"Philip Henderson!" Miss Johnston repeated, looking up from her work; "was that the name of the man who defrauded you?"
"He was my step-father—the villain! My own father I do not recollect—he died in my infancy, leaving my mother wealthy—the possessor of half a million nearly. She had married this man Henderson before I was three years old; and I remember how pleased I was when he first came, with the little baby-sister he brought me—for he was a widower with a child not two years old. Shortly after my mother's second marriage, we left Rochester, where I was born. Mr. Henderson purchased, with my mother's money, of course, for he had none of his own, a magnificent place up at Yonkers—a house like a castle, and magnificent grounds. Everything was in keeping; the furniture, pictures, and plate superb; a whole retinue of servants; the fastest horses and finest carriages in the country. It is like a dream of fairy-land to me now to look back upon. Olly and I (his daughter's name was Olive), as we grew up, had a governess, and masters in the house, and played in bright silk dresses among the pastures, and fountains, and graperies of our palace-like home. The place was filled with company all the summer through—nothing but balls and soirees, and dressing and dancing, and fetes champetre; and in the winter, Mr. and Mrs. Henderson came down to the city, leaving us in charge of the housekeeper and governess. It is a very pleasant thing, no doubt, spending money as freely as if it were water; but, unfortunately, even half a million of dollars will not last forever. Mr. and Mrs. Henderson, and their two daughters—for I passed as his child, too, and scarcely knew the difference myself—were all the fashion for nearly ten years, and then the change began to come. I was only thirteen, and not old enough to understand the stormy scenes between Henderson and my mother—her passionate reproaches of his folly and extravagance, his angry recrimination, and the ominous whisperings of the servants. Suddenly the crash came—Henderson had fled, taking Olly with him, and the few thousands that yet remained of our princely fortune. He was over head and ears in debt; the creditors seized everything—house, furniture, plate, and all—and my mother and I were penniless. Miss Johnston, the shock killed her. She had always been frail and delicate, and she never held up her head after. She was buried before a month passed; and I, at the age of thirteen, was alone in the world, and a pauper. But a child of that age cannot realize misery as we can in after-years. I was fully conscious of present discomfort, but of the future I never thought. My mother had left Yonkers immediately after the creditors' seizure, too keenly sensitive to remain a beggar where she had once reigned a queen, and came here to the city. She came here to an old servant of hers, to whom she had been a kind friend in other days, and the woman did not forget it. She was comfortable enough with her husband and two children, and she kept me and sent me to learn the business I now work at. I remained with her nearly six years, realizing more and more every day what I had lost in losing wealth. She is dead now. Her husband is married again and gone to California, and I am here, the most miserable creature, I believe, in all this great desert of a city."
She had been walking up and down all the time, this impetuous Miss Wade, with rapid, excited steps, speaking in a rapid, excited voice, a fierce light flaring in her large angry eyes. The actress had finished her work; it lay on her lap now, her quiet hands folded over it, her quiet eyes following the passionate speaker.
"Wade, I suppose," was her first remark, "was your own father's name. When did you adopt it?"
"Only when I came here. The name of Henderson had long been odious to me, but the family I lived with was too accustomed to it to change."
"And have you never heard from this man Henderson or his daughter since?"
"I have heard of them, which is as good; and, thank God! retribution has found them out! They are both dead—he committed a forgery, and shot himself to escape the consequences; and Olly—she was always a miserable, puling, sickly thing—died in a hospital. They have been made an example of, thank Heaven! as they deserved to be."
She uttered the impious thanksgiving with a fierce joy that made the actress recoil. But her mood changed a second after; she stopped in her walk, the darkly-sullen look settling on her face again, and stared blankly at the flaring candle, dripping tears of fat over the candlestick. So long she stood that the actress rose and began folding up the flower-girl's dresses, preparatory to starting for the theater.
"Are you going?" Miss Wade asked, coming out of her moody reverie.
"Yes, when I have had a cup of tea—it is drawing down stairs at Mrs. Butterby's fire. Will you not take another?"
"No, thank you; I can't eat. I will wait here while you take it."
There was a newspaper on the bed. Miss Wade took it, and sat down to read whilst she waited. The actress left the room, returning a moment or two after, with a small snub-nosed teapot and a plate of buttered toast. She was standing at a little open pantry pouring out the tea, when she suddenly laid down the teapot, and turned round to look at her companion. It was not an exclamation Miss Wade had uttered, it was a sort of cry; and she was holding the paper before her, staring at it in blank amaze.
"What is the matter?" Miss Johnston inquired, in her calm voice.
Miss Wade looked up, a sudden and strange flush passing over her colorless face.
"Nothing," she said, slowly. "That is—I mean I saw the—the death of a person I knew, in this paper."
She held it up before her face, and sat there while the actress drank her tea and ate her toast, never moving or stirring. Miss Johnston left the pantry, put on her bonnet and shawl, and took up her bundle as if to go.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Wade," she said, "but it is time for us to go."
Miss Wade arose, with the paper still in her hand. Two bright spots, all unusual there, and which strong excitement alone could bring, burned on either cheek, and a strange dusky fire shone in her eyes.
"I do not think I will go to the theater to-night, Miss Johnston," she said. "My head aches. I will take this paper, if you will let me, and read it in my room for a little while, and then go to bed."
The actress assented, looking at her curiously, and Miss Wade passed down the dark stairs to her own room. There was a lamp on the table, which she lit, then she locked the door; and with that same red spot on each cheek, and that same bright light in each eye, sat down with the paper to read. But she only read one little paragraph among the advertisements, and that she read over and over, and over again. The paper was the Montreal True Witness, some two or three weeks old, and the paragraph ran thus:
"Information Wanted.—Of Philip Henderson or his heirs. When last heard from he was in New York, but is supposed to have gone to Canada. He or his descendants will hear of something to their great advantage by applying to John Darcy, Barrister-at-Law, Speckport."
"Information Wanted.—Of Philip Henderson or his heirs. When last heard from he was in New York, but is supposed to have gone to Canada. He or his descendants will hear of something to their great advantage by applying to John Darcy, Barrister-at-Law, Speckport."
It is three days by steamer and rail-cars from New York to Speckport; but as steam never traveled half as fast as story-tellers, we are back there in three seconds. Dear, foggy Speckport, I salute thee!
In a grimy office, its floor freshly sprinkled, its windows open to admit the March-morning sunshine, in a leathern-covered armchair, before a littered table, Mr. Darcy, barrister-at-law, sits reading the morning paper. It is the "Daily Snorter," and pitches savagely into the "Weekly Spouter," whose editor and proprietor, under the sarcastic title of "Mickey," it mildly insinuates is an ignorant, blundering, bog-trotting ignoramus, who ought still to be in the wilds of Connemara planting potatoes, instead of undermining the liberty of this beloved province, and trampling the laws of society under his ruthless feet, by asserting, as he did yesterday, that a distinguished member of the Smasher party had been found lying drunk in Golden Row, and conveyed in that unhappy state to his residence in that aristocratic street, instead of to the watch-house, as he should. Much more than this the "Daily Snorter," the pet organ of the Smasher party, had to say, and the anathemas it fulminated against "that filthy sheet," the "Spouter," and its vulgar, blockheaded, addle-pated editor, was blood-curdling to peruse. Mr. Darcy was deep in it when the office door opened, and Mr. Val Blake lounged carelessly in. Mr. Darcy looked up with a nod and a laugh.
"Good morning, Blake! Fine day, isn't it? I am just reading this eulogy the 'Snorter' gives you."
"Yes," said Mr. Blake, mounting the back of a chair as if it were the back of a horse, and looking the picture of calm serenity. "Severe, is it? Who do you suppose I had a letter from last night?"
"How should I know?"
"You won't faint, will you? It was from Charley Marsh!"
Mr. Darcy dropped the "Snorter," and stared.
"Char—ley Marsh! It's not possible, Blake?"
"Yes, it is. I am on my way to Cottage Street at this present writing, to tell his mother."
"Well, this is an astonisher! And where is the boy?"
"You'd never guess. A captain in the Southern army."
"You don't say so! How did he ever get there?"
"You see," said Val, "it's a long letter, and he explains everything. After he broke jail that time (of course, Turnbull helped him off), he skulked in the woods for two or three weeks, visited occasionally by a friend (Turnbull again), and through him heard of Nathalie's death. At last, he got the chance of a blockade-runner. The 'Stonewall Jackson' was leaving here, and he got on board, ran the blockade, and found himself in Dixie. There he was offered a captainship, if he would stay and fight a little. He accepted, and that's the whole story. I must tell the mother. It will do her more good than fifty novels and fifty thousand blue pills. Jo went into hysterics of delight when she heard it at breakfast, and I left her kicking when I came away."
"Does he say anything at all about the murder?"
"Oh, yes. I forgot that. He wants to know if Cherrie has turned up yet, and says he may thank her for all his trouble. He was up at Redmon that night to meet her. She had promised to elope with him, but she never came. He protests his innocence of the deed, and I believe him."
"Humph!" said Mr. Darcy, reflectingly. "It is most singular Cherrie does not turn up. I dare say she could throw light on the subject, if she chose."
"I don't despair, yet," said Val. "I'll find her before I stop, if she's above ground. No news yet, I suppose, from the heirs of Redmon?"
"None; and I am sick and tired of advertising. Not a New York or Canadian paper I have not tried, and all alike unsuccessfully. I believe the man's dead, and it's of no use."
"Well," said Mr. Blake, dismounting from the chair, "I'm off. I must get back to the office after I've seen Mrs. Marsh, and give the 'Snorter' such a flailing as it won't get over for a month of Sundays."
Off went Mr. Blake like a long-legged steam-engine; and Mr. Darcy's office boy entered with a handful of letters from the post-office. The lawyer, laying down his paper, began to break the envelopes and read. The first three were business communications, brief and legal, in big buff envelopes. The fourth bore a different aspect. It was considerably stouter. The envelope was white; the writing, a lady's delicate spidery tracery; the postmark New York. The lawyer surveyed it for a moment in grave surprise, then broke it open and began to read. The letter was a long one—three sheets of note-paper closely written; and before he had got to the end of the first, Mr. Darcy, with a sort of shout of astonishment, began at the beginning again. Once, twice, three times, and Mr. Darcy perused the letter; and then rising, with the rest unopened, began pacing up and down the floor. The windows of the office faced the street, and, glancing out, he saw Mr. Blake striding past presently, as if shod with seven-league boots. Mr. Darcy put his head out of the window and hailed him.
"Hallo, Blake! Come up here a moment, will you?"
Mr. Blake looked up, ran up-stairs, and entered the office.
"You'll have to be quick, Mr. Darcy," he said. "Time's precious this morning, and my conscience is uneasy until I give the 'Snorter' fits. Anything up?"
"Yes. The heir of Redmon has turned up at last!"
"By Jove!" cried Val, "you don't say so? Where is he?"
"It's not a he. I should have said the heiress of Redmon has come to light. I have had a letter from Philip Henderson's daughter this morning."
"And where's Philip himself?"
"Where Heaven pleases. The man's dead, and has been these three years. No wonder he never answered our advertisements."
"But it is a wonder this daughter of his did not?"
"She never heard it until the day before she wrote, and then by the merest chance, she says. She is very poor, I fancy, though she does not exactly say so, and without the means to come on here."
"Where is she?"
"In New York. Mrs. Leroy told me her brother resided in Yonkers, with his wife and two daughters, she believed, and the writer of this letter corroborates that statement. They did live in Yonkers, she says, and were in affluent circumstances for a number of years, until she, the writer, was thirteen years old, when they became involved in debt, and everything was seized by the creditors. Henderson, the father, went to Canada. Mrs. Leroy told me she heard he had gone there, but they never held any correspondence. He went to Canada and died there about three years ago. The youngest daughter died about the same time, and the mother shortly after their loss of fortune. The writer of this letter, then, is the only survivor of the family, and the rightful heiress of Mrs. Leroy's fortune. She speaks of Mrs. Leroy, too; says her father had an only sister, who married a New York Jew of that name, for which low alliance, her father ever afterwards refused to have anything to do with her. She refers me to several persons in Yonkers, who can confirm her story, if necessary; though, as she has not been there since she was a child of thirteen, and is now a young lady of twenty, they would hardly be able to identify her. She works for her living, she says—as a teacher, I presume—and tells me to address my reply to 'Station G, Broadway.' Her story bears truth on the face of it, I think. Here is the letter—read it."
Mr. Blake took the lady-like epistle, and, apparently forgetful of his late haste, sat down and perused it from the date "New York, March 7th, 1862," to the signature, "Yours respectfully, Olive W. Henderson." He laid it down with a thoughtful face.
"Her statement is frank and clear, and coincides in every particular with what Mrs. Leroy told you. I don't think there is any deception, but you had better write to Yonkers and ascertain."
"I shall do so: and if all is right, I will forward money to Miss Henderson to come here at once. I am heartily glad to be rid of the bother at last. What will Speckport say?"
"Ah, what won't it say! It's an ill wind that blows nobody good; and what killed poor Natty Marsh is the making of this girl. I wonder if she's good-looking. I shouldn't mind making up to her myself, if she is."
"You might make down again, then. She wouldn't touch you with a pair of tongs. How did Mrs. Marsh take the news?"
"She cried a little," said Val, turning to go, "and then went back to 'Florinda the Forsaken,' I having disturbed her in the middle of the ninety-eighth chapter."
Nodding familiarly, Mr. Blake took his departure, and Mr. Darcy sat down to write to Station G, Broadway, and to Yonkers.
The very winds of heaven seemed to carry news in Speckport, and before night everybody at all concerned knew that the heiress of Redmon had turned up.
Before the expiration of a fortnight, Mr. Darcy received an answer from Yonkers. Mr. and Mrs. Philip Henderson had resided there with their two daughters some years before, but he had absconded in debt, and his wife had left the place, and died shortly after. Harriet and Olive, they believed, were the names of the children; but they knew nothing whatever of them, whether they were living or dead. Mr. Henderson, they had read in the papers, had died very suddenly in Canada—committed suicide, they believed, but they were not certain.
Mr. Darcy, upon receipt of these letters, forwarded a hundred dollars to Miss Henderson, desiring her to come on without delay to Speckport, and take possession of her property. The hunt for the heirs had given Mr. Darcy considerable trouble, and he was very glad to be rid of the bore. He directed the young lady to come to his house immediately upon landing, instead of a hotel; if she sent him word what day she would come, he would be at the boat to meet her.
Mr. Val Blake, among less noted people, went down to the wharf one Tuesday afternoon, nearly a fortnight after Mr. Darcy had dispatched that last letter containing the hundred dollars, to New York. It was late in March now, a lovely, balmy, June-like day; for March, having come in like a lion, was going peacefully out like a lamb. There was not a shadow of fog in Speckport. The sky was as blue as your eyes, my dear reader—unless your eyes happen to be black—with billowy white clouds sailing like fairy ships through a fairy sea. The soft breezes and warm sunshine rendered fans unnecessary, and the bay was a sheet of sapphire and gold. The wharf, a superb wharf, by the way, and a delightful promenade, was thronged. All the pretty girls in Speckport—and, oh! what a lot of pretty girls there are in Speckport—were there; so were the homely ones, and all the nice young men, and the officers with canes under their arms, staring at the fair Speckportians. Young and old, rich and poor, lined the wharf, sitting down, standing up, and walking about, attracted by the beauty of the evening, and the report that the new heiress was coming in that day's boat.
Mr. Val Blake, with his hands in his trowsers' pockets as usual, and his black Kossuth hat pushed far back on his forehead, not to obstruct his view, also as usual, lounged down through the crowd, nodding right and left, and joined a group near the end of the wharf, of whom Miss Jeannette McGregor, Miss Laura Blair, Miss Catty Clowrie, and Captain Cavendish formed prominent features. Two or three more officers and civilians hovered around, and way was made for Mr. Blake.
"Oh, Mr. Blake, do you suppose we'll know her when she lands?" eagerly inquired Miss McGregor. "I am dying to see what she is like!"
"Darcy's going on board after her," said Val, "you'll see him linking her up the wharf. I say, Laura, Bill told me you had a letter from Miss Rose."
"Why, yes, didn't you know? And she is coming back with Mrs. Wheatly, and I am so glad!"
"Have you been corresponding with Miss Rose all this time, Laura?" inquired Miss Clowrie.
"No; this is the first letter I have received. I sent her the 'Spouter,' containing Nathalie Marsh's death, to Quebec, and she wrote back in reply. This is all I have heard of her until now. She says she has had scarcely a moment to herself."
"Do you know, Laura," said Miss McGregor, "I used to think she was half in love with Charley Marsh before that terrible affair of his. He was a handsome fellow, and she must have seen a great deal of him, living in the same house."
"One might fall in love with Charley without living in the same house with him, mightn't they, Catty?" asked Mr. Blake, with a grin; "but it's all nonsense in saying the little school-mistress cared about him. She was too much of a saint to fall in love with any one."
"There's the boat!" cried Captain Cavendish; "coming round Paradise Island!"
"And there goes Darcy down the floats," echoed Val. "Watch well, ladies, and you will behold the heiress of Redmon in a jiffy."
The steamer swept around the island and floated gracefully up the harbor. In twenty minutes she was at the wharf; a little army of cabmen, armed with whips, stood ready, as if to thrash the passengers as they came up. A couple of M. P.'s, brass-buttoned, blue-coated, and red-batoned, stood keeping order among the rabble of boys, ready to tear each other's eyes out for the privilege of carrying somebody's luggage. Our party flocked to the edge of the high wharf overlooking the floats, up which the travelers must come, and strained their necks and eyes to catch sight of the heiress. Mr. Darcy had gone on board the first moment he could, and the passengers were flocking out and up the floats. Some of them, who had been to Speckport before, or had heard from others that it was one of the institutions of the place for the population of the town to flock down on such occasions, passed on indifferently; but others, more ignorant, looked, up in amazement, and wondered if all those people expected friends. Most of the passengers had gone, when there was an exclamation from more than one mouth of "Here she is!" "There's the heiress with Mr. Darcy!" "Look, she's coming!" and all bent forward more eagerly than before. Yes, Mr. Darcy was slowly ascending the floats with a lady on his arm, a tall lady, very slender and graceful of figure, wearing a black silk dress, a black cloth mantle trimmed with purple, a plain dark traveling bonnet, and a thick brown vail. The vail defied penetration—the eyes of Argus himself could not have discovered the face behind it.
"Oh, hang the vail!" cried Captain Cavendish; "they ought to be indicted as public nuisances. The face belonging to such a figure should be pretty!"
"How tall she is!" exclaimed Miss McGregor, who was rather dumpy than otherwise. "She is a perfect giantess!"
"Five feet six, I should say, was mademoiselle's height," remarked Val, with mathematical precision. "I like tall women. How stately she walks!"
"I suppose she'll be putting on airs now," remarked Miss McGregor, with true feminine dislike to hear another woman praised; "and forget she ever had to work for her living in New York. Or perhaps she'll go back there and take her fortune with her."
"You wouldn't be sorry, Jeannette, would you?" said Laura. "She's a terrible rival, I know, with her thirty thousand pounds, and her stately stature. Val, I wish you would find out what she is like before you come to our house this evening. You can do anything you please, and I am dying to know."
"All right," said Val; "shall I drop into Darcy's, and ask Miss Henderson to stand up for inspection, in order that I may report to Miss Blair?"
"Oh, nonsense! you can go into Mr. Darcy's if you like, and see her, without making a goose of yourself."
"And I'll go with him, Miss Laura," said Mr. Tom Oaks, sauntering up. "Blake has no more eye for beauty than a cow, or he would not have lived in Speckport all these years, and be a single man to-day. We'll both drop in to Darcy's on our way to you, Miss Blair, with a full, true, and particular account of Miss Henderson's charms."
"Oh, her charms are beyond dispute, already," said Captain Cavendish; "she has thirty thousand, to our certain knowledge."
"And of all charms," drawled Lieutenant the Honorable Blank, "we know that golden ones are the most to your taste, Cavendish. You'd better be careful and not put your foot in it with this heiress, as they tell me you did with the last."
Very few ever had the pleasure of seeing Captain Cavendish disconcerted. He only stared icily at his brother-officer, and offered his arm to Miss McGregor to lead her to her carriage, which was in waiting, while Mr. Oaks did the same duty for Laura. Mr. Blake saw her led off under his very nose, with sublimest unconcern, and lounged along the wharf, watching the deck-hands getting out freight, with far more interest than he could ever have felt in Laura's pretty tittle-tattle. If that lady felt disappointed, she knew the proprieties a great deal too well to betray it, and held a laughing flirtation all the way up the wharf with Mr. Tom Oaks.
"You will be sure to find out what the heiress is like," she said, bounding into the carriage. "I shall never know a moment's peace until I ascertain."
"I will go to Darcy's with Blake," answered Tom; "that's all I can do. If she shows it is all right; if she don't, a fellow can't very well send word to her to come and exhibit herself. Adieu, mesdemoiselles!"
The two gentlemen tipped their chapeaux gallantly as the carriage rattled off up the hilly streets of Speckport; for every street in Speckport is decidedly "the rocky road to Dublin." Mr. Oaks hunted up Mr. Blake, and led him off from the fascinating spot, where the men were noisily getting out barrels, and bales and boxes.
"I'll call round for you, Blake," he said; "and we'll drop into Darcy's, promiscuous, as it were, before going to Laura's. I want to see the heiress myself, as much as the girls do."
Mr. Blake was of much too easy a nature to refuse any common request; and when, about seven o'clock, Mr. Oaks, magnificently got up in full evening costume, partly concealed by a loose and stylish overcoat, called at Great St. Peter's Street, he found the master of No. 16 putting the finishing touches to a characteristically loose and careless toilet.
The two young men sallied forth into the brightly starlit March night, lighting their cigars as they went, and conjecturing what Miss Henderson might be like. At least Mr. Oaks was, Mr. Blake being constitutionally indifferent on the subject.
"What's the odds?" said Val; "let her be as pretty as Venus, or as ugly as a blooming Hottentot, it makes no difference to you or I, does it?"
"Perhaps not to you, you dry old Diogenes," said Tom; "but to me it's of the utmost consequence, as I mean to marry her, should she turn out to be handsome."
Mr. Blake stared, for Mr. Oaks had delivered himself of this speech with profoundest gravity; but as they were at the lawyer's door, there was no time for friendly remonstrance on such precipitate rashness. Val rang, and was shown by the young lady who answered the bell, and did general housework for Mrs. Darcy, into the parlor. Mr. and Mrs. Darcy were there, and so was the new heiress, to whom they were presented in form. She still wore her black silk dress, and lay back in a cushioned rocker, looking at the bright coal-fire, and talking very little. It was very easy to look at her; had she been a tall statue, draped in black, it could scarcely have been easier; and the two gentlemen took a mental photograph of her, for Miss Blair's benefit and their own, before they had been two minutes in the room.
"We were on our way to Miss Blair's tea-splash," Mr. Blake explained, "and dropped in. You're not coming, I suppose?"
No, a note-apology had been sent. They were not going. Mrs. Darcy was saying this when the young lady looked suddenly up.
"I beg you will not stay on my account," she said. "I am rather fatigued, and will retire. I shall be sorry if my arrival deprives you of any pleasure."
She had a most melodious voice, deep, but musical, and her smile lit up her whole dark face with a luminous brightness, most fascinating, but not easily described. You know the magnetic power some of these dark faces have, of kindling into sudden light, and how bewitching it is. Mr. Oaks seemed to find it so; for she was gazing with an entranced absorption that rendered him utterly oblivious of all the rules of polite breeding.
Mr. and Mrs. Darcy hastened to disclaim the idea of her presence depriving them of any pleasure whatever, as people always do on these occasions, and repeated their intention of not going. Messrs. Blake and Oaks accordingly took their leave, and sallied forth again under the quiet stars for the residence of Miss Laura Blair.
The pretty drawing-room of Laura's home was bright with gaslight and flowers, and fine faces and charming toilets, and red coats, for the officers were there when they entered. What Mr. Blake had denominated a "tea-splash" was a grand birth-day ball. Miss Laura was just twenty-one that night. She danced up to them as they entered, looking wonderfully pretty in rose-silk, and floating white lace, white roses in her hair and looping up her rich skirt. "So you have come at last!" was her cry, addressing Tom Oaks, and quite ignoring Mr. Blake—the little hypocrite! "Have you seen Miss Henderson?"
"Yes," said Val, taking it upon himself to reply, "and she's homely. Her nose turns up."
There was a cry of consternation from a group of ladies, who came fluttering around them, Miss Jo, tall and gaunt, and grand, in their midst.
"Homely!" shouted Mr. Oaks, glaring upon Val. "You lying villain, I'll knock you down if you repeat such a slander. She is beautiful as an angel! the loveliest girl I ever looked upon."
Everybody stared, and there was a giggle and a flutter among the pretty ones at this refreshingly frank confession.
"Nonsense!" said Val. "You can't deny, Oaks, but her nose turns up!"
"I don't care whether it turns up or down!" yelled Mr. Oaks, "or whether she's got any nose at all! I know it's perfect, and her eyes are like the stars of heaven, and her complexion the loveliest olive I ever looked at!"
"Olive!" said Mr. Blake. "I'll take my oath it's yellow, and she's as skinny as our Jo there."
"I'm obliged to you, Mr. Blake, for the compliment, I'm sure!" exclaimed Miss Jo, flashing fire at the speaker; "and I think you might have a little more politeness than running down the poor young lady, if her nose does turn up. Sure, she is not to blame, poor creature! if she is ugly!"
"But, I tell you, ma'am," roared Mr. Oaks, growing scarlet in the face, "she is not ugly! She's beautiful! She's divine! She's an angel!—that's what she is!"
"Well," said Mr. Blake, resignedly, "if she's an angel, all I've got to say is, that angels ain't much to my taste. She is not half as pretty as yourself, Laura; and now I want you to dance with me, after that."
Miss Blair, with a radiant face, put her pretty white hand on Val's coat-sleeve, and marched him off. A quadrille was just forming, and they took their places.
"So she's really not handsome, Val? What is she like?"
"Oh, she's tall and thin, and straight as a poplar, and she has big, flashing black eyes, and tar-black hair, all braided round her head, and a haggard sort of look that I don't admire. I dare say, Lady Macbeth looked something like her; but she is not the least like poor Nathalie Marsh."
"Ah! poor Nathalie! dear Nathalie!" Laura sighed. "It seems like yesterday since that night last May, at Jeannette McGregor's, when she was the belle and the heiress of Redmon, we all thought, and Captain Cavendish came for the first time. I remember, too, Miss Rose arrived that night, and we were asking Charley—poor Charley!—what she looked like. And now to think of all the changes that have taken place! I declare, it seems heartless of us to be dancing and enjoying ourselves here, after all!"
"So it is," said Val, "and we are a heartless lot, I expect; but, meantime, the quadrille is commencing, and as you have not taken the vail yet, Miss Blair, suppose you make me a bow, and let us have a whack at it with the rest!"
A pretty room—Brussels carpet on the floor, marble-topped table strewn with gayly-bound books and photograph-albums, chairs and sofas cushioned in green billiard-cloth, hangings of lace and damask on the windows, a tall Psyche mirror, a dressing-table, strewn with ivory-backed brushes, perfume bottles, kid gloves, and cambric handkerchiefs; and marble mantel, adorned with delicate vases filled with flowers. You might have thought it a lady's boudoir but for the pictures on the papered walls—pictures of ballet-dancers and racehorses, with one or two Indian scenes of pig-sticking, tiger and jackal hunts, and massacres of Sepoys, and the pistols and riding-whips over the mantel, and the gentleman standing at the window, looking out. He wore a captain's uniform, and nothing could have set off his fine figure so well; and this lady-like apartment was his, and told folios about the man's tastes and character. He stood looking out on the lamp-lit street, with people passing carelessly up and down, not looking at them, but thinking deeply—thinking how the best-laid plans of his life had been defeated by that invincible Fate, which was the only deity he believed in, and laying fresh plans, so skillfully to be carried out as to baffle grim Madam Fate herself. He was going to a party to-night—a party given by Mrs. Darcy, to introduce the new heiress of Redmon to Speckportian society.
Captain George Percy Cavendish, standing at the window, looking abstractedly out at the starlit and gaslit street, was thinking. No one had wished more to see the heiress than he. She was the fashion, the sensation, the notoriety of the day. What eclat for him, not to speak of the solid advantages in the way of dollars and cents, to carry off this heiress, in fair and open combat, from all competitors. Tom Oaks, the most insensible of mankind, had seen her but once, and had gone raving about her ever since. Then, she was the heiress of Redmon, and Captain Cavendish had vowed a vow long ago, that Redmon and its thousands should be his, in spite of the very old Diable himself. Did he think remorsefully of that other heiress who had staked all for him, and lost the game? I doubt it.
A little toy of a clock on a Grecian bracket struck ten. There had been a noisy mess-dinner to detain him, and he was late; but he did not mind that. Mr. Johnson, his man, appeared, to assist him on with his greatcoat, and Captain Cavendish started to behold his fate!
The drawing-room of the lawyer's house was filled when he entered—he being himself the latest arrival. He stood near the door for some time, watching the figures passing and re-passing, gliding in and out of the dance—for they were dancing—glancing from one to the other of those pretty mantraps, baited in rainbow-silk, jewelry, and artificial flowers, for the capture of such as he. He was looking for the heiress, but all of those faces were familiar, and almost all deigned him their sweetest smiles in passing—for was there another marriageable man in all Speckport as handsome as he? While he waited, Lieutenant the Honorable L. H. Blank, in a brilliant scarlet uniform, approached with a lady on his arm, and Captain Cavendish knew that he was face to face with the heiress of Redmon! She had been dancing, and the lieutenant led her to a seat, and left her to fulfill some request of hers. Captain Cavendish looked at her, with an electric thrill flashing through every nerve. Tom Oaks was right when he had called this woman glorious. It was the only word that seemed to fit her, with her dark Assyrian beauty, her flaming black eye, and superb wealth of dead-black hair. Yes, she was glorious, this black-eyed divinity, who was dressed like the heroine of a novel, in spotless white, floating like a pale cloud of mist all about her, and emblematic of virgin innocence, perhaps; only this dark daughter of the earth would hardly do to sit to an artist for an ideal Innocence.
She was dressed with wonderful simplicity, with a coronal of vivid scarlet berries and dark-green leaves in the shining braids of her black hair, and a little diamond star, shining and scintillating on her breast. Her nose might turn up, her forehead might be too broad and high, her face too long and thin for classic beauty, but with all that she was magnificent. There was a streaming light in her great black eyes, a crimson glow on her thin cheeks, and a sort of subtle brilliant electricity about her, not to be described, and not to be resisted. This flashing-eyed girl was one of those women for whom worlds have been lost—dark enchantresses not to be resisted by mortal man.
While Captain Cavendish stood there, magnetized and fascinated, a ringing laugh at his elbow made him look round. It was Miss Laura Blair, of course; no one ever laughed like that, but herself.
"Love at first sight, is it?" she asked, with a wicked look; "come along, and I'll introduce you."
A moment after he was bowing to the dark divinity, and asking her to dance. Miss Henderson assented, with a bewitching smile, and turned that dark entrancing face of hers to Laura.
"Do you know I wanted you, and have sent my late partner off in search of you. I suppose the poor fellow is scouring the house in vain. They are going to take me to Redmon and around the town to-morrow, it seems, and I want to know if you will come?"
Come! Laura's sparkling face answered before her words. The enchantress had fascinated her as well as the rest; and, in a superb and gracious sort of way, she seemed to have taken a fancy in turn to the laughter-loving Bluenose damsel.
While Laura was speaking, Lieutenant Blank came up, looking dazed and helpless after his search; and directly after him, Mr. Tom Oaks, who had been hovering around Miss Henderson all the evening, like a moth round a candle. Mr. Oaks wanted her to dance, and glared vindictively upon Captain Cavendish on hearing she was engaged to that gentleman, who led her off with a calm air of superiority, very galling to a jealous lover.
The dance turned out to be a waltz, and Miss Henderson waltzed as if she had indeed been the ballet-dancer envious people said she was. She floated—it was not motion—and the young officer, who was an excellent waltzer himself, thought he never had such a partner before in his life. Long after the rest had ceased, they floated round and round, the cynosure of all eyes, and the handsomest pair in the room. Tom Oaks, looking on, ground his teeth, and could have strangled the handsome Englishman without remorse.
As he stood there glowering upon them, Mr. Darcy came along and slapped him on the back.
"It's no use, Oaks. You can't compete with Cavendish! Handsome couple, are they not?"
Mr. Oaks ground out something between his teeth, by way of reply, that was very like an oath, and Mr. Darcy went on his way, laughing. Standing there, scowling darkly, Mr. Oaks saw Captain Cavendish lead Miss Henderson to the piano.
Miss Henderson was a most brilliant pianiste, and quite electrified Speckport that night. Her white hands swept over the ivory keys, and a storm of music surged through the room, and held them spell-bound.
Those who had stigmatized her as a ballet-dancer and a dress-maker were staggered. Ballet-dancers and dressmakers, poor things! don't often play the piano like that, or have Mendelssohn's and Beethoven's superbest compositions at their finger-ends. In short, Miss Henderson bewitched Speckport that night, even as she had bewitched poor Tom Oaks. Never had a debut on the great stage of life been so successful. Where the witchery lay, none could tell; she was not beautiful of feature or complexion, yet half the people there thought her dazzlingly beautiful.
In short, Olive Henderson was not the sort of woman fire-side fairies and household angels and perfect wives are made of, but the kind men go mad for, and rarely marry. She was so brightly beautiful that she defied criticism; and she moved in their midst a young empress, crowned with the scarlet coronal and jetty braids, her diamond-star scintillating rays of rainbow fire, and that smiling face of hers alluring all. Even that slow Val Blake felt the spell of the sorceress, recanted his former heresy, and protested he was as near being in love with her as he had ever been with any one in his life.
The confession was made to Laura Blair, of all people in the world; but the glamour was over her eyes, too, and she heard it without surprise, almost without jealousy.
"Oh, she's splendid, Val," the young lady enthusiastically cried. "I never loved any one so much in my life as I do her! How could you say she was ugly?"
"Upon my word, I don't know," responded Mr. Blake helplessly; "I thought she was at the time, but she don't seem like the same person. How that Cavendish does stick to her, to be sure."
The cold pale dawn of the April day was lifting a leaden eye over the bay and the distant hill-top, when the assembly broke up. It was four o'clock of a cold and winter morning before the lights were fled, the garlands dead, and the banquet-halls deserted. Speckport was very quiet as the tired pleasure-seekers went wearily home, the chill sweeping wind penetrating to the bone.
Leaning against a lamp-post, opposite Mr. Darcy's house, and gazing with ludicrous earnestness at one particular window of that mansion, was a gentleman, whom the cold and uncomfortable dawn appeared to affect but very little. The gentleman was Mr. Tom Oaks, his face flushed, his hair tumbled, and his shirt-bosom in a limp and wine-splashed state, and the window was that of Miss Henderson's room. Heaven only knows how these mad lovers find out things; perhaps the passion gives them some mysterious indication; but he knew the window of her room, and stood there watching her morning-lamp burn, with an absorption that rendered him unconscious of cold and sleet and fatigue. While he was gazing at the light, with his foolish heart in his eyes, a hand was laid on his shoulder, and a familiar voice sounded in his ear:
"I say, Oaks, old fellow! What are you doing here? You'll be laid up with rheumatic fever, if you stand in this blast much longer."
Tom turned round, and saw Captain Cavendish's laughing face. The young officer was buttoned up to the chin, and was smoking a cigar.
"It's no affair of yours, sir," cried Mr. Oaks, rather more fiercely than the occasion seemed to warrant. "The street's free, I suppose!"
"Oh, certainly," said the captain, turning carelessly away; "only Miss Henderson might consider it rather impertinent if she knew her window was watched, and there is a policeman coming this way who may possibly take you up on suspicion of burglary."
It is not improbable, if Captain Cavendish had not already been some paces off, Tom's fist would have been in his face, and his manly length measured on the pavement. Tom never knew afterward what it was kept him from knocking the Englishman down, whom he already hated with the cordial and savage hatred of a true lover. But the captain was not knocked down, and walked home to his elegant rooms, a contemptuous smile on his lips, but an annoyed feeling within. He was so confoundedly good-looking, he thought, this big, blustering, noisy Tom Oaks, and so immensely rich, and women had such remarkably bad taste sometimes that—
"Oh, pshaw!" he impatiently cried to himself, "what am I thinking of to fear a rival in Tom Oaks—that overgrown, blundering idiot. What a glorious creature she is! By Jove! If she were a beggar, those eyes of hers might make her fortune!"
Early in the afternoon of the next day, the plain dark carryall of the lawyer, containing himself and Miss Henderson, drove up to Mr. Blair's for Laura.
Laura did not keep them long waiting; she ran down the steps, her pretty face all smiles, and was helped in and driven off. Miss Henderson lay back like a princess among the cushions, a black velvet mantle folded around her, and looked languidly at the beauties of Speckport as Laura pointed them out. Queen Street stared with all its eyes after the heiress, and the young ladies envied Miss Blair her position, the cynosure of all. The windows of Golden Row were luminous with eyes. If the heiress of Redmon had been the pig-faced lady, she could hardly have attracted more attention. But she might have been a duchess, instead of an ex-seamstress, she was so unaffectedly and radically indifferent; she looked at banks, and custom-houses, and churches, and squares, and men, and women, with listless eyes, but never once kindled into interest. Yes, once they did. It was when they reached the lower part of the town, Cottage Street, in fact, and the bay, all alive with boats, and schooners, and steamers, and ships, came in sight, its saline breath sweeping up in their faces, and its deep, solemn, ceaseless roar sounding in their ears. The heiress sat erect, and a vivid light kindled in her wonderful eyes.
"Oh, the sea!" she cried; "the great, grand, beautiful sea! Oh, Laura! I should like to live where its voice would sound always, night and day, in my ears!"
She had grown so accustomed to hear every one the night before call Miss Blair Laura, that the name came involuntarily, and Laura liked it best.
"It is down here Nathalie Marsh used to live," Laura said; "there is the house. Poor Nathalie!"
"Mrs. Darcy was telling me of her. She was very pretty, was she not?"
"She was beautiful! Not like you," said Laura, paying a compliment with the utmost simplicity; "but fair, with dark blue eyes, and long golden curls, and the loveliest singer you ever heard. Every one loved her. Poor Natty!"
Tears came into Laura's eyes as she spoke of the friend she had loved, and through their mist she did not see how Olive Henderson's face was darkening.
"I never received such a shock as when I heard she was missing. I had been with her a little before, and she had been talking so strangely and wildly, asking me if I thought drowning was an easy death. It frightened me; but I never thought she would do so dreadful a deed."
"There can be no doubt, I suppose, but that it was suicide?"
"Oh no! but she was delirious; she was not herself—my poor, poor Natty! They talk of broken hearts—if ever any one's heart broke, it was hers!"
The strange, dark gloom falling like a pall on the face of the heiress, darkened, but Laura did not notice.
"Was it," she hesitated, and averted her face; "was it the loss of this fortune?"
"That, among other things; but I think she felt most of all about poor Charley. Ah! what a handsome fellow he was, and so fond of fun and frolic—every one loved Charley! I suppose Mrs. Darcy told you all the story?"
"Yes. You are quite sure it wasn't he, after all, who committed the murder?"
"Sure!" Laura cried, indignantly. "I am certain! If everybody hadn't been a pack of geese, they would never have suspected Charley Marsh, who wouldn't hurt a fly! No, it was some one else, and Val—I mean Mr. Blake—says if ever Cherrie Nettleby is found, it will be sure to come out!"
"And Mr. Blake supports Mrs. Marsh, Mrs. Darcy says. That is very good of him."
Laura's eyes sparkled.
"Good! Val Blake's the best, the kindest-hearted, and most generous fellow that ever lived. He has that off-hand, unpolished way, you know; but at heart, he is as good, and kind, and tender as a woman!"
She spoke with an eagerness—this impulsive Laura—that told her secret plainly enough; but the heiress was thinking of other things.
"She was engaged to Captain Cavendish—this Miss Marsh—was she not?" she asked.
"Yes, I believe so; but it never was so publicly given out. He was her shadow; and every one said it would be a match after Mrs. Leroy's death, for she detested him."
"How did he act after she lost her fortune?"
"Well, the time was so short between that and her dreadful death, that he had very little opportunity of doing anything; but the general opinion was, the engagement would be broken off. In fact, he told Val himself that she broke off, immediately after—for Natty was proud. He went to the house every day, I know, until—Oh!quand on parle de diable—there he is himself!"
Laura did not mean by this abrupt change that his Satanic Majesty was coming, though it sounded like it. It was only one of his earthly emissaries—Captain Cavendish, on horseback. Captain Cavendish looked handsomer on horseback than anywhere else, a fact of which he was fully convinced, and he rode up and lifted his hat to the ladies with gallant grace.
"Good day to you, mesdemoiselles! I called at your house, Mr. Darcy, but found Miss Henderson out! I trust I find you well, ladies, after last night's fatigue?"
He addressed both, but he spoke only to one. That one lifted her dark eyes and bowed distantly, almost coldly, and it was Laura who answered.
"Seven or eight hours' incessant dancing have no effect on such constitutions as ours, Captain Cavendish! We have been showing Miss Henderson the lions of Speckport!"
"And what does Miss Henderson think of those animals?"
"I like Speckport," she said, scarcely taking the trouble to lift her proud eyes; "this part of it particularly."
She was in no mood for conversation, and took little pains to conceal it. "Not at home to suitors," was printed plainly on those contracted black brows, and in the somber depths of those gloomy eyes. Captain Cavendish lifted his hat and rode on, and the distrait beauty just deigned a formal bend of her regal head, and no more.
Laura smiled a little maliciously to herself, not at all sorry to see the irresistible Captain Cavendish rather snubbed than otherwise. There was nowhere to go now but to Redmon, and they drove along the quiet road, in the gathering twilight of the short March afternoon. A gray and eerie twilight, too, the low flat sky, of uniform leaden tint, hanging dark over the black fields and moaning sea. The trees, all along the road, stretched out gaunt, bare arms, and the cries of the whirling sea-gulls came up in the cold evening blasts. They had fallen into silence, involuntarily—the gloom of the hour and the dreary scene weighing down the spirits of all. Something of the gloominess of the flat dull landscape lay shadowed on the face of the heiress, as she shivered behind her wraps in the raw sea-gusts.
Ann Nettleby stood at her own door as the party drove by. The cottage looked forlorn and stripped, too, with only bare poles where the scarlet-runners used to climb, and a dismal entanglement of broom stalks, where the roses and sweetbrier used to flourish. Mr. Darcy drew rein for a moment to nod to the girl.
"How d'ye do, Ann! Any news from that runaway Cherrie yet?"
"No, sir," said Ann, her eyes fixed curiously on the heiress.
"Is this Redmon?" asked Miss Henderson, looking over the cottage at the red brick house. "What a dismal place!"
Dismal, surely, if house ever was! All the shutters were closed, all the doors fastened, no smoke ascending from the broken chimneys, no sound of life within or without; not even a dog, to humanize the ghostly solitude of the place. Black, and grim, and ghostly, it reared its gloomy front to the gloomy sky; the stripped and skeleton trees moaning weirdly about it, an air of decay and desolation over all. Forlorn and deserted, it looked like a haunted house, and such Speckport believed it to be. The two young ladies leaning on Mr. Darcy's arms as they walked up the bleak, bare avenue, between the leafless trees, drew closer to his side, in voiceless awe. The rattling branches seemed to catch at the heiress as she passed them, to catch savagely at this new mistress, out of whose face every trace of color had slowly died away.
"It's a dismal old barrack," Mr. Darcy said, trying to laugh; "but you two girls needn't look like ghosts about it. If the sun was shining now, I dare say you would be laughing at its grimness, both of you."
"I don't know," said the heiress, "I cannot conceive this place anything but ghostly and gloomy. I should be afraid of that murdered woman or that drowned girl coming out from under those black trees in the dead of night. I shall never like Redmon."
"Oh, pooh!" said Mr. Darcy, "yes, you will. When the sun is shining and the grass is green, and the birds singing in these old trees, you'll sing a different tune, Miss Olive. We'll have a villa here, and this old rookery out of the way, and fine doings up here, and, after a while, a wedding, with Laura here, for bridesmaid, and myself to give you away. Won't we, Laura?"
"I'm sure I don't know, sir. Who do you want to give her away to?"
"Well, I'm not certain. There's Tom Oaks looney about her; and there's that good-looking Englishman, all you girls are dying for. You like soldiers, don't you, Miss Olive?"
"Not particularly. Especially soldiers who never smell powder except on parade-day, and whose only battles are sham ones. I like those poor fellows who are fighting and dying down South, but carpet-knights I don't greatly affect.
"That's a rap over the head, Mr. Darcy," cried Laura, with sparkling eyes. "I wish he heard you, Miss Henderson."
"He might if he liked," said the heiress, scornfully.
"Well," said the lawyer, taking the "rap" good-humoredly, "he can make whom he marries, 'my lady,' some day. Is not that an inducement, my dear?"
"Is he of the nobility, then?" asked Olive Henderson, indifferently, and not replying to the question.
"He is next heir to a baronetcy. Lady Olive Cavendish does not sound badly, does it?"
"He used to come here often enough in the old days," Laura said, looking at the gloomy old mansion; "he was all devotion to poor Nathalie."
Miss Henderson's beautiful short upper-lip curled.
"He seems to have got wonderfully well over it in so brief a time, for a love so devoted."
"It is man's nature, my dear," said Mr. Darcy; "here's the house, will you go through?"
Laura absolutely screamed at the idea.
"Good gracious, Mr. Darcy! I would not go in for all the world. Don't go, Olive—I mean Miss Henderson."
"Oh, call me Olive! I hate Miss Henderson. No, I don't care for going in—the place has given me the horrors already."
As they walked back to the carriage, Laura asked her what she thought of Mr. Darcy's plan of the villa.
"I shall think about it," was the reply. "Meantime, Mr. Darcy, I wish you would look out for a nice house for me, one with a garden attached, and a stable, and in some nice street, with a view of the water."
"But, dear me!" said Laura, "I should think it would be ever so much nicer and handier to board. It will be such a bother, housekeeping and looking after servants, and all that kind of thing. If I were you I would board."
She turned upon Laura Blair, her eyes, her face, her voice, so passionate, that that young lady quite recoiled.
"Laura!" she cried out, in that passionate voice, "I must have a home. A home, do you hear, not a boarding-house. Heaven knows I have had enough of them to last me my life, and the sound of the word is hateful to me. I must have a home where I will be the mistress, free to do as I please, to come and go as I like, to receive my friends and go to them as it suits me, unasked and unquestioned. I must have a home of my own, or I shall die."
Mr. Darcy looked out a house for the heiress; and after a fortnight's search, found one to suit. It belonged to a certain major, who was going with his bride, a fair Speckportian, home to old England, on a prolonged leave of absence. It was to be let, all ready furnished; it was situated around the corner from Golden Row, commanding a fine view of the harbor, and with two most essential requisites, a garden and a stable. It was a pretty little cottage house, with a tiny drawing-room opening into a library, and a parlor opening into a dining-room. There was a wide hall between, with a delightful glass porch in front, a garden fronting the street, and the door at the other end of the hall opening into a grass-grown backyard. Altogether it was a pleasant little house, and Miss Henderson took it at once, as it stood, on the major's own terms, and made arrangements for removing there at once.
"I must have a horse, Laura, you know," she said to Miss Blair, as they inspected the cottage together, for the two girls had grown more and more intimate, with every passing day. "I must have a horse, and a man to take care of him; and besides, I shall feel safer with a man in the house. Then I must have a housekeeper, some nice motherly old lady, who will take all that trouble off my hands; and a chambermaid, who must be pretty, for one likes to have pretty things about one; and I shall get new curtains and pictures, and send to Boston for a piano and lots of music, and oh, Laura! I shall be just as happy as a queen here all day long."
She waltzed round the room where they were alone, in her new glee, for she was as fitful of temper as an April day—all things by turns, and nothing long. Laura, who was lolling back in a stuffed rocker, looked at her lazily. "A housekeeper, Olly! There's Mrs. Hill, that widow you told me once you thought had such a pleasant face. She is the widow of a pilot, and has no children. She lives with her brother-in-law, Mr. Clowrie, and would be glad of the place."
Miss Henderson gave a last whirl and wheeled breezily down upon a lounge.
"Would she? But perhaps she wouldn't suit. I want some one that can get up dinners, and oversee everything when I have a party. I must have a cook, too—I forgot that."
Laura laughed.
"If you went dinnerless one day, you would be apt to remember it afterward. Mrs. Hill is quite competent to a dinner, or any other emergency, for she was housekeeper in some very respectable English family, before she married that pilot. I am sure she would suit, and I know she would like to come."
"And I know I would like to have her. I'll go down to Mr. Clowrie's to-morrow, and make her hunt me up a cook and housemaid, and stableman. I shall want a gardener, too—that's another thing I forgot."
"Old Nettleby will do that. I say, Olly, you ought to give us a house-warming."
"I mean to; but they never can dance in these little rooms. Oh, how nice it is to have a house of one's own!"
Laura wondered at the morbid earnestness of Miss Henderson on this subject. She knew very little of the prior history of the heiress, beyond that from great wealth she had fallen to great poverty, and had had unpleasant experience in New York boarding-houses; the probable origin of this desperate heart-sick longing for a house of her own—a home where she would be the mistress, the sovereign queen.
Mrs. Hill, the pilot's widow, was very glad of Miss Henderson's offer, and gratefully closed with it at once. Perhaps the bread of dependence, never very sweet, was unusually bitter, when sliced by the fair hand of Miss Catty. She was a tall, portly old lady, with a fair, pleasing, unwrinkled face, and kindly blue eyes, that had a motherly tenderness in them for the rich young orphan girl.
"And I want you to find me a cook, and a groom, and a housemaid, Mrs. Hill," Olive said; "and the girl must be pretty. I mean to have nothing but pretty things about me. I am going to the cottage on Monday, and you must have them all before then."
Mrs. Hill was a treasure of a housekeeper. Before Saturday night she had engaged a competent cook, whose husband knew all about horses, and took the place of groom and coachman. She got, too, a chambermaid, with a charmingly pretty face and form; and the new window-draperies of snowy lace and purple satin were festooned from their gilded cornices; and the new furniture was arranged; and the new pictures, lonely little landscape-scenes, hung around the walls. It was a perfect little bijou of a cottage, and the heiress danced from room to room on Monday morning with the glee of a happy child delighted with its new toy, and hugged Laura at least a dozen times over.
"Oh, Laura, Laura, how happy I am! and how happy I am going to be here! I feel as if this great big world were all sunshine and beauty, and I were the happiest mortal in it!"
"Yes, dear," said Laura, "but don't strangle me, if you can help it. The rooms are beautiful, and your dear five hundred are dying to behold them. When does that house-warming come off?"
Miss Henderson was whirling round and round like a crazy teetotum, and now stopped before Miss Blair with a sweeping courtesy that ballooned her dress all out around her.
"On Thursday night, mademoiselle, Miss Henderson is 'At Home'. The cards will be issued to-day. Come and practice 'Come Where my Love Lies Dreaming.' Captain Cavendish takes the tenor, and Lieutenant Blank the bass. We must charm our friends with it that night."
Miss Henderson did not invite all her dear five hundred friends that Thursday night—the cottage-rooms would not have held them. As it was, the pretty dining-room and parlor were well filled, and the heiress stood receiving her guests with the air of a royal princess holding a drawing-room. She looked brilliantly beautiful, in her dress of rich mauve silk sweeping the carpet with its trailing folds, its flounces of filmy black lace, a circlet of red gold in her dead black hair, twisted in broad shining plaits around her graceful head, a diamond necklace and cross blazing like a river of light around her swanlike throat, and a diamond bracelet flashing on one rounded arm. Speckport, ah! ever-envious Speckport, said these were but Australian brilliants, and that the whole set had not cost three hundred dollars in New York; but Speckport had nothing like them, and Speckport never looked on anything so beautiful as Olive Henderson that night. She was no longer wan and haggard; her dark cheeks had a scarlet suffusion under the brown skin, and the majestic eye a radiance that seemed more and more glorious every time you saw her.
No one could complain that night of caprice or coquetry, or partiality; all were treated alike; Tom Oaks, Lieutenant Blank, Mr. Val Blake, and Captain Cavendish; she had enchanting smiles, and genial hostess-like courtesies for all, love for none. Whatever beat in the heart throbbing against the amber silk, the lace and the diamonds of her bodice, she only knew—the beautiful dark face was a mask you could not read.
Miss Henderson's reception was a grand success; Mrs. Hill's supper something that immortalized her forever after in Speckport. The guests went home in the gray morning light with a dazed feeling that they had been under a spell all night, and were awakening uncomfortably from it now. They were under the spell of those magical smiles, of that entrancing face and voice—a spell they were powerless to withstand, which fascinated all against their better judgment, which made poor Tom Oaks wander up and down in the cold, before the cottage, until sunrise, to the imminent risk of catching his death; which made half a score of his young towns-men lose their sleep and their appetite, and which made Captain George Percy Cavendish pace up and down his room in a sort of fever for two mortal hours, thrilling with the remembrance of the flashing light in those black eyes, in the bewildering touch of those hands. For you see, Captain Cavendish, having set a net to entrap an heiress, was getting hopelessly entangled in its meshes himself, and was drunk with the draught he would have held to her lips.
And so the reeling world went round, and she who wove the spell, who turned the heads, and dazed the hot brains of these young men, lay tossing on a sleepless pillow, sleepless with the excitement of the dead hours, sleepless with something far worse than excitement—remorse!