THE HEPBURN LINE.

I had come from my mother’s burial to the rector’s house, where I was to stay until it should be known what disposition would be made of me by my father’s aunts, the Misses Morton, who lived at Morton Park, near Versailles, Kentucky. Of these aunts I knew little, except that there were three of them now, but there had been four, and my great-grandfather, an eccentric old man, had called them respectively, Keziah, Desire, Maria and Beriah which odd names he had shortened into Kizzy and Dizzy, Rier and Brier. My father, who had lived with them when a boy, had often talked of Morton Park, and once when he was telling me of the grand old house, with its wide piazza and Corinthian pillars, its handsome grounds and the troop of blacks ready to come at his call, I had asked him why he didn’t go back there, saying I should like it better than our small cottage, where there were no grounds and no Corinthian pillars and no blacks to waitupon us. For a moment he did not answer, but glanced at my mother with a look of unutterable tenderness, then, drawing us both closely to him, he said, “If I go there I must leave you behind; and I would rather have mamma and you than all the blacks and Corinthian pillars in the world.”

Although very young, I felt intuitively that Morton Park was not a pleasant topic of conversation, and I rarely spoke of it to him after that, but I often thought of it, with its Corinthian pillars for which I had a great reverence, and of the blacks, and the maple-trees, and the solid silver from which my aunts dined every day, and wondered when they were so rich why we were so poor and why my father worked as hard as I knew he did, for he often lay upon the couch, saying he was tired, and looking very pale about his mouth, with a bright red spot on either cheek. I heard some one call these spots “the hectic,” but did not know what this meant until later on, when he stayed in bed all the time and the doctor said he was dying with quick consumption. Then there came a day when I was called from school and hurried home to find him dead,—my handsome young father, who had always been so loving to me, and whose last words were, “Tell little Doris to be a good girl and kind to her mother. God bless her!”

The blow was so sudden that for a time my mother seemed stunned and incapable of action, but she was roused at last by a letter from my Aunt Keziah, to whom she had written after my father’s death. I say a letter, but it was only an envelope containing a check for a hundred dollars and a slip of paper with the words, “For Gerold’s child,” and when my mother saw it there was a look on her face which I had never seen before,and I think her first impulse was to tear up the check, but, reflecting that it was not hers to destroy, she only burned the paper and put the money in the bank for me, and then went bravely to work to earn her living and mine, sometimes taking boarders, sometimes going out to nurse sick people, and at last doing dressmaking at home and succeeding so well that I never knew what real poverty was, and was as happy and free from care as children usually are.

My father had been an artist, painting landscapes and portraits when he could find sale for them, and, when he could not, painting houses, barns and fences, for although he had been reared in the midst of luxury, and, as I now know, belonged to one of the best families in Kentucky, he held that all kinds of labor, if necessary, were honorable, and was not ashamed to stand in his overalls side by side with men who in birth and education were greatly his inferiors. At the time of his death he had in his studio a few pictures which had not been sold. Among them was a small one of the house in Morton Park, with its huge white pillars and tall trees in front, and one or two negroes playing under the trees. This I claimed for my own, and also another, which was a picture of his four aunts taken in a group in what seemed to be a summer-house. “The Quartette,” he called it, and I had watched him with a great deal of interest as he brought into seeming real life the four faces so unlike each other, Aunt Kizzy, stern and severe and prim, with a cap on her head after the English style, which she affected because her grandfather was English,—Aunt Dizzy, who was very pretty and very youthfully dressed, with flowers in her hair,—Aunt Rier, a gentle, matronly woman, with a fat baby in herlap which I did not think particularly good-looking,—and Aunt Brier, with a sweet face like a Madonna and a far-away look in her soft gray eyes which reminded one of Evangeline. Behind the four was my father, leaning over Aunt Rier and holding a rose before the baby, who was trying to reach it. The picture fascinated me greatly, and when I heard it was to be sold, with whatever other effects there were in the studio, I begged to keep it. But my mother said No, with the same look on her face which I had seen when she burned Aunt Kizzy’s letter. And so it was sold to a gentleman from Boston, who was spending the summer in Meadowbrook, and I thought no more of it until years after, when it was brought to my mind in a most unexpected manner.

I was ten when I lost my father, and fourteen when my mother, too, died suddenly, and I was alone, with no home except the one the rector kindly offered me until something should be heard from my aunts. My mother had seemed so well and active, and, with her brilliant color and beautiful blue eyes and chestnut hair which lay in soft waves all over her head, had been so pretty and young and girlish-looking, that it was hard to believe her dead, and the hearts of few girls of fourteen have ever been wrung with such anguish as I felt when, after her funeral, I lay down upon a bed in the rectory and sobbed myself into a disturbed sleep, from which I was roused by the sound of voices in the adjoining room, where a neighbor was talking with Mrs. Wilmot, the rector’s wife, of me and my future.

“Her aunts will have to do something now. They will be ashamed not to. Do you know why they have so persistently ignored Mr. and Mrs. Gerold Morton?”

It was Mrs. Smith, the neighbor, who asked the question, and Mrs. Wilmot replied, “I know but little, as Mrs. Morton was very reticent upon the subject. I think, however, that the aunts were angry because Gerold, who had always lived with them, made what they thought a misalliance by marrying the daughter of the woman with whom he boarded when in college. They had in mind another match for him, and when he disappointed them, they refused to recognize his wife or to see him again.”

“But did he have nothing from his father? I thought the Mortons were very rich,” Mrs. Smith said, and Mrs. Wilmot answered her, “Nothing at all, for his father, too, had married against the wishes ofhisfather, a very hard and strange man, I imagine, who promptly disinherited his son. But when the young wife died at the birth of her child, the aunts took the little boy Gerold and brought him up as their own. I do not at all understand it, but I believe the Morton estate is held by a long lease and will eventually pass from the family unless some one of them marries somebody in the family of the old man who gave the lease.”

“They seem to be given to misalliances,” Mrs. Smith rejoined; “but if they could have seen Gerold’s wife they must have loved her, she was so sweet and pretty. Doris is like her. She will be a beautiful woman, and her face alone should commend her to her aunts.”

No girl of fourteen can hear unmoved that she is lovely, and, although I was hot with indignation at my aunts for their treatment of my father and their contempt for my mother, I was conscious of a stir of gratification, and as I went to the washstand to bathe my burning forehead I glanced at myself in the mirror.My face was swollen with weeping, and my eyes were very red, with dark circles around them, but they were like my mother’s, and my hair was like hers, too, and there was an expression about my mouth which brought her back to me. I was like my mother, and I was glad she had left me her heritage of beauty, although I cared but little whether it commended me to my aunts or not, as I meant to keep aloof from them, if possible. I could take care of myself, I thought, and any hardship would be preferable to living with them, even should they wish to have me do so, which was doubtful.

To Mrs. Wilmot I said nothing of what I had overheard, but waited in some anxiety for Aunt Kizzy’s letter, which came about two weeks after my mother’s death. It was directed to Mr. Wilmot, and was as follows:

“Morton Park, September 10, 18—.

“Rev. J. S. Wilmot:

“Dear Sir,—Your letter is received, and I have delayed my reply until we could give our careful consideration as to what to do, or rather how to do it. We have, of course, no option in the matter as towhatto do, for naturally we must care for Gerold’s daughter, but we shall do it in the way most agreeable to ourselves. As you will have inferred, we are all elderly people, and I am old. I shall be sixty next January. Miss Desire, my sister, is forty-seven. (Between her and myself there were two boys who died in infancy.) Maria, my second sister, would, if living, be forty-five, and Beriah is nearly thirty-eight. Thus, you see, we are no longer young, but are just quiet people, with our habits too firmly fixed to have them broken in upon by a girl who probably talks slang and would fill the house with noise and chatter, singing at most inopportune moments, banging the doors, pulling the books from theshelves and the chairs into the middle of the rooms, and upsetting things generally. No, we couldn’t bear it, and just the thought of it has given me a chill.

“We expect to educate the girl,—Doris, I think you called her,—but it must be at the North. If there is a good school in Meadowbrook, perhaps it will be well for her to remain there for a while, and if you choose to retain her in your family you will be suitably remunerated for all the expense and trouble. When she is older I shall place her in some institution where she will receive a thorough education, besides learning the customs of good society. After that we may bring her to Morton Park. For the present, however, I prefer that she should remain with you, for, as you are a clergyman, you will attend to her moral training and see that she is staunch and true in every respect. I hate deception of all kinds, and I wish her to learn the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments and the Creed, and to be confirmed at the proper age. She is about ten now, is she not?

“Enclosed you will find a check sufficient, I think, for the present necessities. If more is needed, it will be sent. Please let me know if there is a good school in Meadowbrook, and if there is none, will you kindly recommend one which you think suitable?

“Yours truly,“Miss Keziah Morton.”

“Yours truly,

“Miss Keziah Morton.”

This was the letter which I read, looking over Mr. Wilmot’s shoulder, and growing more and more angry as I read, it was so heartless and cold, with no word of real interest or sympathy for me, who was merely a burden which must be carried, whether she were willing or not.

“I’ll never accept a penny from her,” I exclaimed, “and you may tell her so. I’d rather scrub than be dependent upon these proud relatives, who evidently think me a heathen. The Lords Prayer, indeed! andI fourteen years old! I wonder if she thinks I know how to read!”

I was very defiant and determined, but after a little I grew calmer, and as the graded school in Meadowbrook, which I had always attended, was excellent of its kind, and the Wilmots were glad to have me with them, I consented at last that a letter to that effect should be forwarded to Kentucky. But when Mr. Wilmot suggested that I, too, should write and thank my aunt for her kindness, I stoutly refused. I was not thankful, I said, neither did I think her kind as I understood kindness, and I could not tell a lie. Later, however, it occurred to me that as she had said she wished me to be true and staunch, and that she hated deception, it might be well to let her know just how I felt towards her, so as not to occupy a false position in the future. Accordingly I wrote a letter, of which the following is a copy:

“Meadowbrook, Mass., September—, 18—.

“Miss Keziah Morton:

“Dear Madam,—Mr. Wilmot has told you that there is a good school in Meadowbrook and that he is glad to keep me in his family. He wished me also to thank you for your kindness in furnishing the means for my education, and if I really felt thankful I would do so. But I don’t, and I cannot pretend to be grateful, for I do not think your offer was made in kindness, but because, as you said in your letter, you had no option except to care for me. You said, too, that you did not like deception of any kind, and I think I’d better tell you how I feel about accepting help from you. Since my mother died I have accidentally heard how you treated her and neglected my father because of her, and naturally I am indignant, for a sweeter, lovelier woman than my mother never lived. When she died and left me alone, there was a leaning in my heart towards you and theother aunts, because you were the only relatives I have in the world, and if you had shown the least sympathy for me I could have loved you so much. But in your letter you never said one word of pity or comfort. You offered to educate me, that was all. But I prefer to care for myself, and I can do it, too. I am fourteen, and can earn my own living. I can make dresses, as mother did after father died, or I can do second work until I have enough to pay for my schooling. And I would rather do it than be indebted to any one, and if, when you get this, you think best to change your mind, I shall be glad. But if you do not, I shall try to improve every moment and get a thorough education as soon as possible, and when I can I shall pay you every dollar you expend for me, and you need have no fears that I shall ever disgrace my father’s name, or you either.

“I used to think that I should like to see Morton Park, as it was once my father’s home, but since reading your letter I have no desire to go there and bang doors, and pull the books from the shelves, and sing, whether invited to or not, and shock you with slang. I suppose I do use some,—all the girls do, and example is contagious,—and I am fond of singing, and would like nothing better than to take lessons in vocal and instrumental music, but I am not quite a heathen, and can hardly remember when I did not know the Lord’s Prayer, and Ten Commandments, and Creed. But I have not been confirmed, and do not intend to be until I am a great deal better than I am now, for I believe there is something necessary to confirmation besides mere intellectual knowledge. Father and mother taught me that, and they were true Christians.

“Father used sometimes to tell me of his home and his aunts, who were kind to him, and so, perhaps, you would like to know how peacefully he died, and how handsome he was in his coffin, just as if he were asleep. But mother was lovelier still, with such a sweet smile on her face, and her dear little hands folded upon her bosom. There were needle-pricks and marks of thehard work she had done on her fingers, but I covered them with great bunches of the white pond-lilies she loved so much, and then kissed her good-bye forever, with a feeling that my heart was broken; and, oh, it aches so now when I remember that in all the world there is no one who cares for me, or on whom I have any claim.

“I don’t know why I have written this to you, who, of course, have no interest in it, but guess I did it because I am sure you once loved father a little. I do not expect you to love me, but if I can ever be of any service to you I will, for father’s sake; and something tells me that in the future, I don’t know when or how, I shall bring you some good. Until then adieu.

“Doris Morton.”

I knew this was not the kind of letter which a girl of fourteen should send to a woman of sixty, but I was indignant and hot-headed and young, and felt that in some way I was avenging my mother’s wrongs, and so the letter was sent, unknown to the Wilmots, and I waited anxiously for the result. But there was none, so far as I knew. Aunt Kizzy did not answer it, and in her letter to Mr. Wilmot she made no reference to it. She merely said she was glad I was to live in a clergyman’s family under religious influence, and added that if I had a good voice and he thought it desirable I was to have instruction in both vocal and instrumental music.

It did not occur to me to connect this with anything I had written, but I was very glad, for I was passionately fond of music, as I was of books generally. And so for two years I was a pupil in the High School in Meadowbrook, passing from one grade to another, until at last I was graduated with all the honors which such an institution could give.

During this time not a word had ever been written to me by my aunts. The bills had been regularly paid through Mr. Wilmot, to whom Aunt Kizzy’s letters were addressed, and at the end of every quarter a report of my standing in scholarship and deportment had been forwarded to Kentucky. And that was all I knew of my relatives, who might have been Kamschatkans for anything they were to me.

About six months before I was graduated, Mr. Wilmot was told that I was to be sent to Madame De Moisiere’s School in Boston, and then, three months later, without any reason for the change, I learned that I was to go to Wellesley, provided I could pass the necessary examination. Of this I had no fears, but the change disappointed me greatly, as I had heard glowing accounts of Madame De Moisiere’s School from a girl friend who had been there, and at first I rebelled against Wellesley, which I fancied meant nothing but hard study, with little recreation. But there was no help for it. Aunt Keziah’s law was the law of the Medes and Persians, and one morning in September I said good-bye to Meadowbrook and started for Wellesley, which seemed to me then a kind of intellectual prison.

CHAPTER II.—Beriah’s story.DORIS.

Morton Park, June —, 18—.

Ten o’clock at night, and I have brought out my old book for a little chat. I am sure I don’t know why I continue to write in my journal, when I am nearly forty years old, unless it is because I began it nineteen years ago, on the day after I said good-bye to Tom forever and felt that my heart was broken. It was just such a moonlight night as this when we walked under the elms in the Park and he told me I was a coward, because I would not brave Kizzy’s wrath and marry out of the “accursed Hepburn line,” as he called it. Well, Iwasafraid of Kizzy, and shrank from all the bitterness and trouble which has come to us through that Hepburn line. First, there was my brother Douglas, twenty-five years older than I am, who, because he married the girl he loved, instead of the one he didn’t, was sent adrift without a dollar. Why didn’t my father, I wonder, marry into the line himself, and so save all this trouble? Probably because he was so far removed from the crisis now so fast approaching, that he ventured to take my mother, to whom he was always tender and loving, showing that there was kindness in his nature, although he could be so hard on Douglas and the dear little wife who died when Gerold was born. Then came the terrible time when both my father and mother were swept away on the same day by the cholera, and sixmonths after Douglas died, and his boy Gerold came to live with us, He was two years my senior, and more like my brother than my nephew, and I loved him dearly and spoke up for him when Kizzy turned him out, just as Douglas had been turned out before him. Had I dared I would have written to him and assured him of my love, but I could not, so great was my dread of Keziah, who exercises a kind of hypnotic power over us all. She tried to keep Desire from the man of her choice, and might have succeeded, if death had not forestalled her. She sent Tom away from me, and only yielded to Maria, who had a will as strong as her own and married whom she pleased. But she, too, died just after her husband, who was shot in the battle of Fredericksburgh, and we have no one left but her boy Grant, who is almost as dear to me as Gerold was.

Grant is a young man now, and I trust he will marry Dorothea, and so break the evil spell which that old man must have put upon us when to the long lease of ninety years given to my grandfather he tacked that strange condition that if before the expiration of the lease a direct heir of Joseph Morton, of Woodford County, Kentucky, married a direct heir of Amos Hepburn, of Keswick, England, only half the value of the property leased should revert to the Hepburn heir, while the other half should remain in the Morton family. If no such marriage has taken place, uniting the houses of Morton and Hepburn, then the entire property goes to the direct heir of the Hepburns. I believe I have stated it as it is worded in that old yellow document which Keziah keeps in the family Bible and reads every day with a growing dread of what will soon befall us unless Grant marries Dorothea, who, sofar as we know, stands first in the Hepburn line, and to whom the Morton estate will go if it passes from our hands.

I have sometimes doubted if that clause would stand the test of law, and have said so to Keziah, suggesting to her to take advice on the subject. But she treated my suggestion with scorn, charging me with wishing to be dishonest, and saying that even if it were illegal it was the request of Amos Hepburn, and father had instilled it into her mind that a dead man’s wish was law, and she should abide by it. Neither would she allow me to ask any legal advice, or talk about the matter to any one.

“It is our own business,” she said, “and if we choose to give up our home it concerns no one but ourselves.”

But she does not expect to give it up, for our hopes are centred on Grant’s marrying Dorothea; and as one means of accomplishing this end he must be kept from Doris and all knowledge of her.

Poor little orphaned Doris! I wonder what she is like, and why Keziah is so hard upon her! She is not to blame because her father married the daughter of his landlady, whom Keziah calls a cook. How well I recall a morning two or three years ago when, at the tick of the clock announcing eight, Kizzy and Dizzy and I marched solemnly down to breakfast just as we have done for the last twenty years and shall for twenty more if we live so long, Keziah first in her black dress and lace cap, with her keys jingling at her side, Desire next, in her white gown and blue ribbons, which she will wear until she is seventy, and I, in my chintz wrapper of lavender and white, colors which Tom said were becoming to me and which I usually select. Ican hear the swish of our skirts on the stairs, and see the round table with its china and glass and flowers, and old Abe, the butler, bringing in the coffee and toast, and a letter for Keziah, who read it twice, and then, folding it very deliberately, said, “Gerold’s widow is dead and has left a little girl, and a Rev. Mr. Wilmot has written to know what is to be done with her.”

“Oh, bring her here, by all means!” both Dizzy and I exclaimed in a breath, while Keziah’s face, which is always severe and stern, grew more so as she replied, in the tone from which there is no appeal, “She will stay where she is, if there is a decent school there. I shall educate her, of course; there is no alternative; but she cannot come here until she is sufficiently cultivated not to mortify us with her bad manners, as blood will tell. I have never forgiven her mother for marrying Gerold, and I cannot yet forgive this girl for being that woman’s daughter.”

Both Desire and myself knew how useless it was to combat Keziah when her mind was made up. So we said nothing more about the child, and kept as much as possible out of Keziah’s way, for when she is disturbed she is not a pleasant person to meet in atete-a-tete. We knew she wrote to Mr. Wilmot, and that he replied, and then, two days after, when we went down to breakfast, we found another letter for Keziah. It was from Doris, and Keziah read it aloud, while her voice and hands shook with wrath, and Desire and I exchanged glances of satisfaction and touched each other slyly with our feet in token of sympathy with the child, who dared write thus to one who had ruled us so long that we submitted to her now without a protest. It was a very saucy letter, but it showed the mettle ofthe girl, and I respected her for it, and my heart went out to her with a great pity when she said, “If you had shown the least sympathy for me I could have loved you so much, but you did not. You offered to care for me because you felt that you must, but you never sent me one word of pity or comfort.”

“Oh, Keziah,” I exclaimed at this point, “is that true? Did you write to Mr. Wilmot and say no word to the child?”

“I never say what I do not feel,” was Keziah’s answer, as she read on, and when she had finished the letter she added, “She is an ungrateful girl, fitter for a dressmaker or maid, no doubt, than for anything higher. But she is a Morton, and must not be suffered to do a menial’s work. I shall educate her in my own way, but shall not recognize her socially until I know the kind of woman into which she develops. Neither must you waste any sentimentality upon her, or make any advances in the shape of letters, for I will not have it. Let her stand alone awhile. She seems to be equal to it. And——” here she hesitated, while her pale cheek flushed a little, as she continued, “she is older than I supposed. She is fourteen,—very pretty, or beautiful, I think Mr. Wilmot said, and that does not commend her to me. You know how susceptible Grant is to beauty, and there must be no more mistakes. The time is too short for that. Grant is going to Andover, which is not far from Meadowbrook, and if he knew of this girl, who is his second cousin, nothing could keep him from seeing her, and there is no telling what complications might arise, for she is undoubtedly designing like her mother, who won Gerold from the woman he should have married. Consequently you are to saynothing to Grant of this girl; then, if he chances to meet her and trouble comes of it, I shall know the hand of fate is in it.”

“But, Keziah,” I remonstrated, “you surely cannot expect that Grant will never know anything of Doris? That is preposterous!”

“He need know nothing of her until matters are arranged between him and Dorothea, who is only fifteen now, while he is eighteen,—both too young as yet for an engagement. But it must be. It shall be!”

She spoke with great energy, and we, who knew her so well, felt sure that it would be, and knew that so far as Grant or any of us were concerned, Doris was to remain a myth until such time as Keziah chose to bring her home. But if we could not speak of her to Grant, Desire and I talked of her often between ourselves, and two or three times I began a letter to her, but always burned it, so great was my fear of Keziah’s displeasure should she find it out. We knew the girl was well cared for and happy, and that she stood high in all her classes, for the very best of reports came regularly from her teachers, both with regard to deportment and to scholarship. Perhaps I am wrong, but I cannot help thinking that Keziah would have been better pleased if some fault had been found in order to confirm her theory that blood will tell. But there has been none, and she was graduated with honor at the High School in Meadowbrook, and every arrangement was made for her to go to Madame De Moisiere’s school in Boston, where she particularly wished to go, when suddenly Keziah changed her mind in favor of Wellesley, where Doris did not wish to go. “She is bitterly disappointed, and I shall be glad if you can think best to adhere toyour first plan,” Mr. Wilmot wrote, but did not move Keziah a whit. It was either Wellesley or some out-of-the-way place in Maine, which I do not recall. Doris has chosen Wellesley, of course, while Dizzy and I have put our wits to work to find the cause of the change, and I think we have found it. Dorothea has suddenly made up her mind to go to Madame De Moisiere.

“I don’t care for books, any way,” she wrote. “I am a dunce, and everybody knows it and seems to like me just as well. But old Gardy thinks I ought to go somewhere to be finished, and so I have chosen De Moisiere, where I expect to have no end of fun provided I can hoodwink the teachers, and I think I can. Besides, as you may suspect, the fact that Grant has finished Andover and is now in Harvard has a good deal to do with my choice, for he will call upon me, of course. I shall be so proud of him, as I hear he is very popular, and all the girls will be green with envy!”

“The dear rattle-brained child,” Keziah said, chuckling over the letter, as she would not have chuckled if it had been from Doris,—“the dear rattle-brained child! Of course Grant must call, and I shall write to the professors, giving my permission, and to Madame asking her to allow him to see her.”

Poor, innocent Kizzy! It is so many years since she was at boarding-school, where she was kept behind bars and bolts, and she knows so little how fast the world has moved since then, that she really believes young people are kept as closely now as they were forty years ago. What would she say if she knew how many times Grant was at Madame’s while he was at Andover and during his first year at Harvard, and how many flirtations he has had with the girls, whom he calls a jollylot. All this he confided to Dizzy and myself, when at the vacation he came home, fresh and breezy and full of fun and frolic and noise, making our quiet house resound with his college songs and Harvard yells, which I think are hideous, and rather fast, if not low. But Kizzy never utters a word of protest, and pays without questioning the enormous bills sent to her, and seems gratified to know that his rooms are as handsome and his turnout as fine as any in Cambridge.

Grant has the first place in Kizzy’s heart, and Dorothea the next, and because she is going to Madame De Moisiere, Doris must not go, for naturally she would fall in with Dorothea, and through her with Grant, who would not be insensible to his pretty cousin’s charms, and who would resent his having been kept from her so long. Mr. Wilmot has written that she is exceedingly beautiful, with a manner which attracts every one, while some of her teachers have written the same. Dorothea, on the contrary, is rather plain. “Ugly as a hedge fence,” Grant once said of her in a fit of pique, declaring that if he ever married, it would be to a pretty face. And so he must not see Doris until he is engaged to Dorothea, as it seems likely he soon will be, and Doris is going to Wellesley, where Kizzy thinks Grant has never been and never can go without her permission! Deluded Kizzy! Grant knows at least a dozen Wellesley girls, each one of whom he designates a brick. Will he find Doris, I wonder? I cannot help hoping so. Ah, well, the world is a queer mixture, andnous verrons.

It is growing late, and everybody in and around the house is asleep, except myself and Nero, the watch-dog, who is fiercely baying the moon or barking at somethieving negro stealing our eggs or chickens. The clock is striking twelve, and I must say good-night to my journal and to Tom, if he is still alive, and to dear little Doris: so leaning from my window into the cool night air, I will kiss my hand to the north and south and east and west, and say God bless them both, wherever they are.

It was a lovely morning in September when, with Lucy Pierce, a girl friend, I took the train for Boston, where I was to spend the night with Lucy’s aunt, who lived there, and the next day go to Wellesley. Soon after we were seated, a young man who had formerly lived in Meadowbrook, but was now a clerk in some house in Chicago and was going to Boston on business, entered the car, and after the first greetings were over, said to us, “I saw you get in at Meadowbrook, and have come to speak with you and have a little rest. The through sleeper from Chicago and Cincinnati is half full of school-girls and Harvard boys, who have kept up such a row. Why, it was after twelve last night before they gave us a chance to sleep. They are having a concert now, and a girl from Cincinnati, whom they call Thea, and who seems to be the ringleader, is playing the banjo, while another shakes a tambourine, and a tall fellow from Kentucky, whom they call General Grant, is whistling an accompaniment. I ratherthink Miss Thea is pretty far gone with the general, the way she turns her great black eyes on him, and I wouldn’t wonder if he were a little mashed on her, although she is not what I call pretty. And yet she has a face which one would look at twice, and like it better the second time than the first; and, by Jove, she handles that banjo well. I wish you could see her.”

When we reached Worcester, where we were to stop a few minutes, Lucy and I went into the sleeper, from which many of the passengers had alighted, leaving it free to the girls and the Harvards, who were enjoying themselves to their utmost. The concert was at its height, banjo and tambourine-players and whistler all doing their best, and it must be confessed that the best was very good. Thea was evidently the centre of attraction, as, with her hat off and her curly bangs pushed back from her forehead, her white fingers swept the strings of the banjo with a certain inimitable grace, and her brilliant, laughing eyes looked up to the young man, who was bending over her with his back to me so I could not see his face. I only knew he was tall and broad-shouldered, with light brown hair which curled at the ends, and that his appearance was that of one bred in a city, who has never done anything in his life but enjoy himself. And still he fascinated me almost as much as Thea, who, as I passed her, said to him, with a soft Southern accent, “For shame, Grant,—to make so horrid a discord! I believe you did it on purpose, and I shall not play any more. The concert is ended; pass round the hat;” and, dropping her banjo on her lap and running her fingers through her short hair until it stood up all over her head, she leaned back as if exhausted and fanned herself with her sailor hat. Withthe exception of her eyes and hair, she was not pretty in the usual acceptation of the term. But, as young Herring had said, one would turn to look at her twice and like her better the second time than the first, for there was an irresistible charm in her manner and smile and voice, which to me seemed better than mere beauty of feature and complexion.

When he reached the depot in Boston I saw her again, and then thought her very pretty as she stood upon the platform, taking her numerous parcels from “General” Grant, with whom she was gayly chattering.

“Now mind you come soon. I shall be so homesick till I see you. I am half homesick now,” she said, brushing a tear, either real or feigned, from her eyes.

“But suppose they won’t let me call? They are awfully stiff when they get their backs up, and they are not very fond of me,” the young man said, and she replied, “Oh, they will, for your aunt and Gardy are going to write and ask permission for me to see you, so that is fixed.Au revoir.” And, kissing her fingers to him, she followed her companions, while Grant went to look for his baggage.

He had been standing with his back to me, but as he turned I saw his face distinctly and started involuntarily with the thought that I had seen him before, or somebody like him. Surely there was something familiar about him, and the memory of my dead father came back to me and was associated with this young man, thoughts of whom clung to me persistently, until the strangeness and novelty of Wellesley drove him and Thea from my mind for a time.

Of my student life at Wellesley, I shall say but little,except that as a student I was contented and happy. I loved study for its own sake, and no task was too long, no lesson too hard, for me to master. I stood high in all my classes, and was popular with my teachers and the few girls whom I chose as my friends. And still there was constantly with me a feeling of unrest,—a longing for something I could not have. Mordecai sat in the gate, and my Mordecai was the restrictions with which my Aunt Keziah hedged me round, not only in a letter written to my teachers, but in one which she sent to me when I had been in Wellesley three or four weeks. I was not expecting it, and at the sight of her handwriting my heart gave a great bound, for she was my blood relation, and although I had no reason to love her, I had more than once found myself wishing for some recognition from her. At last it had come, I thought, and with moist eyes and trembling hands I opened the letter, which was as follows:

“Dear Doris,—It has come to my knowledge that a great deal more license is allowed to young people than in my day, and that young men sometimes call upon or manage to see school-girls without the permission of their parents or guardians. This is very reprehensible, and something I cannot sanction. I am at a great expense for your education, in order that you may do credit to your father’s name, and I wish you to devote your entire energies and thoughts to your books, and on no account to receive calls or attentions of any kind from any one, and especially a Harvard student. My orders are strict in this respect, and I have communicated them to your Principal. You can, if accompanied by a teacher, go occasionally to a concert or a lecture in Boston, but, as a rule you are better in the building, and must have nothing to do with the Harvarders. Your past record is good and I expect your future tobe the same, and shall be pleased accordingly. I shall send your quarter’s spending money to Miss ——, who will give it to you as you need it, and I do this because I hear that girls at school are sometimes given to buying candy by the box,—French candy, too,—and sweets by the jar, and to havingspreads, whatever these may be. But you can afford none of these extravagancies, and, lest you should be tempted to indulge in them, I have removed the possibility from your way by giving your allowance to Miss ——, and I wish you to keep an account of all your little incidental expenses, and send it to me with the quarterly reports of your standing.

“I have arranged with the Wilmots for you to spend your vacations with them. But when your education is finished, if your record is as good as it has been, you will come to us, of course, if we have a home for you to come to. There is a dark cloud hanging over us, and whether it will burst or not I cannot tell. If it does, you may be obliged to earn your own living, and hence the necessity for you to get a thorough education. I am thankful to say that, for people of our years, your aunts and myself are in comfortable health. If you wish to write me occasionally and tell me of your life at Wellesley, you can do so, but you must not expect prompt replies, as people at my time of life are not given to voluminous correspondence.

“Yours truly,“Keziah Morton.”

“Yours truly,

“Keziah Morton.”

I had opened the letter with eager anticipations of what it might contain, but when I finished it my heart was hardening with a sense of the injustice done me by treating me as if I were a little child, who could not be trusted with my own pocket money, and who was to give an account for every penny spent, from a postage stamp to a car fare. And this at first hurt me worse than the other restrictions. I did not know much about the Harvard boys or spreads, and I did not care especiallyfor French candy and sweets, but now that they were so summarily forbidden, I began to want them and to rebel against the chains which bound me, and as the weeks and months went on, I became more and more conscious of a feeling of desolation and loneliness, which at times made me very unhappy. In Meadowbrook I had been so kindly cared for by the Wilmots that, except for the sense of loss when I thought of my mother, I had not fully realized how alone I was in the world; but at Wellesley, when I heard my companions talk of their homes and saw their delight when letters came to them from father or mother or brothers or sisters, I used to go away and cry with an intense longing for the love of some one of my own kindred and friends. I had no letters from home and no home to go to during the vacations except that of the Wilmots, who always made me welcome. I stood alone, a sort ofgoody-goody, as the girls called me when I resisted their entreaties to join in violation of the rules. I took no part in what Aunt Keziah called spreads. I seldom saw a Harvard student, but heard a good deal about them and learned that they were not the monsters Aunt Kizzy thought them to be.

My room-mate, Mabel Stearns, had a brother in Harvard, whose intimate friend was called General Grant, but whose real name was Grantley Montague, Mabel said, adding that he was a Kentuckian and belonged to a very aristocratic family. He was reported to be rich, spending his money freely, and while always managing to have his lessons and stand well with the professors, still arranging to have a hand in every bit of fun and frolic that came in his way. I heard, too, of Dorothea Haynes, who was at Madame De Mosiere’s,She was a great heiress and an orphan, and lived in Cincinnati with her guardian, whom she called old Gardy, who gave her all the money she wanted, and whose instructions were that, as she was delicate, she was not to have too many lessons or study too hard. Like Grantley Montague, she was very popular, and no one had so many callers from Harvard. Prominent among these was Grantley Montague, who was very lover-like in his attentions. Happy Dorothea Haynes, I thought, envying her for her money,—which was not doled out to her in quarters and halves,—envying her for her freedom, and envying her most for her acquaintance with Grantley Montague, who occupied much of my thoughts, but who seemed as far removed from me as the planets from the earth.

I never went anywhere, except occasionally to a concert, or a lecture, and to church. I seldom saw anyone except the teachers and students around me, and, although I was very fond of my books, time dragged rather monotonously with me until I had been at Wellesley about two and a half years, when Mabel who had spent Sunday in Boston came back on Monday radiant and full of news which she hastened to communicate. Grantley Montague and her brother Fred were soon to give a tea-party under the auspices of her married sister, who lived in Cambridge, and who was to be assisted by two or three other ladies. I had heard of these receptions, where Thea Haynes usually figured so prominently in wonderful costumes, but if any wish that I might have part in them ever entered my mind, it was quickly smothered, for such things were not for me, fettered as I was by my aunt Keziah’s orders, which were not relaxed in the least, although I was now nineteenyears of age. How then was I surprised and delighted when with Mabel’s invitation there came one for me! It was through her influence, I knew, but I was invited, and for a few moments I was happier than I had ever been in my life. Then came the thought expressed in words, “Can I go?”

“Certainly,” Mabel said; “you have only to write your aunt, who will say yes at once, if you tell her how much you desire it, and Miss —— will give her permission gladly, for you are the model scholar. You never get into scrapes, and have scarcely had an outing except a few stupid lectures or concerts with a teacher tacked on, and I don’t believe you have spoken to a Harvarder since you have been here. Of course she will let you go; if she don’t, she’s an old she-dragon. Write to her at once, and blarney her a little, if necessary.”

I did not know how to blarney, and I was horribly afraid of the she-dragon, as Mabel called her, but I wrote her that day, telling her what I wanted, and how much pleasure it would give me to go. It was the first favor I had asked, I said, and I had tried so hard to do what I thought would please her, that I hoped she would grant it, and, as there was not very much time for delay, would she please telegraph her answer? I signed myself, “Your affectionate niece, Doris Morton,” and then waited, anxiously, for a reply. I knew about how long it took for a letter to reach Morton Park, and on the fourth day after mine was sent I grew so nervous that I could scarcely eat or keep my mind upon my lessons. Encouraged by Mabel, I had come to think it quite sure that my aunt would consent, and had tried on my two evening dresses to see which was the morebecoming to me, crimson surah with creamy trimmings, or cream-colored cashmere with crimson trimmings. Mabel decided for the cashmere, which, she said, softened my brilliant color, and I sewed a bit of lace into the neck and fastened a bow of ribbon a little more securely, and was smoothing the folds of the dress and wondering what Grantley Montague would think of it and me, when there was a knock at my door and a telegram was handed me. I think the sight of one of those yellow missives quickens the pulse of every one, and for a moment my heart beat so fast that I could scarcely stand. I was alone, for Mabel had gone out, and, dropping into a chair, I opened the envelope with hands which shook as if I were in a chill. Then everything swam before my eyes and grew misty, except the one wordNo, which stamped itself upon my brain so indelibly that I see it now as distinctly as I saw it then, and I feel again the pang of disappointment and the sensation as if my heart were beating in my throat and choking me to death. I remember trying to cry, with a thought that tears might remove the pressure in my head, which was like a band of steel. But I could not, and for a few moments I sat staring at the wordNo, which for a time turned me into stone. Then I arose and hung up the dress I was not to wear, and put away the long gloves I had bought to go with it, and was standing by the window, looking drearily out upon the wintry sky, when Mabel came in, full of excitement and loaded with parcels.

She had been shopping in Boston, and she displayed one after another the slippers and fan and handkerchief she had bought for the great occasion of which she had heard so much. Grantley Montague, she said, wassparing no pains to make it the very finest affair of the season, and Thea Haynes was having a wonderful costume made, although she already had a dozen Paris gowns in her wardrobe. Then, as I did not enter very heartily into her talk, she suddenly stopped, and, looking me in the face, exclaimed, “What is it, Dorey? Has the answer come?”

I nodded, and spying the dispatch on the table, she snatched it up and readNo, and then began pirouetting wildly around the room, with exclamations not very complimentary to my aunt.

“The vile old cat!” she said. “What does she mean by treating you so, and you the model who never do anything out of the way, and have never been known to join in the least bit of a lark? But I would spite the hateful old woman. I’d be bad if I were you. Suppose you jump out of the window to-night, or do something to assert your rights. Will you? A lot of us will help.”

She had expressed aloud much that had passed through my mind during the last hour. What was the use of being agoody-goody, as I was so often called? Why not be abady-badyand taste forbidden fruit for once? I had asked myself, half resolving to throw off all restraint and see how bad I could be. But when I thought of my teachers, who trusted me and whom I loved, and more than all when I remembered my dead mother’s words, “If your aunts care for you, respect their wishes as you would mine,” my mood changed. I would do right whatever came; and I said so to Mabel, who called me a milksop and sundry other names equally expressive, and declared she would not tell me a thing about the reception. But I knew she would, and she did, andfor days after it I heard of little else than theperfectly elegantaffair.

“Such beautiful rooms,” she said, “with so many pictures, and among them such a funny one of four old women sitting in a row, like owls on a pole, with a moon-faced baby in the lap of one of them, and a young man behind them. It has a magnificent frame, and I meant to have asked its history, but forgot it, there was so much else to look at.”

I wonder now that I did not think of my father’s picture of his four aunts, which was sold to a Boston dealer years before; but I did not, and Mabel rattled on, telling me of the guests, and the dresses, especially that of Thea Haynes, which she did not like; it was too low in front and too low in the back, and fitted her form too closely, and the sleeves were too short for her thin arms.

“But then it was all right because it was Thea Haynes, and she is very nice and agreeable and striking, with winning manners and a sweet voice,” she said. “Everybody was ready to bow down to her, except Grantley Montague, who was just as polite to one as to another, and who sometimes seemed annoyed at the way she monopolized him, as if he were her special property. I am so sorry you were not there, as you would have thrown her quite in the shade, for you are a thousand times handsomer than she.”

This was of course flattering to my vanity, but it did not remove the feeling of disappointment, which lasted for a long time and was not greatly lessened when about a week after the reception I received from Aunt Keziah a letter which I knew was meant to be conciliatory. She was sorry, she said, to have to refuse the firstfavor I had ever asked, but she had good reasons, which she might some time see fit to tell me, and then she referred again to a shadow which was hanging over the family, and which made her morbid, she supposed. I had no idea what the shadow was, or what connection it had with my going to Grantley Montague’s reception, but I was glad she was making even a slight apology for what seemed to me so unjust. She was much pleased with the good reports of me, she said, and if I liked I might attend a famous opera which she heard was soon to be in Boston, and I could have one of those long wraps trimmed with fur such as young girls wore to evening entertainments, and a new silk dress, if I needed it. That was very kind, and Mabel, to whom I showed the letter, declared that the dragon must have met with a change of heart.

“I’d go to the opera,” she said, “and I’d have the wrap trimmed with light fur, and the gown a grayish blue, just the color of your eyes when you are excited. There are some lovely patterns at Jordan & Marsh’s, and sister Clara will help you pick it out, and we’ll have a box and go with Clara, and I’ll do your hair beautifully, and you’ll see how many glasses will be leveled at you.”

Mabel was always comforting and enthusiastic, and I began to feel a good deal of interest in the box and the dress and the wrap and the opera, which I enjoyed immensely, and where so many glasses were turned towards me that my cheeks burned as if I were a culprit caught in some wrong act. But there was something lacking, and that was Grantley Montague, whom I fully expected to see. Neither he nor Thea was there, and I heard afterwards that she was ill with a cold and hadwritten a pathetic note, begging him not to go and enjoy himself when she was feeling so badly and crying on her pillow, with her nose a sight to behold. Mabel’s brother, who reported this to her, added that when Grantley read the note he gave a mild little swear and said he reckoned he should go if he liked. But he didn’t, and I neither saw him then, nor any time afterwards, except in the distance, during my stay at Wellesley.

He was graduated the next summer, and left for Kentucky, with the reputation of a fair scholar and a first-rate fellow who had spent quite a fortune during his college course. Thea Haynes also left Madame’s, where she said she had learned nothing, generously adding, however, that it was not the fault of her teachers, but because she didn’t try. Some time during the next autumn I heard that she had gone to Europe with her guardian and maid and a middle-aged governess who acted as chaperon, and that Grantley Montague was soon to join her in a trip to Egypt. After that I knew no more of them except as Mabel occasionally told me what she heard from her brother, who had also left Harvard and was in San Francisco. To him Grantley wrote in February that he was with the Haynes party, which had been increased by a second or third cousin of Thea’s, a certain Aleck Grady, who was a crank, and perfectly daft on the subject of a family tree and the missing link in the Hepburn line.

“If he finds the missing link,” Fred wrote to his sister, “Grant says it will take quite a fortune from Thea, or himself, or both; and he seems to be a little anxious about the link which Aleck Grady is trying tofind. I don’t know what it means. Think I’ll ask him to explain more definitely when I write him again.”

Neither Mabel nor I could hazard a guess with regard to the missing link or the Hepburn line, and I soon forgot them entirely in the excitement of preparing for my graduation, which was not very far away. I had hoped that one of my aunts at least would be present, and had written to that effect to Aunt Keziah, telling her how lonely it would be for me with no relative present, and how earnestly I wished that either she or Aunt Desire or Aunt Beriah would come. I even went so far as to thank her for all she had done for me and to tell her how sorry I was for the saucy letter I wrote to her six years ago. I had often wanted to do this, but had never quite made up my mind to it until now, when I hoped it might bring me a favorable response. But I was mistaken.

It was not possible for herself or either of her sisters to come so far, she wrote. She appreciated my wish to have her there, she said, and did not esteem me less for it. But it could not be. She enclosed money for my graduating dress, and also for my traveling expenses, for after a brief rest in Meadowbrook I was going to Morton Park, in charge of a merchant from Frankfort, who would be in New York in July and would meet me in Albany. And so, with no relative present to encourage me or be proud of me, I received my diploma and more flowers than I knew what to do with, and compliments enough to turn my head, and then, amid tears and kisses and good wishes, bade farewell to my girl friends and teachers, one of whom said to me at parting: “If all our pupils were like you, Wellesley would be a Paradise.”

A model in every respect they called me, and it was with quite a high opinion of myself that I went to Meadowbrook, where I spent a week, and then, bidding a tearful good-bye to the friends who had been so kind to me, I joined Mr. Jones at Albany, and was soon on my way to Kentucky.

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