CHAPTER XXIX.
Passion is both raised and softened by confession. In nothing perhaps were the middle way more desirable than in knowing what to say and what not to say to those we love.—Goethe.
All this time Floyd Grandon has scarcely had an hour's leisure. When the last paper is signed, he draws a long breath of satisfaction. He has done his whole duty and succeeded better than any sanguine hopes he has ever dared to entertain. He has settled, so to speak, the lives that pressed heavily upon him, and they can sustain themselves. He has come out of it with the honor he prizes so highly. And what else? What has he saved for himself?
That the distance should widen between himself and Violet was not strange. He has a horror of a jealous, suspicious husband, and believes thoroughly in the old adage, that if a woman is good she needs no watching, and if bad she can outwit Satan himself. But this is no question of morals. He could trust Violet in any stress of temptation. She would wrench out her heart and bleed slowly to death before she would harbor one wrong thought or desire. In that he does her full justice. She has seen the possibility and turned from it, but nothing can ever take away the vivid sense, the sweet knowledge that there might have been a glow in her life instead of a colorless gray sky.
He makes himself accept the bald, hard fact. He will not even trust himself to long for what is denied, lest he be stirred by some overmastering impulse as on that one night. She shall not suffer for what is clearly not her fault. She has no love to give him, nothing but a calm, grateful liking that almost angers him. That is his portion, and he will not torment her for any other regard.
They drop into an almost indifferent manner toward each other, except that it is so kindly solicitous. There are no little bits of confidence or tenderness in private, as there used to be, indeed, they are so seldom alone. He seems to leave her with Eugene and Polly, as they have all come to call her by way of endearment, and there is something wonderfully fascinating about these young people; they make love unblushingly; they can pick a quarrel out of the eye of a needle just for the purpose of reconciliation, it would seem, and they make up with such a prodigal intensity of sweetness; Polly strays down the walk to meet him or fidgets if he stays a moment longer than usual; Eugene hunts the house and grounds over to find her just to say a last good-by for an hour or two. Violet suspects at times that Polly runs away for the pleasure of being found. He puts flowers in her hair, and she pins a nosegay at his lapel, she scents his handkerchief with her own choice extract, and argues on its superiority and Frenchiness. They take rides; her father has bought her a beautiful saddle horse, and they generously insist that Violet shall accompany them because Floyd is always busy. It may be foolish, but it is very sweet, and Violet's heart aches with a pain thrust out of sight, for the heart of eighteen has not yet learned to despise sweetness. The level, empty years stretch out so interminably.
She has tried to comfort herself with the sorrows of others as a medicine. Lucia Brade, who has carried her preference for Eugene so openly, must be secretly brokenhearted, she thinks, and she looks for heavy eyes and a smileless face. But no, while there was hope Lucia waited; now that he is gone irrevocably, she bestirs herself instead of donning sackcloth. She is twenty, and of the eligibles about she must select a husband; so she no longer snubs the young men, but makes herself amiable and seductive, is always going or having company. There is no grave buried in her heart, only a rather mortifying sense of failure that she will eradicate as soon as possible.
Even Eugene seems to recover from the passion she feared would blight his life. She is sincerely glad, and yet—issheincapable of inspiring a lasting regard? Is there some fatal lack in her? Gertrude is delightfully pleasant, but she misses some old grace in her. It is her husband who has taken possession of the empty soul and filled it to the exclusion of others. What the professor says and does and thinks is paramount and right. There is no appeal from his judgment, so far as others are concerned, though she reserves little rights for herself. Gertrude is very much married already; the stronger will has captured the weaker. She can admire the professor with out stint, so there is nothing to militate against her regard.
Violet always comes back to Polly. The naive, wondering eyes, the soft, sweet lips abloom with kisses, the limpid, purling voice that goes through pleasant meadows, shaded woods, little interruptions of stones and snags and dead grasses of yesterday that must be swept away, over cascades laughingly, dripping sweetness, and never seeming to settle. She calls upon Violet to see faults in Eugene—"for I know he is not perfect," she says, with her pretty worldly wise air; and when Violet has timidly ventured to agree, she proceeds to demolish and explain away such a monstrous fancy!
Mr. Murray declares every day that he must send Polly to Baltimore, but instead Polly goes to the city and buys ravishing fall costumes, and Violet pleads to have her stay. Mr. Haviland purchases a house in the park and brings his family, a wife and two sisters and six children, and the two ladies have to be amiable to them. Polly, Violet, and Eugene visit every house that is even suggested as for sale, and make wonderful plans.
Not that Eugene is in the house from "early morn till dewy eve." He develops quite a business capacity, and can follow a strong lead excellently. He is no longer tossed to and fro by Wilmarth's sneers and innuendoes, or bracing himself to fight against what he considers Floyd's inexperience. Mr. Murray belongs to the wise children of this world, and possesses the secret of suavity, good-humor, and judicious commendation. Already he is an immense favorite in the factory, and the men are willing to run at his slightest beck. Eugene makes himself useful in many ways with the books and correspondence.
By the time Floyd is at liberty, Violet seems to have settled into a placid routine, and it is youth with kindred youth. Floyd is nearly twice her age, he remembers with dismay, but he does not feel old; on the contrary, it seems as if he could begin life with fresh zest. Neither would he have her emerge too rapidly from youth's enchanting realm. Only—and the word shadows so wide a space—can he do anything to make good the birthright he has unwittingly taken? She is rich, accomplished, and pretty, worth a dozen like Polly, it seems to him. Must her life be drear and wintry, except as she rambles into the pleasaunce of others? He could give up the seductive delights that have never been his, yet he has come to a time when home and love, wife and child, have a sacred meaning, and are the joys of a man's life.
The garden parties begin to wane, but there is no lack of diversion for the young. Mr. Murray is not insensible to the charms of society, such as he finds at Madame Lepelletier's. He has travelled considerably, has much general information as to art and literature, men and events. With madame, the professor and his wife, and Floyd Grandon, the evenings pass delightfully.
Violet is left out of them more by accident than design. The elders simply light their cigars and stroll down the avenue. Gertrude accepts madame's hospitality with an air of perfect equality that sits admirably upon her. She has attended dinners at San Francisco and various other centres, given in honor of the professor, and more await them in Europe. She is not so dazzling and has not the air of courts, but she has the prestige of a famous husband and has recovered some of her youthful beauty. Irene Stanwood has not distanced her so immensely, after all.
If madame has been surprised at some turns of fate, there is one that has no flavor of disappointment thus far, and the crisis has nearly passed. She has attained all that is possible; she is Floyd Grandon's friend; she can gently crowd out other influences. He defers to her, relies upon her judgment, discusses plans with her, and she secretly exults in the fact that she is nearer to the strong, daring, intellectual side of his nature than his girl-wife can ever be. The danger of a love entanglement has passed by, he will settle to fame and the society of his compeers, and she will remain a pretty mother to his child, and the kind of wife who creates a wonder as to why the man has married her.
Eugene finds her in the corner of the library one evening, alone, and with a pat on her soft hair, says tenderly,—
"You poor little solitary girl, what are you doing?"
She glances up with bright, brave eyes, and with a bit of audacity that would do credit to Polly, says,—
"How dare you call me poor when you know I am an heiress! As for being little, you can tell me the more easily from Polly," and she laughs over the chasm of solitude that she will not remark upon.
"Yes," he answers, mirthfully, "it would be sad to make a mistake now, for I can't help loving Polly."
"Why should you? I am so glad you love her with your whole soul, for youdo. She will always be my dearest friend, and if you neglect her or make her unhappy——"
"Oh, youarean angel, Violet!" he cries, with actual humility. "You are never jealous or hurt, you praise so generously, you are always thinking how other people must be made happy. You give away everything! I am not worth so much consideration," the crust of self-love is pierced for a moment and shows in the tremulous voice, "but I mean to make myself more of a man. And I can never love you any less because——"
"Because you love Rome more," and she compels herself to give a rippling laugh. "That is the right, true love of your life, the others have been illusions."
"Not my love for you," he declares, stoutly. "It will always hold, though it has changed a little. Only I wish you were——" Can he, dare he say, "happier"?
"Don't wish anything more for me!" and she throws up her hand with a kind of wild entreaty. "There is so much now that I can never get around to all. You must think only of Polly's happiness."
"Which will no doubt keep me employed"; and he laughs lightly. "By Jove! there won't be much meandering in forbidden pastures with Polly at hand! You wouldn't believe now that she was jealous last night, because I fastened a rose in poor Lucia's hair that had come loose. Wouldn't there have been a row if I had given it to her? But she is never angry jealous like some girls, nor sulky; there is a charm—I cannot describe it," confesses the lover in despair. "But we three shall always be the best of friends."
"Always," with a convulsive emphasis. She has no need to insist that he shall thrust her out of his soul. She can take his regard without fear or dismay. She slips down from her seat on the window ledge, and they go to find Pauline and devote the remainder of the evening to music.
A few days after the two go to the city to see a wonderful picture of Gérome's just arrived. They stop at Mrs. Latimer's, who promises to accompany them if they will stay to lunch, and they spend the intervening time in the nursery. A rollicking baby is Polly's delight, a baby who can be pinched and squeezed and kissed and bitten without agonizing howls.
At the table Gertrude's departure is mentioned.
"Oh," exclaims Mrs. Latimer, "has Mr. Grandon resolved to go? John is so anxious to attend some great gathering at Berlin. If they do go I must give a little farewell dinner, andwe," with a gay laugh, "will be up on exhibition, as widows of that indigenous plant having a tubular stem, simple leaves, and secondary color."
Polly laughs with bewitching humor and heartiness.
It is well for Violet that of late she has been trained in a Spartan school. Last summer her flower-like face would have betrayed her in its changing tints. Now she steadies her voice, though she must answer at random.
"He has not quite decided, I think."
"It would be a nice little run for them, though I have made John promise to be back by Christmas."
All the afternoon Violet ponders this in a sore, bewildered state. She has enough wifely pride to be hurt at the lack of confidence. Once he said when the cares of business were over they two would have a holiday. Will he ever desire one with her?
That evening Cecil climbs upon her lap and puts her soft arms about Violet's neck, and she presses the child in a long, passionate embrace.
"Oh, why do you hug me so tightly?" Cecil cries, with a touch of wilfulness.
The hands suddenly unclasp. Is her love to prove a burthen even here? Does no one want it?
"Mamma——" Cecil bends down to kiss her. "O mamma, are you crying? Don't cry, sweetest." She has caught this from the lovers. "Oh, you know I love you—better than anybody!"
The ambiguity is almost like a stab. The child has told the truth unwittingly. Violet is like a person drowning in a wide dreary ocean, when some stray spar floats thitherward. It is not a promise of rescue, yet despair clutches it.
"Not better than—papa?" Then a mortal shame crimsons her face and she despises herself.
Cecil draws a long, quivering breath. "Ididlove papa best," she whispers, "but now——"
"No, you must still love him best," Violet cries, in all the agony of renunciation.
"But who will love you best?" she asks, innocently. "Mamma, I shall love you best until I grow to be a big lady and have a lover like Polly. Then you know I shall have to care for him!"
Is her best of all love to come from a child not of her own blood, instead of the husband of her vows?
"Yes," Violet answers, in a strange, mirthless tone, while there is a smile on her dry lips. "You must care for him so much that he cannot help loving you. Oh, my darling, the only joy of all this dreary world is love!"
If Denise could hear her young mistress utter that in such a soul-rending tone, her heart would break.
Grandon meanwhile ponders the future,theirfuture. He has had one impulse of the heroically sentimental order, a possible freedom for Violet in the years to come, while she is still young, and a chance with life and fortune to retrieve the mistake into which she was hurried through no fault of her own. Would it be a violation of the divine law? This is not a usual case. She has clearly been defrauded of a great right. Can he restore it to her? If she were poor and dependent, he could give her so much she would hardly miss the other.
He is angry that Eugene and Pauline should flaunt their happiness in her sad eyes. For they have grown very sad. She goes clad in lovely soft raiment now, yet he can recall the little girl in her gray gown, holding up her arms with strength and courage to save Cecil from disaster. He smiles as he calls up the flash in the spirited eyes, as she said, with true motherly instinct, "You shall not scold her!" If the eyes would only flash again!
When he remembers this he cannot relinquish her. It would take too much out of his life. He could not see any other man win her, even if the law made her free. He should hate to think of other lips kissing her with lover's kisses. Ah, he is selfish, jealous still, a man among men, no more generous, just as eager to quaff the beaker of love as any other. Since she is his, he will not give her up. But to keep her in this cold, passive fashion, to have her gentle, obedient, affectionate, when he knows she has a woman's fond, warm soul!
Would a separation awake any longing, any desire? This is one reason why he entertains the plan of the six weeks abroad, yet it is horribly awkward to discuss it with her. Still, it must be done.
It is a rainy Sunday afternoon, and he roams about the house unquietly. Mr. Murray has gone to his partner's, Mrs. Grandon is with Laura, the lovers are in the drawing-room, with Violet at the far end playing propriety. Does it hurt her, he wonders, to have Eugene so foolishly fond of another?
He catches up Cecil, who is running through the hall, and carries her out to the conservatory, where she culls flowers at her own sweet will. "This is for Polly, this for Eugene, and this for mamma."
"Cecil," he asks, suddenly, "have you forgotten Auntie Dora, and Lily and Fen and Lulu? Do you never want to see them?"
"Will they come here?" she asks, with wide-open eyes.
"How would you like to go there? to sail in a great ship again?"
"With madame?" she questions, laconically.
The color mounts his brow. "No," he replies, gravely, "with papa."
"And mamma?"
"What if mamma does not want to go?"
The lovely face grows serious and the eyes droop, as she answers slowly,—
"Then I should stay with mamma. She would have no one."
"But I would have no one either," he says, jealously.
"Then why do you not stay with mamma? She cries sometimes," and Cecil's voice has a touch of pitiful awe. "Why do you not put roses in her hair and kiss her as Uncle Eugene does Polly? She is sweetest."
"When does she cry?" he asks, smitten to the heart.
"At night, when it is all soft dark, and when she puts her face down on my pillow."
"Take your flowers in to them," he cries, suddenly. Is it because any love has gone out of Violet's life that she weeps in the soft dark? He strides up and down with his blood at fever heat. Is it for Eugene? The idea maddens him!
When he enters the room, Violet has the red rose at her throat. He sits down by her and finds her grave, composed. No lovely warm color flutters over her face. She has trained herself so well that she can even raise her eyes without any show of embarrassment. Her exquisite repose would rival madame's; indeed, she might almost be a statue with fine, clear complexion, proudly curved lips, and long-fringed lids that make a glitter of bronze on her rose-leaf cheek. How has this girl of eighteen achieved this passionless grace?
As the night sets in the rain pours in torrents. There is dinner, music, and Cecil makes various diversions up and down the room. Eugene and Polly make love in their usual piquant fashion in dim obscurity, he audaciously stealing kisses under cover, for no earthly reason except that stolen kisses have a more delicious flavor.
Violet goes up-stairs with Cecil; for though Jane is equal to toilet purposes, there is a certain seductive way of tucking up and smoothing pillows, of stories and good-nights in which Violet is unsurpassed.
"Come down in the library after you are through," Grandon says. "I want to see you." He wonders if people can divine what is in each other's soul unless eyes and lips confess it. Intuition, forsooth!
She finds the room in a soft glow from the large lamp on the library table. Mr. Grandon is seated on one end of the divan, pushed a trifle from the window, and motions her hither. He has been thinking somewhat bitterly of having to leave his lovely home when he has just won the right to stay in it tranquilly. A sense of resentment swells up in his soul.
She listens with gentle respect to his proposed journey, that seems definitely settled, and replies in a grave, steady tone, not devoid of interest, "that it will no doubt be very pleasant for him." Objecting or pleading to accompany him does not really enter her mind.
"What will it be for you?" he asks, in a manner that would be savage were his breeding less perfect.
Ah, she dare not say! People live through miserable times, sorrow does not kill them!
He is chagrined, disappointed at her silence. It is unnatural for her to be so calm. She may even be glad—monstrous thought! His impatience and resentment are roused.
"Violet," he begins, with a certain asperity, "there occasionally comes a time in life, married life, when the mistake one has made is realized in its full force. That we have made a mistake becomes more apparent as time goes by. If I could give you back your liberty"—and his voice softens unconsciously—"God knows I would gladly do it. I could not see how events would shape themselves when I took it from you, and your father during his illness——"
Her calmness breaks. She throws up her hand in pitiful entreaty, her old gesture to shelter herself in time of trouble. She cannot have her father indirectly censured, she cannot listen to that humiliating episode fromhislips. If she understood him better she would know the almost brutal frankness, a kind of family usage, is not one of his faults.
"Oh," she cries, in anguish, "I know! I know! You were very good, you were generous. I know now it was not as most people marry, and that you could not love me, that you did it to save me, but almost, I think, it would have been better——" for Jasper Wilmarth to have taken me, she is on the point of saying, but she ends with a strong, convulsive shudder.
Who has been so cruel and dastardly as to tell her this? Ah! he guesses wildly.
"This is Eugene's tale!" he cries, angrily, his face in the white heat of passion. "He shall answer to me as surely as there is a heaven!" and he springs up.
Her arms are round him in their frantic endeavor to drag him back, her face is pressed against his breast, her silken hair blinds his very eyes.
"You shall not!" she declares, in her brave, unshrinking voice, that, somehow, she has found again. "There shall be no disturbance on my account! Eugene did not tell me until I compelled him, it was some one else. I think you have wronged him in your mind. He was kind, tender, brotherly."
"Whom then?" he demands, in a tone that terrifies her, and she sways like a lily.
"It was Marcia; she was vexed about something, but you will forgive her. And Denise told me about Mr. Wilmarth—in all honor to you. She adores you. And, I could not remain blind, there were many things. But I do not want to be free, indeed I do not. I will be content"; and she gives a long, heart-breaking sob.
"My poor child! my little darling!" and his arms enclose her with a fond clasp, though her face is still hidden. It is so easy to go through a labyrinth with a clew. This is what Eugene's fondness meant, and he forgives him much. This is why she has grown grave and cold and retiring! He is back again with her dying father—has he kept faith? She has been his wife, it is true, but was there not a higher meaning in the bond? Her heart beats against his like some prisoned bird. She is so near—are they to be kept asunder all their lives? If she did not love Eugene, may she not learn to love him?
"You said I could not love you," he cries. "How do you know, who told you? Is your wisdom of so blind a quality?" and he raises the face full of tears, that shrinks from being seen with all its secrets written in a burning blush.
"Violet! Violet! are we both to blame? Is there not some certainty when people love each other?" He bends his face to hers, and kisses into the lips the sweet and sacred knowledge that electrifies her, that seems to rend the horizon of remembrance with a flash. Out there on the porch in that first entrancing waltz he half told his secret, that he had begun to love her! The knowledge comes with a thrill of exultation.
"I think you love me a little," he says, "but, Violet, I want no grateful, gentle, passive regard. I must have my wife sweet, fond, adoring! Am I not as worthy of love as other men?"
She raises her face and they glance steadily into each other's eyes, then hers droop under the stronger and more imperious will, the lip quivers, the flush deepens.
"If you will—be glad—to have me love you," she murmurs, brokenly.
"Glad!" And the tone tells the rest.
He brings her back to the seat where they were so cold and grave a brief while ago. Is there any need of envying Polly in the great drawing-room? The rain pours in torrents, but it is a divine summer within.
"Violet," he says, a long while afterward, "we have never been real lovers, you know. I am not sure but it would be better for me to go abroad. We could write letters, and you could decide how much you cared."
She glances up in a dismay so wild that he feels inclined to laugh in pure joy. She studies out the meaning: it is forherto say whether he shall go or not.
"Oh, I shall keep you here! I shall be jealous and exigeant like Polly, and you——"
She is the bright-eyed, sunny-faced girl he found on the rocky shore, and there is the same buoyant ring in her voice.
"I shall be a jealous, tyrannical husband," he rejoins, giving the rose-leaf cheek a soft pinch. "You will hardly dare dream your soul is your own."
"No, I shall not dream it," she answers, with gay audacity.
John Latimer is greatly disappointed, as well as the professor, at Grandon's defection. There is a charming dinner party at the Latimers', and Mrs. Latimer dolefully declares that she must be the single spear of grass. The following Saturday the friends go to see the travellers off. Gertrude may remain abroad several years, "Unless," says the professor, "I grow homesick for my little cottage among the cliffs and my good Denise."
If her husband's eyes study all the changes that make Violet's face radiant and fascinating, some other eyes watch them with a vague suspicion. Has the chasm been bridged over? Has the man found the chords of his own soul, and united them in the divine melody to which exceptional lives are set? He may have friends among women, for he is chivalrous, high-minded, and attractive, but he will never need anyonefriend greater than the rest. There is no secret niche for her, they are all open-columned temples, that the world may see, except the Holy of Holies where he will keep his wife.
The world is all before Madame Lepelletier. She can marry well, if she chooses, she can make a charmed circle for herself if she so elects, but she feels strangely old andennuied, as if she must have lived in centuries past, and there was no new thing. Yet the face in the mirror does not tell that story. How curiously she has come into the lives of these Grandons a second time, and gone out with as little result. Is the stone of Sisyphus the veiled myth of life?
Violet and Grandon are not unblushing lovers like Polly and Eugene, and their most pronounced honeymoon hours are spent in the little cottage, under Denise's rejoicing eyes. There are always so many things to talk over, and the years to come must be the more crowded to make up for one lost in the desert.
Polly's engagement gets shortened from two years to six months. Mr. Murray sets up a house, and Eugene is an important factor. He fits admirably into the life that has come to him; men of this stamp are saved or lost simply by the result of circumstances, and his are sufficiently strong to save him.
Marcia will flit and flutter about until she captures another husband. She makes an attractive heroine of herself, but how near she came to tragedy she will never know. Floyd Grandon dismisses these ugly blots on the old life; he can well afford it in the perfect enjoyment that comes to him, a little fame, much honor, and a great deal of love.
LEE AND SHEPARD'S POPULAR FICTION
AMANDA M. DOUGLAS' NOVELS.
Osborne of Arrochar.ByAmanda M. Douglas.Price, cloth, $1.50. Popular edition, $1.00.
"In this novel, the author introduces us to an interesting family of girls, who, in default of the appearance of the rightful heir, occupy an old, aristocratic place at Arrochar. Just as it has reached the lowest point of dilapidation, through lack of business capacity on the part of the family, Osborne appears to claim his inheritance, and the interesting problem presents itself of marrying one of the daughters or turning the family out. The author thus gives herself a fair field to display her skill in the painting of character, the management of incident, and the construction of the dialogue. She has been in a large degree successful. We feel that we are dealing with real persons; and, as to the management of the story, it is sufficient praise to say that the interest is cumulative. The book will add to the author's reputation."—School Journal, N.Y.
The Heirs of Bradley House.ByAmanda M. Douglas.Price, $1.50. Popular edition, $1.00.
"The author has won a most honorable place in the literary world by the character as well as cleverness of her work. Her books are as clean and fresh and invigorating as a morning in May. If she is not deep or profound, she stirs in the heart of her reader the noblest impulses; and whosoever accomplishes this has not written in vain."—Chicago Saturday Evening Herald.
Whom Kathie married.ByAmanda M. Douglas.Price, $1.50. Popular edition, $1.00.
MissDouglaswrote a series of juvenile stories in which Kathie figured; and in this volume the young lady finds her destiny. The sweetness and purity of her life is reflected in the lives of all about her, and she is admired and beloved by all. The delicacy and grace with which MissDouglasweaves her story, the nobility of her characters, the absence of everything sensational, all tend to make this book one specially adapted to young girls.
A Woman's Inheritance.ByAmanda M. Douglas.Price, $1.50.
"MissDouglasis widely known as a writer of excellent stories, all of them having a marked family likeness, but all of them bright, fascinating, and thoroughly entertaining. This romance has to do with the fortunes of a young woman whose father, dying, left her with what was supposed to be a large property, but which, under the management of a rascally trustee, was very near being wrecked, and was only saved by the self-denying devotion of one who was strictly under no obligation to exert himself in its behalf. The interest of the story is well sustained to the very close, and the reader will follow the fortunes of the various characters with an absorbed fascination."—New Bedford Mercury.
Sydnie Adriance.ByAmanda M. Douglas.Price $1.50. Popular edition, $1.00.
In this book, the heroine, being suddenly reduced to poverty, refuses an offer of marriage, because she thinks it comes from the condescension of pity rather than from the inspiration of love. She determines to earn her living, becomes a governess, then writes a book, which is successful, and inherits a fortune from a distant relative. Then she marries the man—But let us not tell the story. The author has told it in a charming way.
LEE AND SHEPARD, BOSTON, SEND THEIR COMPLETE CATALOGUE FREE.
LEE AND SHEPARD'S POPULAR FICTION
Nelly Kinnard's Kingdom.ByAmanda M. Douglas.Price, cloth, $1.50. Popular edition, $1.00.
"Nelly Endicott, a bright, lively girl, marries Dr. Kinnard, a widower with two children. On going to her husband's home, she finds installed there a sister of his first wife (Aunt Adelaide, as she is called by the children), who is a vixen, a maker of trouble, and a nuisance of the worst kind. Most young wives would have had such a pest put out of the house, but Nelly endures the petty vexations to which she is subjected, in a manner which shows the beauty and strength of her character. How she surmounted the difficulty, it would not be fair to state."—New York Evening Mail.
From Hand to Mouth.ByAmanda M. Douglas.Price, $1.50. Popular edition, $1.00.
"This is a thoroughly good, true, pure, sweet, and touching story. It covers precisely those phases of domestic life which are of the most common experience, and will take many and many of its readers just where they have been themselves. There is trouble in it, and sorrow, and pain, and parting, but the sunset glorifies the clouds of the varied day, and the peace which passes understanding pervades all. For young women whose lives are just opening into wifehood and maternity, we have read nothing better for many a day."—Literary World.
A Modern Adam and Eve in a Garden.ByAmanda M. Douglas.Price $1.50.
Bright, amusing, and sensible. A story of two people who set out to win their share of the world's wealth, and how they did it; which, as a critic says, "is rather jolly and out-of-door-y, and ends in a greenhouse,"—with some love and pathos, of course, and much practical knowledge.
The Old Woman who lived in a Shoe.ByAmanda M. Douglas.Price $1.50.
This is not a child's story, nor a comic view of household life,—as some might think from its title—but a domestic novel, full of the delights of home, of pure thoughts, and gentle virtues. It has also sufficient complications to keep the thread of interestdrawn, and to lead the reader on. Among MissDouglas' many successful books, there is none more beautiful or attractive, or which leaves a more permanent impression.
Claudia.ByAmanda M. Douglas.Price, $1.50. Popular edition, $1.00.
This is a romantic story, with abundant incidents and strong situations. The interest is intense. It concerns two half sisters, whose contrasted character and complicated fortunes are the charm of the book.
Seven Daughters.ByAmanda M. Douglas.Price $1.50.
The "Seven" are daughters of a country clergyman who is not greatly blessed with the good things of the world. The story is related by the eldest, who considers herself far from brilliant or witty, but who makes charming pictures of all who figure in the book. The good minister consents to receive a number of bright boys as pupil-boarders, and the two families make a suggestive counterpoise, with mutual advantage. Destiny came with the coming of the boys, and the story has naturally a happy end.
The Foes of her Household.ByAmanda M. Douglas.Price $1.50.
"This is an exceedingly entertaining book. A simple girl, of beautiful character, marries a young man in poor health out of pure love, and ignorant of the fact that he is rich. His death occurs not very long after the marriage, and the young widow becomes the object of practical persecution by his relatives, who misunderstand her motives entirely. With a nobility of character, as rare as beautiful, she destroys their prejudice, and at last teaches them to love her."—Central Baptist, St. Louis, Mo.
LEE AND SHEPARD, BOSTON, SEND THEIR COMPLETE CATALOGUE FREE.