olive suggests, wiCli animation. Olive is up to more mischief than I am, notwith- etanding her spectacles. I ring the bell. " We need not expect her for ten minutes or so," ( say ; and, pending her arrival, we drift into talk about our singing-lessons, of the concert we are to .,ake part in with the rest of the pnpils on the twenty- first, Poppy's bridemaids' dresses, and a hundred other things. When at last Mary Anne does make her appearance, we stare at her with a vague surprise in both our faces. * ' You rang, miss ? " she says, with a look of stolid inquiry. "Oh, yes !" Olive answers, in quite a sprightly way. " You wanted coal on the fire, Allie, didn't you ? " Mary Anne puts coal on the fire ponderously. " Who was the gentleman who came in just now ? " I ask, trying to speak with a gravity which might excuse the question. "The attics," Mary Anne answers, putting some finishing touches to the coal with her fingers. " What is his name ?" Olive inquires, without a change of countenance. "I forget his name. We calls him the Count." " Is he a count ? " " Oh, no no more a count than you are ! But he's BO dark and foreign-looking, and so short-like of money, we calls him the Count. Not that he's mean or that he's as proud as Lucifer, and wouldn't owe anybody a farthing." " Then how do you Prow he is poor ? " Olive in- quires with interest. FOR LIFE AND LOVE. II " In course he wouldn't live up four pairs of stairs if he had much money to spare, for all he wants to be near the skylight ! " " What does he want with the skylight ? " " He's an artist/' Mary Anne answers, with such an inimitable air of pity, not to say contempt, that Olive and I are absolutely afraid to look each other in the face. " Is he a photographer ? " Olive asks innocently. " Oh, no a painter ! And a poor thing he makes of it, though the mistress do say that, if he worked at it, he'd make a name for himself. He do work hard enough sometimes, but it's only by fits and starts. And he has a lot of idle yomig friends that come bothering him I don't doubt but he'd do well enough if they let him alone." " Where has he been for the last fortnight ? " I inquire, thinking of Aunt Rosa. " On a sketching tour," Mary Anne answers glibly, " up in Scotland or somewhere. Can I take the tea- things now, ma'am ? " Permitted to take the tea-things, Mary Anne re- turns with them to the lower rogions, whence we had evolved her. The moment the door closes behind her Olive and I begin to laugh. " What will Aunt Eosa say ? " Olive exclaims de- lightedly. " Indeed I don't know," I answer more seriously. " I only hope she won't know anything about it for the next fortnight. I sha'n't tell her." " You'll never see him," Olive says, " unless you happen to met him on the stairs, and that's not very likely. And, as for his friends, I dare say Mrs. Wauchope will give him a hint not to bring them about the house while you are here." " I don't mind his friends, or him either. Only I know Aunt Rosa will think my being here more outre 12 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. than ever. I say, Olive, wouldn't you like to see hia studio ? " " I should, very much. I wonder'if he takes por- traits, Allie ? Wouldn't it be 1'uu if I got him to paint my picture ? You could come with me to play propriety, you know ; or would it he necessary to have up Mrs. Waucliopc ? I wish we knew his name." " I shall soon find it out. Ginx's Baby, I call him the initials on his valise were ' G. B. ' : " ' G. B.' " Olive repeats musingly. " Fred knows a great many young artists. I'll ask him if he knows any ' G. B." ; " I am afraid the ' four pair back ' is an artist as yet unknown to fame," I laugh, poking the fire into a bright cheery blaze. " It has grown dark already in Carle ton Street ; but I do not care to light the gas yet ; it makes the evening seem so intermina- bly long to light the gas at half-past five." ' I'm afraid so. Allie, what color is your evening- dr3ss ? " " Blue, my dear the most delicate shade of bird's- egg blue." " Gauze or grenadine ?" " Neither, silk and crepe. Oh, it is a very decent dress ! I was extravagant enough to get it from Madame Garoupe." " Then it is sure to be all right," Olive says, with a sigh of as complete satisfaction as if the crepe and silk "confection" were absolutely before her eyes. "I wish I could order my dresses from Madame Garoupe." " I can afford it ; I get so few of them." " Afford it ! " Olive laughs, shrugging her shoul- ders. " Oh, well, you know Uncle Tod doesn't allow me me much for dress ! " FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 13 " Then why don't you make him give yon more ?* " I don't want it. He lets me have my horse and my dogs ; and nobody dresses much at Yattenden." So " Ginx's Baby " drops out of the conversation. And so completely have we forgotten his existence that, when Fred Deane comes in, we never think of asking him if he knows of any artist whose initials are " G. B." Fred wants to engage me for the first waltz on Friday evening, and, as he dances very badly, I want to reserve myself for his brother Gus, who is sure to ask me, and who dances very well. " What's to be the color of your dress, Miss Scott ? " Fred inquires, thinking no doubt of Covent Garden. " Blue cerulean blue/' " 'Taking color from the skies, can heaven's truth be wanting ? ' " he quotes sentimentally, looking in- to eyes which were certainly not "made for earnest granting," blue as they may be. " Come home, Fred ; we shall be late for dinner. Send him away, Allie ; you'll have lots of time to flirt on Friday evening. Good-by, my dear, and mind you write down to Yattenden for your dress. Ill see you at Madame Cronhelm's to-morrow. Fare- well till we meet again ! " An hour later, while I am engaged in demolish- ing my solitary chicken, I hear voices overhead high overhead Mrs. Wauchope's voice and another, and then a careless boyish laugh. I glance at my closed door, at the great empty silent room, at the chair by fire, where I shall presently, try to while away the rest of the evening with the aid of a dish of almonds and raisins and Octave Feuillet. How lonely it looks ! How wearisome it will be without a voice to break the silence ! I envy people who have other people to talk to I envy Mrs. Wauchope I even envy Mary Anne. That boy's laugh is an offense to me I, who have nothing to make me laugh. 14 FOX LIFE AND LOTJS. Yet he must be as lonely as I am, up there at the top of the house. The evenings must seem just as dreary and long to him as they do to me. Not a bit of it ! Before I have finished my dinner, I hear him run down-stairs, cross the hall, and go out at the front door. On the doorstep he pauses a moment to light a match, and then he walks away down the street quickly, as though he knew where he was going, and is glad to go. It is good to be a man, I think, a little bitterly, as I lean back in my hammock-chair and stretch out my hand lazily for an almond. How pleasant it would be if I could put on my Newmarket now and sally out into the gayly-illuminated streets to the theater perhaps, or to meet and chat with a friend ! But, instead of that, I must sit here over the fire, reading a book I know by heart and munch- ing almonds and raisins. " Who went out ?" I ask Mary Anne, as she folds up the table-cloth. " The Count," Mary Anne answers laconically. " Does he go out every evening ? " " Mostly to the opera or something." " Where was he going this evening ?" I ask care- lessly. "To a dance," Mary Anne answers vaguely. " And he do look well when he's dressed for the evening," she adds, with some lighting up of her stolid countenance. "The mistress told him so just now on the stairs." That was what had made him laugh. What a careless young laugh it was ! It rings in my eais still. To drive it away I throw down my book and ?o to the piano. A piece of music lies on the carpet ; take it up and set it open on the desk before me . It is a song a favorite one of mine " The Cros?- Roads " and I play the prelude dreamily, lingering FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 15 over each familiar chord. In the days to come I may wonder vaguely what led me to sing this song to-night. On to the very last verse, I sing it through " Was I not made for him ? We loved each other. Yet fate gave him one road, and me another 1 " CHAPTER II. up-stairs, and I'll show you his new picture." " But he may not care to have me see his picture, Mrs. Wauchope." " He'll never know anything about it. He doesn't know you are in the house." " That makes no difference," I say, my sense of integrity being, apparently, no mate for my land- lady's. I am sitting at the table in the middle of the room, finishing my breakfast. It is nine o'clock, and a cool gleam of March sunshine lights up my big dingy drawing-room, make the ancient carpet and curtains which have faded into an indescrib- able shade between drab and dust color look still more ancient, and gleaming brightly on the break- fast table, on the tin sardine-box, on the knives and forks, on my silver solitaires for I have drawn the blinds up to the top of the windows that I may feel even that vague unsatisfactory bit of sunshine on my face. My landlady is standing opposite to me, on the other side of the table a fat, sallow com- plexioned woman in a frilled gown of black luster, with purple ribbons in her black net cap and a purple knitted jc7m tied behind with woolen tassels. 16 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. y^ ' He wanted to know this morning if the drawing- rooms were taken," Mrs. Wauchope says, laughing in her silent fashion. " I told him they were by a lady of a certain age from the country. That will keep him from asking any more questions." Aunt Rosa's face rises before me, grimly disap- proving. But I turn my back metaphorically on the menacing vision. "How long has he been lodging here, Mrs. Wau- chope ? " " Well," Mrs. Wauchope answers slowly, " he's been with mo, off and on, for more than two years now ; and I've never found him anything but most respectable and well-conducted, though his temper is none of the sweetest. Xot that any of us is sweet if we're put out," she adds extenuatingly ; "and, if one's born with a bad temper, why it's all the more creditable if one keeps it down." This bad-tempered young man whose name, Mrs. Wauchope informs me, is Baxter Gerard Baxter would be intensely gratified if he could hear us. But as he left the house hours ago so Mrs. Wauchope also informs me that gratification is denied to him. " Come up, and I'll show you his studio, Miss Allie. You never saAv such an old curiosity-shop. And it would be as much as my life is worth to sweep it or anything though, goodness knows, it wants it ! But he'd fly at me like a young tiger for raising a dust on them weary old pictures." " But if he were to come in and find us poking about his premises, Mrs. Wauchope," I say, divided between all the notions of propriety which Aunt Rosa has been inculcating on me for nearly a score of years and a powerful desire to see the pictures, " fancy what a crow he would have to pluck with youT* FOR. LIFE AND LOVE. I? " He's gone to Kensington, and won't be in till four o'clock," Mrs. Wauchope declares positively. se I wouldn't have you caught up there for the world, Miss Allie ; but, even if there was a chance of his coming back, he has left his latch-key on his dress- ing-table, so that he can't get into the house unless he knocks." I am more than doubtful about the whole pro- ceeding ; but I rise from the breakfast-table, and, gathering up my long dress in my hand, follow Mrs. Wauchope out of the room and up the gloomy gtairs. It is a long way up quite long enough for my better judgment to have had time to assert itself before we reach the topmost landing, under the very roof of the house. " I shall only just peep in at the door," I say : and Mrs. Wauchope, passing on before me, nods her head and opens the low unpaneled door. " He has had the wall raised, you see," she says, ushering me in for I do go in " and got that glass roof put on. Makes it much lighter, you know, and quite cheerful and pleasant. You'd never guess there could be such a fine roomy place up here at the top of the house." The great garret-room has certainly been metamor- phosed into a very well-lighted studio. An awning has been stretched under part of the glass roof, throwing the light more fully upon the easel in the middle of the floor. The place is crowded for the most part with a litter of quaint odds and ends, but its untidiness does not trouble me as it seems to trouble my landlady. Several pictures, finished and unfinished, hang or lean against the walls ; a lay figure does duty as a hat-rack in one corner, in an- other a pile of rusty armor shelters innumerable spiders, to judge from the webs with which it is 3 1 8 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. festooned. On the easel in the middle of the floor stands an unfinished picture, with the colors still wet upon it n somber, yet splendidly realistic view of mountain-scenery ; in the foreground " A lake of sadness, seldom sunned, that stretched In sullen silence from a marge of reeds." I am not an artist ; yet I stand before the un- framed canvas I think a picture never looks so well as when standing unframed upon the easel where it was painted lost in admiration of the power, clearness, and artistic completeness which breathe through the whole composition, and which even I am not too ignorant to understand aTid to appreciate. " That is the picture he brought from Scotland," Mrs. Wauchope says, standing a little behind me with her head on one side. " I suppose there's a great deal in it there ought to be, if he did nothing but paint it all the time he was awa} r . I tell him I am sure there is some young lady in Scotland, he goes there so often ; but he says, No, he doesn't care for young ladies which is ridiculous, you know," Mrs. Wauchope adds ; " and he with such a pair of eyes in his head ! Whether he likes them or not, they like him ; and so I tell him." " Has he very handsome eyes ?" I ask absently, fascinated by the picture before me. " Handsome ! " Mrs Wauchope repeats. " I often tell him they were not put into his head for the good of his soul ! But he only laughs at me, and asks me what I want him to do for me. He mends my spectacles, and the other day he touched up poor Wauchope's picture, and made it look as good as new." " Is there anything he cannot do ? " I ask, laugh- ing. " He doesn't seem to be able to make his fortune," FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 1(0 Mrs. Wauchope says, shaking her head, with a glance round the studio. " Look at all those pictures on the walls only half finished, most of them thrown aside because he got tired of them, and wanted to begin something new. The greatest fault I find with him is that he won't stick to anything. Be- cause he's not satisfied with it, he tells me ; but that is all nonsense. It is because he is new-fangled, and wants to be at something else." " An unlucky temperament ! " I say to myself, wondering if any woman has lost her heart to this unstable young man. Mrs. Wauchope has moved away to the other end of the room, intent on carrying away some empty cigar-boxes which she has found there, and I turn away from the canvas which has taken such hold on my imagination to glance round the precincts where- in I cannot help feeling I have no business. It is my first introduction to anything so Bohemian as the studio of a professional painter ; and I like it, notwithstanding the litter of palettes and brushes, the bottles of " medium," the maul-sticks and palette-knives, the colors and odds and ends of canvas scattered about the floor. There are pictures framed and unframed, ranged about the room. There is a miscellaneous assortment of pipes on the the table here a quaint china tobacco-jar, there a tall candlestick of Florentine bronze, wherein the candle has he-en allowed to burn down to the socket, fencing-foiis on .the wall, books thrown down care- lessly here and there and anywhere, a faded blue velvet smoking-cap on one shelf, on another a dead camellia in its dusty specimen-glass a dead brown camellia, which seems to have perished of thirst^ for the leaf beside it, which reaches down to the drop of water in the bottom of the vase, is still fresh and green. 2O FOR LIFfc ANt> LOVE. " I'll show you his photograph, if you'd like to see it," Mrs.Wauchope says, pausing beside a door lead- ing into an inner room or garret. " He leaves his albnra on the dressing-table mostly, and you might know some of his friends." But to this proposal I at once put a decided negative. To look at his picture which all the world may soon see is one thing, to pry into the secrets of his photographic album another. I wonder if Mrs. Wauchope is equally obliging in ex- hibiting my photographic album to the Misses Pryce ? I shall lock it up religiously in future, lest she should be as anxious to amuse them at my expense as she is to amuse me at Mr. Baxter's. "I'm just going in to dust his looking-glass," Mrs. Wauchope announces, and suits the action to the word by disappearing into the inner room. And I look about me, utterly refusing to let the idea of Aunt Rosa enter rny head. A shaft of the early March sunshine streams in through the sky- lights, lighting up a dusty canvas here, a gilded frame there, bringing into greater prominence some bit of smiling landscape or some cob webbed " prop- erty," and shining full upon the dead camellia in the little glass at my elbow. My eye rests on the withered "button-hole" meditatively at first, pity- ing the poor flower, which certainly no "useless water-springs" have "mocked into living." But all at once a spirit of mischief enters into me a brilliant idea which is worthy of Olive Deane her- self ! Yet ought I to do it ? Nobody will ever know Mrs. Wauchope will never suspect, nor can the "subtle spider, which from overhead looks like a spy on human guilt and error," tell the secret, and within these four walls there are no living creatures but the spiders and myself. What living human being could turn informer, if I were to take the FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 21 withered camellia out of the glass and put the fresh, Bweet, dewy bunch of violets I am wearing into it instead ? If I do it at all, I must do it now, while Mrs. Wauchope's back is turned. Again my conscience Whispers " Do not do it \" and again I turn a deaf ear to its voice. How he will puzzle over the chang- ing ! If he asks Mary Anne, she will be able to tell him nothing, she being at this moment in the mar ket baying vegetables for "the parlors," and Mrs. Wauchope, even if she suspects me, would not dare to tell him that she had allowed me to pry into his rooms. Time and the opportunity are too much for me in another instant I have transferred the violets from my dress to the glass, and am holding the dead camellia hidden in the palm of my hand. " I suppose you've seen all you want to see, Miss Allie ? " unsuspecting Mrs. Wauchope says, coming back with her black-silk apron full of the empty cigar-boxes. " And how any one can live in such a den," she adds, her cursory glance taking in the artistic litter which certainly abounds in the place with as much disgust as if it were her own ash heap, " passes my comprehension ! And the smell of tobacco-smoke would suffocate you, sometimes I'm often afraid Miss Pryce will get a whiff of it in the parlors ! If you'll close the door, Miss Allie, I'll be obliged to you you see my hands are full." The moment I have closed the door my mind mis- gives me. But it is too late. The deed done can- not be undone ; and, with the camellia in my hand, I descend the stairs leisurely, laughing to myself, as I look round the passages which must be so familiar to him, at Mrs. Wauchope's Machiavelian method of extinguishing all curiosity in Mr. Baxter's mind with regard to her drawing-room lodger. " I wonder where he got this ? " I say to myself, 22 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. as I bring the dead exotic to ligh. in thj privacy of my own room, a minute later. " Perhaps somebody gave it to him. Perhaps he values it, dead as it is, more than tons of the sweetest and freshest violets ! ]f that is the case, how he will bless the thief who stole it ! How he will maltreat my poor little vio- lets ! Yet I fancy he bought this flower there is half a yard of wire round it. And, if he cared very much for it, he would scarcely have left it to die for lack of water in a dusty vase." Xevertheless I shut it up in a bon-bon box, and lock it into my wardrobe, feeling vaguely conscious of a possibility of having to produce it at some future time. I have stolen it, that is certain ; and should it chance to be discovered, I might be called upon to restore the purloined property, even though it be only a dead camellia. 1 feel rather guilty as I turn the key in my wardrobe. What would Mr. Baxter say if he could have seen me putting up his discarded "button-hole " in a pasteboard box ? Would he not think with reason that I valued the flower because he had worn it for one evening in his coat I, who never beheld him in my life ? And what would Aunt Rosa say ? I do not dare to dwell on Aunt Rosa's sentiments. The mildest thing she could say of me would be that I had taken leave of my senses. I shall never tell her, or any one else, what I have done not even Olive Deane. Great a madcap as Olive is, I doubt whether she would pre- sent a bouquet to a man who was a stranger to her. Thinking of it in this light, my cheeks grow hot suddenly, and I hope the violets will be dead be- fore he sees them violets wither very soon out of water these will be black and dead to-morrow, if they spend the night in that dry dusty glass. As I put on my fur cap to go to my singing-class, I wonder vaguely if he is as handsome as Mrsu FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 2$ Wauchope describes him, and if he cares as little for young ladies as he tells her he does ; and then I button on the jacket of thick gray tweed which matches my dress, and, sallying out into the cold March morning air, straightway forget that there is such a person in existence as Mrs. Wauchope's "attics." " Wasn't it stupid of me ? I quite forgot to ask Fred if he knew anything of ' G. B., '" Olive says, as we issue out of Madame Cronhelm's house with half a dozen other girls, all carrying portfolios of music. ''They are all talking so much of the wed- ding that it puts everything else out of my head." " His name is Baxter Gerard Baxter. Mrs. Wau- chope told me so this morning," I answer, the recol- lection of my morning's misdemeanor flashing into -my mind for the first time since I left the house. " He is a landscape-painter, and his people are Scotch ; he has nobody belonging to him but an old grandmother, Mrs. "VVauchope thinks, who lives in Edinburgh. And he's as proud as Lucifer and as poor as a church-mouse." Olive laughs, looking at me through her gold- rimmed pince nez. " You must not fall in love with him, Allie " ' He was but a landscape painter And a village maiden she ! ' ' " He won't fall in love with me from Mrs. Wau- chope's description," I laugh in my turn ; and then I relate that worthy woman's stroke of diplomacy in describing me as a spinster from the country "between the ages," as Madame Cronhelm would say. If I am tempted for a moment to relate the episode of the violets, Olive's next words induce me to hold my peace. 24 frOR LIFE AND LOVE. " I didn't tell mama a word about him," sh& says, nodding her blonde head sagaciously. "She would be sure not to like it ; and she might I don't say she would, but she might write and tell your Aunt Rosa. Mrs. Wauchope ought not to have pre- tended there were none but ladies in the house. Not that it's really any matter you know only mama has charge of you in a manner, though you were an obstinate wretch, and would not come to stay with us at the square." " I'll come for Poppy's wedding next month." " Well, I should think you would ! " " And you are to come back with me to the vicar- age, Olive." "My dear, I wouldn't miss being at Woodhay Manor on the eleventh of next June for anything. " And I shouldn't care half as much for anything if you weren't there. Do you remember my birth- day last year, and the fun we had with the school- children ? You said it was the first time you had ever helped in any parish-work, and you rather liked it." "I liked to see you play the Lady Bountiful, Allie. And besides that dear delightful curate of your uncle's was there the man with the romantic name." " The Reverend Hyacinth Lockhart," I laugh, remembering how Olive flirted with him. "How do you like the new song Madame Cronhelm has given you ? " " I don't like it at all," Olive says, shrugging her shoulders ; " and I think Madame Cronhelm is very cross ; don't you ? " " She is very strict. But you know you are horribly idle, Olive." " My dear, I don't go to Madame Cronhelm to learn. I only go for the fun of the thing." FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 2$ "Then you can't expect her to take any pains with you." " I don't want her to do so. She admires your voice, Allie." " She thought I was only a beginner." " Well, you astonished her. She never says much except to criticise, and she's bitter enough then but I could see that your singing of that delicious * Serenade ' took her by surprise. And Herr von Konig put on his spectacles to look at you. Allie, it's the greatest pity in the world that you are a woman of independent means ! You'd make a for- tune on the stage ! " " I wish Aunt Rosa could hear you ! " "I am sure Madame Cronhelm thinks you mean to sing in public." " Madame Cronhelm is at liberty to think her own thoughts." " Do they know you have such a voice down at the vicarage?" " I sing in church," I say demurely. " I never knew such a queer girl as you are, Allie. If you were anybody else, you would be "I wouldn't be Allie Somers Scott," I laugh, shrugging my shoulders. " I suppose not. And I like you just as you are, my dear. Have you seen the latest addition to Poppy's trousseau 9 A kouis XVI. morning-dress of ruby plush with pink bows we must make her put it on after luncheon It is most becoming to Poppy, though, you kno-v, I think it is a ridiculous style for the morning *.ncy crimson plush with pink surah bows." Poppy Deane is a tall dark girl, with a marble- white complexion and Mack eyes. Olive is quite different a little plumx* thing with a round face, a white complex*^, very fair hair in a wisp 26 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. of curls over her forehead, and a pair of very sane/, if not particularly handsome eyes. To day she wears a " granny " bonnet lined with cardinal, and a coquettish dress of navy-blue and cardinal which shows off her prettily rounded figure. Also she wears spectacles, not so much because she finds them necessary to aid her sight as because she fancies they improve the appearance of what she considers the worst features in her face. "That serenade of Gounod's rings in my ears," she says, as we reach the door of the house in Dexter Square. " You sing it again for me, Allie, after we have criticised Poppy's plush gown." CHAPTER III. IT is Friday evening the evening of the Roller tons' dance. I have heard and seen nothing of " the Count " since yesterday ; nobody has mentioned violets, no- body has accused me of pilfering. Whether he is in the house or not I know not, nor whether he has been in since I changed his dead camellia for my bunch of purple Woodhay violets yesterday. I have been fully occupied between my singing-lessons and my visits to Dexter Square so fully that such a person as Mr. Wauchope's handsome ill-tempered lodger could certainly find no room in my thoughts. If I am thinking of any one now., as I lean back in my comfortable hammock chair, with my buckled shoes on the fender, it is of Gussie Deane. Poor G us is devoted to me has been devoted to me since we were children. And Gus is not a bad-looking fellow by any means. He is a little fair man, and I do not like little fair men as a rule. But then he is a cap- FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 2? tain in the " Blues/* and I believe he really likes me. I do not care for him of course ; but it is fun to have a lover. I have had a good many lovers so at least they tell me but I have up to this time walked "in maiden meditation, fancy free/' I am not a flirt my worst enemy if I have any enemies could not accuse me of flirting. It is an amuse- ment which I both dislike and despise. And I do not flirt with Gus, though he is and has always been my "chum." He does not care to be called my chum now so much as he used. Olive says it is be- cause he thinks " sweetheart " a prettier word. I do not care about sweethearts. I shall never be so foolish as to fall in love with any one. I think love is all nonsense. And most of the men who have wanted to marry me I do not mean poor Gus, of course ; and, besides, he never asked me to marry him were in love with Woodhay, and not with Allie Scott. If I had no money I might believe in love a little ; but, as it is, I do not believe in it at all. "Shall I light the candles on your dressing-table, ma'am ? " Mary Anne's voice wakes me out of what was per- haps as much a dream as a reverie. " What o'clock is it ? " I ask, yawning. " It is half -past seven, ma'am. Is this your dress ? Ill unpack it for you and lay it on the bed." The back drawing-room is my bedroom. I leave my easy-chair reluctantly it is a cold night even for March, sharp and frosty and follow Mary Anne into the inner room, where a newly-lighted fire burns in the grate. " Why didn't you light that before ? " I ask, shivering. "The Count he came in unexpectedly, wanting his dinner," Mary Anne answers, kneeling down to put some life into the fire by means of a rapid fan- 2$ FOR LIFE AND LOVE. ning with her apron, " and I had to attend to him. He's just like that always walking in when he's least expected. Gentlemen is a bother you never know when they'll be in and when they won't ! " I take out my dress from its flat pasteboard box myself, unwilling to trust it to the tender mercies of Mary Anne's grimy fingers. There is a note from Aunt Rosa in the box, and another bunch of my dear Woodhay violets. Aunt Rosa tells me no news they are all well at Yattenden, and have had very cold weather. I lay down her note and take up the violets, thinking, as I press the dewy fra- grant purple blossoms to my lips, of the dear old trees at Woodhay about whose mossy roots they grew. " Send Mrs. Wauchope up to me," I say to the maid-of-all-work, when she has done what she can for my sulky fire. Mrs. Wauchope will make a better attempt at getting me into my dress than she could, and will not perhaps leave such traces of the strain she must necessarily put upon my sky-blue laces. I have ar- ranged my hair in its usual simple fashion before my landlady comes up, gathered closely round my head into a loop of close plaits at the back, and curl- ing in a light natural fringe about my forehead. And before the Deanes' carriage comes for me I am ready, standing before the dingy old-fashioned glass and wondering what Olive will think of me and of my dress. What I see in the glass is a tall girl, in a long closely-fitting cuirasse body of blue silk, ending in sashes of crepe of the same colo% and with a billowy blue skirt lying along the carpet like the crisping waves of a summer sea a giri with a pretty white neck and arms, with hair neither fair nor dark, but of a curious ash-color, with eyes neither blue nor FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 29 gray, but a mixture of both, with a nose neither long nor short, a mouth neither large nor small a face that denies all laws of beauty, yet a face which Olive says she would never be tired of looking at but then Olive is my friend, and prejudiced ; I do not set much store by her verdict. What I know myself to be is a girl with a swinging gait and a well-poised head, whose outdoor life has developed muscle and straight limbs, and who, oddly enough, has a pair of eyes which have not looked out of the family face since my great-grandmother died, about a hundred years ago. While I consider myself, gravely and dispassion- ately, as though my reflection in Mrs. Wauchope's depressing greenish-tinged mirror were another person, I hear the Count's voice up-stairs, talking to my landlady. My heart beats quicker for a mo- ment. Can he have discovered the theft of the dead " button-hole " f But no ; he goes in and shuts the door ; Mrs. Wauchope comes down-stairs, passes my door, and I breathe freely again. I gather up my gloves and fan, having put my violets nest- ling near my heart, the only spot of darker color in my skyey dress, and, walking into the drawing- room, impelled by I know not what spirit of mis- chief or of folly, I sit down at the piano and begin to sing " Thy voice is near." I do not think my voice is audible in the attics, I feel sure the words are not distinguishable ; and, even if they were, who could tell what silly freak led me to sing them ? ****** " Word after word I seem to hear, Yet strange it seems to me That, though I listen to thy voice, Thy face I never see ! " " Why, Allie my dear, you're by far the nicest girl in the room ! ' 30 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. The remark is Olive's, of course. " So I have been telling her/' says Gus, who has been my partner in the waltz which has just come to an end. " Don't talk nonsense ! Who is that gentleman who has just come into the room ? " We are standing near a doorway. Gus and Olive both turn their heads. " Which gentleman ? " Olive asks, blinking through her spectacles. " Oh, he has moved on now you can't see him with the crowd ! " " Why did you ask ? " Gus says. " Was there anything remarkable about him ? " " He was remarkably handsome, that was all." " Oh ! " says Gus, screwing his glass into his eye. " I know everybody here," Olive remarks, looking round the room. " If you see him again when I am in your neighborhood, point him out to me, and I am almost sure to know who he is. Allie, you look jolly ; I hope you. are enjoying yourself as much as you seem to be doing." " Oh, quite as much ! " "lam having such fun with him," Olive says, glancing after her late partner, with a world of mis- chief in her saucy dimpled face. " He is so silly- you've no idea what a donkey he makes of him- eelf ! " " You'd better not make a donkey of yourself/ 3 Gus remarks severely. " Oh, he doesn't know I'm laughing at him ! Men are so vain, they would think anything sooner than that you were making fun of them." " You know a lot about them ! " says Gus, with a glance of brotherly scorn directed downward at his pretty little sister. ft I know enough to know that. Here is Captain LIFE AND LOVE. 31 Cathcart coming for me. And there is the ' Weit von Dir.' Oh, Allie, don't waste a note of that deli- cious waltz ! " Ten minutes later, I am in Olive's neighborhood again, this time waiting for Fred to bring me an ice. " There is the man I mean, Olive standing with his back to the wall the tall dark one, talking to Colonel Rolleston." " Yes ; I observed him just now. I thought I knew everybody here ; but I do not know who he is, nor does Captain Cathcart. Isn't he splendidly handsome, Allie ? I don't think I ever saw such a handsome face in my life. " "He is very handsome," I answer, glancing at the grand-looking boy for he scarcely seems more than that as he stands talking to Colonel Rolleston, and looking with splendid careless eyes about the room. His face is dark, almost foreign-looking, with a straight nose, a slight dark mustache, and a pair of the most beautiful, fierce, tender, laughing, long-lashed eyes I have ever seen. " I shall get Katie Rolleston to tell me his name," Olive promises, as her partner whirls her away ; and Fred returning with my ice, that and the waltz put everything else out of my head. It is nearly half an hour later when somebody in- troduces me to a partner for the coming waltz whose name I do not catch ; and, looking round carelessly, still talking to young Rolleston, I find the unknown standing before ma with his eyes fixed inquiringly on my face. I accept him, of course, and walk away with him, wishing I had caught his name. He is a rather silent partner, appearing to be more anxious to study me than to make himself agreeable ; but whatever he does say is clever and amusing, and so boyish withal that it is absolutely refreshing after th 32 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. " society " talk to which I have been compelled to listen for the last two hours. He dances well, and knows how to take care of his partner. Once, when somebody by accident puts his foot on my dress, he turns round with a wicked flash of the eye which brings Mrs. Wauchope's ill-tempered lodger into my mind. And once or twice 1 find him look- ing at me with an expression which puzzles me a little. It is not admiration, nor criticism, nor de- preciation ; but it is easier to say what it is not than what it is rather a mixture of amusement and curi- osity, as if trying to read some riddle in my face. When the waltz is over, he resigns me to Gus, having just put down his name opposite to the only disengaged dance on my program, a mazourke. I can make nothing of the hieroglyphic scrawled in pencil ; but I fancy the last letter of the initials looks like "B." " Is that your handsome man ? " Gus asks, look- ing after him as he makes his way slowly through the crowd. " Yes," I answered at once. " Do you know his name ? " " Don't you know it ?" " No ; I could not catch it when he was introduced to me." " Why, that is Baxter Gerard Baxter, the painter, a clever fellow, but no ' stay ' in him. If he had, he would have made a name for himself long ago." s He looks a mere boy." " He is one-and-twenty. He could paint pictures if he liked ; but he won't take the trouble. Jack Rolleston knows him well ; but I've only met him once or twice. He has been away in Scotland for Mie last month or two, sketching. I don't consider him so very handsome." FOR LlFfe AND LOVE. $$ I think Gus is a little jealous, or I would think so if I had time to think of anything but my own astonishment. So this is Mrs. Wauchope's lodger ; this is the Count ; this is the whilom glazier, the man whom I christened Ginx's Baby ! It is strange, it is astonishing, it is not to be believed ! The epi- sode of the violets rushes to my recollection the words I had so imprudently sung this very evening sung to him ! It is well for me that he has no idea who I am would never dream of identifying me with Mrs. "Wauchope's spinster tenant " of a certain age." Aunt Rosa would have good reason to be ashamed of me if she knew what pranks I had been playing good reason to say that she was right and I was wrong about the advisability of my coming up alone to Carleton Street ! I shall never be so foolish again. I ought to have had more sense a girl of very nearly one-and-twenty ! It has been a lesson to me not to be carried away by the wild spirits which have been my bane always, the love of adventure which my good aunt has so often tried to nip in the bud ! If I had known that Mrs. Wau- chope's "four-pair-back," was a person like this, I should not have dared to play what my laggard sense of propriety now stigmatizes as a silly practical joke, all the more silly because the victim would never know who perpetrated it. Standing with Gus near the upper end of the room, I wish devoutly that I had not promised him a second dance. What if I should be foolish enough to betray my identity with Mrs. Wauchope's "drawing-room"? What if he should ask me where I am staying in London ? I shall be very cool to him, very reserved and dis- tant, so that the idea of asking such a question shall never enter into his head. I am sorry now that I fot myself into this scrape I should like to have nown my fellow-lodger who is so poor and so proud, 3 34 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. But I have made any further acquaintance with him impossible, all through that wretched little bunch of violets ! I avoid his look for the rest of the evening, though more than once I am conscious that he is quietly studying me. Gus seems rather annoyed at my absence of mind. Once or twice he has offered me a penny for thoughts which I certainly would not have communicated to him for a great many pounds. Retribution has not been long in following on the heels of my offense ; but I hope the lesson will be a salutary one, and congratulate myself that no worse mischief has befallen me. The dance I have begun to dread has come at last the dance for which I am engaged to Mr. Baxter. He comes up at the first notes of the mazourke. "This is ours, I think?" I take his arm ; and, as I take it, my heart gives a sudden bound of dismay. In the button-hole of his somber evening coat he wears a bunch of half- withered violets ! " This has been a pleasant evening," he says, when we have taken a couple of circuits of the room. " Yes," I answer vaguely, my heart beating fast. " Small dances like this are much more enjoyable than gigantic crushes don't you think so ? " " Yes." After the first glance at the violets, I do not dare to look at them. Any one might wear violets almost every one wears violets in March. But these are my violets I know it intuitively, though why he should care to wear them, having no clew to the giver, puzzles me more than the name of the giver can have puzzled him. " You do not go out much ?" " No," I answer, wondering if the remark is a TOR LIFE AND LOVE. 35 question or an assertion. If it is an assertion, how does he know ? "Shall we take another turn, or are you tired ? " " I am not tired," I say, thinking what an amus- ing companion he must find me. We take a few inore turns, and then come to a stand-still. Mr. Baxter seems to prefer to talk. " You are fond of violets ? " glancing at the bouquet in my dress. A rush of foolish, guilty crimson dyes my cheeks which I would have given worlds to have kept out of them. But it comes there, and it stays, while my partner lowers his dark imperial head to look into my half-frightened, half-defiant eyes. "Very fond," I answer glibly. "I think every one is fond of violets." " I am," he says, smiling a little. " You must be, to wear so poor a bunch." " You would not call them poor, unless " "Unless what?" "No matter," he returns, laughing. "But it is not very polite of you to disparage my violets." " It is not indeed. I hope you will forgive me/' I say, conscious that, unless he is on an entirely wrong scent, I have stupidly betrayed myself. " Certainly. There is nothing to forgive. You only spoke the truth when you said my violets were a little faded they were badly treated, poor little flowers ! " " How was that ? " I ask innocently. " Well," he says deliberately, looking not at me now, but at the violets, "they were given to me by a lady whose name I did not know. And. if I hrt " I hope you will never do it," he interrupts, with more passion than the occasion seems to war- rant. " I hope to Heaven you will never do it ! " " But if I must do it ? " I say, wilfully encourag- ing the idea which he somehow or other seems to have taken into his head. " If my daily bread de- pends upon it, what am I to do ? " " Can't you teach, or something ! " he says boy- ishly. "You could teach other girls, couldn't you?" "But fancy teaching fancy wearing one's self out with a troop of idle girls, as Madame Cronhelm does, when one might be bowing to a delighted audience behind the footlights, with one's arms full of bouquets." " That's just what I hate," he retorts savagely. " That is just what no girl no cousin or sister of mine should ever degrade herself by doing. How do you think a man who loved you, for instance would like to see other men level their opera glasses at you, and perhaps indeed certainly make com- ments on your personal appearance ? " " If they were complimentary, I don't suppose she Would mind very much." " But he would mind. If he were her brother 01 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. $1 her husband, ho would rather' see her in her coffin than subject her to such degradation." " How delightfully selfish ! " I laugh, shrugging my shoulders. " Oh, we are all very selfish ! " Mr. Baxter allows ; and then, the overture to " Tannhauser " commenc- ing, we find it impossible to talk any more for the present. > I amuse myself by looking for my own particular friends in the crowd. Olive is in a corner flirting with Jack Rolleston, Poppy is sitting calmly beside herfiancS, looking as lazily handsome as ever, Katie .Rolleston is looking at me. I wonder if she would like very much to change places with me, and if half at least of Olive's suspicion about her and Gerard Baxter is true ? Perhaps Katie has lost her heart to this artist-friend of her brother's, though, according to Mrs. Wauchope, Mr. Baxter does not care for young ladies. I am puzzling over Katie's steadfast look, and wondering how it has happened that, among all our common friends, nobody has ever told Gerard Baxter who I am, when " Tannhauser " comes to an end, and I rise from my seat,Blumenthal's " Bend of the River " being next on the program. "You practise a great deal?" Mr. Baxter ob- serves, as he offers me his arm again. ' Yes," I answer, smiling, as I meet his splendid dark eves. " I hope it does not annoy you." "K?>; Mrs. Wauchope will tell you that I have never been so industrious as since you came to Carleton Street." " I am glad to hear it," I venture, somewhat soberly. "If I had your talent, I should certainly not let it lie idle." " I mean to work very hard, now," he says quickly. " Before, I did not care very much whether I mada a name for myself or not. But now I do 1 " 52 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. CHAPTER V. So he thinks I spend my time drumming away OH this unfortunate instrument with the ultimate ob- ject of earning my livelihood ? " I laugh, sitting be- fore the piano in Mrs. Wauchope's drawing-room on the morning after Madame Cronhelm's soir&e musicale. "He thinks I am a penniless art-student like himself, bound to earn my bread by whatever talent I possess, unless I prefer to sit down and starve. What a joke it is, and how Olive will en- joy it ! And how Aunt Rosa's stiff gray curls would bristle with horror if she knew that her niece Allie Somers Scott of Woodhay was taken for a poor young woman from the country who had come up to these cheap furnished lodgings for the purpose of studying vocal music for the stage ! " The idea is too delicious ! I laugh to myself with such frantic enjoyment that, if Mary Anne had chanced to come into the room, she would have set me down either as an idiot or as some harmless kind of lunatic. I shall not tell Mr. Baxter the mistake he has made since no one has thought of telling him before, I hope they will not tell him now. They must take it for granted that he knows who I am, and he must have thought no questions neces- sary, seeing for himself my mode of life. As for Mrs. Wauchope, she probably still labors under the delusion that the Count and the " drawing-rooms " have never yet encountered each other here or any- where else. Mr. Baxter must think the Deanes and Rollestons have been very kind in taking me up ; but then he knows them to be fond of art and artistic people, especially the Rollestons, and likely FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 53 enough to make much of me for the sake of my voice. What fun it is to think of myself as working for my living ! What fun it will be to keep up the de- lusion with the help of my scampish friend Olive, who loves nothing so much as a practical joke ! But my fun is put a stop to in a very summary manner. While I am sitting here at the piano, a note from Olive is put into my hand to say that Ellinor has scarlet fever, and that I am not to at- tempt to come near the house. All the others have had it, and are not afraid ; but Mrs. Deane will not allow them to come near me I must not expect even to see Olive at Madame Cronhelnrs to-day, as her mother does not think it would be right to al' low her to go there out of an infected house. I am very sorry, not only for my own sake, but for Ellinor and all of them. I write a note to Olive, and have just made up my mind not to go out at all this morning, when Ada Rolleston comes running in with an urgent request that I would come over and spend the day in Berkeley Street, which I am rather unwilling to do, but which Ada persuades me into doing in the end. During the next five or six days I spent most of my time with the Rollestons. Ada pets me and spoils me very much, in the fashion of Olive Deane, who has " fagged " for me since we were children together. The house in Berkeley Street is a very pleasant one there are always visitors coming and going clever people, poets, painters, artists, and literary men and women. We are never at a loss for amusement, between the preparations for the fancy-ball, Jack's amateur studio, and the great music-room where their musical friends would will- ingly play symphonies and fantasies all day long, ii they could find any one to listen to them. I meet Mr. Baxter there very often in fact, I 54 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. may say every day. I do not think he can be work- ing very hard unless lie paints by lamplight he is always with Jack Kolleston, smoking in his studio or chatting to us in the drawing-room. He even stays to dinner sometimes I know it because they insist upon my dining there once or twice, and, when I dine there, he dines there too. They laugh at me about him of course, girls laugh at each other for very little and call him my hand- some sweetheart. But I do not flirt with him, though he manages somehow to be always in my neighborhood, and I cannot help knowing that he is almost always looking at me. I am going home on the second of April, to come up to town again for Poppy's wedding, unless it is postponed on account of Ellinors illness. 'Olive, who writes to me almost every day, says they are thinking of going to Brighton as soon as Ellinor is strong enough to travel, and I should not be sur- prised if Poppy's wedding took place from there. The prospect of seeing Woodhay so soon does not fill me with unmixed delight. Something has thrown a glamour over Mrs. Yfauchope's shabby fur- nished lodgings, which my own beautiful Manor has never known " a light that never was on land or sea" illumines these dusty rooms, a "glory and a freshness and a dream/' in which I walk like one who " on a mountain takes the dawn." I am so happy, and yet I cannot say what has made me happy. One day the Rollestons take me to see the studio of an artist of whose pictures I have heard a man who very often comes to Berkeley Street, and who, gaunt and gray and disheveled as he is, is one of the " lions " of the day. As we go up the stairs leading to the studio, we meet a girl coming down a young girl, poorly droned, but with a face of FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 55 such extraordinary beauty that it absolutely dazzlea me. I had never dreamed that a human facw could be so lovely, and Mrs. Eolleston, who has also been struck by it, makes the same remark to the great painter himself. 11 Oh, that," he says, laying down his palette and brushes, " is a poor child who sits to me as a model her name is White ! Her mother is a wretched woman, always begging sometimes drunk. Here is her picture yes, it is a lovely face." He has turned a canvas which had been standing with its face to the wall, and we are looking again at the girl we met on the stairs. There are the pure Greek outlines which Phidias might have wor- shiped the tangled red-gold hair tossed back from the white forehead, glittering like a halo round the angelic head, the dark-blue velvety eyes, the ex- quisite smiling lips. The great artist had painted her in rags, selling violets she is holding out a bunch in one small slender hand, as she leans against the pillar of some great portico, looking out of the canvas with those innocent wistful eyes. I stand before the picture for a long time, studying that girl's face. I envy her, though she is in rags and I am wearing a dress of steel-gray velvet with a bonnet of the same, whose cost I scarcely care to remember. How happy she ought to be with a face like that ? "What matter about cold and hun- ger and rags, if one could smile on the beholder with those ethereal eyes, with those exquisite child- ish lips ! So I think, looking down at the lifeless canvas. And as I look a shiver runs through my veins, as though a door had opened somewhere, let- ting in a breath of some cold outer air. It is a cu- rious sensation I have heard of people feeling the like when one' walked over their grave that was to 'De. Yet why should this girl's face make me 56 "FOR LIFE AND LOVE. shiver ? It is as beautiful as the face of an angel, and as innocent it is not very likely that it should ever do me any harm ! ****** This evening the Rollestons insist upon sending their carriage to take me back to Berkeley Street to dinner. I should have spent a lonely evening if I had not gone, and yet I go rather unwillingly, hav- ing had a pile of letters from Woodhay and Yat- tenden in the morning, which I have not yet had *v time to read. But the temptation to spend the \ evening in that pleasant house is too strong to re- sist against my better judgment I allow myself to be persuaded, and seven o'clock finds me in the drawing-room at Berkeley Street ; and as usual, 1 find Mr. Baxter there before me. " I don't think you are working very hard," I say to him in the course of the evening. " I think we have both been rather idle lately," he retorts, with his boyish smile. " I have been here every day I have no time to practise." " And I have been here every day I have no time to paint." " But how are you to make this great name for yourself if you do not work ? " " And you ? " he suggests, laughing. " Oh, I am not in any great hurry to make a name for myself ! " " I am glad to hear it. I hope you will neve make a name for yourself at all." " Thank you ! " " I mean that I hope you will never make that Toice of yours public property." " What then is to become of me ? " I ask, with laudable gravity. '* Let some man work for you," he says h FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 57 his boyish face flushing like a girl's. " Give some man the chance of making a name for himself for your sake ! " I shake my head gravely, looking out into the twilight. We are standing at an open window at the upper end of the long music-room. All the rest of the party are clustered round the piano at the lower end, where some music-mad friend of Crauford's is playing Berlioz's " Symphonie Ean- tastique." These are all in a warm glow of candle- light from the lights on the piano, but we, stand- ing at this distant window, are illumined only by the low glimmer from a faint clear apple-green sky against which the houses stand up picturesquely dark and indistinct, and in which, just above the shadowy chimney tops, burns one great red lovely star. " Miss Scott, do you think the man you marry will ever allow you to sing on the stage ? " His voice startles me, low and quietly as the words are spoken. I look up at the tall dark figure, indis- tinct in the twilight ; and suddenly this boy, with his beautiful eyes, his desperate poverty, his passion- ate pride, seems to take me by the hand and lead me into some " faery-land forlorn " of which I have never dreamed in all my life before. " I do not think about it/' I answer with truth. <( Miss Scott, will you marry me ? " This question takes me so entirely by surprise that it conveys no meaning to my mind. " Allie, will you marry me, and give me the right to work for you ? " I look up into the eager dark eyes of the lad who is so eager to work for me, but who cannot or will not work for himself. " You with a wife ! " I exclaim, with a cruel smile. " It seems to me to be as much as you can com pass'" $8 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. " To *ive myself. You are very bitter ; I think you take a pleasure in hurting me I think you always did ! "Forgive me/' I say, holding out my hand ; it looks very white and slim in the half-light, as I an> sure I look myself in my faint white clinging gown. "It was kind of you to wish to help me in the only way you could " " Kind ! " he interrupts passionately, taking the hand I have offered to him and daring to press his warm young lips against it. " I am kind to you, Allie, if you call it kind to love you with all the strength of my heart and soul ! " "But you have only known me for so short a time/' I say, drawing my hand away coldly. *' You can know nothing about me." " I know that I love you I know that I have loved you since the very first evening I met you here. I believe I fell in love with your voice before I ever saw you, though Mrs. "Wauchope thought she nipped any danger of that kind so cleverly in the bud ; " and he laughs a little the old boyish laugh. I think of the violets and am silent, looking at that great solitary star, at the houses standing up black against the gold-green sky. The quaint fantastic music of the Symphonic fills the room, the group about the piano listen to it eagerly, with the light full on their preoccupied faces ; only we two are alone together in the twilight window, two tall shadows against the faint ' clear sadness of the sky. " We should be poor, Allie ; but, if we cared for each other, that would not matter. And I would work so hard for you I would work day and night to become famous for your sake nothing would ba too hard for me with such a hope as that." "He looks as if he could "pile him a palaco FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 50 ht, to pleasure the princess he loved," as he stands there, so young and strong and full of life and hope. " But what fools people would think us ! " I say, smiling, and wondering what he will say when he hears the truth about me. " Should we care for that ? " he exclaims, with scornful dark eyes. If we were happy we should care very little what other people said. We are both poor, and, if we choose to be poor together, it is nobody's business but our own." Perhaps my silence says " what I would nevei swear," for he comes nearer to me, bending his dark head to look into my eyes, as he did once before in this very room, when we quarreled about a bunch of withered violets. " Allie, couldn't you care for me enough to 'lay your sweet hands in mine and trust to me ' ? " Could I ? Can I ? He takes me in his arms, he kisses me passionately, and I, Allie Somers Scott of Woodhay, submit to it with an amazed docility which I could not have believed possible a fortnight ago. And so we stand for "one vast moment" of intolerable happiness ; and then, with a laugh which ends with a sigh, I push him away from me. " Oh, this is folly ! " I exclaim, with rather tardy wisdom, it must be confessed. " We are mad to think of such a thing for a minute. You have nothing, and yet you want to burden yourself with a wife whose only mode of earning her living you condemn ! " " My wife shall never sing for her bread ! " the boy says, throwing up his head. " Then how do you propose to live ? " " I shall live by my art." "But you must practise your art before you can live by it." 60 FOR LIFE AND LOVK. " And I intend to practise it." " And if you fail ? " " I shall not fail with such an incentive to work." "You are very confident," I say, gazing into the eyes which look dark as night under their black lashes. But suppose you should not succeed ? " " I shall succeed." " But you seem to me to be more anxious to be- wilder by audacious originality than to conquer by sober work," I say deliberately. "I cannot be conventional ! " he exclaims, frown- ing a little. " I have my own ideas about choice of subject and manner of dealing with it, and I shall adopt the ideas of no other man living." " But your idea may not please the public." " If the public cannot understand me, it is their own loss." " And, meanwhile, you and those belonging to you may starve." He is silent, looking down at me at the girl in the long pale gown who dares to stand there and call not only his own steadfastness of purpose in question, but the principles of his art. " Truth must conquer in the end," he says at last. " If it is backed up by deliberate, mechanical, matter-of-fact toil." " 1 will work for you, Allie, if you will only give me the chance ! " "Will you work for me, Gerard ?" He bends down and kisses my hair a quick pas- sionate kiss. " As long as there is breath in my body, darling." " Then I will tell you what I will do," I say gravely and deliberately. " On the day that you sell a picture for one hundred pounds, if you come and ask me to marry you. Gerard Baxter, I will say, Yes/" FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 6l " For the sake of the hundred pounds, Allie ? " smiling a little. " No," I answer, smiling back again ; " but be- cause it will prove to me that you have begun to work." " You will marry me then, Allie ?" "Yes." " I won't be long painting that picture ! " he ex* claims boyishly. " My darling, do you know how happy you have made me ? " He is standing close to me, his arms round me, his dark head lowered against my fair one, our two foolish hearts full of a foolish dream never to be fulfilled. " Allie ! " they call to me from the other end of the room, turning their dazzled eyes from the piano and Crauford's long-haired friend to peer into our shadowy space of twilight. " Allie, come and sing 'Galla Water.'" I move down the room in my long dress, a faint white presence with no spot of darker color about it than the bunch of heliotrope fastened into ike coil of filmy lace about the throat, and followed by a darker figure which looks like its shadow in the faint perspective of the long shadowy room. " We want you to sing ' Galla Water,' Allie, and 'Logie o' Buchan.'" And I sit down and sing them with the careless gaiety, the dash and insouciance without which, Olive Deane tells me, I should not be Allie Scott. But all the time I am thinking of two shadowy fig- ures outlined against a faint gold-green sky, of a star that " flickered into red and emerald," of a voice that had said " And you will marry me, Allie ? " and of another voice that had answered "Yes." ******* 62 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. "Your aunt has come." Such is Mary Anne's greeting to me in the hall of No. 33 Carletou Street. " My aunt ! What aunt ? " " Your aunt from the country. She came about an hour ago, and was that surprised to find you had gone out ! " " But what has she come for ? Is anything wrong at home ? " "Not a thing in the world. She says she wrote to tell you she was coming, and to have a room ready, because she meant to stay/' " Meant to stay ! " I repeat, thinking of the un- opened letters of the morning. " So she says. She's in the drawing-room now> giving it to the mistress." " Giving her what ?" I ask stupidly. "A piece of her mind, she says ; but I think it's the whole of it ! " the maid-of -all-work says, grin- ning. " It's all along of the Count she be come, I expect. She says Mrs. Wauchope deceived her about having no lodgers but the Misses Pryce." Who can have told Aunt Rosa anything about him ? And what a state of mind she must have been in before she would decide to come up to town in such a hurry ! ' ( Aunt Eosa ! " I exclaim, in a tone of the most innocent astonishment. " My dear Aunt Eosa, I am so sorry you arrived while I was out." The sentence may be ambiguous ; but Aunt Eosa does not perceive it. " So am I," she says, when she has planted a cold kiss upon my nose. " I did not think you came up to London to go to evening parties." "But I was with the Eollestons, aunt perfectly respectable people." " Humph 1 And how did you come home ? " FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 63 "They sent me home in their carriage they always do/' " I wrote to you yesterday. Is there anything the matter with the postal arrangements ? " "Not that I know of, Aunt Rosa." "Then I am to conclude that you never open my letters ? " "Iwas in a hurry this morning breakfast was late, and I was afraid of being late at Madame Cron- helm's. I did glance through your letter ; but I must have overlooked anything you said about coming up to town." She says nothing to me about Mrs. Wauchope's contraband lodger ; but I know, as well as if she had told me, that somebody has been officious enough to write and tell her all about him. I suspect Mrs. Deane ; but I ask Aunt Eosa no questions, nor does she volunteer any information to-night. " It seems Mrs. Wauchope has no spare room for me. In those circumstances " " My dear Aunt Rosa, you can have my room. I will sleep here on the sofa, and just run in there to dress. There is a dressing-room Indeed, perhaps I had better have a shake-down in the dressing- room, if Mrs. Wauchope can manage it." " She is managing it now. I don't like that woman, Rosalie. She has a most virulent tongue/' " She has always been civil to me, Aunt Rosa." " Oh, because you just let her do as she pleases ! Have you been burning nothing but Scotch coal since yon came up to town ? " "I have had very good fires, auntie." " I am surprised at it, then. That coal in the grate is nothing but rubbish, though I dare say you are paying the very highest price for it. And the tea she gave me was execrable perfectly execrable ! " " I'm not much judge of tea, Aunt Rosa," I say, 64 FOR LIFE AND LOVfe. yawning. "I hope you've brought me up some jam from Woodhay, though, and some of our own batter." " I've done no such thing. You're coming home with me to-morrow there's been enough and too much of this folly, and your uncle is very sorry he was ever foolishly persuaded into giving his consent to it." " To-morrow, Aunt Rosa ! " "Not a day later than to-morrow." " But don't you want to see something of Lon- don, auntie ? " " I want to see the last of it. I'm only sorry I didn't know what I know now three weeks ago, and your ridiculous freak would have come to an end a great deal sooner. How your Uncle Todhunter could ever have agreed to such an egregious piece of folly passes my comprehension ! " Poor Aunt Rosa ! If she only knew that the steed was stolen, how much less clatter she 'would have made in locking the door ! In my heart I con- fess that she is right. I have got into mischief here in London, or into what she would consider mischief. If I had never come up to Mrs. Wau- chope's furnished lodgings, I should probably never have met. " That landscape-painter Which did win my heart from me." "I cannot possibly go home to-morrow, Aunt Rosa," I say, laying aside my squirrel-lined cloak and .the fan which I had been holding in my hand since I came into the room. " I must tell Madame Cronhelm that I am leaving town, and I must saj good-by to the Rollestons." "You can write to them both. A note will do just as well." " I shall not write. You can go home to-morrow t LIFE AND LOVE. $ and I will follow the next day, if you do not care to stay in London." "I shall not leave you behind me, Rosalie." " Very well, then : you must stay till the day after to-morrow." " But your uncle sent word by me that you were to come home at once." " I shall not go to-morrow," I repeat obstinately ; and Aunt Rosa, knowing me of old, thinks it better not to press the point. I must see my boy again. This is the idea which is uppermost in my mind. I cannot go away with- out seeing him ; but how shall I manage it ? I may not chance to meet him at the Rollestons' to-morrow ; and, if not, shall I be forced to go away without bid- ding him good-by ? I knew this evening that our time together would not be long, but I did not dream that it would be so short as this. (< I hope you won't be very uncomfortable, Aunt Rosa. You won't find the hair mattress as soft as your feather-bed at home." " I don't expect to be comfortable. The whole place appears to me wretched and shabby to a de- gree," " It is not at all wretched, I assure you. And I have improved greatly since I went to Madame Cron- helm's." Aunt Rosa sniffs, sitting bolt upright in the most uncomfortable chair in the room. " I think I will go to bed," she says. That woman has quite tired me out." I light her bedroom candle with alacrity, and pre- cede her into the inner room. A little camp-bed has been put up for me in the dressing-room ; but, be- fore I go to bed, and after I have helped Aunt Rosa to unpack her night-garments, I creep back to the dying fire in the drawing-room, and, sitting on the I 66 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. rug, lean my chin on my palms, and think of two figures in that twilight window, and of a foolish promise made only to be broken. But if he comes to me, shall I not say " Yes " ? If he keeps his share of the agreement, shall I not keep mine ? A foolish happy smile curves my lips in the dying firelight the lips that he has kissed by the light of that great solitary evening star. Yes, I will keep my promise, Gerard. But will you keep yours ? * * * * * * I go to Madame Cronhelm's in the morning, and after that to the Rollestons'. The Rollestons are sorry I am going away Ada especially. Mr. Baxi er is not at Berkeley Street, nor does any one mention his name. I come back to luncheon at Carleton. Street, though the Rollestons try hard to keep me, and have just finished that long-delayed meal when Mary Anne comes in with a card in her grimy hand, which she proffers to me. " Who is it ?" Aunt Rosa asks suspiciously. " The gentleman upstairs," Mary Anne answers, with malicious enjoyment in either squinting eye. " Who ?" Aunt Rosa exclaims, letting her knit- ting fall into her lap in the extYemity of her amaze- ment, "Ask Mr. Baxter to walk in/ 5 I say quietly. lf rtunt Rosa, this is my friend Mr. Baxter. Mr. Baxter Miss Herrick." Gerard Baxter bows, Aunt Rosa inclines her head stiffly, her eyes blazing through her spectacles like the eyes of her own cat Muff when he is vexed. "I was sorry to hear that you were going away," Gerard Baxter says, as he sinks into a chair beside me. " Yes/' I answer, laughing. My leave is stopped ! " Aunt Rosa is rather deaf. Unless we speak in a kind of raised, sustained tone, she can hear very FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 67 of what we say ; and I do not think it necessary to do this all the time. "I had a great deal of assurance to venture to call upon you, hadn't I ?" Gerard says, smiling. " I s-hould have been sorry not to have wished you gcod-by." " Allie, may I write to you sometimes ? " "Oh, no ; I think not I" I answer hurriedly. "I jould not answer your letters." " But how am I to live without either seeing or hoaring from you ? " "You must work," I say, smiling a little ; but there are tears in my eyes. "I intend to work. I have been wild enough, Allie you don't know how much of the Bohemian there is in me but the thought of you will steady me, darling ; while I love you I shall hate everything I know you would not like/' Something in the admission, frank as it is, saddens me. Is his love for me really great enough to work such a change in him as this ? If he forgets me, will he not relapse into his old idle ways, and then be sorry, and so despair of ever doing any good ? " Gerard, will you promise to let me know the day that you forget me ? " " Forget you, Allie ! " " If you do forget me, promise to tell me so at once." " I do promise ; but that day will never come, darling. I have never loved any woman but you, Allie, and I never shall." Aunt Rosa glows upon us, speechless with wrath and indignation. "What are we whispering about, this foreign-looking, shabby, unabashed young man and I ? We make the conversation more general after this ; and in about twenty minutes Gerard geta up to go. 68 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. " Good-by," he says, holding out his hand to me, having said good-by to Aunt Rosa. " It is hard that we can't have any better good-by than this, Allie isn't it ? " My eyes are full of foolish tears, so full that I am afraid they will flow over and attract Aunt Rosa's attention. But Aunt Rosa is not looking at me. " Good-by ! " I echo mechanically. And so he leaves me, and returns to his studio and his unfinished pictures, while I pack away a few tears into my portmanteau the first I have shed since I was a child. CHAPTER VI. " WELL, Allie, the more I look at you, the mow I think you the most extraordinary girl in the world ! " ''Extraordinary, Olive ?" " To think you could have been satisfied with those wretched old rooms in Carleton Street when you had such a home as this ! " "I was very happy in Carleton Street," I answer dreamily. " Happy ! Because that boy was there." (< And I was not a bit obliged to your mother for bringing Aunt Rosa down upon me/' " But mama did not like your being there alone, Allie." " What nonsense ! I am my own mistress, Olive, and can do as I like." "Not till to-morrow, my dear," Olive laughs. "After to-morrow, you pan please yourself." "And I mean to do it, I assure you." We are walking from the vicarage to Woodhay FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 69 it is only a few minutes' walk through the wood. It is June weather exquisite weather ; all my woods are a mystic 'tangle of green leaf and shadow and golden-dropping sunshine, all my meadows are bloomy purple, " sighing for the scythe." Between Woodhay and the vicarage there runs a little rush- ing brook, and beyond the brook, on my side of it, a hundred feet of woodland runs up steeply, with a wealth of overhanging ferns and tangled foliage throwing their shadow far across the shadowy combe. It is up this southern slope that we are winding by a steep path overhung with woodland tangle of woodbine and blackberry bramble, with a thousand tiny ferns and velvet mosses laughing at us from the crevice of every lichen-spotted rock. " Do you ever think of that boy of yours, Allie ? " Olive asks, as we climb the wooded steep together, bathed in alternate streaks of sun and shadow. " Think of him ? " I repeat inanely. " You used to be great friends, you know, though I think you have forgotten him. Jack Rol- leston used to chaff him about you Jack thought he really cared awfully for you, Allie, joking apart/' " Jack Rolleston is a great fool, Olive ! " "Oh, well, I know Jack hasn't much sense ! But you know that time Jack came down to Brighton for Poppy's wedding, he said Gerard Baxter was working himself into skin and bone, and had grown quite steady, and meant to make a name for him- self." " Yes, so you told me," I remark carelessly, though remembering all about it at least as well as Olive does. " But he has fallen off since then," Olive says, shaking her blonde head. " Poor fellow, I think he met with some disappoiitment about his picture he was obliged to sell it 01 something, and they only ?O FOR LIFE AND LOVE. gave him eighty for it, whereas Jack said he valued it at over a hundred, and it would not have been a penny too much." A little sharp pain runs through my heart like a knife. This was what I had dreaded this reaction after possible disappointment. " I am sure you are sorry for him, Allie," Olive says, looking at me. " We used to call him your handsome sweetheart, you know poor boy, he used to follow you about like your shadow ! " " You speak of him as if he were dead, Olive, " I Bay a little sharply. " I am afraid he is going to the bad, and that is worse," Olive observes soberly. "I met Jack Kol leston the other evening, and he told me he hardly ever saw Gerard Baxter now, that he never came to Berkeley Street, and that he was afraid he had got into a very wild set, and was going down-hill as fast as he could." Olive is preceding me up the steep path, and has enough to do to maintain her footing, without turn- ing her head to look at me. I am glad of it. If she had looked at me, she must have noticed the exceeding whiteness of my face. " It is a great pity, you know," she went on Olive likes to hear herself talk. " He is so young, and so remarkably good looking ! Katie Eolleston told me you know she came down to Brighton tho day before I left that he passed her in Eegent Street the other day, and it quite made her heart ache to see how shabby he was. She said she would have spoken to him, even in such a seedy coat ; but he passed by without looking at her. I suppose he knew he was rather a disreputable-looking figure ta be seen speaking to any lady in the street." " Is he still lodging in Carleton Street ? " "I do not know. Jack knows very little about FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 7 1 him. He says he doesn't like to seem as if he were prying into his affairs, and he is such a proud fellow, Jack says it would be as much as his life is worth to offer him a good luncheon at a restaurant, and that he would be sure to guess it was because he looked half starved." " Does he look like that ? " I ask, infinitely dis- tressed. "Well, he looks very thin,"-01ive says, laughing a little. " I say, Allie, they are putting up tri- umphal arches here ; did you know that ? " "I heard they intended doing it. We will come round by the garden, Olive. I don't want them to surround us like a swarm of bees." Turning from the glimpse of the lawn and car- riage drive, seen between the steins of the walnut- trees, I open a little gate leading into a long straight walk walled by tall, green, fragrant hedges of box and yew. " Don't you mean to let them see you, Allie ?" "Not to-day, if I can help it. I shall have enough and too much of that to-morrow." " My dear, you talk as if coming of age were a grievance ! " " It is a nuisance to me, Olive." " You will tell me that Woodhay is a nuisance to you next ! " "Oh, no ; I should not care to give up Wood- hay!" " I should think not ! ; Olive laughs, as we pass from the cool secluded green walk, through a tall archway cut in the hedge, and find ourselves in a blaze of sunshine and scarlet geranium, and brown velvet calceolaria, and blue lobelia, and a hundred other radiant blossoms. " Allie, when are you cc ming to live here at Wood- hay?" 72 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. ' "To live here ?" I repeat absently, my eyes on the gilded weather-vane which twinkles like a star on the point of my quaint red-brick gable. " You have done nothing but echo me since we left the vicarage. When are you going to take up your abode here in your own manor of Woodhay ? " " I don't know. Not till Uncle Tod is too old to do duty, probably. He will never leave the vicarage till then." " But can't you live here without your Uncle Tod ? " " By myself, Olive?" " You could get lots of nice elderly ladies to come and live with you." " I think one would be enough ! " I say, shrug- ging my shoulders. " Of course I mean one at a time. Why wouldn't your Aunt Eosa come and live with you here ? " "Aunt Kosa would not leave Uncle Tod." " Your uncle could get the Kevereiid Hyacinth Lockhart to come and take up his abode at the ficarage." "I don't think he could. The Reverend Hya- cinth has set up for himself in the village you know the pretty cottage near the church, just out- side the vicarage gate ? " "Going to marry somebody?" Olive inquires, with great interest. "Very probably, though I have not heard any- thing about it as yet." "I hope he is not going to marry anybody," Olive says pathetically. " I should not have half as much fun when I come down here if there was a Mrs. Hyacinth Lockhart." " Then why did you refuse him last summer, my dear?" " Oh, I wasn't o^uite prepared to marry him, you FOR LIFE AND LOVfi. 73 know ! But I don't want him to marry anybody else." " You little dog in the manger ! Come in and have some strawberries, Olive. I told off Digges we should want any amount of strawberries and cream." The old white-haired butler, who has lived at Woodhay as long as I can remember and a great deal longer meets us in the hall. " Good afternoon, Digges. Where are the straw- berries and cream ? " " In here, madam/' Digges says, throwing open the door of the dining-room. It is a long low room, with carved rafters and a high black oak wainscot, which gives it rather a som- ber look. But the glorious June sunshine streams in through the stained glass of the old-fashioned bay-windows, and falls in blue and purple and ruby rays on the polished parqueterie of the floor, on the heavy quaint furniture and on the grim faces of my ancestors and ancestresses hanging round the upper part of the wall in their tarnished frames. " I wonder all these stately forefathers of yours did not awe you into more discretion, Allie," Olive observes, 'nodding her saucy blonde head at the family portraits. " If I had all those prim beruffed and bedoubleted ladies and gentlemen looking down at me all my life with such ' awful speculation ' in their painted eyes, I think I would be a great deal more stiff and stuck-up and dignified than you are." "I never look at them," I confess candidly, lean- ing back in my chair, and looking at them now how- ever. "We are a -plain family, Olive there's not a doubt about it ! Hideously ugly I call those men and women ! " " I suppose you mean to say that you are plain, Allie ? " looking at me over her shoulder. 74 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. " I'm no beauty, my dear. Look at the extraor- dinary effect of that blue light from the window on my great great grandmother's face ! Doesn't it look exactly as if somebody had given her a black eye ? " " My dear Allie, if Digges could hear you ! " " I'm not going to let Digges hear me, besides, he's as deaf as Aunt Rosa." " Is not that the lady whose eyes have made their appearance again in you, Allie, after lying dormant in the family for a hundred years or so ? " " I believe so. And I have heard that she was the most pig-headed woman of the age in which she lived." " Her eyes are exactly the color of yours, Allie the same shade of blue gra}% like an autumn fog." " It does not sound well," I laugh, shrugging my shoulders. " Foggy eyes don't give one the idea of anything very alluring. Olive, you don't mean to say you can't eat any more strawberries ? " " I am reduced to that deplorable plight, my dear." Looking at the table, with its delicate appoint- ments of glass and silver, its dainty flowers, the cake and cream and piled-up dishes of strawberries, my heart aches, thinking of my boy. He may be hun- gry, while there is food and to spare in my house, while my very servants feed on the fat of the land. The thought sends that old dull aching pain through my heart again. "I shall go down and see what they have done to the room they are to dance in," Olive says, getting up from the table. " I hear the decorations there are to be something splendid all scarlet geraniums, festooned about the mottoes and flags." "Sol hear." " Allie, I should like exceedingly to shake you I" FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 75 " Before all my respectable ancestors, Olive ? " " Before them all. Oh, Allie, I forgot to remind you of that note to the confectioner ! We left it lying on the study mantelpiece/' " It will be late for post then, unless I run back now and ask Uncle Tod to take charge of it." " Shall I go ? " Olive asks readily. " Certainly not. If any one must go, I will go myself." " But can't you send somebody over for it ? " " They would not find it probably. I have noth- ing particular to do just at present ; so, if you like to run down and see what they are doing in the serv- ants' hall, I'll go back to the vicarage and give my note to Uncle Tod." Olive agrees to this arrangement ; and, five min- utes later, I am in my wood again, passing under its mazy network of sun and shadow, drinking in the delicious woodland air. I walk very slowly, the little noisy brown river below me on my right hand, on my left the over- hanging rocks with their June vesture of moss and ferns and trailing festoons of bindweed and honey- suckle ; and, while I walk, I am thinking of Gerard Baxter and of the dream that I have been dreaming for the last three months. Has he forgotten me ? This is the question which troubles me most. If he had forgotten me, would he not have found means to tell me so ? Had he not promised to tell me, in the gloomy old drawing-room in Carleton Street- were they not the very last words he had said to me before he said good-by ? He has not forgotten me, for, if he had, he would have told me so I re- peat to myself forlornly ; and, while the thought is m my heart, I raise my eyes and see him standing before me, thin and gaunt and shabby, in the soft sunlight and shadow of my woodland path, 76 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. " Gerard ! " I cry ; and yet the reality of his presence scarcely startles me, so present had he been to my thoughts. He answers nothing, not a single Avord, only stands there, looking at me as if I were a ghost. But it is he who looks like the ghost of his former self. " Gerard, where have yon come from ? What are you doing here ?" " I have come from London," he answers, with- out any gladness in his face " from London, to see you." Something in his manner chills me, and sends the warm blood surging hack to my heart. " You have come to tell me that you have for- gotten me ?" " ]S T o," he replies, a dusky red coming into his haggard cheeks, "I shall never come to tell you that." I am conscious of a feeling of relief. I had scarcely doubted him, and yet his manner had seemed like the grasp of an iron hand about my heart. But, if he has not forgotten me, it matters very little about anything else. " You promised to let me know," I say, standing before him in the dancing sunlight and shadow, looking with wistful eves into his altered face. "I have not forgotten you," he repeats, almost savagelv, a fierce light in his eyes. " I wish I had ! " ' "You wish you had, Gerard !" I do, before Heaven ! " " But I cure for nothing, so long as you have not forgotten me. After all, what does anything mat- ter, if wo love each other ?" " If we love each other ? " he repeats vaguely, his hungry, hollow eyes devouring my face. FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 77 " If you love me, Gerard, I can forgive everything else." " I tried hard," he says brokenly, turning his face away "I tried hard to be worthy of you, Allie." " I know you did," I answer tenderly. " I know all about it, Gerard I have heard." " But it was not in me. It was a bad day for you when you cared for me if you ever did care." " I did cae," I respond gravely, holding my head as high as his is low. "I did care for you, and I care for you still ! " " I hope not ! " he exclaims quickly and passion- ately, stretching out his hands as if to keep my words away. " 1 am not worthy of you you must not waste another thought on such a miserable, de- graded wretch as I am." " But if I love you, Gerard ? " " But you do not know how low I have fallen, child." "Not so low but that I can reach to lift you up, with Heaven's help," I say, in the same grave, tender, quiet way, " Do not thrust me away, Gerard. I should not be a woman if I turned from you be- cause you were unfortunate if you had been for- tunate I might not have cared for you half as much." " You are an angel ! " he returns brokenly ; but his head is turned away from me. He makes no movement to cross the yard or two of mossy path, the glint of sunshine and flicker of dancing shadow, which divides us from each other. " You have suffered since I saw you last," I say, with a pitiful glance at his gaunt, hollow cheeks and faded eyes. " Suffered ! " he echoes, with an indescribable intonation. " Allie, if you cared for me as you Bay you did why didn' Y u marry me ? " 78 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. " And add a new burden to what was heavy enough already, Gerard ? " "Were you afraid of poverty? "What matter if we had starved together f But we should not have starved you would have given me courage to suc- ceed. And, if we had starved one day, we should have feasted the next we should have been like two children we should have cried and laughed together ! We should have been happy, Allie, be- cause we should have loved each other ; but we nave missed it lost it forever ! " He speaks rapidly fiercely, but quite coherently. If it had not been for his coherence I should have thought that he was mad, or had been drinking too much wine. But I do not like his look, or the desperate light in his eyes. " I was cruel," I say, stretching out my hand ta him. " There are plenty of people who would say that I had acted wisely ; but I know in my heart that I did not. I ought to have married you, or forbidden you to think of me at all/' He looks at me with those haggard, hungry eyes looks at my face, my dress, but he makes no move- ment to take my outstretched hand. " You look like a picture, Allie. I wish I could paint you in that white gown, with all those tangled leaves for background, your head thrown out so delicately against that patch of pale blue sky. You look so fair and sweet and good. What right had I to drag you down to share a life of struggle and poverty with me ? " ''If I loved you, I ought to have been glad to share it. I ought not to have left you alone to battle with poverty and temptation. That was the cruel, selfish mistake I made that is what makes me blame myself now a thousand times more than J blame you." FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 79 He does not know how I might have raised him up how high above all want I might have placed him how little we might have struggled with the world which has treated him so badly. "And yet, if I loved you as I ought," he says wistfully, "I ought to be glad to see you here happy among all bright and lovely things. I wonder," he adds, with a short cold laugh, " that you even condescend to speak to a poor shabby out- at-elbows wretch like me ? " " Do you wonder ? " I answer a little coldly. " You seem to have but a poor opinion of me, Mr. Baxter." " I was so sure you had forgotten me. You had seemed to care for me so little always it was I who had cared for you. I said to myself ' She will despise me she will not believe in me any more.' And that made me reckless I did not care what became of me I do not care now." " But I care." "Do you ?" he asks a little curiously, looking down into my face. " How often must I tell you I love you, Gerard ? " "But you must hate me, Allie, from this day forward." " Did you come here to tell me this ? " " I came here because I felt that I must see you again. Do you know that it is nearly three months since I saw your face ? " How well I know it ! But I only ask gravely and coldly " How did you find me out ?" " I knew you lived here with your uncle, You told me he was the clergyman of this place." " Where are you staying ? At Yattenden ? " " At the inn there. I came down to make some sketches in the neighborhood," he adds, smiling a 80 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. very faint tired haggard smile. "There are some pretty bits about here at Woodhay so they tell me. But I suppose I could not venture to carry my paints and easel in here without the owner's leave ? " " I can get that for you very easily." " I suppose you know the people who live here ?" " I know every one in the neighborhood." " The sketches are not of much moment it was to see you that I came. I had something to tell you something I must say to you " " And I," I interrupt with a happy thrill at my heart " I have something to say to you, Gerard. But I have a fancy for saying it to-morrow you will know why afterward. If you come here to- morrow, I will tell you a secret." " My news will keep till to-morrow," he says, with the kind of eagerness with which a drowning man will catch at a straw ; " and it will be some- thing to live for, to think that I shall see you again." " If you come to Woodhay to-morrow^ you will see a village fete." " I am in no trim for fetes," he answers, bitterly, with a glance at his threadbare sleeve. " Oh, there will be all kinds of people here to- morrow ! " " Even beggars like me ! Is it a school feast, or what?" " The owner of the place is coming of age. Did you not notice the triumphal arches fchey are put- ting up all along the road from the village ? " " No ; I came across the fields from the village. My landlord told me there was a rignt-o^-way, even for such tramps as I." " I am sure mine host of the * Swag's Head ' did not say anything so uncivil. What *bouH you hava done if you had not met me here to-day ? * FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 8l " Loafed about the vicarage till I did meet you," he answers, with a gleam of the old boyish fun in his ho.'.low eyes. His manner would have saddened me if I did not know how he will laugh at his want of faith in me to-morrow. " I must go," I say at last, thinking how Olive will wonder what has become of me ; " but you will be sure to come to-morrow ? " " I will come," he promises, looking at me with the sad eyes which trouble me. " I shall see you to-morrow, Allie, and after that the Deluge." But that is not the program I arrange for my- self, as I run up the path through the vicarage garden, between the cabbages and rows of currant and gooseberry bushes. CHAPTER VII. "ALLIE, you have an amazing power of adap- tability." " How do you mean ? " " Why, to-day you look as if you had been acting the Lady Bountiful all your life." " Because a set of old men and women and school children don't make me nervous ? " "But, when the band struck up and they began to cheer, I declare it nearly made me cry ! And you were as cool as a block of Wenham Lake ice you never even changed color, while I was trembling like a leaf." " Every one is not such a goose as you are, V/ 11 V o. Uncle Tod has just returned thanks, in my name, 6 82 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. for the congratulatory speech which Mr. Prout, the steward, his delivered, and the welcome and good wishes for my future happiness which he has ex- pressed on behalf of himself and of my tenantry, who have emphasized each carefully-prepared com- pliment and labored pleasantry with rather indis- crirninating cheers and laughter. But, if they are amused, I am satisfied, and only anxious to get it all over as quickly as I can. I am standing with Uncle Tod on the low balcony or terrace before the hall-door, at the top of the wide shallow flight of stone steps leading down to the drive. A crowd of well-dressed people stand behind us, Olive nearest to me. Aunt Rosa is in the open drawing-room window with a Avhole party of elderly ladies ; there are faces at every window of the picturesque old red-brick house. But they are nothing to the sea of faces in front of us ; the whole village and not only the village, but the country-side seems to have turned out to welcome my father's child to the house from which they had seen his coffin carried those of them who were old enough to remember followed by the tears and lamentations of a tenantry which idolized him as, I am afraid, they will never idolize me. I stand quite quietly at Uncle Tod's elbow, look- ing down at the crowd, while the dear old man, bareheaded, his silver locks glistening in the June sunshine, says his few pleasant fatherly words to the people, and receives a hearty cheer or two, at which he smiles, glancing at me. Then the crowd scatter away to the various amusements prepared for them, which are to occupy the time before the great dinner in the marquees on the lawn. " Come and see the children dance ! " Olive says ; and she and I and half a dozen others Gus Deane and young Algy Dufferin and Mr. Lockhart among FOR LIFE AND LOVB. 83 them make our way to the old croquet-ground, where the children, rich and poor, are dancing merrily to the music of the village brass-band. " What are you looking for?" Gus Deane asks, standing beside me. " Looking for ? " " You seem to be searching in the crowd for some one or something." " Oh, I expected a friend here to-day ! " I an- swered carelessly. " I dare say he is here some- where in the crowd." " Will he not come up and speak to you ? " Gus questions, surprised. " Of course by and by." I stand up, very tall and straight, in the clear space that is left for me wherever I move to-day. The sunshine gilds my birthday gloriously all the woods are bathed in it ; it dreams on the smooth lawns ; it lights up the green triumphal arches and the red and white flags fluttering in long festoons against the cloudless blue of the sky. Olive thinks me very cool and quiet ; but she does not know how my heart is beating under my cream-colored bodice slashed with soft sky-blue not beating be- cause I am the center of attraction here to-day, not beating at the sound of the music or the cheering, but because I am watching for an opportunity to steal away to meet my lover in the greenwood my lover who is waiting there for me. I love him, poor and shabby and haggard and un- fortunate I love him as perhaps I should never have loved him if he had been well-dressed and rich and prosperous as I could never have loved any of the rich and prosperous young men who are crowding about me to-day. Some women love best what most excites their pity what is most depen- dent upon them for comfort and care and help. I 84 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. love this boy because I am everything to him be cause, unless I stoop to save him, he is lost. I long to take him by the hand, to say to him, " All mine is thine." He shall suffer no more poverty, poor lad ; he shall not fight hand to hand with want and disappointment and discouragement any more ! I will help him to be famous ; he need not sell his beautiful pictures for half their value because he must have bread to eat. So I think triumphantly, as I stand looking at the children dancing on the greensward, and wondering impatiently when I shall be able to shake off Gus Deane and escape to my woodland tryst. Has Gerard any idea yet that I am the heroine of the day, I wonder that these village festivities have all been organized in honor of me ? I hope he has no suspicion of it ; 1 want to be the first to tell him myself. He will wonder at my dress when, he sees me long gowns of delicate cream color, slashed with blue satin, great Euben hats lined with the same skyey hue and plumed with soft ostrich leathers, do not come out of quiet country vicarages even a man would know as much as that ! But he will think I am looking well. Olive has told me that she never saw me looking so well before as I am looking to-day. I slip away from them all at last, into the garden, down the long, cool, aromatic alley of box and yew, into the gold and emerald mazes of the wood. The path is very steep ; but I hurry down it down into the cool depths of my shadowy combe. He is there waiting for me, leaning over a bit of ivied wall, looking down into the river the noisy rush- ing river, which drowns the distant music and the hum of the crow'd. " Gerard," I cry joyfully" Gerard ! " He turns at the sound of my voice. FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 8 " Why didn't you come and see us making merry up at the house ? " " I did not care to go ; I have no heart for merry- making," he says a little sullenly, looking at me. "They were making such a noise, shouting and dancing. And you I suppose you were in the mid- dle of it all?" " Yes/' I answered, smiling a little " in the very middle ! " " You look like it. Why are you dressed out like that ? " " Everybody puts on gala attire for such a day as this." " Then it was well I did not venture in among you in my rags ! " " Gerard," I say, taking him by the hand quickly, " come with me : I want to tell you something something that will make you glad." " Nothing could make me glad," he returns, shaking off my hand as if it stung him, " except to know that this would be the last day I had to live." " Gerard, all this place is mine ; it is for me they are making all this noise which vexes you ! Wood- hay is mine, and I I am yours, if you will have me !" He stares at me in bewilderment. " Woodhay is mine, Gerard do you hear ?" *' Why did you not tell me ? " he asks slowly, a great red flush rising to his face, up to his very forehead. " Because I thought you knew, at first ; and then, because I wanted to try you whether you loved me for myself alone." " And I dared to ask you to marry me ? " he says, staring at me in the same bewildered way. " I am not surprised that you refused me, Allie " with a short cold laugh. " I am not surprised that you 86 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. declined my magnanimous offer that night in Berke- ley Street ! Heavens, how you must have laughed at me ! " and he turns away in a sudden passion of anger and resentment. "I did not laugh at you, Gerard. Oh, Gerard, you are treating me very badly " " Don't cry/' he says, but without looking at me "don't cry, or you will drive me mad." " You will drive nie mad ! What have I done that you should be so hard to me so cruel " " You have done nothing. It is I who have ruined myself." " But you are not ruined. We shall be happy yet ; I am very rich, I have great wealth, Gerard, more than you think. And it is all yours ; I only value it now because I can give it to you." "Hush ! " he exclaims, a look of passionate shame and anguish passing over his face. " Don't talk like that, child ; you can do nothing for me ; it is too late, I have done for myself." "It is not too late. No matter what you have done, I love you, Gerard, and I will marry you to- morrow, if you like." " Listen to me ! " he says, taking me by the wrist with a grasp which absolutely bruises my flesh. " Listen to me for a minute. You know that I come here to tell you something, Allie something which it hurts me more to tell than it will hurt you to hear." " What is it ? " I ask, frightened by the strange, lurid glow which lights up the blackness of his eyes. " Something which will make you hate me." " You hurt my wrist," I say, piteously. " Poor little arm ! " he exclaims, and, stooping Buddenly, he kisses it. " Allie, isn't it hard that I, who would lie down and die for you this minute, if I could, must hurt you ? " FOR LIFfc AND LOVE. 87 " You have not hurt me much," I answer, smiling through some childish tears. " But I must hurt you. Allie, walk up and down here with me for a few minutes, while I tell you my story just here I shall not detain you very long." We walk up and down, through the sunshine and the shadow, the rushing of the river in our ears. As long as I live I shall remember these minutes not more than ten are they, though they seem a century of pain and sorrow to us both. " And so I grew reckless, Allie. I did not care what became of me. The picture that was to have made my fortune went for half its value, and I I tried to find oblivion where the wretched look for it so often tried, and lost what little self-respect re- mained to me, and with it all hope of ever winning you." " If you had had patience " " But I had no patience. And it was so easy to go down-hill, so much easier than climbing up ! A fortnight after my picture went, I was starving in an attic in London, ashamed to show my face in Carleton Street, as I have been ashamed to show it ever since." The green leaves flicker, the river brawls among its mossy boulders ; now and then a swell of music comes to us on the soft breathings of the June air. I do not speak I let him tell his story in his own way and then, when he has finished, I will tell him mine. "I lodged with a woman named White a wretched, quarrelsome woman, the widow of a color- sergeant. She said her husband had been a gentle- man a wild medical stndent who had got into debt, and enlisted. I lived in her house, boarding with her. I owed her money. She let her bill run on if she had not, I must have starved, or put an end, 88 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. to myself. I was too shabby to to think of trying for any decent employment. I had sold everything for which I could get money even the locket with my mother's hair. The woman had a daughter a girl whom I had often admired for her pretty face and she took it into her head to fall in love with me." He pauses, with a smile of angry scorn and humi* liation. I say nothing not a single word. " The mother knew I was a gentleman, and em couraged it. I was fascinated bewitched by the child's beauty. I was reckless I did not care what became of me. And she was fond of me I will do her the justice to say that she was fond of me, mis- erable beggar that 1 was." " And you loved her ! " I say quite quietly, though my heart is beating low in its passionate pain. The moment he mentioned the woman's name White I remembered the girl I had seen in London the young girl with tangled red-gold hair, with an exquisite innocent face, with blue velvety eyes that looked dark as night under their black lashes a face whose exceeding beauty I had envied, not dreaming of what it was to be to me. " No," he answers quietly enough, " I did not love her, Allie I shall never love any woman but you. But I married her." ****** " Gerard, will you let me help you in the only way I can ? " We are standing, looking at each other with white altered faces, set and stern. It is all over Aow the miserable story is ended I know the worst. And, if the telling of it has brought an anguish which is almost intolerable to me, it seems to have carried a certain relief with it to him a sense of having dared and endured the worst. FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 89 "You offer me charity?" he says; but he says it humbly. I may hurt him now ; he will not re- taliate, having hurt me so much already. "I offer you of my abundance," I answer, think- ing how little pleasure or profit my abundance will be to me henceforward. "I ask you, as a favor to me, to let me lend you what is lying useless to me if you will be so good." I use the word "lend" advisedly, as more palata- ble to his pride than the word "give." He looks at me, shame and sorrow and regret struggling in his face. " Allie," he exclaims passionately, "is it can it really be true that you care for an unfortunate, good- for-nothing, unlucky wretch like me ? " It is my turn to draw back now miserably indig- nant. " You dare to say this to me, Gerard Baxter to me?" "But half an hour ago five minutes ago, you told me that you loved me," the boy says, a light of passionate triumph in his haggard eyes. " Even a woman cannot love one minute and hate the next ! " "No," I answer quietly; "I do not think they can." He looks down into my eyes looks and turns his head away. " To think that I have lost you, Allie you whom I love better than all the world ! " " Hush ! " I exclaim almost vindictively. " Think of the wretched child you have married ! Do not make me despise you and myself ! " " Despise me ! " he echoes with the quick, hard laugh which is worse than a sob. " I wonder what else you can do ? " " I pity you ; and if you will let me help you as if you were mY own brother I shall count it a kind- 9O FOR LIFE AND LOVE. ness. And now I must go ; they will be calling for me." "To lead the revels," he says bitterly; "while My heart bleeds for him, as I look at the strange, unyouthful expression of his face, at his threadbare coat. If I had dared, I would have offered him money ; but I do not dare. " You have spoiled the revels for me," I answer bitterly, in my turn ; and, as he looks into my eyes, he seems to feel that I speak the truth, for his own cloud over. " I was not worthy of you, Allie," he says brokenly. "I have been justly punished, though my punish- ment is more than I can bear." "You are young, Gerard the world is before you yet. You shall make afresh start. Want of means shall not drag you down any more. You will be famous, and I shall be your friend." He wrings my hand, holding his head down the dark head that used to be held so high. " Do not offer me money, Allie ; I could never take money from you. But I will make a fresh start I will work hard for your sake, and some day or other we may be friends." They are his last words to me. " We have been looking for you everywhere, Allie ! They want you to give the prizes to the boys who have won the races. Why, Allie, have you seen a ghost ? You look as white as a sheet ! " " She is tired," Olive says, putting her arm round me and drawing me away from the excited group on the terrace. " Would you rather somebody else gave away the prizes, dear ? Your Uncle Tod could do it just as well," FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 91 " Oh, I'll do it ! " I answer feverishly. " I want something to do I am tired." Olive leads me into the house. The excitement has been too much for me so everybody says. Olive takes off my hat and puts me on to the sofa, and I lie there quite quietly, holding her hand. The fete goes on merrily. I hear the music and the danc- ing ; it seems to come and go curiously, swelling and dying away. " Shut it out ! " I say wearily. " Shut the win- dow, Olive. I am tired of listening to that river, and the sunshine dazzles me. And give me that sheet of music I know Madame Cronhelm is wait- ing for me to sing." CHAPTER VIII. How softly the sunshine dreams along the terrace how bright the flower-garden looks, seen from tho shadowy room ! I have been asleep, I think ; the light slants more from the west than it did when Olive left me here to rest for a little, while she went out with Mr. Lockhart to play tennis after luncheon. The warm August air comes in through the open window ; without turning my head, I can feel it breathing balmily on my cheek. There are two windows to this quaint long drawing-room of mine, one looking across the terrace in the flower-garden, the other into the tennis-courts. My sofa is near the garden window, which Olive has closed. But through the small old-fashioned panes in their leaden setting I can see my flowers blazing in the sunshine, my pet peacock perched on the stone balustrade, m^ three tawny black-faced pugs rolling over one 92 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. another on the smooth gravel, the bosky tops of my woodland, and, far away, a high blue hill, so faint with heat that it seems to lose its outline in the clouds. I look at them all dreamily, with a curious kind of languid unconcern. It is not weakness or lazi- ness for my strength has quite come back to me, and I never was indolent but a strange feeling of indifference, which prompts me to lie still on my pillows and look about me dreamily like a half- awakened child. The shadows creep round, followed by the sun- shine ; the peacock hops down and stalks away I know not whither ; my dogs have curled themselves up and gone to sleep in the sunshine ; a bee comes booming against the glass and away again ; a flight of crows cross the sky in the distance ; I hear Olive's voice counting her strokes; I know the glorious August afternoon is wearing away ; and yet I do not stir. There has been a hiatus of six weeks in my life ; and, now that I am gathering up the raveled threads .of consciousness again, it is with a curious uncon- cern, a want of energy, which troubles Olive and Uncle Tod. I have been so near death's door that it seems as if I scarcely cared to take the trouble to come back again as if I had somehow got outside the world's attraction, and were floating apart in some dreamy mid-region out of the reach of their sympathies. I feel as if I could not bring myself to care for anything, to feel an interest in anything, to care to rouse myself out of the stupor of languid indifference into which I have fallen since that six weeks' fever out of which they thought I would never have come alive. The sunlight moves on dies off the terrace glides to the top of my bosky wood. The colors ot I FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 93 the flowers in the garden are not so rich now as the coat-of-arms let into the upper part of the deep bay window in colored glass the stag's head above the shield with its chevron charged with three fleurs-de~ lys, over all the bloody hand to which I, as a girl, can have no right. The person who has a right to it is here, at Woodhay. I wonder vaguely if he ever thinks of me as a usurper ? If I had never been born Woodhay would have belonged to him. I study the armorial bearings with the same vague curiosity with which I have studied the garden as if it had not been familiar to me all my life. From the stained glass my eyes wander to the heavy cur- tains of crimson velvet, to the paneled wall, to the oil-painting above the paneling a chorus of ra- diantly-beautiful cherub heads whose rosy cheeks are only a shade less rosy than the heaven which forms their background. I am studying this last as if it too were an unfamiliar thing, when the rustle of a newspaper at the other end of the room attracts my attention. I move my head languidly, turning down the corner of the pilldw with my hand. Eonald Scott is sitting in the great red velvet chair by the window, reading. I have made no sound in turning my head and he does not look round. And calmly and gravely I study him, as I have studied the other objects in the room and out of it, with cold, unin- terested, almost indifferent eyes. I know his face very well. ' He was at the vicarage when I first came down-staira had been staying there for more than a fortnight* He is my cousin ; his father and my father were first cousins but I had never seen him before. Uncle Tod had met him as a lad, before he went to India, and had taken a fancy to him. And, hearing that he had come back to England for ? year's holiday, he had written to invite hint 4ovn ^o the vicarage, promising 94 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. the shooting of as many of my grouse and woodcock - and I believe my hares and pheasants as he chose to demolish. He had not come down till I had hegun to mend the invitation had been given before I fell ill and he does not seem to find life at Yattenden Vicarage dull, or to have grown tired of shooting over my lands, or crossing the brown brook to pay us a visit here at Woodhay, to which I have come for change of air with Olive, Aunt Rosa dividing her time impartially between the two houses, but being nominally on a visit with me. Studying his face thus at my leisure, I try to fancy what I would think of Ronald Scott if I had never seen him before. It is a plain face, thin and brown, with a drooping brown mustache a rather stern face, as of one who has conquered in the fight. Uncle Tod told me, when he heard, of his coming home on leave, that Ronald Scott was a hard-working fellow, and would soon be at the top of the tree. I remember quite well hearing of his going out to India, with very little interest and no capital, nearly twelve years ago, and what a strug- gle it would be to him to get his foot even on the lowest rung of the ladder. Even then I had won- dered if he wished there were no such person in ex- istence as the little wild girl at Yattenden Vicar- age. It seemed hard that he should have inherited nothing but the empty title sometimes I wished my father had not left Woodhay to me, but to him. But Woodhay was not entailed, and my father cared for no one but me. Nevertheless, as a child, I had often thought of my cousin, Sir Ronald Scott wondered what he was like and even made up my mind to marry him some day, and so repair the in- jury I had unconsciously done him. Now, as I lie among my velvet cushions soberly regarding him, I bethink me of the resolution I have come to lately, FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 9$ of leaving Woodhay to him when I die. His yearly income in India promises soon to be equal to my own ; but that makes no difference. Woodhay ought to go with the Scott title, as it has gone for the last four or five hundred years. This magnani- mous arrangement fills me with no sorrow for my- self as I lie among my cushions studying his worn profile as it appears against the sunny square of open window beyond, "You are awake, Rosalie!" Some occult influ- ence has drawn his look toward me, or perhaps the magnetism of my own steadfast gaze. He throws down the newspaper and comes across the room. " I hope you feel rested, cousin ? " " Oh, yes, thanks ! Have I been long asleep ? " " I do not know you were asleep when I came in half an hour ago at least, I suppose so, for you were so quiet that I never knew you were in the room till Miss Deane came to the window to warn me in a whisper not to wake you." " I thought you were playing tennis ?" " I was playing ; but I wanted to read that arti- cle about Indian affairs in to-day's * Times/ '' " Has Olive finished her game yet ? " "Not yet, I think." I glance at the table where Digges has just de posited our afternoon tea-tray. " 1 wish she would come in and give us some tea." "" Shall I go for her ?" " Oh, no ; she will come when she is ready ! " " You will feel lonely without your friend," he says, as Olive's merry laugh comes in through the open window. Olive is going away to-morrow ; Ellinor is not strong, and wants her at home. "Yes," I answer, tears coming into my eyes 1 must be weak yet, or I should not cry so readily. 96 FOR LIFE ANi) LOVfi. " They have written for her ; I shall miss her rery much." " You are going away yourself very soon, are you not ? " "They want me to go to Monte Carlo; but I don't care about it." " Yet I am afraid you will find this place dull in winter." "I never found "Woodhay dull," I answer, look- ing out of the window. " I never lived here, to be sure that I can remember ; but then, even as a child, I was constantly coming and going, and I loved it better than any other place in the world." " It is a fine old place," he says, following my look ; " any one might well be fond of it." I glance at his face ; but it is perfectly uncon- scious entirely free from hatred, envy, or any un- charitableness. He speaks of Woodhay just as he might of any of the neighboring places the Towers of Duusandle. " I think one always cares for one's own property; very few people hate the place where they were born. " "Very few," he agrees readily. "No matter how well people get on in India or the colonies, they always intend sooner or later, to ' go home.' Not one man in a hundred would be satisfied to die in a foreign country." " Not even a Chinaman ! " I laugh. " Not even a Chinaman or a coolie who has lost caste. But they never do go home ; if a Chinaman by any chance loses his pig-tail, he never goes home again." " Doesn't he ? " I say, with much interest. I have risen from my sofa, and am standing in the window, my hands clasped at the back of my neck, my eyes on the distant blue hill melting hazily into the bluer sky. Ronald is standing in FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 9? the window beside me, his hands in the pockets of his gray tweed coat. " I feel as if something were going to happen/' I remark dreamily. " I should say it was a thunder- storm, if that sky did not look so much more like wind. Have you ever had previsions, Cousin Ron- ald?" "Not such as you mean," he answers, with his grave smile. " Have you never felt that something was going to happen ? " " Often. But it was not from any premonitory mental depression." " Lowness of spirits is not a sure sign of impend- ing misfortune. Don't you know what Shakespeare says 'Against ill-fortune men were ever merry.'" " Or when old women tell children they will soon cry, because they are laughing so much ! " he adds, shrugging his shoulders. " That is another case in point." "I don't think you are merry enough now to dread any misfortune following on the skirts of your merriment ? " I glance at him, displeased. This brown-eyed cousin of mine laughs at me, and I do not like it. "You will believe me when we hear some bad news perhaps ! " "I thought we were to have ridden to-day, Rosalie. A gallop across the moors would do away with a great many of your previsions." " I felt so tired, I did not care to ride." I look out into the garden again indifferently. 1 wonder what Ronald Scott thinks of me ? I know my want of interest in everything puzzles him a little he cannot imagine why I do not take any pleasure in my woods, my meadows, my horses, my dogs, and my beautiful old house. Certainly I have 7 98 FOR LIFE AND LOVfi. been ill, but I am well now so well that I have been on horseback several times, and have driven Olive and myself all about Yattenden in my basket- phaeton. But people say my illness has changed me very much ; my face looks haggard there are dark shadows under my eyes. Nobody knows wbat I suffer ; through all my wanderings I have never mentioned Gerard Baxter's name. I am surprised that I did not, he is never out of my thoughts. I have never heard of him since that day when we said good-by to each other in my leafy combe not one single word ! I do not know whether he is dead or alive Olive does not know. She has never spoken of him since that morning she told me all she knew about him as we came through my wood. I do not think she suspects anything she never thought I cared for him ; but, if she had heard any- thing about him, she would have been sure to tell me. Eonald Scott has been very good to me in a brotherly kind of way he and Olive treat me very much like a spoiled child sometimes I suspect he thinks me anything but an agreeable kind of person. 1 wonder if he ever cared for anybody himself if he cares for anybody now. It would be impossible to tell from that grave stern face I often fancy he is a man who would have " Two soul-sides, one to face the world with And one to show a woman when he loved hei\" " Cousin Ronald/' I ask suddenly, without turn- ing my head, "have you any sweetheart in Eng- land?" " Why do you ask, Cousin Rosalie ? " Because I want to know, I suppose." " But I may not care to have you know that I am sweetheartless." " Then you have none ? " FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 99 " Have you one in your eye for me ? " " I suppose you came back for a wife, cousin ? " " Why do you suppose so ? " "You are a Yankee for answering questions with questions ! Because, when an Indian judge cornea back to England, everybody knows he comes back to look for a wife." "Then everybody is wrong, so far as I am con- cerned." " Because you know where to find her ? " " Because I did not come home on any such quest, Cousin Eosalie." " Upon your word ? " " Upon my honor I" he laughs, looking around at me. " Why, cousin, I never thought you had a turn for match-making ! " " I never thought so either. But I know plenty of nice girls Ellinor Deane and Ada Eolleston and Katie." " Why do you leave out your own particular friend ? " " Do you like Olive ? " I ask quickly, glancing round at him. " Or do you like her too well to wish to see her married to me ? " " I think you are too late to try for Olive," I say, shaking my head. "You would not advise me to enter the lists against Lockhart ? " he asks, smiling. "Well, I think Olive likes him a little. But she is such a madcap what she likes one day she hates the next." " Then, if she likes Lockhart to-day, there may be some chance for me to-morrow." " I should like you and Olive to care for each other," I say dreamily. " I like her better tha.u any other girl in the world, " IOO FOR LIFE AND LOVE. " Then you must like me a little, to wish to bestow her upon me." " I like you very much, cousin. You have been very kind to me." " Rosalie, do you like me well enough to care what becomes of me ? " " How can you ask such a foolish question ? " " As you said just now because I want to know." " Of course I care. You are the only cousin 1 have it is not as if I had half a dozen, or half score, like most people.'"' " And you care for me with all the caring that you might have divided a g half a dozen, or, perhaps, half a score ? " I do not answer. " Rosalie, I did not come back to England to look for a sweetheart or a wife. But do you think you could ever care enough for me at any future time to give me both ? " I turn my head now to look at him. His grave eyes meet mine unwaveringly ; his head is a little bent as he looks intently into my face. " No," I answer, in the same grave matter-of-fact tone in which he has spoken, without any change of color or added pulsation of the heart. "I shall never care for any one, Ronald I do not intend to marry any one. This place ought to havo been yours at my death, it will belong to you." " At your death ! " he repeats, with a shocked look. " Why, child, I am ever so many years older than you are ! " " Only ten. And, when one does not care to live, it makes a great difference " " But you care to live ! It is only some morbid fancy you have taken into your head people often take such fancies into their heads when they have been ill." FOR LIFE AND LOVE. IOI '* This is no fancy of mine the stronger I get, the more I seem to see how little life is worth living \" " But you have so much to live for ; you have everything your heart can desire." Have I ? I do not answer him, my eyes are on the great pearly bank of cloud whose fringes are slowly turning from silver to gold in the light of the setting sun. ( ' Rosalie, will you let me try to make you happy ? Will you try to care for me a little ? I love you I have loved you since the first moment I saw your face. Don't you think I could make you happy, loving you so much as that ? " I do not think it for a moment. I do not seriously entertain the thought even for one second of time. A year ago it might have seemed to me a very desir- able arrangement. It would restore Woodhay to the man who I always felt ought to have had it. But a year ago I did not care for any one else. Now my heart lies buried in a grave that was dug for it down among the tangled ferns and leaves and grasses in my shadowy combe one day a grave whose fresh sods I have never visited a grave where with my dead love I have buried all hope, all pleasure, all desire of life. " I am sorry, if you really care for me, Cousin Ronald. I don't know how you can " smiling slightly " knowing how cross I am ! " " May I ask you one question, Rosalie ? " I know what the question is before I look round into his face. " Yes," I answer slowly ; "I suppose you have a right to ask. " " I do not want to ask it by reason of any right, and you are not bound to answer me." " Ko j I am not bound to answer you." 1O2 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. " Rosalie, have you ever fancied that you cared for any other man ? " The question is put so gravely, so composedly, that it does not startle me. I answer it just as gravely, just at composedly, looking straight before me at the smooth gray terrace-walk. " Not fancied it, Cousin Ronald ! I have cared for another man so much that, though you may be a hundred times better, a thousand times worthier, you can never be to me what he once was." " I am not going to ask you his name. But this man, Rosalie, it cannot be but that he loved you m return ?" " Oh, yes, he loved me ! " " Then is he dead ? " ' ' No," I answer, with a strange little smile ; "he is married." For one moment Ronald Scott stands beside me in dead silence, I do not look at him ; but I can fancy the astonishment the disgust, perhaps in his grave stern face his silence might mean either or both. " Poor child," he says at last and his tone is only pitiful, not disgusted at all " poor child ! " I do not look at him, and I do not think he is looking at me. But two great tears well into my eyes and fall upon my ashy purple gown. "I will not trouble you any more, dear," he says, gently. "I would never have asked that question if I had dreamed what your answer would be. But I could not think you cared for any one it seemed so unlikely that he would not care for you." I hold out my left hand to him the one next to him without turning my head. The foolish tears drop down my cheeks and fall upon the gown whose dead violet shade Olive abhors. FOR LIFE AND LOVE. IO3 " I shall be your friend always, Rosalie remem- ber that ! " "Yes," I say vaguely, not dreaming how soon I shall make trial of his friendship ; "I shall re- member/' He stoops and kisses my hand gravely, dispas- sionately, and walks out of the room just as Olive and Mr. Lockhart come into it. ****** " There is no news in the paper to-day," Olive says, picking up the " Times " from the floor where Ronald Scott had thrown it. "Is there not ?" I answer languidly, still stand- ing in the deep bay window looking out. " Nothing that I call news. Oh, what is this ? " She does not speak again for a minute or two. I suppose she is studying the paragraph which seemed to have attracted her attention. I am studying the sunset colors in the sky, the mystic glory of my sun- set hill, the deep ruddy green of my shadowy woods. Mr. Lockhart has just wished us good-by and left the room ; Digges has carried away the tea-things ; Olive has more than once suggested that it is time for my ante-prandial drive ; but I am in no mood for exerting myself even to the extent of putting on my hat. " Such a horrible thing ! " Olive exclaims. ' ' Allie, did you know that unfortunate Gerard Baxter was married ?" " Yes," I answer calmly, without turning my head : " I knew it some time ago." " I declare I don't like to tell you about it it is enough to shock you if you had never known the wretched boy." "What is it ?" I ask, confronting her. The girl is sitting on the corner of the sofa, looking up at me with a white startled face. IO4 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. Why, he was arrested the day before yesterday i charge of having murdered his wife ! '' on a CHAPTER IX. OLIVE DEANE went away this morning, and Ronald Scott left after luncheon the house seems quite lonely and deserted. But I am not thinking of either my friend or my cousin, as I sit alone in my brown-paneled morning-room at Woodhay, holding in my -hand the " Times " of yesterday. I had hidden the paper away that I might study something in it at my leisure to-day something that I already know by heart. As I sit in the deep old-fashioned bay-window, with the paper in my hand, my eyes are on the blaze of color without, intently staring. I see no sunny garden precincts shut in by tall green hedges topped by the blue sky. I see a man in a prison-cell gaunt, haggard the man whom I still love with all the reckless obstinacy of my nature the boy whose weakness of purpose has spoiled both his life and my own. I believe every word of the story he told to the magistrate before whom they took him, though, in the face of such overwhelming evidence as was pro- duced against him, I do not see that there was any course open to the magistrate but the course he adopted, of committing him to prison to take his trial at the October Sessions for the murder of his wife. The account of the examination before the mag- istrate is given in full in the paper in my hand, un- der the heading of " Police Intelligence." I^have mastered every particular of the case, weighed $very grain of evidence in my own mind. But, FOR LIFE AND LOVfi IO$ fonclusively as the crime seems to be brought home to the wretched lad who is to stand his trial in October, I am as entirely convinced that he had no hand or part in it as I am that I had no hand or part in it myself. Three weeks before the day Gerard Baxter was arrested on the charge of having made away with his wife on the twenty-third of July his mother- in-law, Eliza White, deposed to having gone to his lodgings to visit her daughter. The prisoner opened the door for her, and told her that her daughter had gone out, about half an hour before, to buy something in a neighboring street. She had gone home perfectly satisfied, and fully intending to call again in the evening ; but some business of her own prevented her doing this, and, when she repeated her visit on the following morning, she was rather surprised to hear from her son-in-law that her daughter had again gone out. On neither occasion had he invited her into the room, but had stood in the doorway to answer her inquiries. He said her daughter was quite well, and that he expected her in every minute ; but he did not ask her to wait ; nor had she time to waste waiting for her. She thought Gerard Baxter's manner rather odd and surly ; but then he never had a very pleasant man- ner, and it made no impression upon her. She was so sure that he had been telling her the truth on both occasions that she never thought of making any inquiries among the neighbors. In answer to the magistrate, she said the lodgings were very poor ones. Gerard Baxter was an artist, and could not always sell his pictures ; but he had made some copies of pictures for churches, sho thought, and they had brought in some money. They never were in actual want. She went on to say that she had not called again IO6 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. for several clays, being rather hurt with her daugh- ter for never coming near her. She had been in the habit of running into her house every evening almost when her husband went out. They had not got on very well together. Her daughter was a child almost, and very thoughtless, and Gerard Baxter was soured by disappointment and poverty, and had lately begim to drink not hard, but more than was good for him ; but he was never cruel to his Avife at the worst of times, so far as she knew. Mrs. Eliza White's evidence was so impartial that it produced a strong impression in her favor in tho court. For a whole week she saw nothing of her daugh- ter, nor did she go to her lodgings to inquire after her. She blamed herself for it very much after- ward ; but she had to earn her own bread by wash- ing, and had lodgers to look after. At the end of a week she went, however, and found the door locked ; then she turned into the room of a neigh- bor on the next floor, a woman named Haag, the wife of a German who played the violin in the or- chestra of some theater she forgot what theater. Mrs. Haag said that she was surprised to hear her making inquiries for her daughter, since Baxter had told them all she had gone to stay with some cousins in the country. They had not seen or heard anything of her in that house since the twenty- second of July ; Mrs. White herself had seen her on the twenty-first. Mrs. White then resolved to wait till her son-in- law should come in ; but, though she sat with Mrs. Haag for more than two hours, Baxter did not make his appearance. Meanwhile Mrs. Haag told her all she knew how for three days Baxter had told them, when they inquired for bis wife, that she had just gone out and would be in presently, and on tho FOR LIFE AND LOVE. IO? fottrth had told her Mrs. Haag that she had gone to visit some cousins in the country. The neigh- bors suspected nothing. When they asked for her later on, he said he had had letters from her, and eveuVgave them messages which she sent to them in the letters. He looked dark, Mrs. Haag said ; but then he always did look dark, and kept himself very much to himself. She did not think they had got on very well of late. He left his wife alone very much, and they all pitied her she was so young a mere child, and so pretty. On the morning of the twenty-second, they had had words about some- thing ; she Mrs. Haag heard him threaten to rid himself of her to choke her, she thought he said : but such threats were common enough in that tene- ment house she had never given them a second thought. Mrs. "White, finding Baxter did not come back, left Mrs. Haag, and went home. She knew Lily- her daughter's name was Eliza the same as her own, but she always called herself Lily had some cousins in Kent ; and, though she was surprised to hear she had gone to pay them a visit, it was not outside the bounds of probability that she should have done so. And, being troubled with her own concerns, she gave no more thought to the matter until the afternoon of the fourteenth of August. Here the witness was so overcome by grief that it was some time before the examination could pro- ceed. On the afternoon of the fourteenth of August a policeman came to her to take her to the mortuary. A body had been found floating in the river near Blackfriars Bridge ; Mr. Haag had happened to see it, and at once recognized it as the body of Mrs. Baxter, and the girl's mother was sent for to iden- tify it, as her husband was not to be found, 108 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. Mrs. White had no difficulty in identifying the body, though it had been in the water a considerable time three weeks, the surgeon said, who made the post-mortem examination. The face was much dis- figured from the action of the water ; but the beau- tiful red gold hair, the small even teeth, the girl's height and age, the wedding-ring on her finger, were all conclusive evidence. Her clothes were poor, and had no mark upon them a black cash- mere dress, black jacket, and a little brooch with hair in it, which Mrs. White at once recognized as having been a present from herself to her daughter she had put the hair into it herself it was her father's hair. Mr. and Mrs. Haag had also identified the clothes, but could not remember the brooch. Mrs. Haag, being called up, corroborated Mrs. White's evidence in every particular. The prisoner obstinately refused to answer any questions put to him by the bench, and maintained all through the inquiry a sullen demeanor, which had considerably prejudiced the court against him. So much I had read, studying every word I think the sentences have burned themselves into my brain. There were no marks of violence ou the body, so far as could be ascertained ; but, from the state it was in when found, this could scarcely be satisfactorily proved. It was supposed that Baxter had pushed his wife into the river on the night of the twenty- second of July the day Mrs. Haag had heard him threatening to take away her life. I believe Gerard Baxter to be innocent of the crime imputed to him. I have not asked Konald Scott his opinion, nor Uncle Tod I could not trust myself to ask them any questions. But I had heard Olive ask Uncle Tod at breakfast what they would do to Gerard Baxter, and Uncle Tod said they would try him, find him guilty most probably, and con, FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 109 demn him to death. The guilt seemed most con- clusively brought to him whether he would be rec- ommended to mercy or not, he could not say. It might come out that there had been extenuating circumstances ; but, to Uncle Tod's mind, there were no extenuating circumstances. It was a hor- rible business altogether. It is a horrible business. I think so, as I sit star- ing into my quiet sunny garden, into which even the echo of such evil deeds has never come. It is all so peaceful, so orderly the blackbirds and thrushes hop in and out of the tall thick walls of yew and beech, my peacock glimmers up and down in the distance, faint pearly clouds float across the serene sky. How different it is from the wretched Lon- don street, perhaps more wretched court or alley, where the man to whom I would have as freely giv- en Woodhay, with all its gardens and terraces, woods and meadows, has worked and starved till it seems that his misery has driven him mad ! I hate the blue sky, the orderly flower-beds, the ruddy gables, and carved window-settings of my quaint old house. I cannot bear to look at them, thinking how little happiness they have given me. If I had been what he imagined me, the penniless girl learning music as a means of future livelihood, I would have mar- ried him, and we should have been happy. But I refused him, because I was Miss Somers Scott of Woodhay Manor. And now all my woods and moors and meadows have turned to ashes between my teeth. " Aunt Rosa, I am going up to London." " To London ! " Aunt Rosa repeats, staring at me through her spectacles, aghast. " Yes. I am going up on business." 110 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. " But, my dear Rosalie, you are no more fit to travel" " My dear Aunt Rosa, it is just what I want some variety. I have telegraphed to Mrs. Wauchope to have my old rooms in Carleton Street ready for me to-morrow." " You have telegraphed to Mrs. Wauchope ! Do you mean to tell me that you are going up to those dreadful lodgings again alone ?" " Where else would you have me go, Aunt Rosa ? " " Why, I thought you might be going to Olive, or to the Rollestons/ " " The Rollestons are in Denmark ; and I don't want to catch another fever in Dexter Square." " Dear me, I forgot that ! " " Not that I am afraid of the fever," I am bound to add honestly. "I am not in the least afraid of it ; but I prefer going to Carleton Street for a great many reasons." " If you go, I shall go with you," Aunt Rosa, says decisively. " And leave Uncle Tod with that cold on his chest ? My dear Aunt Rosa, I assure you I am very well able to take care of myself." " You will take Nannette with yon, of course ?" "Indeed I shall do no such thing/' I answer at once. My new maid is a weariness to me. If old nurse Marjory had not boon past her work, I would never have installed her in the lodge and hired this pert French soubrette in her stead. " But, my dear child, it is an unheard-of thing for a girl in your position to go up to lodgings in Lon- don alone." "Nobody need know. And it is not as if Mrs. Wauchope were not an old friend ; and I shall only be gone a day or two probably. If anything should FOR LIFE AND LOVE. Ill happen to detain me in town, you may follow me- if you like, and if Uncle Tod's cold is better." Aunt Rosa does uot like the arrangement from any point of view. " You are very self-willed, Rosalie. You were always headstrong, since you were a baby of three years old. If ever a girl wanted a father or mother to control her, I think you wanted them. As for your Uncle Todhunter, if you had cried for the he moon, would have tried to get it for you. I often told him he spoiled you, and so he did." "I think I was always obstinate, whether Uncle Tod spoiled me or not. Aunt Rosa, do you know Cousin Ronald's address in town ? " Aunt Rosa stares at me, scandalized this time over the rim of her spectacles. " My dear Rosalie, are you going to Sir Ronald Scott's hotel in London to call upon him '{" "Not unless I should want him, auntie. But it is well to know the address of a friend in London." " He is staying at the hotel your uncle always goes to in London. But I do hope, Rosalie " "That I will not do anything unbecoming. My dear Aunt Rosa, I can be very steady when I like ; and I am sure you can trust to the chivalry of your friend Ronald Scott." " Sir Ronald Scott is a perfect gentleman. What will he think of this freak of yours, Rosalie ? Do you suppose be will approve of your going up to London alone like this ?" "Ronald Scott's opinion of my proceedings is not of vital importance," I answer, throwing up my head. " Whether he is pleased or displeased mat- ters very little to me. I am going up to London on business which nobody else could manage for me. If he chooses to disbelieve my assertion should I feel called upon to make it it *s nothing to me/ 7 112 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. "I wish it were something to you," Aunt Rosa says a little wistfully, looking at me. " He is a fine fellow a true gentleman ; and he cares for you, Rosalie he asked your Uncle Todhunter's permis- sion to pay his addresses to you. But I suppose you snubbed him, as you snubbed all the rest." " Dear Aunt Rosa," 1 answer gravely, " you can- not like Ronald better than I do ; and what I said to him I said as gently as I could." " Why must you have said it at all, child ? " "Because I could not care enough for him to marry him, auntie." Aunt Rosa sighs. She would be so glad to hand me over to some good steady man like Ronald Scott, who could keep me in order. She would be so thankful to wash her hands of me and my vagaries, fond as she is of me, once and forever. " I don't despair but that you will come to your senses some day, and marry him," she says, deliber- ately getting up from the luncheon table. " I think your Uncle Todbunter would die happy if he knew that you were married to such a man as Sir Ronald Scott." ****** " You're looking poorly enough still," Mrs. Wauchope says, regarding me by the light of the fas in her great dingy drawing-room. "I don't now whether it's the bonnet, or what ; but yon look ten years older than you did when you were up here with me in the spring." Mrs. Wauchope is truthful, if she is not compli- mentary. Glancing at myself in the sea-green depths of the mirror over the mantelpiece, I am forced to acknowledge that I do look ten years older than when I last saw myself reflected between the tall vases of imitation Bohemian glass which grace the mantelshelf. In deference to Aunt Rosa's old- FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 113 fashioned notions, and for other reasons, I have en- deavored to give myself as staid an appearance as possible, wearing the close black bonnet which Olive always said gave me a demure look, though my dimples were against me. And I am wrapped up in my long fur-lined cloak, and have altogether the look of a respectable young widow, as I say to Mrs. Wauchope, laughing, while she gets my tea ready with her own plump hands. "'' Isn't this a terrible business about poor Mr. Baxter?" she remarks presently. "I never got such a turn in my life as when I saw all about it in the paper. And such a young lad as he is too ; and I believe she was little more than a child I" "Do you think he did it?" I ask, standing on the rug. My landlady is busied at the table, with her back toward me ; she does not look round, though I can scarcely keep my voice steady while I speak the six words. " Oh, everybody knows he did it I" " How can they know ? " " But there was no one else to do it." " That proves nothing." " Oh, but he was heard to threaten her ! And then the stories he made up ! And I believe she was a nighty little thing, and too pretty for her station in life. Those painters had spoiled her, forever painting her picture. It was only the other day I found her photograph up in his studio pinned to the wall." A thrill of something very like jealousy of the dead girl, whose photograph Gerard Baxter had cared to pin up in his room, runs like a needle through my heart. But what right have I to be jealous of her the wretched child who had been his wife ? " Have you seen him since he gave up painting hare, Mrs. Wauchope ? " 8 114 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. " Once or twice not more than that. I heard he was married ; and I was sorry to hear it, know- ing the kind of person he married. There was a great deal of good in him, poor lad ; but he was as unstable as water he never finished anything. There are upwards of twenty pictures up-stairs, not one of them finished. If they were any good, I'd sell them to pay up his arrears of rent ; but they're nothing but useless lumber." "I wish you would let me see them, Mrs. Wau- chope. I shouldn't mind taking some of them off your hands. And, if Mr. Baxter ever comes to claim them, you can refer him to me." "You are welcome to see them, Miss Allie. The studio is just as he left it I never even let the bed- room since. You see I had a regard for him, having known him so long ; and I thought he would come back to me some day, till I heard he had married that girl." After tea, Mrs. "Wauchope takes me up-stairs. If the studio had had an untidy look wheu I first saw it, it looks like nothing now but a gloomy attic full of lumber the empty easel pushed into a corner, the unfinished canvases covered with gray cobwebs, every chair and table covered inch-deep with dust. " Here is the photograph," Mrs. Wauchope says, taking something from the table and wiping it with her black apron. " A pretty face, is 1't it ? I've known a man to lose his life for a face that wasn't half as pretty as that." " But what had her face to do with it ? " I ask vaguely. " Why, they say he was jealous, you know. She was a flighty little thing, and some artist was paint- ing her picture, and Mr. Gerard didn't like it. That was what they were quarreling about on the morning of the clay it happened." FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 115 I stand in the light of Mrs. Wauchope's mold candle, looking at the photograph in my hand. It is a beautiful face an exquisite face soft and bright and innocent as a child's. " I will keep this for the present. Mrs. Wauchope. May I?" Mrs. Wauchope nods. Lily Baxter's photograph is in all the shop-windows ; but she does not care to have it at all. CHAPTER X. EARLY the next morning I trangress all Aunt Rosa's rules of propriety by taking a cab and driv- ing to my Cousin Ronald Scott's hotel. I find him finishing breakfast, half a dozen business letters scattered about the table. " Ronald," I say, in my honest fearless way, "I have come to put a promise you made me to the test." " I am glad to hear it, Rosalie," he answers, standing by the table. I have refused the chair he offered me, with the plea that my cab was waiting below. "Do you remember the promise, cousin ?" " I have forgotten nothing," he says, smiling a little. " I want you to manage an interview with that man Gerard Baxter who is in prison for murder- ing his wife," Ronald Scott looks profoundly surprised. " For me or for you ?" he asks, his eyes on my white face. " For me. You can be present, of course ; I should wish you to be present. And it need not last more than five minutes, if so long." Ronald Sott makes no answer whatever for a Il6 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. minute or two. He is standing by the table, one hand resting upon it, looking down at me as I look up at him. " Do you think you can do this for me, Ronald ? " " I can try. Was he an acquaintance of yours ? " " He was a friend was, and is." "I should say 'was,'" Ronald observes, shrug- ging his shoulders. " I say ' is ' " I repeat stubbornly. " Gerard Bax- ter is a friend of mine." Ronald's dark brows meet in a rather heavy frown. "May I ask how you made his acquaintance, Rosalie ? " " We lodged in the same house in London the house in Carleton Street where I am staying now." " But how" I cannot help laughing outright at the exceeding gravity of his face. I think of the bunch of violets ; but I do not tell Ronald about them it is so dif- ferent relating a piece of thoughtless folly like that it would seem so much more heinous an offense repeated under the cold unsympathetic eyes of my judicial cousin ! " I cannot think how you ever made his acquaint- ance, Rosalie. If you had been lodging in the same house for fifty years, you should have had no ac- quaintance with him. " " Oh, he was quite respectable ! I met him in other places in society. The Rollestons knew him he was at their house every day." " As to his respectability," Ronald says coldly, " that must be a matter of opinion. Subsequent events have proved that he could not have been a very respectable acquaintance for you or any one else ! " " Oh, subsequent events ! " FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 1 1/ " But supposing there were no subsequent events. This Baxter was a poor artist a Bohemian not exactly the kind of friend Miss Scott's friends would have chosen for her at least, I think not." " We will not quarrel about that, Eonald. I dare say you are right ; but it is too late to bemoan my want of exclusiveness now. What I want you to do is to manage that I may see my friend if it is only for one moment." " For what ? " he asks rather sharply. "Merely to ask him a single question." He looks at me doubtfully. His face has grown pale under all its sunburn as pale as my own. " I will keep my promise, Rosalie. But it will bo altogether in defiance of my better judgment." "Then so much the more I thank you for keep- ing it. If it cost one nothing to keep a promise, there would not be occasion for much gratitude, would there ? " He does not answer, standing be- fore me, still leaning on the table, still studying my face. " Then, since that is settled, I shall wish you good-by, Cousin Ronald." " Where are you going ? " "Back to Carleton Street. I have written to Olive to come to see me." " It was to to see this man that you came up to town?" " Yes." "But what is he to you, Rosalie, that you should concern yourself in his affairs ? " "He is nothing to me." " Then why mix yourself up in such a disgraceful business ? " " Because the man is innocent, and I must prove it." " Prove it, my poor child I How could you prove 118 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. "There must be some way to prove it if the man Is innocent." I believe he thinks my mind has not quite recovered from the effects of the fever he certainly looks at roe as if he thought me slightly cferanged. " I have not studied the case. But my own im- pressions are that the man is guilty. If I can man- age what you want me to do, where shall I meet you ? " " If you come to Carletou Street for me, I shall be ready to go with you." "It will very likely be to-morrow." " Then I shall remain at home all to-morrow. And, if you fail, you will let me know ? " " I will let you know. I hope you are taking care of yourself, Cousin Kosalie. You look thoroughly worn out." " Oh, I am very well a little tired from the journey perhaps ! " I wrap my fur cloak about me, shivering, though it is August. Ronald walks down the hotel-stairs with me across the hall, in a silence which I do not care to break. He puts me into the cab in the same almost stern silence. I do not glance back at him ns the cab leaves the door, though he stands there bareheaded, looking after me. I am thinking of a jnan in prison a man whom 1 seem to love the more the more the world hates him the more he fieems to have made shipwreck of his own most mis- erable life. ****** I have seen Gerard in prison. Ronald Scott managed it all for me came with me himself to the prisoner's cell. I have heard Gerard's story I have asked the single question I wanted to ask ; and the answer has confirmed niy own b?liof Gerard Baxter is in.- FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 1 19 nocent of the horrible crime imputed to him. I be- lieve every word of the story he has told me, as firmly as I believe that I am a living woman. He knows no more of the manner in which his wretched wife met her death than I do, except that he had no hand or part in it. My interview with him lasted half an hur. Ronald Scott stood leaning with folded arms under the barred window ; Gerard walked up and down the cell restlessly, reminding me of some caged creature : "When all his stretch of burning sand and sky Shrinks to a twilight den, which his despair Can measure at a stride." He and I met without a word, with white faces, with trembling outstretched hands two miserable beings so young, yet for whom all the happiness there might have been in the world seemed to have come to an end. What Ronald Scott thought of our meeting I know not I had never given him a thought during the whole of the interview. Gerard had told me his wretched story in very few words. What he would not say in self-defense to the magistrate he said to me not that I might justify him before the world he seemed to care very little about that but that he might justify himself to me. " She left the house on the twenty-second of July, and I have never seen her since, alive or dead," he said, pausing in his restless pacing up and down to confront me as I sat on the wretched pallet. " She ran away in a rage because I scolded her about some- thing and I never saw her again." f< Then why did you tell her mother what you did? Why did you invent those ttories for the neighbors about letters and messagos ? " I2O FOR LIFE AND LOVE. | " They asked me, and I had to say something." " But why not have told the truth ?" " I would rather have said I killed her than have told the truth." " But why ? " I asked, astonished. " If you knew nothing about her, why did you do what must turn to s'uch terrible evidence against yourself ? " " I did not care about myself/' "But you did not benefit her." He turned away from me, walking up and down the floor again, a deep red angry flush on his hag- gard face. "She was such a fool, such a poor senseless idiot ; and I had driven her to it or so I thought. I ought not to have tried to reason with her as I would with a responsible being ! I ought to have shut her up and fed her with bread and water like an obsti- nate child." Mrs. Wauchope's hint about jealousy came into my mind. He had been jealous of somebody some artist who had been painting his wife's beautiful face. "It would have been better to have told the truth/' I repeated. "Better to have said that she had gone you knew not where." " But I did know, or I thought I knew. She had threatened more than once to go to a friend she had in London. And I thought that she had carried out her threat at last." Eonald Scott had moved restlessly at this junc- ture, but I had never glanced at him. I came here to hear Gerard Baxter's story, and I mean to hear it to the end. " But it must have come out sooner or later " " Then I should have destroyed myself ! " the lad said fiercely. " I often wonder now why I held mjf hand I " FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 121 I have wondered since how I had strength to carry out my own resolution ; but my indomitable will, the obstinacy Aunt Rosa deplored so much in my character, and the resolution to save Gerard Baxter, if mortal power could save him, carried me through. " And you never saw her again, from that day to this ? " "Never again." f< Do you think," I asked vaguely, looking into his hollow eyes " do you think she put an end to herself?" " I do not think it. She was not the kind of girl to do a thing like that ! " " Where is he this man you call her friend ?" " I do not know. I have never uttered his name to any one except to her. I know now that my suspicions of him were groundless it was only the day the police came for me that I met him, and he asked why she had not come for any more sittings for the picture. He was an honest fellow though he paid her compliments sometimes everybody did. And I did not care enough about her to be jealous, only I told her I would have no nonsense I would kill her first !" " She was not happy, Gerard ? " "Happy! "he repeated scornfully. "We are neither of us happy ! " "You must have broken her heart." " Her heart ! She had no heart she was as thoughtless as a baby, and as ignorant. Her igno- rance disgusted me a hundred times a day ! " " You should have had patience with her she was so young ! " "I ought. It is that which is killing me now. Whatever she did, I drove her to it ; but I do not think she took away her own life. I think she must Jiave slipped into the water I don't know how it 122 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. happened. I only know that, since she left the house on the twenty-second of July, I have never seen her, alive or dead/' This had been the substance of Gerard's story. And now, as I drive away from the prison, breath- ing more freely outside the shadow of those hope- less, stupendous iron-gray walls, I say to Eonald Scott, who us sitting opposite to me, looking not at me, but out into the crowded street : " What do you think now, Eonald ? " " Very much what I thought before," he answers, coldly enough. " You do not believe his story ? " " His story seems plausible enough. If the girl's body had not been found, I might have felt inclined to believe it. But the finding of the body is a proof that she met with foul play ; and that in conjunc- tion with the false reports he gave of her which he himself acknowledges were false and his jealousy of the man whose name he would not give, seems to me most conclusive evidence of his guilt." " But he was not jealous of her," I say, feverishly. " I scarcely believe that. He must have cared for her to have married her. And she seems to have had a most beautiful face/' " How do you know ? " te Her photograph is in all the shop- windows." Eonald Scott is not communicative. Anything I do gather from him is dealt out with a reticence which would have annoyed me if I had not been too much wrapped up in my own thoughts to re- sent it. "Where are you going now?" he inquires presently. "Home ? " " No. I am going to ' interview' Mrs. White." " Eosalie, let me advise you to do no such thing. YOU don't know what the woman is, or where she FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 123 lives. Your uncle would be justly angry with me if I allowed you to go into such purlieus," among the very lowest dregs of society " " Uncle Tod need know nothing about it. And if you think your respectability in any wise com- promised by being seen in such a locality, I will stop the cab, and allow you to step out on to the pave- ment." " If you go, I will certainly go too/' he answers, with a vexed smile. "At least, it is safe for you with me. But I must tell you plainly that I enter a very strong protest against the entire proceeding/' " Then let that quiet your conscience. I promise you not to stop longer than I can help in Taw Alley I have no weakness myself for the kind of locality I presume it to be. But I want to see this Mrs. White, though I do not know that it will lead to any discovery which could benefit our cause." Taw Alley is not so utterly wretched a place as I imagined. There is a piece of waste ground at the end of it, where children are playing and where gome clothes are hung out on lines to dry. It is merely a small, mean by-street, with small mean houses, not one of the dens of wretchedness I had pictured to myself. We had left the cab at the entrance of the alley, and I ask the first woman I see standing in a door- way if she could direct me to the house of Mrs. White, the laundress. "I am Mrs. White/' the woman answers, with a quick cunning look, first at my companion, and then at me. She is a white-faced, white-eyelashed woman with red hair I rather pity the defunct Mr. White who was " once a gentleman " as I look at her. " Oh ! I am a friend of Mr. Baxter your son-in- law. And I wanted to see you and this place." 124 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. Ronald Scott seems aghast at my temerity. But fie does not attempt to interfere. At Gerard Bax- ter's name the woman's face had changed. She hates him I know it the moment I see that change in her countenance hates him, notwithstanding the " impartiality " which had won her such favor in the court. "I have heard of your daughter," I say, doubtful how to enter upon such a delicate subject with a perfect stranger, even though the stranger be a per- son like Mrs. White. " About her ! " the woman exclaims quickly. " What about her ? " " Why, all about this sad business ! " The woman raises her apron to her face. She has protruding eyes so very protruding that they look as if they might at any moment fall out of her head. And I know by experience that a woman with those eyes will talk while she can get any one fro listen to her. "You may well call it a sad business, my lady. Many a one comes here to see me, and they all calls it a sad business." " She was very young, and very pretty." " Indeed she was ! Much like myself when I was a girl. But sorrow changes a person's looks sorrow and want and a bad husband will soon take the beauty out of the handsomest face in the world ! " Ronald turns away and ,stares down the alley. Mrs. White, whose apron does not reach as high as her eyes, changes her tactics. " She was the only child I had the only one. Think what 'twould be to you, my lady, to see the only thing you loved in the world fished up out of the river there like a dead dog ! There's things nobody can forget if they was to live a thousand years f" FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 12$ She glances at Ronald when she speaks of " th only thing you loved in the world/' I suppose she thinks he is my husband. " Was she/' I ask, and I shall never know what prompts me to ask the question " was she much changed ?" Again the woman glances cunningly into my face. " She was over three weeks in the water, my lady in course she was changed." " Yet you recognized her, beyond any manner of doubt ? " "I was her mother, my lady. I would have known her if I saw nothing but her hair. Lovely golden hair it was you may have seen it in her pic- ture lots of people saw it. It was her hair the artist-gentlemen admired Venetian hair they called it though some might call it red. We set no store by her looks till people began to take notice of her 'twere an uncommon kind of good looks she had like a picture ! " " You identified her dress of course ; you would remember everything she was in the habit of wear- ing?" Again the woman pauses, eying me. And at the pause Eonald Scott turns round to look at her. " It would be queer if I didn't, and I seeing them and her every day of her life ! " " It would be queer indeed. And you recognized her clothes at once ? " " The minute I laid my eyes on them." ' ' Even the little brooch you gave her that you put her father's hair into yourself ! " " I'd have sworn to that, if I could have sworn to nothing else," Mrs. White asseverates with what seems to me rather unnecessary emphasis. " 'T wasn't much jewelry poor Lily had, and he never gave her anything he hadn't it to give." 126 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. "It must have been a terrible shock to you when you saw her ? " Mrs. White's apron is up to her face again ; but she glances over the edge of it with more specula- tion in her eyes than is compatible with any very deep-seated sorrow. " You. may say it was a shock to me, my lady a shock I won't be the better of for the rest of my life ! " " I do not think anybody could be deserving of greater pity than a mother who has lost her only child," I say advisedly. And then I slip half a sovereign into the woman's hand and turn away, Konald following me. AVe speak no word until we find ourselves in the cab again, well out of hearing distance of Taw Alley. " Well ? " I say then, stooping forward eagerly to look into my companion's face. " You would make a first-class lady detective, Cousin Rosalie ! " " But what do you think, Ronald ? " " What do you think, Rosalie ?" " I think," I say deliberately, leaning back against the cushion again, "that woman would swear to anything. " "So do I." "The body they found was not Lily Baxter's body." " I do not think it was." " And Mrs. White has perjured herself ! " " She hates her son-in-law, and will hang him if she can." I shiver in my warm cloak. But at the same time I draw a long breath of the most exquisite relief. " Do you think she knows where her daughter is, Konald ? " " No j I do not think she does. She has merely frOR LIFE Att> LOVE. i2f sworn to the identity of the body as a means of being revenged on Baxter for his treatment of the girl/' " And Gerard Baxter is innocent ! " I exclaim, with a little womanly triumph. " And you, a judge, would have condemned him to death ! " "Not quite," Ronald says, smiling for the first time since we drove through the prison-gates an hour ago. " I said, if the girFs body had not been found, I would have been inclined to believe his story. And now I am of opinion that it has not been found." I am silent for a minute or two, enjoying that delicious sensation of relief. The tension of the last three or four days is relaxed I feel as if I could breathe again. " How to find Lily Baxter ! " I say, at last. "Ah," my cousin answers deliberately, "that way be more easily said than done ! " We put advertisements in the papers almost in every paper in England. The coroner who held the inquest on the body of Lily Baxter must be astonished if he sees the notice in the papers, calling upon her to come forward and save her husband's life. Nobody knows anything about it but Ronald and I we are probably the only people in London, except the girl's own mother, who are not pitying the unfortunate victim and execrating the unnatural husband. The tragedy has made a sensation ; but already the interest is dying out doubtless all to be revived when the trial comes on in October. I remain on at my lodgings in Carleton Street day after day, vainly hoping that Ronald may. bring some good news. But, though he is doing every- thing he can, it is very little beyond inserting ad- 128 FOR LIFE AND LOVfi. rertisements and putting a detective or two to work ; we hear nothing of the missing girl. Whether ehe knows the jeopardy in which her silence has placed her husband or not we have no means of knowing. But it can hardly be that, knowing his innocence, she would let him suffer the extreme penalty of the law. However it may be, or wher- ever she may be, the days pass by the long weary days and still she makes no sign. The time fixed for the trial is very near. I have made no attempt to repeat my visit to Gerard Baxter's cell ; but Ronald Scott sees him very often, and seems to take great interest in him he is so young such a mere lad, and, we believe, innocent of the horrible crime laid to his charge. That Ronald will exert himself, when the case comes to a trial, I am very sure. But, so long as the public believe the murdered Lily Baxter to be lying in her grave in the little churchyard where she was buried on the twentieth of August, they will not be satisfied till they have their revenge on the wretched young husband. The blood of the victim cries out for justice, and, unless we can produce Lily Baxter, alive and well, before the eighteenth of October. Gerard Baxter may be found guilty of her murder and condemned to death. It is strange how firmly persuaded both Ronald and I are of the duplicity of Mrs. White. If we had not known her to be a worthless woman every- body who is acquainted with her gives her the same character we would still have been persuaded that she was telling a lie when she said she recognized her daughter's body. It was something in her manner, slight, indefinable, yet enough to convince us, watching her so closely, that she not only was unable to identify tre body, but that she knew it Was not Lily's body nb all. The hardihood of the FOR LIFE AND LOVE. woman in risking discovery did not surprise us. She looked hardened enough for anything quite hardened enough to put a bold front upon it should Lily suddenly turn up and render her liable to a charge of perjury. I am weary of waiting, sick to death of the sus- pense which I suffer day after day. I am going home to-morrow I cannot put it off any longer I have been nearly a fortnight in town, and Aunt Rosa threatens to come up to look after me. I can do no good by remaining in Carleton Street I can scarcely suffer more at Woodhay than I am suffering here, though at Woodhay I should have no hope after post-hour, while here Ronald Scott might walk in any moment with some good news. I can- not believe it possible but that something will turn up to throw some light on the mystery of Lily Baxter's disappearance before the day comes when her husband must stand in the dock accused of her murder. Sometimes I feel half tempted to think we were mistaken in supposing Mrs. White had not really identified her daughter's body. The girl's silence is so unbroken, she seems to have slipped so completely out of the only world which had ever known her, that sometimes I think, whether that was her body they found in the river or not, that she must be dead. Olive Deane comes to see me very often. I think she is puzzled about me I am sure she wonders what can keep me in London. I have no excuse now of music-lessons there is no piano in Mrs. Wauchope's drawing-room, and if there had been, I would not have touched it. But she confesses that my sojourn in town has done me good. I seem to interest myself more in everything, I have more color in my cheeks, I do not look so like the ghost of my former self as 1 did at Woodhay, wheii 7 130 FOR LIFE AND LOVfi. she and Uncle Tod thought so she confesses to me now that I was going to die of consumption. I shall live till Gerard Baxter's innocence is es- tablished, I shall live to find Gerard Baxter's wife. This excitement makes life endurable. And apres f I do not think of any afterward. I am bound up in the present, heart and soul. I have found a work to do, and, though I seem to have been baffled at the very outset, I do not despair of accomplishing it yet. CHAPTEE XL THE next morning at breakfast I have an inspire tion. It is a solitary breakfast. It is still raining dole- fully I know how Carleton Street looks, though I deny myself the pleasure of looking at it, on principle. But, without going to the window, I can see the drenched balcony blackened by the rain, fringed by bright drops wherever a drop can hang ; I should know it rained by the limp droop of the drab moreen curtains and of the muslin ones still hanging behind them. But the rain does not trouble me much, does not depress me as it c'.e* pressed me yesterday, for I have got an idea. My train will not leave London until three o'clock in the afternoon ; therefore I have five hours in town still at my disposal, it not having yefc struck ten. Two hours would be ample for the business I have in hand it is merely to pay a visit. Should the visit necessitate as it certainly may, and I hope will a longer stay in London, I must telegraph to Uncle Tod again. Aunt Rxxsa will think I have gone mad ; but that cannot be helped. Some day or other I will explain everything to them it maj FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 13! ff.ot satisfy Aunt Eosa, but it will account for what certainly must seem a very wild freak to them both now. I shall not ask Ronald Scott to go with me this time. I dare say he will be very angry with me for not asking him ; but I have given him trouble enough already, and can do what I have to do just as well without him indeed perhaps a great deal better. I am going to see the Mrs. Haag who lodged in the same house with the Baxters, the woman who gave evidence at the examination be- fore the magistrate, the wife of the German violin- ist, the last person perhaps who saw Lily Baxter alive. How the visit can benefit the cause I have taken up I do not know. But some strange impulse prompts me to make it not prompts me merely indeed, but drives me I can describe it by no other word. I feel impelled to go and see this woman. She had corroborated Mrs. White's evidence, and Mrs. White I believe to have perjured herself. But she had only sworn to what she knew, or thought she knew if Mrs. White identified her daughter's body, surely she, Mrs. Haag, would naturally be led to see in everything corroborative evidence that the body was Lily Baxter's body though at the in- quiry she had stoutly denied having ever seen the brooch before which was found fastening the collar of the drowned girl. This circumstance alone gave me an idea that the woman might be honest had been honest in her conviction that the girl they had found floating in the river was none other than the girl she had last seen alive on the morning of the twenty-second of July. I know from the newspaper report where Mrs. Haag lives, or did live at the time of the inquiry into Lily 'Baxter's disappearance. If she has left 132 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. Slator'a Buildings, somebody there will be able to tell me where she has moved to probably, or the people at the theater I remember its name and situation will be able to give me her husband's address. I have become quite clever at hitting on expedients now, though my cleverness has led to so little. But my want of success has not daunted me, though I did lift up a lamentable voice in my own room last night and cry as if my heart would break. But this morning my courage has come back to me, the old indomitable will which Aunt Kosa calls stubbornness, the obstinacy which I must have inherited from the great-great-grand- mother whose eyes have been transmitted to me, and who was known as the most pig-headed woman of her time. I have finished my breakfast, put on my bonnet, and sent Mary Anne, sheltered by own umbrella, to fetch a cab. I have a regard for this stolid, grimy- faced maid-of-all-work. She had been kind to the poor lad who used to lodge here had she not on one occasion left my newly-lighted fire to its own devices to attend to his dinner ? If Mary Anne would like a situation in the country, I will find one for her ; but I doubt if Mary Anne could live out of the basement of a London lodging-house. It still rains, a fine cheerless drizzle. But I am not thinking of the weather as I stare straight be- fore me at the dingy " Coming of Age of the Heir" which reminds me so much of the weeks I spent here last March those happy careless weeks when Gerard Baxter and I fell in love with each other. Then the gloomy old room was a fairyland to me, a fool's paradise wherein I sat and dreamed of a day that was never to be. Now no boyish laugh echoes down the stairs, no suspicion of cigar-smoke comes wafted up from the hall-door steps. Only all FOR LIFE AND LOVF. 133 the place is full of a haunting presence, the sor- rowful ghost of the poor proud boy who had dared to fall in love with me, and whom I had been too vise or too weak to save. How can that girl he married care so little about him ? She is his wife, he her husband. If she be indeed alive, how can she let him lie in such jeop- ardy ? She had cared for him once ; he had said to me that day at'Woodhay " She was fond of me I will do her the justice to say that she was fond of me, miserable beggar that I was." If she has any feeling for him still left in her heartif she does not hate him utterly, as her mother hates him, how can she leave him to languish in prison, accused of a crime of which she alone could prove him inno- cent ? I believe her mother to be a stupidly vi- cious woman, who would shrink from nothing short of actual implication in crime. But. the girl had the face of an angel I cannot believe her capable of the horrible cruelty of allowing her husband to die when a word from her could save his life. Mary Anne comes back in the cab. I put on my warm cloak the day is raw and chilly and set out on my erratic venture, without saying a word to any one of where I am going. Nobody will see me ; even if this had been a day when people would be likely to be out of doors, nobody could recognize me through the thick gauze veil I have tied closely over the upper part of my face. If Eonald Scott calls at Carleton Street, he will suppose I have gone to see Olive Deane, or the Eollestons, who came back to town yesterday. But he is more likely to meet me at the railway-station at three o'clock indeed he is almost sure to be there, to look after my luggage one portmanteau and to wish me good-by. I reach Slator's Buildings after much driving 134 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. through devious streets and lanes of whose exist- ence even I had not been cognizant wretched places the mere sight of which makes me wonder how any human being could live and breathe their loathsome airs. But Slator's Buildings are not so bad ^ as some of these, nor is the tenement-house I am in search of in such lamentable want of repair and ventilation as some I have passed in my jour- ney to it. A woman, minding a little toddling child on the doorstep, tells me that Mrs. Haag does live there, eying me at the same time with a cunningly sus- picious look. Desiring the cabman to wait for me, and rather glad to see a policeman at the corner of the street, I follow the woman's directions, and a minute later find myself in the presence of the Ger- man violinist's wife. She is a German too I know it before she speaks a stolid, good-humored-looking woman with round blue eyes and flaxen hair smoothly drawn back under a white cap. Her room is quite neat and clean ; she was working a sewing machine when I tapped at the door ; but she has left her work to speak to me, politely offering me a chair. But I do not sit down ; I tell her that I am in a hurry, but would be glad if she could tell me any- thing she knew about the people who had lodged in the house in the summer the Baxters and if she thought it possible that I could see the room they occupied. She shakes her head ; she does not think it possi- ble that I could see the room the landlord had the key it had not been let since people did not seem to care about taking it nobody cares to take a place which has a bad name, and people will always give a bad name to a place where such a thing happens it is silly ; but people always do it. She speaka FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 135 in quaint German-English. I rather like her, and her honest round blue eyes. She tells me all she knows about the Baxters, with hesitation. I can see that it has never dawned upon her but that Lily Baxter is dead ; no doubt of the body having been her body has ever entered her head. That she did hot recognize the brooch is nothing she might have had twenty brooches without Mrs. Haag seeing them and she was not observant she could not even swear to the dress she had on it was the red hair she recognized, she said, and the black-cloth jacket. That almost everybody wears a black-cloth jacket did not seem to have struck her she took it for granted that the girl found had been the girl lost, and, when the girl's own mother swore to her iden- tity, it was not for her to doubt. I could see all this plainly in every word she said she had taken it for granted that the drowned woman had been her neighbor ; and there, with true German phlegm, she had let the matter rest. I do not rouse any suspicion to the contrary in her mind now it is not for that I came to Slater's Buildings. Afterward we may take this woman into our confidence ; but what I want to find out now is whether Lily Baxter had any friends any girl of her own age, any comrade, as most girls have. Mrs. Haag does not know she thinks Mrs. Baxter was very childish silly rather and very vain. The painter-gentlemen had spoiled her not that she was bad either, only silly and childish ; it used to vex her husband. And he did not allow her to associate much with her neighbors ; he was a gentleman once, and kept himself to himself, and would have her do the same only she was so childish, she would not be said nay by him. " But had she no friend at all, no companion, no old school-fellow ? " I ask, looking hard into the 136 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. woman's comely, unexpressive face. " Did you never hear her speak of any comrade of any acquaintance even it seems so strange for a girl to have no friend of her own age, doesn't it ? " " The Herr painter would not allow her to have any friends/' Mrs. Haag repeats Stolidly. " It was one reason they quarreled, it was one thing which made us dislike him ; he was cold, cruel he was too proud. There were some people lodging here a German and his family the father played the * cello ' in the orchestra with my husband. They were not fortunate the father drank too much beer the mother was dead of the children, two played parts in the theater juvenile parts and one was a cripple. Mrs. Baxter took a fancy to the little cripple, or the child took a fancy to her one or the other. But the Herr soon put a stop to it ; and soon the Raffs went away to some other theater I know not where. They were to be pitied, those children ! " " Do you know where they are now ? " I ask eagerly. " I do not know. The father was a poor wretch, always besotted with beer. How he kept his situa- tion in any orchestra I do not know. But he was a good musician he had talent it was a thousand pities he could not keep himself steady." " The crippled child how old was she ? " " Ten or eleven, perhaps ; but she looked like an old woman. She fell through a trap on the stage and hurt her back she was playing in a Christmas pantomime and she never recovered from it. She was like a witch or a monkey. But she loved Mrs. Baxter, that child ! She loved her with her whole heart and soul." I must find that child ! " Can you not give me any clew by which I might FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 137 find that family ? I do not mind spending money I have plenty of money. And I would give any- thing to see that child ! " Mrs. Haag stares at me. My excitement puzzles her. " "Wait a moment," she says, and, leaving me in possession of her trim little room, she goes down- stairs. She is gone about five minutes, which time I spend gazing out between the geraniums on the window- / sill at my cabman, who stands beside his vehicle in the narrow street, rubbing his hands together and glancing impatiently from time to time at the open door below. Mrs. Haag comes back at last. " I thought my neighbor in the next house might know the Raffs' address she too is a German she can hardly speak any English. She says it is a place called Frigate Lane a very low place she happen? to know, because about two months ago she heard from one of the children, and she still had the letter by good chance, intending some day to answer it." " Thank you very much," I say hurriedly, slipping a note into the woman's hand I say it is for the baby whom I see asleep in the cradle, and turning to leave the room, " with all Hope's torches lit in both my eyes." " I hope madame does not intend to go to that place," the woman says, detaining me. " It would be no place for madame." " Oh, I am not afraid I must go I" I exclaim, thinking of Ronald and Aunt Rosa, but feeling very much as a fox-hunter must feel when he hears the "view halloo." "I dare not waste a moment; it may be a matter of life and death ; but I thank you all the same for your kindness ; perhaps it may be m my power some day to return it in kind." FOR LIFE AND LOVE. The cabman closes the door upon me with a clap which speaks volumes. "Where to, miss?" "To Number Nine, Frigate Lane." I give the address as unflinchingly as I can. It is almost at the other end of the city so, at least, I judge from the man's face. But he climbs to his box without entering any complaint, tucks his rug about him leisurely, and starts off at a pace which promises to bring us there about dusk* I have ample time during my drive to take in the whole situation. It does seem rather unconven- tional that I should be acting ^he part of a private detective in such a wretchedly discreditable business as this Baxter case. I can quite sympathize with my Cousin Ronald's disapprobation this day's work will bring his displeasure to a climax ; but if he had shown ten times more disapproval, nay, a hundred times, it would not have made any difference to me. Vhat I can do to save the man I loved the man whom, through all my grief and loneliness and des- peration, I feel that I love still in every fiber of my undisciplined heart I will do, if it costs me not only Ronald Scott, but every friend I have in the world. CHAPTER XII. WHEN, in the course of time, and after some more or less tedious stoppages for the purpose of inquiring the way, the cab finally comes to a stand- still, and I let down the window, I am positively startled by the extreme wretchedness of the locality in which I find mysolf. So squalid is it that I shrink from the idea of stepping out into the mud and dirt, among the swarms of ragged children who FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 139 look as if fresh air and soap and water were alike unknown luxuries. The air is horrible to breathe, ragged clothes, hung high overhead on lines stretch- ing across the narrow street, drip with moisture, the sidewalks are strewn with refuse of fish and vegeta- bles. In all my life before I have never been in such a place, und my first impulse is to turn my back upon it then and there. But I think of an evening not very long ago, of a faint, clear, gold- green sky. of a boy who had promised to love me, holding me to his heart in the starlight ; and, draw- ing a long breath, which is almost a sob, I step oi>>. of the cab. desiring the man to wait for me as be- fore, and cross the muddy pavement with my silk skirt held tightly in my hand. " Do the Eaffs live here ? " I ask of one of the wretched-looking children who have crowded round me. "Yes," the girl answers not uncivilly; "they live at No. 9 right at the top of the house." Standing in the narrow entry, I eye the broken dirt-begrimed staircase dubiously, winding upward between walls the idea of coming into contact with which sends a shudder through my veins, so wains- coted are they by the grimy hands and shoulders of I know not how many generations of ragged passers up and down. But it is for Gerard ; the thought nerves me to encounter even the nameless horrors of that ill-lighted staircase and I know not what further dens of foul air and wretchedness to which it leads. And, with the further assurance that in a few- minutes I shall have left Frigate Lane and all its horrors behind me, I set out on my adventurous quest. It is a long way to the top of the house. The latter half of the ascent is made in almost total dark- ness j but at last I reach a narrow landing with thre.e 140 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. low doors opening upon it. I knock at the nearest, but receive no answer , my tap upon the next is fol- lowed by a sharp " Come in I" I go in, and am agreeably surprised at the neat- ness, not to say brightness, of the garret-room. There are plants in the window, creeping plants hanging from little wire-baskets, common ferns in boxes covered with pine-cones, a geranium, a pot of musk. Two beds covered with clean patchwork quilts stand at one end of the room ; there are some unframed pictures on the wall prints from the " Graphic " and the " Illustrated News." But I see only one thing when I open the door a little girl pausing in the middle of the floor, leaning on crutches a child with a quaint, old-fashioned face, with sharp, black eyes, with short, thick, black hair tied back from her face with a piece of scarlet woolen braid, with a blue check pinafore over a very poor, well-patched, brown stuff frock. "Is your name Raff ? " I ask, shrinking from the gaze of those comprehensive black eyes. "Yes," the child answers warily. "I have come from a friend of yours Mrs. Haag." "Yes?" " I wanted to see you, because you knew a person once in whom I am greatly interested." "What person?" " Mrs. Baxter. Do you remember her ? " " Yes." " Do you know where she is now ? " "She is dead." My heart sinks. The child's face looks blank, impassive, stupid almost. " You are quite sure she is dead ? " " Oh, quite sure! Everybody knows she is dead." "JJut 1 happen to know that she is alive." FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 141 It is a bold stroke. The girl looks hard at me, without a change of countenance. " Nobody knows that," she says deliberately. " How could they know it ? " " Because when a person is not known to be dead it is generally taken for granted that he or she is alive." " But doesn't everybody know that Mrs. Baxter is dead ? " " Do you know it ? " The sudden,' sharp question seems to stagger her. "\ know nothing about it/' she says, after a moment. " You were fond of her were you not ?" The black eyes glisten a little whether with tears or not I cannot say. " You would be glad to do her a service ? " "You won't bribe me," the girl says stoutly. te I wouldn't tell you anything, even if I knew." " Has anybody ever asked you anything about her ? " "~No never I Why should they ask me ?" " Because you and she were friends ; you might know more than other people." " I wasn't there when it happened," the girl says, her eyes traveling to the window, and resting there. " I am aware 'of that. But if she wanted you, she knew where to find you." The black eyes come back to me for an instant, then go to the window again. ' What would she want with me ?" " You might be able to help her. What is your name your Christian name ? " " Lottie." " Lottie, if you cared for any one, wouldn't you like to do something that would' benefit them vert much ? " 142 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. She glances round the poor room, leaning heavily on her crutches. But she makes no answer does not attempt to make any answer. " I am Lily Baxter's friend. I want you to be- lieve that." The child turns her black bright eyes upon me, scrutinizing me from head to foot. Leaning on one crutch, she stretches out her hand, and softly strokes the fur on my jacket, as if it were a living thing, and could feel pleasure at the touch. Then she takes hold of my dress. " Lottie," I exclaim impatiently, "you are keep- ing me waiting all this time ! Is there nothing you want nothing I could do for you ? I am very rich I have a great deal of money. If you will tell me where to find Lily Baxter, I will give you money more than you ever had in your life ! " It is an ungrateful task to me to offer bribes to the little creature whose loyalty I cannot help ad- miring, though it puts my own patience to so severe a test. But I have a powerful incentive, a desperate object in view the saving of a life which is more dear to me a thousand times than my own. "Well, Lottie?" Suddenly, without any preamble, she bursts into a passion of tears. " Go away," she sobs vehemently " go away out of this ! I don't want your money I don't want you here I hate the sight of you ! " " I will not go away till you tell me where Lily Baxter is hiding," I say, with determination. " I came here to find out, and I will not go away till you tell me, if you know." " I don't know." "I think you do." "I tell you she is dead." " She is not dead. You are telling a falsehood, FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 143 Lottie. I don't want to hurt her if she knew how much I wanted her, she would not thank you for not telling me you are doing her harm and mischief, and telling a very wicked falsehood be- sides." The child eyes me, her small pale face very troubled, the tears hanging thickly on her long eye- Jashes. I am sorry to be obliged to drag her secret from her ; but there is no other way to come at the truth that is my only excuse." " You may trust me, Lottie. I am Lily Baxter's friend." I have taken one of the small hard hands in mine ; the upward glance of the black eyes has both cun- ning and hardihood in it, doubtless born of the ill- usage of the world. " You won't hurt her if I tell you ?" she says, at last. " No ; but I will do her a great deal of good." Still she hesitates, while I hold my breath in an agony of suspense. " You have a nice face," she observes deliberately. " I don't think you would do her any harm. I don't know where she is now ; she wouldn't tell me, be- cause I might be asked, you know but she isn't dead." " Have you no idea where she is ? " I ask, my heart sinking a little. " I know where you could find her if you went there to-night." " Where ? " The child names a theater unknown to me. " She dances in the ballet. She has another name, you know I don't know it she didn't tell me and she looks different her hair isn't red now, nor bright. She comes tc see me sometimes. Oh, I hope she won't be angry with me for telling if 144 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. she never forgave me for telling on her, what should I do?" The black eyes have clouded over with tears lagain. It hurts me that I have wounded the child's conscience, but there was no help for it. "She won't be angry with you, Lottie ; you have done her the greatest service you ever did her in your life. Does anybody does your father know ? " " Nobody knows it but me." Lottie nods her black head. " You are a good little friend. I wish I had a great many like you." But this is an unfortunate speech, and adds bit- terness to the sobs which threaten to destroy the equilibrium of the poor little stunted figure leaning so heavily upon the old well-polished crutches. " Don't cry, Lottie ! I am going to be your friend too. Tell me what I can do for you. I must hurry away now ; but I will come again soon ; I won't for- get you. Would you like that ? " I hold out a sovereign on the palm of my glove. The black eyes glitter. "Will you give mo that?" scanning my face eagerly. "It is for yon." She puts out her hand and seizes it greedily, with- out a word of thanks. I am disappointed and yet what else could I have expected to find in Frigate lane ? "What will you do with it ?" " We owe so much rent," the child says, her voice sinking sadly. "Father doesn't bring in any money " Who then keeps the house, Lottie ?" " I and Gretchen and Elsie. " Oh, we keep it very well ! But the rent seems to collect so fast, do what we will." FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 14$ " And what do you do ? " I ask, looking down at the brave little creature. " I make match-boxes. I don't get much for them ; but it is something. And I can make a great many in the long days, but not so many now." I make my way down the filthy staircase again, determined on one thing. I will make a friend of Lottie Kaff. I do not think she is lavish of her friendship ; but it seems to me that it, would be a feather in my cap if I might call her my friend. It is growing dark and raining heavily ; the cab- man is sitting wrapped up in an oilskin cape on the box of his vehicle, too surly to take any notice of me beyond moving on when he calculates that I have had time to bestow myself inside. I lean back against the shabby cushion, drawing a long breath. Can it be that I have found Lily Baxter at last ? It seems too strange to be true that she has been here in London, quite close to us, as one may say, all this time that we have been hunting the country for her far and wide. My heart swells with a great glow of triumph. I am glad it was I who found her and not another I am glad that it is to me Gerard Baxter will owe his liberty, since it was through me or so I have always felt that he sunk to so low a depth of misery. I wonder, impatiently, what Eonald Scott will say. I am going straight to him now to tell him my wonderful news. He will disbelieve me at first, probably not me, but my informants. He never was sanguine, never, at any stage of the proceedings. But we can prove the truth of Lottie Eaff's story ; for my own part I believe every word of it ; but then I am only a woman, and not an Indian judge. When I drive up to the door of the hotel, the win- dows are all alight, waiters are crossing the great hall in every direction. I tell the cabman to IQ 146 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. for me, and, getting out, ask one of the waiters if Sir Ronald Scott is in his rooms. The man stares at me dubiously. " Did you hear me ? " I exclaim impatiently. "I wish to see Sir Ronald Scott." " Sir Ronald Scott is at his dinner." " But I must see him. Here is my card." The man takes the card and stares at it, but makes no attempt to stir. " If you call again in an hour " he begins. " Take that card to Sir Ronald Scott this in- stant ! " " And if he refuses to see anybody at this hour " " He will not refuse to see me." The man walks away leisurely I fancy he ex- changes a glance of impertinent intelligence with some of his fellows in the hall. While I wait, stand- ing in the glare of the gaslight, I feel very much " out in the cold." very lonely, very desolate even, though I know that I have come here of my own free will, and on another's business, not my own. But the sense of loneliness and isolation is new to me and unpleasant. Everybody else seems at home, busy, preoccupied, while I stand looking out at the passengers hurrying along the wet glistening pave- ment, at the carriages driving past with their bright lights and well-muffled occupants, at the ever- changing panorama of the busy lamplit street, feel- ing strangely odd and solitary, and as if I belonged to nobody and had nobody belonging to me. But I am not waiting very long in reality before Ronald himself comes hurrying down the staircase in full evening-dress, and with a very shocked, not to say angry face. But I do not. care about the shocked look I am so glad to see him. If it had not been for the waiters, I am sure I should havo thrown myself into his arms. FOR LIFE AND LOVE, 147 " Ronald, you need not look frightened- there is nothing the matter. It was only that I wanted to tell yon about about that business." Eonald frowns. "I thought you went down to Woo dhay to-day, Rosalie." ' ' I intended to go down ; but I found I could not leave town." " Rosalie, you ought to go home, dear. Will you let me take you back to Carleton Street now at once ? " " But your dinner, Ronald " "It is no matter about my dinner " smiling. " Child, you ought not to do these things, to be out alone at this hour. I cannot have you do it ; I am very angry with you." " But, Ronald," I exclaim, eagerly, " I have a wonderful thing to tell you ! I have " The hall is crowded with waiters, coming and going. "I will drive back with you to Carleton Street," Ronald says peremptorily, and puts me into the cab. Then he hurries in for hat and overcoat, and in three minutes is sitting opposite 'to me while we drive slowly through the crowded noisy lamplit streets. "Ronald, I have found Lily Baxter." "Found her !" " That is, I know where to find her." "Oh," Ronald says, less excitedly, "that is a very different thing." " Oh, but, Ronald, I am sure we have found her this time ! " And then I proceed to tell him my adventures, to which he listens with an exceedingly grave face. And when I have finished, instead of commending me, he merely says "Rosalie, you must promise me never to do such a thing as this again." I4& FOR LIFE AND LOVE. " Oh, Ronald, don't worry about me; I'm all right!" " No, you are all wrong," he says, and then and there gives me a lecture the like of which I, Allie Somers Scott of Woodhay, have certainly never re- ceived before in my life, because there was nobody who would dare to give it to me. And all the time that he is scolding me if such grave disapprobation of my conduct can be called scolding I cannot help thinking how nice he looks, how brave and stern and tender, and how pleasant it would be for a woman to have such a man as Ronald Scott to take care of her always, and to see that she did what was proper and right. And I suppose my thoughts are written in my face, for suddenly Ronald, who is looking straight into my eyes, smiles a little. " I am afraid you are not listening to me, Rosalie." " I am thinking that it is rather nice to have you scold me, Cousin Ronald." " But T want you to think of the scolding, not of me." " If you want me to say that I am sorry for what I have done, I must tell you that I am not sorry, but glad glad and thankful to have been able to do so much." " But you could have done it as well with me, Rosalie." " I am not sure about that." "But I am sure of it." "And now, Ronald, I want you to take me to this theater to-night." "That I certainly will not do, Rosalie." " Then I must go alone." " You shall not go alone, or at all. It is not a place for you to go to it is one of the last places in London at which I should wish to see you, or any one belonging to me." FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 149 "Ronald, I arn not a child or a baby ! " " You are a lady, Rosalie, and my cousin, and nothing nothing would induce me to take you there." " Is it such a dreadful place ? " I ask vaguely, thinking of Gerard's wife. "It is not fit for you to go to, Rosalie." " But I must find her and there seems to be no other way." "I will send a detective there to-morrow." " But to-morrow " " If she is there to-night, she will be there to- morrow night." " But if they frighten her away, Ronald ? " " I can go there to-night, if you wish," Ronald says, looking at his watch. " We were going to hear Albani, I and a fellow I knew in Scinde ; but, if it will make your mind easy, I will change my coat and go to this place instead." " Dear Ronald, if you would ! " " Then I will," he says, smiling again. " Dear cousin, how shall I thank you ? " "By not thanking me at all, Rosalie." He stares out of the window, as if he had never eeen lighted streets before, while I look at his grave profile and wonder if he thinks me a miserable spoil- sport. 1 have spoiled his pleasant evening, at all events. I am sure he hates the idea of going to this low fourth or fifth rate theater at the other side of the city. " Do you think you will recognize her, Ronald ? " " I suppose I shall, from the description you have given me, and her photograph." " I should recognize her among a thousand," I say, sighing. But Ronald is immovable, and I do not press the point. (e YOU say she has changed the color of her hair ?* ISO FOR LIFE AND LOVE. " Yes dyed it, I suppose. It will alter her ap- pearance a good deal." " So I should suppose." The silence lasts till we reach Carleton Street. " Take care of yourself in those outlandish places, Ronald," I say, with rather tardy concern, as he wishes me good night, " Do not be uneasy," he laughs carelessly. "I have come to too many cross-roads not to be able to take care of myself." "And when will you let me know ?" " Early to-morrow. You are going home to- morrow ?" " That must depend upon what you find out to- night." " You must go home, Rosalie. I shall go down with you to Woodhay to-morrow." " Very well. But you must first bring Gerard Baxter here to me." He winces a little, turning his head away. I look up at him as he stands in the dim light of the gas- jet, buttoned up in his long light-colored coat, his hat in his hand. There is something very noble about this grave cousin of mine, something calm and cool and steadfast, which recommends itself to my careless fancy, engrossed as it is by other things. " Good night," he says coldly. " Good night," I echo, vaguely ; and he is gone. I hope I have not sent him into any danger. I hope he will not get into any row in that wretched theater to-night. Half the night I lie awake, think- ing of him and of Gerard Baxter, and of what the morrow may bring forth, my heart throbbing and my head in a whirl of suspense and dread of I know not what. A thousand nameless terrors and con- jectures flit through my brain. What if Lily Baxter should escape us at this last momeqt ! What if FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 151 that child has outwitted me put us on a wrong scent altogether ? But over and above all is the glad triumphant consciousness, the hope that will not be put down, that to-morrow, through my in- strumentality, Gerard Baxter may be free. CHAPTER XIII. "WELL, Eonald ?" I have started up to meet him, the terrible sus- pense of the night and morning showing itself in my white face and shaking limbs. " I have found her, Rosalie." I cover my eyes with my hands in a passion of thankfulness. " And Gerard Baxter ? " " This evening Gerard Baxter will be at liberty." " He does not know yet ? " Xo " curtly. I stand by the table, leaning my hand upon it, Ronald Scott opposite tome, watching my face with curious intentness. " Did you recognize her at once ?" " No, not at once. But I saw her afterward- coming out of the theater ; and then I recognized her." " Did you speak to her then ? " " Yes.'" "Was she frightened ?" "Not in the very least." "But did she intend to let him die, Ronald ?" "No. At least, she says so now." " And you believe her ? " " She is nothing but a foolish, giddy child. lam only surprised that she was clever enough to baflle I $2 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. us all as she did. She intended to punish him, sho said. He had suspected her of horrid things, and she meant to be even with him. She never meant to let the trial come on so she said. She pretended to know nothing about her husband at first not even that he had been suspected of making away with her ; but I soon let her see that she could not make a fool of me." " And she allowed him to lie in prison all this time, knowing " "She seemed to think it rather a good joke," Eonald says, shrugging his shoulders. " I tell you she has scarcely any notion of right or wrong she looks a mere child, and a more ignorant, uneducated, utterly thoughtless child there could scarcely be. I never saw such hardihood in my life the idea of the body that was found having been identified as her body seems to have been the greatest source of amusement to her she could not speak of it without laughing." " Did her mother know ?" "She knows nothing about her mother. I believe she dislikes the woman excessively and one can scarcely wonder at it." " She is very pretty, is she not ?" 1 ask, hesitat- ingly. " She has a most beautiful face." " You admire her ? " " No man can look at her without admiring her." If I sigh, Ronald Scott does not hear me. " What will you do about Gerard Baxter ? " I in- quire, after a pause. " 1 am going for the girl now, to take her before the authorities." "If she should have run away, Ronald ?" " My dear Hosalio, you must think me a very simple person 1 I took owe to put the house vhere FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 1 53 ghe lodges under the surveillance of the police. But I do not think she has any intention of running away." "Did she wonder how you discovered her ?" " She did not ask me any questions, and I vol- unteered no information ; I think myself, she was rather surprised that we had not found her before." " Can she be punished in any way ? " "I think not. She is so young, you know ; and she will say she knew nothing about her husband's detention in prison.'* " Ronald," I ask, in the same hesitating way in which I had asked another question, "do you think she cares at all for him ? " "I am sure she does." I did not know whether the answer pleases me or displeases me ; but I pul my hand to my heart. "Go!" I exclaim hurriedly. "Don't lose any more precious time ; and, when Gerard Baxter is at liberty, send him here to me." Eonald's face darkens ; but he merely says "And you will allow me to take you down to Woodhay this evening, Rosalie ? " "When I have seen him." He goes away then ; and, for the next hour and a half, I walk up and down the room in uncontrolla- ble excitement. I cannot sit still every sound startles me, every passing cab draws me to the win- dow, every voice down-stairs causes my heart to beat so tumultuously that I wonder how it can bear the strain. Twenty times I look at my watch how slow the minutes drag ! it is not one o'clock yet ; and yet I feel that I have endured an eternity of suspense since Ronald Scott left the house at eleven. The cool, autumnal sunshine slants into the room, creeps across the colorless carpet, lies on the familiar pictures, on the faded table-cloth^ on the silver 154 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. clasps of my fur cloak as it hangs over the back of a chair, on the dead dry grasses in the vases on the mantel-piece. How weary I am of them all, how I hate the sight of them, and of my own ghastly face in the glass ! I see it every time I turn in my rest- less passing to and fro a white face, with dark shadows under the distended eyes, with contracted brows, with pale trembling lips that look as if they could never smile again. Can this haggard woman really be Allie Scott the girl who used to laugh, sitting over the fire with Olive Deane, who used to sing " In my Chateau of Pompernik " and " Nancy Lee," in such a gay rollicking voice, who used to lounge in that hammock-chair, eating almonds and raisins and dreaming dreams of a boy up-stairs paint- ing away in a shabby velveteen coat, who had thought it such a terrible thing to have been found out in the unsolicited gift of a bunch of violets ? I can scarcely believe in my own identity when I look at that ghostly face which seems to grow more ghostly with every loud monotonous tick of the old clock on the landing, with every step that passes by the door that passes and does not come in. Another hour passes two hours. Mrs. Wanchope comes up with my luncheon, and carries it away again untasted ; a telegram arrives from Uncle Tod to say that the carriage has been sent to meet me ; but the carriage may go back again, for I am late for that train already. I am beginning to feel that I cannot bear this terrible strain on brain and heart any longer, when the door opens, quickly, is quickly closed again, and I turn round, to find Gerard Baxter standing just inside the room, looking at me. With a low exclamation, I hold out both my hands. He starts forward, and, seizing them, falls upon his knees at my feet. , For a moment neither of us speaks. He has FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 155 buried his face in my dress and is sobbing heavily, while 1 hold both his hands in a close hard grasp, shivering as if I had the ague. " Gerard," I say at last "Gerard." Still he sobs on, like a heartbroken child who has wearied himself out with sobbing. " Gerard, you are killing me. It is all over now, dear ; you must not give way, for both our sakes ! " He raises his tear-swollen face that face which seems to me but the ghost of its former self, so gaunt, so haggard is it. " You have saved my life I would thank you for it, if I could speak ; but I cannot speak ! " " Do not try to thank me, dear," I say, with stiff lips that almost refuse to form the words. " It was all my fault I know- it ; but it is all over now." He looks up at me with drowned eyes, 'with pite- ous lips that tremble like my own. " And I do not care to live. It would have been better for me if I had died." " But you must care to live. "Why should you not care to live, Gerard ? The world is before you you are young ; it is only cowards who wish to die ! " He makes no answer, but kneels there looking up at me, his cheeks wet with tears ; and, though I speak so bravely, I myself am trembling exceed- ingly ; my hands are as cold as ice, though my cheeks burn. "You shall go to Italy, Gerard ; you shall study in Rome and Florence ; you shall make a name for yourself and do me credit I who am your friend." His haggard young face brightens a little, but only a very little. "It could not be done. I am a beggar on the face of the earth, Allie twice beggared now." " But I am rich you forget that ! " He shakes his head, with the old obstinate gesture. 156 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. "But listen. When you are a great artist, you shall pay me back with interest, if you like." He smiles faintly at that ; we both smile, he look- ing up and I looking down. "But that wretched child ! " he says at last. "I will take care of her for you, Gerard." " You ! " " Yes. She shall live with me at Woodhay while you are away."- " With you, Allie ? " " With me. And, when you have grown rich, you shall come for her in two or three years per- haps, if you work very hard." He shudders, still kneeling beside me, still hold- ing both my hands against his breast. " Have you forgiven me, Allie ? " " Entirely. I wish I could as easily forgive my- self." He bends his head and kisses my hands passion- ately one after the other. " How can you tell rne to live I who have lost the only thing worth living for in the world ? " Looking down into the boyish, careworn face, re- membering all his love for me, all that he has suf- fered through that love, a great flood of pity surges through my heart. " My poor boy," I say, smoothing the dark hair back from his forehead " my poor boy ! " " Can you care for me still, Allie a miserable wretch like me ? " "'I shall care for you always, Gerard always ! " " As you cared for me once, Allie ? " For a moment I hesitate, with the hungry hollow dark eyes devouring my face. '' As I might care for a dear brother, if I had one, Gerard." He stands up, flinging away my hand. FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 157 " Is that all ? " "That must be all." " And you can mete out your affection to such a nicety as that ? " " I hope so with the help of Heaven ! " " I cannot ! " lie exclaims roughly. "I have not my feelings so admirably under control I cannot love you like a lover one day, and like a brother the next ! " " We can never be anything but friends, Gerard ; but I shall always be your friend your best of friends." "And I shall be your lover," he says passionately " your lover, as long as I live." " You may think so now," I answer quietly, but my heart rebels against the bitter fate that has divided us. "I know it; and I glory in the knowledge. I love you with my whole heart and soul as I shall never love any other woman. And now is it any wonder that I do not greatly care to live ? " " You must go away," I say, putting my hand to my forehead. "You must go away." " My darling, I have wearied you you look like a ghost ! " he exclaims, with a penitence as passion- ate as his anger had been a moment before. "I will go away I will do anything you ask me. Oh, my darling, my darling, you do not know the anguish it is to me to leave you this day I" He has turned away from me ; there is a look of utter misery in the gaunt young face, in the wild dark eyes. I am afraid of him afraid that he will do some desperate thing, perhaps, in his despair. * ' Gerard, if you love me, you will promise to do what I ask you." "If Hove you, Allie ?" "You will go away at once to Italy to Borne. FOR LIFE AND LOVE. You will start to-morrow I will give you a check on my bankers to be repaid, when you come back. Gerard, you have brought suffering upon me too you owe it to me to make this reparation it is all I ask of you or will ever ask perhaps. And you owe it to your wii'e." " Do not speak of her." " But I must speak of her. The child loves you. Gerard." " So much the worse for her." " Yes, unless you prove yourself worthy of her love." "Of her love, Allie?" " It is the only love that can rightly belong to you now. And it is a precious gift, Gerard even the love of a child." He turns away impatiently. " Gerard, will you do this for my sake ? " " If you asked me to lay down my life for you, Allie, I would do it." " And you will go at once ? " " As soon as you like. I do not care what becomes of me." " Dear Gerard, do not speak like that. It breaks my heart to hear you." " My heart is broken," he says, letting his head sink upon his breast. " I hope not," I answer, with a poor attempt at a smile. And then I fill in the check for him with a hand that shakes a good deal a check for a hundred pounds. " You may write to me from Italy. And I will write to you to tell you about your wife." He kisses my hand passionately, looks at my face with eyes which seem as if they were trying to take away a memory which must last them through eternity, and then, without another word, he goes away. FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 159 And I throw myself face downward on Mrs. Wau- chope's drab moreen sofa and cry for two long houra as if my heart would break. ****** We are rushing along through the darkness, my cousin Ronald Scott and I, as fast as the express train can carry us. Eonald is leaning back against the cushions opposite to me, his tweed cap pulled well down over his eyes. I am sure he is not asleep, though he sits there so quietly; but I see his eyes in the shadow the lamp over our heads gives such a miserable glimmer of light. We have been travel- ing for nearly two hours now in another hour we shall have reached the nearest railway-station to Yattenden, where the carriage from Woodhay will be waiting for us. We have scarcely addressed each other during the whole of those two hours. Ronald does not seem inclined to talk, and I feel too wretched to do anything but brood over my misery, staring into the darkness with wide-open miserable eyes. " Are you very tired, Rosalie ? " Ronald's voice startles me, the silence between us has lasted so long. " Rather. Why do you ask ? " " I thought you looked tired." " Have you been studying my face ? " a little querulously. " One cannot very well help seeing what is straight before one." " I thought your eyes were shut," I say, remem- bering how I had studied all that was visible of his calm grave face a while ago, wondering what he thought of me. " They were not shut. What were you trying to find out just now ? " "When ? " I ask, though I know very well. l6o FOR LIFE AND LOVE. " When yon did me the honor to consider me to intently." I was trying to find out what you thought of me, Ronald." "And did you find out ?" " Not much. You have one of those faces, which I cannot read." " Then I have the advantage of you there." " Can you read my face ? " "Very often I can," he answers, smiling a little. "You have an interesting study, then" shrug- ging my shoulders. " I think I have. Rosalie, would you like to know what I think of you ? " "I know you think me very foolish." " Then you do not want to know ? " t( You could not tell me anything pleasant " with a rather forced laugh. " I wish we were at Yatten- den, Ronald ; don't you ? " " I do, for your sake. Rosalie, are you to see that fellow Baxter again ? " The name sends a shiver through my veins. And yet it is forever ringing in my ears. " No. Why do you ask ? " "I am glad to hear it," he says, without answer- ing my question. "Why are you glad ?" " Because it is neither good for you nor for him." I should he angry if Roland did not look so grave, did not speak in such a matter-of-fact, fatherly way. " He is going to Italy," I say, in rather a subdued voice. " And you have taken charge of his wife." "Yes/* Ronald expresses neither approval nor disapproval. I wonder if he despises me if he thinks that I am breaking my heart about a lad who by all accounts LIFE AND LOVg. I6'I could not have cared very much for me ? I am almost sorry I, like a coward, refused to let him tell me what he thought of me just now. But I had shrunk from another lecture, knowing the folly and wickedness of my undisciplined heart. " Eonald, you have redeemed your promise nobly," I say, stretching out my hand to him in my old im- pulsive fashion. *" You have been a true friend to me ; you have borne with me very patiently :. do not think too badly of me, if you can help it." He bends forward out of the shadow to take my hand. *' All my efforts must be directed the other way, Rosalie," he answers quietly, looking at me with brown eyes, which for once I cannot fail to read. But I shake my head, laughing a little. " ' I warrant I love you more than you do me ! ' ' I quote, drawing my hand away rather quickly. And we say no more till the train stops, and I see my own carriage-lamps glimmer in the darkness, and my own livery on the platform ; and I ask if they are all well at Yattenden, and am told that they are all well, but very uneasy because I had not come down by the earlier train. CHAPTER XIV. " ISN'T he a jolly little fellow, Olive ? " Olive glances at the cherub-faced boy on my lap, whom I have been smothering with kisses. "He is a fine child, certainly." " A fine child ! " I exclaim with laughing indigna- tion. " You speak of him as if he were some young creature whom you were fattening for a prize." U 1 62 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. Olive glances at us from her low chair inside the window. I am sitting on the steps just outside, holding the sturdy, two-year-old boy in my arms. September sunshine makes glorious the ruddy gables of my old house, rising sharply defined against the serene blue sky ; September sunshine dreams on the smooth terrace, on the trim walks and careful flower- beds of my sheltered garden, just as it dreamed upon them three years ago, when my sick eyes saw no beauty in them, nor in the sunshine, nor in any other fair or lovely thing. " You will spoil him, Allie," Olive says ; but at the same time she smiles indulgently. " Spoil him ! You are not capable of being spoiled, Scott ; are you ? You take after your godmother, my fair child ! As if anybody could spoil such a darling, Olive ! Whv, the nicest thing I could say of him wouldn't be half nice enough ! " " Not half nice 'nough ! " Scott corroborates, in a perfect tempest of chuckles. " You delicious little mite ! " I laugh encourag- ingly, kissing his rosebud mouth, his bloomy cheeks, his dimpled elbows, whilst he makes vain snatches at my hair, at my ear-rings, at my nose even, with his chubby dimpled fists. " Why, Olive, if I were you I should do nothing but kiss him all day long ! " " I wonder what would become of Hyacinth and the vicarage, and the parish generally, if I made such a goose of myself ? " Olive says demurely. I take great delight in spoiling my little godson, partly because he is such a splendid little fellow, but principally because it is so amusing to hear Olive protesting against it. She has grown so deli- ciously matter-of-fact since she married Mr. Lock- hart ! Three years have transformed her from a scatter-brained girl into the most amusingly demure matron who ever pretended not to adore her hus FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 163 band, or to think her children the most perfect chil- dren that ever were born." "I wonder how you will bring up your own children one of these days/' Olive observes in her precise voice, glancing at me over the pinafore she is em- broidering. " I shall never have any children to bring up. I shall be a rich old spinster, and Scott shall be my adopted son, and I will leave Woodhay to him when I die, and he shall take the name of Scott Scott Lockhart Scott. Doesn't it sound well, Olive ?" " It sounds well enough/' Olive says smiling. " But you don't think it will ever come to pass ?" "I hope it will never come to pass." " You hope your son won't have Woodhay, Olive? " " I hope your own son will have Woodhay, Allie. You have done enough for Scott already." " By presenting him with an ugly silver mug the day he was christened ! " Olive shakes her head, denuded of its golden fringe now, with sleek golden braids drawn back plainly from her forehead instead, and plaited neatly at the back of her neck. " My dear Allie, I should be sorry to think of your living the cheerless life you have mapped out for yourself. It seems all very well now, while you are young and have plenty of friends. But think how lonely you would feel by and by when you begin to grow old, without husband or children to care for you with nobody in the world who really loved you, perhaps, as a wife and mother is sure to be loved ! " If I sigh, Olive does not hear me, though her pink ears are sharp enough. " My dear, I have been resigned to my fate this long time back/' I say carelessly, pulling one of Scott's elastic curls straight und then letting it run 164 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. < into glossy flaxen spirals again ; " and, after all, it is not such a very terrible thing to be an old maid." " 1 think it is a terrible thing," Olive answers seriously " a very terrible thing." " You did not think so always, Olive. I remember when you ridiculed the idea of matrimony and were going in for woman's rights and all that kind of thing/' " Oh, that was before I knew ! " Olive says softly. " Did you ever hear of a woman who had a husband and children wishing she were an old maid, Allie ?" " Why do you try to put me out of conceit with my lot, Olive ? " I exclaim fretfully. " I said long ago that I should never marry, and I never shall. But I mean to be happy in my own way. ' I am happy just as happy as half the married women in the world." Olive shakes her smooth head again, very posi- tively this time. "I wish Digges would come with our tea," I say, yawning. My godson has scrambled off my lap, my book has fallen to the ground, there seems to have come a cold breath of air from somewhere or other. I shiver in my blue and gold-colored chintz gown. " It is early yet," Olive returns, placidly thread- ing her needle. " Not so very early " looking at my watch. " I wonder what sport "Ronald has had? I haven't heard any shots lately ; have you ? " ' ' One cannot hear much when you and Scott are romping with each other." "I am sure he ought to have had enough of it by this time," I say, not alluding to the romping. *' He started off the moment after breakfast seven good hours ago, at the very least." " Are you in a hurry to have him back, Allie ? " FOR LIFE AND LOVB 165 " Mot the slightest. Only it is astonishing how the thing never seems to pall upon them ! " Olive looks at me, and the expression of her face annoys me. " May I ask what is amusing ? " I inquire crossly. " Oh, nothing ! Only, for such a confirmed spinster " " Olive, the end of it will be that I shall quarrel with you." " I hope not," Olive says equably. "Here is Sir Ronald coming up the lawn." I had seen him before she spoke, crossing the grass leisurely, his gun under his arm, and his dogs at his heels. He wears knickerbockers and coarse ribbed shooting-stockings, and he looks very well or I like his looks very well as he comes up to the window. " Just in time for tea, Ronald." "I don't care for tea, Rosalie," he laughs, leaning his gun against the wall and sitting down on the steps at a little distance from me. (e But I don't mind assisting at the ceremony once in a way." " Had you any sport, Ronald ? " " She hopes you had not/' Olive interpolates mischievously. "Why does she hope that ?" Ronald asks, look- ing at me. " Don't mind Olive ; she is intensely disagreeable to-day," I laugh, shrugging my shoulders. Digges has brought up a gypsy-table in front of me, and laid the tea-things upon it my dainty Sevres cups and saucers, my gilded spoons my favorite plum-cake, piled high on a Sevres dish, Olive's favorite home-made biscuits, a basket of ripe black plums. " What have you been doing with yourself all day, Rosalie ? " Ronald asks, with apparent irrelevancy. l66 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. " Gardening a little, and driving with Aunt Rosa." " Why did you not come to meet me, as you promised you would ? " 'I don't know." ' I was looking out for you in the larch wood." * Were you ? " ' Is that the way in which you keep your promises, xtosalie . ' I scarcely ever make any promises." ' So much the better, since you can break them so easily." " I intended to go, Ronald." " Then why did you not come ? " If I had any reason at all, it was such a silly one that I do not care to tell it to him indeed nothing would induce me to tell it to him, of all people in the world. I have gone to meet him on his way back from shooting probably a hundred times ; but of late I have shrunk from treating him with the sisterly familiarity which has rendered our intercourse with each other so pleasant to me, at least for the last three years. When or how this new feel- ing of shyness sprung up it would puzzle me to tell. Ronald has always treated me like a younger sister, with a gentle protecting kindness which has nothing of the lover about it. I believe his last attempt at love-making was in the train that evening, three years ago, when he brought me down to Woodhay. I do not remember a single word, a single look since then which could be construed into the most distant approach to anything beyond cousinly or brotherly affection. And I have ignored the past just as en- tirely perhaps it was easier for me to do it than for him and found it very pleasant to have Ronald to go to in all my difficulties, to ease me in a great measure of all my cares of state, for, though we do FOR LIFE AND LOVfc. 167 Hot live in the same county, or in the same country even Ronald's place, Balquharrie, is in Scotland- he comes to Woodhay very often, and we write to each other constantly long letters, chiefly on busi- ness, but letters which I think arc a pleasure to us both. I know they are a pleasure to me. I have had a great many offers of marriage during the last three years, more than I care to remember", I dismissed my suitors one after the other with DO qualms of conscience, for even the vainest of tlum could not say that I had bestowed any favors upon him, or given him any reason to believe that I would lend a favorable ear to his suit. The only one for whom I felt any sympathy was poor Gussie Deane. It did grieve me for the space of a day and a half to send him him away sorrowing ; but then neither had I ever given him any encouragement my greatest enemy could not call me a flirt. Gus had gone out to the Cape, he went more than a year ago ; Olive hears from him sometimes. She says she thinks he is getting rather fond of his colonel's daughter, a nice girl whom we used to know in London ; and I hope it is the case. Ellinor Deane is married to Jack Rollesto'n ; I have had them down here at Woodhay on a visit. Poppy and her husband are in Ceylon. Eonald Scott had never gone back to India. A distant relative a third or fourth cousin of his mother's, I believe, and a very old man had died before his year's holiday was over, leaving him Balquharrie, a fine wild place in the north of Scot- land, which it seems he always knew would one day be his. I have never been there ; but I have seen photographs of the old castle, with its keep and drawbridge, and the great wild mountains towering up behind it. Sometimes a disagreeable thought obtrudes itself into my mind that Eonald will be 168 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. marrying somebody some of these days, and that 1 shall lose my friend. But I put the idea away from me persistently ; when the misfortune happens it will be time enough to lament over it. Meanwhile Ronald belongs to me. Dear old Uncle Tod died two years ago, and since his death Aunt Eosa has lived with me. At his de,ath the Lockharts moved into the vicarage. It is pleas- ant to have Olive so near scarcely a day passes that we do not see each other her nursery is one of my favorite haunts. When I am enjoying myself there, nobody would suppose that I was the unapproachable Miss Somers Scott of Woodhay so, at least, Olive tells me when she interrupts some glorious romp. And I am happy enough, with a kind of negative happiness I manage to live, and take some pleasure out of life without the heart which I buried, the day I came of age, far down in the depths of my shadowy combe. I have never attempted to raise it up again I do not suppose I could, if I would. I have loved and done with love I gave my heart to Gerard Baxter three years and a half ago, and, if I have any heart left, it is his still. Deep down, far away from the disturbing pleasures and cares of every day, lies the memory of a boy with dark eyes the memory of a tall handsome lad whom I loved long ago, whom I know if I dared to disturb the moss and long grasses about that buried heart I love still as I shall never love any one else in the world. "I thought you were in a hurry for tea, Allie ?" Olive's voice wakes me out of a reverie. " I wonder where Lily is ? " I remarked, as I ar- range my cups and saucers. " In her room, I think." " Poor child ! " I say softly. "She seems very nervous and excited, Allie, Doesn't she ?" FOR LIFE AND LOVfc. 169 "' Is it any wonder ? " "I suppose not/' I feel nervous and excited myself, though I try not to think of to-morrow. I have been learning a lesson for the last three years, and I am afraid, now that I shall so soon be called upon to repeat it, my courage may fail at the last moment. If I could have saved myself so severe a trial, I would have done it ; but I could not very well. And, after all, it is bet- ter to have it over. The test must come sooner or later, and sometimes I almost long for it with a fever of impatience, for, till I have tried my own endurance, how can I know that it will stand ? " Scott, will you run in and pull the bell, darling or stay, I will go for her myself. Here is your tea, Olive, and excuse me for a moment I want to see what Lily is about." I find her in the pretty south room which I have had fitted up for her. She is standing before the glass, a slender figure in a long white gown. "Lily!" She turns round at the sound of my voice. " Admiring yourself, you vain child ? " She runs to me, throws her arms round me, and bursts into a sudden passion of tears. " My dear Lily, what are you crying for, on thia day, of all days in the year 1 " Only sobs answer me. I touch her hair tenderly, the soft hair that gleams like gold as it ripples away from her white forehead. "Yon are a very foolish child, Lily ; do you know that ? " " I cannot help it, Rosalie, oh, Rosalie, what if he should not care for me what if he should have cared for somebody else " " He has not cared for anybody else since he left you, darling." " But how do you know ?" 170 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. I know. And I have come to take you down to tea. Dry your eyes and come with me." She dries her eyes obediently ; she is just as much of a child still as she was three years ago. In other things she is improved out of all resemblance to her former self. In appearance she has, if anything, gained in attractiveness, while in manner she is as different from the girl I brought down to Woodhay three years ago as she is in education and refine- ment of speech. I have taken pains to make Gerard's wife as beautiful mentally as she is out- wardly, for his sake, and I have been rewarded by ft most unexpected measure of success. Lily is as fair as the flower she is called after the wretched surroundings of her neglected childhood have not smirched the whiteness of her soul. A little wayward she is still, a little wilful even ; but to me she is always obedience itself. I think she always would be to any one she loved. And she loves me with a perfect passion of devo- tion. Whether she would love me so much if she knew how Gerard once loved me I know not I have taken care that she shall never hear that story from me or from any one else. " What shall I do if he hates me, Eosalie ? " I am holding one of the small trembling hands, smoothing back the tendrils of red-gold hair out of the velvety sapphire-blue eyes. The beauty of the wistful face sends a strange pang to my heart. " Hate you, darling ! As if he could ! " " He never loved me as I loved him, Eosalie." " Then he will fall in love with you to-morrow/' I assure her, smiling. She smiles too at that, a very childlike smile. "If I could only think it" " My darling, you may be sure of it. He will not be able to help himself." FOR LIFE AND LOVE. I/I \ ' Am I so different from what I was then ? " The deep velvety eyes search my face wistfully, the color burns deeper and deeper in the rounded cheeks. "Just the difference that he would wish to see, Lily. You were a child then, darling ; now you are a woman, ready to lend a woman's earnest helpful life." " If I may only help him, Rosalie ! " " You shall help him. See how he has got on what a name he has made for himself ! And if he has done so much alone, what will he not do with you to cheer and encourage him ? " She sighs, as if the picture oppressed her with its weight of felicity. " What have you been doing up here all the after- noon, Lily ? " " Looking at myself in the glass," she answers at once. " What a child you are ! " I say, laughing. " It was childish, wasn't it ? But, if you knew, Rosalie " "I do know, darling I know all about it." It is I who sigh this time, remembering a girl in a blue dress, with a buncb of violets nestling over her heart a girl who had looked up into Gerard Baxter's dark eyes and "loved him with that love which was her doom/' " Come down and have some tea," I say, drawing her out of the room with me. I love the child, for Gerard's sake ; but it has cost me many a pang to watch her growing loveli- ness and think whose arms will clasp her, whose lips will kiss her by and by when I am forgotten ! The pain is very vague now, a dimness has come over it of late. But I know that it is only in abey- ance that the very sound of Gerard. Baxter's voice FOR LIFE AND LOVE. will bring it all to life again, to haunt me with its old tormenting anguish of unrest. " I shall know to-morrow," the girl says dreamily, as we cross the hall together. " I shall know to- morrow." " And I," I echo, but not aloud " I too shall know to-morrow. " We find Olive and Ronald Scott apparently ex- changing confidences in the sunshine, Ronald with his elbow on the window-sill, looking up, and Olive looking down. They cease talking when we make our appearance, which rather rouses my suspicion ; but Olive looks so demurely unconscious that I may be mistaken in supposing she was telling tales of me. And Eonald looks so curiously at Lily as we come forward to the window that I half fancy they must have been talking of her. CHAPTER XV. " OH, Rosalie, why have you put on that hideous dress ?" " Hideous ! " I repeat, looking down at it. " Do you think it hideous, Lily ?" "Why, everybody does ! It is about the only un- becoming dress you have, Rosalie Mrs. Lockharfc is always wishing somebody would steal it, or burn it, or something." " Oh, Olive never admired my taste in dress ! " "But it is not becoming to you, indeed, Rosalie." "My dear, I have ceased to study my appear- ance ! " which is not true, since I have studied it particularly this evening. " And I wanted you to look well/' Lily says, sighing, as she considers me. FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 1^3 " If you look well, that is all that is of any conse- quence." " Do I ? " the girl asks wistfully. She looks exquisite in her dress of snowy llama softly ruffled with Spanish lace. " My dear, I have spent the last hour and a half over your toilet do you think it likely I would have ceased ray efforts unless I had been satisfied with the result ? " She smiles a little at this her infantine innocent smile. "You look like a white rose," I say, tenderly stroking the pretty white arm. " You must have more color in your cheeks than, that, Lily, or else your husband will think I have been starving you !" There is color enough in her cheeks for a minute after, that ; but it fades away again ; the deep pansy- blue eyes look darker than ever, the childish lips tremble, even the little gloved hand shakes as 1 clasp it closely in my own. I shall be glad when this interview is over. My own heart is beating my own color comes and goes at every sound with- out I am almost sorry I told Digges to light up the drawing-room ; but I wanted Gerard to see his wife in a full blaze of light, to be dazzled by her beauty, as I know his artistic imagination will be dazzled by it, surrounded by every adventitious aid that I can think of or devise. It is a quarter to eight o'clock at eight he may be here ; I have sent a carriage to meet him at the railway-station ; he is to stay at Woodhay to-night. Ronald has been out all day shooting ; it is scarcely five minutes since he ran up-stairs to dress. He too seems rather excited I cannot think what has come over him. He does not seem jealous of my expected visitor he seems rather in a hurry to have him come. His manner puzzles me a little, because he 174 FOk LIFE AND LOVE. is generally so grave and self-contained, so impervi- ous apparently to the mere outward influences which have such power to raise or to depress me. Old Digges has certainly done his best to illumi- nate the drawing-room. The wood fire crackles and sparkles on the hearth, reflected in every painted tile ; the chandelier scintillates with row after row of softly luminous wax-candles, reflected in every mirror about the room. It is a pretty room, though I say it, to whom it belongs, quaint and rich and. old-fashioned, and it never looks so well as when it is lighted up at night. And its warm red tones throw out that white figure so purely, standing in the full blaze of the wax lights, as a niche of ruddy velvet throws out some fair white statue, rendering its whiteness more purely white by contrast. I have drawn Lily into the best light the room affords, un- consciously to herself, and there I keep her stand- ing while I listen for the wheels which seem to my impatience to tarry so long, " You must stay here if I go out to meet him, Lily ; remember that/' " Here alone ? " she asks, with frightened eyes searching my face. " My darling, it will only be for a moment. But you must promise me not to stir." " Not even to run to the door, Rosalie ? " " Not to move from where I leave you, clear it is I who should welcome him to Wood hay, you know " " Oh, yes ! But might I not come with you ?" " No. I wish to see him first for a moment* alone." " You won't keep me too long waiting ? " she pleads, with a tremulous smile. " Indeed I will not, darling not a minute, prob ably, if so much." FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 175 Ronald seems to be a long time over his toilet this evening, or can it be that he does not wish to be S'esent at the meeting of husband and wife ? Aunt osa never makes her appearance till the gong sounds I do not think there is much danger of her veering out of her groove to-night. Ten minutes to eight five three. I fancy I hear wheels in the distance ; but the clock ticks so loudly that I cannot be certain. - " Here he is ! " Lily says, putting her hand to her heart. "Are you sure ?" " Oh, quite sure I" " Then, do not stir remember what you have promised me I" I say, and cross the room quietly, looking back at her over my shoulder. The picture is perfect ; all the lights seem con- centrated about the exquisite figure standing in the middle of the floor she looks more like a vision than a human being, so pale is she, with all that glory of light falling full on her golden head. With a long breath, which is almost a sigh, I open the door and walk into the hall just as Gerard Baxter steps into it out of the starry darkness of the September night. He catches sight of me in a moment, and comes forward quickly, his hat in one hand, the other stretched out to meet mine. " Welcome to Woodhay," I say, smiling. And the dreaded meeting is over. " Thank you," he answers, in the voice I remem- ber so well, and stands there looking down at me, while Hook up at him with eyes which seem to have suddenly grown dim. This is not my boy, this stalwart man, black- haired and bearded like a pard ! This is not the lad I remember, the lad whom my imagination had 176 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. clothed with every fair attribute under the sun ! Surely I must have forgotten him, or else he must have changed mysteriously, if this pallid handsome man is the boy I loved long ago the Gerard Baxter whom my god-like fancy had endowed with perpet- ual youth ! This man looks old for his age, is in- clined to be stout, is splendidly handsome certainly, with a kind of foreign perfection of feature and coloring ; but he is not the lad with whom I fell in love three years and a half ago the slender, poverty- stricken artist who "did win my heart from me" in Mrs. Wauchope's shabby house in Carleton Street, and broke it, here at Woodhay, the day I came of age ! " Will you go in there ?" I say, loosing my hand from his close grasp, and nodding my head toward uhe drawing-room door. " I promised not to detain you for more than a minute." " Is she there ?" he asks, in a sort of breathless fashion. "Yes." He hesitates for a moment, looking down at me. I wonder what he thinks of me in the ugly mouse- colored velveteen which my friends wish somebody would steal or destroy. "I suppose you have forgotten me ?" he says, a little wistfully. " Quite," I answer, with a cheerful smile " as you have forgotten me." He shakes his head at that ; but I put my hand lightly on his arm and impel him toward the open door. I can see that he is eager to go in, and yet he hesitates can it be out of compassion for me ? " Go in," I say smilingly, and usher him into the softly-illuminated room, waiting just long enough. nnperceived by either to see the look of bewilder- ment on his face change suddenly into passionate FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 1 77 admiration, and to hear her low cry of delight as she rushes forward into his outstretched arms. ****** Dinner is over such a merry dinner as had not taken place at Wood hay for many a long day. Not even the grim portraits of my ancestors or my old butler's solemn visage could damp our mirth I do not believe any one gave a single thought to either. Even Aunt Rosa laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks at Gerard's adventures abroad, which he re- lated with a quiet humor that somehow reminded me of Mark Twain and the irresistible "Mr. Harris." He has travelled a good deal, and some of his experi- ences in foreign cities and galleries were most amus- ing, or he amused us by relating them in his droll unsmiling way. As for Ronald Scott I never saw him looking so happy before as he has looked ever since Gerard Baxter came into the house. After dinner, we three ladies betake ourselves to the drawing-room. Aunt Rosa disposes herself for a nap on the sofa, and Lily kneels on the rug beside my favorite low-chair, and rests her elbow on my knee and her cheek in her hand, looking into the fire with serenely happy eyes. * "Well, Lily," I ask at last, " is your silly little heart at rest ?" " I think so," she answers, drawing a long breath. " Oh, Rosalie, I am so happy ! " " Long may your happiness continue, darling," I say, and bend down to kiss the downy forehead. " Rosalie," she says presently, taking my hand and leaning her cheek upon it, '*! wish you were as happy as I am to-night." " Dear, I am very happy," I answer, a little startled by the unexpected aspiration. " Are you ? " looking up at me with soft question- ing eyas. 12 FOR LIFE AND LOVE. " Indeed I am." She sighs a sigh of the most complete content. " I want you to be happy, Rosalie ; you have been so good to me and to him." " And I am rewarded now by seeing your happi- ness, Lily and his." " I think he is happy," she says dreamily, look- ing into the fire. " I am sure he is. I do not know anybody who looks happier than he looked to-night." " Sir Ronald looked very happy," Lily observes demurely ; but this time she does not look up at me. "Yes; I thought he looked in rather better humor than usual." I have just been thinking how well he looked in his plain evening-dress, with his grave face and drooping brown mustache and that laughing look in his brown eyes. It is certainly very becoming to people to look happy. I wonder if I too look happier than usual to-night ? " I wish you hadn't worn this ugly dress," Lily says, laughing as she smooths my mouse-colored velveteen with her delicate hand. " Do I look such a show, Lily ? " " Well, you don't look as you would have looked in your white dress, or in the" blue flowered one, or in your pink silk." " Never mind. I can wear my pink silk to-mor- row night." " But Gerard won't be here to-morrow night." Somebody else will, though I think so, with a strange glad thrill at my heart. While I smile to myself, wondering why I never felt like this before, Lily turns her head, listening to some sound in the hall. "You think you will never see him again," ] laugh, pulling her little pink ear. FOR LIFE AND LOVE. 179 "He is coming," she says, rising from her place on the hearthrug to stand with her eyes fixed upon the door. And he does come a moment later ; but, when I look for Eonald to follow him into the room, I am disappointed Ronald has gone out to solace him- self with a cigar. ***** * The terrace is steeped in moonlight as bright as day, all the flowers in my garden stand up like the ghosts of flowers white in the white light of the moon. I have come out on to the terrace ostensibly to breathe the cool delicious night-air, but in reality to give the lovers in the drawing-room a few mo- ments together before Digges comes in with tea. But I am glad I came out, the night is so serene, so heavenly in its quiet, so soft, so unclouded : the air is so delicious with the perfume of my beds of night- scented stock and mignonette. I lean over the terrace balcony watching the moon slip from branch to branch of dark sleeping trees, a white knitted " cloud " wrapped round my head and shoulders a shadowy figure " gray against the gray." So Ronald finds me when he saunters round from the dining- room a moment later, finishing his cigar. " Do I sleep do I dream, Or are visions about ? " he laughs, throwing away the cigar to lean over the balcony beside me. " What lucky chance induced you to take an airing here to-night, cousin ?" " No chance at all, but perfect good-nature," answer, smiling. "I did to others what I would have them do unto me in the same circumstances that was all." " I bless the kindly thought," Ronald says, look- ing at my smiling face by the light of the moon. l8o FOR LIFE AND LOVE. " We must leave them a long time together, Allie, mustn't we ? " I do not think he has ever called me Allie before, if he has, I do not remember it. But I like to hear him say it in that grave tender voice of his. " I must give them some tea presently/' ' ' Tea ! Do you think they will want tea or any- thing else while they have each other ? " " But Aunt Rosa will wake up like clock-work and call out for hers you know she always does." "I hope her jollity at dinner will have a soporific effect," Ronald laughs, shrugging his shoulders. " Allie, what a night it is. I was just wishing I could persuade you to come out when I turned the corner of the house and found you here." " "Were you indeed ? " I say, watching the moon glide across from one tufted 'tree-top to another. " It is seldom one's wishes are so quickly granted so far, at least, as my experience goes." " One would think you had need to wish for very little, Allie." " How so ? " I ask, turning my head to look at him. " Why, most people would say you had all your heart could desire." " Has anybody that, I wonder ? " " I have gone back to my contemplation of the moon, and I speak the words dreamily, not so much a question as an assertion, yet Ronald answers them as if they had been a question. " Do you mean, is there anybody perfectly happy in the world ? " " If having all the iieart could desire would make one happy yes." " I only desire one thing at this moment, "Ronald Bays, in a lower tone. " To make you happy ? " FOR LIFE AND LOVE. l8t " To make me so intolerably happy that I would count one hour of such happiness worth the pain and toil of a lifetime if by that only could I attain it." He is not looking at me now, but at my dusky belt of woodland rising densely black against the faint fair moonlit sky. But I glance at his grave face almost stern it looks as he stands there erect in the moonlight and wonder why my heart beats so loudly, and what new glory has come to the soft splendor of the September night. " Allie," he says, turning to me suddenly, "you told me once that you cared so much for somebody else that, though I might be a thousand times better a thousand times more worthy these are your own words I could never be to you what that man was." "Yes," I answer vaguely, remembering the day and the hour when I had said it, standing in the drawing-room window at Woodhay the very window which is glimmering behind us now in the light of the moon. " I did not ask you his name then, and I am not going to ask it now," Ronald goes on, in the same quick passionate way. " But I am going to ask you if you will reconsider your answer to me that day, Allie if you can find it in your heart to love me a little now I, who have loved you so long ! " My heart ! What heart ? My heart lies buried under those night-black trees in the hollow yonder ! How can I give him or any one that dead and loathsome thing ? " But I have no heart to give you, Ronald." " Have you not ? " he says, smiling a little. "Allie, I am wiser than you, and I think you have.'"' In a moment in a second of time, it seems to me my spirit flies away to that shadowy combe dowo ?82 FOR LIFE 4ND LOVE. by the rushing river, whore the moonlight glimpses so mysteriously through the moving branches, and searches till it finds that lonely grave finds it, and tears away the mosses, the long trailing grasses, the dead leaves of three sorrowful winters, and discovers nothing. It is not there, the heart that I buried there three years ago that shallow grave had no power to hold it it is free ! " Allie, have you no heart to give me now ?" He is watching my face, he has drawn nearer to me he holds out his arms. And, with a rapture that is too deep for utterance, I cast away that haunting memory and suffer myself to be folded in the strong arms of the man whom I believe I have really loved since the very day that he ceased to make love to me ! TEE END. MRS. WINSIOW'S SOOTHING SYRVP A Word 1o Mothers the advertisements of Mrs 4 Winslow's Soothing Syrup state precisely what the experienced tiurse knew the syrup had done and would continue to do for infants, there is as much that might be said of what it does for mothers. In allaying the pain of infants while teething, it insures to mothers peaceful days and restful nights. In relieving infants of wind colic it re- lieves mothers of one of their main causes for anxiety, and as a remedy for diarrhoea it would seem to be the antidote for all maternal fears. Hence mothers can. enjoy the home cir- cle and the outside world as well while their infants thrive through the medium Of Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup. Reasons why you should obtain a Cat- alogue of our Publications A postal to us will place it in your hands 1. You will possess a comprehen- sive and classified list of all the best standard books published, at prices less than offered by others. 2. You will find listed in our cata- logue books on every topic : Poetry, Fiction, Romance, Travel, Adven- ture, Humor, Science, History, Re- ligion, Biography, Drama, etc., be sides Dictionaries and Mannals, Bibles, Recitation and Hand Books, Sets, Octavos, Presentation Books and Juvenile and Nursery Literature in immense variety. 3. You will be able to purchase books at prices within your reach ; as low as 10 cents for paper covered books, to $5 oo for books bound in cloth or leather, adaptable for gift and presentation purposes, to suit the tastes of the most critical. 4. You will save considerable money by taking advantage of our SPECIAL DISCOUNTS, which we offer to those whose purchases are large enough to warrant us in making a reduction. HURST & CO., Publishers, 395, 397. 399 Broadway, New York. By Horatio Alger, Jr. The Boy's Writer A SERIES of books known to all boys ; books that *"* are good and wholesome, with enough " ginger " in them to suit the tastes of the younger generation. The Alger books are not filled with " blood and thunder" stories of a doubtful character, but are healthy and elevating, and parents should see to it that their children become acquainted with the writings of this celebrated writer of boy's books. We publish the titles named below : Adrift in New York. Bound to Rise. Rrave and Bold. Cash Buy. Do and Dare. Driven from Home. Erie Train Boy. Facing the World. Hector's Inheritance. Herbert Carter's Legacy. In a New World. Jack's Ward. Julius the Street Boy. Luke Walton. Only an Irish Boy. Paul the Peddler. Phil the I-icldler. Ralph Raymond's Heir. Risen from the Ranks. Shifting for Himself. Slow and Sure. Store Boy. Strive and Succeed. Strong and Steady. Tom the Bootblack. Try and Trust. Young Acrobat. Young Outlaw. Any of these books will be mailed upon receipt of 50 cents. Do not fail to procure one or more of these noted volumes. A Complete Catalogue of Books upon request. sent HURST & CO., Publishers, NEW YORK A BOOK OF THE HOUR The Simple Life By CHARLES WAGNER Translated from the French by H. L. WILLIAMS The sale of this book has been magnetic and its effect far-reaching. It has the endorsement of public men, literary critics and the press generally. This is the book that President Roosevelt preaches to his countrymen. The price is made low enough to be within the reach of all. Don't fail to purchase a copy yourself and recommend it to your friends. Cloth binding, 12 mo. Price, postpaid, 500. Get Our Latest Catalogue Free Upon Request. HURST & CO., Publishers, NEW YORK By John Habberton Interesting ! Entertaining ! Amusing! A BOOK with a famous reputation. It is safe to say that no book, illustrating the doings of child- ren, has ever been published that has reached the popularity enjoyed by " HELEN'S BABIES." Brilliantly written, Habberton records in this volume some of the cutest, wittiest and most amusing of childish sayings, whims and pranks, all at the expense of a bachelor uncle. The book is elaborately illustrated, which greatly assists the reader in appreciating page by page, Habberton's masterpiece. Published as follows : Popular Price Edition, Cloth, 60c., Postpaid. Quarto Edition, with Six Colored Plates, Cloth, $1.25, Postpaid. We guarantee that you will not suffer from "the blues " after reading this book. Ask for our complete catalogue. Mailed upon request. HURST & CO., Publishers, 395-399 Broadway, New York. Mirthful Books Worth Reading ! 9eek's cf Mumcr No author has achieved a greater national reputa- tion for books of genuine humor and mirth than GEORGE W. PECK, author of " Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa." We are fortunate to be able to offer, within everyone's reach three of his latest books. The titles are Peck's Uncle Ike, Peck's Sunbeams, Peck's Red-Headed Boy. CLOTH Binding, 6Oc., Postpaid. PAPER Binding, 3Oc., Postpaid. By failing to procure any one of these books you lose an opportunity to " laugh and grow fat." When you get one you will order the others. Send for our Illustrated Catalogue of Books. HURST & CO., Publishers, 395-399 Broadway, New York. > Elegant Gift Books J> Hurst's Presentation A Distinctive Cover Design oil Each Book A BEAUTIFUL series of /oung People's Books to ** suit the tastes of the most fastidious. The pub- lishers consider themselves fortunate in being able to offer such a marvelous line of choice subjects, made up into attractive presentation volumes. Large type, fine heavy paper, numerous pictures in black, inserted with six lithographic reproductions in ten colors by eminent artists, bound in extra English cloth, with three ink and gold effects. Price, postpaid, Ji.oo per volume. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Andersen's Fairy Tales. Arabian Nights. Black Beamy. Child's History of England. Grimm's Fairy Tales. Gulliver's Travels. Helen's Babies, Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare". Mother Goose, Complete. Palmer Cox's Fairy Book. Peck's Uncle I*e and the Red- Headcd Boy. Pilgrim's Progress. Robinson Cruwoc. Swiss Family Robinson. Tales from'Scon forYi.ung People. Tom Brown's School Days. Uncle Tota's Cabin. Books sure to be a delight to every boy and girl who becomes the proud possessor of any or all of them. Write for our Complete Catalogue. HURST & CO., Publishers, 395-399 Broadway, New York. of THIS popular novel writer has written a large number of successful books that have been widely circulated and are constantly in demand. We issue twenty of them as below : Aikenside, Bad Hugh, Cousin Maude, Darkness and Daylight, Dora Deane, Edith Lyle's Secret, English Orphans, Ethelyn's Mistake, Family Pride, Homestead on the Hillside, Leighton Homestead, Lena Rivers, Maggie Miller, Marian Grey, Mildred, Millbank, Miss McDonald Rector of St. Marks, Rose Mather, Tempest and Sunshine. Any of these books will be supplied, postpaid, in cloth binding-, at SQC. In paper binding, i5C. Obtain our latest complete catalogue. HURST & CO., Publishers, 395-399 Broadway, New York. Dictionaries of the English Language A DICTIONARY is a book of reference ; a book that is constantly looked into for information on various meanings and pronunciations of the several thousand words of our language. The publishers, recognizing the importance of placing before the public a book that will suit all pocket-books and come within the reach of all, have issued several editions of Dic- tionaries in various styles and sizes, as follows : Peabody's Webster Dictionary, ... 2Oc. Hurst's Webster Dictionary, .... 25c. American Popular Dictionary, - 85c. American Diamond Dictionary, (abie't^u^) 4Oc - Hurst's New Nuttall, 75c. With Index, $1.OO. Webster's Quarto Dictionary, Cloth, - $1.25. " " " % Russia, $1.75. " " " Full Sheep, $2.25. Any of the above will be mailed, postpaid, at the prices named. Send for our complete catalogue of books. HURST & CO., Publishers, 395-399 Broadway, New York. Dictionaries of the Foreign Languages The increased demand for good, low-priced, Foreign Dictionaries, prompts the publishers to issue an up-to- d-te line of these books in GERMAN, FRENCH and SPANISH, with the translation of each word into English, and vice versa. These lexicons are adaptable for use in schools, academies and colleges, and for all persons desirous of obtaining a correct knowledge of these languages. Durably bound in half leather, size 7x5$, fully illus- trated, we offer the following : GERMAN-ENGLISH Dictionary, Price, Postpaid, $1.00, FRENCH-ENGLISH " " < $1.00. SPANISH-ENGLISH " " $1.00. Or, the publishers will send all three, postpaid, upon receipt of 8I2.CO. The same books, without illustrations, bound in cloth, size <>x4i, are offered at 50c., postpaid, or, all three for $1.00. Our " new possessions " make it imperative that an understanding of these languages are a necessity, and these books will fill a long felt want. Write for our Complete Book Catalogue. HURST & CO., Publishers, 365-3QO Eroadway, New York. 000789150