She did not speak; a cold bend of the head answered him, and she rose up, haughty and pale. But he would not let her go; the power of his fixed gaze held her there as surely as if she had been chained.
"I fear," he said, in that quiet voice of his, "I fear you thought me rude in watching you, as I must own to having done. But I assure you, Miss Henderson, it was no intentional rudeness; neither was it my admiration, which, pardon me, is great! I watched, Miss Henderson, because I find you bear a most startling, a most wonderful resemblance to a person—a young girl—I once knew in New York."
She caught her breath, feeling the blood leaving her face, and herself growing cold. Paul Wyndham never took his pitiless eyes off her charming face.
"In saying I knew this young girl," he slowly went on, "I am wrong; I only saw her in the city streets. You came from New York, but you could not have known her, Miss Henderson, for she was abjectly poor. She lived in a mean and dirty thoroughfare called Minetta Street; she lodged in a house filled with rough factory-women, and kept by one Mrs. Butterby; and the young woman's name was Harriet Wade."
A moment after Mr. Wyndham said this, he came out of the curtained recess, and crossed the ballroom rapidly. On his way he met Laura Blair, and paused to speak.
"I am going for a glass of water," he said, "for Miss Henderson. I was talking to her at that window when she was taken suddenly ill. You had better go to her, Miss Blair. I am afraid she is going to faint."
A bleak and rainy morning in Speckport—a raw and windy morning, with a sky all lead-color, except where it was inky black. A wild, wet, rainy day, on which nobody wanted to stir out if they could help it. An utterly black and miserable day, that which followed the officers' ball.
On this wretchedly wet and windy day Olive Henderson sat at her chamber window, and looked out over the black and foam-crested bay. The room looked very cozy and pleasant, with its soft, warm, bright-hued Brussels carpet, its cushioned easy-chairs and lounges, its white-draped bed, its pretty pictures and tables, and bright coal fire burning in the glittering steel grate, its costly window-draperies of lace and damask, looking all the more pleasant and luxurious by contrast with the black, bleak day outside.
A delightful room this bad May morning, a room to bask and luxuriate in, this chamber of Olive Henderson. But Olive Henderson herself, sitting by the window, staring blankly out, seemed to take very little enjoyment in its comfort and beauty. She wore a white loose muslin wrapper, tied carelessly round the slender waist with a crimson cord, its every fold, as it hung straight about her, telling how indifferently the simple toilette had been made. All her profuse black hair was drawn away from her face, haggard and worn in the gray morning light, and fastened in a great careless knot behind. But, somehow, the stateliness that was a part of herself characterized her as strikingly in this primitive simplicity as when robed in velvet and diamonds last night. Perhaps Semiramis, Queen of Assyria, when in trouble with foreign parts, wore white muslin wrappers, and her black hair disheveled, before her subjects, and managed to look Queen Semiramis withal. It isn't likely, you know, but she may.
Rain, rain, rain! How ceaselessly it lashed the windows, and how piteously it beat on the heads of the poor little newsboys, passing up and down Golden Row, and chanting, disconsolately, "Morning Snorter," the "Sn-o-o-or-ter!" Perhaps, looking up at the curtained-window, where the young lady sat, these newsboys thought it was a fine thing to be Miss Olive Henderson, the heiress of Redmon, and live in a handsome house, with servants to wait on her, and nothing to do but play the piano, and drive about in her carriage all day long. But, I am pretty sure, there was not a pug-nosed urchin coming there that particular morning, who was not a thousand times happier than the heiress of Redmon.
Discovered—disgraced—in the power of this man—this stranger! Liable to be exposed as a liar and a cheat to the world at any hour! Liable to have all this wealth and luxury, for which she had done so much—for which she had risked her very soul—torn from her at any instant, and she herself thrust out to fight the battle of life, with poverty and labor and misery once more. She seemed to have grown old in four-and-twenty hours, with her haggard cheeks and great hollow eyes. She had sat as she was sitting now for hours, her hands clasped loosely in her lap, her vacant gaze fixed on the wretched day, but seeing nothing. Only yesterday, and she had been so sure, so secure, so happy, and now—and now!
She had not fainted the night before. Laura Blair found her lying back ghastly and white in her chair, but not insensible. The ballroom had been filled with consternation, and she was so surrounded immediately that Mr. Wyndham, returning with his glass of water, could find no possibility of approaching her. They had led her into the ladies' dressing-room, and Captain Cavendish had gone for a cab; and when she was a little better, they took her home, and the rest went back to the ballroom. People began to think that in spite of Miss Henderson's apparent physical perfection, she was subject to fainting fits, and pitied her very much, as they resumed their dancing. But the eclipsed belles of Speckport rejoiced, I am afraid, in their wicked little hearts, that the conqueress was gone, and held up their pretty heads, which had drooped in the sunlight of her shining presence before.
Once at home, Miss Henderson professed herself perfectly restored, and insisted on Laura and her mamma, who had been their chaperone, and Captain Cavendish, going back to the ball once more.
"I shall do well enough now," she said, wearily. "I am very foolish, but——"
Her voice died away, and her head drooped forward on her arm. Captain Cavendish bent tenderly over her, as she lay on a sofa, with a pale and anxious face.
"My darling," he said, "I am afraid you are very ill. Let me go for Dr. Leach—this may be something serious."
But Miss Henderson positively refused, and insisted on their returning to the ball.
"I shall lie down and go asleep," she said, "and I will be quite restored to-morrow. Go at once."
"I shall go," the captain said, holding her hands, "but not back to the ball. Do you think there could be any pleasure for me there, and you absent, Olive? Good night, my love—get rid of this white face before I see you to-morrow."
Olive Henderson slept that night, but it was more like stupor than healthful sleep, and she awoke with a dully throbbing headache, and a numbing sense of misery at her heart. She had arisen in the black and wretched dawn of that miserable May morning, and had sat staring vacantly out at the ceaseless rain, and dark and turbid sea. She was not thinking—she was sitting there in a dull torpor of despair, waiting for the end.
There was a knock at the door. It had to be repeated two or three times before she comprehended what it meant, and then she arose and opened the door. It was Rosie, the housemaid; and the girl recoiled at sight of her, as if she had seen a ghost.
"My patience, Miss! how bad you do look! I am afraid you are worse than you was last night."
"No. What is it you want?"
"It's a gentleman, Miss, that has called, and is in the drawing-room, although it is raining cats and dogs."
She presented a card to her mistress, and Olive read the name of "Paul Wyndham." She turned sick at sight of that name—that name so lately heard for the first time, but so terribly familiar now; and looked at the girl with a sort of terror in her great black eyes.
"Is this man—is this Mr. Wyndham here?"
"Down in the drawing-room, Miss, and his overcoat and umbrella making little streams of rain-water all along the hall. Will you go down, Miss?"
Olive Henderson's hand had closed on the pasteboard with so convulsive a pressure, that the card was crushed into a shapeless mass. Her stupor was ending in a sort of sullen desperation. Let the worst come, it was Fate; and she was powerless to battle with so formidable a foe. Whatever brought this man now, his coming was merciful; the most dreadful certainty was better than this horrible suspense, which had made the past night a century of misery.
Rosie, the pretty housemaid, watched her young lady's changing face, as she walked rapidly up and down, her eyes staring straight before her with a fierce and feverish luster, and her lips so rigidly set. Rosie saw all this, and greatly marveled thereat. A gentleman had called very early on a very wet morning; but that was no reason why Miss Henderson should be prancing up and down her room, with the look of an inmate of a lunatic asylum.
"Will I tell him you'll come down, Miss?" Rosie ventured to ask, when she thought the silence had lasted long enough.
The voice of the girl drew Olive out of her darkly-brooding fit, and she turned to close her door.
"Yes," she said. "Tell him I will be down in five minutes."
She walked to the glass, and looked at herself. I dare say Lady Jane Grey and Mary Queen of Scots did the same before they were led to the block; and I doubt if either wore a more ghostly face at that horrible moment than the girl standing there did now. She smiled in bitter scorn of herself, as she saw the haggard face and the hollow, burning eyes.
"I look as if I had grown old in a night," she said. "Where is the beauty now that so many have praised since I came here?"
She made no attempt to change her dress, but with the loose white muslin wrapper trailing in long folds around her, and girdled with scarlet, she descended the stairs, and entered the drawing-room.
Mr. Paul Wyndham was sitting at a window, watching the ceaseless rain beating against the glass. At that very window, looking out at the silvery moonlight, she herself had sat a few nights before, while she promised Captain Cavendish she would be his wife. Perhaps she thought of this as she swept past, à la princesse, just deigning to acknowledge her visitor's presence by her haughtiest bow. She could not have acted otherwise, had a hundred fortunes depended on it, and she did not sit down.
She stood beside the mantel, her arm, from which the flowing white sleeves dropped away, leaning on it, her eyes fixed steadily upon the man before her, waiting in proud silence for what he had to say. Any one else might have been disconcerted; but Mr. Wyndham did not look as if he was. He looked pale and quiet and gentlemanly, and entirely self-possessed.
"You do not ask the object of my visit, Miss Henderson," he said, "although the hour is unfashionably early, and the day not such as callers usually select. But I presume you have been expecting me, and are not surprised."
"I am not surprised," she said, coldly.
"I thought that at this hour I should be most certain of finding you at home and alone. Therefore, I have come, knowing that after what passed last night, the sooner we come to an understanding the better."
"How have you found out my secret?" she abruptly demanded. "You never knew me in New York?"
"That is my secret, Miss Henderson—I presume you prefer being called by that name—that is my secret, and you will pardon me if I do not reveal it. I do know your secret, and it is that knowledge which has brought me to this place."
"And knowing it, what use do you intend to make of it?"
He smiled slightly.
"You are very straightforward, Miss Henderson. It is almost as easy getting on with you as if you were a man. I foresee that we shall settle this little matter pleasantly, after all."
Olive Henderson contracted her black brows, and reiterated her question.
"Knowing this secret, sir, what use do you intend making of it?"
"That depends upon yourself, madam."
"How?"
"I shall keep your secret, Miss Henderson," Paul Wyndham said, "I shall keep it inviolably; you shall still be Olive Henderson, heiress of Redmon, the lady paramount of Speckport, on one condition."
Her heart beat so fast and thick that she had to press her hands over it to still its tumultuous throbbing. Her hollow, burning black eyes never left his face, they were strained there in suspense too intense for words.
"You are aware, Miss Henderson," the cold, clear, yet melodious voice of Paul Wyndham went on, "of the position in which you stand. You have usurped the place of another—your stepsister—you have assumed a name which does not belong to you, and you have come here to dupe the people of this place, to pass yourself off for what you are not, and possess yourself of wealth to which you have no shadow of claim. In doing this, Miss Henderson, you must be aware you are guilty of a felony, punishable by law, punishable by trial, imprisonment, and life-long disgrace. All this you know, and knowing it, must be aware how entirely and irrevocably you are in my power!"
"Irrevocably and completely in my power," the pitiless voice went on, "you see it yourself as well as I. You know also much better than I do, the misery, the shame, the degradation exposure must bring. Your name published, your crime published far and wide, yourself the scoff and jeer of every boor in the town, the horrors of a jail, of a criminal cell, of a public trial before gaping thousands, of——"
Paul Wyndham stopped. It was not a cry she had uttered, but a gasping sob, telling more of the unutterable agony, the intense misery she was suffering, than any wild outbreak of womanly shrieks. She put out her hands with a passionate cry.
Paul Wyndham looked at the disturbed, crouching form, convulsed with despairing agony, with Heaven only knows how much of pity in his face.
"Miss Henderson! Miss Henderson!" he cried, "I did not mean—I did not think what I said would affect you like this. I only told you what might be, but it never will be, for you will listen to what I have yet to say, and I never will reveal your secret to a living soul!"
She lifted her head, and looked at him as a hunted stag might, with the knife at its throat.
"Mr. Wyndham," she said, with that dignity which is born of extreme misery, "what have I ever done to you that you should come here and torment me like this?"
Paul Wyndham turned away from that reproachful face, with a dark shadow on his own.
"Heaven knows, Miss Henderson, I hate the necessity which compels me to cause you this pain, but it is a necessity, and I must do it; you never have wronged me—I have no wish to give you a moment's suffering, but a fatality against which I am powerless, urges me on. I hate myself for what I am doing—but what can I do—what can I do?"
He seemed to ask himself the question, as he sprang up and took, like herself, to walking excitedly up and down. His face was so darkly troubled that Olive Henderson looked at him with searching, wondering eyes.
"I do not understand you," she said, chilled with a new fear, "does any one but yourself know my secret?"
She was still sitting, and never ceasing to watch him. Paul Wyndham leaned against the mantel, as she had done a moment before, and looked down at her.
"Miss Henderson, I can tell you nothing but that your secret is safe with me if you will comply with the condition I have to name. You may trust me; I shall never reveal it!"
"And that condition is——"
There was a pause, during which Olive could have counted the raindrops on the window or the loud beating of her heart.
Paul Wyndham's large, clear, bright gray eyes steadily met her own.
"The condition is, that you become my wife."
She gave a cry, she was so utterly astonished, and sat staring at him, speechless.
"Your—wife!" she slowly said, when her returned senses enabled her to speak.
"Yes, Miss Henderson, my wife! I am no more insensible to the power of wealth than you are. You have risked everything for the future; you can only hold it now, on condition of becoming my wife!"
Olive Henderson rose up, white and defiant, "I never will!" she said, "I never will! I will lose every shilling of it, I will die before I consent!"
"Oh, no!" Mr. Wyndham said, quietly, "I do not think you will, when you come to reflect, it is not pleasant to die when one is young and handsome and prosperous, particularly if one has not been very good, and not at all sure of going to Heaven. You will not die, Miss Henderson; you will keep the fortune and marry me."
"I never will!" she vehemently cried; "what if I told you my stepsister, the real Olive Henderson, were alive, that I have seen her lately, and that she has made over everything to me. What if I told you this?"
He smiled incredulously.
"You do not believe me, but I swear to you I state the truth. Olive Henderson lives, though I thought her dead; and I have seen her, I tell you, and she has consented to my keeping all."
"Well," said Mr. Wyndham quietly, "supposing, for argument's sake, what you say to be true, it does not alter your position in the least. Should I go to a lawyer and tell him your story, the arrest, the exposure, the disgrace all follow as inevitably as ever. The rightful heiress may, as you say, be alive, and willing you should usurp her birthright, though it does not sound very likely; but even if so, Harriet Wade is too proud a woman to incur life-long disgrace and humiliation, when she can avert it so easily."
She turned away from him, dropped into her seat, and laid her hand on a table near. The action, the attitude, told far more than words, of the cold, dark despair thickening around her.
She never lifted her head. She was suffering, as other women have suffered, dumbly.
"In asking you to be my wife, Miss Henderson," Mr. Wyndham still continued, "I make no pretense of being in love with you myself. I am not—I may as well tell you plainly—and I shall never ask love from you. In becoming my wife, you will go through a legal ceremony that will mean nothing. I shall never intrude upon you one single moment out of all the twenty-four hours, unless you desire it, or when the presence of others makes our being together unavoidable. We may dwell under the same roof, and yet live as far apart as if hemispheres divided us. Believe me, I shall not force myself upon you against your will; but for your own sake, Miss Henderson, and to still the whispers of busy tongues, it would be as well to keep your sentiments regarding me to yourself, as well we should be apparently on cordial terms. Are you listening, Miss Henderson?"
He really thought she was not. She was lying so still, so rigid, with her poor white face on the table, and the thick coils of her dead-black hair unloosing themselves, and trailing and twining about her like black snakes. She was not hysterical now; she was lying there in a sort of dumb anguish, that none but very proud and sensitive hearts, crashed to the very dust in shame and humiliation, can ever feel.
"Miss Henderson," Mr. Wyndham repeated, looking at the drooping, girlish figure, its very attitude speaking so much of supreme misery, "I am waiting for my answer."
She lifted her head and looked at him, with something the look of a deer at bay.
"Have you no pity?" she said. "Will you not spare me? I am only a girl, alone in the world, and you might pity me and be merciful. I have done wrong, I know, but Heaven alone knows what I have suffered from poverty, and the degradation it inevitably entails. I was tempted, and I yielded; but I think I never was so miserable in the worst days of my suffering as I have been at times since I came here. I am not good, I know, but I am not used to wickedness and plotting like this, and I think I am the most miserable creature on the face of this wide earth. But I never wronged you, sir; and you might pity me and spare me."
Her head dropped down again with a sort of sob, and the pitiful pleading was touching to hear from those proud lips. If Paul Wyndham had possessed the hardest heart that ever beat in a man's breast since the days of Nero, I think it must have been touched by the sight of that haughty spirit so bowed and crushed before him. His face showed no sign of whatever he might feel, but his clear voice shook a little as he replied.
"It is of little use, Miss Henderson, for me to say how deeply I do pity you—how sorely against my will I wage this unequal warfare, since the battle must go on all the same. It would only sound like mockery were I to say how grieved I am to give you this pain, since I should still remain inexorable."
"Will nothing bribe you?" she asked. "Half the wealth I possess shall be yours if——"
She had lifted her face again in eager hopefulness, but he interrupted with a gesture.
"I said I was inexorable, Miss Henderson, and I must repeat it. Besides," he added, with a slight smile, that showed how credulous he was about the story, "the real heiress, though she might make over the fortune to you, might object to your handing the half of it over to a stranger. No, Miss Henderson, there is only the one alternative—be my wife, or else——"
"Or else you will tell all?"
He did not speak. He stood, quietly waiting his answer—quiet, but very inflexible.
Olive rose up and stood before him.
"Must you have your answer now?" she asked, "or will you not even give me a few hours respite to think it over?"
"As many as you please, Miss Henderson."
"Then you shall have it to-night," she said, with strange, cold calmness. "I promised Miss Blair to go to the theater—you will see me there, and shall have your answer."
Mr. Wyndham bowed, and with a simple "Good morning," walked out of the room. As he shut the door behind him, he felt as though he were shutting Olive Henderson in a living tomb, and he her jailer.
"Poor girl! poor girl!" he was thinking, as he put on his overcoat; "what a villain I must seem in her eyes, and what a villain I am, ever to have consented to this. But it is only retribution after all—one ill turn deserves another."
Paul Wyndham walked to his hotel through the drenching rain and cold sea-wind, and Olive Henderson listened to the tumult of the storm, with another storm quite as tumultuous in her own breast.
The play that night was the "Lady of Lyons." There is only one theater in Speckport, so Mr. Wyndham was not likely to get bewildered in his search. The first act was half over when he came in, and looked round the dress circle, and down in the orchestra stalls. In the glare of the gaslight Olive Henderson looked superb. Never had her magnificent black eyes shone with such streaming luster as to-night, and a crimson glow, quite foreign to her usual complexion, beamed on either cheek—the crimson glow, rouge, worn for the first time in her life; and though she was a New York lady, she had the grace to be ashamed of the paint, and wear a thin black vail over her face. She took her eyes off Mademoiselle Pauline for a moment, to fix them on Mr. Wyndham, who came along to pay his respects, and to find a seat directly behind that of the heiress, but she only bent her head in very distant acknowledgment of his presence, and looked at Pauline again.
The curtain fell on the first act. Miss Henderson was very thirsty—that feverish thirst had not left her yet, and Captain Cavendish went out for a glass of ice-water. Laura was busy chattering to Mr. Blake, and Paul Wyndham bent forward and spoke to the heiress, who never turned her head.
"I have come for my answer, Miss Henderson," he said; "it is 'Yes,' I know."
"It is 'Yes,' Mr. Wyndham, and, with my consent, take the knowledge that I hate and despise you more than any other creature on the face of the earth."
She never turned while saying this. She stared straight before her at the row of gleaming footlights. The music was croaking out, every one was talking busily, and not one of the young ladies who looked enviously at the beautiful and brilliant heiress, nor the men who worshiped her at a distance, and who hated the young New Yorker for the privilege he enjoyed of talking to her—not one of them all dreamed ever so faintly of that other play being enacted off the stage.
Captain Cavendish came back with the water, the play went on, but I doubt if Olive Henderson heard a word, or knew whether they were playing "Othello" or the "Lady of Lyons," but none of the others knew that; that serviceable mask, the human face, is a very good screen for the heart.
The play was over, and they were all going out. Mr. Wyndham had not addressed her since, but she knew he was behind her all the time, and she knew nothing else. He was by her side as they descended the stairs, and the cold night-wind struck them on the face. She was leaning on the arm of Captain Cavendish, but how was that conquering hero to know it was for the last time?
"I will have the pleasure of calling on you to-morrow, Miss Henderson," he distinctly said, as he bowed an adieu and was lost in the crowd.
Captain Cavendish, sitting at the window of his room in the hotel, stared at the red sunset with a clouded face and a gloomy abstraction of manner, that told how utterly its lurid glory was lost upon him.
Captain Cavendish had been sitting there since four in the afternoon, thinking this over and over again, and never able to get beyond it. His day of retribution had come. He was feeling the torture he had so often and so heartlessly made others feel; he was learning what it meant to be jilted in cold blood. Olive Henderson had turned out the veriest, the most capricious, the most heartless of flirts, and Captain Cavendish found himself incontinently snubbed! He had asked for no explanation yet, but the climax had come to-day. He had ridden over to escort the heiress on her breezy morning gallop, and had found Mr. Wyndham just assisting her into the saddle. She had bowed distantly to him, cut her horse a stinging blow across the neck, and had galloped off, with Paul Wyndham close beside her. Catty Clowrie looked out of the cottage window, and laughed a voiceless laugh, to see the captain's blank consternation.
"Tit for tat!" Catty said; "you are getting paid back in your own coin, Captain George Cavendish!"
So, while the fierce red sun blazed itself out in the purple arch, and the big round yellow moon rose up, like another Venus, out of the bluish-black bay, Captain Cavendish sat at his window, telling the same refrain over and over in his mind, as perseveringly as ever any holy monk told the Ave Maria on his rosary:—"What has changed her? what has changed her? what has changed her?"
The moon was high in the sky before he roused himself from his long and somber musing-fit, and, pulling out his watch, looked at the hour.
"Half-past seven," he said; "they were to start at eight, and she promised to go. I shall ask for an explanation to-night."
He rang for his servant, and desired that young man, when he appeared, to fetch him his overcoat. Mr. Johnston brought that garment, and assisted his master into it, and the captain put on his hat and gloves, and with his cane under his arm (for, of course, as an officer of the British army, it was his duty at all times to carry a cane under his arm), he set off for the cottage of my Lady Caprice.
The whole front of the pretty cottage was in a state of illumination, as he opened the little gate and walked up the gravel path, and men's shadows moved on the curtained windows as he rang the bell. Rosie, with pink ribbons in her hair, and her Sunday dress on, opened the door and showed him into the drawing-room.
"I'll tell Miss Olive you're here," she said; "she is engaged with company just now."
Captain Cavendish said nothing. He walked over to the low chimney-piece, and leaned moodily against it, as Paul Wyndham had done that rainy morning, little better than a week before. He had seen something as he came in that had not tended to raise his spirits. The dining-room door stood half-open, and glancing in as he passed, he perceived that Miss Henderson had given a dinner-party, and that the company was still lingering around the table. He saw the Rev. Augustus Tod and his sister—and the Tods were the very cream of Speckport society—Major and Mrs. Wheatly, and Mr. Paul Wyndham. That was all; but he, her betrothed husband, her accepted suitor, had known nothing of it—had never been invited!
Captain Cavendish, leaning against the mantel, listened to the laughter, and pleasant mingling of voices, and the jingling of glasses in the dining-room, and he could plainly distinguish the musical laughter of Olive, and her clear voice as she talked to her guests. He stood there for upward of half an hour, raging with inward fury, all the more fierce for having to be suppressed. Then he heard the dining-room door open, a rustle of silk in the passage, an odor of delicate perfume in the air, and then the drawing-room door opened.
Miss Henderson swept into the room, bowing and smiling as she passed him, and sinking gracefully into a low violet-velvet chair, her rosy skirts and misty white lace floating all about her like pink and white clouds, and she looked up at him with the same glance of inquiry she might have given any lout of a fisherman in Speckport, had such a person presumed to call.
"I fear I intrude, Miss Henderson," he said, suppressing, as a gentleman must, his rage. "I did not know there was a dinner-party at the cottage."
"Oh, it is of no consequence," Miss Henderson said, carelessly, toying with her watch and chain; "my guests are all friends, who will readily excuse me. Will you not take a seat, Captain Cavendish?"
"No, Miss Henderson! in a house where I am made to feel I am an intruder I must decline being seated. I believe you promised to join the sailing-party on the bay to-night, but I suppose it is useless to ask you if you are going now."
"Why, yes," in the same careless way, "it is hardly probable I should leave my friends, even for the moonlight excursion. Are you going? I am sure you will have a very pleasant time; the night is lovely."
"Yes," said Captain Cavendish, "I am likely to have a pleasant time, as I have had, you must be aware, all through the past week. If you can spare a few minutes from these very dear friends of yours, Miss Henderson, I should be glad to have an explanation of your conduct."
"Of my conduct?" still in that careless way. "How?"
Captain Cavendish choked down an oath, but there was a subdued fierceness in his voice when he spoke.
"Miss Olive Henderson, has it quite escaped your memory that you are my promised wife? It strikes me your conduct of late has not been altogether in keeping with this fact. Will you have the goodness to explain the contempt, the slights, the strangeness of your conduct?"
"It is very easily explained," Miss Henderson answered, with supreme indifference, which, whether real or assumed, was very natural. "I have repented that rash promise, and now retract it. I have changed my mind; it is a woman's privilege, Captain Cavendish, and here is your engagement ring."
She drew the little golden circlet off her finger and held it out to him, as she might have returned it to some jeweler who had asked her to purchase it. He did not take it—he only stood looking at her, stunned!
"Olive!"
"I am sorry to give you pain, Captain Cavendish," Miss Henderson replied to that cry, still toying with her chain; "but you know I told you that night I did not love you, so you ought not to be surprised. I suppose it seems heartless, but then I am heartless; so what can you expect."
She laughed to herself a little hard laugh, and looked up at him with coldly-shining eyes. He was white, white even to his lips; for, remember, he loved this woman—this cold-blooded and capricious coquette.
"Olive! Olive!" was all he could cry, and there was nothing but wild astonishment and passionate reproach in his voice. There was no room for anger now. He loved her, and it made him a coward, and he faltered and broke down.
Olive Henderson rose up as if to end the interview.
"Better we should understand one another now, Captain Cavendish, than later. Perhaps the day may come and sooner than you expect, when you will thank me for this. I am not good, and I should not have made you a good wife, and you have more cause for thankfulness than regret. Here is your ring, and with it I renounce all claim to you! We are from henceforth what we were before you spoke—friends! In that character I shall at all times be happy to see you. Good evening, Captain Cavendish!"
Captain Cavendish walked back to his hotel in a stunned and stupefied sort of way, much as a man might who had received a heavy blow on the head, and was completely benumbed. He had received a blow, a most unexpected and terrible blow; a blow so inconceivable, he could hardly realize it had really fallen. His worst enemy could scarcely have wished him a more miserable night than that which he spent, ceaselessly walking his room, and acting over and over again the scene that had so lately passed. O Nathalie Marsh! could you have risen up in spirit before him then, surely you would have thought yourself completely avenged.
Was Miss Olive Henderson, lying in luxurious ease among the satin pillows of a lounge in the dining-room, next morning, wearing a most becoming matin neglige, and listlessly turning over the leaves of a novel, thinking of her rejected lover, I wonder? Catty Clowrie, sitting sewing industriously at the window—for Catty was not above doing plain sewing for the heiress—and watching her stealthily between the stitches, wondered if she were really reading, or only thinking, as she lay there, turning over the leaves with restless fingers, and jerking out her pretty little watch perpetually to look at the hour. It was very early, only nine o'clock, too soon for her to expect visitors—even that indefatigable Mr. Wyndham, who came like clockwork every day, could hardly have made his appearance so early. Catty, thinking this, stopped suddenly, for a gentleman was ringing the door-bell—a gentleman with a white, fierce face, and a look about him, altogether, Miss Clowrie had never seen him wear before. Olive sat up and looked at Catty.
"Who is it?" she asked.
"Captain Cavendish."
The black brow contracted suddenly, and Catty saw it. She, as well as all Speckport, knew there was a breach between the two, and she and all Speckport set Mr. Wyndham down as the cause.
Olive Henderson rose up, with her brows still contracted, and walked into the drawing-room. She shut the door behind her; and oh! what would not Catty Clowrie have given had the painted panels of that door been clear glass, that she might see what was going on. She could hear, not their words, but the voice of the captain, passionate and then reproachful, then pleading, then passionately angry again. Once she crept to the door; it was after an unusually vehement outburst on his part; and when her curiosity was excited beyond all bounds, she affixed her ear to the keyhole.
"It hardly becomes you, Captain Cavendish," she heard the voice say, in a tone of cold disdain; "it does not become you to talk like this of infidelity. If all tales be true, you have been rather faithless yourself in your time. People who live in glass houses are always the readiest to throw stones, I think!"
Catty dared not stay, lest they should suddenly open the door, and went back to her work.
"She has refused him!" she thought. "What new mystery is this?"
Had Miss Clowrie been able to look into the room, she would have seen Captain Cavendish pacing it like a caged tiger, and Miss Henderson standing up and leaning against the mantel, and looking icily at him out of her great black eyes. He stopped abruptly before her, controlling his passion, and steadfastly returned her gaze.
"And is it for Mr. Paul Wyndham," he asked, with sneering emphasis, "the little pitiful quill-driver, that I am rejected?"
The black eyes of Olive Henderson flashed flame at the gibing tone.
"Yes!" she flashed, impetuously, "it is for Mr. Paul Wyndham, whose name is a household word in lands where he has never been—who will be remembered by thousands when you are dead and forgotten!"
If Captain Cavendish could, with any propriety, have knocked the defiant young lady down at that moment, I think he would have done it. He set his strong white teeth, and clenched his hands, in the impotence of his fury.
"And this insult, am I to understand, is your final answer?"
"The answer is final," Olive said, frigidly. "The insult, if such it be, you provoked yourself, by first insulting me. I wished to part friends with you; if you prefer we should part enemies, it is immaterial to me. I do not know why you have come to make this scene this morning, when you received your answer last night."
The morning sunshine was streaming brightly into the room; but, as she spoke, it was suddenly darkened, and Paul Wyndham, riding past, strung his horse at the door. An instant after, Catty Clowrie saw Captain Cavendish leave the house, his hat slouched over his eyes, and stride away as if shod with seven-league boots. Mr. Wyndham had come to escort Miss Henderson on her customary morning-ride to Redmon, and Olive ran up-stairs to put on her riding-habit. But not until Catty had seen how haughtily cold her reception of Mr. Wyndham was, and how ghostly pale she looked as she ran up-stairs.
Catty Clowrie was not the only young lady in Speckport puzzled by Miss Henderson's remarkable conduct. Laura Blair was bothering her poor little brain with the enigma, and could not solve it, though she tried ever so.
"Olly, dear," she said, in a perplexed tone, when she came to the cottage next day, and up in Olive's room seated herself for a confidential chat, "have you quarreled with Captain Cavendish?"
Olive was reclining in a vast Sleepy Hollow of an armchair, looking pale and fagged; for she had been at a ball the previous night, and lay with her hands folded listlessly in her lap, and the lazy lids hiding the splendor of her eyes. She hardly took the trouble to lift these heavy eyelids, as she replied:
"No—yes. Why?"
"Because, he's gone away, dear! I thought you knew it. He has gone off on leave of absence to Canada, I believe."
"Indeed!" Miss Henderson said, indifferently. "When did he go?"
"He left in the steamer for Portland, Maine, this morning. Olly, dearest, will you not tell me what it is all about?"
"All what is about?" asked Olive, impatiently.
Laura looked frightened; she always got scared when Miss Henderson's big black eyes flashed.
"You won't be angry, my darling Olly? but I thought—every one thought—you were going to marry Captain Cavendish."
"Did they? Then it's a pity 'every one' must be disappointed, for I am not going to marry Captain Cavendish."
Laura sat silent after this quencher. She was seated on a low stool at her friend's feet, with her brown head lying on her lap. The heiress bent down and kissed the pretty face.
"My poor, silly, inquisitive little Laura!" she said, "you would like a wedding, I know. You have a feminine love of bridal-vails and orange-wreaths, and you would like to look pretty in white silk and Honiton lace, as my bridemaid—wouldn't you, now?"
"Yes," said Miss Blair.
"Well, then, Laura, you shall!"
Laura started up, and stared.
"What?"
"I say," repeated Olive, quietly, "you shall be gratified. You shall wear the white silk and the Honiton lace, my dear, and be first bridemaid, for I am going to be married!"
Laura Blair clasped her hands.
"Oh, Olly! and to Mr. Wyndham?"
"Yes; to Mr. Wyndham."
Laura sat like one transfixed, digesting the news. Somehow, she was not so much surprised, but the suddenness of the intelligence stunned her.
Olive Henderson laughed outright as she looked at her.
"Well, Miss Blair," she said, "if I had told you I had committed a murder, and was going to be hanged for it, you could hardly look more aghast! Pray, is there anything so very terrible in my marrying Mr. Wyndham?"
"It's not that," said Laura, recovering herself slowly, "but the news came so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that——"
"Unexpectedly! Is it possible, Laura, Speckport has not decided before now I should marry Mr. Wyndham?"
"Speckport doesn't know what to think," said Laura; "it decided upon your marriage with Captain Cavendish; it said that you were engaged, and that all was settled, when, lo! this Mr. Wyndham appears, and presto! all is changed. Captain Cavendish flies out of the country, and Mr. Wyndham becomes the hero of the story. Speckport never was so pleased before; you are as erratic as a comet, Miss Henderson, and it is as useless trying to account for your vagaries."
"I am glad Speckport has found that out. Well, Laura, you will be bridemaid?"
"Of course. Oh how strange it all seems! When is it to come off?"
"What, the wedding? Oh, near the end of next month, I believe. Mr. Wyndham, like any other ardent lover, objects to long engagements."
She laughed, as she spoke, a little disdainful laugh, that made Laura fix her brown eyes thoughtfully on her face.
"Olly—don't be angry, please—do you love Mr. Wyndham?"
"Of course, you silly child," the heiress laughed, carelessly, "if not, should I marry him? You have read a great many novels, my Laura, of the high-pressure school, and have formed your own ideas of lovers from the rapturous proceedings therein recorded. But Mr. Wyndham and I are not romantic; it is not in my nature to be, and all the romance in his he reserves as his stock-in-trade for his books, and has none left for this prosy every-day life. He is sufficiently well-looking, he is gentlemanly and attentive, and he is famous, and he has asked me to marry him, and I have said yes; and I will do it, too, if I don't change my mind before the day comes."
"Does Mr. Wyndham love you, Olly?" she asked, after a long, grave pause, during which Olive had been humming an opera air.
"Of course, my love! How can he help it?"
"And you are really going to be married so soon, and to this stranger? Oh, Olly! take care!"
"You absurd Laura! Take care of what? Are you afraid Mr. Wyndham will beat me after the magic words are spoken?"
"I suppose it is the suddenness of it all that makes me feel so strange about it. I like Mr. Wyndham very much, and I think his books are lovely! I dare say you will be very happy with him, after all. How many bridemaids are you going to have, and what are we to wear?"
After this truly feminine turn to the conversation, love and happiness were forgotten in the discussion of silks and moire antiques, and the rival merits of pink or white for the bridemaids' bonnets. They were a very long time deciding; for somehow Olive Henderson, with all her inborn love of dress, did not seem to take much interest in the matter.
"We'll settle it all again, Laura," she said, impatiently, "there's no hurry—six weeks is a long time. Come, and let us have a drive."
As the young ladies entered the little pony-carriage, Mr. Wyndham rode up on his bay, looking his best, as good riders always do on horseback. Laura, who was on very friendly, not to say familiar, terms with the young author, held out her hand.
"Accept my congratulations," she said, "I am to be bridemaid-in-chief on the happy occasion; and, next to being married myself, there is nothing we girls like better than that!"
Mr. Wyndham smiled, lifted her hand to his lips gallantly, and made some complimentary reply; but there was no rapture in his face, Laura noticed, even although his bride-elect, in the dark splendor of her beauty, sat before him among the rich cushions, like an Egyptian queen.
"He does not love her," thought Laura; "he is like all the rest; he wants to marry her because she is handsome, and the fashion, and the heiress of Redmon. I wonder, if I were in her place, if that stupid Val would ever come to the point. I know he likes me, but the tiresome creature won't say so."
Mr. Wyndham had but just left Mr. Blake's office, after having bewildered that gentleman with the same news Olive had imparted to her friend.
Mr. Blake's hands were very deep in his pockets, and he was whistling a dismally perplexed whistle, as the young author left his sanctum.
"It's very odd!" Mr. Blake was thinking, "it's very odd, indeed! He said he would do it, and I didn't believe him, and now it's done. It's very odd! I know she doesn't care about him, rather the reverse; and then, she was promised to Cavendish. What can she be marrying him for? Wyndham, too, he isn't in love with her; it's not in him to be in love with any one. What can he want marrying her? It can't be her money—at least, it's not like Paul Wyndham, if it is. And then he's a sort of novel-writing hermit, who would live on bread and water as fast as turtle-soup, and doesn't care a button for society. It's odd—it's uncommonly odd!"
Speckport found it odd, too, and said so, which Mr. Blake did not, except to himself. But then the heiress with the imperious beauty and flashing eyes was a singular being, anyhow, and they put it down as the last coquetry of my Lady Caprice. And while they talked of it, and conjectured about it, and wondered if she would not jilt him for somebody else before the day came round—while Speckport gossiped ravenously, Mr. Wyndham was a daily visitor at the cottage, and Speckport beheld the betrothed pair galloping together out along the lovely country-roads and over the distant tree-clad hills, and saw the new villa at Redmon going up with magical rapidity, and the once bleak and dreary grounds being transformed into a fairy-land of beauty. All the head dressmakers and milliners of the town were up to their eyes in the wedding-splendors, and such a lot of Miss Henderson's dear five hundred had been invited to the wedding that the miracle was how the cottage was going to hold them all. Speckport knew all about the arrangements beforehand; how they were to be married in Trinity Church, being both High-Church people; how they were going on a bridal-tour through the Canadas, and would return toward the close of August, when the villa would be ready to receive them.
Speckport talked of all this incessantly, and of the five bridemaids; of whom Laura Blair, Jeannette McGregor and Miss Tod, were the chief; and while they talked, the day came round. A dull and depressing day, with a clammy yellow fog that stuck to everything, and a bleak wind that reddened the pretty noses of the bridemaids, and made them shiver in their white satin shoes. The old church was crowded. Young and old, gentle and simple, all flocked to see the beautiful black-eyed heiress who had set so many unhappy young men crazy, married at last to the man of her choice. The dismal weather had no effect on her, it seemed; for she swept up the aisle, leaning on the arm of Mr. Darcy, who was to play papa, in a dress whose splendor electrified Speckport, and which had been imported direct from Paris; all in white, an immense vail floating all around her like a silvery mist, she didn't, as scandalized Speckport said, for all, look a bit like a bride. Where was the drooping of the long eye-lashes; where the paling and flushing cheek; where the shy and timid graces of virginhood? Was it not the height of impropriety to walk up the aisle with her head erect, her black eyes bright and defiant, her lips compressed, and her color never varying? It was the vulgarity and brazenness of the New York grisette breaking out, or the spangles and sawdust of the circus-rider. But Speckport said all this under their breath; and when it was all over, and the names down in the register, kissed the bride, at least female Speckport did, the beings in broadcloth and white vests only looking as if they would like to. And then they drove back to the cottage; and Miss Henderson—no, it was Mrs. Wyndham now—went to her room at once to put on her traveling-dress, for the steamer started in half an hour. There was a great crowd on the wharf to see them off; and the bride and bridegroom stood to be looked at—he, pale, quiet, and calm; she, haughty and handsome, and uplifted to the end.
So it was all over, and the heiress of Redmon was safely married at last! The news came out in next day's "Spouter," with a string of good wishes from the editorial chair for the happy pair. Two young men—Captain George P. Cavendish, in the reading-room of a Montreal hotel, and Mr. Tom Oaks, in an Indian's tent up the country, where he shot and fished—read it, and digested the bitter pill as best they might. Some one else read it, too; Mr. Wyndham, with his own hands, posted the first copy of that particular "Spouter" he received to a young lady, who read it with strange eagerness in her own room in a quaint New York hotel. A lady who read it over and over and over again, as often and as eagerly as Miss Wade had read that advertisement long before in the Canadian paper shown her in Mrs. Butterby's lodgings, by the pale actress.
Mr. Wyndham and Miss Henderson had had but one confidential interview after that first one, during the length of their brief engagement. It was the day after the evening at the theater. Mr. Wyndham had called early and found the heiress waiting for him in the drawing-room. There was no terror, no humiliation in her manner now, nothing but reckless, scornful defiance, and fierce pride, with which she seemed to dare him and Fate to do their worst.
"I was afraid of you yesterday, Mr. Paul Wyndham," she said, with an unpleasant laugh. "I shall never be afraid of you again. I see that it is of no use to struggle against Destiny—Providence, good people would say, but I make no pretense of goodness. The French have a saying that embodies the character of the nation: 'Couronnons nous des roses avant qu'elles ne se fleurissent.' I take that for my motto from henceforth, and crown myself with roses before they fade. I shall dress and spend money and enjoy this fortune while I may—when it goes, why, let it go,—I, shall know what to do when that time comes!"
Mr. Wyndham bowed in grave silence, and waited to hear all she might have to say. "To retain this wealth," she went on in the same reckless tone, and with her black deriding eyes seeming to mock him, "I consent to marry you; that is, I consent to go through a civil and religious ceremony which the world will call a marriage, and which to us will simply mean nothing but an empty form. It will give you a right to my money, which is all you want; it will give you a right to dwell under the same roof, but no right ever to intrude yourself upon me for one second, except when others are present and it is necessary to avoid suspicion. The world will call me by your name; but I shall still remain Olive Henderson, free and unfettered—free to come and go and do as I please, without interference or hindrance from you. Do I make myself understood?"
"Perfectly," Mr. Wyndham said, coolly, "and express my views entirely. I am delighted with your good sense, Miss Henderson, and I foresee we shall make a model couple, and get on together famously. Now, as to our wedding arrangements. When is it to be?"
"Whenever you please," she said, scornfully; "it is a matter of perfect indifference to me."
"I do not like to hurry you too much, but if the end of June——"
Olive made a careless gesture with her ringed hand:
"That will do! One tune is as good as another."
"And our bridal tour? There must be a bridal tour, you know, or people will talk."
"I told you," she said, impatiently, "it was of no consequence to me! Arrange it as you please—I shall make no objection."
"Then suppose we go to Canada for a couple of months? The villa at Redmon can be ready upon our return."
And this tender tête-à-tête between the plighted pair settled the matter. And in due time the solemn mockery was performed by the Rev. Augustus Tod, and Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham departed on their wedding tour. The upholsterer had received his orders, and the villa would be in readiness upon their return, and there would be a famous house-warming, to which half Speckport was to be invited. About three weeks after the amicable adjustment of affairs between the author and the heiress, Mr. Wyndham made a little investment in landed property on his own account. There was a delightful little dwelling, known as "Rosebush Cottage," for sale. A real bijou of a cottage, painted cream color, with vivid green window-shutters and door, and with a garden in front that was a perfect sea of roses—crimson roses, and monthly roses, and damask roses, and bridal roses, all kinds bloomed here, until the air became faint with perfume; and behind there was a gnarled old orchard, where apple-trees and plum-trees nearly covered the creamy cottage with their long green arms. This delicious Rosebush Cottage was for sale; and Mr. Wyndham, who had for some time been quietly on the look-out for just such a place, became its purchaser. When asked what he could possibly want of it, Mr. Wyndham answered it was for his mother.
"For your mother!" exclaimed Mr. Blake, when Mr. Wyndham first told him. "You never mean to say, Wyndham, your mother is going to exchange the genial and spicy breezes of Westchester County for our bleak province—hey?"
"Westchester County is a delightful place, no doubt," responded Mr. Wyndham; "but in my absence, it is only vanity and vexation of spirit to my poor mother. What are all the Westchester Counties in America to her without her Paul, her only one! I shall send for her as soon as I return from Canada, to come here."
"Perhaps she won't come," said Val; "perhaps she will think of the old adage, 'My son's my son till he gets him a wife,' and prefer remaining where she is."
"No," said Mr. Wyndham, "my mother knows her son will be her son all the days of his life. She is very much changed, Blake, since you knew her; she never was very fond of society, as you are aware; but of late she has become a perfect recluse, shutting herself in and shutting the world out. Rosebush Cottage will make her a very nice hermitage, I think, and it is conveniently near Redmon. The next thing is to look out for a competent and trustworthy servant—not a young girl, you know, giddy and frivolous, but a quiet and sensible woman, who would not object to the loneliness."
Mr. Blake put on his considering-cap.
"There's Midge," he said, "she's out of place, and stopping with us—you saw her at our house last night, you remember; but I'm afraid she mightn't suit."
"That little dwarf, do you mean? She would do well enough, as far as looks are concerned, if that is the only objection."
"But that isn't the only objection," said Val; "more's the pity, for she is perfectly trustworthy, and can work like a horse. As for the loneliness, she would rather prefer it on that very account."
"Then what is the objection?"'
"Why, you see," said Mr. Blake, "we're none of us perfect in this lower world, and Midge, though but one remove from an angel in a general point of view, has yet her failings. For instance, there's her temper."
"Bad?" inquired Mr. Wyndham.
Mr. Blake nodded intelligently.
"It never was of the best, you know; but after she lost Nathalie Marsh, it became—well, she is never kept in any place over a week, and then she comes to us and makes a purgatory of No. 16 Great St. Peter Street, until she finds another situation. I'm afraid she wouldn't do."
Mr. Blake, smelling audibly at the roses as he said this, did not see the sudden change that had come over Mr. Wyndham's face nor the eagerness hardly repressed in his voice when he spoke.
"She was formerly a servant, then, of this Miss Nathalie Marsh, of whom I have heard so many speak since I came here?"
"Yes, for years, and devotedly attached to her. Poor Natty! I think Midge felt her loss ten degrees more than her own mother; but grief, I regret to say, hasn't a sweetening effect on Midge's temper."
"Still I think I shall try her," said Paul Wyndham, carelessly. "My mother is very quiet and easy, and I don't believe they will quarrel. I will see Midge about it this very day."
Which he did accordingly, sending her off at once to keep the cottage until his mother's arrival. The upholsterer furnishing Redmon Villa had his orders for Rosebush Cottage also, and both were to be in readiness when September came round.
Olive Henderson heard with extreme indifference of the expected arrival of Mr. Wyndham's mother, from the lips of Miss Jo Blake, next day.
"Ah! is she?" the heiress said, suppressing a yawn; "well, as she is to reside a mile and a half from Redmon, I don't suppose she will be much trouble to me. If the mistress be like the maid, Laura," said the heiress, turning with a scornful laugh to her friend, "I am likely to have a charming mamma-in-law."
Good Miss Jo, who thought the motherless heiress would rejoice at the tidings she brought her, was scandalized at the speech. Indeed, Miss Jo—the best of women and old maids—did not approve of Miss Henderson's capers at all. She had always thought her too proud; for Miss Jo's simple Irish belief was, that we earthly worms have no business at all with that sin which drove Lucifer, Star of the Morning, from Paradise, and was sorry to see her favorite Laura so much taken up with the queenly coquette.
"Laura was such a nice little girl, Val," Miss Jo said, to the editor of the "Speckport Spouter," across the tea-table that evening; "and now, I am afraid, she will fall into the ways of that young girl, whom everybody is running crazy after. If Miss Henderson was like poor Natty, or that little angel, Miss Rose, now!"
"How is Miss Rose, Jo?" asked Val; "I haven't seen her this month of Sundays?"
"She isn't out much," said Miss Blake; "Mrs. Wheatly keeps her busy; and when she does come out, it's to Mrs. Marsh's she goes, or to see her poor pensioners. Miss Henderson asked her to be one of her bridemaids, I hear, but she refused."
"Stuff!" said Val, politely. "Miss Henderson isn't the woman to ask a governess to be her bridemaid. Not but that Miss Rose is as good as she is!"
"As good!" cried Miss Jo, in shrill indignation, "she's fifty thousand times better. Miss Rose is a little pale-faced angel on the face of the earth; and that rich young woman with the big black eyes is no more an angel than I am!"
Miss Jo manifested her disapprobation of the heiress by not going to see her married, and by declining an invitation to the wedding-breakfast; neither of which slights, had she known of them, which she didn't, would have troubled the high-stepping young lady in the least.
But Miss Jo was destined to become an heiress herself; for, a fortnight after the great wedding, and just as Speckport was getting nicely round after the shock, it received another staggerer in the news that a great fortune had been left to Miss Jo Blake. Thirty thousand pounds, the first startling announcement had it; thirteen, the second; and three, the final and correct one.
Yes; Miss Jo had been left the neat little sum of three thousand pounds sterling, and was going home to take possession of the fortune. An old maiden aunt, after whom Miss Joanna had been named, and from whom she had long had expectations—as all Speckport had heard a million times, more or less—had died at last, and left Miss Jo the three thousand and her blessing.
Upon receiving the tidings, Miss Blake was seized with a violent desire to revisit the scenes of her infantile sports, and gave warning of her intention of starting in the first vessel bound for Liverpool.
"And it's not in one of them dirty steamboats I'll go," said Miss Jo, decisively, "that's liable to blow up any minute; but I'll go an a ship that's slow and sure, and not put a hand in my own life by trusting to one of them new-fangled inventions!"
Mr. Blake expostulated with his sister on the impropriety of leaving him alone and unprotected to the mercies of heartless servant-girls. Miss Jo was inexorable.
"If you don't like keeping house and fighting with the servants," said Miss Blake, "go and board. If you don't like boarding, why, go and get married! it won't hurt your growth any, I'm sure!"
As Mr. Blake was on the wrong side of thirty, and had probably done growing, there was a great deal of sound truth in Miss Jo's remark. Mr. Blake, however, only stood aghast at the proposal.
"It's time you were getting married, Val," pursued Miss Jo, busily packing; "particularly now, that I'm going to leave you. You're well enough off, and there's lots of nice girls in Speckport who would be glad to snap at you. Not that I should like to see you marry a Bluenose—Lord forbid! if it could be helped; but there's Miss Rose, or there's Laura Blair, both of them as nice girls as you will find. Now, why can't you take and marry one of them?"
Mr. Blake was beyond the power of replying. He could only stare in blank and helpless consternation at his brisk, match-making sister.
"I would rather you took Miss Rose," pursued Miss Blake, "she's the best of the two, and a rock of sense; but Laura's very fond of you, and—where are you going now?"
For Mr. Blake had snatched up his hat and started out, banging the door after him. The first person he met, turning the corner, was Mr. Blair.
"So you're going to lose Jo, Blake," he said, taking his arm. "Laura tells me she is off next week in the Ocean Star. What are you going to do with yourself when you lose her?"
"Become a monk, I think," said Mr. Blake, helplessly. "I don't know anything else for it! Jo talks of boarding, but I hate boarding-houses, and where else can I go?"
"Come to us," cried Mr. Blair, heartily. "Mrs. B. thinks there's nobody like you, and you and I will have a fine chance to talk things over together. Come to us, old boy, and make our house your home!"
Mr. Blake closed with this friendly offer at once, on condition that the ladies of the house were satisfied.
"No danger of that," said Laura's father; "they will be in transports. Come up this evening and have a smoke with me, and see if they don't."
Laura Blair's eyes danced in her head when her father told them the news; but the little hypocrite affected to object.
"It will make so much trouble, pa," the young lady said, in a dissatisfied tone, "trouble for ma and me, I mean. I wish he wasn't coming."
Mr. Blair listened to the shocking fib with the greatest indifference. He didn't care whether she liked it or not, and said so, with paternal frankness.
So Miss Jo kissed everybody and departed, and Val translated his Lares and Penates to Mr. Blair's; at least, such of them as were not disposed of by public auction.
Speckport was just settling its nerves after this, when it was thrown into another little flutter by the unexpected return of Captain Cavendish.
Yes, Captain Cavendish, the defeated conqueror, came back to the scene of his defeat, rather swaggering than otherwise, and carrying things with a high hand. Perhaps the gallant captain wanted to show Speckport how little he cared for being jilted; perhaps he wanted to see what kind of life Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham would lead together; perhaps he found himself too well known as a roué and gambler in Montreal; or perhaps he was not tired bleeding young Alick McGregor and young Speckport generally, in that quiet house in Prince Street. He was back, anyway, handsome, and nonchalant, and unprincipled as ever.
Miss Blair received a letter from her friend three weeks after her departure, dated Niagara. Mrs. Wyndham was not a good correspondent, it seemed; her letter was very brief and unsatisfactory, and she only mentioned her husband once, and then merely to say Mr. Wyndham was well. She signed the letter simply, "Olive," not using her real name, and told Laura that Montreal was tiresome and the Canadians stupid. Miss Blair sent her half a quire of note-paper by way of answer, recording every item of information, and every possible scrap of news, and imploring a speedy reply. But Olive never replied, although August wore itself out while Laura waited. On the last day of that month, Mrs. Hill received a telegram from Portland, Me., from Mr. Wyndham, informing her her master and mistress would arrive next day.
It was a glorious September afternoon that on which the wedded pair returned from their short bridal-tour. The steamer swept up to the crowded wharf in a sort of sun-burst of glory, and the air was opaque with amber mist, as if it were raining impalpable gold-dust. Not a sign of fog in the cloudless blue sky; it might have been Venice instead of Speckport, so luminously brilliant was sky and earth that afternoon.
The passengers poured out of the steamer, and came up the bustling floats, where cabmen, porters, hotel-runners and the steamer-hands were making a Babel of discord, and the passengers wondered to see the crowd of people looking curiously down upon them from the wharf above. Laura Blair stood straining her eyes for a sight of her friend. Olive Henderson, with her dangerous gift of fascination, had won the girl's love as it had never been won before, and Laura had missed her sadly during these two last months. As she stood impatiently waiting, she was thinking of that pleasant March evening when Olive Henderson had first come to Speckport, and they had watched her walk up these very floats, stately and tall, leaning on Mr. Darcy's arm, and wearing a vail over her face. And while Laura thought of it, and could scarcely believe it was only six months ago, she saw the same Olive—Olive Wyndham now—coming toward her on her husband's arm. She was not vailed this time, although a long drab gossamer vail floated back from the pretty jockey-hat she wore, and Laura saw how pale and fagged and spiritless she looked. The next moment, she had thrown her arms impetuously around her, and was kissing her rapturously.
"My darling Olly! my darling Olly!" she was crying out. "Oh, how glad I am to see you again!"
Her darling Olly did not return the embrace very enthusiastically, though her face lit up at sight of her friend. Laura shook hands with Mr. Wyndham, who was smiling at her effusions, and then turned again to the friend she loved.
"Oh, Olly! how dull it has been since you went away, and how cruel of you never to write to me! Why didn't you write?"
"Writing is such a bore," Olive said, drearily. "I hate writing. Is that the carriage waiting up there?"
"Yes," said Laura; "and how did you enjoy your travel? You look pale and tired."
"I am tired to death," Mrs. Wyndham said, impatiently, "and I have not enjoyed myself at all. Every place was stupid, and I am glad to be home! Do let us get out of this mob, Mr. Wyndham!"
Mr. Wyndham had paused for a moment to give some directions about the baggage, and his wife addressed him so sharply that Laura stared. Laura noticed during the homeward drive how seldom she spoke to her husband, and how cold her tone always was when she addressed him. But Mr. Wyndham did not seem to mind much. He talked to Laura—and Mr. Wyndham knew how to talk—and told her about their travels, and the places they had been, and the people they had met, and the adventures they had encountered.
"Olive reigned Lady Paramount wherever we went," he said, smiling (he never called her Mrs. Wyndham or "my wife," always Olive). "Our tour was a long succession of brilliant triumphs for her."
Olive merely shrugged her shoulders disdainfully, and looked at the swelling meadows as they drove along Redmon road. A beautiful road in summer time, and the Nettleby cottage was quite lost in a sea of green verdure, sprinkled with red stars of the scarlet-runners. Ann Nettleby stood in the door as they drove by in a cloud of dust—in that doorway where pretty Cherrie used to stand, pretty, flighty little Cherrie, whom Speckport was fast learning to forget.
And Redmon! Could Mrs. Leroy have risen from her grave and looked on Redmon, she might well have stared aghast at the magical changes. A lovely little villa, with miniature peaks and turrets, and a long piazza running around it, and verdant with climbing roses and sweetbrier. A sloping velvety lawn, on which the drawing-room and dining-rooms windows opened, led from the house to the avenue; and fair flower-gardens, where fountains played in marble basins, and bees and butterflies disported in the September sunshine, spread away on all sides. Beyond them lay the swelling meadows, the dark woods; and, beyond all, the shining sea aglitter in the summer sunshine. The groom came up to lead away the horse, and Mrs. Hill, in a black silk dress and new cap, stood in the doorway to receive them. The dark, sunless face of Olive lit up and became luminous for the first time as she saw all this.
"How pretty it is, Laura!" she said. "I am glad I am home."
The servants were gathered in the hall to welcome their master and mistress as they entered arm-in-arm. The upholsterer had done his work well, the drawing-room was one long vista of splendor, the dining-room almost too beautiful for eating in, and there was a conservatory the like of which Speckport had never seen before. Mrs. Wyndham had a suite of rooms, too—sleeping-room, dressing-room, bath-room, and boudoir—all opening into one another in a long vision of brightness and beauty, and there was a library which was a library, and not a mockery and a delusion, and was lined with books from floor to ceiling. Speckport had been shown the house, and pronounced it perfection.