Watch and Ward: In Five Parts: Part Fifth

IX.

NORA frequently wondered in after years how that Sunday afternoon had worked itself away ; how, through the tumult of amazement and grief, decision, illumination, action had finally come. She had disembarrassed her-self of a vague attempt of Mrs. Keith’s towards some compensatory caress,and making her way half blindly to her own room, had sat down face to face with her trouble. Here, if ever, was thunder from a clear sky. Her friend’s disclosure took time to swell to its full magnitude ; for an hour she sat, half stunned, seeming to see it climb heaven-high and glare upon her like some monstrous blighting sun. Then at last she broke into a cry and wept. For an hour she poured out her tears ; the ample flood seemed to purge and unchoke the channel of thought. Her immense pain gushed and filtered through her heart and passed out in shuddering sobs. The whole face of things was hideously altered ; a sudden chasm had yawned in that backward outlook of her life which had seemed to command the very headspring of domestic security. Between the world and her, much might happen ; between her and Roger, nothing ! She felt horribly deluded and injured ; the sense of suffered wrong absorbed for the time the thought of wrong inflicted. She was too weak for indignation, but she overflowed with a tenderness of reproach which contained the purest essence of resentment. That Roger, whom all these years she had fancied as simple as charity, should have been as double as interest, should have played a part and laid a train, that she had been living in darkness, in illusion, on lies, was a sickening, tormenting thought. The worst of the worst was, that she had been cheated of the chance to be really loyal. Why had he never told her that she wore a chain ? Why, when he took her, had he not drawn up his terms and made his bargain ? She would have kept it, she would have taught herself to be his wife. Duty then would have been duty ; sentiment would have been sentiment; her youth would not have been so wretchedly misspent. She would have surrendered her heart gladly in its youth ; doubtless it would have learned to beat to a decent and satisfied measure; but now it had throbbed to a finer music, a melody that would ring in her ears forever. But she had challenged conscience, poor girl, in retrospect; at the very whisper of its name, it stood before her as a living fact. Suddenly, with an agonizing moral convulsion, she found herself dedicating her tears to her own want of faith. She it was who had been cruel, cunning, heedless of a sacred obligation. The longer she gazed at the situation, the more without relief or issue it seemed to her ; the more densely compounded of their common fatal want of wisdom. That out of it now, on her part, repentance and assent should spring, seemed as a birth of folly out of chaos. Was she to be startled back into a marriage which experience had overpassed ? Yet what should she do? To be what she had been, and to be what Roger wished her to be, were now alike impossible. While she turned in her pain, longing somehow to act, Mrs. Keith knocked at the door. Nora repaired to the dressing-glass, to efface the traces of her tears ; and while she stood there, she saw in her open dressing-case her last letter from her cousin. It supplied the thought she was vaguely groping for. By the time she had crossed the room and opened the door, she had welcomed and blessed this thought; and while she gravely shook her head in response to Mrs. Keith’s softly urgent, “ Nora, dear, won’t you let me come to you ? ” she had passionately embraced it. “ I had rather be alone,” she said ; “ I thank you very much.”

It was nearly six o’clock ; Mrs. Keith was dressed for the evening. It was her gracious practice on Sundays to dine with her mother-in-law. Nora knew, therefore, that if her companion accepted this present dismissal, she would be alone for several hours.

“ Can’t I do something for you ? ” Mrs. Keith inquired, soothingly.

“ Nothing at all, thank you. You re very kind.”

Mrs. Keith looked at her, wondering whether this was the irony of bitter grief ; but a certain cold calmness in the young girl’s face, overlying her agitation, seemed to intimate that she had taken a wise resolve. And, in fact, Nora was now soaring sublime on the wings of purpose, and viewed Mrs. Keith’s offence as a diminished fact. Mrs. Keith took her hands. “ Write him a line, my dear,” she gently adjured.

Nora nodded. “Yes, I will write him a line.”

“ And when I come back, it will be all over ? ”

“ Yes, — all over.”

“ God bless you, my dear.” And on this theological gracieuseté the two women kissed and separated. Nora returned to her dressing-case and read over her cousin’s letter. Its clear friendliness seemed to ring out audibly amid this appalling hush of the harmonies of life. “ I wish you might know a day’s friendliness or a day’s freedom,— yours without question, without condition, and till death.” Here was the voice of nature, of appointed protection ; the sound of it aroused her early sense of native nearness to her cousin ; had he been at hand she would have sought a wholesome refuge in his arms. She sat down at her writingtable, with her brow in her hands, lightheaded with her passionate purpose, steadying herself to think. A day' s freedom had come at last; a lifetime’s freedom confronted her. For, as you will have guessed, immediate retrocession and departure had imperiously prescribed themselves. Until this had taken place, there could be nothing but deeper trouble. On the old terms there could be no clearing up; she could speak to Roger again only in perfect independence. She must throw off those suffocating bounties which had been meant to hold her to the service in which she had so miserably failed. Her failure now she felt no impulse to question, her decision no energy to revise. I shall have told my story ill if these things seem to lack logic. The fault lay deeper and dated from longer ago than her morning’s words of denial. Roger and she shared it between them ; it was a heavy burden for both. He had wondered, we may add, whether that lurking force which gave her the dignity that entranced him was humility or pride. Would he have wondered now ?

She wrote her “ line,” as she had promised Mrs. Keith, rapidly, without erasure ; then wrote another to Mrs. Keith, folded and directed them and laid them on her dressing-table. She remembered now, distinctly, that she had heard of a Sunday-evening train to New York. She hastened down stairs, found in a newspaper the railway advertisement, and learned that the train started at eight ; satisfied herself, too, that the coast was clear of servants, and that she might depart unquestioned. She bade a gleeful farewell to her borrowed possessions, vain bribes, ineffective lures. She exchanged the dress she had worn to church for an old black silk one, put a few articles of the first necessity into a small travelling-bag, and emptied her purse of all save a few dollars. Then bonneted, shawled, veiled, with her bag in her hand, she went forth into the street. She would begin as she would have to proceed; she started for the station, savingly, on foot. Happily it was not far off; she reached it through the wintry darkness, out of breath, but in safety. She seemed to feel about her, as she went, the reckless makeshift atmosphere of her childhood. She was once more her father’s daughter. She bought her ticket and found a seat in the train without adventure ; with a sort of shame, in fact, that this great deed of hers should be so easy to do. But as the train rattled hideously through the long wakeful hours of the night, difficulties came thickly ; in the mere oppression of her conscious purpose, in the keener vision at moments of Roger’s distress, in a vague dread of the great unknown into which she was rushing. But she could do no other, — no other; with this refrain she lulled her doubts. It was strange how, as the night elapsed and her heart-beats seemed to keep time to the crashing swing of the train, her pity grew for her friend. It would have been a vast relief to be able to hate him. Her undiminished affection, forced back on her heart, swelled and rankled there tormentingly. But unable to hate Roger, she could at least abuse herself. Every fact of the last six years, in this new light, seemed to glow like a portent of that morning scene, and, in contrast, her own insensibility seemed to mantle with the duskiness of sin. She felt a passionate desire to redeem herself by work, — work of any kind, at any cost, —the harder, the humbler the better. Her music, she deemed, would have a marketable value ; she would write to Miss Murray, her former teacher, and beg her to employ her or recommend her. Her lonely life would borrow something of the dignity it so sadly needed from teaching scales to little girls in pinafores. Meanwhile George, George, was the word. She kept his letter clinched in her hand during half the journey. But among all these things she found time to think of one who was neither George nor Roger. Hubert Lawrence had wished in memorable accents that he had known her friendless and helpless. She imagined now that her placid dependence had stirred his contempt. But for this, he might have cut the knot of her destiny. As she thought of him it seemed not misery, but happiness, to be wandering forth alone. She wished he might see her sitting there in poverty ; she wondered whether there was a chance of her meeting him in New York. She would tell him then that she understood and forgave him. What had seemed cruelty was in fact magnanimity ; for, of course, he had learned Roger’s plan, and on this ground had renounced. She wondered whether she might properly let him know that she was free.

Toward morning, weariness mastered her and she fell asleep. She was aroused by a great tumult and the stopping of the train. It had arrived. She found with dismay that, as it was but seven o’clock, she had two or three hours on her hands. George would hardly be at his place of business before ten, and the interval seemed formidable. The dusk of a winter’s morning lingered still, and increasd her trouble. But she followed her companions and stood in the street. Half a dozen hackmen attacked her; a facetious gentleman, lighting a cigar, asked her if she would n’t take a carriage with him.

She made her escape from the bustle and hurried along the street, praying to be unnoticed. She told herself sternly that now her difficulties had begun and must be bravely faced ; but as she stood at the street-corner, beneath an unextinguished lamp, listening to the nascent hum of the town, she felt a most unreasoned sinking of the heart. A Dutch grocer, behind her, was beginning to open his shop; an ash-barrel stood beside her, and while she lingered an old woman with a filthy bag on her back came and poked in it with a stick ; a policeman, muffled in a comforter, came lounging squarely along the pavement and took her slender measure with his hard official eye. What a hideous sordid world ! She was afraid to do anything but walk and walk. Fortunately, in New York, in the upper region, it is impossible to lose one’s way; and she knew that by keeping downward and to the right she would reach her appointed refuge. The streets looked shabby and of ill-repute ; the houses seemed mean and sinister. When, to fill her time, she stopped before the window of a small shop, the objects within seemed, in their ugliness, to mock at the delicate needs begotten of Roger’s teaching, and now come a-begging. At last she began to feel faint and hungry, for she had fasted since the previous morning. She ventured into an establishment which had Ladies' Café inscribed in gilt letters on a blue tablet in the window, and justified its title by an exhibition of stale pies and fly-blown festoons of tissuepaper. On her request, humbly preferred, for a cup of tea, she was served staringly and condescendingly by a half-dressed young woman, with frowzy hair and tumid eyes. The tea was bad, yet Nora swallowed it, not to complicate the situation. The young woman had come and sat down at her table, handled her travelling-bag, and asked a number of plain questions ; among others, if she would n’t like to go up and lie down. “I guess it’s a dollar,” said this person, to conclude her achievements, alluding to the cup of tea. Nora came afterwards to a square, in which was an enclosure containing trees, a frozen fountain, thawing fast, and benches. She went in and sat down on one of the benches. Several of the others were occupied by shabby men, sullen with fasting, with their hands thrust deep into their pockets, swinging their feet for warmth. She felt a faint fellowship in their grim idleness ; but the fact that they were all men and she the only woman, seemed to open out deeper depths in her loneliness. At last, when it was nine o’clock, she made her way to Tenth Avenue and to George’s address. It was a neighborhood of storehouses and lumberyards, of wholesale traffic in articles she had never heard of, and of multitudinous carts, drawn up along the pavement. She found a large cheaplooking sign in black and white, — Franks and Fenton. Beneath it was an alley, and at the end of this alley a small office which seemed to communicate with an extension of the precinct in the rear. The office was open ; a small ragged boy was sweeping it with a broom. From him she learned that neither Franks nor Fenton had arrived, but that if she wanted, she might come in and wait. She sat down in a corner, tremulous with conjecture, and scanned the room, trying to bridge over this dull interval with some palpable memento of her cousin. But the desk, the stove, the iron safe, the chairs, the sordid ink-spotted walls, were as blank and impersonal as so many columns of figures. When at last the door opened and a man appeared, it was not Fenton, but, presumably, Franks. Mr. Franks was a small meagre man, with a whitish coloring, weak blue eyes and thin yellow whiskers, laboring apparently under a chronic form of that malady vulgarly known as the “ fidgets,” the opening steps of Saint Vitus’s dance. He nodded, he stumbled, he jerked his arms and legs about with pitiful comicality. He had a huge protuberant forehead, such a forehead as would have done honor to a Goethe or a Newton ; but poor Mr. Franks must have been at best a man of genius manqué. In other words, he was next door to a fool. He informed Nora, on learning her errand, that his partner (“ pardner ” he called it) was gone to Williamsburg on business, and would not return till noon ; meanwhile, was it anything he could do ? Nora’s heart sank at this vision of comfort still deferred; but she thanked Mr. Franks, and begged leave to sit in her corner and wait. Her presence seemed to redouble his agitation ; she remained for an hour gazing in painful fascination at his grotesque shrugs and spasms, as he busied himself at his desk. The Muse of accounts, for poor Mr. Franks, was, in fact, not habitually a young woman, thrice beautiful with trouble, sitting so sensibly at his elbow. Nora wondered how George had come to marry his strength to such weakness; then she guessed that it was his need of capital that had discovered a secret affinity with Mr. Franks’s need of brains. The merciless intensity of thought begotten by her excitement suggested the dishonorable color of this connection. From time to time Mr. Franks wheeled about in his chair and fixed her solemnly with his pallid glance, as if to offer her the privilege of telling him her story ; and on her failure to avail herself of it, turned back to his ledger with a little grunt of injury and a renewal of his vacant nods and becks. As the morning wore away, various gentlemen of the kind designated as “ parties ” came in and demanded Fenton, quite over Mr. Franks’s restless head. Several of them sat awhile on tilted chairs, chewing their toothpicks, stroking their beards, and listening with a half-bored grin to what appeared to be an intensely confidential exposition of Mr. Franks’s wrongs. One of them, as he departed, gave Nora a wink, as if to imply that the state of affairs between the two members of the firm was so broad a joke that even a pretty young woman might enjoy it. At last, when they had been alone again for half an hour, Mr. Franks closed with a slap the great leathern flanks of his account-book, and sat a moment burying his head in his arms. Then he suddenly rose and stood before the young girl. “Mr. Fenton’s your cousin, Miss, you say, eh ? Well, then, let me tell you that your cousin’s a rascal! I can prove it to you on them books! Where is my money, thirty thousand dollars that I put into this d—d humbug of a business ? What is there to show for it? I’ve been made a fool of,—as if I wasn’t fool enough already.” The tears stood in his eyes, he stamped with the bitterness of his spite; and then thrusting his hat on his head and giving Nora’s amazement no time to reply, he darted out of the door and went up the alley. Nora saw him from the window, looking up and down the street. Suddenly, while he stood and while she looked, George came up. Mr. Franks’s fury seemed suddenly to evaporate; he received his companion’s hand-shake and nodded toward the office, as if to tell of Nora’s being there ; while, to her surprise, George hereupon, without looking toward the window, turned back into the street. In a few minutes, however, he reappeared alone, and in another moment he stood before her. “Well!” he cried; “here’s a sensation ! ”

“ George,” she said, “ I’ve taken you at your word.”

“ My word ? O yes !” cried George, bravely.

She instantly perceived that he was changed, and not for the better. He looked older, he was better dressed and more prosperous ; but as Nora glanced at him, she felt that she had asked too much of her heart. In fact, George was the same George, only more so, as the phrase is. The lapse of a year and a half had hammered him hard. His face had acquired the settled expression of a man turning over a hard bargain with cynical suspicion. He looked at Nora from head to foot, and in a moment he had noted her simple dress and her pale face. “ What on earth has happened ? ” he asked, closing the door with a kick.

Nora hesitated, feeling that, with words, tears might come.

“ You 're sick,” he said, “or you will be.”

This horrible idea helped her to recall her self-control. “ I’ve left Mr. Lawrence,” she said.

“So I see! ” said George, wavering between relish and disapproval. When, a few moments before, his partner had told him that a young lady was in the office, calling herself his cousin, he had straightway placed himself on his guard. The case was delicate ; so that, instead of immediately advancing, he had retreated behind a green baize door twenty yards off, had “ taken something,” and briskly meditated. She had taken him at his word: he knew that before she told him. But confound his word, if it came to this ! It had been meant, not as an invitation to put herself under his care, but as a simple high-colored hint of his standing claims. George, however, had a native sympathy with positive measures ; Nora evidently had engaged in one which, as such, might yield profit. “How do you stand?” he asked. “ Have you quarrelled ? ”

“ Don’t call it a quarrel, George! He’s as kind, he’s kinder than ever ! ” Nora cried. “ But what do you think ? He has asked me to marry him.”

“ Eh, my dear, I told you so ! ”

“ I did n’t believe you ! I ought to have believed you. But it is n’t only that. It is that, years ago, he adopted me with that view. He brought me up for that purposeHe has done everything for me on that condition. I was to pay my debt and be his wife ! I never dreamed of it. And now at last that I’m a woman grown and he makes his demand, I can’t, I can’t! ”

“You can’t, eh? So you’ve left him ! ”

“ Of course I’ve left him. It was the only thing to do. It was give and take. I can’t give what he wants, nor can I give back all I have received. But I can refuse to take more.”

Fenton sat on the edge of his desk, swinging his leg. He folded his arms and whistled a lively air, looking at Nora with a brightened eye. “ I see,

I see,” he said.

Telling her tale had deepened her color and added to her beauty. “ So here I am,” she went on. “ I know that I’m dreadfully alone, that I’m homeless and helpless. But it’s a heaven to living as I have lived. I have been content all these days, because I thought I could content him. But we never understood each other. He has given me immeasurable happiness ; I know that ; and he knows that I know it ; don’t you think he knows, George ? ” she cried, eager even in her reserve. “ I would have made him a sister, a friend. But I don’t expect you to understand all this. It’s enough that I ’m satisfied. I 'm satisfied,” the poor girl repeated vehemently. “ I’m not going into the heroics ; you can trust me, George. I mean to earn my own living. I can teach ; I’m a good musician ; I want above all things to work. I shall look for some employment without delay. All this time I might have been writing to Miss Murray. But I was sick with impatience to see you. To come to you was the only thing I could do ; but I sha’ n’t trouble you for long.”

Fenton seemed to have but half caught the meaning of this impassioned statement, for simple admiration ot her radiant purity of purpose was fast getting the better of his caution. He gave his knee a loud slap. “ Nora,” he said, “ you 're a great girl ! ”

For a moment she was silent and thoughtful. “ For heaven’s sake,” she cried at last, “ say nothing to make me feel that I have done this thing too easily, too proudly and recklessly ! Really, I’m anything but brave. I ’m full of doubts and fears.”

“You’re beautiful; that’s one sure thing ! ” said Fenton. “ I ’d rather marry you than lose you. Poor Lawrence ! ” Nora turned away in silence and walked to the window, which grew to her eyes, for the moment, as the “glimmering square” of the poet. “ I thought you loved him so ! ” he added, abruptly. Nora turned back with an effort and a blush. “If he were to come to you now,” he went on, “and go down on his knees and beg and plead and rave and all that sort of thing, would you still refuse him ? ”

She covered her face with her hands. “ O George, George ! ” she cried.

“ He ’ll follow you, of course. He ’ll not let you go so easily.”

“ Possibly ; but I have begged him solemnly to let me take my way. Roger is n’t one to rave and rage. At all events, I shall refuse to see him now. A year hence, perhaps. His great desire will be, of course, that I don’t suffer. I sha’ n’t suffer.”

“ By Jove, not if I can help it ! ” cried Fenton, with warmth. Nora answered with a faint, grave smile, and stood looking at him, invoking by her helpless silence some act of high protection. He colored beneath her glance with the pressure of his thoughts. They resolved themselves chiefly into the recurring question, “ What can be made of it ? ” While he was awaiting inspiration, he took refuge in a somewhat inexpensive piece of gallantry. “ By the way, you must be hungry.”

“ No, I ’m not hungry,” said Nora, “but I’m tired. You must find me a lodging — in some quiet hotel.”

“ O, you shall be quiet enough,” he answered ; but he insisted that unless, meanwhile, she took some dinner, he should have her ill on his hands. They quitted the office, and he hailed a hack, which drove them over to the upper Broadway region, where they were soon established in a well-appointed restaurant. They made, however, no very hearty meal. Nora’s hunger of the morning had passed away in fever, and Fenton himself was, as he would have expressed it, off his feed. Nora’s head had begun to ache ; she had removed her bonnet, and sat facing him at their small table, leaning wearily against the wall, her plate neglected, her arms folded, her bright eyes expanded with her trouble and consulting the uncertain future. He noted narrowly her splendid gain of beauty since their parting; but more even than by this he was struck by her brave playing of her part, and by the purity and mystery of moral temper it implied. It belonged to a line of conduct in which he felt no commission to dabble ; but in a creature of another sort he was free to admire these luxuries of conscience. In man or woman the capacity then and there to act was the thing he most relished. Nora had not faltered and wavered; she had chosen, and here she sat. He felt a sort of rage that he was not the manner of man for whom such a woman might so choose, and that his own temper was pitched in so much lower a key ; for as he looked askance at her beautiful absent eyes, he more than suspected that there was a positive as well as a negative side to her refusal of her friend. To refuse Roger, favored as Roger was, her heart, at least, must have accepted another. It was love, and not indifference, that had pulled the wires of her adventure. Fenton, as we have intimated, was one who, when it suited him, could ride rough-shod to his mark. “ You’ve told me half your story,” he said, “ but your eyes tell the rest. You’ll not be Roger’s wife, but you ’ll not die an old maid.”

She started, and her utmost effort at self-control was unable to banish a beautiful guiltiness from her blush. “To what you can learn from my eyes you are welcome,” she said. “ Though they may compromise me, they won’t any one else.”

“ My dear girl,” he said, “ I religiously respect your secrets.” But, in truth, he only half respected them. Stirred as he was by her beauty and by that sense of feminine appeal which to a man who retains aught of the generosity of manhood is the most inspiring of all motives, he was keenly mortified by the feeling that her tenderness passed him by, barely touching him with the hem of its garment. She was doing mighty fine things, but she was using him, her hard, shabby cousin, as a senseless stepping-stone. These reflections quickened his appreciation of her charm, but took the edge from his delicacy. As they rose to go, Nora, who in spite of her absent eyes had watched him well, felt that cousinship was but a name. George bad been to her maturer vision a singular disappointment. His face, from the moment of their meeting, had given her warning to withdraw her trust. Was it she or he who had changed since that fervid youthful parting of sixteen months before ? She, in the interval, had been refined by life ; he had been vulgarized. She had seen the world. She had known better things and better men ; she had known Hubert, and, more than ever, she had known Roger. But as she drew on her gloves she reflected with horror that trouble was making her fastidious. She wished to be coarse and careless ; she wished that she might have eaten a heavy dinner, that she might enjoy taking George’s arm. And the slower flowed the current of her confidence, the softer dropped her words. “ Now, dear George,” she said, with a desperate attempt at a cheerful smile, “let me know where you mean to take me.”

“ Upon my soul, Nora,” he said, with a hard grin, “ I feel as if I had a jewel I must lay in soft cotton. The thing is to find it soft enough.” With George himself, perhaps, she might make terms; but she had a growing horror of his friends. Among them, probably, were the female correlatives of the men who had come to chat with Mr. Franks. She prayed he might not treat her to company. “ You see I want to do the pretty thing,” he went on. “ I want to treat you, by Jove, as I ’d treat a queen ! I can’t thrust you all alone into a hotel, and I can’t put up at one with you, — can I ? ”

“ I ’m not in a position now to be fastidious,” said Nora. “ I sha’ n’t object to going alone.”

“No, no ! ” he cried, with a flourish of his hand. “ I ’ll do for you what I ’d do for my own sister. I ’m not one of your pious boys, but I know the decencies. I live in the house of a lady who lets out rooms, — a very nice little woman ; she and I are great cronies ; I’m sure you ’ll like her. She ’ll make you as snug as you ever were with our friend Roger ! A female companion for a lonely girl is never amiss, you know. She’s a first-rate little woman. You’ll see!”

Nora’s heart sank, but she assented. They re-entered their carriage, and a drive of moderate length brought them to a brown-stone dwelling of the third order of gentility, as one may say, stationed in a cheap and serried row. In a few moments, in a small tawdry front parlor, Nora was introduced to George’s hostess, the nice little woman, Mrs. Paul by name. Nice enough she seemed, for Nora’s comfort. She was youngish and fair, plump and comely, with a commendable air of remote widowhood. She was a trifle too loving on short acquaintance, perhaps; but, after all, thought Nora, who was she now, to complain of that ? When the two women had gone up stairs, Fenton put on his hat, —he could never meditate without it (he had written that last letter to Nora with his beaver resting on the bridge of his nose), — and paced slowly up and down the narrow entry, chewing the end of a cigar, with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the ground. In ten minutes Mrs. Paul reappeared. “Well, sir,” she cried, “what does all this mean?”

“ It means money, if you ’ll not scream so loud,” he answered. “ Come in here.” They went into the parlor and remained there for a couple of hours with closed doors. At last Fenton came forth and left the house. He walked along the street, humming gently to himself. Dusk had fallen ; he stopped beneath a lighted lamp at the corner, looked up and down a moment, and then exhaled a deep, an almost melancholy sigh. Having thus purged his conscience, he proceeded to business. He consulted his watch ; it was five o’clock. An empty hack rolled by ; he called it and got in, breathing the motto of great spirits, “Confound the expense ! ” His business led him to visit successively several of the upper hotels. Roger, he argued, starting immediately in pursuit of Nora, would have taken the first train from Boston, and would now have been more than an hour in town. Fenton could, of course, proceed only by probabilities ; but according to these, Roger was to be found at one of the establishments aforesaid. Fenton knew his New York, and, from what he knew of Roger, he believed him to be at the Brevoort House. Here, in fact, he found his name freshly registered. He would give him time, however; he would take time himself. He stretched his long legs awhile on one of the divans in the hall. At last Roger appeared, strolling gloomily down the corridor, with his eyes on the ground. For a moment Fenton scarcely recognized him. He was pale and grave ; distress had already made him haggard. Fenton observed that, as he passed, people stared at him. He walked slowly to the street door ; whereupon Fenton, fearing he might lose him, followed him, and stood for a moment behind him. Roger turned suddenly, as if from an instinct of the other’s nearness, and the two faced each other. Those dumb eyes of Roger’s for once were eloquent. They glowed like living coals.

X.

The good lady who enjoyed the sinecure of being mother-in-law to Mrs. Keith passed on that especial Sunday an exceptionally dull evening. Her son’s widow was oppressed and preoccupied, and took an early leave. Mrs. Keith’s first question on reaching home was whether Nora had left her room. On learning that she had quitted the house alone, after dark, Mrs. Keith made her way, stirred by vague conjecture, to the empty chamber, where, of course, she speedily laid her hands on those two testamentary notes of which mention has been made. In a moment she had read the one addressed to herself. Perturbed as she was, she yet could not repress an impulse of intelligent applause. Ah, how character plays the cards ! how a fine girl’s very errors set her off! If Roger longed for Nora to-day, who could measure the morrow’s longing ? He might enjoy, however, without waiting for the morrow, this refinement of desire. In spite of the late hour, Mrs. Keith repaired to his abode, armed with the other letter, deeming this, at such a moment, a more gracious course than to send for him. The letter Roger found to be brief but pregnant. “ Dear Roger,” it ran, “ I learned this afternoon the secret of all these years, — too late for our happiness. I have been blind ; you have been too forbearing, — generous where you should have been narrowly just. I never dreamed of what this day would bring. Now, I must leave you ; I can do nothing else. This is no time to thank you for these years, but I shall live to do so yet. Dear Roger, get married, and send me your children to teach. I shall live by teaching. I have a family, you know ; I go to N. Y. to-night. I write this on my knees, imploring you to be happy. One of these days, when I have learned to be myself again, we shall be better friends than ever. I beg you solemnly not to follow me.”

Mrs. Keith sat with her friend half the night in contemplation of this prodigious fact. For the first time in her knowledge of him she saw Roger violent, — violent with horror and self-censure, and vain imprecation of circumstance. But as the hours passed, she noted that effect of which she had had prevision : the intenser heat of his passion, the need to answer act with act. He spoke of Nora with lowered tones, with circumlocutions, as some old pagan of an unveiled goddess. Consistency is a jewel ; Mrs. Keith maintained in the teeth of the event that she had given sound advice. “ She ’ll have you yet,” she said, “if you let her alone. Take her at her word, — don’t follow her. Let her knock against the world a little, and she ’ll make you a better wife for this very escapade.”

This philosophy seemed to Roger too stoical by half; to sit at home and let Nora knock against the world was more than he could undertake. “ Wife or no wife,” he said, “ I must bring her back. I ’m responsible for her to Heaven. Good God ! think of her afloat in that horrible city with that rascal of a half-cousin — her ‘family’ she calls him ! — for a pilot!” He took, of course, the first train to New York. How to proceed, where to look, was a hard question ; but to linger and waver was agony. He was haunted, as he went, with dreadful visions of what might have befallen her; it seemed to him that he had hated her till now.

Fenton, as he recognized him, seemed a comfortable sight, in spite of his detested identity. He was better than uncertainty. “You have news for me ! ” Roger cried. “ Where is she ? ”

Fenton looked about him at his leisure, feeling, agreeably, that now he held the cards. “Gently,” he said. “ Had n’t we better retire ? ” Upon which Roger, grasping his arm with grim devotion, led him to his own bedroom. “ I rather hit it,” George went on. “ I’m not the fool you once tried to make me seem.”

“Where is she, — tell me that!” Roger demanded.

“Allow me, dear sir,” said Fenton, settling himself in spacious vantage. “ If I’ve come here to oblige you, you must let me take my own way. You don’t suppose I’ve rushed to meet you out of pure gratitude ! I owe it to my cousin, in the first place, to say that 1 ’ve come without her knowledge.”

“If you mean only to torture me,” Roger answered, “say so outright. Is she well? is she safe?”

“ Safe ? the safest woman in the city, sir ! A delightful home, maternal care ! ”

Roger wondered whether Fenton was making horrible sport of his trouble ; he turned cold at the thought of maternal care of his providing. But he cautioned himself to lose nothing by arrogance. “ I thank you extremely for your kindness. Nothing remains but that 1 should see her.”

“ Nothing indeed ! You ’re very considerate. You know that she particularly objects to seeing you.”

“ Possibly ! But that’s for her to say. I claim the right to take the refusal from her own lips.”

Fenton looked at him with an impudent parody of compassion. “ Don’t you think you’ve had refusals enough ? You must enjoy ’em ! ”

Roger turned away with an imprecation, but he continued to swallow his impatience. “Mr. Fenton,” he said, “you have not come here, I know, to waste words, nor have I to waste temper. You see before you a desperate man. Come, make the most of me ! I’m willing, I ’m delighted, to be fleeced ! You ’ll help me, but not for nothing. Name your terms.”

It is odd how ugly a face our passions, our projects may wear, reflected in other minds, dressed out by other hands. Fenton scowled and flinched, all but repudiated. To save the situation as far as possible, he swaggered. “Well, you see,” he answered, “my assistance is worth something. Let me explain how much. You ’ll not guess ! I know your story ; Nora has told me everything, — everything ! We ’ve had a great talk, I can tell you! Let me give you a little hint of my story, — and excuse egotism! You proposed to her ; she refused you. You offered her money, luxury, a position. She knew you, she liked you enormously, yet she refused you flat! Now reflect on this.”

There was something revolting to Roger in seeing his adversary profaning these sacred mysteries; he protested. “ I have reflected, abundantly. You can tell me nothing. Her affections,” he added, stiffly, to make an end of it, “ were pre-engaged.”

“Exactly! You see how that complicates matters. Poor, dear little Nora!” And Fenton gave a twist to his mustache. “ Imagine, if you can, how a man placed as I am feels toward a woman, — toward the woman ! if he reciprocates, it’s love, it ’s passion, it’s what you will, but it’s common enough ! But when he does n’t repay her in kind, when he can’t, poor devil, it ’s — it’s — upon my word,” cried Fenton, slapping his knee, “it’s chivalry ! ”

For some moments Roger failed to appreciate the astounding purport of these observations ; then, suddenly, it dawned upon him. “ Do I understand you,” he asked, in a voice gentle by force of wonder, “ that you are the man ? ”

Fenton squared himself in his chair. “You’ve hit it, sir. I’m the man, — the happy, the unhappy man. Damn it, sir, it’s not my fault ! ”

Roger stood lost in tumultuous silence ; Fenton felt his eyes penetrating him to the core. “Excuse me,” said Roger, at last, “ if I suggest your giving me some slight evidence of this extraordinary fact ! ”

“ Evidence ? is n’t there evidence enough and to spare ? When a young girl gives up home and friends and fortune and — and reputation, and rushes out into the world to throw herself into a man’s arms, you may make a note of her preference, I think ! But if you ’ll not take my word, you may leave it ! I may look at the matter once too often, let me tell you ! I admire Nora with all my heart ; I worship the ground she treads on ; but I confess I’m afraid of her ; she’s too good for me ; she was meant for a finer gentleman than I! By which I don’t mean you, of necessity. But you have been good to her, and you have a claim. It has been cancelled, in a measure ; but you wish to re-establish it. Now you see that I stand in your way ; that if I had a mind to, I might stand there forever ! Hang it, sir, I ’m playing the part of a saint. I have but a word to say to settle my case, and yours too! But I have my eye on a lady neither so young nor so pretty as my cousin, but whom I can marry with a better conscience, for she expects no more than I can give her. Nevertheless, I don't answer for myself A man is n’t a saint by the week ! Talk about conscience when a beautiful girl sits gazing at you through a mist of tears ! O, you have yourself to thank for it all ! A year and a half ago, if you bad n’t treated me like a sharper, Nora would have been content to treat me like a cousin. But women have a fancy for an outlaw. You turned me out of doors, and Nora’s heart went with me. It has followed me ever since. Here I sit with my ugly face and hold it in my hand. As I say, I don’t quite know what to do with it. You propose an arrangement, I inquire your terms. A man loved is a man listened to. If I were to say to Nora to-morrow, ‘ My dear girl, you ’ve made a mistake. You ’re in a false position. Go back to Mr. Lawrence directly, and then we’ll talk about it!’ she’d look at me a moment with those eyes of hers, she’d sigh, she’d gather herself up like a queen on trial for treason, remanded to prison, — and she’d march to your door. Once she’s within it, it’s your own affair. That’s what I can do. Now what can you do ? Come, something handsome!”

Fenton spoke loud and fast, as if to deepen and outstrip possible self-contempt. Roger listened amazedly to this prodigious tissue of falsity, impudence and greed, and at last, as Fenton paused, and he seemed to see Nora’s image blushing piteously beneath this heavy mantle of dishonor, his disgust broke forth. “ Upon my word, sir,” he cried, “you go too far; you ask too much. Nora in love with you,— you who have n’t the grace even to lie decently! Tell me she’s ill, she’s lost, she’s dead ; but don’t tell me she can fancy you for a moment an honest man ! ”

Fenton rose and stood for a moment, glaring with anger at his vain selfexposure. For an instant, Roger expected a tussle. But Fenton deemed that he could deal harder vengeance than by his fists. “ Very good ! ” he cried. “ You’ve chosen. I don’t mind your words ; you ’re a fool at best, and of course you ’re twenty times a fool when you ’re put out by a disagreeable truth. But you’re not such a fool, I guess, as not to repent! ” And Fenton made a rather braver exit than you might have expected.

Roger’s recent vigil with Mrs. Keith had been hideous enough ; but he was yet to learn that a sleepless night may contain deeper possibilities of suffering. He had flung back Fenton’s words, but they returned to the charge. When once the gate is opened to self-torture, the whole army of fiends files in. Before morning he had fairly out-Fentoned Fenton. There he tossed, himself a living instance, if need were, of the furious irresponsibility of passion ; loving in the teeth of reason, of hope, of justice almost, in blind obedience to a reckless personal need. Why, if his passion scorned counsel, was Nora’s bound to take it ? We love as we must, not as we should ; and she, poor girl, had bowed to the common law. In the morning he slept awhile for weariness, but he awoke to a world of agitation. If Fenton’s tale was true, and if, at Mrs. Keith’s instigation, his own suspicions had done Hubert wrong, he would go to Hubert, pour out his woes, and demand aid and comfort. He must move to find rest. Hubert’s lodging was high up town ; Roger started on foot. The weather was perfect; one of those happy days of February which seem to snatch a mood from May, — a day when any sorrow is twice a sorrow. All winter was a-melting; you heard on all sides, in the still sunshine, the raising of windows; on the edges of opposing house-tops rested a vault of vernal blue. Where was she hidden, in the vast bright city? Hideous seemed the streets and houses and crowds which made gross distance of their nearness. He would have beggared himself for the sound of her voice, though her words might damn him. When at last he reached Hubert’s dwelling a sudden sense of all that he risked checked his steps. Hubert, after all, and Hubert alone, was a possible rival, and it would be sad work to put the torch in his hands ! So he turned heavily back to the Fifth Avenue and kept his way to the Park. Here, for some time he walked about, heeding, feeling, seeing nothing but that garish nature mocked his unsunned soul. At last he sat down on a bench. The delicious mildness of the air almost sickened him. It was some time before he perceived through the mist of his thoughts that two ladies had descended from a carriage hard by, and were approaching his bench, — the only one near at hand. One of these ladies was of great age and evidently infirm ; she came slowly, leaning on her companion’s arm ; she wore a green shade over her eyes. The younger lady, who was in the prime of youth and beauty, supported her friend with peculiar tenderness. As Roger rose to give them place, he dimly observed on the young lady’s face a movement of recognition, a smile, — the smile of Miss Sandys ! Blushing slightly, she frankly greeted him. He met her with the best grace at his command, and felt her eyes, as he spoke, scanning the trouble in his aspect. “ There is no need of my introducing you to my aunt,” she said. “She has lost her hearing, and her only pleasure is to bask in the sun.” She turned and helped this venerable invalid to settle herself on the bench, put a shawl about her, and satisfied her feeble needs with filial solicitude. At the end of ten minutes of commonplace talk, relieved however by certain mutual glances of a subtler complexion, Roger felt the presence of this fine woman closing about him like some softer moral climate. At last these sympathetic eye-beams resolved themselves, on Miss Sandys’s part, into speech. “You ’re either very unwell, Mr. Lawrence, or very unhappy.”

Roger hesitated an instant, under the empire of that stubborn aversion to complaint which, in his character, was half modesty and half philosophy. But Miss Sandys seemed to sit there eying him so like some Muse of friendship that he answered simply, “ I ’m unhappy ! ”

“ I was afraid it would come ! ” said Miss Sandys. “ It seemed to me when we met, a year ago, that your spirits were too good for this life. You know you told me something which gives me the right—I was going to say, to be interested ; let me say, at least, to be compassionate.”

“ I hardly remember what I told you. I only know that I admired you to a degree which may very well have loosened my tongue.”

“ O, it was about the charms of another you spoke ! You told me about the young girl to whom you had devoted yourself.”

“ I was dreaming then ; now I ’m awake ! ” Roger hung his head and poked the ground with his stick. Suddenly he looked up, and she saw that his eyes were filled with tears. “ O Miss Sandys,” he cried, “ you 've stirred deep waters ! Don’t question me. I ’m ridiculous with disappointment and sorrow ! ”

She gently laid her hand on his arm. “ Let me hear it all ! I assure you I can't go away and leave you sitting here the same image of suicidal despair I found you.”

Thus urged, Roger told his story. In the clear still air of her attention, it seemed to assume to his own vision a larger and more palpable outline. As he talked, he worked off the superficial disorder of his grief. He was forcibly struck, for the first time, with his own great charity ; the silent respect of his companion’s gaze seemed to attest it. When he came to speak of this dark contingency of Nora’s love for her cousin, he threw himself frankly upon Miss Sandys’s pity, upon her wisdom. “ Is such a thing possible ? he asked. “ Do you believe it ? ”

She raised her eyebrows. “You must remember that I know neither Miss Lambert nor her kinsman. I can hardly risk a judgment ; I can only say this, that the general effect of your story is to diminish my esteem for women, to elevate my opinion of men.”

“ O, except Nora on one side, and Fenton on the other! Nora’s an angel!”

Miss Sandys gave a vexed smile. “ Possibly ! You ’re a man, and you ought to have loved a woman. Angels have a good conscience guaranteed them ; they may do what they please ! If I should except any one, it would be Mr. Hubert Lawrence. I met him the other evening.”

“ You think it’s Hubert then ? ” Roger demanded mournfully.

Miss Sandys broke into a warm laugh which seemed to Roger to sound the emancipation of his puzzled spirit. “ For an angel, Miss Lambert has n’t lost her time on earth ! But don't ask me for advice, Mr. Lawrence ; at least not now and here. Come and see me to-morrow, or this evening. Don’t regret having spoken ; you may believe at least that the burden of your grief is shared. It was too miserable that at such a time you should be sitting here alone, feeding upon your own heart.”

These seemed to Roger rich words ; they lost nothing on the speaker’s lips. She was indeed admirably beautiful; her face, softened by intelligent pity, was lighted by a gleam of tender irony of his patience. Was he, after all, stupidly patient, ignobly fond ? There was in Miss Sandys something singularly assured and complete. Nora, in momentary contrast, seemed a flighty school - girl. He looked about him, vaguely invoking the bright empty air, longing for rest, yet dreading forfeiture. He left his place and strolled across the dull-colored turf. At the base of a tree, on its little bed of sparse raw verdure, he suddenly spied the first violet of the year. He stooped and picked it; its mild firm tint was the color of friendship. He brought it back to Miss Sandys, who now had risen with her companion and was preparing to return to the carriage. He silently offered her the violet,—a mere pin’s head of bloom ; a passionate throb of his heart had told him that this was all he could offer her. She took it with a sober smile ; it seemed pale beneath her deep eyes. “ We shall see you again ? ” she said.

Roger felt himself blushing to his brows. He had a vision on either hand of an offered cup, — the deep-hued wine of illusion, —the bitter draught of constancy. A certain passionate instinct answered, — an instinct deeper than his wisdom, his reason, his virtue,—deep as his love. “Not now,” he said. “ A year hence ! ”

Miss Sandys turned away and stood for a full moment as motionless as some sculptured statue of renunciation. Then, passing her arm caressingly round her companion, “ Come, dear aunt,” she murmured ; “ we must go.” This little address to the stone-deaf dame was her single tribute to confusion. Roger walked with the ladies to their carriage and silently helped them to enter it. He noted the affectionate tact with which Miss Sandys adjusted her movements to those of her companion. When he lifted his hat, his friend bowed, as he fancied, with an air of redoubled compassion. She had but imagined his prior loss, — she knew his present one ! “ Ah, she would

make a wife ! ” he said, as the carriage rolled away. He stood watching it for some minutes ; then, as it wheeled round a turn, he was seized with a deeper, sorer sense of his impotent idleness. He would go to Hubert to accuse him, if not to appeal to him.

XI.

Nora, relieved of her hostess’s company, turned the key in her door and went through certain motions mechanically suggestive of her being at rest and satisfied. She unpacked her little bag and repaired her disordered toilet. She took out her writing-materials and prepared to compose a letter to Miss Murray. But she had not written many words before she lapsed into sombre thought. Now that she had seen George again and judged him, she was coming rapidly to feel that to have exchanged Roger’s care for his care was, for the time, to have outraged Roger. It may have been needful, but it was none the less a revolting need. But it should pass quickly ! She took refuge again in her letter and begged for an immediate reply. From time to time, as she wrote, she heard a step in the house, which she supposed to be George’s ; it somehow quickened her pen and the ardor of her petition. This was just finished when Mrs. Paul reappeared, bearing a salver charged with tea and toast, — a gracious attention, which Nora was unable to repudiate. The lady took advantage of it to open a conversation. Mrs. Paul’s overtures, as well as her tea and toast, were the result of her close conference with Fenton ; but though his instructions had made a very pretty show as he laid them down, they dwindled sensibly in the vivid glare of Nora’s mistrust. Mrs. Paul, nevertheless, seated herself bravely on the bed and rubbed her plump pretty hands like the best little woman in the world. But the more Nora looked at her, the less she liked her. At the end of five minutes she had conceived a horror of her. It seemed to her that she had met just such women in reports of criminal trials, She had wondered what the heroines of these tragedies were like. Why, like Mrs. Paul, of course ! They had her comely stony face, her false smile, her little tulle cap, which seemed forever to discredit coquetry. And here, in her person, sat the whole sinister sisterhood on Nora’s bed, calling the young girl “ my dear,” wanting to take her hand and draw her out ! With a defiant flourish, Nora addressed her letter with Miss Murray’s honest title : “ I should like to have this posted, please,” she said.

“ Give it to me, my dear ; I ’ll attend to it,” said Mrs. Paul ; and straightway read the address. “ I suppose this is your old schoolmistress. Mr. Fenton told me all about it.” Then, after turning the letter for a moment, “ Keep it over a day ! ”

“ Not an hour,” said Nora, with decision. “ My time is precious.”

“ Why, my dear,” cried Mrs. Paul, “ we shall be delighted to keep you a month.”

“ You ’re very good. You know I’ve my living to make.”

“ Don’t talk about that! I make my living, — I know what it means ! Come, let me talk to you as a friend. Don’t go too far. Suppose, now, you repent ? Six months hence, it may be too late. If you leave him lamenting too long, he ’ll marry the first pretty girl he sees. They always do, — a man refused is just like a widower. They ’re not so faithful as the widows ! But let me tell you it’s not every girl that gets such a chance ; if I ’d had it, I would n’t have split hairs ! He ’ll love you the better, you see, for your having led him a little dance. But he must n’t dance too long ! Excuse my breaking out this way ; but Mr. Fenton and I, you see, are great friends, and I feel as if his cousin was my cousin. Take back this letter and give me just one word to post, —Come ! Poor little man ! You must have a high opinion of men, my dear, to think you had n’t drawn a prize ! ”

If Roger had wished for a proof that sentiment survived in Nora’s mind, he would have found it in the disgust she felt at hearing Mrs. Paul undertake his case. She colored with her sense of the defilement of sacred things. George, surely, for an hour, at least, might have kept her story intact. “ Really, madam,” she answered, “ I can’t discuss this matter. I’m extremely obliged to you.” But Mrs. Paul was not to be so easily baffled. Poor Roger, roaming helpless and hopeless, would have been amazed to hear how warmly his cause was a-pleading. Nora, of course, made no attempt to argue the case. She waited till the lady had exhausted her eloquence, and then, “ I'm a very obstinate person,” she said ; “you waste your words. If you go any further I shall feel persecuted.” And she rose, to signify that Mrs. Paul might do likewise. Mrs. Paul took the hint, but in an instant she had turned about the hard reverse of her fair face, in which defeated self-interest smirked horribly. “ Bah ! you ’re a silly girl! ” she cried ; and swept out of the room. Nora, after this, determined to avoid a second interview with George. Her bad headache furnished a sufficient pretext for escaping it. Half an hour later he knocked at her door, quite too loudly, she thought, for good taste. When she opened it, he stood there, excited, angry, ill-disposed. “ I ’m sorry you ’re ill,” he said; “but a night’s rest will put you right. I’ve seen Roger.”

“ Roger ! he’s here ? ”

“ Yes, he’s here. But he don’t know where you are. Thank the Lord you left him ! he’s a brute ! ” Nora would fain have learned more, — whether he was angry, whether he was suffering, whether he had asked to see her ; but at these words she shut the door in her cousin’s face. She hardly dared think of what offered impertinence this outbreak of Fenton’s was the rebound. Her night’s rest brought little comfort. Time seemed not to cancel her disturbing thoughts, but to multiply them. She wondered whether Roger had supposed George to be her appointed mediator, and asked herself whether it was not her duty to see him once again and bid him a respectfully personal farewell. It was a long time after she rose before she could bring herself to leave her room. She had a vague hope that if she delayed, her companions might have gone out. But in the dining-room, in spite of the late hour, she found George gallantly awaiting her. He had apparently had the discretion to dismiss Mrs. Paul to the background, and apologized for her absence by saying that she had breakfasted long since and had gone to market. He seemed to have slept off his wrath and was full of brotherly bonhomie. “ I suppose you !II want to know about Roger,” he said, when they were seated at breakfast. “ He had followed you directly, in spite of your solemn request ; but not out of pure affection, I think. The little man’s mad. He expects you to back down and come to him on your knees, — beg his pardon and promise never to do it again. Pretty terms to marry a man on, for a woman of spirit ! But he does n’t know his woman, does he, Nora? Do you know what he intimated ? indeed, he came right out with it! That you and I want to make a match ! That you ’re in love with me, Miss, and ran away to marry me. That we expected him to forgive us and endow us with a pile of money. But he ’ll not forgive us, — not he ! We may starve, we and our brats, before he looks at us. Much obliged ! We shall thrive, for many a year, as brother and sister, sha’ n’t we, Nora? and need neither his money nor his pardon ! ”

In reply to this speech, Nora sat staring in pale amazement. “ Roger thought,” she at last found words to say, “that it was to marry you I refused him, — to marry you I came to New York ? ”

Fenton, with seven-and-twenty years of impudence at his back, had received in his day snubs and shocks of various shades of intensity ; but he had never felt in his face so chilling a blast of reprobation as this cold disgust of Nora’s. We know that the scorn of a lovely woman makes cowards brave ; it may do something towards making knaves honest men. “ Upon my word, my dear,” he cried, “ I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. It’s rough, but it’s so ! ”

Nora wished in after years she had been able to laugh at this disclosure ; to pretend, at least, to a mirth she so little felt. But she remained almost sternly silent, with her eyes on her plate, stirring her tea. Roger, meanwhile, was walking about under this miserable error ! Let him think anything but that ! “ What did you reply,” she asked, “ to this — to this —• ”

“To this handsome compliment ? I replied that I only wished it were true ; but that I feared I had no such luck ! Upon which he told me to go to the Devil — in a tone which implied that he did n’t much care if you went with me.”

Nora listened to this speech in sceptical silence. “ Where is Roger ? ” she asked at last.

Fenton shot her a glance of harsh mistrust. “ Where is he ? What do you want to know that for ? ”

“ Where is he, please ? ” she simply repeated. And then, suddenly, she wondered how and where it was the two men had happened to meet. “Where did you find him ?” she went on. “ Plow did it happen ? ”

Fenton drained his cup of tea at one long gulp before he answered. “ My dear Nora,” he said, “ it’s all very well to be modest, it’s all very well to be proud; but take care you’re not ungrateful ! I went purposely to look him up. I was convinced he would have followed you, — as I supposed, to beg and beg and beg again. I wanted to say to him, ‘ She’s safe, she’s happy, she ’s in the best hands. Don’t waste your time, your words, your hopes. Give her rope. Go quietly home and leave things to me. If she turns homesick, I ’ll let you know.’ You see I’m frank, Nora ; that’s what I meant to say. But I was received with this broadside. I found a perfect bluster of injured vanity. ‘ You ’re her lover, she’s your mistress, and be d—d to both of you ! ' ”

That George lied Nora did not distinctly say to herself, for she lacked practice in this range of incrimination. But she as little said to herself that this could be the truth. “ I 'm not ungrateful,” she answered, firmly. “ But where was it ? ”

At this, George pushed back his chair. “ Where — where ? Don’t you believe me ? Do you want to go and ask him if it’s true? What are you, anyway ? Nora, who are you, where are you ? Have you put yourself into my hands or not ? ” A certain manly indignation was now kindled in his breast ; he was equally angry with Roger, with Nora, and with himself; fate had offered him an overdose of contumely, and he felt a reckless, savage impulse to wring from the occasion that compliment to his force which had been so rudely denied to his delicacy. “ Are you using me simply as a vulgar tool ? Don’t you care for me the least little bit ? Let me suggest that for a girl in your — your ambiguous position, you are too proud, by several shades. Don’t go back to Roger in a hurry ! You ’re not the unspotted maiden you were but two short days ago. Who am I, what am I, to the people whose opinion you care for ? A very low fellow, madam ; and yet with me you’ve gone far to cast your lot. If you’re not prepared to do more, you should have done less. Nora, Nora,” he went on, breaking into a vein none the less revolting for being more ardent, “ I confess I don’t understand you ! But the more you puzzle me the more you fascinate me ; and the less you like me the more I love you. What has there been, anyway, between you and Lawrence ? Hang me if I can understand ! Are you an angel of purity, or are you the most audacious of flirts ? ”

She had risen before he had gone far. “ Spare me,” she said, “ the necessity of hearing your opinions or answering your questions. Be a gentleman ! Tell me, I once more beg of you, where Roger is to be found ? ”

“Be a gentleman!” was a galling touch, He had gone too far to be a gentleman; but in so far as a man means a bully, he might still be a man. He placed himself before the door. “I refuse the information,” he said. “ I don’t mean to have been played with, to have been buffeted hither by Roger and thither by you ! I mean to make something out of all this. I mean to request you to remain quietly in this room. Mrs. Paul will keep you company. You did n’t treat her overwell, yesterday ; but, in her way, she’s quite as strong as you. Meanwhile I shall go to our friend. ‘ She’s locked up tight,’ I ’ll say ; ‘she’s as good as in jail. Give me five thousand dollars and I ’ll let her out.’ Of course he ’ll drop a hint of the law. ‘ O, the law ! not so fast. Two can play at that game. Go to a magistrate and present your case. I ’ll go straight to the ' Herald ’ office and demand a special reporter and the very biggest headings. That will rather take the bloom off your meeting.’ The public don’t mind details, Nora ; it looks at things in the gross ; and the gross here is gross, for you ! It won’t hurt me ! ”

“ Heaven forgive you ! ” murmured Nora, for all response to this explosion. It made a hideous whirl about her ; but she felt that to advance in the face of it was her best safety. It sickened rather than frightened her. She went to the door. “ Let me pass!” she said.

Fenton stood motionless, leaning his head against the door, with his eyes closed. She faced him a moment, looking at him intently. He seemed hideous. “Coward!” she cried. He opened his eyes at the sound ; for an instant they met hers ; then a burning blush blazed out strangely on his dead complexion ; he strode past her, dropped into a chair and buried his face in his hands. “O God!” he cried. “ I ’m an ass ! ”

Nora made it the work of a single moment to reach her own room and fling on her bonnet and shawl, of another to descend to the hall door. Once in the street, she never stopped running till she had turned a corner and put the house out of sight. She went far, hurried along by the ecstasy of relief and escape, and it was some time before she perceived that this was but half the question, and that she was now quite without refuge. Thrusting her hand into her pocket to feel for her purse, she found that she had left it in her room. Stunned and sickened as she was already, it can hardly be said that the discovery added to her grief. She was being precipitated toward a great decision ; sooner or later made little difference. The thought of seeing Hubert Lawrence now filled her soul. That, after what had passed between them, she should so sorely need help, and yet not turn to him, seemed as great an outrage against his professions as it was an impossibility to her own heart. Reserve, prudence, mistrust, had melted away ; she was conscious only of her trouble, of his ardor, and of their nearness. His address she well remembered, and she neither paused nor faltered. To say even that she reflected would be to speak amiss, for her longing and her haste were one. Between them both, you may believe, it was with a beating heart that she reached his door. The servant admitted her without visible surprise (for Nora wore, as she conceived, the air of some needy parishioner), and ushered her into the little sitting-room which, with an adjoining chamber, constituted his apartments. As she crossed the threshold, she perceived. with something of regret and relief, that he was not alone. He was sitting somewhat stiffly, with folded arms, facing the window, near which, before an easel, stood a long-haired gentleman of foreign and artistic aspect, giving the finishing touches to a portrait in crayons. Hubert was in position for a likeness of his handsome face. When Nora appeared, his handsome face remained for a moment a blank ; the next it turned most eloquently pale. “Miss Lambert!” he cried.

There was such a tremor in his voice that Nora felt that, for the moment, she must have self-possession for both. “ I interrupt you,” she said, with excessive deference.

“We are just finishing!” Hubert answered. “ It’s my portrait, you see. You must look at it.” The artist made way for her before the easel, laid down his implements, and took up his hat and gloves. She looked mechanically at the picture, while Hubert accompanied him to the door, and they talked awhile about another sitting and about a frame which was to be sent home. The portrait was clever, but superficial ; better looking at once, and worse looking than Hubert, — elegant, effeminate, and unreal. An impulse of wonder passed through her mind that she should happen just then to find him engaged in this odd self-reproduction. It was a different Hubert that turned and faced her as the door closed behind his companion, the real Hubert, with a vengeance ! He had gained time ; but surprise, admiration, conjecture, abroad hint of dismay, wrought bright confusion on his brow. Nora had dropped into the chair vacated by the artist ; and as she sat there with clasped hands, she felt the young man reading the riddle of her shabby dress and her excited face. For him, too, she was the real Nora. Dismay began to prevail in his questioning eyes. He advanced, pushed towards her the chair in which he had been posturing, and, as he seated himself, made a halfmovement to offer his hand ; but before she could take it, lie had begun to play with his watch-chain. “Nora,” he asked, “ what is it ? ”

What was it, indeed ? What was her errand, and in what words could it be told ? An utter weakness had taken possession of her, a sense of having reached the goal of her journey, the term of her strength. She dropped her eyes on her shabby skirt, and passed her hand over it with a gesture of eloquent simplicity. “ I ’ve left Roger,” she said.

Hubert made no answer, but his silence somehow seemed to fill the room. He sunk back in his chair, still looking at her with startled eyes. The fact intimidated him ; he was amazed and confused ; yet he felt he must say something, and in his confusion he uttered a gross absurdity: “Ah, with his consent?”

The sound of his voice was so grateful to her that, at first, she hardly heeded his words. “ I’m alone,” she added, “ I’m free.” It was after she had spoken, as she saw him, growing, to his own sense, infinitely small in the large confidence of her gaze, rise in a perfect agony of impotence and stand before her, stupidly staring, that she felt he had neither taken her hand, nor dropped at her feet, nor divinely guessed her trouble ; that, in fact, his very silence was a summons to tell her story and to justify herself. Her presence there was either a rapture or a shame. Nora felt as if she had taken a jump, and was learning in mid-air that the distance was tenfold what she had imagined. It is strange how the hinging-point of great emotions may rest on an instant of time. These instants, however, seem as ages, viewed from within ; and in such a reverberating moment Nora felt the spiritual substructure of a passion melting from beneath her feet, crumbling and crashing into the gulf on whose edge she stood. But her shame at least should be brief. She rose and bridged this dizzy chasm with some tragic counterfeit of a smile. “I’ve come—I’ve come—’’she began and faltered. It was a vast pity some great actress had not been there to note upon the tablets of her art the light, all-eloquent tremor of tone with which she transposed her embarrassment into the petition, “ Could you lend me a little money ? ”

Hubert was simply afraid of her. At his freest and bravest, he would have shrunk from being thus peremptorily brought to the point; and as matters stood, he felt all the more miserably paralyzed. For him, too, this was a vital moment. All his falsity, all his levity, all his egotism and sophism, seemed to crowd upon him and accuse him in deafening chorus ; he seemed, under some glaring blue sky, to stand in the public stocks for all his pleasant sins. It was with a vast sense of relief that he heard her ask this simple favor. Money? Would money buy his release ? He took out his purse and grasped a roll of bills ; then suddenly he was overwhelmed by a sense of his cruelty. He flung the thing on the floor and passed his hands over his face. “Nora, Nora,” he cried, “say it outright; I disappoint you ! ”

He had become, in the brief space of a moment, the man she once had loved ; but if he was no longer the rose, he stood too near it to be wantonly bruised. Men and women alike need in some degree to respect those they have suffered to wrong them. She stooped and picked up the porte-monnaie, like a beggar-maid in a ballad. “ A very little will do,” she said. “ In a day or two I hope to be independent.”

“ Tell me at least what has happened ! ” he cried.

She hesitated a moment. “ Roger has asked me to be his wife.” Hubert’s head swam with the vision of all that this simple statement embodied and implied. “ I refused,” Nora added, “ and, having refused, I was unwilling to live any longer on his — on his — ’* Her speech at the last word melted into silence, and she seemed to fall a-musing. But in an instant she recovered herself. “ I remember your once saying that you would have liked to see me poor and homeless. Here I am ! You ought at least,” she added with a laugh, “to pay for the exhibition ! ”

Hubert abruptly drew out his watch. “ I expect here this moment,” he said,

“ a young lady of whom you may have heard. She is to come and see my portrait. I 'm engaged to her. I was engaged to her five months ago. She’s rich, pretty, charming. Say but a single word, that you don’t despise me, that you forgive me, and I ’ll give her up, now, here, forever, and be anything you ’ll take me for,—your husband, your friend, your slave!” To have been able to make this speech gave Hubert immense relief. He felt almost himself again.

Nora fixed her eyes on him, with a kind of unfathomable gentleness. “ You ’re engaged, you were engaged ? How strangely you talk about giving up! Give her my compliments !” It seemed, however, that Nora was to have the chance of offering them personally, The door was thrown open and admitted two ladies whom Nora vaguely remembered to have seen. In a moment she recognized them as the persons whom, on the evening she had gone to hear Hubert preach, he had left her, after the sermon, to conduct to their carriage. The younger one was decidedly pretty, in spite of a nose a trifle too aquiline. A pair of imperious dark eyes, as bright as the diamond which glittered in each of her ears, and a nervous capricious rapidity of motion and gesture, gave her an air of girlish brusquerie, which was by no means without charm. Her mother’s aspect, however, testified to its being as well to enjoy this charm at a distance. She was a stout, coarse-featured, goodnatured woman, with a jaded, submissive expression, and seemed to proclaim by a certain bulky languor, as she followed in her daughter’s wake, the subserviency of matter to mind. Both ladies were dressed to the utmost limits of the occasion, and savored potently of New York. They came into the room staring frankly at Nora, and overlooking Hubert with gracious implication of his being already one of the family. The situation was a trying one, but he faced it as he might.

“This is Miss Lambert,” he said, gravely; and then with an effort to conjure away confusion with a jest, waving his hand toward his portrait, “This is the Rev. Hubert Lawrence ! ”

The elder lady moved toward the picture, but the other came straight to Nora. “ I’ve seen you before ! ” she cried defiantly, and with defiance in her fine eyes. “And I’ve heard of you too ! Yes, you ’re certainly very handsome. But pray, what are you doing here ? ”

“ My dear child ! ” said Hubert, imploringly, and with a burning sideglance at Nora. If he had been in the pillory before, it was not till now that the rain of missiles had begun.

“ My dear Hubert,” said the young lady, “ what is she doing here ? I have a right to know. Have you come running after him even here ? You’re a wicked girl. You’ve done me a wrong. You’ve tried to turn him away from me. You kept him in Boston for weeks, when he ought to have been here ; when I was writing to him day after day to come. I heard all about it ! I don’t know what’s the matter with you. I thought you were so very well off! You look very poor and unhappy, but I must say what I think ! ”

“ My own darling, be reasonable ! ” murmured her mother. “ Come and look at this beautiful picture. There’s no deceit on that brow ! ”

Nora smiled charitably. “ Don’t attack me,” she said. “ If I ever wronged you, I was quite unconscious of it, and I beg your pardon now.”

“Nora,” murmured Hubert, piteously, “ spare me ! ”

“ Ah, does he call you Nora ? ” cried the young lady. “ The harm’s done, madam ! He ’ll never be what he was. You’ve changed, Hubert ! ” And she turned passionately on her fiancé. “You know you are ! You talk to me, but you think of her. And what is the meaning of this visit ? You Ye both vastly excited ; what have you been talking about ? ”

“ Mr. Lawrence has been telling me about you, ” said Nora ; “ how pretty, how charming, how gentle you are ! ’

“ I 'm not gentle ! ” cried the other. “You’re laughing at me! Was it to talk about my prettiness you came here ? Do you go about alone, this way ? I never heard of such a thing. You 're shameless ! do you know that ? But I’m very glad of it ; because once you ’ve done this for him, he ’ll not care for you. That’s the way with men. And 1 ’m not pretty either, not as you are ! You’re pale and tired; you 've got a horrid dress and shawl, and yet you 're beautiful! Is that the way I must look to please you ? ” she demanded, turning back to Hubert.

Hubert, during this spiteful tirade, had stood looking as dark as thunder, and at this point he broke out fiercely, “ Good God, Amy ! hold your tongue. I command you.”

Nora, gathering her shawl together, gave Hubert a glance. “ She loves you,” she said, softly.

Amy stared a moment at this vehement adjuration ; then she melted into a smile and turned in ecstasy to her mother. “ Good, good ! ” she cried. “That’s how I like him. I shall have my husband yet.”

Nora left the room ; and, in spite of her gesture of earnest deprecation, Hubert followed her down stairs to the street door. “ Where are you going ? ” he asked in a whisper. “With whom are you staying ? ”

“ I ’m alone,” said Nora.

“Alone in this great city? Nora, I will do something for you.”

“ Hubert,” she said, “ I never in my life needed help less than at this moment. Farewell.” He fancied for an instant that she was going to offer him her hand, but she only motioned him to open the door. He did so and she passed out.

She stood there on the pavement, strangely, almost absurdly, free and light of spirit. She knew neither whither she should turn nor what she should do, yet the fears which had haunted her for a whole day and night had vanished. The sky was blazing blue overhead; the opposite side of the street was all in sun ; she hailed the joyous brightness of the day with a kind of answering joy. She seemed to be in the secret of the universe. A nursery-maid came along, pushing a baby in a perambulator. She stooped and greeted the child, and talked pretty nonsense to it with a fervor which left the young woman staring. Nurse and child went their way, and Nora lingered, looking up and down the empty street. Suddenly a gentleman turned into it from the cross-street above. He was walking fast; he had his hat in his hand, and with his other hand he was passing his handkerchief over his forehead. As she stood and watched him draw near, down the bright vista of the street, there came upon her a singular and altogether nameless sensation, strangely similar to one she had felt a couple of years before, when a physician had given her a dose of ether. The gentleman, she perceived, was Roger; but the short interval of space and time which separated them seemed to expand into a throbbing immensity and eternity. She seemed to be watching him for an age, and, as she did so, to be swinging through the whole circle of emotion and the full realization of being. Yes, she was in the secret of the universe, and the secret of the universe was, that Roger was the only man in it who had a heart. Suddenly she felt a palpable grasp. Roger stood before her, and had taken her hand. For a moment he said nothing ; but the touch of his hand spoke loud. They stood for an instant scanning the change in each other’s faces. “ Where are you going ? ” said Roger, at last, imploringly.

Nora read silently in his haggard furrows the whole record of his passion and grief. It is a strange truth that they seemed the most beautiful things she had ever looked upon ; the sight of them was delicious. They seemed to whisper louder and louder that secret about Roger’s heart.

Nora collected herself as solemnly as one on a death-bed making a will; but Roger was still in miserable doubt and dread. “ I’ve followed you,” he said, “ in spite of that request in your letter.”

“Have you got my letter?” Nora asked.

“ It was the only thing you had left me,” he said, and drew it, creased and crumpled, out of his pocket.

She took it from him and tore it slowly into a dozen pieces, never taking her eyes off his own. “ Don’t try and forget that I wrote it,” she said. “ My destroying it now means more than that would have meant.”

“What does it mean, Nora?” he asked, in hardly audible tones.

“ It means that I ’m a wiser girl today than then. I know myself better, I know you better. O Roger ! ” she cried, “it means everything !”

He passed her hand through his arm and held it there against his heart, while he stood looking hard at the pavement, as if to steady himself amid this great convulsion of things. Then raising his head, “ Come,” he said; “ come ! ”

But she detained him, laying her other hand on his arm. “No; you must understand first. If I ’m wiser now, I ’ve learnt wisdom at my cost. I ’m not the girl you proposed to on Sunday. I feel— I feel dishonored!” she said, uttering the word with a vehemence which stirred his soul to its depths.

“ My own poor child ! ” he murmured, staring.

“ There’s a young girl in that house,” Nora went on, “ who will tell you that I’m shameless ! ”

“ What house ? what young girl ? ”

“ I don’t know her name. Hubert is engaged to her.”

Roger gave a glance at the house behind them, as if to fling defiance and oblivion upon all that it suggested and contained. Then turning to Nora with a smile of consummate tenderness: “ My dear Nora, what have we to do with Hubert’s young girls ?”

Roger, the reader will admit, was on a level with the occasion, — as with every other occasion which subsequently presented itself.

Mrs. Keith and Mrs. Lawrence are very good friends. On being complimented on possessing the confidence of so charming a woman as Mrs. Lawrence, Mrs. Keith has been known to say, opening and shutting her fan, “The fact is, Nora is under a very peculiar obligation to me.” Another of Mrs. Keith’s sayings may perhaps be appositely retailed,— her answer, one evening, to an inquiry as to Roger’s age : “ Twenty-five — seconde jeunesse.” Hubert Lawrence, on the other hand, has already begun to pass for an elderly man. Mrs. Hubert, however, preserves the balance. She is wonderfully' fresh, and, with time, has grown stout, like her mother, though she has nothing of the jaded look of that excellent lady'.

H. James Jr.