Kate Beaumont

CHAPTER XXXVI.

WITHIN two days after Bent Armitage left the lonely old house in Saxonburg Mrs. Chester quitted it also, turning it over without the least compunction to the care of the negroes and the rats, and flying back, of all places in world, to the Beaumont homestead, against which she had so lately shaken off the dust of her feet.

It was singular conduct certainly, but there was one thing which was even more singular than the conduct itself, and that was that it seemed to her perfectly natural. It also seemed to her quite natural to throw herself into Kate’s arms, kiss her with sobbings and gaspings of affection, hug and kiss Nellie in the same ecstatic manner, and weep with joy at getting home. A few minutes later, her now very peculiar form of rationality led her to relate with astonishing volubility how Bent Armitage had come down to avenge the Beaumonts on their hereditary enemies, and how it was her intention to attend the funeral of Frank McAlister in the family carriage, and therefrom give the survivors of his race a piece of her mind.

Peyton Beaumont was not at home to care for his sister in this sad moment. But Vincent, a cool and clearheaded young man, his apprehension quickened by his medical knowledge, did all that was necessary. He soon had his unfortunate aunt in her room and in bed, under the guardianship of two muscular negro mammas. When he came out from her he said to his brother Poinsett, “ I think you had better ride yourself after Mattieson. Tell him it is a clear case of delirium, with probabilities of softening of the brain.”

Kate was present, and heard these words. A flush started into her pale cheeks, and clasping her hands she exclaimed, “O Vincent!” It seemed as if this girl’s affections followed the line of her natural duty, without the slightest regard as to whether those allied to her were lovable or not. Gentle and pacific as she was, abhorring bloodshed and all wild ways, we have seen how loyal and tender she has been to her free-drinking, pugnacious father and to her ungovernable catamounts of brothers, although their flighty and violent tempers have slaughtered the dearest hopes of her heart and filled the outlooks of her life with darkness. Mrs. Chester, too, had been a perpetual plague and perplexity; hardly a day had passed but she had vexed Kate’s soul with some foolish interference or spiteful assault; and at last she had driven her into that to her most dreadful of extremities, an open conflict. Yet the moment that misfortune settled upon this pest of a bloodrelation, the girl was full of pity and sorrow.

“ Am I to blame ?” she asked, ready to accuse herself. “ She went away from here because of a difficulty with me. Do you suppose that made her ill ? ”

“ Nonsense ! ” declared Nellie, somewhat hardly. “ She is always having difficulties. If they could hurt her, she would have died long ago.”

“ Don’t worry yourself, my dear,” said Vincent, patting Kate’s arm. “This is a trouble of old standing.”

“ But she has been very well of late,” replied the girl. “ I never saw her more vigorous and clever, — in her way.”

“ She has not seen a thoroughly well day since I have been able to observe her intelligently,” continued Vincent. “She has been for a long time in a state of abnormal excitement. We Beaumonts are all, always, pretty near a brain-fever. Except Kate here ; and Kate is a Kershaw.”

“ She is not in immediate danger, I suppose,” said Nellie, who did not love her aunt, and would not pretend to, not even now.

“No,” judged Vincent. “Even if the affair should terminate fatally, it will be a lingering case.”

“ O Vincent, how calmly you talk of it! ” said Kate.

“ I am a physician,” he answered. “ I am professional.” Then, patting her arm again, “ You are a good, sweet girl; too good for use in this world, Katie.”

“She is just a little bit silly,” added Nellie, kissing her sister. “ Come, child, don’t worry so much about Aunt Marian. I dare say she will live to plague us a good many years yet. I have great faith in her.”

“ I am not thinking entirely of her,” replied Kate, musingly. Then, raising her head suddenly, like one who resolves to speak in spite of scruples, she asked, “Vincent, how much truth has Aunt Marian been capable of telling this evening ? ”

“ Who knows ? A mixture of truth and error, I suppose.”

Kate walked slowly away, and signed to her sister to follow her. When they were alone she said, “Nellie, there is no sense in this difficulty, if there is a difficulty, between Bent and the McAlisters. They cannot possibly have anything to do with each other. It must, in some way, be a pure misunderstanding.”

Nellie reflected with the rapidity of lightning. It was evident that Kate wished to save the life of the man who loved her, and whom almost certainly she had once loved, if indeed she did not love him still. Should she be encouraged to talk of the matter, or should she be checked at once? It was impossible for a woman of more than average affection and sentiment to decide otherwise than in favor of Frank McAlister.

“ I have no doubt that Bent is in fault,” said Nellie. “ Bent has probably been drinking, and when he does that he is a savage, like all his race. The Armitages are no more fit to have liquor than so many Seminoles. I sometimes think they must have Indian blood in them. Yes, I suppose Bent is going the way of his family ; he has been drinking, and wants to fight some one. But what can we do?”

“ I cannot ask you to do anything,” answered Kate, with tears in her eyes, the pathetic tears of a retired soul which finds itself forced to step out into the hard, glaring world of action. “ But I must do something. Both these men have liked me ; I owe them kindness for that. I never shall be anything to either of them ; but it is my duty to try to save their lives. Moreover, — you can understand it, Nellie, — this quarrel may be about me. Well, I shall try to stop it ; woman as I am, I shall try. People will say it is not a lady’s affair ; but I cannot and shall not mind that. A lady surely cannot be wrong in seeking to save life. I cannot go to Mr. McAlister, but I certainly shall see Bentley. Will you help me ? ”

It was as impossible for Nellie Armitage to say to her sister, “ I will not help you,” as it would have been for her to die outright by a mere effort of will. She reflected just one moment; but in that moment she decided to do herself what Kate proposed to do, — decided, furthermore, that she would do it without informing the girl of her purpose. All that she said was, “Yes, I will help you.”

“ You are my own darling,” cried Kate, embracing her. “ You are the strong and brave part of myself. O, it is a comfort to lean upon you ! ”

“ I am something, in a weak way, like a husband, am I not ? ” returned Nellie, smiling away the scene.

“ Will you send for Bent here ? ” asked Kate. “ Papa has forbidden his family the house. But for such a purpose as this — ”

“ I will see to everything,” promised Nellie. “ It is late now. Go and sleep. Leave everything to me.”

Kate slept very little that night. The anxieties and sorrows of the last few months had got her into a way of lying much awake. Slumber is very largely a matter of habit ; the less you do of it, the less you are likely to be able to do; and this troubled soul had acquired an unhappy facility for easy wakings and prolonged vigils. This night she tossed for hours, often turning her pillow to find a cool spot for her fevered head, and repeatedly rising to seek refreshment in the damp air that flowed in from the outer night. Most of the time her mind oscillated between her crazed aunt and the image of Bent Armitage hunting Frank McAlister to bis death. She went through scene after scene in insane asylums, and stood witness to a succession of fatal duels.

It was unendurable, and she sought relief in devotion ; but she prayed in vain. There is no comfort in the truest piety, — as witness the case of Cowper, — when it is presided over by a shattered nervous system. To no wicked soul, to no criminal called upon to expiate unparalleled guilt, could the heavens seem more pitiless than they seemed to this scrupulously unselfish, this pathetically conscientious innocent. The Moloch of superstition which arises from deranged health, or overtasked sympathies, or a wearied brain, deigned no reply to her petitions but a demand for sacrifice, sacrifice ! “ I have given him up,” she replied in her despair. “ I do give him up. Only, spare his life.”

Once an apparition from the real life of the world — an apparition which would have moved and troubled her profoundly, had she understood it — came to give her a moment of distraction and slight relief. She had risen, seated herself by the window, pushed open the blinds, and was drawing deep gasps of the cool night breeze, her aching eyes wandering through the broad moonlight. Suddenly the dogs barked; next there was the trample of a horse’s feet advancing slowly and as if with caution ; at last the figure of a horseman showed hazily in the road which passed the house. It remained a few minutes motionless, and then went the way it had arrived. Kate did not know that Frank McAlister came four miles every night to look at the windows of her room. Much as she thought about him, this never entered her imagination. She languidly watched the unknown out of sight, wondered a little who he might be, went back to her bed, and at last slept.

Before the younger sister was up in the morning, the elder had set out on her mission. Nellie had no difficulty in finding Bent, for he too had risen early, as was his custom.

This ill-starred youth was very sad, mainly because he was a little sick. The liquor which had been for the week past his chief motive-force, and almost his food, had become a dose. It had temporarily paralyzed his digestion, and it palled upon his taste. He had thrown away in disgust the cocktail which was to prepare him for breakfast ; and, deprived of his usual stimulus, shaken moreover by his long drinking-bout, he was in low spirits. He was in that state of mind in which a man sees himself, not merely as others see him, but as his enemies and despisers see him. Remembering how for two days, or perhaps three, he could not tell which, he had been blustering publicly about Hartland, threatening death on sight to Frank McAlister in places where Frank McAlister never went, he queried whether he had not seemed a fool to everybody else, and whether he had not, in fact, been a fool.

He thought of going back to Saxonburg ; then he had a mad impulse to rush over to the Beaumont house and propose to Kate ; then, knowing that she would refuse him, and probably even decline to see him, he queried whether he had not best shoot himself. At last it occurred to him that he might feel the better for a gallop ; and, taking a horse from the hotel stables, he rode out breakfastless into the country, directing his course towards the long, low eminence on which stood the Beaumont residence ; for he too wanted to look at the home of Kate. By the way, he had his revolver under his coat and a brace of derringers in his pocket ; being not yet decided in mind that he would not fire upon Frank McAlister if he should see him.

Nellie Armitage, also in the saddle, and followed by a mounted servant, encountered him half a mile from the village. Both drew rein as they met, the negro remaining at a little distance.

“ Good morning, Bent,” said Nellie. “ I am glad to find you. I came to look for you.”

“ I hope you mean kindly,” replied the young man, with a look which was both sullen and piteous. “ I could n’t stand much of a lecture this morning.” (He chose to pronounce it “lectur’,” according to his slangy tastes.) “I feel up to blowing the top of my head off if anybody I like should scold me. It ’s one of the black days.”

The better nature of this youth, so much worthier a man than his thoroughly selfish and shameless brother, showed itself in the fact that tears of remorse and humiliation rose to his eyelids, and that his glance cowered under the gaze of a noble woman, a woman whom he respected.

“ Yes, it is one of the black days,” said Mrs. Armitage, surveying gravely and not without pity his haggard face. She well knew the meaning of that pallor ; she had studied it often in her husband; she had seen it before in Bent.

“ I will be as gentle as things allow,” she went on. “ Bent, is it true that you are here to bring about a meeting with one of the McAlisters ? ”

He had a mind to say that surely no Beaumont should find fault with him for such a purpose as that; but he was a straightforward man, and he remembered that he was talking to a straightforward woman ; he decided that it would be in bad taste to bandy words.

“ That is what I waded in here for,” he replied, almost involuntarily using his slang to carry off his embarrassment ; for he recollected his absurd blustering about the village, and supposed that Nellie knew of it.

“ Is this on our account ? ” continued Nellie. “ I heard that you were here to take up the feud.”

“ That is all nonsense,” he burst out. “ I have been — wild ; but I know perfectly well that I am not a Beaumont ; I have not been fool enough to want to meddle in your family affairs. I have my own quarrel with this Frank McAlister.”

It is about Kate, thought Nellie. She did not want to say a word further ; she hated to be always talking with men about her sister ; it seemed to make the girl too public. But she had undertaken this job of sending Bent home, and she must go through with it.

“ Does your quarrel refer to one of us ?” she asked unflinchingly.

Bent did not speak, and in truth could not speak, but his look said, yes.

“ I know it has nothing to do with me,” she continued. “ What right have you to quarrel about her ? ”

After a long pause Bent answered, “ He has slandered me to her.”

“ I don’t believe it,” abruptly declared Nellie, remembering Frank’s manly face and deportment, unmarked by a trace of meanness.

“ He told her that I was a drunkard,” Bent added with a crimsoning face. “ Even if I am one, he had no right to say it. It killed me,” he went on, after a brief struggle with his emotion. “You know that I loved your sister. Well, she had a right to avoid me. You had a right to check me. But he, what business had lie to say anything ? O, curse him!”

And here his voice gave way utterly, sinking into a sob, or a growl.

“ There is one sure way to clear this up,” observed Nellie, not looking at him the while, for his grief touched her. “ My sister will tell us the absolute truth. You must go with me and see her.”

“ Has n’t your father forbidden me his house?” asked Armitage.

“ If you have scruples about entering it at my invitation, she will come out to meet you,” said Nellie, evading a direct reply. “ Come.”

“ I suppose it will be proved to me that I am a fool,” muttered Bent, as he rode on by her side.

Presently they halted in the road before the Beaumont mansion. Kate, dressed in black, was sitting in the veranda, anxiously awaiting the return of her sister. At a sign from Nellie she came hastily down to the gate and halted there breathless, looking up at Armitage with an expression which was partly aversion, partly pleading. Thin, haggard, and anxious, her pallor marking more clearly than health could the exquisite outline of her Augustan features, her lucid hazel eyes unnaturally large and bright with eagerness, she was beautiful, but also woful and almost terrible. At the first sight of her thus, so changed from what she had been when he last met her, Bentley was horror-stricken and terrors-tricken. He dismounted and took off his hat; he wanted to prostrate himself at her feet.

“ Miss Beaumont, are you ill ?” He could say nothing else, and he could say nothing more.

“ I am not well,” she replied. " How can I be ? ”

There seemed to be a complaint in the words, but there was none in the tone. Her utterance and her whole manner were singularly mild and sweet, even for her. Gentle as she always had been, she had of late searched her conduct with such exaggerated conscientiousness, that she had found herself guilty of impatience and tartness, remembering with special remorse her controversy with Mrs. Chester ; and by her efforts to curb a petulance which in reality had no existence she had acquired a bearing which resembled that of one who has passed years under the discipline of a convent ; she was an incarnation of selfcontrol, resignation, and humility.

“ Let us say what we have to say at once,” observed Mrs. Armitage, who had also dismounted. “ Bentley, can you ask your own questions ? ”

“ I can’t,” murmured the young fellow.

Nellie was too purely a woman not to pity a man so thoroughly humbled and wretched as was this man. But after one merciful glance at him, she turned to her sister and went on firmly : “ Kate, I have promised Bent that he shall know the truth. Is it true, — he has heard so, — is it true that Frank McAlister has slandered Bent to you ? ”

Kate’s calmness vanished ; all her face filled with excited blood ; she answered hoarsely and almost sternly, " No ! ”

“In no way, in nothing?” continued Nellie.

“ In no way, in nothing,” repeated Kate, still with the same air of agitated protest.

Bentley suddenly flushed crimson with anger ; he had been duped into outrageous folly which had pained the being whom he worshipped ; and in his indignation he burst forth, “ Then there is one Beaumont much to blame. Your aunt told me this.”

The two women glanced at each other, and shrank backward as if under a blow.

“ It must be spoken,” said Nellie, at last. “ Our poor aunt is crazy.”

“ Crazy ? ” demanded Bentley.

“She is in the house, under confinement.”

“ Crazy ! ” he repeated. “ So am I.

I have been crazy for a week. I always shall be.”

There was another silence, an intensely tragic one, — one of those silences which do not come because there is nothing to say, but because all that can be said is too painful for utterance.

“Yes, I am no better than a madman,” resumed Bentley, suddenly lifting his eyes and staring eagerly at Kate, with the air of one who bids an everlasting farewell to all that is dear.

“ I am and always shall be a miserable drunkard. But at least, Miss Beaumont, I will never torment you again. This is the last time that you will see me, or, I hope, hear of me.”

Without even offering his hand for a good by, he sprang on his horse and spurred away.

When he was out of sight, Nellie turned to her sister and said with a serenity which would be amazing, did we not remember the hardening misery of her married life, “ It is a happy riddance.”

“ He had never done me any harm,” replied Kate. “ I am very, very sorry for him.”

“ Think of the harm he would have done you, had you liked him.”

“ Perhaps he would not have been the same,” was the pensive response. “ Perhaps I could not employ my life better than in trying to reform some such person.”

“ As I have employed my life,” said Nellie, bitterly,

“ There is nothing left me but to live for others,” murmured Kate.

Her face was sadly calm, with the calmness of despair. Suddenly a little light of interest and perhaps of pleasure came into it. Nellie followed the direction of her sister’s eye and beheld the approaching figure of the Rev. Arthur Gilyard.

“Must that be the end of it?” she thought. “ Is Kate to become his wife, and wear herself to death on his sense of duty ? ”

CHAPTER XXXVII.

WHAT was to be the ultimatum of destiny to Kate Beaumont as a young lady ?

Quite as much interested in this question as Nellie Armitage was Major John Lawson. From the time that the girl had returned from Europe, a wonder in his eyes of beauty, grace, and graciousness, he had fairly worshipped her. The grandfather had broken out in him, as it sometimes will break out in old bachelors.

He never saw Kate and never thought of her, but he wanted to pat her hand, to praise her to her face, to minister unto her happiness, to be the good fairy of her future. He had a daguerreotype of her which he kept constantly with him and looked at twenty times a day, it not fifty. He used to say to himself, and sometimes to his confidential friends, “ If I were young enough and rich enough and good enough, I would offer myself to her. Not that I should hope to be accepted, — certainly not, in no case. But I should consider it an honor to be refused by her. I should feel it a great privilege to be allowed to lay my heart unnoticed at her feet. I should feel that I had not lived in vain.”

In truth, this elderly, simple-hearted, sweet-hearted gentleman had been for months little less than foolish over the child. And of late, now that she was the only representative of his deceased friend, the noble, the venerable, the revered Kershaw, he adored her as if she were more than human. Impulsively and fervently he transferred to her the allegiance which he had for years paid to the sublime old Colonel. How should he not love her when they mourned together ? He gave her his sympathy because of her great bereavement, and demanded hers because of his own great sorrow. His head bowed, holding her hand tenderly (but not making eyes, nor grimacing, nor saying fine things), he softly bewailed the death of her grandfather and his friend, so sincerely bewailing it that more than once he wept. Vain and yet unselfish, whimsical and yet earnest, he was on the surface something of a bore, but at bottom a heart of gold. If, considering his tediousness, he was not worth the digging, he was at least worth having when he gave forth his treasures of affection freely.

It must be understood that, at Kate’s request, he had taken charge of the Kershaw place until some one who could work it, might be put in permanent tenantry, and that consequently he was able to ride over to the Beaumont house every day to visit his favorite. Of course, he saw that his other pet, Frank, never came there, and that the Rev. Arthur Gilyard came there very often. Was this young minister going to spoil the romance of “ Romeo and Juliet in South Carolina ” ? Was he going to prevent an alliance between the Beaumonts and McAlisters, and thus make himself the instrument of prolonging the feud ? Major Lawson, though reverent of clergymen in general, and heretofore an admirer of Gilyard himself, began to have doubts of his piety. When he was not talking with him (in which case he of course grinned and complimented in his usual fashion) he watched him with a suspicious air, and, in fact, rather glared at him, as if he would have liked to send him on missionary work to the Cannibal Islands and get him eaten out of the way. With respect to Kate, much as he loved her, he almost felt that it would be better for her to take poison over Frank’s dead body, than to become the happy wife of any other gentleman.

“What is Mrs. Armitage about?” he demanded, talking to himself, as was his frequent custom. “ Has she — a woman— a woman too who has suffered— no true womanly sentiment with regard to this matter? Bless me, I had supposed that woman had, of all the human race, the truest eye for what is beautiful in life ! And this—this marriage — this instead of the other — would be so unbeautiful, so unartistic ! I had supposed that women were our superiors in a perception of the gracious fitness of things. They surely are so in the affairs of ordinary existence. They decorate our houses. To them we owe carpets, curtains, tassels, laces, parterres of flowers. Without them our dwellings would be bare walls, mere shelters, dens. But for their guiding taste we should spend our money entirely on the useful, the ponderous, the unamiable. We should have aqueducts and no sofas, fortifications and no upholstery. And when it comes to making our lives beautiful with poetry, with the romance of artistically arranged events, with the facts which naturally arise from true sentiment, is woman — woman — to fail us ? ”

The Major was thinking his best; he felt that he ought to take notes of himself; he resolved to put these ideas into his next essay (for private readings) ; perhaps, if it were possible, into a poem. He grew oratorical ; he started backwards and started forwards ; he ran from basso up to soprano, and down again; he broke a wineglass and did not know it.

Presently, however, he recollected the urgency of the case, and resolved to have a talk with Mrs. Armitage as to her sister. He was a little afraid of Nellie ; there was about her a manly frankness which was rendered more potent by a womanly impulsiveness ; and this mingling of weight and rapidity gave her a momentum which he did not love to encounter. Nevertheless, alarmed for his romance, and anxious for the happiness of his two pets, he sought her out and unfolded to her his mind.

“ I am quite of your opinion,” replied Nellie, when she had discerned, through many smiling and flattering circumlocutions, the fact that the Major did not like the Gilyard courtship.

Lawson was stunned as usual by her directness, but delighted with her assent.

“ My dear lady,—gracious lady, as Dante says, —you fill me with joy,” he exclaimed, seizing her hand and patting it in his caressing way. “I have not had such a moment of gratification for months.”

“ But what can be done ? ” asked Mrs. Armitage. “ Kate is her own mistress.”

“ Go to Mr. Gilyard,” replied Lawson, firmly; meaning, however, that Nellie should go, not he himself. “ Hint to him, if necessary say to him plainly, that he is standing in the way of much good. Don’t you see, my dear Mrs. Armitage? If he marries Kate, she can’t marry Frank McAlister. Then what means have we left for ending this horrible feud ? Pardon me, — I really beg your pardon, Mrs. Armitage, — I am speaking severely of your family fasti, of your hereditary palladium. But I remember my old, noble, reverend friend Kershaw, and I venture to utter my mind boldly. I know that it was his earnest desire for many years that this quarrel should terminate. Have I offended you?”

“ Never mind, Major,” replied Nellie, quietly waving her hand as if to brush away his apologies. “ I am altogether of your opinion in this whole matter. We have had enough of quarrels. I have seen enough of them.”

“ You delight me beyond expression, — beyond the power of a Cicero to express,” chanted Lawson, his eyes twinkling with an unusual twinkle, as if there were tears of joy in them. “ And now, gracious lady — ”

“ I will make one more effort for peace,” interrupted Nellie. “ I will — But never mind what ; you shall know in a day or two.”

Quite tremulous with his gladness, the Major thanked her copiously, squeezed her hand again and again, and at last fairly kissed it by force, subsequently waving affectionate and cheering farewells to her while he got out of the house, mounted his steed, and ambled out of sight.

What Nellie Armitage did was to go straight to Arthur Gilyard with her story and her demands.

“ I want a great thing of you,” said this sympathetic woman, knowing full well the pain that she gave, and watching it with the emotion of an angel overseeing the necessary chastening of a saint; “ I want you to make peace between us and the McAlisters, so that my unhappy sister may meet the man who loves her, and whom I believe she loves. I ask this of you for her sake, and for the sake of the father and brothers whom I want to keep in life, and in the name of all my relatives who have fallen in this long quarrel.”

Kate’s lover, thus summoned to give her up to a preferred lover, half started to rise from the chair in which he was sitting, and then dropped his head upon his bosom as if he had been shot. His habitually pale cheeks turned ghastly white ; he was so dizzy that he could not see the woman who was torturing him ; the words that he heard during the next minute were merely as a drumming in his ears. “ I beg beforehand that you will hear me patiently until I have discharged my conscience,” continued the minister.

But, fortunately for his honor as a man, he was of the same heroic mould with the person who demanded of him this tremendous sacrifice, and who had had the greatness to believe that he could be great enough for it. As he came back to his full consciousness, he passed rapidly in review the procession of horrors which had marked the history of the feud, and resolved that he would do what lay in him to close such a source of bloodshed, no matter what suffering the labor might bring him.

“ Is it too much to ask ? ” murmured Nellie, her heart almost failing her at the sight of his quivering face.

“ No duty is too much to ask,” were his first words, — words spoken on the rack. After a moment more of struggling for breath and purpose, he added, as if by way of exhortation to himself, “A Christian must not hesitate before duty.”

She remained silent; she was revering him. But surely it was also a great thing in her that she could be noble enough, in that eager and anxious moment, to perceive his nobility.

“ How can I best serve your purpose ? ” he presently inquired.

“ May I beg you to join with me in urging a reconciliation upon my father ? ” she answered.

“ I will do so, with all my heart,” said this man whose heart was bleeding.

“ He will return this evening,” added Nellie. “ Will you see him with me tomorrow ? ”

“ I can talk with him best alone,” he replied. “Will you allow it ?”

Then, perceiving assent in her eyes, he hastily rose, bowed, and got himself away, conscious that he was tottering.

“ It is worse than I looked for,” said Nellie, as she gazed after him with admiration and pity. “ He is to lose her in showing himself worthy of her.”

In the little space which we can allot to Arthur Gilyard, we must strive to do him justice. It was characteristic of him that from the moment when he resolved to tear out his heart for the good of others, he never faltered in his purpose. What struggle remained to this clear-headed and heroic sufferer was simply a struggle for resignation. He would do his duty ; oh yes, that would be done ; that of course. The hardness of the thing was to do it in a spirit which should be held acceptable in that unseen world which he tried to think of as the only real world. O, how unreal it seemed to him as he rode homeward ! Earth, this earth of emotions, this passionate, mortal life, was very near and terribly puissant. He was like Christian, set upon going through the valley of shadows, but seeing Apollyon “straddled quite across the way,” dreadful to look upon and threatening woful wounds.

It was not until he had locked himself into his accustomed place of devotion that he could get one glimpse of that sphere which Kate Beaumont did not yet inhabit, and where her influence must not reign. But here, on the threshold of a sanctuary, we stop.

When, during the next day, he presented himself before Peyton Beaumont, he was so pinched and pale that his host asked him if he had been sick.

“ I have been favored with my usual health,” he replied calmly. “ Perhaps the consciousness of a great and difficult duty has weighed upon me more than it would have weighed upon a stronger and better man.”

Beaumont could hardly fail to understand that this word “ duty ” referred to himself; that towards him was coming some plea, some remonstrance, or perhaps some reproof. High as was his temper, and savage in certain points as had been his life, he had an imaginative reverence for religion, and a wellbred respect for clergymen. His wideopen black eyes stared into the firm blue ones of Gilyard with mere grave surprise and expectation, not showing a sparkle of annoyance.

“ Mr. Gilyard, speak boldly,” said Peyton. “ I give you my thanks already, if what you have to say concerns my conduct.”

“ It does in part,” went on Gilyard. “ I have come solely to beg you to stop the account of blood between your family and the McAlisters. Heretofore more than once, if I remember, I have ventured to speak to you of this matter ; but not plainly enough, and not urgently enough. I did not do my full duty. I was weakly and wickedly vague. I did not clearly set before you your responsibility, and— I must say the word —your guilt.”

“ Guilt ! ” exclaimed Beaumont, his astonishment very great, and his eyes showing it.

“ In the presence of God I repeat the word,” insisted Gilyard. “ It condemns me as well as you. I should have uttered it years ago.”

After a moment’s reflection, after drawing a long breath of surprise, Beaumont said, “ We are not the only guilty ones.”.

“ It is too true. The McAlisters also come under condemnation.”

“ They do,” declared Peyton, his excitement reviving. “I made peace with them once. And they broke it: they broke it.”

“ Offer it again,” exhorted the minister. “ Urge it.”

“ See here,” said Beaumont, after further thought. “ I can tell you something—a secret, please to observe — which will give you pleasure. I have been engaged lately in preparing a way to peace. Kershaw asked it of me. I pledged him my word on his death-bed, and I have not forgotten it. In a day or two — in a few days at least — I hope to hear from Judge McAlister, hope to receive a friendly message from him. In that case I will give him my hand for life, if he will take it and do what he should to keep it. I will, so help me— It is not easy work, this. But it shall be done ; it shall, I promise you. Will that content you ? ”

“ I am merely a messenger from One who is infinitely greater than I, Mr. Beaumont,” returned Gilyard. “ I can only say personally that I thank you for this assurance.”

“And I thank you, sir, for coming to me,” said Peyton. “ I do in all sincerity. But bless me ! you are very pale. Won’t you have a glass of wine ? ”

Mr. Gilyard had understood that peace between the Beaumonts and McAlisters meant the cession by him of Kate Beaumont to Frank McAlister. On obtaining the promise of this peace, the assurance of this cession, he had nearly fainted.

It was some minutes before he could muster fortitude to seek out Mrs. Armitage and say to her, “ We have reason to be grateful. Your father, I believe, and hope, will end the feud, if it is humanly possible.”

“It will take us a lifetime to thank you for this,” replied Nellie, ready to kneel at the feet of this martyr, who had, as it were, lighted his own pyre of torture.

“ I should have done my little long ago,” he said.

Then, suddenly remembering that in such a case he might not have loved only to lose, he added in his heart,

“ My sin has found me out.” If he had thought of confessing his hopeless affection, if he had had an impulse to utter a complaint and a cry for sympathy, his mouth was sealed now. Bearing a burden of self-condemnation which only a saintly nature could heap upon itself, suffering as we solemnly believe only the imperfectly conscientious and the highminded can suffer, this noble though limited spirit went out speechlessly from the household which he had blessed, bearing his cross alone.

That very day Judge McAlister received his appointment as Judge of the United States District Court of South Carolina. This was Beaumont’s doing; it was to bring this about that he had spent weeks in Washington ; it was to this that he had alluded when he told Gilyard that he had prepared a way for peace. He had fought hard for it, combating the partisan prejudices which ruled at the national capital, and beating down the pretensions of claimants of his own following. Of course he knew that he was not under any practical obligations to McAlister, inasmuch as his own election would have been brought about, even had not his rival withdrawn from the canvass. But his word had been passed ; and that word it had been the pride of his life to keep sacred ; and in this matter it must be kept all the more sacred because given to an enemy.

The favor was received in a spirit not unworthy of that in which it had been conferred. Judge McAlister was not often troubled by magnanimous impulses ; but now the best blood in his manly, selfish heart boiled to the surface.

“ This is Beaumont’s work,” he said, handing the commission to Frank, who happened to be with him at the time. “ By heavens, he is a gentleman ! ”

The young man’s face flushed crimson ; he saw all the possible consequences of this fine deed ; he trusted that there was set for him love and happiness. It was impossible for the moment that he could do more than merely endure his heart-beats. He was either far above or far below the faculty of speech.

“ I could not have demanded it,” continued the father. “ That miserable rencontre had put my claims in chancery. He is certainly a gentleman.”

“ What will you do, sir ? ” the son could at last inquire.

“ What do you mean ? ” stared the Judge.

“ If you accept the commission, you will owe an expression of— ”

“ Gratitude,” admitted the Judge. “ Unquestionably. I shall owe it, and I will pay it. The gift, to be sure, is not overwhelming,” he added, his conceit, or, as he conceived it to be, his dignity, beginning to come uppermost.

“ I suppose I had claims to the position which no man could gainsay. I may say that I had rights. This thing, at the least, was due me. But I consider the good-will,” he went on, with an air of magnanimity. “ A bit of good-will from an old enemy is doubly an obligation. Certainly I shall thank Beaumont. I could not do otherwise as long as my name is McAlister.”

Heavens, what a pride he had in being himself, and how loftily he bugled the word “ McAlister ! ” He was grandiose over his gratitude ; he would so return thanks for the favor received as to overpay it; he would make Beaumont glory in having served him.

“ I will go in person,” added this Artaxerxes of a country gentleman and local politician.

“ I beg pardon,” observed Frank. " We must take precautions against another misunderstanding. You are not perhaps aware that there is a second drunken Armitage on hand.”

It must be understood that, although Bentley had already left Hartland, Frank had not heard of it.

“ Indeed ? ” demanded the Judge, not minded to get himself shot unnecessarily, at his time of life.

Then the young man told the elder how Bent had challenged him, and was supposed to be lying in wait to take a shot at sight.

The father gave the son a queer look. He was saying to himself, “ In my day, when a fellow proposed to ambush us, we used to look him up and root him out.” But he could not make this speech to his son, and especially not under the present circumstances ; for the Armitages were kin to the Beaumonts, and with these last it was not well to open a fresh account of blood, at least not immediately.

“ That is bad,” he observed, arching his eyebrows thoughtfully. “ I hope you are — taking precautions.”

“ I am not ashamed to say that I am keeping out of the lunatic’s way. Of course, if he attacks me, I shall defend myself.”

“ Unquestionably you would be justified in so doing,” declared the man of law. “ Indeed, it would be your duty, to yourself and society. But I am sorry to hear this. It complicates matters ; it is dreadfully inconvenient.”

After a moment of worried meditation he added, I am greatly tempted to put this rascal under bonds to keep the peace.”

“ It would excite discussion, sir,” observed Frank, who knew that certain families were too lofty and honorable to appeal to the law for protection against their foes.

“ It would,” admitted the Judge of the United States District Court, remembering that he was a high-toned gentleman first, and an expounder of the statutes afterwards. “ I must confess that I hardly know what to do in the premises. On the whole, I must, I think, write to Beaumont, asking his permission to call upon him with one or two of my family.”

“ With our revolvers in our pockets, sir ? ” smiled Frank.

“ I see no impropriety in that, under the circumstances,” answered the Judge. “ Of course we shall have the gentility and the sense to keep them out of sight, except in the last extremity.”

“ On the whole I can suggest nothing better,” assented the young man, knowing that his father would do nothing better, though it should be suggested by an angel.

Anything for a chance to bring the two families together in peace ; anything to obtain one more look at Kate Beaumont; anything for love !

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

JUDGE MCALISTER did not call upon his ancient enemy and present benefactor attended by an armed retinue.

Having made inquiry in the village after Bentley Armitage, and having learned positively that that unhappy young man had gone to parts unknown, he went alone to the Beaumont place with his calumets and his wampums.

There had been an appointment, but, watches disagreeing, Peyton had miscalculated his visitor’s arrival, and was at his stables, with all his sons and not far from half his negroes, inspecting a newly purchased racer.

It was Kate Beaumont who received and welcomed Frank McAlister’s father. She had learned that he was coming, and learned or guessed that it was in peace. In spite of her conscientious struggles to be calm, in spite of the spiritual melancholy which had settled upon her, she was in a state of feverish excitement. Would there be a renewal of amity? Would the dry bones of feelings and expectations which she believed to be dead clothe themselves again with life and stand upon their feet, a mighty army ? How the questions, the doubts, the hopes, the scruples, the self-reproaches, the longings, the fears, and still the hopes again, thronged through her spirit! Impossible to give more than a feeble and vague idea of the contest which agitated her soul and caused her very flesh to tremble. One word she kept repeating, “ I have given him up, given him up ” ; repeated it with selfabasement, with desperation. Nevertheless she went forth to greet his father.

When the Judge met her in the veranda, he saw a girl who had not slept the night before, and who was even then striving to lay her heart upon the altar of a Moloch, but whose face was so colored and whose eyes so brightened by fever that she looked the picture of health.

“ My dear young lady ! ” he said, the exclamation being actually forced from him by his amazement at a beauty which was even more wonderful now than formerly, because more spiritual. “ I consider it a good omen that you should be the first to meet me,” he added in the flush of his enthusiasm.

“ You have my earnest thanks for this visit, sir,” she replied, pressing his hand fervently, and then dropping it suddenly, with a strange mixture of impulse and self-repression.

“ Heaven bless you, my dear young lady ! ” said the Judge, still in a sort of daze as he bowed gigantically over her, wondering and admiring. “You show your native goodness in divining me,” he continued, regaining his intellectual self-possession. “I have come for peace.”

She led him into the parlor with the air of a dethroned and sorrowing but resigned queen, receiving a being who brings sympathy. Her fine figure rendered only the more willowy and elegant by emaciation and by her closely clinging black dress, she was an incarnation of grace.

“ I have but one regret,” she sighed, her eyes turning upward sadly as if seeking her grandfather.

u Miss Beaumont, I share it,” he answered, understanding her with a quickness which did him honor. “ I wish John Kershaw could have seen this day.”

“ I wish so,” whispered Kate, almost inaudibly.

The Judge rose to his feet and took both her hands tenderly, while a dimness came into his eyes as of half-born tears.

“ My dear child, you have my very heart’s sympathies,” he said. “ What a man he was ! What a loss ! ”

Kate bowed ; she could not answer ; she could not look at him. She bowed very low, let fall a few bright drops upon the carpet, and left the room. When she had gone, the ponderous Judge took a large white handkerchief out of a capacious pocket, slowly wiped away something which obscured his sight, and murmured, " Poor — beautiful — creature ! ”

As soon as Beaumont learned that McAlister had arrived, he hurried to meet him with such speed that he entered the parlor quite out of breath. To honor the occasion and the visitor, he had dressed himself with scrupulous care. He had on a blue dress-coat with gilt buttons, a buff vest also with gilt buttons, and buff kerseymere trousers tightly strapped under the instep, as was the fashion of the time. The strong colors, so suggestive of military uniform, perfectly became his bold, trooper-like, officer-like expression and the dark ruddiness, almost as deep as mahogany, of his complexion. His costume contrasted with the solemn black of the Judge, much as his impetuous character contrasted with the other’s deliberate subtlety.

“ I beg your pardon, Judge, for making you wait a single instant,” were Peyton’s first words, at the same time cordially giving his hand.

“ I have not waited,” said McAlister, with a certain grave emotion. “ I have been gratified, honored, by an interview with your youngest daughter.”

“ I am glad that she was here to receive you,” returned Beaumont, bowing thanks for the compliment to his child.

“ She is a wonderful woman,” declared the Judge, momentarily forgetting the object of his visit. “ I thought I knew her already; but she always astonishes me. I have never seen in any other person such expression of feeling and character. She spoke of her grandfather in a way — ”

The Judge stopped. Beaumont bent his head as if beside a grave.

“ Lamentable tragedy ! ” resumed McAlister. “ Mr. Beaumont, I hope it will be the last in the history of our families.”

The Judge, profoundly in earnest, was talking above himself. It was the contagion of Kate Beaumont’s tender nobility of soul, quite as much as a consciousness of the weighty importance of the occasion, which thus elevated him. His host looked at him with surprise and respect, and answered fervently, “ I sincerely hope and trust so.”

He too, as well as McAlister, was at his moral zenith. He was quite aware that this was one of the most impressive and important moments of his life. Its gravity exalted and purified him ; he showed it in his deportment and utterance. Throughout the whole interview he exhibited not one violent impulse, not one start of his characteristic eccentricity of feeling, not one amusing trait of unconscious humor. Never before, at least not since his days of youthful diffidence, had he been such a calm, contained gentleman as he was during this scene.

“ Mr. Beaumont, I am your debtor,” resumed McAlister, remembering that he had come to return thanks.

“ I have fulfilled my promise. Let us say no more about it.”

“ I must say this, that I owe you my earnest gratitude, and give it. ’

“Judge, your merit has at last been acknowledged, at least in part. That is all.”

Considering the life-history of these two men, it was surely a grand, as well as perhaps a grandiose, dialogue.

“ You are very kind to express yourself thus,” bowed the Judge. Then he fell silent. He wanted to ask for peace. He remembered Frank, and wanted to give him a chance. But the feud was a very old denizen of his heart and habits. It made the word “ peace ” a hard one to mouth.

Beaumont broke the silence. He felt that McAlister had said as much as could be demanded of him. It was his own turn now. His rival must be met half-way. Moreover, his promise to Kershaw must be kept. The two families must, if the thing were possible, be brought into some kind of compact, so that blood-shedding at least should cease.

“Judge, let me be frank,” he began, speaking slowly, like one who weighs his words, and who speaks because he must. “ There has been a feud between your house and mine. I propose that it shall end; that you and I shall do our utmost to end it ; that we shall pledge our faith and character to that work. Sir, will you give me your hand to it ? ”

His face was crimson with his struggle to say this. Judge McAlister’s ashy-sallow countenance also turned to a deep red. Both men felt that it was a weighty agreement to offer and to accept.

“ Here is my hand,” replied the head of the McAlisters. “ Our honor is plighted.”

After this great deed had been done they sat down, both at once, two tired and breathless men. This making of peace had been to them a more wearying effort than would have been a wrestling-match.

“ We shall keep this treaty,” said the Judge, after a moment. “We never fully and freely and in set terms made it before.”

“ That was our mistake,” answered Beaumont.

He seemed absent-minded ; he was thinking of Kershaw.

“ It is the spirit of my old friend who has done this,” he presently exclaimed, rising in agitation. “He is stronger in death than he was in life. God forgive me for not having let him see this day and hear these words.”

His martial and grim face worked with emotion, and there was a prayerful, piteous stare in his black eyes. The Judge rose also, seized and wrung Peyton’s hand anew, and even patted him comfortingly on the shoulder. He had not for years been in such a state of tender emotion over a man. He absolutely thought well of Beaumont, absolutely admired him.

Soon the conversation became calmer, turning easily to subjects of an unpathetic nature, as is natural with masculine talk. For a while it was mutually satisfactory ; but at last McAlister made a remark which showed his thick-skinned nature, his born incapacity for distinguishing what might offend the feelings of a man of acute sensibility.

“ I trust that you will be reassured before long as to the fate of your sonin-law,” he said. “Excuse me,” he added, perceiving a change in his host’s countenance. “ I wish to say that he could hardly be held culpable as to the fate of our lamented friend. So obvious an accident, you know ! ”

Beaumont’s brow had darkened unpleasantly; he did not want to hear about a son-in-law whom he had despised and hated ; above all, he did not want to discuss his character and chances with a McAlister. For an instant it seemed as if he would reply offensively; but after a struggle, he smoothed his forehead and spoke softly. What he said, however, was startling.

“ He is dead, sir. I am quite reassured as to his fate. Shot dead, sir, by some mountaineer or other, in the Dark Corner. Don’t trouble yourself to condole with us, sir.”

The Judge had blundered, and of course he saw it. He bowed meekly, mumbled some unnoticed words of apology, and passed to other matters. But it seemed well now not to prolong the interview; and, having begged Beaumont to do him the honor of a visit, he took his leave.

“ Ah ! ” burst out Peyton, when his visitor had got out of hearing. “ How can I get on with such a man ? When he means to be civil he tramples on one’s soul.”

After a little, however, he recovered bis good-nature, and added, with a smile of grim resignation, “ But he will die some day, and, for that matter, so shall I ; and perhaps our children will find each other more endurable.

I must use the rest of my life in trying to give them a chance to live.”

Considering the man’s sensitive nature and pugnacious habits, the resolution was surely self-sacrificing, and showed not a little paternal affection.

But Peyton Beaumont became more distinctly and agreeably reconciled to the idea of peace with the McAlisters, when Frank called on him. The habitually stormy depths of his eyes grew calm, and a hospitable smile flew like a dove to sit upon his wide, strong mouth, as he beheld the almost sublime stature and the handsome, gracious, dignified countenance of this gentle giant. Painful and humiliating as the task was to him, he apologized for the untoward incidents of Frank’s last visit.

“ It was a shameful, horrible breach of hospitality, sir,” he said. “ But you will surely not hold us accountable, especially as we were the greatest sufferers. That — that scoundrel is dead, sir,” he added. “ He will make no more mischief.”

“ God have merey upon him ! ” Frank murmured. Beaumont made no reply; his nostrils were distended and his eyebrows working ; he was thinking of the dead Kershaw and the sorrows of his daughters, not praying for Armitage.

After some amicable dialogue, the young man asked leave to pay his respects to the ladies of the family.

“ They will be happy to see you, sir,” answered Beaumont, graciously. “ You will find my youngest daughter very much changed. She has received a terrible blow.”

So Frank perceived for himself when he encountered Kate. It is true that the first sight of him brought a flush to her face and a tremulous brightness to her eyes ; hut in a moment came the thought that she had given him up, turning her to the whiteness and coldness of marble ; and presently the tumult subsided into the calm pallor of physical languor and of grief. Thin as she was and faded as she was, Frank found her more beautiful than ever. His pity for her increased his affection magically, and he thought that he had never before seen her so enchanting. O, blind faithfulness of love, admirable and enviable, deserving reward and winning it!

Of course, in this first meeting after great calamities, awed by the melancholy of those eyes whose pathos made the room holy, and still believing somewhat in the tale of the Gilyard engagement, Frank could not breathe a word nor throw out a look of courtship. The interview passed in talk on commonplace subjects, and he retired from it so unsatisfied that he thought himself unhappy. It had been a great joy to look upon her once more ; but he believed that he was doomed never to win her as a wife.

Several weeks passed without visible change in the relations of the two young people. But meantime Kate’s health rapidly returned to her, and brought with it a fresh outburst of her girlish beauty. She grew well at Hartland ; she made a little trip to Charleston, and came back still better; in two months she had recovered her plumpness, her tints of damask rose, and the brightness of her eyes. The moment that life had ceased to be merely a sorrow, it had ceased to be a disease.

As if to pile miracle on miracle, health of body restored health of mind. The clouds of superstitious gloom and ascetic purpose, which had lately wrapped her in wretchedness, rose, grew thin, dispersed, vanished, she knew not why, she knew not when, but utterly and forever. It was as if a terrible enchantment had been lifted by a spell, restoring her from cavernous dungeons to light, from a false world of horrors to a real world of happiness. Suddenly and to her amazement she found herself free ; she could do what she would with her pure heart and will and life. “ No voice nor hideous hum ” of her Moloch any longer deceived her ; and she knew that her late vows of self-sacrifice were senseless and nugatory. Indeed, she was so perfectly healthy in spirit that she at times asked herself, “ Have I been crazed ? ” No, she had not been crazed j but she had been near it.

It must be understood, by the way, that Arthur Gilyard had facilitated her recovery by keeping altogether away from her, so that she the more easily got rid of her impression that it was her duty to become his wife. It was the final act of self-abnegation in this noble spirit to seek a prompt dismissal from his parish, and take up his labor for souls in a distant part of the State. It was well, no doubt, for his own peace; but it was well also for the peace of Kate.

Meantime, the two families remained on friendly, and, so far as the womenfolks were concerned, on cordial terms. Mrs. McAlister and Mary once more twined the tendrils of their hearts around Kate, claiming her as one whom they had a right to love and must love. It was they who first learned, and who quickly reported to their son and brother, that the Rev. Arthur Gilyard never came to the Beaumont house, and so could not be troth-plighted to its fairest inmate. They threw out hints of encouragement to the young man which sent the blood through all his six feet and four inches of stature. These affectionate urgencies were all the more open because the Judge was impatient for a proposal of marriage, and actually pushed the women to push the boy up to it.

“Why does n’t he take advantage of the present favorable circumstances ? ” said this unsensitive old gentleman. “A woman who is in affliction, and who of course needs consolation, is all the more likely to accept an offer. Depend upon it, madam, that I know something of human nature. He ought to speak at once, before any one else comes in.”

In a modified form, made delicate and pure by a mother’s lips, these suggestions reached Frank’s ears.

“ I should be so overjoyed to take such a daughter to my heart,” said Mrs. McAlister in a cooing, happy tone. “ I think, considering what she already knows of your feelings, that she would not be shocked if you should speak to her. You need not press her for an answer; it would be best not, I think. But you certainly may tell her that you have not changed. It would be only fair and kind to tell her that.”

So Frank McAlister resolved to tell Kate Beaumont that he had not changed.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

BEFORE going to the daughter, Frank went to the father, whose consent it will be remembered that he had once asked but not received, matters between the Beaumonts and McAlisters being then in a highly explosive state, smoking with a promise of lofty flame and red-hot lava. He found the Honorable Peyton in his veranda, walking up and down with the short, careful steps of a gouty man, and smoking a cigar with an air of grinding it.

“ Good evening,” said the lord of the manor in the strong and rather too trumpet-like tone which was habitual with him, but at the same time amicably producing a spare cigar. “Will you join me ? ”

“ I wish to join you for life, Mr. Beaumont,” replied Frank, not even seeing the proffered Havana.

It was evident that Kate’s father comprehended, and that he was not entirely gratified. Over his hard and highly colored but expressive face there came a cloud, which, if not downright displeasure, was anxiety. Nevertheless, he looked into his visitor’s eyes with an air of attentive and respectful meditation.

“ Once more, Mr. Beaumont,” continued Frank, unfalteringly, “ I come to ask you to let me tell your daughter that I love her with all my heart.”

The simple earnestness of the phrase, and the tremulous sincerity of the tone in which it was uttered, shook all the father in Peyton.

“ Look here,” he said, throwing away his cigar, and seizing both of Frank’s hands. “ I have but a single objection. To yourself I have none. I believe in you, Mr. McAlister; I believe in your head and your heart. But, I sometimes ask myself, how long will peace last between our families, much as we now prize it ? How do I know that you will not some day separate me from my child ? ”

“From my wife, sir, you shall never be separated,” answered Frank, returning the other’s spasmodic grasp. The two men were locked together by their emotions ; it seemed to Beaumont as if he could not escape, as if a fate held him fast. “ I know that this marriage will be a bond of union for us all,” continued Frank, speaking for the moment with the sublimity of a prophet.

“ Ah, well, — so let it be,” returned Beaumont, unable to resist this enthusiasm. “ Go and find her.”

Frank raised the hand of Beaumont, and suddenly pressed it to his heart.

It was a hand which had shed McAlister blood, but he forgot that; it was also the hand of his loved one’s father, and that alone he remembered.

Next, descending into the garden, where he had already seen Kate through the twilight, he sought her amid a perfumed tangle of shrubbery and flowers. The faint golden radiance which lingered in the west revealed her; she appeared to him to be standing in a delicate, unearthly halo of luminousness; she reminded him of Murillo’s Immaculate Virgin showing through hazes of aureoles. Although the comparison sprang from the hot imagination of strong affection, it was not altogether extravagant. The greatest fact possible to young womanhood, the consciousness of loving and of being loved, had given Kate the sweet serenity of a seraph. Moreover, unmarried though she was, there was about her something of the Madonna. Her face had that various richness of expression which we see in the faces of wives and mothers so much oftener than in the faces of maidens. Under suffering her mind and heart had both expanded, and this development of thought and feeling had given every feature a new light, rising at times to a fulness of meaning which seemed to comprehend all womanhood.

There was just one blemish to the picture, if so tender a thing may be called a blemish. There was a tear ; it hung upon her eyelash as he softly approached her ; and when she turned at the sound of his footsteps, it fell upon a white rose which she held to her lips. She had been kissing the rose because it was her grandfather’s favorite flower.

“ will you let me spend the future in trying to console you for the past ? ” he said, gently taking her hand.

Yes, such had been her history and such was his nature, that his first words of love to her must be words of comfort.

It was just what she craved ; she could hardly, under any circumstances, have answered nay to such a plea; and loving him, trusting him as she did, she only answered by leaning on his breast and weeping there. It was one of those sublime moments in the life of the soul when it is mightier than the body ; when its emotions are so overpowering that the voice fails at their mere advent and can give them no utterance.

“ I will console you for all,” he whispered, his arm supporting her. “ Every breath that I draw shall be drawn for your happiness.”

What further was said between them we will not repeat. The few syllables which they exchanged had to their souls a fulness and richness of meaning which would not appear to those who should read them. Their lips, touched by fire from heaven, ennobled language far beyond its wont, and made it like the speech of some better world. Words became emotions, pouring heart into heart, and mingling them forever.

As they returned to the house, Nelly Armitage met them, gave one glance at her sister’s face, read with a woman’s sympathetic insight all that was in it, passed a tremulous arm quickly around her neck, and kissed her. Then pressing Frank’s hand vehemently, she went and wandered alone in the darkling garden, calling to mind how this same cup of happiness had once been put to her lips, and obstinately struggling to forget how it had been dashed from them.

Major Lawson, lounging on the gravel-walk before the house, also saw the young couple, comprehended what had happened to them, and halting with a start, stared after them in ecstasy, muttering, “Bless my body I It is done at last. The Montagues and Capulets reconciled ! Romeo and Juliet to be married ! Bless my body !

I could caper like a nigger. Bless my body ! ”

“ I have won her,” was Frank’s simple address, when, wearing Kate proudly on his arm, he reached Beaumont.

“Take her,” replied the father.

“ Only remember that I have put my happiness as well as hers in your hand.”

He kissed his child repeatedly, and then resumed his solitary walk and cigar, feeling deserted and sorrowful.

Well, a year more saw many events : the marriage of Frank McAlister to Kate Beaumont; the young man’s installation over the Kershaw estate, he giving up science as a thing not yet required by Carolinians ; the marriage of Vincent Beaumont to Mary McAlister, who became lady of the house in the mansion of her ancestors’ enemies ; the marriage of Jenny Devine to Dr. Mattieson, — “ Just to console him for losing you, my dear,” she said to Kate ; finally, the death of poor wornout Mrs. Chester by softening of the brain.

It will be understood, of course, that there was no renewal of the famous feud which had so long kept Hartland in cheerful, tragical gossip, and made it feel itself to be the most illustrious village of South Carolina.

It must be stated also that Peyton Beaumont always remained satisfied with the son-in-law who had come to him through so many difficulties and whom he had accepted with so much hesitation.

“ By heavens, sir, he is Kershaw over again,” he used to say. “ I don't wonder Kate picked him out of twenty. It’s astonishing what a perception of character that girl has. He is Kershaw over again.

J. W. DeForest.