The House of a Merchant Prince

XIX.

A GARDEN PARTY ON THE HUDSON, AND ITS SEQUEL.

“WHATEVER scruples or misgivings Ottilie Harvey may have cherished in taking her seat on Mr. Kingbolt’s coach, the day of Sprowle Onderdonk’s garden party, were soon dispelled, for the time being at least, by the novel pleasure of the experience.

The eyes of pedestrians turned admiringly towards this imposing vehicle, as it rolled up the Avenue. The freshfaced young English guard stood up boldly in his place, in the attitude of the angels on the Church of the Heavenly Rest, and woke the echoes with his horn.

Ottilie thought the great city more delightful than ever. It was bathed at this season in an atmosphere of liquid amber. The scarlet and yellow leaves in the squares had begun to drift idly downwards, one by one, from the rich masses of foliage to which they belonged. The pretty women, back from the country, promenaded in dresses of dark, warm stuffs, premonitory of the coming winter. Strangers crowded into town, and the streets were filled to their utmost. If the bronze Washington at Union Square indeed supervise the cohorts debouching before him from Broadway, he had need of all his strategic talents now ; and the bronze Seward, who records them in his tablets, should be just as active above. Small dealers, especially along Fourteenth and Twenty-Third streets, had spread out on the sidewalks a merchandise of blue china, oriental fans and boxes. On some of these days there were parades of militia, and the young girl had looked out of her window upon the swaying steel of the regiments as far as the eye could reach. It was as if the surface of the street itself were in motion. In the evening the profiles of all the western cross-streets were thrown out black against skies of smoky orange and crimson,— fuller harmonies of the colormusic of which the falling leaves struck wandering notes.

“ If Europe can be brighter or more picturesque than this,” said Ottilie, “ it must be lovely indeed.”

She exchanged but little talk, and that of a conventional kind, with the company about her. Her acquaintance with most of it was of a formal sort, and Kingbolt appeared engrossed with his horses.

A number of the drags formed a junction presently, constituting quite a procession. A somewhat circuitous route was chosen, that the rendezvous might not be arrived at too soon. They passed through the glowing copses of Central Park, then the transitional region above, neither city nor country. There were bowlders, shanties, and goats ; isolated blocks of new houses, like sections of plum-cake sliced out with a sharp knife ; and paved and sidewalked streets, forming causeways across low grounds, utilized by thrifty German market gardeners. The Elevated Railroad had not yet come in. That spider’s-web trestle — with the little stations set upon it high in the air, like habitations of lakedwellers, or chalets from the land of dreams — which now traverses the region was still, though not far, in the future. The parallelograms of crops in the little market gardens, fresh yet as in early spring, seemed thrown down beside one another, like a series of rugs of the royal Ottoman greens.

Further on, our party threaded the embowering lanes of an area of handsome villas. Some were of stone, ivyclad. All were shaded with fine trees. Almost the only sign of life encountered here was an occasional policeman, of the mounted force, slowly pacing his charger, or, in pursuance of his duty, trying the fastenings of a lodge gate, to see that all was well. In the freedom of these secluded places the gayer spirits followed their own devices without constraint. Baron An instructed Daisy Goldstone in approved methods of winding a coaching-horn. Ada Trull drew off her long mousquetaire gloves, and essayed her skill in the accomplishment, which she fancied she possessed, of producing shrill whistles through her joined hands.

From here the merry-makers turned back a little, and came down to the Sprowle manor, on the Hudson, in the last day of its existence. It was garlanded for the sacrifice. The tall columns of the portico, in the old-fashioned classic style, were hung with wreaths and draperies. Large bunches of flowers were set out in the old-fashioned wainscoted rooms, deprived now of the greater part of their furniture, and swept and garnished for dancing. On the morrow, at daylight, the minions of improvement would begin clattering down the shingles from the roof and tearing the sheathing from the stout old frame.

The coaches were unlimbered and let stand upon the lawn, where their bits of canary, blue, and scarlet sparkled vividly throughout the afternoon. Luncheon was to be taken under a tent at two o’clock, and this was to be followed by the delivery of Dr. Wyburd’s poem. Archery and lawn tennis had been provided for such as cared for these sports. People walked in a neglected garden, of box hedges, yew-trees, hollyhocks, dahlias, and other old-fashioned flowers.

Baron Au organized a round game, rather badgering people into it, on the plea of a chill in the air. It was one he had seen given with great success, he said, at lake parties at Saratoga, the past summer. The Italian and Turkish ministers had taken part in it, which showed that it must be something quite sufficiently dignified.

Kingbolt simulated well the indifference he had proposed. He engaged in the round game, danced gayly with Ada Trull, and took Ottilie about a good deal on his arm.

Angelica thought he must be contemptuous indeed to console himself with a rival like that. She would rather have seen him — though, to he sure, what difference should it make ? —show an air of depression and gloom.

Dr. Wyburd’s poem proved to be a record of names and doings, more or less well authenticated, of the Sprowle dynasty, given in a poor doggerel. Poetry, and perhaps literature in general, was not the doctor’s strong point, although he dabbled in it a good deal, much to his own satisfaction. A sufficient idea of the character of his production may be had from such couplets as these : —

The approaching union of Sprowle and Angelica was announced, as had been agreed. A clumsily turned compliment, was inserted into the poem in praise of the youth and beauty which was now to confer and receive honor by being united with the latest scion of the illustrious Sprowle lineage. This was received with applause. Next the health of the pair was drank in a eulogistic toast. Sprowle rose to reply to the toast, but acquitted himself in so poor a manner that it was not at all to the satisfaction of his critical betrothed.

It might be supposed that Miss Angelica Harvey would have been especially content with her choice, on a day like this, devoted to the glorification of the family importance, which had been her principal motive in making it ; but such was not the case. Whether it were due merely to that inopportune feeling of sadness which is said always to hang about the culmination of ardent human wishes, or to a regretful drawing of contrasts now at the last moment, or to pique at the indifference of Kingbolt, she was rather out of temper. Kingbolt’s indifference was so well simulated as to provide New York society with something like a nine days’ wonder, and radically change the fortunes of a number of our characters.

The company scattered again, after the delivery of the poem. Ottilie interested herself quietly with the sentiment of antiquity of the place and the series of attractive views. From the colonnaded porch vistas had been made through the foliage of the great trees, and glimpses of the river were had thus framed. Now a steamboat forged boldly across the openings; now a halfbecalmed schooner drifted into them ; again, it was a puffing little tug, interminably slow in passing on account of the long train of canal-boats it had in tow. The hazy atmosphere had dropped, as it were, between the foreground and the distance. Patches of the autumntinted foliage among the cliffs of the further shore seemed as if dimly burning. Any small object, as a row-boat, moving upon the deep reflection and shade of that shore drew a long silver line behind it.

There was talk on the porch of the remains of some British earthworks existing in the vicinity. Stillsby asked Ottilie to stroll with him in search of them. Not greatly versed as yet in the polite arts for escaping boredom, she amiably consented. This youth had primed himself — having secured an inkling of Ottilie’s taste—with a liberal stock of poetical quotations, and was overjoyed to secure an opportunity to put them to use.

Kingbolt had offered Angelica flippant “ congratulations ” of the usual sort, which secretly exasperated her. Somewhat later, they two were left momentarily together, a little removed from the rest, near the open gate of the old-fashioned garden. Finding him so close, Angelica could not forbear speaking. She was looking particularly well to-day. Kingbolt could see it with half an eye, though affecting not to attend, and though having been in the habit, too, of finding her the most fascinating in each successive toilette as it appeared. She was in her gray corduroy coaching dress, with a wide-brimmed hat and feather to match. She had around her waist a belt of silver links, with a silver chain depending from it nearly to the ground, and securing a multitude of dainty vinaigrettes, tablets, dog-whistles and betting-books, which clinked as she walked.

“ I would rather you were not angry with me, if you are,” she said. “ If there is anything in which you think me in the wrong, under the circumstances, I am sure I am very sorry. I trust that we are to part as friends.”

She was very enticing thus, but Kingbolt thought best to say little in reply, He refused to be drawn out of a reserved and gloomy air he assumed. The young lady thought it very becoming to him. By little and little they ventured into the garden, and began to pace along the principal alley. The principal alley led to a retired bower on the crest of the well-wooded slope falling towards the river. The bower was of lattice-work, in the Dutch style, with a roof painted red, and finished with a weather-cock. Persons within were invisible from the house, and here the two presently sat down.

Meanwhile Ottilie and her eccentric escort had found the historic earthworks of which they went in quest, and were retracing their steps by a pleasant path up the wooded slope. Stillsby, proceeding by gradual stages, had now launched fairly out into his stock of intellectual lore, and was beginning to look for results from the onslaught, He had quoted from “ My name is Norval; on the Grampian hills ; ” “ Farewell, farewell to thee, Araby’s daughter; ” the Maid of Athens; and the Seminole’s Reply. The mystified Ottilie was coming to a dimly-amused conception of his object.

The interview in the bower had proceeded but a little way, when Kingbolt burst out into a torrent of reproaches and entreaties, as of old. Angelica had reason now to repent her ill-advised course in allowing the subject to be reopened in any degree whatever. She rose, in alarm, and would have gone away. Kingbolt detained her. She seemed obliged to argue with him somewhat further.

“ How utterly without reason you are! ” she said. “You talk the wildest absurdities. Now, just imagine for a moment what a stir there would be, what a commotion in society, if the engagement of anybody of consequence — I do not say mine, but anybody’s—* should be broken after having gone as far as this.”

“ What is a hubbub of a few days, or a few weeks, — or, if it should be, a few months, for that matter, — compared with the happiness of a life-time?” he replied excitedly. “ I know you do not care for Sprowle. How could you? — you, so beautiful and superior. Yet you have got to go on with him not merely for a little while, but all your life long. Remember that! Oh, break with him, Angelica! It is not too late. Oh, break with him ! ”

He caught her hand, but she pulled it away.

“ Let me go ! ” she said. “ I cannot let you talk so about him. I am going back to the house.”

“ He is a milksop, a molly-coddle, a fool. I consider him but little ahead of Stillsby,” pursued her companion. “ Most of the men know it. The idea of his being able to appreciate a girl like you ! And as to morality, — if you come to that, he is not a straw better than anybody else.”

The young woman had not selected her future husband chiefly on grounds of superior wisdom or morality. Hence this argument was not as effective as some others might perchance have been.

“No! Impossible!” she reiterated. “ Do not detain me against my will! Let us go back at once! ”

“ Well, then, I cannot bear it ! Do you understand ? ” cried the lover, throwing out his arms in a wild way. “ It suffocates me ! It tears me all to pieces! There are fellows who talk about suicide. Plenty of them would not do it, you know ; it is all talk ; but I believe I am one of the kind that would. I believe you will hear nothing more of me from the clay you are married till kingdom come. I cannot live, I tell you ! I cannot live ! ”

The blood rushed to his face and stalwart neck, swelling the veins. He contorted his body, in a writhing way, on the hips. It must have been a spasm resembling, now in mature life, one of those of his childish days for which he had been put in his padded room. He might have been a young modern Orestes, pursued by the avenging Furies. His fine figure was displayed in these unconscious movements to excellent advantage.

Angelica, approaching, laid her hand on his arm in a persuasive way, and said, “ Let us talk reasonably.”

“ Reason ? There is no reason,” he exclaimed with vehemence, “but in making you mine ! ”

He turned quickly. His handsome eyes blazed into hers, equally handsome. What an adulation it was, compared with the sluggish methods of Sprowle ! She delayed an instant too long in this dangerous proximity. Kingbolt took her in his arms, and kissed her passionately. She did not resist.

Ottilie, with her sentimental companion, was at this moment emerging from the wood.

“ Longfellow, now, is a nice poet,” Stillsby was saying. “ You take his — now — that Excelsior. I call that A 1.”

“Yes,” rejoined the long-suffering Ottilie.

The embrace in the bower flashed full upon the view of both.

“ Hi ! ” ejaculated Stillsby, his eyes starting half out of his head.

But Ottilie managed to draw him back into the covert of the foliage before they were themselves perceived, and they returned by another way. When they had gone on some little distance in silence, Ottilie offered a deprecating suggestion : “ It seems to me it would be best not to make any mention of what we have just seen.”

“ Oh, certainly not! certainly not! ” her cavalier hastened to protest, with gallant alacrity, “if you don’t wish it.”

The warmer and more human impulses had prevailed over calm calculation, after all, and the engagement of Angelica was to be definitively broken. She was capable of acting upon impulse no less than Kingbolt, and she had one of the most obstinate of wills to sustain whatever course she might undertake. The two set to discussing now the difficult problem of their future. Mrs. Harvey would consent to the reversal of her favorite plan only with extreme irritation; that was certain. The calmer and sterner opposition of Rodman Harvey to the unbusiness-like step proposed was even more to be dreaded. Sprowle was to be gotten rid of. And there was the presumable rage of his mother and of all the Sprowle connection, though of this Angelica affected to make light. She was very affectionate with her new lover, petted him and soothed him, but did not accept his suggestions, which were more notable for a vehement contempt of obstacles than for tact.

“ Leave it all to me,” she said, finally. “ Nothing must be said or done just now. We must appear for a while to be mere ordinary acquaintances, as before.”

She at once began a course of alienating tactics with her betrothed on the way back to town. The next day, for he was fond of her and came often, she would not see him. The next, he brought her some small present. She ridiculed it in an exasperating way, saying, “You dear, good, stupid thing, do take it away ! You have no more taste than Marmion.” In a subsequent interview she gave out that she had heard something against him, — against his moral character ; but being pressed, she would not tell what it was; then said it was of no consequence, though appearing still to retain a prejudice. In the succeeding one she was absent-minded; asked him repeatedly, “ What did you say ? ” and paid no attention to his answers. In short, she crowded into the briefest possible space of time the greatest number of annoyances. A saint would have been nettled at less. When at last Sprowle resented it, in a rather vigorous way for him, she became hysterical.

“ Go ! ” she said, in the true spirit of the meek wolf and ferocious lamb. “ All is at an end between us. Nothing any longer that I can do is right. It was not always thus.’’ She pressed her handkerchief to her eyes, and went sobbing out of the room.

She granted another meeting, however. In this her ultimatum of the day before was not adhered to, but in the end she so managed the situation as to make it more acrimonious than ever. Then she went to her room, and wrote to Sprowle that she could see now that they were not congenial, and never really had been. It would not have been safe for them to marry. She hereby canceled her engagement with him. It was absolutely and filially over. Upon the heels of this she hurried back his ring and all his presents. Efforts on his part to see her, and repeated expostulations by note, were vain. He offered humble apologies,—for what he did not quite know. He offered to have the wedding put off; to wait for her indefinitely. No, all quite vain. Through chagrin, he did not at once make known to his mother what had happened, but went out of town for a few days. Never in all his diplomatic career as secretary of legation, his lounging in club windows, his participation in the observances of polite society and in athletic sports, had he met with or heard of such an experience.

The situation between Angelica and her astonished mother resolved itself only after a violent contest, as had been foreseen. It ended in the triumph of the stronger will, as might also have been foreseen. The girl declared her purpose to marry Kingbolt, and not Sprowle, irrevocably fixed, and that no power under heaven should shake it. The mother, defeated, reluctantly went over to her side. They planned together that the cause of the dismissal of Sprowle should not be disclosed ; not to Rodman Harvey more than to the others. It should be attributed to uncongeniality, caprice, a quarrel, — anything but the substitution of a new lover. Then, if Kingbolt should choose to appear afterwards, — as what more natural than that suitors should appear in time? — and were accepted, no connection need show between the two events.

This arrangement was foiled, however, by the indiscretion of so unimportant a person as young Stillsby. The manners of Stillsby at the Empire Club for the first few days after the scene he had witnessed at the garden party were a marvel to all who knew him.

“ What the devil is the matter with the fellow,” asked Whitehead Finch, “ smirking, and glowering, and swooping about by himself in that way? lie seems to get lighter in his upper story every day. He was well enough when he joined the club. I recollect when he had almost as much sense as the average.”

“ The character of his associations, — knocking about much so with you fellows, he has dropped to the level of his company,” said Watervliet, with the freedom of an old bird and a privileged character.

To forbear adding to his own importance by disclosing what he knew, especially when the news of the broken engagement came out, and it was spoken of as something mysterious and unaccountable, was more than Stillsby, after heroic effort, was capable of. He gave up his secret in strict confidence to one and then another. The club was soon buzzing with it, and it came to the ears of Sprowle Onderdonk. This was on the afternoon of Election Day, as it happened, when the political fortunes of Rodman Harvey were trembling in the balance. Sprowle Onderdonk hastened fiercely to Stulsby, and had the story out of him. Soon after he was closeted with his aunt and his cousin Sprowle, who had returned to town.

The dowager Mrs. Sprowle ordered her carriage, and drove to the Harvey mansion. She made her way up to Mrs. Harvey’s boudoir, where she had so often been before on more agreeable errands. Her black and vindictive aspect told the cause of her coming even before she had opened her lips. Ottilie, who was in attendance, trembled at her violence of reproach.

If “ My dear Mrs. Sprowle’s ” and “ My dear madam’s,” uttered in the most deprecating way by Mrs. Rodman Harvey, could have saved the day, it would have been done. But it could not. Angelica, however, hearing in her chamber above some rumor of what was in progress, came down, in a semiinvalid condition, pale, disheveled, in a charming wrapper of lace and knots of ribbon. She lent her assistance, engaged the enemy intrepidly, and moved, perhaps, by the consciousness of being wholly in the wrong, had soon thrown all attempt at conciliation to the winds. There was a vixenish quality in her anger when at white heat which a lover of the amiable in woman would not have cared to see. Mrs. Sprowle retired down the staircase, breathing threatenings and slaughter.

“ The brazen, brazen girl! ” she muttered. “ That ever I should have taken up with such people ! . . . Oh, if I had but known this before! ” she said, as she pulled together the door of her carriage with a trembling band. And again she said, at a conclave of the Sprowle interest summoned to meet at her house that evening, “ Oh, if I had but known this before ! ”

If she meant that she might, in that event, have done something to impede Rodman Harvey’s election, and to strike at the women of the family through him, it was now too late. At sunset Michael Brannagan, nominee of Tammany Hall, was well beaten, and Harvey duly elected next representative in Congress from the most important district in New York. Baleful glances might be shot across the street from the darkened residence of the Sprowles, but these could not prevent that of the merchant prince from being brightly illuminated, nor the coming of troops of admiring friends to offer congratulations on his victory.

Towards eleven o’clock, when the returns were verified, and there could be no dispute about the result, the henchmen who had borne the heat and burden of the day arrived with a brass band to tender a serenade. In the cheering concourse were many of the merchant’s clerks. They did not reside in his district, and had not been able to vote for him. but had felt the excitement at the store, nevertheless, where it had even relaxed the usual discipline for a day or two. They had chaffed and offered wagers there with a zest that would not have misbecome the Empire Club, and they now came to hear “ the old man ” speak.

He stood forth, his head bare, on the broad steps. The noises about him were suddenly hushed. At the Sprowle mansion, as elsewhere, was audible his opening phrase, “ Fellow citizens.” Then followed such fragments as “ the proud satisfaction, —the momentous issues,— one whose interests are identical with your own, — this great New York,— this imperial city of ours, — washed on three sides by rivers, with a bay capable of holding the commercial navies of the world, —men of all nations and climes, — the enterprise, wealth, and skill of our people. Thanking you once more for your kind attention, I will bid you good-night! ”

There were more shrill cheers; the band struck up briskly ; there was a bustle of hand-shaking on the steps; some of the leaders were invited into the house; refreshments were passed around outside. Then came more music by the band. It marched away, its notes sounding fainter and fainter in the distance, and the merchant prince was left to repose upon his new honors.

Rodman Harvey made much less of the news of the substitution of Kingbolt for Sprowle, when it was broken to him, than his family had dreaded. Whether it was that he was occupied with his own affairs, and did not fully appreciate its bearing upon himself, or that he had other reasons, he appeared, after a decorous amount of advice, to regard the choice of Kingbolt with genuine favor.

“ He has so much more money, you know, papa,” urged Angelica, anxious to make the case the most secure possible.

“Yes, I know,” be replied. “The name of the Eureka Tool Works, and that of its founder, Colonel Kingbolt, are almost like household words.

“ The matter chiefly concerns you,” he said to the two women. “ You made the first match for reasons good and sufficient to yourselves, and now that you are pleased to change your views I do not know that I am called upon to interfere. Only do not let it happen again. Its suddenness is most unbusiness-like and reprehensible. I trust that you have done everything, as far as possible, to reconcile the Sprowles, and that you will do yet more. They are a strong clan and their ill-will is a matter of consequence.”

The women suppressed some of the aggravated circumstances of the affair, and they did not tell him that it was war to the knife with the Sprowles.

The news had its various effects in many quarters. It came to Mr. Fletcher St. Hill upon the heels of his fancied recovery of control over Kingbolt, and caused in that financier a profound revulsion of feeling. Now, indeed, was his patron lost to him, and it was time for him to make to himself new friends in the mammon of iniquity. He moved his Prudential Land and Loan Company two flights higher up in the Magoon Building. He took himself, after a while, with his grudge against Harvey, to the Sprowles. They received him with open arms. He was to aid them in working up a campaign. On the strength of this Sprowle Onderdonk advanced him money. St. Hill imparted gradually, and under strict pledge of confidence, his secret, and showed Harvey’s treasonable correspondence in his possession. “ My business relations are too delicate,” he explained, “and my situation here as a Southerner among Northerners too critical, to allow me to engage in a contest with so powerful an adversary. There is no telling what calumnies he might invent, in return, and even give them a certain currency, too, through his recognized standing.”

“These are good, but not enough,” groaned Mrs. Sprowle, over the letters.

“ They would have injured him politically, but more is wanted.” She would have liked to convict Rodman Harvey of arsons, assassinations, — the most heinous of crimes.

The news came to Bainbridge by the mouth of G. Lloyd, the architect, the day after Harvey’s election. It was a dismal, wet November day, one of those that herald in peculiarly disagreeable fashion the advent of winter. The rain beat like small shot against his office windows, and scourged the ferry-boats and wandering sails, which fled before it like guilty things, down on the wide yellow river. In the squares it tore off the leaves, no longer one by one, but by the handful, and endeavored to beat them into the ground with a superfluity of malice. They met in the damp hall of the Magoon Building, at noon, and their umbrellas ran pools upon the tile pavement while they talked.

“ By the way, another lively exploit of our friend Kingbolt,” said Lloyd. “ We were talking about him, the other evening, you remember. Heard ? ”

“ No,” said Bainbridge.

“ He has cut out Sprowle with Harvey’s handsome daughter, and got her for himself. Fact! ”

“Heavens—No! But isn’t it pretty sudden?”

“ They say he has been dangling around her this ever so long. I got it from some clubmen. People saw them hugging each other at a garden-party up the Hudson. That’s what brought on the crisis.”

Bainbridge walked about in the blustering weather in a rapture. Perhaps he hardly noted that it rained. For him it had suddenly become the most genial of days. The sun was shining at but the slightest remove behind the enshrouding vapors.

Ottilie not another’s at all ? and still open to him? He knew very well what he meant to do at the first practicable moment for getting up town. He called himself a million idiots for having so mistaken the true state of affairs. What must she have thought of him ? And he a lawyer, and presumably in the habit of attaching something like its real value to evidence! He entered a florist’s, and sent Ottilie flowers, accompanied by a note.

Ottilie, in her room, looking out of her window at the dismal prospect, received, that afternoon, a pasteboard box full of Jacqueminot roses. They were cut with long stems, and laid in a protection of cotton-wool. Their dewiness and perfume were upon them still, as if fresh from the conservatory. The young girl had never had a more delightful compliment. The inclement season trebled their charm. What did it all mean ? She read the following note: DEAR MISS OTTILIE, — I seem to have been laboring under some stupid delusion. Happily, it is past. I wonder if you will be at home this evening. I shall give myself the pleasure of trying to find you. Sincerely yours,

RUSSELL BAINBRIDGE.

Delusion ? What delusion ? What was she to understand ? Here was testimony enough, if more were needed, that with Bainbridge one was dealing with no ordinary person. She sat in an attitude of pensive reflection, burying her face from time to time in the lovely roses. She was greatly puzzled. At any rate, he was coming to see her again, and of that she was very glad. Suddenly, however, she started up, seized her pen, rang for a district telegraph messenger, and, while awaiting his arrival, wrote as follows : —

DEAR MR. BAINBRIDGE, — Thank you so much for the flowers you have been kind enough to send me. What a bit of tropical beauty and fragrance on this blustering day ! I am sorry to say that I cannot be at home this evening. I am not wholly mistress of my own motions, as you know, and my aunt has made some arrangement for me which will keep me away both this evening and to-morrow. I consider it very unfortunate. But will you not come very soon after that ? Your “ delusion ” is a great mystery. What can it be ? I think I have had reason to fear some such delusion on your part as that you had fancied you cared a little for yours very truly, but found you did not.

With sincere regards,

OTTILIE HARVEY.

Could Bainbridge have found Ottilie in the first flush of his enthusiasm, she would have heard from him an ardent declaration of his state of mind, whatever effect we may suppose such a declaration to have upon her. But this was not to be for some time longer. He had a night and a day of enforced reflection. Even after that he did not at once find her alone. Nothing, in fact, had changed in their circumstances, from the point of view of eligibility to marriage. Were they not as poor as ever? It is only in story-books, when true-lovers, without a penny in their pockets, take each other for better or for worse, throwing prudential considerations to the winds, that everything else is immediately added unto them. “ Rodman Harvey would look upon a proposal for his niece’s hand as an attempt upon his purse-strings, and would close them tighter than ever. And who wishes him to open them on my account, since he will not on hers ? ” said Bainbridge.

“ No, let us wait a little.” He had an indefinite sense that something must turn up to aid them. The immediate danger was over. He would study out a solution of their difficulties at leisure. Their former relations were resumed. Why hurry to its dissolution a situation which was so charming in itself?

He began to walk much in Wall Street in his noon outings. He studied the backs of capitalists who had achieved notable success there. He crossed over and met them, and endeavored to divine their secret in their faces. Some of them were of the most ordinary aspect, — shamble-gaited, of rusty attire, and pinched and mean little physiognomies. They did not look happy, with their money, and plenty of well-authenticated stories showed that they were not. But that was not to the purpose; so much the worse luck theirs. If he, Bainbridge, had it he could be happy.

The dark mass of Trinity Church rose at the head of the narrow, opulent street. The quiet old churchyard at its base was in such contrast to the eager streams of human life rushing by, as if death and graves, though actually lying there under one’s eyes, were the most improbable of myths. Down the street jutted the temple-like porticoes of the sub-treasury and custom-house. The multitudinous needs of commercial intercourse had spun a dusty web of telegraph wires across the sky, which at places ruled it into squares like those of the ledger pages, and again converged into bundles like skips’ cordage. Trays of gold pieces shone in the windows of the low basement offices, as if here, sure enough, Jupiters in plenty had rained themselves down in search of Danae, having come to the wrong part of town. The brokers waited in the dark interiors for customers to take the glittering bait. Bainbridge gathered up one day all his resources, including a moderate loan from the Hudson Hendricks, and went into Wall Street.

An idea bad taken possession of him. Speculation was not the ideal means of redeeming one’s fortunes. No doubt he should be ashamed of it afterwards. But it was a means, a possible means, and there seemed no other. There was talk, just at present, of unusual opportunities for gain. The market was actively “booming.” He determined to regard this venture as an augury. To win Ottilie, if he succeeded; to give her up to a better custody than his, if he failed ! Surely fate would be propitious to so deserving a cause.

There was a plan of buying on a “ margin,” or percentage, by which one secured control of a number of shares vastly out of proportion to his small capital. In this way, in the event of a rise a large profit was reaped; though of course, in the event of a considerable decline, on the other hand, the capital one had put in was wholly wiped out. Bainbridge bought shares of Devious Air Line, on a margin. There seemed a certain fitness in connecting himself in this way with the fortunes of Rodman Harvey.

Devious Air Line remained exactly where it was for a long time. Then it dropped off a point or two.

XX.

“ LALAGE, SWEETLY SMILING, SWEETLY SPEAKING.”

Conventional lovers in the conventional stories are always aware of the precise extent of the regard they have for each other. It is generally a frenzy amounting to madness. They take the earliest (and every subsequent) opportunity of declaring it, and thereafter it is no will of their own, but only the most insuperable physical obstacles, that keep them apart.

But who shall picture all the fluctuations of feeling, the misgivings, the blowing hot and cold, of lovers in real life, where there are so many affairs besides those of the heart demanding attention ; so much marrying and giving in marriage, indeed, with hardly a pretense of affection at all ? Balked in his first intent, Bainbridge did not renew it. His imagination hovered over Ottilie with an all-embracing tenderness, but he did not make her any set speeches of affection.

When they had met a number of times, and he had not referred in any way to his note, Ottilie said to him,—

“ Perhaps you do not remember that you have not told me what the stupid delusion you mentioned was. I am dying to know.”

Taken by surprise, he was hardly able to vary from the truth with any great ingenuity at so short notice, He had hoped that as the matter had not been alluded to so far, it would remain uninvestigated. He gave to his admission of the truth, however, a flippant air, as if the point had been of but the most trifling consequence.

“ Oh, — that ? Oh, yes ! ” he said. “ That was a misunderstanding about Kingbolt, you know. I was overworked, or absent-minded, or something.

I often get things wrong. I seemed to get it into my head that it was you to whom Kingbolt was paying his court instead of Angelica.”

Ottilie did not reply on the instant. She looked at him with a gaze at once bewildered, reflective, amused. What a compliment he paid her! He had been seriously considering her, then, as an eligible partner for Kingbolt; she, who considered herself so little eligible for anybody. Why, the plain implication was, too, that he, Bainbridge, had been jealous of her. She dared not trust this hypothesis ; it was too wild. But in the instant of making it her heart beat quicker, and it remained very much warmer towards Bainbridge ever after.

“ Oh, you thought it was I ? ” she said. “ That is very interesting. If you could only have known how he was boring me with his talk about my cousin all the while, you would not have thought so. I hardly knew what to do. I could not betray his confidence, and yet I did not want it. I never supposed his persistence would have any result. So that accounts for your— So you thought”—

She nibbled her lip with her even white teeth in the effort to repress her smiles. But her smiles were rather of keen delight, which she feared might betray itself, than of derision.

“ The circumstances fitted into one another so perversely. Your riding with him so much, you know, and all that,” said Bainbridge.

“And so you stayed away?” She broke into a merry laugh.

“ Well, yes. I did seem to stay away.”

“ Do you not think you are of a rather peculiar disposition?” the young girl asked.

“ I advised you, you know,” said Bainbridge, waiving an answer to this question. “ A companion of that kind, if I had been right, would naturally have taken my place. I thought I ought to furnish a clear field.”

“ And no favor,” she supplemented, archly.

“Well, no ; not very much favor.”

“ You do me great honor, I am sure. Perhaps the advice is good yet, in principle.”

This was a critical passage for Bainbridge. The tone and look of banter he assumed were likely to give place to an instant expression of blazing avowal of passion. “ I am well out of it,” he thought. “ Your cousin’s new engagement is openly announced, I hear,” he said, changing the subject.

“ Yes ; as the murder was out, boldness was the best policy. I think they are doing a number of things on that basis, still. It is a continual round of dinners and theatre parties in Angelica’s honor. Mr. Kingbolt gets his friends to give them, and gives them himself, sometimes at Delmonico’s, and sometimes at his own fine apartments, He has, of course, suitable chaperons to preside. I have seen some of the menus from these dinners. One was on embroidered satin, another engraved on a silver tablet. Lovely presents are given the guests : fans, sashes to match the ladies’ dresses, gold pins and butterflies for their hair, and satin bags of confectionery. It is one rain of gifts for Angelica all the time : parcels from the jeweler, the florist, and confectioner all day long. Do you want to hear about her engagement ring ? ”

“ Certainly I do. What is it? ”

“ A diamond of five carats, in a plain setting. Oh, how it glitters ! She has another ring, also a present, with a pink pearl and two diamonds set in line. It came in a jewel case of painted porcelain, in the shape of an egg, a perfect jewel itself. This was inclosed in a little teak-wood box, elaborately carved, and this again in a silk bag, drawn together with a cord. You would have screamed.”

“ I am almost tempted to now, at your feeling description.”

“ Angelica has given him in return a lock of her hair, a photograph for his dressing-table, a cat’s-eye ring, and a sofa pillow partly embroidered by herself.”

“ You seem to take a certain interest in such matters.”

“ I dote on them. I have my epicurean tastes, too. Poor old Lone Tree !

I fear I am forever spoiled by the leaven of luxury.”

“ I dare say she is very fond of him ? ” said Bainbridge, continuing the subject.

“ She must be, to have done what she has. I have heard her adjure him affectionately to be more careful of his hands for her sake. She thinks he is ruining them by his driving his coach, and the other sports. But, seriously, you see how she has offended and defied the influential Sprowle family as she has. If you could have seen that old woman’s face, the day she came to reproach my aunt about it! I was frightened to death. What do you think she will do? What is done in this fashionable world, when people bitterly bate each other, and want revenge ? ”

“ That is one of the problems. Well, they have their opinion of one another, and when they get sympathetic listeners they state it. Good old-fashioned vengeance, in fact, appears to be dying out. It is not a modern luxury. Few facilities are afforded now for its indulgence. Mortal enemies are not usually invited to the same dinner, —at least; discriminating hosts do not put them next each other.”

“ Could the Sprowles attack my uncle in any way ? ” added Ottilie, with anxiety. “ They might think it best to strike at my aunt and cousin through him. Probably no other means would be so effective. I am sure I should feel nothing more keenly than any taint of disgrace that might attach to him.”

“ Nonsense ! ” said Bainbridge. “ They might annoy him in some trifling ways ; but if your uncle really bad any points dangerously open to attack, it is not likely that he could afford to be as stiff and uncompromising as he is with almost everybody.”

“ Well, I shall feel easier when my cousin’s wedding is over.”

The merchant prince went off to Washington in December, and took his seat in the House of Representatives.

Kingbolt and Angelica, having impressed their new situation upon society to the extent they thought needful, also went away to pay a visit to the family of Kingbolt at Kingboltsville. The young heir was considerably overdue there. It was long since he had conferred with his trustees, and these, having the management of things, so very much in their own hands, began almost to look upon him as an interloper. It was due to his mother and sisters, too, that he should introduce his betrothed to them.

His enthusiasm for her, which under ordinary circumstances might perhaps have cooled somewhat, was kept aglow by the opposition he had met with. He squared himself defiantly against the notoriety the case had obtained. It was a wonder he did not come to blows with Sprowle Onderdonk. It was probably due to the forbearance of this latter that such an outbreak did not take place. The two passed each other in the lobby of the Empire Club for a while with a haughty aggressiveness of mien.

“ Still,” said Onderdonk, “ it would be stretching a point for me to take it up, in that way. It is my cousin Sprowle’s affair, the idiot! If he can afford to let it alone, I suppose I can. Besides, this fool of a Kingbolt is not the culprit. It is the Harvey people. We must make them feel it, root and branch. Perhaps we shall show them in time that slights are not to be put on a family like ours with impunity.”

Mrs. Sprowle also spoke of Kingbolt in pretty much the same way. He was, according to her, “ a poor dupe,” “ the rich young plebeian, whom those designing women had got into their clutches,” and who was more to be pitied than blamed, bad even as his private character was.

At Kingboltsville, Kingbolt went with Angelica to take a glimpse of the great Works. “ Would you believe,” he inquired, “ that I once came personally, with my blue shirt and dinner-pail, like one of the ordinary hands, and greased the machinery ? ”

“ Fancy ! ” his sweetheart replied, with supreme contempt.

It was a source of wonderment now to the young man himself that, with all his superior opportunities for enjoyment in the world, he could ever have allowed himself to he deluded by any such absurd notions of duty.

An evening party was given, and provincial society came out to do Angelica honor. The young woman professed surprise to see how very well some of these persons really looked. She preserved with all of them, however, a chill, haughty demeanor. Nor did she get on much better with the family itself. She privately termed the two widowed sisters “ frumps.” They spent a humdrum existence here, ample as their resources were, in personally looking after small eases of charity, founding a church or a school, or patronizing some mediocre artist who came up from New York to establish classes in “decorative art.” They still dressed in black, of a rather rusty sort, though their respective bereavements were very many years remote ; and when they descended from a carriage you had a glimpse of worn gaiter and wrinkled stocking.

Kingbolt’s mother ventured an injudicious comment, in her timorous, affectionate way, on his future bride. “ We all admire her so much, Arthur,” she said. “ She is so brilliant in looks, so accomplished. I hope and pray tha she will make you happy. But if yot could have chosen one a little less — a little more — not quite so worldly-minded, perhaps, dear.”

The son, resenting, in quite his youthful way, any impugnment of the wisdom of whatever he might choose to do, returned some brusque, impatient answer. His sisters said, “ You should not speak to your mother in that way, Arthur.” Upon this, he flung himself out of the room, agreeing with Angelica that they were hostile to her, as she said. The pair presently left so unappreciative a society, and departed to visit at Washington.

There Angelica went about on her lover’s or her father’s arm to such places as pleased her. The great New York merchant and capitalist had been from the first put on important committees, and taken a prominent place in Congress. His beautiful daughter was something of a new sensation. She gave to statesmen from the interior a lesson in feminine elegance they had not before enjoyed. The newspaper correspondents, taxed to the utmost as they are in this department, sought fuller resources of word-painting to describe her. Ottilie read some of their glowing accounts of her cousin’s appearance at the afternoon receptions, at the ball of the British minister, of the General of the army, of Admiral this, and Senator that. Angelica assisted, too, the “ ladies of the White House,” — who were glad of her, and somewhat abashed by her; and she dined more than once, in company with her father, at the President’s table.

Angelica’s own opinion of the whole, in return, was not favorable. “ It is a perfect menagerie,” she said to Kingbolt. “ If it were not for the legation people, it would be quite intolerable. No exclusiveness, no fixity, no traditions ! Everybody goes everywhere. What does a society based upon a little brief office-holding amount to ? These furbelowed daughters, nieces, and cousins of the good bourgeois legislators, no doubt, think it heaven ; and probably it is to them, who have never seen anything.”

It was thus she stigmatized the multitude of pretty girls flocking from all parts of the country to the gayeties of the place; she made herself as elegantly severe in attire as possible, by contrast. Murray Hill looked down disdainfully on Capitol Hill and all its affiliations.

Kingbolt coincided, as a newly engaged lover should, in most opinions that she chose to express. He amused himself, during his expatriation, with an incidental run to Baltimore, where he knew some pleasant fellows of the Maryland Jockey Club. He picked up from a needy inventor hanging about the Patent Office some ingenious new device in telegraphic communication, which he set about having put in operation between his house and stock-farm at Kingboltsville. He proposed to Angelica that his yacht should be brought around, and that they should take a trip to Bermuda ; but to this she did not accede. We may leave them here for a little, and return to New York.

The Christmas season went by with Bainbridge and Ottilie. Owing to the change in affairs, there was not the same amount of gayety at the Harvey mansion proposed at the beginning of the season. Mrs. Harvey took Ottilie about with her more or less, however, into society. She wished her companionship, but never quite let her lose the sense of her peculiar situation. Bainbridge took to going out, also, to places where there was a likelihood that he should meet with Ottilie. There were by no means the same unconstrained opportunities for seeing her at the house now as before. He was still wheeling round the circle of obstacles by which he seemed beset, without finding in it any loophole of escape. Devious Air Line recovered the point or two it had lost, but did not rise above the purchase price.

Sometimes Bainbridge said to himself, “ I will not marry her, for my own sake.” That was his selfish mood, and meant that he desired to take upon himself no further burdens.

Again he said, “ I will not marry her, for her sake. Why should I pull her down ? Have I not well tested my capacity and prospects ? Without me she stands an excellent chance to be prosperous and happy.”

But still again he exclaimed passionately, “ I will marry her, in spite of everything ! ”

He set off more than once to undertake the needful preliminary, but he either did not find Ottilie when he would, or in her presence recovered an equanimity which enabled him to hold his avowal still unpronounced.

Once he dropped in one morning, by some chance, at a “ Shakespearean reading ” at Chickering Hall, and saw her there in the audience, following carefully with a text in her hand. She was reaping now some of those “ advantages ” of the metropolis, of which she had so exalted an idea. He knew of her going to lectures at the Academy of Design, to old Dr. John Jones’s sonorous discourses on Reformers and Men of Letters, and to hear the Rev. Wayland Howland on the Cathedrals of Europe, this last illustrated by the stereopticon.

Bainbridge contemplated her awhile, at the Shakespearean reading, from his vantage-ground in the rear, and went away without having made his own presence known. How attractive it was in her, he thought, to sink the consciousness of her personal comeliness, — which so many other young women would have depended upon as sufficient for a career in itself, — and endeavor so ambitiously to fill her pretty head with mental furniture! It was a pretty head. The hair, drawn upward, except a tendril or two which escaped, grew delightfully upon the delicate nape of her neck. One smooth cheek was mufiled by the satin bow of her bonnet, tied at the side. The other, with long, dark eyelashes projecting above it, showed its rounded profile, now more, now less, as she turned.

The next meeting of the pair was at an afternoon reception, or four-o’clock tea. They were by the corner of a door-way and each held and tasted in a dilettante way a cup of the beverage which gave the entertainment its name. Bainbridge managed at the same time to keep his hat and stick under his arm. The rooms were full of a chattering audience, chiefly ladies, in elegant street toilettes. These drove from one to another of a number of similar receptions, all in progress at the same time, with card-cases in their hands, and remained but a few moments at each.

“ I saw you at Chickering Hall,” said Bainbridge. “ You are always giving yourself infinite pains about some learned thing or other. You could afford to go in a little more for ‘ a good time.’ You know more now than any dozen other New York girls put together.”

“Oh! oh!” exclaimed Ottilie, scandalized. “ Very well ; if you call it learned to go to a panorama, or an innocent little Shakespearean reading, what will you say if I begin to talk Herbert Spencer and Mill, and Tait’s researches into the original atoms of matter to you ? ”

“ I shall say, don’t do it! ”

“They are in the shape of rings, always in motion, as if contending with one another.”

“ The researches, or the atoms ? Well,” in response to an indignant frown, “let primordial atoms delight to bark and bite, if ’t is their nature to ; but that is no reason why we should.”

“ At any rate, persons who have everything to gain and nothing to lose ought to be ambitious, and learn all they can, do you not think so ? ” Ottilie insisted. “ Besides, I shall never know enough to hurt me. Do you know, I think I should like to be a professor, — always learning something important, and arousing an interest in it in others.”

“ You take a roseate view of professors. There are a good many of a different sort. They are too often chosen from the class of learners by rote, who never have known and never will know what a genuine enthusiasm for scholarship is. That kind, by their dreary way of instruction, but stifle the germs of it in those confided to their care.”

“ A professor, after all, is only one of the tools, a part of the machinery. One would rather be a finished specimen of the product.”

It happened that this particular fouro’clock tea was of a more elaborate sort than usual. The people by whom it was given were spoken of as in an upper grade of “ stragglers.” They still thought it desirable to commend themselves to favor by a lavish expenditure of money, which would not be so necessary later. The floral display was commented upon with an admiration thinly veiling contempt, by those who would not have imitated it. Flowers adorned the banisters from top to bottom, and were set about in forms of monstrous tea-kettles, temples, swans, and ships, on the piano and other pieces of furniture. Pretty children, costumed as flower-girls, presented each guest at his entrance a choice nosegay. A flowerwreathed silver fountain sprayed into the air, instead of water, a delicate perfumery.

“ Do you know that this is not orthodox talk for a four-o’clock tea?” said Ottilie. “ You distract one from looking about. You should merely tell me how very difficult it is for men to attend affairs of this kind, and how surprised you are at finding yourself here. You should say that men have not the gift of small talk, you know ; and, if you are inclined to be humorous, that it is really very dreadful to find one’s self in such a minority among an assembly of the fair sex. I should remark that it is said to make a fatal difference in a cup of tea whether the milk or the sugar be put in first. ‘ Yes,’ you should reply ; and you should state further that it is said that if a cup of tea be not perfect at the first mixing, no alteration can make it so. Meanwhile, we should both be staring about the room, thinking whom we would like to join, or have join us, next.”

“So you are spoiled by luxury?” Bainbridge inquired, going hack to a former subject.

“ I suppose I am. Still, I don’t know. I want to see a specimen of everything ; then I shall decide which I like best. It may not be this fashionable life, after all. It is a decadence, I fear. These stories that go about of the flirtations of married men with young girls, and of men with other men’s wives,—I do not believe them, of course; hut it shows that something is wrong that they can get the currency they have.”

This was a line of subjects, however, that could be more freely discussed with Mrs. Clef, for instance.

“ What I should really like to see,” Ottilie went on, her face brightening, “ is literary society. I should like to meet the people whose names you see in the papers, authors, artists, people who discuss things that are really worth while, and come to some conclusion about them. The bright ones in this fashionable society say sparkling, audacious, amusing things, but that is all. Nothing is advanced, nothing settled.”

“ They would be glad to have a niece of Rodman Harvey at any of the places where the kind of people you speak of assemble. I can drop Mr. Stoneglass a hint, down town. I know his wife will be pleased to send you an invitation, when her receptions begin.”

“ Really ? Oh, I thought it would be very difficult to accomplish that. I supposed that my aunt, not being literary in any way, was not eligible. I had never dared to aspire to it.”

“ You will meet people whose names you see in the papers, but you will find very little settled, my poor child, even there. This is not a world, in fact, where much is settled. Then there are writers from whom one has expected a great deal, who are found to have told in their books all they know, and perhaps even more. You get nothing further out of them. Still, it may be that, having entertained us in print, they consider it their privilege to be as dull as they please out of it.”

“ But what will they think of me? ” said Ottilie, shrinking diffidently from the idea now that it seemed unexpectedly feasible.

“ The only condition of comfort is to consider what you think of people, not what they think of you. I dare say, however, you will not be frightened. They let me in. To tell the truth, literary lions of the first magnitude do not abound in New York. The best of them do not always turn out either, and when they do they roar but gently. The field is left a good deal to the minor lights. I fear you will be disappointed.”

“ Oh, no, I shall not. Anything in the shape of a live author ! I recollect making a pilgrimage, once, to get the autograph of a lady writer in our neighborhood, about as good as Mrs. Anne Arundel Clum. We high-schoolgirls of fifteen used to think she was wonderful. If she had been Sappho, or Madame de Staël, she could not have received us with a greater dignity.”

“Yes, Mrs. Stoneglass, on the whole, will be the best for you,” said Bainbridge, as if having reflected on the several places available. “ Stoneglass has dined with your uncle, you say, and that will make it pleasanter. He edits the Meteor, and his wife writes the bright Fanny Copperplate letters in that and other papers. She is better known than he, though his work is so much more substantial. When his rivals wish to be malicious, they speak of him as Mr. Fanny Copperplate Stoneglass. The entertainers are usually persons who themselves dabble, in a minor way, in letters. The right one to hold a salon of the traditional sort has hardly yet arisen. She should be appreciative and intelligent, of easy and friendly manners, and be surrounded by a certain degree of luxury. She should not bore people with a small literary vanity of her own, nor have axes to grind.”

“ When will Mrs. Stoneglass’ receptions begin ? ”

“ Some little time from now. I will let you know. They will probably be held Sunday nights, as usual.”

“ Oh ! Sunday nights ? We-ll ” — said Ottilie, hesitatingly.

“ Yes; another of our imported customs. Sunday afternoons and evenings are coming into favor for a great deal of quiet sociability. Actors are free on Sunday evening, for one thing. You may see some leading actors at Mrs. Stoneglass’.”

Otillie fell to reviewing the fitness of her equipment for meeting this formidable company.

“ I read so little now, compared with what I used,” she said; “ I do not keep up at all. I am quite ashamed of myself.”

“ I, too, read almost nothing of late. It may be that as life becomes more interesting, books grow less so,” said Bainbridge. “ Perhaps we shall read again later on, to contrast our own experiences with those of fiction. I have had the last new novel of Blank’s, of which people are talking, lying in my room for a fortnight, and have not touched it. I hear it has a legal plot. I wish I knew what it was without the trouble of perusing it.”

“ Send it around to me ; I will read it for you,” volunteered Ottilie.

“ Take care! It is too tempting an offer. I may hold you to it.”

“ I am not at all afraid.”

He sent it around to her, in fact. At another meeting, not long after, she had ready and gave him a concise account of the story in a way which would hardly have done discredit to the best narrative powers of Angelica, or Madame Batignolles-Clichy herself.

“ Do you know, it was very nice of you to do that,” said Bainbridge, holding her hand a moment longer than necessary, it seemed, as she gave it to him for good-by.

“ Was it ? Well, I am glad you appreciate it.”

She looked up brightly at him; but somehow her face flushed under his warm glance, and her eyes fell again, He hesitated over her hand, but dropped it without saying anything further.

Ottilie permitted herself reveries and speculations on the basis of the jealousy to which Bainbridge had confessed. It was the wildest of suppositions, of course. It would have meant that their association had not been platonic, after all, but nothing was more firmly established. But supposing now, as a mere hypothesis, that he could really like her in another way, he was about the kind of a person one would naturally like to marry. His looks pleased her ; she admitted it. He was manly-looking, of rather a distinguished air ; people would be apt to notice him in a crowd, she thought.

“ They say very nice things of him, too, in contradiction of his own account of himself,” she went on. “Judge Chippendale praises his legal acquirements, and also his personal courage in the affair with the shanty tenants. You never get a word out of him, though, on the subject. He is more serious than he used to be, too, — almost reasonable enough now for anybody. I knew that he never believed in his own wild theories. It was only his way of talking. How well we have got on together! How sympathetic and appreciative he is with me, and sympathy has been by no means common ! We have not seemed to tire each other; at least I hope I have not tired him. Whether we agree or disagree, our discussions are equally charming.”

She would have liked to do something very warm and affectionate for him, — as for a dear brother. Once when she had sat down to write letters home, she scribbled almost inadvertently upon hits of paper, —

Mr. R. Bainbridge. . . . Mrs. Russell. . . . Mr. and Mrs. Bainbridge. . . . Mrs. Ottilie Bain—

But at this point she exclaimed, “ Ridiculous ! ” tore up the paper hastily, and looked over her shoulder in blushing alarm, lest by any chance she might have been observed.

“ He to marry a poor girl,” she went on, “ with his tastes, his needs, his ambitions! If such a one had any conscience she would refuse to become a burden upon him, even if he were so foolish as to ask her. He should have the best wife in the world. He must have one who will be an advantage to him, — aid him to rise, not draw him back.”

These were possibly far-fetched considerations and scruples, but such as they are, they were those of Ottilie Harvey.

Ottilie was sometimes taken to her aunt’s box at the opera. Bainbridge, whose passion and relaxation were music, went also, in a more modest way. He could see that the same class of fashionable men fluttered about the Harvey box, probably by force of habit, as when Angelica had been there. One night, of a number, he sat with his eyes fixed upon Ottilie’s slight figure, at a distance. The love passages on the stage were of unusual tenderness. He heard in the melodies the supplication, the pathos, of his own affection. He went, after the act, to pay his respects at the box. The opera-going men of unexceptionable form were there. Mrs. Rodman Harvey was saying to one of them, in a tone of wearied criticism, —

“ We have no more voices. Grisi and Malibran were the last of the giants. The light style of singing is destroying us.”

Bainbridge found that it was Mr. Northfleet, of the Empire Club, who was bending over Ottilie. “ The German music is more bracing and tonic,” he overheard him say, with an elaborate, languishing air, — a manner that had won him success with others of the fair sex before now,— “the Italian sweeter, cloying, if you will. But give me the sensuous Italian music, after all ! There are times when it draws you out of yourself; fills you with vague, ineffable longings.”

“ Like going through Tiffany’s in the holiday season,” returned Ottilie, with her luminous smile. “Yes, I have felt that way, too.”

Thus she parried the sentimentality of these persons, and seemed to stand less in awe of them than formerly. But there were too many of these men. Although no aspirant so flagrant as he had taken Kingbolt to be appeared in the field, Bainbridge no longer knew whom not to dread, whom not be jealous of.

One memorable afternoon he was passing through the street in which the Hastings family resided. It abutted at the Avenue upon the massive Egyptian reservoir. The shadows had already begun to climb the opposite row of houses. He walked on the shaded side, but was presently sensible of light being flashed in his eyes from across the way. Looking over, he saw that it was the mischievous little Hastings children who were playing him this trick with a mirror from an upper window. They replied to an admonitory forefinger with laughing shrieks and a pretended hiding of their heads. Ottilie Harvey appeared in some confusion behind them.

“ I have been looking after them for an hour or two,” she explained to Bainbridge, holding parley down to him, “ while my friend Mrs. Hastings has gone after her new nurse-maid. You will not think much of ray discipline.”

At the instant Mrs. Hastings herself rolled up. “ Are you planning an elopement, or is it only a serenade ? ” she asked gayly, alighting from her coupé. “ Well, come in ! I will help you. Perhaps we have a rope-ladder in the house. You must stay to dinner,” she insisted hospitably. “ We need somebody to carve. Mr. Hastings is detained down town, and will not be at home.”

Bainbridge, not unwillingly persuaded, entered the house with her. Ottilie brought the children down to the parlor, and made many apologies for their bad behavior. They were a boy and a girl, charming in them dainty attire ; a little over-boisterous and spoiled, but lovelv in physical aspect to the height of the ideal.

At the dinner-table, Bainbridge, in Mr. Hastings’ place, had quite the air of a man of family. A parrot, kept on a stand at one side of the room, was loosed from his large tin cage, at dessert, and practiced a feat of coming and getting a grape or two and a bit of sugar from his mistress’ hand. He vouchsafed, with his cold air, to come also to Ottilie. She had for this pet, as for most others, an abundant stock of affectionate murmurings and cooings. There was some talk on matters of cookery between her and the hostess; not of the epicure’s sort, but such as good housewives indulge in who have masculine tastes to look after, and feel a due sense of the responsibility. Mysterious formulas of “ two of flour, one of saleratus, and one of sugar,” were mentioned. Ottilie said,

“ I always make ray salad dressings with cream as well as oil.”

Mrs. Hastings was busy, it appeared, with inducting the new nurse-maid into the duties of her office, for a considerable time after dinner, and our two young people were left much alone together. Ottilie sat down at the piano, and played a little, ever and anon turning back to talk.

“ I have been this morning to Harvey’s Terrace,” she said, among other things, “and have heard of a case which distresses me. The elderly school-teacher, Miss Finley, who went away to live with the pretty one, her friend, who was married from there, has come back in a pitiable condition. It seems that she let Mr. Cutter, the young man her friend married, have her money — all her savings of years —to invest, and she cannot get it back. Neither can she get any interest on it. The young man has put it in as a special deposit in some company where he is employed, and probably lost it. At least, it looks so much like it that the poor girl, cannot eat nor sleep. She may lose her place in the schools, unless something is done ; for of course a person so distracted is not fit to teach.”

“ A sad case, indeed,” commented Bainbridge, reflecting quite as much on the good heart and charitable energy of her who recited it to him.

“I want to try to get my uncle to do something. I shall mention it to him the next time he comes on from Washington. The young man was formerly in his store. Perhaps he can force him or his employer, in some way, to restitution.”

The traits of the Hastings infants, in another turn of the conversation, became the starting-point for an exchange of sagacious views on education. Bainbridge alleged that the method of training of most people, his own at any rate, was wholly indefensible.

“ What is wanted,” he said, “ is a scheme of education based upon the scheme of an international exhibition. First, the primary materials of the universe ; then the forces of nature ; then the forces as utilized by machinery; then the products of the machinery; then man in his history, manners and customs, governments, and fine arts. The chimera of study for the mere sake of mental discipline should be discarded; something of real interest should be learned at the same time. The elements of the various branches of human knowledge should be reduced to their lowest terms, and given to the child at a very early age. In infancy one thing is about as easy as another. At that flexible time of life everything is possible. The child should be put in possession of all his physical powers, too. He should make the most of his arms, legs, eyes, and his voice. Indistinctness of speech, for one thing, should not be tolerated ; neither should awkwardness of carriage. With proper management, the eye might be trained so that drawing would be as easy as writing. It should be a mere matter of choice whether a memorandum were made with a picture or a paragraph.”

“ Oh, indeed ? ” said Ottilie.

“ Yes,” the theorist went on ; “ the child should learn geology, botany, and natural history, and get also an idea of the artistic beauty in common forms and lights and shadows, which occur everywhere. With all this, he would have something for his walks abroad. He would be kept from the mischief traditionally waiting for idle hands and vacant minds.”

“ But with all that,” said Ottilie, “you would hurry your infant into an early grave. Good health is of much more importance.”

“ But I say good health,” protested the young man. “ I say physical exercise, the more the better. And only the broad, simple features of the sciences to be given.”

“ That is all very well for Julius Cæsars and Napoleons and Admirable Crichtons, who can do fifty different things at once, but you will kill the child,” insisted Ottilie perversely.

There was a certain penetrating feeling of domesticity in their situation, and the interior where they were. By a little stretch of the imagination, it might have been fancied that it was they who were at home, and Mrs. Hastings their guest. They commented with favor on the small house, abounding with many evidences of a refined taste, and on the enviable lot of the Hastings family generally.

“ But I thought you cared for nothing on so modest a scale,” said Ottilie; “ though an establishment like this is expensive enough, goodness knows. I recollect your scoffing at the idea of anything less for a residence than the Custom House, or Saint Peter’s at Rome.”

But nothing was more to Bainbridge’s taste at this time than notable details of economy, accounts of cheap rents, of persons who made much of very slender incomes, and the like.

“ I suppose persons might do with less if they really loved each other,” he said.

“ If they really loved each other.” said Ottilie, in a dreamy voice, and with half-averted head, perhaps they would think very little of their circumstances. Nothing that they could do, no surrounding of their lives, could seem very tame or common.”

Bainbridge was standing by her at the piano, ostensibly for the purpose of turning over her music. His heart throbbed so, upon this, that he thought she could hear it. “ I must speak. I will,” he said to himself. He walked hastily to a small table near the centre of the room, to collect his ideas. The evening paper, carelessly thrown down, lay upon this table. Mis eye fell upon a line of it as he stood, which projected with a startling distinctness.

There had been a flurry in Wall Street. Devious Air Line had fallen five per cent, He took his hat, and left the house.

The next day the flurry in Wall Street continued. The omen for which he had been waiting declared itself. His pitiful “ margin ” was wiped out, and he was left besides a debtor for the sum he had borrowed.

“ Better luck next time ! ” his broker cried to him, cheerfully, as he hurried away from the conclusion of the transaction with a face expressing deep despair. It was so marked that Judge Chippendale, meeting him, noticed it, and had the story from him, in the first unguarded moments of his agitation. “ Nothing wonderful about that,” said the judge, with but a scant sympathy. “ It is on just such persons as you that Wall Street lives. Better have the experience now, while you are young, than later. It will be money in your pocket, in the end. If you had succeeded, you would only have come to the same result later in life, when you could not have stood it as well.”

So they could afford to talk to him, they who had not lost, they who knew nothing of his hopes, nothing of what the disappointments of his past life had been. He rushed up to his office, to bo alone. Ah, yes, he was young. He set to work to eradicate this idle passion of love from his heart. As a philosopher and man of experience, he knew that it could be done. He knew that its growth is a matter of proximity, habit, repetition of charming impressions, and that it could be diminished, and made to disappear, by abstinence from all the kind of impressions upon which it had been fed. No doubt the requisite period of time could be definitely calculated. He had acquired earlier a very dreary kind of knowledge: namely, that it is possible to forget. He thought he knew already that men may survive, in a certain calloused way, the keenest of agitations, till these pass away, and become as a dream ; and that happiness is not necessarily put down in the programmes of all of us, desperately though we may strive and agonize for it.

He determined to go upon a journey.

As he was shutting up his office, Mr. Fletcher St. Hill, who had moved nearer to his vicinity of late, accosted him.

“ Oh, by the way,” said St. Hill, “ I dare say you can tell me where to find a person by the name of Gammage; a respectable old gentleman, you know, who formerly did some light work for me. If I knew of his whereabouts now,

I think I could give him quite a job of copying.”

“ He is not in the city. He is up in the country somewhere.”

“ I should not mind paying his expenses to town, if you could find him,” said the inquirer, with an eagerness not wholly suppressed.

“ I really cannot help you. I do not know where he is,” responded Bainbridge, coldly.

This was, in fact, true. The person with whom Gammage had last lodged, when among the farmers of Westchester, had brought to Bainbridge a rather favorable account of the old clerk’s doings while there, and reported that he had taken a small agency of some kind, and disappeared from view. He had gone back into the remote interior, this informant said, a considerable remove from the lines of railroad, and had not returned.

Some little time after this, on his return from his journey, our young attorney saw Gammage advertised for in a “ personal,” over the office address, and apparently the initials, of Sprowle Onderdonk. As neither St. Hill nor Onderdonk would be likely to want the broken-down teller of the Antarctic Bank for his own merits, Bainbridge conkl but suspect some purpose to annoy Rodman Harvey by means of him. They were moving, then, in that matter ? He was very sorry, not for Rodman Harvey’s sake, but for Ottilie’s, though trying so hard to forget her. Nothing was to be done, however. He only trusted that Gammage had retired so far as to be permanently beyond their reach.

Bainbridge’s journey was into Central Pennsylvania, where he prosecuted in person some collections confided to his care. On his way back he fell in with Miss Emily Rawson. She was on the same train, and they traveled a considerable part of the day together. This led to a renewal of their intimacy, and a certain renewal of her influence over him. He wanted distraction. As well that she could furnish, he said, as any other ! He was not likely, at any rate, to meet Ottilie there. His steps almost drew him perforce, when he set out on his walks, in the direction of poor Ottilie, now again cruelly neglected, but he resisted the impulse strenuously.

The sympathy of Emily Rawson, although she could have had at present but a dim idea of what she was sympathizing with, was grateful. She had him “ smoke to her ” again, and play his violin in accompaniment to her piano. How they philosophized now, more than ever, on the elusiveness of happiness, the unsatisfactoriness of life ! Why could he not like her ? he asked himself. She was made to be liked. She was womanly, accomplished, tender, restful. Her experience gave her an added charm. He could find no fault in her but that of liking him a little too well.

One evening, at the piano, without any ostensible cause, she let her head fall upon her hands, and wept. Bainbridge tried to soothe her. He asked, solicitously, “ Oh, why ? What does it mean ? ” She replied that it was but a nervous mood, and meant nothing. Weakened, unstrung by a purely physical sympathy with unhappiness akin to his own, he had well-nigh offered himself to her, — though not for one moment forgetting Ottilie, — and added thus a new feature to his complications.

William Henry Bishon.