CHAPTERV.

“I say!” he began. “Now, isn’t that too bad! And Deena so particular that you should get the note before tea time. I’m awfully sorry, Mr. French—it’s all Bridget’s fault. Deena said if I got that note to you before five o’clock I should have a piece of cake, and when Bridget wouldn’t give it to me it made me so mad I forgot everything. I wanted to kill her.”“I know just how you felt,” said Stephen, with irony.Dicky was tying his chocolates into a hard ball, but with the finishing grimy knot he tossed responsibility to the winds.“Oh, well,” he said, soothingly, “you’ve got it now, at any rate, so there’s no occasion for saying justwhenI gave it to you, unless you want to get a fellow into trouble.”Stephen looked grave; he did want Mrs. Ponsonby to know why he had failed to follow her suggestion of taking tea with her at her mother’s house—and also he hated evasion.“As it happens, that is the exact point I wish your sister to know. I shall not tell her, but I expect you, as a gentleman, to tell of yourself.”“All right,” said Dicky, mournfully. “Good-night, Mr. French.”CHAPTERV.Deena had ample time to get accustomed to the old home life before her parents returned, for she had already been in charge for two weeks and still they tarried.It was evident that young Mr. Beck wished to carry out his aunt’s bequests in the spirit as well as the letter of her instructions, for trunks of linen and silver began to arrive from Chicago which gave some idea of the loot obtainedfrom the dismantling of Mrs. Beck’s fine house. The young Sheltons took the keenest interest in unpacking these treasures. Children are naturally communistic. They enjoy possessions held in common almost as much as their individual acquisitions—only in a different way. There is more glorification in the general good luck, but not such far-reaching privilege.In the midst of these excitements Deena received a letter the possession of which no one seemed inclined to dispute with her. It was from Simeon, posted at Montevideo, and containing the first news of his voyage. His wife read it in the retirement of her own room, but she might have proclaimed it from the rostrum, so impersonal was its nature. He had made an attempt, however, to meet what he conceived to be feminine requirements in a correspondent, for the handwriting was neat, and the facts he recorded of an unscientific nature. He described his cabin in the vessel, also his fellow passengers; not humorously, but with an appreciation of their peculiarities Deena had not anticipated; he introduced her to flying fish, and then to the renowned albatross, and he conducted her up the river Platte to Montevideo, which he described with the ponderous minuteness of a guide book. At the end he made a confidence—namely, that even his summer flannels had proved oppressive in that climate—but the intimacy of his letter went no further, and he omitted to mention any personal feelings in regard to their separation.It was an admirable family letter, instructive and kind, and rather pleasanter and lighter in tone than his conversation. Deena was glad that no exhortations to economy made it too private to show to French when he called that afternoon. She but anticipated his object in coming. He also had a letter which he had brought for her to read, and they sat on opposite sides of the fire, enjoying their exchanged correspondence.But what a difference there was in the letters; Deena’s had three pages of pretty handwriting; Stephen’s six of closely written scrawl. In Deena’s the ideas barely flowed to the ink; in Stephen’s they flowed so fast they couldn’t get themselves written down—he used contractions, he left out whole words; he showed the interest he felt in the work he left behind in endless questions in regard to his department; he thanked Stephen more heartily than he had ever done by word of mouth for suggesting him for the appointment, and finally he gave such an account of his voyage as one intelligent man gives another.Deena recognized her place in her husband’s estimation when she finished his letter to Stephen, and said, with pardonable sarcasm:“Simeon saves the strong meat of observation for masculine digestion, and I get only thehors-d’œuvres; perhaps he has discriminated wisely.”The mere fact of being able to exchange letters with Deena was a revelation to French, and as he walked home from their interview his fancy was busy putting himself in Simeon’s place. The paths that lead through another man’s kingdom are never very safe for the wandering feet of imagination. It is an old refrain, “If I were king,” the song of a usurper, if only in thought.If he were king of Deena Ponsonby’s life, Stephen thought, would he write letters that another chap might read? Would he dwell upon the shape of an albatross, when there must be memories—beautiful, glowing memories—between them to recall? Pen and ink was a wretched medium for love, but the heart of the world has throbbed to its inspiration before now. Why, if a woman like Mrs. Ponsonby shared his hearth, he would let Tierra del Fuego, with its flora and its fauna, sink into the sea and be damned to it, before he’d put the hall door between himself and her. His own front door had suggested the idea, and he shut it with a bang.He picked up the letters he found waiting on the hall table, and went directly to his library, passing through a room that would have been a drawing-room had a lady presided there, but to the master served only as a defenseagainst intrusion into the privacy of his sanctum.The postman had left a pile of bills and advertisements, but there was one letter in Ben Minthrop’s familiar writing, and Stephen turned up his light and settled himself to read it. Ben wrote:Dear French:When I asked you to spend Christmas with us in Boston I had no idea that, like the Prophet Habbacuc, I, with my dinner pail, was to be lifted by the hair of my head, and transported to Babylon—in other words, New York. But so it is! If you know your Apocrypha, this figurative language will seem apt, but in case you should like my end of it explained I will leave the mystifications of Bel and the Dragon and come down to plain speech.My father has conceived the idea that I am one of the dawning lights in the financial world, and he has decided to open a branch office of our business in New York and to put me at its head. I must confess that the whole thing is very pleasant and flattering, and it has stirred all the decent ambitions I have—that I have any I owe to you, old fellow—and I am rather keen to be off.We have taken a house not far from the park in East Sixty-fifth Street, where a welcome will always be yours, and where Polly and I hope you will eat your Christmas dinner.Perhaps you may reflect that it is a serious thing to befriend straying men and dogs; they are apt to regard past kindness as a guarantee of future interest in their welfare. I do not believe, however, that I am making too large a demand upon your friendship in asking for your good wishes in this pleasant turn to my future affairs.Of course I want one more favor. If you have any influence with Deena Ponsonby, will you urge her to spend the winter with us? Polly is writing to her by this same mail, but I know the New England conscience will suggest to Deena that anything amusing is wrong, and so you might explain that I am nervous about Polly’s health, and that I look to her to help me get settled without overstrain to my wife—in short, administer a dose of duty, and she may see her way to coming.Ever, my dear French,Sincerely yours,Benjamin Minthrop.Anger gives to the natural man a pedal impulse—in plain language, he wants to kick something. Rage flows from the toes as freely as gunpowder ran out of the great Panjandrum’s boots when he played “Catch who catch can” on the immortal occasion of the gardener’s wife marrying the barber. Now, Stephen French was a man of habitual self-restraint, and yet upon reading Ben Minthrop’s letter he got up and—ignoring the poker and tongs—kicked the fire with a savagery that showed how little the best of us has softened by civilization. And yet the letter was distinctly friendly, even modest and grateful—without one kick-inspiring sentence. Stephen began pacing his library floor, hurling his thoughts broadcast, since there was no one to listen to his words.Why were people never content to let well enough alone? he demanded. There was old Minthrop, with enough money to spoil his son, laying plans for Ben to muddle away a few millions in New York in the hope of making more; or even if, by some wild chance, the boy were successful and doubled it—still one would think the place for an only son was in the same town with his parents. Of course it was their business, but when it came to dragging Mrs. Ponsonby into their schemes it was a different matter. Simeon would disapprove, he knew, and as her adviser in Simeon’s absence, he felt it his duty to tell her to stay at home withherparents till her husband returned.And then common sense asserted itself, and he asked himself what Deena owed to her parents; and why Harmouth was a better place for her than New York; and what possible difference it could make to Simeon? The answer came in plain, bold, horrid words, and he shrank from them. The curse of Nathan was upon him; like David, he had condemned his friend to absence and danger, and had then promptly fallen in love with his wife. But not willingly, he pleaded, in extenuation; it had crept upon him unawares. It was his own secret, he had never betrayed himself, and so help his God, he would trample it down till he gained the mastery. Not for one moment would he tolerate disloyalty to his friend, even in his thoughts. Ben’s suggestion was a happy solution of the situation as far as he was concerned; he would urge Deena to go before hisfolly could be suspected. To have any sentiments for a woman like Mrs. Ponsonby except a chivalrous reverence was an offense against his manhood.French was a man who had been brought up to respect ceremonial in daily living, and he dressed as scrupulously for his lonely dinner as if a wife presided and expected the courtesy to her toilet. Somebody has wisely said that unconsciously we lay aside our smaller worries with our morning clothes, and come down to dinner refreshed in mind as well as body by the interval of dressing. If Stephen did not exactly hang up his anxiety with his coat, he at least took a more reasonable view of his attachment to his neighbor’s wife. He began to think he had exaggerated an extreme admiration into love—that he was an honorable man and a gentleman, and could keep his secret as many another had done before him; and that if Deena went away for the winter it removed the only danger, which was in daily meeting under terms of established intimacy.There was to be a lecture at the Athenæum that evening on the engineering difficulties incident to building the Panama Canal, and Stephen, who was interested in the subject, made up his mind to start early and stop for a moment at the Sheltons’ to carry out Ben’s request. He took glory to himself for choosing an hour when Mrs. Ponsonby was likely to be surrounded by a bevy of brothers and sisters; he would never again try to see her alone.His very footfall sounded heroic when he ran up the steps and rang the bell. As he stood within the shelter of the storm door waiting to be let in, the voices of the young Sheltons reached him, all talking at once in voluble excitement, and then a hand was laid on the inside knob and advice offered in a shrill treble.“You had better run, Deena, if you don’t want to be caught,” and then more giggling, and a quick rush across the hall.Dicky threw open the hall door, and French, glancing up the stairs, caught sight of a velvet train disappearing round the turn of the first landing. He took the chances of making a blunder and called:“Come down, Mrs. Ponsonby. It is I—Stephen French—and I have something to say to you.”This was first received in silence, and then in piercing whispers, the little sisters tried to inspire courage:“Go down, Deena; you don’t look a bitfunny—really.”“‘Funny’—ye gods!” thought French, asDeenaturned and came slowly down the stairs. He only wished she did lookfunny, or anything, except the intoxicating, maddening contrast to her usual sober self that was descending to him.She was dressed in black velvet of a fashion evidently copied from a picture, for the waist was prolonged over the hips in Van Dykes, and from the shoulders and sleeves Venetian point turned back, displaying the lovely neck and arms that Polly had so envied. Her hair was loosely knotted at the back, and on her forehead were straying curls which were seldom tolerated in the severity of her usual neatness. She wore a collar of pearls, and her bodice was ornamented with two sunbursts and a star.French, who had never seen her in evening dress, was amazed. He seemed to forget that he had asked speech with her, and stood gazing as if she were an animated portrait whose exceeding merit left him dumb. He was recalled alike to his senses and his manners by Dicky, who turned a handspring over his sister’s long train and then addressed Stephen, when he found himself right-end up.“I say, Mr. French, mustn’t she have been sort of loony to wear a dress like that, and she sixty-five?”“Who?” asked French, completely mystified.“Why, mother’s cousin, Mrs. Beck. Didn’t you know she had died and left us things?” said Dicky, proudly. “A trunk full of clothes and diamond ornaments came to-day, and mother wroteto Deena to unpack it, and we persuaded her to dress up in this. Don’t she look queer? That Mrs. Beck must have been a dressy old girl.”Deena ignored the explanation. She appeared to treat her costume as a usual and prosaic affair, and said to Stephen, almost coldly:“You have something to tell me?”He wondered whether his eyes had offended her, whether the stupidity of his admiration had hurt her self-respect. She didn’t look at him squarely and openly, as usual, but kept her head half turned so that the perfect line of her throat and chin was emphasized, and the tiny curls at the back of her neck set off the creamy whiteness of her skin. To tell the truth, Deena had never before worn a low-necked dress. Prior to her early marriage a simple white muslin, a little curtailed in the sleeves and transparent over the neck, had been sufficient for any college dance she went to, and after Simeon had assumed command, even the white muslin was superfluous, for she never saw company either at home or abroad. Her present costume was sufficiently discreet in sleeves—they came almost to the elbow, but the bodice allowed so liberal a view of neck and shoulders as to cover the wearer with confusion. She felt exactly as you feel in a dream when you flit down the aisle of a crowded car in your night clothes, or inadvertently remove most of your garments in a pew in church, and with Deena self-consciousness always took the form of dignity.Stephen pulled himself together.“I have had a letter from Ben,” he said, “who seems to think an appeal he has made for your company in New York this winter will be more apt to win a favorable answer if backed up by yourTemporary Adviser. That describes the position Simeon indicated for me; doesn’t it, Mrs. Ponsonby?”She sank back in her chair and, forgetting herself for a moment, allowed her eyes to meet his with a merry smile.“This seems to be like a conspiracy to make a hungry man eat!” she answered. “No urging is necessary to persuade me to go to New York—why should you and Ben suppose I do not like to do pleasant things? I shall delight in being with Polly—I shall like the excitement and the fun—I am perfectly mad to go!”If it had not been for the exaggeration of the last sentence French would have been sure of the genuineness of her wishes, but the force of the expression was so foreign to her usual moderation that he asked himself whether Deena might not also find a separation desirable. The thought sent the blood bounding through his veins. If she cared for him ever so little, it would be easier to let her go—easier if he knew she suffered too! Then he called himself a coxcomb and a self-deceiver, and made a grasp at the good resolutions that had almost escaped him.“I always knew you possessed that adorable quality, common sense,” he remarked. “Ben and I might have guessed you would do the wise thing. When men rush hot-footed into the affairs of women, they are apt to play the fool.”“Is there any reason why I shouldn’t go?” she demanded, anxiously.“On the contrary, every reason why you should; but I feared some mistaken idea about expense or Simeon’s approbation might interfere with your taking a holiday, which you will enjoy as much as he enjoys digging up roots in Patagonia.”Deena considered the two points of his answer—expense and Simeon’s approbation—and replied thoughtfully:“My husband would recognize so simple a duty, and, as far as expense goes, I am a perfectly independent woman. Didn’t you knowourstory—the one you made me rewrite—sold at once, and, besides that, I have placed a number of fugitive poems? So I snap my fingers at expenses till the bank breaks,” and she tapped her forehead to indicate from whence the supply flowed.“Then make the most of the sensation while it lasts,” he said, with good-natured cynicism, “for expenses have a way of sizing you up—cleaning out your pockets—and going you one better!If you are still snapping your fingers when you come back from New York, then, indeed, you may boast.”A troubled look came into her face.“Simeon would like me to go to Polly when she is out of health and needs me,” she said, in a tone she meant to be assertive, but which was only appealing, “and if we are careful about spending, it is because we are proud and do not wish to incur obligations.”Thewewas a masterpiece of loyalty, and French was suitably impressed by it.“Dear Mrs. Ponsonby,” he said, “you speak as ifIwere likely to misjudge Simeon, whereas my object in coming here was to preventyourmisjudging him by allowing your sensitive conscience to forbid pleasures he would be the first to suggest.”The speech was genuine; in Stephen’s estimation his friend had noble qualities, and in bearing testimony to them he was beginning his chapter of self-discipline. In this interview, at least, he had preserved a conscience void of offense, and he hastened to say goodnight before any temptation should assail his discretion. Perhaps, also—for he was but mortal—the reflection in the parlor mirror of what was passing in the hall may have accelerated his departure.For the benefit of an admiring gallery at the head of the stairs, Master Shelton was performing jugglers’ tricks with their visitor’s best silk hat. Twice it had turned a somersault in the air, and twice safely alighted well down over Dicky’s ears, but a third time it might miss even such a conspicuous mark and be smashed out of symmetry on the hard floor. French beat a hasty retreat, but he was no match for Dicky in change of tactics; as he came into the hall that young gentleman stood stiffly and solemnly waiting to hand him his hat and open the front door with an air he had copied precisely from Stephen’s own servant the day of the memorable feast. His presumption carried him a little too far, however, for as he closed the door on Stephen he favored his sister with a comment that promptly brought its punishment.“If I were an old bag of bones like brother Simeon,” he said, grinning, “I shouldn’t care to have good-lookin’ fellows like Mr. French running after you twice in the same day, Deena!”Deena had always been the tenderest of elder sisters, but at this apparently innocent remark, she first got red as fire, and then, paling with anger, she rushed at her brother and pulled his ruddy locks till he cried for mercy, while she burst into tears.“Stop it!” roared Dicky, burrowing his head in a sofa cushion. “I tell you, you’re hurting me! And I’d like to know what the mischiefyou’recrying for, anyhow?”Deena left the room, her face buried in her handkerchief, but she managed to answer brokenly:“I will—not—allow—you—to call—my husband—‘a bag of bones’!”CHAPTERVI.The house the young Minthrops had taken was of a contracted luxury that oppressed Deena, accustomed as she was to space and sunshine at Harmouth. She told Ben that fortunes in New York could be gauged by the amount of light the individual could afford—billionaires had houses standing free, with light on four sides; millionaires had corner houses with light on three sides; while ordinary mortals lived in tunnels more or less magnificent where electric light had often to do duty for the sun. Ben declared that his income only admitted light fore and aft, but that with skillful decoration they could at least travesty the sunshine, and so they tried to reproduce its effects by wall hangings of faint yellow and pale green, by chintz-covered bedrooms that seemed to blossom with roses, and living rooms sweet with fresh flowers. There was no solemn mahogany—no light-absorbing color on door or window; all was delicately bright and gay as the tinting of the spring.Deena worked hard to get the house ready for Polly, who was still in Boston with her mother-in-law, and seemed quite content to leave the arranging of her new quarters to her sister and husband, who preceded her by several weeks; indeed, she was becoming so accustomed to being waited upon that she considered herself in a fair way of being spoiled. An heir was expected, and an heir seemed a very important thing to the elder Minthrops. They treated Polly as a queen bee, and the rest of the world as slaves to wait upon her. She was behaving in a way to satisfy their requirements in a daughter-in-law, and life was to be smoothed accordingly.Every day brought a fresh suggestion covered by a check. Ben was invited to select a high-stepping gray horse—a pair of cobs—a tiny brougham—a victoria—a piano—a pianola. Deena shopped till she almost sank exhausted, and yet the requests kept coming. If dear Mrs. Ponsonby didn’t mind the trouble, perhaps Polly might be warmer with sable rugs—perhaps an extra sofa in her room might induce her to lie down oftener—perhaps a few of those charming lace and linen tablecloths might make her feel like giving little dinners at home instead of fatiguing herself by going out to find her amusements.Deena would have been more than mortal if the image of old Mrs. Ponsonby had not risen before her eyes in forbidding contrast to so much indulgence. She realized that the genus mother-in-law has widely differing species, and yet in her heart she doubted whether Mrs. Minthrop, with money to anticipate every wish of her only son, loved him a whit more than frugal, self-denying Mother Ponsonby had loved her Simeon. Lavishness or thrift, alike they proved a mother’s affection.Deena executed all the commissions without a shadow of covetousness and rejoiced in her sister’s good fortune; it was reserved for Polly and Ben, when they took up their life in New York, to show her the depths of her own loneliness by the fullness of their comradeship, and her yearning needs by their mutual devotion.Polly arrived one bleak December day, the week before Christmas, escorted by Mrs. Minthrop and two maids, and was met at the Grand Central by her husband in a state of boyish excitement. His delight in having his wife with him once more was so genuine that Deena forgave him an amount of fussiness she never before suspected in his easy-going nature. He altered his orders half a dozen times as to which carriage should bring her from the train to the house, and finally ordered both; he repeated half a dozen times the hour at which the Boston express was due, in order that Deena might make no mistake about having tea served to the minute, and when he had shut the front door, on his way to the Grand Central, he came tearing back to ask the menu for dinner, as Polly was apt to be fanciful about her food. Deena remembered the time—not two years ago—when it was quantity rather than quality that balked Polly’s appetite, and nearly laughed in his face, but she loved her big brother-in-law for his forethought.The curtains were drawn and the lights turned up before the bustle of arrival drew Deena to the stairs. First old Mrs. Minthrop came, stopping to commend the house at every step, and then Polly, with her arm linked in her husband’s, chattering volubly at the delight everything gave her; and Deena, wedged between the elder lady and the wall in cordial greeting, could not help hearing Ben welcome his wife to her own home with a sentiment she never suspected in him before. Polly flew to her sister and kissed and thanked her for all she had done, and lavished her praises broadcast, and then she insisted upon pouring out the tea at her own fireside, and Ben perched on the arm of her chair; and once, when Deena turned suddenly from handing the toast to Mrs. Minthrop, she saw him kiss Polly’s hair.Her thoughts sped back to her parting with Simeon, with its prosaic formality—-the feel of his puckered lipsbrushing her forehead. What a lack of imagination marked all his dealings with her! She felt rebellious and sad; not that she wanted any of the luxury that surrounded Polly, but she was hungry for love. She saw suddenly what marriage ought to be, and the realization frightened her. How was it she had committed this crime against her own nature? Was it her sin or her parents’ that she had been so blind? Not Simeon’s—she exonerated him, she knew he had given her as much of himself as he had to spare, and that his conduct was uniform; what it had been at the beginning was now and for all time, and if she had suddenly become a connoisseur in husbands she was not the first woman to whom knowledge brought misery. It was not Simeon’s fault that he remained stationary while her views expanded. Fortunately for Deena’s peace of mind, it was Ben who figured in these reflections as the exponent of what a husband should be, and she had no suspicion that it was Stephen French who had waked her from her domestic coma.Poor sleeping beauty, her conscience had long ago been pricked by her mother-in-law’s spindle, and her whole moral sense infected with the belief that to keep house wisely was the end and aim of wifely duty. She reverenced Simeon for his learning and dignity, and felt proud that so simple a person as herself should have been chosen in marriage by a professor of Harmouth. On that she had existed for two years, and now she was waking up to new needs that stirred her like the prince’s kiss.Life in the young Minthrops’ dovecote soon settled down into a glorified routine. The elder Mrs. Minthrop returned to Boston, leaving Deena as her lieutenant, and perplexing her with the multiplicity of her charges; apparently Mrs. Ponsonby was to be Providence to her sister, with health and happiness under her control. The situation was paradoxical. Polly was to be denied nothing, but not allowed to have her own way too freely; she was to be kept amused, but most amusements were strictly prohibited—she was not to be encouraged to think herself an invalid, and at the same time her usual occupations were taken from her. Deena was wise enough to listen and make no promises, and when she assumed command she contented herself with trying to stand between her sister and domestic worries.Christmas came and went without the visit from Stephen, which Ben had hoped for, and invitations were pouring in for the plethora of social functions that mark the season’s height. Deena came in for her share, but she felt too much of a stranger to venture alone into the vortex. Polly entertained in a modest way at home—a few people at dinner, a friend or two at lunch—and this Deena greatly enjoyed, and had begun to make herself favorably known to a small circle when a stop was put to this mild dissipation. The great doctor, who had been charged by Mrs. Minthrop never to forget her daughter-in-law’s inexperience, issued orders that Polly was to stay in her room. This enforced quiet found an outlet in a desire to send Deena everywhere. She drove her forth to dinners and balls, and the high-stepping gray horse was always at her service, and so the beautiful Mrs. Ponsonby became the fashion. New York does not ask too many questions in these days about the husbands of handsome married women who appear as grass widows in its midst; indeed, the suspicion of a latent romance or scandal gives a flavor to the interest, and Deena suffered not a whit from the rumor that she was a deserted wife, with money.“Oh, yes, there is a husband,” the great Mrs. Star admitted. “She married him for his money, and he has a hobby—fossils, I think it is—and he has gone to collect them at Cape Horn. She bears his absence surprisingly well, doesn’t she? Old Mrs. Minthrop’s son married the sister, and she begged me to be civil to them. I forget who she said they were, butMayflowerpeople, you know.”In this way Deena was passed on, stamped with the hall-mark of theMayflower. Mrs. Shelton had contributedvery generously to her daughter’s outfit for the season in New York. The black velvet picture dress was only one of several found suitable for her use in the trunk of finery belonging to the Chicago cousin, and the jewels that had come into the Shelton family from the same source were worthy of Deena’s beauty. Her clothes were good, and she wore them like a princess.One evening late in January, Deena and Ben were dining with a gay young matron, who, without any especial personal charm herself, had the faculty of drawing to her house the best element society had to offer. The engagement had been made for them by Polly, much against her husband’s wishes, and his anxiety at leaving her alone could hardly be concealed during dinner. As soon as the ladies left the table he excused himself to his host, and, following the little hostess into the drawing room, he whispered a few words in her ear, nodded to Deena and disappeared.“Your brother-in-law has gone home to his wife, Mrs. Ponsonby,” said the hostess. “I have never seen such devotion.” She laughed a trifle enviously; her own infelicities were the talk of the town.Deena started forward in alarm.“Was he sent for? Is my sister ill?” she inquired, nervously, and then sank back in her chair, smiling, when she found it was only a phase of young Minthropism.While her own daylight hours were given to her sister, she was always pleased to be out of the way in the evening—it left the lovers to themselves—though she could not quite free herself from a sense of responsibility to the elder Mrs. Minthrop.Mrs. Star, who was beside Deena, gave a sniff—if so fine a lady could be suspected of such a plebeian way of marking her disapprobation.“My dear,” she said, “why should your charming sister be treated as a prisoner over whom somebody must perpetually keep watch? I have had six children—they were all healthy and had their full complement of legs and arms—except Bob, who lost an arm in the Spanish war, but that doesn’t count—and I never was shut up in my room before I had to be—nor put on a milk diet—nor forbidden reasonable exercise—and I think the modern doctors are full of fads and greed. Their bills! I don’t know who is rich enough to be ill nowadays!” Here she shut her eyes and trembled to think of the portion of her own great fortune that might have transferred itself to the doctor’s pockets if her nursery had not antedated the present school. “It may not seem very expensive to young Mrs. Minthrop to lie on her sofa and drink milk—but just wait till she comes to pay for it!”“I don’t believe anyone will care about the bill, Mrs. Star,” said Deena, “so long as Polly keeps well.”“It is bad enough to have food and exercise taken away from the young mothers,” continued Mrs. Star, who was evidently mounted on a hobby, “but when helpless infants are deprived of their natural sustenance and fed from bottles filled in a laboratory and stuffed with cotton, it is time for the Gerry Society to interfere. Cruelty to children is practiced far more by the rich than by the poor, in my opinion, and if you want to see cases of inanition and feeble spines, I’ll show you where to look for them, and it won’t be in the tenements!”Deena wanted to laugh, but didn’t dare to; the old lady proclaimed her fierce sentiments with such earnest gravity. She managed, however, to say politely:“You think that science has not improved upon nature in rearing the race, but you must remember that it finds the higher classes existing under unnatural conditions.”“The conditions would do very well if we could banish the doctors,” said the old lady, testily. “I am out of patience with their incubators and their weighing machines and their charts and their thermometers—yes, and their baby nurses! What do you suppose I heard a mother say to her own servant the other day: ‘Please, nurse, may I take the baby up? He is crying fearfully,’ and the nurse, who had reluctantly put down the morning paper, said:‘No, m’am, when he cries in that angry way, he must learn that it is useless!’His age was six weeks.”Deena burst into a hearty laugh.“My dear Mrs. Star,” she said, “I am a convert.”Mrs. Star wagged her head in approbation.“Just tell your sister what I have said, will you?” she pursued, afraid that so much wisdom might be lost. “And, my dear, since your brother-in-law has gone home, suppose you come along to the opera with me. I sent some tickets to a few stray men, and I must look in before the last act.”At this point they were joined by the gentlemen, and as soon as decency would permit, Mrs. Star made her adieux, followed by Deena. The Minthrop brougham was dismissed, and the ladies whirled away in Mrs. Star’s electric carriage. She at once took up her parable, but this time the topic was not the care of infants.“I think a great deal of the scenic effect of an opera box,” she said. “I always dress with respect to the hangings, and I never take a discordant color beside me if I can help it. You happen to please me very much this evening; I like the simplicity of the white dress. Still, it wouldn’t be anything if you didn’t have such a neck—it gives an air to any low gown.”“It was my wedding dress,” said Deena, frankly, “and my sister’s maid rearranged it for me. I am glad you like it.”“Your wedding dress,” said Mrs. Star, reflectively. “I think I heard you had married a naturalist—prehistoric bones, is it not? Very interesting subject—so inspiring. Milliken”—to the footman, who opened the door on their arrival at the opera house—“you may keep the carriage here. I shall not be more than half an hour.”Half an hour for the enjoyment of a pleasure that cost her, yearly, a moderate fortune!On their way through the foyer to the box, Deena ventured to disclaim for her husband a peculiar interest in fossils.“My husband is a botanist,” she began, and then desisted when she saw her companion’s attention was barely held by a desire to be civil.“Ah, indeed!” Mrs. Star vaguely responded. “Delightful topic. I went into it myself quite extensively when I was a girl.”Deena was not often malicious, but she couldn’t help wishing Simeon could have stood by to hear this announcement of a girlish mastery of his life’s work. She tried to think in what dry words he would have rebuked the levity, but before she could arrange a phrase quite in character, they were in the front of the box, and in the obscurity some one took her hand, and Stephen French’s voice murmured:“What a piece of luck that I should see you to-night! I have only been in town a few hours, and obeyed my aunt’s summons to the opera as a means of keeping myself from Ben’s house till the morning. You can’t think how eager I have been to see you again, Mrs. Ponsonby.”There was a strange break in his voice, as if he were trying to restrain the rush of happiness.All the six mighty artists who made the opera the marvel it was were combining their voices in the closing sextet of the fourth act, and Deena, thrilled by the loveliness of the music and, perhaps, by the surprise of French’s presence, felt she was trembling with excitement.“Fancy meeting you here!” she kept repeating, the stupid phrase concealing the great joy that was puzzling her conscience.“What is so wonderful in my being in my aunt’s opera box?” Stephen demanded. “Cannot a professor of zoology like music, or do you object to a bachelor owning an aunt?”How pleasant it was to hear his kind voice, with its good-natured raillery! But that was sub-conscious pleasure—her immediate attention was busy with the first part of his speech about his aunt’s opera box; she never supposed he had any relations.“Who is your aunt?” she asked, abruptly.“Mrs. Star,” he answered. “Don’t you see the family likeness?”And oddly enough, in the half light, there was a distinct resemblance in the profile of the bewigged old lady to her handsome young kinsman’s. Deena regretted both the likeness and the relationship; it made her uncomfortable to know that Stephen was the nephew of this worldly-minded old lady, with her fictitious standards and her enormous riches; it seemed to place a barrier between them and to lift him out of the simplicity of his college setting.“Have I become a snob in this Relentless City’?” she exclaimed. “Ifind my whole idea of you changed by this announcement. It depresses me! You seem to me a different person here, with these affiliations of fashion and grandeur, than when I thought of you simply as Simeon’s friend.”“Don’t think of me simply as Simeon’s friend,” he pleaded, half in fun, half in sinful earnest.“I never shall again,” she said, sadly. “Your greatest charm is eclipsed by this luxury—I want you to belong to Harmouth only.”Stephen’s lips were twitching with suppressed amusement.“There is a proverb, my dear lady,” he said, “of the pot and the kettle, that you may recall. I am not sure but what I may find a word to say to you upon the cruelty of disturbing associations.”“To me!” she said, turning to him with the gentle dignity that was her crowning charm. “Surely there are no surprises in me.”Stephen shook his head in mock disapproval as he allowed his eyes to sweep from the topmost curl of her head to her slipper points, and then he said:“Go home, Mrs. Ponsonby, and take off that white lace evening dress, and perhaps the wreath of holly might come, too—and that diamond star on your bodice; and put on, instead—let me see—the dark blue frock you wore the evening I told Simeon about the Patagonian expedition, and then you will be in a position to reproach me for any relapse from the simplicity of Harmouth. If you disapprove of me as the nephew of my aunt, how do you suppose I feel about you? And oh! my stars! what would Simeon say?”“Simeon,” she said, faintly. “You are right; Simeon might not understand——” and before French had time to protest that he had only been teasing her, the curtain went down, strange men came flocking into the box, Mrs. Star was introducing a Russian grand duke, and Stephen, surrendering his chair, withdrew to the other side of his aunt.Deena could not but admire the old lady’s admirable manner. She kept up an easy chatter, sometimes in French, sometimes in English, with the Russian and with a Spanish artist; she never allowed Deena to feel out of touch with the conversation, and in the midst of it all she managed to welcome her nephew.“You are stoppingatmy house, of course, Stephen? No—at the Savoy? That is uncharitable to a lonely old woman. Where did you know that pretty creature, Mrs. Ponsonby?” she asked, seeing that the two foreigners were absorbing the attention of her beautiful protégée. “You should learn to guard the expression of your face, my dear boy. I begin to understand why you cling so obstinately to Harmouth. I see the place has advantages outside the work of the college.”Here she wagged her head in self-congratulation at her own astuteness, and Stephen flushed angrily.“Hush!” he said. “She will hear you. You have little knowledge of Mrs. Ponsonby if you think she would permit the attentions of any man. She is not in the least that kind of person. She is one of the most dignified, self-respecting, high-minded women I ever knew.”Mrs. Star cut him short with a wave of her fan.“Spare me the rhapsodies,” she laughed. “You merely mark the stage of the disease you have arrived at. The object of your love sits enthroned! If the husband is wise he will throw his fossils into the sea and come back to look after this pretty possession. Flesh and blood is worth more than dry bones.”“Ponsonby is a botanist,” Stephen corrected, grimly, while his inward thought was that the dry bones were Simeon’s own; and then, ashamed of the disloyal—though unspoken—sneer, he went back to Deena and began talking volubly of his last letter from her husband.They had both had letters from Simeon, now safely arrived in the Straits of Magellan. He had written to Deena when they first cast anchor off the Fuegian shore. He described to her the visits of the Indians in their great canoes, containing their entire families and possessions, and the never-dying fire of hemlock on a clay hearth in the middle of the boat; how they would sell their only garment—a fur cloak—-for tobacco and rum, and how friendly they seemed to be, in spite of all the stories of cannibalism told by early voyagers.In the midst of this earnest conversation, Mrs. Star rose to go, escorted by the grand duke, and Stephen, following with Deena, was able to let his enthusiasm rise above a whisper when they gained the corridor.“Didn’t he tell you that they were all going guanaco hunting?”“Simeon!” in a tone of incredulity.“Greatest fun in the world, I am told,” pursued French; “something like stag hunting, only more exciting—done with the bolas. You whirl it round your head and let it fly, and it wraps itself round a beast’s legs and bowls him over before he knows what hit him.”“Does it kill him?” asked Deena, shrinking from the miseries of the hunted.“Only knocks him over,” explained Stephen. “You finish him with your knife.”“Sport is a cruel thing,” she said, shuddering. “I am glad Simeon cannot even ride.”“Can’t ride!” repeated Stephen. “Indeed, I can tell you he means to. He says the Indians have offered him the best mount they have. They considered him a medicine man, on account of his root-digging propensities, and treated him as the high cockalorum of the whole ship’s company.”“Surely he is joking,” she said. “Simeon is making game of you.”“Simeon!” he echoed, mimicking her incredulous tone.“A joke would be no stranger to him than a horse,” she said, smiling.They had reached the entrance, and Deena stood shaking with suppressed laughter. “Fancy! Simeon!” she repeated.“And why not Simeon, pray?” asked Stephen, slightly nettled.A vision of Simeon with his gold-rimmed spectacles and stooped figure mounted on horseback in the midst of a party of Indians, whirling his bolas over his head and shouting, presented itself to Deena’s imagination. The carriage was waiting, and, obeying Mrs. Star’s motion to get in first, Simeon Ponsonby’s wife fell back on the seat and laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks.Outside, Stephen was entreating to be allowed to visit her the next morning.“I haven’t half finished my story, Mrs. Ponsonby,” he protested.And Deena managed to steady her voice and invite him to lunch the next day.CHAPTERVII.French’s visit to New York was not the result of any weakening resolution in regard to his neighbor’s wife; the object was business. His property was chiefly in real estate, and the distinguished law firm who managed his affairs had summoned him to confer with a tenant who was desirous of becoming a purchaser. Being in the same town with Deena, he decided that he could not well avoid visiting her, to say nothing of Ben. It was his misfortune that every meeting made his self-discipline harder, for, if they lived, he had got to see her under still more trying circumstances—reunited with a husband who misunderstood her.These thoughts passed through hismind the morning after their encounter at the opera, as he finished his breakfast at the Savoy. He had an appointment at his lawyers’ at ten o’clock, and at the Minthrops’ for luncheon at half-past one. The first, if properly conducted, might result in a largely increased income; the second in self-repression and a heartache; and yet his one idea was to dispatch the business, so that no precious moments of Deena’s society should be lost to him.He was hurrying out of the hotel to go downtown, when a telegram was put into his hand. For the detached bachelor such messages have little interest. Stephen opened this one as casually as most people open an advertisement—may the foul fiend fly away with those curses of our daily mail!—and read:Buenos Ayres, Jan. 30.Pedro Lopezto theHon’ble Professor French, Harmouth University.Tintorettoon its way home. Ponsonby missing.Stephen read the dispatch several times before he quite understood its significance. Pedro Lopez was his South American friend, who had set on foot the Fuegian expedition and applied to Harmouth for a botanist; theTintorettowas the vessel furnished by the Argentine Government.The cable message had gone to Harmouth and been repeated to New York, probably by Stephen’s butler.The first effect of evil tidings is apt to be superficial. We receive a mental impression rather than a shock to the heart. We are for the moment spectators of our own misfortunes, as if the blow had produced a paralysis to the feelings, leaving the intellect clear.Stephen went back to his own room conscious of no emotion except intense curiosity as to what had become of Simeon, though, perhaps, far back in his mind anxiety was settling down to its work of torture.He flung himself into a chair near the window which overlooked the entrance to the park and let his eyes gaze blankly at the busy scene. It had snowed during the night, and sleighs were dashing in and out under the leafless arches of the trees. Bells were tinkling, gay plumes of horsehair floating from the front of the Russian sleighs and the turrets of the horses’ harness, men and women wrapped in costly furs were being whirled along, laughing and chatting, through the crisp morning air.Stephen didn’t know he was receiving an impression—he thought his mind was at a standstill, but whenever in the future that terrible day came back to his memory, he always saw a picture, as it were, of the brilliant procession dashing into the city’s playground, while Saint Gaudens’ statue of Sherman stood watching, grim and cold, with the snow on his mantle and his Victory in a winding sheet.It was not very long before French was able to pull himself together and to face the situation. What did it mean? Had Simeon lost himself in the Patagonian wilds or was he drowned? French felt that he couldn’t carry such an uncertain report to Deena, the strain upon her would be too great. It was horrible to have to tell her at all, but he must try to make the news definite—not vague. Gradually he thought out a course of action; he would telegraph to Lopez to send him a detailed account, cabling the answer at his expense, and until this reply came he thought himself justified in concealing the news. Lopez was in constant communication with the expedition, and the letter which had announced Ponsonby’s disappearance must have gone into particulars.After dispatching this cable he kept his appointment in Wall Street, transacting the business with the dull precision of a person in a hypnotic sleep, and then presented himself at the Minthrops’ a few minutes before the lunch hour. He had not been prepared to find Deena installed as hostess, and her manner of greeting him and presiding at the lunch table was so assured, so different from the timid hospitality she was wont to offer under Simeon’s roof, that her whole personality seemedchanged. She more than ever satisfied his admiring affection, but she was so unlike the Mrs. Ponsonby of Harmouth that he felt like confiding to this gracious, sympathetic woman the tragedy that threatened her other self.Early in the day, before that woeful message came, he had counted the minutes he could spend with her, and now he was timing his visit so as to curtail it to the least possible duration, and taxing his ingenuity as to how best to avoid seeing her alone. It was Saturday, and he trusted to the half holiday for the protection of Ben’s presence; his depression of spirits would be less noticeable in general conversation.He arrived on the stroke of the hour set for lunch, and to his chagrin was shown to the library, where Deena was sitting alone. His trouble deepened, for, after motioning him to a chair beside her, she resumed her embroidery and said, with a quizzical expression:“You were in the midst of Simeon’s last letter when we parted last evening, Mr. French; please go on with it. You may remember you left my unfortunate husband pledged to become a horseman.”Stephen could not respond to her merry mood; his anxiety was to steer the conversation away from Simeon, and he had run against a snag at the start.“At all events, I left him safely surrounded by friends,” he said—more in answer to his own feelings than her banter.In thinking over any disaster, the mind loves to dwell on the peaceful moments that preceded it. Stephen found comfort in recalling the gay tone of Simeon’s letter, his delight in his coming adventure, and the good feeling that evidently existed between him and the ship’s company.Deena took exception to his remark.“You have strange ideas of safety!” she laughed. “Not content with mounting a confirmed pedestrian on a wild horse of the Pampas, you must needs turn him loose among a horde of savages. The hunt had not taken place when he wrote, had it? It is a pity, for I should like Simeon safely back on shipboard without the loss of spectacles or dignity.”She would like Simeon back! What wouldn’t French give to know her husband was still alive!The butler announced lunch, and Ben came dashing downstairs, delighted to see Stephen and full of excuses at having lingered in his wife’s room. He said Polly was feeling rather poorly, and Stephen was glad to see a look of anxiety cross Deena’s face; he rightly judged her thoughts had been diverted from Patagonia to Polly’s sofa, and he breathed once more.What a pleasant luncheon it was, in spite of the lurking dread. Deena was wearing the old blue dress he had recommended to her the night before. It could not be from coquetry—she was above coquetry—but perhaps she had put it on to recall associations; to remind him of the close bonds of friendship that existed between them in those pleasant autumn days that followed Simeon’s departure. Stephen was not very learned in the make of women’s frocks, but he understood color and could appreciate how that steely-blue made her complexion glow warm as ivory and her hair like copper.They were pretending to quarrel over a dish of salted almonds; Deena declared that French was getting the lion’s share, and finally covered the little silver basket that held them with her hand. On the third finger flashed old Mrs. Ponsonby’s diamond in its antiquated silver setting, and below it was her wedding ring, the narrow band that symbolized her bondage to Simeon. For the first time since French had received the cable, its possible significance to him took possession of his mind, and he flushed a dull red and fell into a reverie.In all probability there was no longer any barrier between him and the woman he loved; nothing to prevent his striving to win her, but the period of her mourning—the respect she owed to the memory of a husband who was the palest shadow of a lover, and not even the ghost of a companion. He wonderedwhether she had ever guessed his feelings—feelings which he had subdued and held under with all the strength of his nature, partly through fear of forfeiting her friendship and partly because her charm was in the simplicity of her goodness. If love had once been named between them, Deena would have been other than herself.Her voice roused him. She was excusing herself in order to go to her sister, and leave him and Ben to smoke. He held the door open for her to pass with a profound sense of relief—no suspicion of his awful secret had been betrayed. But oh! the comfort of talking it over with Ben, of sharing the burden with another! They discussed the meager announcement till they had exhausted every probability and found nothing to hope and everything to fear.“I hope to Heaven he is dead!” cried Ben. “Imagine a man physically weak, like Ponsonby, enduring slow starvation in the damp and chill of the Patagonian seacoast. It will be a positive relief if we hear he fell overboard.”“Anything is better than uncertainty,” said Stephen, and the speech must have been from the new point of view, the hope of Deena’s freedom, for the next moment he was conscious of a wave of shame.“I ought to get an answer from Lopez before night,” he added, rising to go; “and as soon as I hear I will return and let you know.”Ben followed him to the front door, whispering like a conspirator and glancing furtively up the stairs. There was a childish streak in the boy’s nature that gloried in a confidence; the joy of the secret nearly made up for the sorrow of the fact. But secrets and sorrows were soon put out of his head, for a crucial moment had come to the young Minthrops—one we anticipate and are never quite prepared for.As he ran upstairs, after seeing Stephen off, he met Deena, evidently looking for him.“Oh, Ben,” she said, “Polly is ill, and I have telephoned for——”But she got no further, for her big brother-in-law turned white as a frightened girl, and when he tried to speak no sound came from his lips.“Goose!” said Deena, laying an affectionate hand on his shoulder. “Shall I get a glass of brandy? Do you suppose no one has ever met with this experience before?”Ben recovered himself with a fit of irritation, which seems the corollary to being frightened.“Brandy!” he repeated. “Why in thunder should I want brandy? Really, Deena, for a sensible woman, you are given at times to saying the most foolish things I ever heard.”In the meanwhile, as the afternoon was still early, French was anxious to find some occupation that might distract his thoughts. He decided to visit his aunt, whose conversation was usually startling enough to hold the attention of her hearers in any stress of agitation, and then when he was halfway up her steps repented the intention, on the ground that he needed soothing rather than stimulating; but his retreat was cut off by the good lady coming out of her door and discovering him, and, as she was about to walk round the block for exercise before taking her afternoon drive, she promptly claimed his company for both occasions. The wind blew her dress up to her ankles as she reached the sidewalk, displaying a pair of pointed-toed, high-heeled boots that perforce made walking—even round the block—a torturing task. But Mrs. Star was a brave woman, and walking a matter of conscience, so she tottered along beside her nephew, occasionally laying a hand on his arm when a bit of icy pavement made her footing more than usually uncertain.“How I hate the late winter in New York!” she exclaimed, when a few minutes later they were seated in her sleigh on their way to the park. “Here we are at the threshold of February, when any self-respecting climate would be making for spring, and we must count on two months more of solid discomfort. Ah, well, this year I do not mean to face it. I have had the yacht put in commission, and she sails next week forthe Mediterranean, where I shall overtake her by one of the German boats, and do a little cruising along the African coast. Come with me, Stephen,” she said, coaxingly. “Let this silly school-teaching go. You are a rich man—why under the sun do you want to work? If you are holding on to Harmouth on account of that pretty Mrs. Ponsonby, it can’t do you much good when she is in New York. Besides,” she added, quite as an afterthought, “it is bad morality, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”He was about to turn and rend her for what he considered an unpardonable meddling with his affairs, when he saw her eyes fixed on him with tenderest affection and his anger melted.“Dear Stevie,” she said, “be good-natured and bear an old woman company—you know you are as dear as my own sons.”She used to call him Stevie when he was a lonely little boy, and she made her house his home; when all he knew of family life was supplied by that good-natured, worldly household—the name touched a chord of memory that softened his irritation.“I wish I could, Aunt Adelaide,” he answered, “but I have managed to tie myself to my work in a way you cannot understand. You will have to take Bob as a companion.”Bob was her only unmarried child, wedded only to his clubs and amateur soldiering, and even less available than Stephen for a cruise.“Bob!” she said, contemptuously. “He never voluntarily went to a foreign country except Cuba, and I don’t believe he knows on which side of the Mediterranean Africa lies! I shall find some one who will be glad to go with me—perhaps your charming friend, Mrs. Ponsonby, might go. She looks as if she would be a pleasant traveling companion.”French’s heart tightened as he thought of the horror that stood between Deena and pleasure, and was even debating in his mind whether it would not be better to tell his aunt the truth, when conversation was rendered impossible for the moment by the puffing and tooting of a great automobile advancing toward them down the west drive of the park—its wheels slipping in a crazy manner, that made the coachman of Mrs. Star’s sleigh give it a wide berth. Just as it got abreast of them, it became perfectly unmanageable—slewed to the left, made a semicircle which turned it round, and, catching the back of the sleigh on its low front, turned the light vehicle over as easily as if it had been made of pasteboard.Mrs. Star allowed herself a shrill shriek as the sleigh went over and then lay quite still in a heap by the side of the road, with Stephen across her feet. The automobile seemed to have recovered its serenity, for it now stood still like any well-behaved machine, quiet save for its noisy breathing, while the sleigh was being bumped, on its side, far up the road, at the heels of the outraged horses.French scrambled to his feet and endeavored to help his aunt, who had raised herself to a sitting posture and was looking white and disheveled, while she cast furious glances at the motor and its owner. She took her nephew’s hands and attempted to rise, but fell back, declaring she had broken her knee, as it hurt her excruciatingly when she tried to move it.The owner of the auto now came forward in great contrition to offer help and apologies. He was a physician, he explained, hastening to a case of great urgency, and he had taken his automobile as the quickest means of covering the distance, though he had known it at times to behave badly on slippery and snowy roads.The admission was a mistake—it put him in the wrong, and Mrs. Star, who distrusted all modern doctors, felt a consuming rage against this one in particular.“You must have a strange estimate of a physician’s duty if you feel justified in risking many lives to save one!” she said, haughtily. “Not that you are much worse than the fire engines and ambulances. We ought to add a petition to the litany for safety against oursafeguards, for they kill more than they rescue.”The gentleman bore her sarcasms with becoming humility, and begged to be allowed to take her home, promising that the machine should execute no more “Voyages en zigzag,” and she, ashamed of her temper, forced herself to decline, with some graciousness, though she made it very plain that no person on earth could tempt her to get into the automobile.“At least let him tell you whether your knee is seriously hurt,” Stephen whispered, loath to see the medical help departing.“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” retorted Mrs. Star. “A nice spectacle you would make of me by the roadside! Besides, I am not going to allow my knee to buy him a new automobile. Thank Heaven, I know how to guard my pocket against the medical profession—I’ll not stir from this spot till he takes himself off.”“Don’t be so foolish!” urged French. “If your knee is injured it is a very serious thing.”“Well, it isn’t seriously injured,” she said, perversely. “I have changed my mind, and I mean to have it tied up with witch hazel.”Fortunately her equipage was now seen approaching in the charge of two park policemen, who had stopped the horses about a mile further on, righted the sleigh and now brought it back not much the worse for the misadventure. The coachman and groom were collected from the bushes, and, as they were quite uninjured, Stephen lifted his aunt into the back seat and they turned their faces homeward.However much the rest of the party may have been inconvenienced, French had certainly attained the object of his solicitude—namely, to have his thoughts distracted from Simeon Ponsonby.CHAPTERVIII.The second cable from Lopez arrived soon after dinner; it brought small comfort. Its nineteen words told the story but too conclusively.Strayed from party while hunting. Weather turned foggy. Search parties persevered for two weeks. Hope abandoned. Expedition homeward bound.There was no further excuse for concealment; indeed, it was French’s plain duty to tell Deena what might be told by the newspapers if he delayed.It was just nine o’clock, and he walked rapidly to the Minthrops’ and rang the bell. Outside an electric cab was waiting, its great lamps casting pathways of light across street and sidewalk. The motorman was inside; an indication that long waiting had driven him to shelter, though the circumstance had no significance to Stephen.The bell was answered by the butler, who looked portentous and stood resolutely in the doorway.“Not at ’ome, sir,” he said, in response to Stephen’s request to see Mrs. Ponsonby.“Then I must see Mr. Minthrop,” French insisted.The man hesitated and then relaxed his wooden expression.“I beg your pardon, Mr. French. I did not recognize you, sir. The truth is, we’re a bit h’upset h’inside. Mrs. Minthrop is tuk ill, sir—very sudden—and we’re expecting the good word every minute. I shall tell Mr. Minthrop you called.”Stephen nodded and turned away—the fates had ordained that he was to carry his secret till the morning. It had been a harassing burden in the daylight hours, but during the night it became maddening; it seemed beyond his resolution to tell Deena that the pleasure trip he had set on foot for her husband’s advantage had ended in death.As early as he thought permissible, the next morning, he presented himself at Ben’s door—this time gaining, a cheerful admission—and was shown to the library on the second floor. There he found the young father, radiantly happy, and so self-centered that he had entirely forgotten the misfortune overhanging his sister-in-law.“Come and see my son,” he said, proudly, and in spite of an expressionof reluctance on the part of French to intrude into the upper regions of the house, he pushed him ahead of him up the next flight of stairs and knocked softly at the door of a back bedroom.Deena’s voice bade them enter, and French was ushered into a large room fitted out as a nursery, with the newest appliances for baby comfort. There was a bassinette so be-muslined and be-ribboned and be-laced that it looked like a ball dress standing by itself in the middle of the floor; and a bathtub that looked like a hammock; and a weighing machine; and a chart for recording the daily weight; and a large table with a glass top; and a basket containing all the articles for the Lilliputian toilet; while near the fender some doll-like clothes were airing.Deena was sitting in a low rocking-chair near the fire with her nephew in her arms. She welcomed her visitors with a smile, and turned down a corner of the baby’s blanket to display his puckered ugliness to Stephen. She was looking happy, tender, proud, maternally beautiful.“Hasn’t he a beautifully shaped head?” she demanded, passing her hand tenderly over the furry down that served him for hair. “And look at his ears and his hands—was there ever anything so exquisite?”It was French’s first introduction to a young human, and he found it slightly repulsive, but Deena, in her Madonna-like sweetness, made his heart swell.“He is part of an exquisite picture,” he answered.Ben, who had been for a moment with Polly, now came into the room with his usual noisy bustle, and Deena got up and, surrendering the baby to the nurse, led the way downstairs.At the library door Stephen paused to whisper to Ben:“Stay with me while I tell her,” in tones of abject fright; but Ben shook his head.“Look here, old man,” he said, in mild remonstrance, “if you had had a baby last night, you wouldn’t be casting about for fresh trouble to-day—now, would you?”Stephen gave him an indignant glance, and, following Deena, he shut the library door. He did it in so pronounced a way that she looked up surprised, and was even more at a loss to account for the gravity of his expression; she wondered whether he had thought her rude yesterday when she had disappeared from the table at lunch and had never returned, but it was not like French to be touchy.“I left you very unceremoniously yesterday,” she began, “but the nurse appeared for a moment at the door, and I did not want to alarm Ben. You were not offended?”“Believe me, no,” French answered, with a sort of shudder; “for the first time in my life I was glad to see you go—your presence was torture to me—I was concealing something from you, Mrs. Ponsonby, and it has got to get itself told.”While he spoke her expression changed rapidly from amazement to alarm, and she got up and came close to him—waiting—but without a word.“Simeon is lost,” he said, hoarsely, hurling the bald fact at her before his courage failed. “I tried to tell you yesterday,” he went on, drawing the cables from his pocket, “but I couldn’t; it all seemed so vague at first, and I ventured to wait until I got more news.”She was standing before him with her hands clasped and her face deadly pale, but with a calm that frightened him.“Do you mean lost at sea?” she asked, in a steady voice—toneless but perfectly clear.

“I say!” he began. “Now, isn’t that too bad! And Deena so particular that you should get the note before tea time. I’m awfully sorry, Mr. French—it’s all Bridget’s fault. Deena said if I got that note to you before five o’clock I should have a piece of cake, and when Bridget wouldn’t give it to me it made me so mad I forgot everything. I wanted to kill her.”

“I know just how you felt,” said Stephen, with irony.

Dicky was tying his chocolates into a hard ball, but with the finishing grimy knot he tossed responsibility to the winds.

“Oh, well,” he said, soothingly, “you’ve got it now, at any rate, so there’s no occasion for saying justwhenI gave it to you, unless you want to get a fellow into trouble.”

Stephen looked grave; he did want Mrs. Ponsonby to know why he had failed to follow her suggestion of taking tea with her at her mother’s house—and also he hated evasion.

“As it happens, that is the exact point I wish your sister to know. I shall not tell her, but I expect you, as a gentleman, to tell of yourself.”

“All right,” said Dicky, mournfully. “Good-night, Mr. French.”

Deena had ample time to get accustomed to the old home life before her parents returned, for she had already been in charge for two weeks and still they tarried.

It was evident that young Mr. Beck wished to carry out his aunt’s bequests in the spirit as well as the letter of her instructions, for trunks of linen and silver began to arrive from Chicago which gave some idea of the loot obtainedfrom the dismantling of Mrs. Beck’s fine house. The young Sheltons took the keenest interest in unpacking these treasures. Children are naturally communistic. They enjoy possessions held in common almost as much as their individual acquisitions—only in a different way. There is more glorification in the general good luck, but not such far-reaching privilege.

In the midst of these excitements Deena received a letter the possession of which no one seemed inclined to dispute with her. It was from Simeon, posted at Montevideo, and containing the first news of his voyage. His wife read it in the retirement of her own room, but she might have proclaimed it from the rostrum, so impersonal was its nature. He had made an attempt, however, to meet what he conceived to be feminine requirements in a correspondent, for the handwriting was neat, and the facts he recorded of an unscientific nature. He described his cabin in the vessel, also his fellow passengers; not humorously, but with an appreciation of their peculiarities Deena had not anticipated; he introduced her to flying fish, and then to the renowned albatross, and he conducted her up the river Platte to Montevideo, which he described with the ponderous minuteness of a guide book. At the end he made a confidence—namely, that even his summer flannels had proved oppressive in that climate—but the intimacy of his letter went no further, and he omitted to mention any personal feelings in regard to their separation.

It was an admirable family letter, instructive and kind, and rather pleasanter and lighter in tone than his conversation. Deena was glad that no exhortations to economy made it too private to show to French when he called that afternoon. She but anticipated his object in coming. He also had a letter which he had brought for her to read, and they sat on opposite sides of the fire, enjoying their exchanged correspondence.

But what a difference there was in the letters; Deena’s had three pages of pretty handwriting; Stephen’s six of closely written scrawl. In Deena’s the ideas barely flowed to the ink; in Stephen’s they flowed so fast they couldn’t get themselves written down—he used contractions, he left out whole words; he showed the interest he felt in the work he left behind in endless questions in regard to his department; he thanked Stephen more heartily than he had ever done by word of mouth for suggesting him for the appointment, and finally he gave such an account of his voyage as one intelligent man gives another.

Deena recognized her place in her husband’s estimation when she finished his letter to Stephen, and said, with pardonable sarcasm:

“Simeon saves the strong meat of observation for masculine digestion, and I get only thehors-d’œuvres; perhaps he has discriminated wisely.”

The mere fact of being able to exchange letters with Deena was a revelation to French, and as he walked home from their interview his fancy was busy putting himself in Simeon’s place. The paths that lead through another man’s kingdom are never very safe for the wandering feet of imagination. It is an old refrain, “If I were king,” the song of a usurper, if only in thought.

If he were king of Deena Ponsonby’s life, Stephen thought, would he write letters that another chap might read? Would he dwell upon the shape of an albatross, when there must be memories—beautiful, glowing memories—between them to recall? Pen and ink was a wretched medium for love, but the heart of the world has throbbed to its inspiration before now. Why, if a woman like Mrs. Ponsonby shared his hearth, he would let Tierra del Fuego, with its flora and its fauna, sink into the sea and be damned to it, before he’d put the hall door between himself and her. His own front door had suggested the idea, and he shut it with a bang.

He picked up the letters he found waiting on the hall table, and went directly to his library, passing through a room that would have been a drawing-room had a lady presided there, but to the master served only as a defenseagainst intrusion into the privacy of his sanctum.

The postman had left a pile of bills and advertisements, but there was one letter in Ben Minthrop’s familiar writing, and Stephen turned up his light and settled himself to read it. Ben wrote:

Dear French:When I asked you to spend Christmas with us in Boston I had no idea that, like the Prophet Habbacuc, I, with my dinner pail, was to be lifted by the hair of my head, and transported to Babylon—in other words, New York. But so it is! If you know your Apocrypha, this figurative language will seem apt, but in case you should like my end of it explained I will leave the mystifications of Bel and the Dragon and come down to plain speech.My father has conceived the idea that I am one of the dawning lights in the financial world, and he has decided to open a branch office of our business in New York and to put me at its head. I must confess that the whole thing is very pleasant and flattering, and it has stirred all the decent ambitions I have—that I have any I owe to you, old fellow—and I am rather keen to be off.We have taken a house not far from the park in East Sixty-fifth Street, where a welcome will always be yours, and where Polly and I hope you will eat your Christmas dinner.Perhaps you may reflect that it is a serious thing to befriend straying men and dogs; they are apt to regard past kindness as a guarantee of future interest in their welfare. I do not believe, however, that I am making too large a demand upon your friendship in asking for your good wishes in this pleasant turn to my future affairs.Of course I want one more favor. If you have any influence with Deena Ponsonby, will you urge her to spend the winter with us? Polly is writing to her by this same mail, but I know the New England conscience will suggest to Deena that anything amusing is wrong, and so you might explain that I am nervous about Polly’s health, and that I look to her to help me get settled without overstrain to my wife—in short, administer a dose of duty, and she may see her way to coming.Ever, my dear French,Sincerely yours,Benjamin Minthrop.

Dear French:When I asked you to spend Christmas with us in Boston I had no idea that, like the Prophet Habbacuc, I, with my dinner pail, was to be lifted by the hair of my head, and transported to Babylon—in other words, New York. But so it is! If you know your Apocrypha, this figurative language will seem apt, but in case you should like my end of it explained I will leave the mystifications of Bel and the Dragon and come down to plain speech.

My father has conceived the idea that I am one of the dawning lights in the financial world, and he has decided to open a branch office of our business in New York and to put me at its head. I must confess that the whole thing is very pleasant and flattering, and it has stirred all the decent ambitions I have—that I have any I owe to you, old fellow—and I am rather keen to be off.

We have taken a house not far from the park in East Sixty-fifth Street, where a welcome will always be yours, and where Polly and I hope you will eat your Christmas dinner.

Perhaps you may reflect that it is a serious thing to befriend straying men and dogs; they are apt to regard past kindness as a guarantee of future interest in their welfare. I do not believe, however, that I am making too large a demand upon your friendship in asking for your good wishes in this pleasant turn to my future affairs.

Of course I want one more favor. If you have any influence with Deena Ponsonby, will you urge her to spend the winter with us? Polly is writing to her by this same mail, but I know the New England conscience will suggest to Deena that anything amusing is wrong, and so you might explain that I am nervous about Polly’s health, and that I look to her to help me get settled without overstrain to my wife—in short, administer a dose of duty, and she may see her way to coming.

Ever, my dear French,Sincerely yours,Benjamin Minthrop.

Anger gives to the natural man a pedal impulse—in plain language, he wants to kick something. Rage flows from the toes as freely as gunpowder ran out of the great Panjandrum’s boots when he played “Catch who catch can” on the immortal occasion of the gardener’s wife marrying the barber. Now, Stephen French was a man of habitual self-restraint, and yet upon reading Ben Minthrop’s letter he got up and—ignoring the poker and tongs—kicked the fire with a savagery that showed how little the best of us has softened by civilization. And yet the letter was distinctly friendly, even modest and grateful—without one kick-inspiring sentence. Stephen began pacing his library floor, hurling his thoughts broadcast, since there was no one to listen to his words.

Why were people never content to let well enough alone? he demanded. There was old Minthrop, with enough money to spoil his son, laying plans for Ben to muddle away a few millions in New York in the hope of making more; or even if, by some wild chance, the boy were successful and doubled it—still one would think the place for an only son was in the same town with his parents. Of course it was their business, but when it came to dragging Mrs. Ponsonby into their schemes it was a different matter. Simeon would disapprove, he knew, and as her adviser in Simeon’s absence, he felt it his duty to tell her to stay at home withherparents till her husband returned.

And then common sense asserted itself, and he asked himself what Deena owed to her parents; and why Harmouth was a better place for her than New York; and what possible difference it could make to Simeon? The answer came in plain, bold, horrid words, and he shrank from them. The curse of Nathan was upon him; like David, he had condemned his friend to absence and danger, and had then promptly fallen in love with his wife. But not willingly, he pleaded, in extenuation; it had crept upon him unawares. It was his own secret, he had never betrayed himself, and so help his God, he would trample it down till he gained the mastery. Not for one moment would he tolerate disloyalty to his friend, even in his thoughts. Ben’s suggestion was a happy solution of the situation as far as he was concerned; he would urge Deena to go before hisfolly could be suspected. To have any sentiments for a woman like Mrs. Ponsonby except a chivalrous reverence was an offense against his manhood.

French was a man who had been brought up to respect ceremonial in daily living, and he dressed as scrupulously for his lonely dinner as if a wife presided and expected the courtesy to her toilet. Somebody has wisely said that unconsciously we lay aside our smaller worries with our morning clothes, and come down to dinner refreshed in mind as well as body by the interval of dressing. If Stephen did not exactly hang up his anxiety with his coat, he at least took a more reasonable view of his attachment to his neighbor’s wife. He began to think he had exaggerated an extreme admiration into love—that he was an honorable man and a gentleman, and could keep his secret as many another had done before him; and that if Deena went away for the winter it removed the only danger, which was in daily meeting under terms of established intimacy.

There was to be a lecture at the Athenæum that evening on the engineering difficulties incident to building the Panama Canal, and Stephen, who was interested in the subject, made up his mind to start early and stop for a moment at the Sheltons’ to carry out Ben’s request. He took glory to himself for choosing an hour when Mrs. Ponsonby was likely to be surrounded by a bevy of brothers and sisters; he would never again try to see her alone.

His very footfall sounded heroic when he ran up the steps and rang the bell. As he stood within the shelter of the storm door waiting to be let in, the voices of the young Sheltons reached him, all talking at once in voluble excitement, and then a hand was laid on the inside knob and advice offered in a shrill treble.

“You had better run, Deena, if you don’t want to be caught,” and then more giggling, and a quick rush across the hall.

Dicky threw open the hall door, and French, glancing up the stairs, caught sight of a velvet train disappearing round the turn of the first landing. He took the chances of making a blunder and called:

“Come down, Mrs. Ponsonby. It is I—Stephen French—and I have something to say to you.”

This was first received in silence, and then in piercing whispers, the little sisters tried to inspire courage:

“Go down, Deena; you don’t look a bitfunny—really.”

“‘Funny’—ye gods!” thought French, asDeenaturned and came slowly down the stairs. He only wished she did lookfunny, or anything, except the intoxicating, maddening contrast to her usual sober self that was descending to him.

She was dressed in black velvet of a fashion evidently copied from a picture, for the waist was prolonged over the hips in Van Dykes, and from the shoulders and sleeves Venetian point turned back, displaying the lovely neck and arms that Polly had so envied. Her hair was loosely knotted at the back, and on her forehead were straying curls which were seldom tolerated in the severity of her usual neatness. She wore a collar of pearls, and her bodice was ornamented with two sunbursts and a star.

French, who had never seen her in evening dress, was amazed. He seemed to forget that he had asked speech with her, and stood gazing as if she were an animated portrait whose exceeding merit left him dumb. He was recalled alike to his senses and his manners by Dicky, who turned a handspring over his sister’s long train and then addressed Stephen, when he found himself right-end up.

“I say, Mr. French, mustn’t she have been sort of loony to wear a dress like that, and she sixty-five?”

“Who?” asked French, completely mystified.

“Why, mother’s cousin, Mrs. Beck. Didn’t you know she had died and left us things?” said Dicky, proudly. “A trunk full of clothes and diamond ornaments came to-day, and mother wroteto Deena to unpack it, and we persuaded her to dress up in this. Don’t she look queer? That Mrs. Beck must have been a dressy old girl.”

Deena ignored the explanation. She appeared to treat her costume as a usual and prosaic affair, and said to Stephen, almost coldly:

“You have something to tell me?”

He wondered whether his eyes had offended her, whether the stupidity of his admiration had hurt her self-respect. She didn’t look at him squarely and openly, as usual, but kept her head half turned so that the perfect line of her throat and chin was emphasized, and the tiny curls at the back of her neck set off the creamy whiteness of her skin. To tell the truth, Deena had never before worn a low-necked dress. Prior to her early marriage a simple white muslin, a little curtailed in the sleeves and transparent over the neck, had been sufficient for any college dance she went to, and after Simeon had assumed command, even the white muslin was superfluous, for she never saw company either at home or abroad. Her present costume was sufficiently discreet in sleeves—they came almost to the elbow, but the bodice allowed so liberal a view of neck and shoulders as to cover the wearer with confusion. She felt exactly as you feel in a dream when you flit down the aisle of a crowded car in your night clothes, or inadvertently remove most of your garments in a pew in church, and with Deena self-consciousness always took the form of dignity.

Stephen pulled himself together.

“I have had a letter from Ben,” he said, “who seems to think an appeal he has made for your company in New York this winter will be more apt to win a favorable answer if backed up by yourTemporary Adviser. That describes the position Simeon indicated for me; doesn’t it, Mrs. Ponsonby?”

She sank back in her chair and, forgetting herself for a moment, allowed her eyes to meet his with a merry smile.

“This seems to be like a conspiracy to make a hungry man eat!” she answered. “No urging is necessary to persuade me to go to New York—why should you and Ben suppose I do not like to do pleasant things? I shall delight in being with Polly—I shall like the excitement and the fun—I am perfectly mad to go!”

If it had not been for the exaggeration of the last sentence French would have been sure of the genuineness of her wishes, but the force of the expression was so foreign to her usual moderation that he asked himself whether Deena might not also find a separation desirable. The thought sent the blood bounding through his veins. If she cared for him ever so little, it would be easier to let her go—easier if he knew she suffered too! Then he called himself a coxcomb and a self-deceiver, and made a grasp at the good resolutions that had almost escaped him.

“I always knew you possessed that adorable quality, common sense,” he remarked. “Ben and I might have guessed you would do the wise thing. When men rush hot-footed into the affairs of women, they are apt to play the fool.”

“Is there any reason why I shouldn’t go?” she demanded, anxiously.

“On the contrary, every reason why you should; but I feared some mistaken idea about expense or Simeon’s approbation might interfere with your taking a holiday, which you will enjoy as much as he enjoys digging up roots in Patagonia.”

Deena considered the two points of his answer—expense and Simeon’s approbation—and replied thoughtfully:

“My husband would recognize so simple a duty, and, as far as expense goes, I am a perfectly independent woman. Didn’t you knowourstory—the one you made me rewrite—sold at once, and, besides that, I have placed a number of fugitive poems? So I snap my fingers at expenses till the bank breaks,” and she tapped her forehead to indicate from whence the supply flowed.

“Then make the most of the sensation while it lasts,” he said, with good-natured cynicism, “for expenses have a way of sizing you up—cleaning out your pockets—and going you one better!If you are still snapping your fingers when you come back from New York, then, indeed, you may boast.”

A troubled look came into her face.

“Simeon would like me to go to Polly when she is out of health and needs me,” she said, in a tone she meant to be assertive, but which was only appealing, “and if we are careful about spending, it is because we are proud and do not wish to incur obligations.”

Thewewas a masterpiece of loyalty, and French was suitably impressed by it.

“Dear Mrs. Ponsonby,” he said, “you speak as ifIwere likely to misjudge Simeon, whereas my object in coming here was to preventyourmisjudging him by allowing your sensitive conscience to forbid pleasures he would be the first to suggest.”

The speech was genuine; in Stephen’s estimation his friend had noble qualities, and in bearing testimony to them he was beginning his chapter of self-discipline. In this interview, at least, he had preserved a conscience void of offense, and he hastened to say goodnight before any temptation should assail his discretion. Perhaps, also—for he was but mortal—the reflection in the parlor mirror of what was passing in the hall may have accelerated his departure.

For the benefit of an admiring gallery at the head of the stairs, Master Shelton was performing jugglers’ tricks with their visitor’s best silk hat. Twice it had turned a somersault in the air, and twice safely alighted well down over Dicky’s ears, but a third time it might miss even such a conspicuous mark and be smashed out of symmetry on the hard floor. French beat a hasty retreat, but he was no match for Dicky in change of tactics; as he came into the hall that young gentleman stood stiffly and solemnly waiting to hand him his hat and open the front door with an air he had copied precisely from Stephen’s own servant the day of the memorable feast. His presumption carried him a little too far, however, for as he closed the door on Stephen he favored his sister with a comment that promptly brought its punishment.

“If I were an old bag of bones like brother Simeon,” he said, grinning, “I shouldn’t care to have good-lookin’ fellows like Mr. French running after you twice in the same day, Deena!”

Deena had always been the tenderest of elder sisters, but at this apparently innocent remark, she first got red as fire, and then, paling with anger, she rushed at her brother and pulled his ruddy locks till he cried for mercy, while she burst into tears.

“Stop it!” roared Dicky, burrowing his head in a sofa cushion. “I tell you, you’re hurting me! And I’d like to know what the mischiefyou’recrying for, anyhow?”

Deena left the room, her face buried in her handkerchief, but she managed to answer brokenly:

“I will—not—allow—you—to call—my husband—‘a bag of bones’!”

The house the young Minthrops had taken was of a contracted luxury that oppressed Deena, accustomed as she was to space and sunshine at Harmouth. She told Ben that fortunes in New York could be gauged by the amount of light the individual could afford—billionaires had houses standing free, with light on four sides; millionaires had corner houses with light on three sides; while ordinary mortals lived in tunnels more or less magnificent where electric light had often to do duty for the sun. Ben declared that his income only admitted light fore and aft, but that with skillful decoration they could at least travesty the sunshine, and so they tried to reproduce its effects by wall hangings of faint yellow and pale green, by chintz-covered bedrooms that seemed to blossom with roses, and living rooms sweet with fresh flowers. There was no solemn mahogany—no light-absorbing color on door or window; all was delicately bright and gay as the tinting of the spring.

Deena worked hard to get the house ready for Polly, who was still in Boston with her mother-in-law, and seemed quite content to leave the arranging of her new quarters to her sister and husband, who preceded her by several weeks; indeed, she was becoming so accustomed to being waited upon that she considered herself in a fair way of being spoiled. An heir was expected, and an heir seemed a very important thing to the elder Minthrops. They treated Polly as a queen bee, and the rest of the world as slaves to wait upon her. She was behaving in a way to satisfy their requirements in a daughter-in-law, and life was to be smoothed accordingly.

Every day brought a fresh suggestion covered by a check. Ben was invited to select a high-stepping gray horse—a pair of cobs—a tiny brougham—a victoria—a piano—a pianola. Deena shopped till she almost sank exhausted, and yet the requests kept coming. If dear Mrs. Ponsonby didn’t mind the trouble, perhaps Polly might be warmer with sable rugs—perhaps an extra sofa in her room might induce her to lie down oftener—perhaps a few of those charming lace and linen tablecloths might make her feel like giving little dinners at home instead of fatiguing herself by going out to find her amusements.

Deena would have been more than mortal if the image of old Mrs. Ponsonby had not risen before her eyes in forbidding contrast to so much indulgence. She realized that the genus mother-in-law has widely differing species, and yet in her heart she doubted whether Mrs. Minthrop, with money to anticipate every wish of her only son, loved him a whit more than frugal, self-denying Mother Ponsonby had loved her Simeon. Lavishness or thrift, alike they proved a mother’s affection.

Deena executed all the commissions without a shadow of covetousness and rejoiced in her sister’s good fortune; it was reserved for Polly and Ben, when they took up their life in New York, to show her the depths of her own loneliness by the fullness of their comradeship, and her yearning needs by their mutual devotion.

Polly arrived one bleak December day, the week before Christmas, escorted by Mrs. Minthrop and two maids, and was met at the Grand Central by her husband in a state of boyish excitement. His delight in having his wife with him once more was so genuine that Deena forgave him an amount of fussiness she never before suspected in his easy-going nature. He altered his orders half a dozen times as to which carriage should bring her from the train to the house, and finally ordered both; he repeated half a dozen times the hour at which the Boston express was due, in order that Deena might make no mistake about having tea served to the minute, and when he had shut the front door, on his way to the Grand Central, he came tearing back to ask the menu for dinner, as Polly was apt to be fanciful about her food. Deena remembered the time—not two years ago—when it was quantity rather than quality that balked Polly’s appetite, and nearly laughed in his face, but she loved her big brother-in-law for his forethought.

The curtains were drawn and the lights turned up before the bustle of arrival drew Deena to the stairs. First old Mrs. Minthrop came, stopping to commend the house at every step, and then Polly, with her arm linked in her husband’s, chattering volubly at the delight everything gave her; and Deena, wedged between the elder lady and the wall in cordial greeting, could not help hearing Ben welcome his wife to her own home with a sentiment she never suspected in him before. Polly flew to her sister and kissed and thanked her for all she had done, and lavished her praises broadcast, and then she insisted upon pouring out the tea at her own fireside, and Ben perched on the arm of her chair; and once, when Deena turned suddenly from handing the toast to Mrs. Minthrop, she saw him kiss Polly’s hair.

Her thoughts sped back to her parting with Simeon, with its prosaic formality—-the feel of his puckered lipsbrushing her forehead. What a lack of imagination marked all his dealings with her! She felt rebellious and sad; not that she wanted any of the luxury that surrounded Polly, but she was hungry for love. She saw suddenly what marriage ought to be, and the realization frightened her. How was it she had committed this crime against her own nature? Was it her sin or her parents’ that she had been so blind? Not Simeon’s—she exonerated him, she knew he had given her as much of himself as he had to spare, and that his conduct was uniform; what it had been at the beginning was now and for all time, and if she had suddenly become a connoisseur in husbands she was not the first woman to whom knowledge brought misery. It was not Simeon’s fault that he remained stationary while her views expanded. Fortunately for Deena’s peace of mind, it was Ben who figured in these reflections as the exponent of what a husband should be, and she had no suspicion that it was Stephen French who had waked her from her domestic coma.

Poor sleeping beauty, her conscience had long ago been pricked by her mother-in-law’s spindle, and her whole moral sense infected with the belief that to keep house wisely was the end and aim of wifely duty. She reverenced Simeon for his learning and dignity, and felt proud that so simple a person as herself should have been chosen in marriage by a professor of Harmouth. On that she had existed for two years, and now she was waking up to new needs that stirred her like the prince’s kiss.

Life in the young Minthrops’ dovecote soon settled down into a glorified routine. The elder Mrs. Minthrop returned to Boston, leaving Deena as her lieutenant, and perplexing her with the multiplicity of her charges; apparently Mrs. Ponsonby was to be Providence to her sister, with health and happiness under her control. The situation was paradoxical. Polly was to be denied nothing, but not allowed to have her own way too freely; she was to be kept amused, but most amusements were strictly prohibited—she was not to be encouraged to think herself an invalid, and at the same time her usual occupations were taken from her. Deena was wise enough to listen and make no promises, and when she assumed command she contented herself with trying to stand between her sister and domestic worries.

Christmas came and went without the visit from Stephen, which Ben had hoped for, and invitations were pouring in for the plethora of social functions that mark the season’s height. Deena came in for her share, but she felt too much of a stranger to venture alone into the vortex. Polly entertained in a modest way at home—a few people at dinner, a friend or two at lunch—and this Deena greatly enjoyed, and had begun to make herself favorably known to a small circle when a stop was put to this mild dissipation. The great doctor, who had been charged by Mrs. Minthrop never to forget her daughter-in-law’s inexperience, issued orders that Polly was to stay in her room. This enforced quiet found an outlet in a desire to send Deena everywhere. She drove her forth to dinners and balls, and the high-stepping gray horse was always at her service, and so the beautiful Mrs. Ponsonby became the fashion. New York does not ask too many questions in these days about the husbands of handsome married women who appear as grass widows in its midst; indeed, the suspicion of a latent romance or scandal gives a flavor to the interest, and Deena suffered not a whit from the rumor that she was a deserted wife, with money.

“Oh, yes, there is a husband,” the great Mrs. Star admitted. “She married him for his money, and he has a hobby—fossils, I think it is—and he has gone to collect them at Cape Horn. She bears his absence surprisingly well, doesn’t she? Old Mrs. Minthrop’s son married the sister, and she begged me to be civil to them. I forget who she said they were, butMayflowerpeople, you know.”

In this way Deena was passed on, stamped with the hall-mark of theMayflower. Mrs. Shelton had contributedvery generously to her daughter’s outfit for the season in New York. The black velvet picture dress was only one of several found suitable for her use in the trunk of finery belonging to the Chicago cousin, and the jewels that had come into the Shelton family from the same source were worthy of Deena’s beauty. Her clothes were good, and she wore them like a princess.

One evening late in January, Deena and Ben were dining with a gay young matron, who, without any especial personal charm herself, had the faculty of drawing to her house the best element society had to offer. The engagement had been made for them by Polly, much against her husband’s wishes, and his anxiety at leaving her alone could hardly be concealed during dinner. As soon as the ladies left the table he excused himself to his host, and, following the little hostess into the drawing room, he whispered a few words in her ear, nodded to Deena and disappeared.

“Your brother-in-law has gone home to his wife, Mrs. Ponsonby,” said the hostess. “I have never seen such devotion.” She laughed a trifle enviously; her own infelicities were the talk of the town.

Deena started forward in alarm.

“Was he sent for? Is my sister ill?” she inquired, nervously, and then sank back in her chair, smiling, when she found it was only a phase of young Minthropism.

While her own daylight hours were given to her sister, she was always pleased to be out of the way in the evening—it left the lovers to themselves—though she could not quite free herself from a sense of responsibility to the elder Mrs. Minthrop.

Mrs. Star, who was beside Deena, gave a sniff—if so fine a lady could be suspected of such a plebeian way of marking her disapprobation.

“My dear,” she said, “why should your charming sister be treated as a prisoner over whom somebody must perpetually keep watch? I have had six children—they were all healthy and had their full complement of legs and arms—except Bob, who lost an arm in the Spanish war, but that doesn’t count—and I never was shut up in my room before I had to be—nor put on a milk diet—nor forbidden reasonable exercise—and I think the modern doctors are full of fads and greed. Their bills! I don’t know who is rich enough to be ill nowadays!” Here she shut her eyes and trembled to think of the portion of her own great fortune that might have transferred itself to the doctor’s pockets if her nursery had not antedated the present school. “It may not seem very expensive to young Mrs. Minthrop to lie on her sofa and drink milk—but just wait till she comes to pay for it!”

“I don’t believe anyone will care about the bill, Mrs. Star,” said Deena, “so long as Polly keeps well.”

“It is bad enough to have food and exercise taken away from the young mothers,” continued Mrs. Star, who was evidently mounted on a hobby, “but when helpless infants are deprived of their natural sustenance and fed from bottles filled in a laboratory and stuffed with cotton, it is time for the Gerry Society to interfere. Cruelty to children is practiced far more by the rich than by the poor, in my opinion, and if you want to see cases of inanition and feeble spines, I’ll show you where to look for them, and it won’t be in the tenements!”

Deena wanted to laugh, but didn’t dare to; the old lady proclaimed her fierce sentiments with such earnest gravity. She managed, however, to say politely:

“You think that science has not improved upon nature in rearing the race, but you must remember that it finds the higher classes existing under unnatural conditions.”

“The conditions would do very well if we could banish the doctors,” said the old lady, testily. “I am out of patience with their incubators and their weighing machines and their charts and their thermometers—yes, and their baby nurses! What do you suppose I heard a mother say to her own servant the other day: ‘Please, nurse, may I take the baby up? He is crying fearfully,’ and the nurse, who had reluctantly put down the morning paper, said:‘No, m’am, when he cries in that angry way, he must learn that it is useless!’His age was six weeks.”

Deena burst into a hearty laugh.

“My dear Mrs. Star,” she said, “I am a convert.”

Mrs. Star wagged her head in approbation.

“Just tell your sister what I have said, will you?” she pursued, afraid that so much wisdom might be lost. “And, my dear, since your brother-in-law has gone home, suppose you come along to the opera with me. I sent some tickets to a few stray men, and I must look in before the last act.”

At this point they were joined by the gentlemen, and as soon as decency would permit, Mrs. Star made her adieux, followed by Deena. The Minthrop brougham was dismissed, and the ladies whirled away in Mrs. Star’s electric carriage. She at once took up her parable, but this time the topic was not the care of infants.

“I think a great deal of the scenic effect of an opera box,” she said. “I always dress with respect to the hangings, and I never take a discordant color beside me if I can help it. You happen to please me very much this evening; I like the simplicity of the white dress. Still, it wouldn’t be anything if you didn’t have such a neck—it gives an air to any low gown.”

“It was my wedding dress,” said Deena, frankly, “and my sister’s maid rearranged it for me. I am glad you like it.”

“Your wedding dress,” said Mrs. Star, reflectively. “I think I heard you had married a naturalist—prehistoric bones, is it not? Very interesting subject—so inspiring. Milliken”—to the footman, who opened the door on their arrival at the opera house—“you may keep the carriage here. I shall not be more than half an hour.”

Half an hour for the enjoyment of a pleasure that cost her, yearly, a moderate fortune!

On their way through the foyer to the box, Deena ventured to disclaim for her husband a peculiar interest in fossils.

“My husband is a botanist,” she began, and then desisted when she saw her companion’s attention was barely held by a desire to be civil.

“Ah, indeed!” Mrs. Star vaguely responded. “Delightful topic. I went into it myself quite extensively when I was a girl.”

Deena was not often malicious, but she couldn’t help wishing Simeon could have stood by to hear this announcement of a girlish mastery of his life’s work. She tried to think in what dry words he would have rebuked the levity, but before she could arrange a phrase quite in character, they were in the front of the box, and in the obscurity some one took her hand, and Stephen French’s voice murmured:

“What a piece of luck that I should see you to-night! I have only been in town a few hours, and obeyed my aunt’s summons to the opera as a means of keeping myself from Ben’s house till the morning. You can’t think how eager I have been to see you again, Mrs. Ponsonby.”

There was a strange break in his voice, as if he were trying to restrain the rush of happiness.

All the six mighty artists who made the opera the marvel it was were combining their voices in the closing sextet of the fourth act, and Deena, thrilled by the loveliness of the music and, perhaps, by the surprise of French’s presence, felt she was trembling with excitement.

“Fancy meeting you here!” she kept repeating, the stupid phrase concealing the great joy that was puzzling her conscience.

“What is so wonderful in my being in my aunt’s opera box?” Stephen demanded. “Cannot a professor of zoology like music, or do you object to a bachelor owning an aunt?”

How pleasant it was to hear his kind voice, with its good-natured raillery! But that was sub-conscious pleasure—her immediate attention was busy with the first part of his speech about his aunt’s opera box; she never supposed he had any relations.

“Who is your aunt?” she asked, abruptly.

“Mrs. Star,” he answered. “Don’t you see the family likeness?”

And oddly enough, in the half light, there was a distinct resemblance in the profile of the bewigged old lady to her handsome young kinsman’s. Deena regretted both the likeness and the relationship; it made her uncomfortable to know that Stephen was the nephew of this worldly-minded old lady, with her fictitious standards and her enormous riches; it seemed to place a barrier between them and to lift him out of the simplicity of his college setting.

“Have I become a snob in this Relentless City’?” she exclaimed. “Ifind my whole idea of you changed by this announcement. It depresses me! You seem to me a different person here, with these affiliations of fashion and grandeur, than when I thought of you simply as Simeon’s friend.”

“Don’t think of me simply as Simeon’s friend,” he pleaded, half in fun, half in sinful earnest.

“I never shall again,” she said, sadly. “Your greatest charm is eclipsed by this luxury—I want you to belong to Harmouth only.”

Stephen’s lips were twitching with suppressed amusement.

“There is a proverb, my dear lady,” he said, “of the pot and the kettle, that you may recall. I am not sure but what I may find a word to say to you upon the cruelty of disturbing associations.”

“To me!” she said, turning to him with the gentle dignity that was her crowning charm. “Surely there are no surprises in me.”

Stephen shook his head in mock disapproval as he allowed his eyes to sweep from the topmost curl of her head to her slipper points, and then he said:

“Go home, Mrs. Ponsonby, and take off that white lace evening dress, and perhaps the wreath of holly might come, too—and that diamond star on your bodice; and put on, instead—let me see—the dark blue frock you wore the evening I told Simeon about the Patagonian expedition, and then you will be in a position to reproach me for any relapse from the simplicity of Harmouth. If you disapprove of me as the nephew of my aunt, how do you suppose I feel about you? And oh! my stars! what would Simeon say?”

“Simeon,” she said, faintly. “You are right; Simeon might not understand——” and before French had time to protest that he had only been teasing her, the curtain went down, strange men came flocking into the box, Mrs. Star was introducing a Russian grand duke, and Stephen, surrendering his chair, withdrew to the other side of his aunt.

Deena could not but admire the old lady’s admirable manner. She kept up an easy chatter, sometimes in French, sometimes in English, with the Russian and with a Spanish artist; she never allowed Deena to feel out of touch with the conversation, and in the midst of it all she managed to welcome her nephew.

“You are stoppingatmy house, of course, Stephen? No—at the Savoy? That is uncharitable to a lonely old woman. Where did you know that pretty creature, Mrs. Ponsonby?” she asked, seeing that the two foreigners were absorbing the attention of her beautiful protégée. “You should learn to guard the expression of your face, my dear boy. I begin to understand why you cling so obstinately to Harmouth. I see the place has advantages outside the work of the college.”

Here she wagged her head in self-congratulation at her own astuteness, and Stephen flushed angrily.

“Hush!” he said. “She will hear you. You have little knowledge of Mrs. Ponsonby if you think she would permit the attentions of any man. She is not in the least that kind of person. She is one of the most dignified, self-respecting, high-minded women I ever knew.”

Mrs. Star cut him short with a wave of her fan.

“Spare me the rhapsodies,” she laughed. “You merely mark the stage of the disease you have arrived at. The object of your love sits enthroned! If the husband is wise he will throw his fossils into the sea and come back to look after this pretty possession. Flesh and blood is worth more than dry bones.”

“Ponsonby is a botanist,” Stephen corrected, grimly, while his inward thought was that the dry bones were Simeon’s own; and then, ashamed of the disloyal—though unspoken—sneer, he went back to Deena and began talking volubly of his last letter from her husband.

They had both had letters from Simeon, now safely arrived in the Straits of Magellan. He had written to Deena when they first cast anchor off the Fuegian shore. He described to her the visits of the Indians in their great canoes, containing their entire families and possessions, and the never-dying fire of hemlock on a clay hearth in the middle of the boat; how they would sell their only garment—a fur cloak—-for tobacco and rum, and how friendly they seemed to be, in spite of all the stories of cannibalism told by early voyagers.

In the midst of this earnest conversation, Mrs. Star rose to go, escorted by the grand duke, and Stephen, following with Deena, was able to let his enthusiasm rise above a whisper when they gained the corridor.

“Didn’t he tell you that they were all going guanaco hunting?”

“Simeon!” in a tone of incredulity.

“Greatest fun in the world, I am told,” pursued French; “something like stag hunting, only more exciting—done with the bolas. You whirl it round your head and let it fly, and it wraps itself round a beast’s legs and bowls him over before he knows what hit him.”

“Does it kill him?” asked Deena, shrinking from the miseries of the hunted.

“Only knocks him over,” explained Stephen. “You finish him with your knife.”

“Sport is a cruel thing,” she said, shuddering. “I am glad Simeon cannot even ride.”

“Can’t ride!” repeated Stephen. “Indeed, I can tell you he means to. He says the Indians have offered him the best mount they have. They considered him a medicine man, on account of his root-digging propensities, and treated him as the high cockalorum of the whole ship’s company.”

“Surely he is joking,” she said. “Simeon is making game of you.”

“Simeon!” he echoed, mimicking her incredulous tone.

“A joke would be no stranger to him than a horse,” she said, smiling.

They had reached the entrance, and Deena stood shaking with suppressed laughter. “Fancy! Simeon!” she repeated.

“And why not Simeon, pray?” asked Stephen, slightly nettled.

A vision of Simeon with his gold-rimmed spectacles and stooped figure mounted on horseback in the midst of a party of Indians, whirling his bolas over his head and shouting, presented itself to Deena’s imagination. The carriage was waiting, and, obeying Mrs. Star’s motion to get in first, Simeon Ponsonby’s wife fell back on the seat and laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks.

Outside, Stephen was entreating to be allowed to visit her the next morning.

“I haven’t half finished my story, Mrs. Ponsonby,” he protested.

And Deena managed to steady her voice and invite him to lunch the next day.

French’s visit to New York was not the result of any weakening resolution in regard to his neighbor’s wife; the object was business. His property was chiefly in real estate, and the distinguished law firm who managed his affairs had summoned him to confer with a tenant who was desirous of becoming a purchaser. Being in the same town with Deena, he decided that he could not well avoid visiting her, to say nothing of Ben. It was his misfortune that every meeting made his self-discipline harder, for, if they lived, he had got to see her under still more trying circumstances—reunited with a husband who misunderstood her.

These thoughts passed through hismind the morning after their encounter at the opera, as he finished his breakfast at the Savoy. He had an appointment at his lawyers’ at ten o’clock, and at the Minthrops’ for luncheon at half-past one. The first, if properly conducted, might result in a largely increased income; the second in self-repression and a heartache; and yet his one idea was to dispatch the business, so that no precious moments of Deena’s society should be lost to him.

He was hurrying out of the hotel to go downtown, when a telegram was put into his hand. For the detached bachelor such messages have little interest. Stephen opened this one as casually as most people open an advertisement—may the foul fiend fly away with those curses of our daily mail!—and read:

Buenos Ayres, Jan. 30.Pedro Lopezto theHon’ble Professor French, Harmouth University.Tintorettoon its way home. Ponsonby missing.

Buenos Ayres, Jan. 30.

Pedro Lopezto theHon’ble Professor French, Harmouth University.

Tintorettoon its way home. Ponsonby missing.

Stephen read the dispatch several times before he quite understood its significance. Pedro Lopez was his South American friend, who had set on foot the Fuegian expedition and applied to Harmouth for a botanist; theTintorettowas the vessel furnished by the Argentine Government.

The cable message had gone to Harmouth and been repeated to New York, probably by Stephen’s butler.

The first effect of evil tidings is apt to be superficial. We receive a mental impression rather than a shock to the heart. We are for the moment spectators of our own misfortunes, as if the blow had produced a paralysis to the feelings, leaving the intellect clear.

Stephen went back to his own room conscious of no emotion except intense curiosity as to what had become of Simeon, though, perhaps, far back in his mind anxiety was settling down to its work of torture.

He flung himself into a chair near the window which overlooked the entrance to the park and let his eyes gaze blankly at the busy scene. It had snowed during the night, and sleighs were dashing in and out under the leafless arches of the trees. Bells were tinkling, gay plumes of horsehair floating from the front of the Russian sleighs and the turrets of the horses’ harness, men and women wrapped in costly furs were being whirled along, laughing and chatting, through the crisp morning air.

Stephen didn’t know he was receiving an impression—he thought his mind was at a standstill, but whenever in the future that terrible day came back to his memory, he always saw a picture, as it were, of the brilliant procession dashing into the city’s playground, while Saint Gaudens’ statue of Sherman stood watching, grim and cold, with the snow on his mantle and his Victory in a winding sheet.

It was not very long before French was able to pull himself together and to face the situation. What did it mean? Had Simeon lost himself in the Patagonian wilds or was he drowned? French felt that he couldn’t carry such an uncertain report to Deena, the strain upon her would be too great. It was horrible to have to tell her at all, but he must try to make the news definite—not vague. Gradually he thought out a course of action; he would telegraph to Lopez to send him a detailed account, cabling the answer at his expense, and until this reply came he thought himself justified in concealing the news. Lopez was in constant communication with the expedition, and the letter which had announced Ponsonby’s disappearance must have gone into particulars.

After dispatching this cable he kept his appointment in Wall Street, transacting the business with the dull precision of a person in a hypnotic sleep, and then presented himself at the Minthrops’ a few minutes before the lunch hour. He had not been prepared to find Deena installed as hostess, and her manner of greeting him and presiding at the lunch table was so assured, so different from the timid hospitality she was wont to offer under Simeon’s roof, that her whole personality seemedchanged. She more than ever satisfied his admiring affection, but she was so unlike the Mrs. Ponsonby of Harmouth that he felt like confiding to this gracious, sympathetic woman the tragedy that threatened her other self.

Early in the day, before that woeful message came, he had counted the minutes he could spend with her, and now he was timing his visit so as to curtail it to the least possible duration, and taxing his ingenuity as to how best to avoid seeing her alone. It was Saturday, and he trusted to the half holiday for the protection of Ben’s presence; his depression of spirits would be less noticeable in general conversation.

He arrived on the stroke of the hour set for lunch, and to his chagrin was shown to the library, where Deena was sitting alone. His trouble deepened, for, after motioning him to a chair beside her, she resumed her embroidery and said, with a quizzical expression:

“You were in the midst of Simeon’s last letter when we parted last evening, Mr. French; please go on with it. You may remember you left my unfortunate husband pledged to become a horseman.”

Stephen could not respond to her merry mood; his anxiety was to steer the conversation away from Simeon, and he had run against a snag at the start.

“At all events, I left him safely surrounded by friends,” he said—more in answer to his own feelings than her banter.

In thinking over any disaster, the mind loves to dwell on the peaceful moments that preceded it. Stephen found comfort in recalling the gay tone of Simeon’s letter, his delight in his coming adventure, and the good feeling that evidently existed between him and the ship’s company.

Deena took exception to his remark.

“You have strange ideas of safety!” she laughed. “Not content with mounting a confirmed pedestrian on a wild horse of the Pampas, you must needs turn him loose among a horde of savages. The hunt had not taken place when he wrote, had it? It is a pity, for I should like Simeon safely back on shipboard without the loss of spectacles or dignity.”

She would like Simeon back! What wouldn’t French give to know her husband was still alive!

The butler announced lunch, and Ben came dashing downstairs, delighted to see Stephen and full of excuses at having lingered in his wife’s room. He said Polly was feeling rather poorly, and Stephen was glad to see a look of anxiety cross Deena’s face; he rightly judged her thoughts had been diverted from Patagonia to Polly’s sofa, and he breathed once more.

What a pleasant luncheon it was, in spite of the lurking dread. Deena was wearing the old blue dress he had recommended to her the night before. It could not be from coquetry—she was above coquetry—but perhaps she had put it on to recall associations; to remind him of the close bonds of friendship that existed between them in those pleasant autumn days that followed Simeon’s departure. Stephen was not very learned in the make of women’s frocks, but he understood color and could appreciate how that steely-blue made her complexion glow warm as ivory and her hair like copper.

They were pretending to quarrel over a dish of salted almonds; Deena declared that French was getting the lion’s share, and finally covered the little silver basket that held them with her hand. On the third finger flashed old Mrs. Ponsonby’s diamond in its antiquated silver setting, and below it was her wedding ring, the narrow band that symbolized her bondage to Simeon. For the first time since French had received the cable, its possible significance to him took possession of his mind, and he flushed a dull red and fell into a reverie.

In all probability there was no longer any barrier between him and the woman he loved; nothing to prevent his striving to win her, but the period of her mourning—the respect she owed to the memory of a husband who was the palest shadow of a lover, and not even the ghost of a companion. He wonderedwhether she had ever guessed his feelings—feelings which he had subdued and held under with all the strength of his nature, partly through fear of forfeiting her friendship and partly because her charm was in the simplicity of her goodness. If love had once been named between them, Deena would have been other than herself.

Her voice roused him. She was excusing herself in order to go to her sister, and leave him and Ben to smoke. He held the door open for her to pass with a profound sense of relief—no suspicion of his awful secret had been betrayed. But oh! the comfort of talking it over with Ben, of sharing the burden with another! They discussed the meager announcement till they had exhausted every probability and found nothing to hope and everything to fear.

“I hope to Heaven he is dead!” cried Ben. “Imagine a man physically weak, like Ponsonby, enduring slow starvation in the damp and chill of the Patagonian seacoast. It will be a positive relief if we hear he fell overboard.”

“Anything is better than uncertainty,” said Stephen, and the speech must have been from the new point of view, the hope of Deena’s freedom, for the next moment he was conscious of a wave of shame.

“I ought to get an answer from Lopez before night,” he added, rising to go; “and as soon as I hear I will return and let you know.”

Ben followed him to the front door, whispering like a conspirator and glancing furtively up the stairs. There was a childish streak in the boy’s nature that gloried in a confidence; the joy of the secret nearly made up for the sorrow of the fact. But secrets and sorrows were soon put out of his head, for a crucial moment had come to the young Minthrops—one we anticipate and are never quite prepared for.

As he ran upstairs, after seeing Stephen off, he met Deena, evidently looking for him.

“Oh, Ben,” she said, “Polly is ill, and I have telephoned for——”

But she got no further, for her big brother-in-law turned white as a frightened girl, and when he tried to speak no sound came from his lips.

“Goose!” said Deena, laying an affectionate hand on his shoulder. “Shall I get a glass of brandy? Do you suppose no one has ever met with this experience before?”

Ben recovered himself with a fit of irritation, which seems the corollary to being frightened.

“Brandy!” he repeated. “Why in thunder should I want brandy? Really, Deena, for a sensible woman, you are given at times to saying the most foolish things I ever heard.”

In the meanwhile, as the afternoon was still early, French was anxious to find some occupation that might distract his thoughts. He decided to visit his aunt, whose conversation was usually startling enough to hold the attention of her hearers in any stress of agitation, and then when he was halfway up her steps repented the intention, on the ground that he needed soothing rather than stimulating; but his retreat was cut off by the good lady coming out of her door and discovering him, and, as she was about to walk round the block for exercise before taking her afternoon drive, she promptly claimed his company for both occasions. The wind blew her dress up to her ankles as she reached the sidewalk, displaying a pair of pointed-toed, high-heeled boots that perforce made walking—even round the block—a torturing task. But Mrs. Star was a brave woman, and walking a matter of conscience, so she tottered along beside her nephew, occasionally laying a hand on his arm when a bit of icy pavement made her footing more than usually uncertain.

“How I hate the late winter in New York!” she exclaimed, when a few minutes later they were seated in her sleigh on their way to the park. “Here we are at the threshold of February, when any self-respecting climate would be making for spring, and we must count on two months more of solid discomfort. Ah, well, this year I do not mean to face it. I have had the yacht put in commission, and she sails next week forthe Mediterranean, where I shall overtake her by one of the German boats, and do a little cruising along the African coast. Come with me, Stephen,” she said, coaxingly. “Let this silly school-teaching go. You are a rich man—why under the sun do you want to work? If you are holding on to Harmouth on account of that pretty Mrs. Ponsonby, it can’t do you much good when she is in New York. Besides,” she added, quite as an afterthought, “it is bad morality, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

He was about to turn and rend her for what he considered an unpardonable meddling with his affairs, when he saw her eyes fixed on him with tenderest affection and his anger melted.

“Dear Stevie,” she said, “be good-natured and bear an old woman company—you know you are as dear as my own sons.”

She used to call him Stevie when he was a lonely little boy, and she made her house his home; when all he knew of family life was supplied by that good-natured, worldly household—the name touched a chord of memory that softened his irritation.

“I wish I could, Aunt Adelaide,” he answered, “but I have managed to tie myself to my work in a way you cannot understand. You will have to take Bob as a companion.”

Bob was her only unmarried child, wedded only to his clubs and amateur soldiering, and even less available than Stephen for a cruise.

“Bob!” she said, contemptuously. “He never voluntarily went to a foreign country except Cuba, and I don’t believe he knows on which side of the Mediterranean Africa lies! I shall find some one who will be glad to go with me—perhaps your charming friend, Mrs. Ponsonby, might go. She looks as if she would be a pleasant traveling companion.”

French’s heart tightened as he thought of the horror that stood between Deena and pleasure, and was even debating in his mind whether it would not be better to tell his aunt the truth, when conversation was rendered impossible for the moment by the puffing and tooting of a great automobile advancing toward them down the west drive of the park—its wheels slipping in a crazy manner, that made the coachman of Mrs. Star’s sleigh give it a wide berth. Just as it got abreast of them, it became perfectly unmanageable—slewed to the left, made a semicircle which turned it round, and, catching the back of the sleigh on its low front, turned the light vehicle over as easily as if it had been made of pasteboard.

Mrs. Star allowed herself a shrill shriek as the sleigh went over and then lay quite still in a heap by the side of the road, with Stephen across her feet. The automobile seemed to have recovered its serenity, for it now stood still like any well-behaved machine, quiet save for its noisy breathing, while the sleigh was being bumped, on its side, far up the road, at the heels of the outraged horses.

French scrambled to his feet and endeavored to help his aunt, who had raised herself to a sitting posture and was looking white and disheveled, while she cast furious glances at the motor and its owner. She took her nephew’s hands and attempted to rise, but fell back, declaring she had broken her knee, as it hurt her excruciatingly when she tried to move it.

The owner of the auto now came forward in great contrition to offer help and apologies. He was a physician, he explained, hastening to a case of great urgency, and he had taken his automobile as the quickest means of covering the distance, though he had known it at times to behave badly on slippery and snowy roads.

The admission was a mistake—it put him in the wrong, and Mrs. Star, who distrusted all modern doctors, felt a consuming rage against this one in particular.

“You must have a strange estimate of a physician’s duty if you feel justified in risking many lives to save one!” she said, haughtily. “Not that you are much worse than the fire engines and ambulances. We ought to add a petition to the litany for safety against oursafeguards, for they kill more than they rescue.”

The gentleman bore her sarcasms with becoming humility, and begged to be allowed to take her home, promising that the machine should execute no more “Voyages en zigzag,” and she, ashamed of her temper, forced herself to decline, with some graciousness, though she made it very plain that no person on earth could tempt her to get into the automobile.

“At least let him tell you whether your knee is seriously hurt,” Stephen whispered, loath to see the medical help departing.

“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” retorted Mrs. Star. “A nice spectacle you would make of me by the roadside! Besides, I am not going to allow my knee to buy him a new automobile. Thank Heaven, I know how to guard my pocket against the medical profession—I’ll not stir from this spot till he takes himself off.”

“Don’t be so foolish!” urged French. “If your knee is injured it is a very serious thing.”

“Well, it isn’t seriously injured,” she said, perversely. “I have changed my mind, and I mean to have it tied up with witch hazel.”

Fortunately her equipage was now seen approaching in the charge of two park policemen, who had stopped the horses about a mile further on, righted the sleigh and now brought it back not much the worse for the misadventure. The coachman and groom were collected from the bushes, and, as they were quite uninjured, Stephen lifted his aunt into the back seat and they turned their faces homeward.

However much the rest of the party may have been inconvenienced, French had certainly attained the object of his solicitude—namely, to have his thoughts distracted from Simeon Ponsonby.

The second cable from Lopez arrived soon after dinner; it brought small comfort. Its nineteen words told the story but too conclusively.

Strayed from party while hunting. Weather turned foggy. Search parties persevered for two weeks. Hope abandoned. Expedition homeward bound.

Strayed from party while hunting. Weather turned foggy. Search parties persevered for two weeks. Hope abandoned. Expedition homeward bound.

There was no further excuse for concealment; indeed, it was French’s plain duty to tell Deena what might be told by the newspapers if he delayed.

It was just nine o’clock, and he walked rapidly to the Minthrops’ and rang the bell. Outside an electric cab was waiting, its great lamps casting pathways of light across street and sidewalk. The motorman was inside; an indication that long waiting had driven him to shelter, though the circumstance had no significance to Stephen.

The bell was answered by the butler, who looked portentous and stood resolutely in the doorway.

“Not at ’ome, sir,” he said, in response to Stephen’s request to see Mrs. Ponsonby.

“Then I must see Mr. Minthrop,” French insisted.

The man hesitated and then relaxed his wooden expression.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. French. I did not recognize you, sir. The truth is, we’re a bit h’upset h’inside. Mrs. Minthrop is tuk ill, sir—very sudden—and we’re expecting the good word every minute. I shall tell Mr. Minthrop you called.”

Stephen nodded and turned away—the fates had ordained that he was to carry his secret till the morning. It had been a harassing burden in the daylight hours, but during the night it became maddening; it seemed beyond his resolution to tell Deena that the pleasure trip he had set on foot for her husband’s advantage had ended in death.

As early as he thought permissible, the next morning, he presented himself at Ben’s door—this time gaining, a cheerful admission—and was shown to the library on the second floor. There he found the young father, radiantly happy, and so self-centered that he had entirely forgotten the misfortune overhanging his sister-in-law.

“Come and see my son,” he said, proudly, and in spite of an expressionof reluctance on the part of French to intrude into the upper regions of the house, he pushed him ahead of him up the next flight of stairs and knocked softly at the door of a back bedroom.

Deena’s voice bade them enter, and French was ushered into a large room fitted out as a nursery, with the newest appliances for baby comfort. There was a bassinette so be-muslined and be-ribboned and be-laced that it looked like a ball dress standing by itself in the middle of the floor; and a bathtub that looked like a hammock; and a weighing machine; and a chart for recording the daily weight; and a large table with a glass top; and a basket containing all the articles for the Lilliputian toilet; while near the fender some doll-like clothes were airing.

Deena was sitting in a low rocking-chair near the fire with her nephew in her arms. She welcomed her visitors with a smile, and turned down a corner of the baby’s blanket to display his puckered ugliness to Stephen. She was looking happy, tender, proud, maternally beautiful.

“Hasn’t he a beautifully shaped head?” she demanded, passing her hand tenderly over the furry down that served him for hair. “And look at his ears and his hands—was there ever anything so exquisite?”

It was French’s first introduction to a young human, and he found it slightly repulsive, but Deena, in her Madonna-like sweetness, made his heart swell.

“He is part of an exquisite picture,” he answered.

Ben, who had been for a moment with Polly, now came into the room with his usual noisy bustle, and Deena got up and, surrendering the baby to the nurse, led the way downstairs.

At the library door Stephen paused to whisper to Ben:

“Stay with me while I tell her,” in tones of abject fright; but Ben shook his head.

“Look here, old man,” he said, in mild remonstrance, “if you had had a baby last night, you wouldn’t be casting about for fresh trouble to-day—now, would you?”

Stephen gave him an indignant glance, and, following Deena, he shut the library door. He did it in so pronounced a way that she looked up surprised, and was even more at a loss to account for the gravity of his expression; she wondered whether he had thought her rude yesterday when she had disappeared from the table at lunch and had never returned, but it was not like French to be touchy.

“I left you very unceremoniously yesterday,” she began, “but the nurse appeared for a moment at the door, and I did not want to alarm Ben. You were not offended?”

“Believe me, no,” French answered, with a sort of shudder; “for the first time in my life I was glad to see you go—your presence was torture to me—I was concealing something from you, Mrs. Ponsonby, and it has got to get itself told.”

While he spoke her expression changed rapidly from amazement to alarm, and she got up and came close to him—waiting—but without a word.

“Simeon is lost,” he said, hoarsely, hurling the bald fact at her before his courage failed. “I tried to tell you yesterday,” he went on, drawing the cables from his pocket, “but I couldn’t; it all seemed so vague at first, and I ventured to wait until I got more news.”

She was standing before him with her hands clasped and her face deadly pale, but with a calm that frightened him.

“Do you mean lost at sea?” she asked, in a steady voice—toneless but perfectly clear.

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