Late summer on the Norfolk Broads! And where on earth can the lover of boats find a more charming resort? How alluring are the mysterious entrances to these Broads! where a boat seems to make an insane dive into a hopeless cul de sac of a ditch, and then suddenly emerges on a wide expanse of water, teeming with pike and bream and eels; and fringed with a border of plashy ground, full of reeds and willows and flowering flags; and alive with water fowl.

Now close to the Manor of Hyde, the country home of Earl Hyde in Norfolk, there was one of these delightful Broads—flat as a billiard table, and hidden by the tall reeds which bordered it. But Annie Hyde lying at the open window of her room in the Manor House could see its silvery waters, and the black-sailed wherry floating on them, and the young man sitting at the prow fishing, and idling, among the lilies and languors of these hot summer days. Her hands were folded, her lips moved, she was asking of some intelligence among the angels, grace and favour for one who was dearer to her than her own life or happiness.

An aged man sat silently by her, a man of noble beauty, whose soul was in every part of his body, expressive and impressive—a fiery particle not always at its window, but when there, infecting and going through observers, whether they would or not. He was dressed altogether in black, and had fine small hands, a thin austere face and clean sensitive lips which seemed to say, “He hath made us kings and priests”—a man of celestial race, valuing things at their eternal, not at their temporal worth.

There had been silence for some time between them, and he did not appear disposed to break it; but Annie longed for him to do so, because she had a mystical appetite for sacred things, and was never so happy and so much at rest as when he was talking to her of them. For she loved God, and had been led to the love of God by a kind of thirst for God.

“Dear father,” she said finally, “I have been thinking of the past years, in which you have taught me so much.”

“It is better to look forward, Annie,” he answered. “The traveller to Eternity must not continually turn back to count his steps; for if God be leading him, no matter how dangerous or lonely the road, ‘He will pluck thy feet out of the net.’”

“Even in the valley of death?”

“‘BE NOT AFRAID! NOTHING OF THEE WILL DIE!’ Take these sweet compassionate words of Jesus, as He wept by the dying bed of Joseph, His father, into thy heart. Blessed are the homesick, Annie! for they shall get home.”

“All my life I have loved God, and His love has been over me.”

“Date not God’s love from thy nativity; look far, far back of it—to the everlasting love.”

“After death, I SHALL KNOW.”

“Death!” he repeated, “Death that deceitful word. What is it? A dream, that wakes us at the end of the night. This is the great saying that men forget—Death is Life!”

“Yet life ceases.”

“It does not, Annie. Death, is like the setting of the sun. The sun never sets; life never ceases. Certain phenomena occur which deceive us, because human vision is so feeble—we think the sun sets, and it never ceases shining; we think our friends die, and they never cease living.”

As he spoke these words Mary Damer entered, and she laid her hand on his shoulder and said, “My dear Doctor Roslyn, after death what then? we are not all good—what then?”

He looked at her wistfully and answered, “I will give you one thought, Mary, to ponder—the blessedness of heaven, is it not an eternity older than the misery of hell? Let your soul fearlessly follow where this fact leads it; for there is no limit to God’s mercy. Do you think it is His way to worry a wandering sheep eternally? Jesus Christ thought better of His father. He told us that the Great Shepherd of souls followed such sheep into the wilderness, and brought them home in His arms, or on His shoulder, and then called on the angels of heaven to rejoice because they were found. Find out what that parable means, Mary. He whose name is ‘Love’ can teach you.”

Then he rose and went away, and Mary sat down in his place, and Annie gradually came back to the material plane of everyday life and duty. Indeed Mary brought this element in a very decided form with her; for she had a letter in her hand from an old lover, and she was much excited by its advent, and eager to discuss the particulars with Annie.

“It is from Captain Seabright, who is now in Pondicherry,” she explained. “He loves me, Annie. He loved me long ago, and went to India to make money; now he says he has enough and to spare; and he asks me if I have forgotten.”

“There is Mr. Van Ariens to consider. You have promised to marry him, Mary. It is not hard to find the right way on this road, I think.”

“Of course. I would scorn to do a dishonourable or unhandsome thing. But is it not very strange Willie Seabright should write to me at this time? How contradictory life is! I had also a letter from Mr. Van Ariens by the same mail, and I shall answer them both this evening.” Then she laughed a little, and added, “I must take care and not make the mistake an American girl made, under much the same circumstances.”

“What was it?” inquired Annie languidly.

“She misdirected her letters and thus sent ‘No’ to the man whom of all others, she wished to marry.”

As Mary spoke a soft brightness seemed to pervade Annie’s brain cells, and she could hardly restrain the exclamation of sudden enlightenment that rose to her lips. She raised herself slightly, and in so doing, her eyes fell upon the tall figure of Hyde standing clearly out in the intense, white sunshine of the Broads; and perhaps her soul may have whispered to his soul, for he turned his face to the house, and lifted the little red fishing cap from his head. The action stimulated to the utmost Annie’s intuitive powers.

“Mary,” she said, “what a strange incident! Did you know the girl?”

“I saw her once in Philadelphia. Mr. Van Ariens told me about her. She is the friend of his sister the Marquise de Tounnerre.”

“How did Mr. Van Ariens know of such an event?”

“I suppose the Marquise told him of it.”

“I am interested. Is she pretty? Who, and what is her father? Did she lose her lover through the mistake?”

“You are more interested in this American girl, than in me. I think you might ask a little concerning my love affair with Captain Seabright.”

“I always ask you about Mr. Van Ariens. A girl cannot have two lovers,”

“But if one is gone away?”

“Then he has gone away; and that is the end of him. He must not trouble the one who has come to stay, eh, Mary?”

“You are right, Annie. But one’s first lover has always a charm above reason; and Willie Seabright was once very dear to me.”

“I am sorry for that unfortunate American girl.”

“So am I. She is a great beauty. Her name is Cornelia Moran; and her father is a famous physician in New York.”

“And this beauty had two lovers?”

“Yes; an Englishman of noble birth; and an American. They both loved her, and she loved the Englishman. They must have both asked her hand on the same day, and she must have answered both letters in the same hour; and the letter she intended for the man she loved, went to the man she did not love. Presumably, the man she loved got the refusal she intended for the other, for he never sought her society again; and Mr. Van Ariens told me she nearly died in consequence. I know not as to this part of the story; when I saw her in Philadelphia, she had no more of fragility than gave delicacy to all her charms.”

“And what became of the two lovers, Mary?”

“The Englishman went back to England; and the American found another girl more kind to him.”

“I wonder what made Mr. Van Ariens tell you this story?”

“He talked much of his sister, and this young lady was her chief friend and confidante.”

“When did it happen?”

“A few days after his sister’s marriage.”

“Then the Marquise could not know of it; and so she could not have told her brother. However in the world could he have found out the mistake? Do you think the girl herself found it out?”

“That is inconceivable,” answered Mary. “She would have written to her lover and explained the affair.”

“Certainly. It is a very singular incident. I want to think it over—how—did—Mr. Van Ariens—find—it—out, I wonder!”

“Perhaps the rejected lover confided in him.”

“But why did not the rejected lover send the letter he received—and which he must have known he had no right to retain—to Miss Moran, or to the Englishman for whom it was intended? A man who could keep a letter like that, must have some envious sneaking devil in his body. A bad man, Mary, a bad man—the air must be unclean in any room he comes into.”

“Why Annie! How angry you are. Let us drop the subject. I really do want to tell you something about Willie Seabright.”

“What did Mr. Van Ariens say about the matter? What did he think? Why did he tell you?”

“We were talking of the Marquise. The story came up quite naturally. I think Mr. Van Ariens felt very sorry for Miss Moran. Of course he did. Will you listen to Captain Seabright’s letter? I had no idea it could affect me so much.”

“But you loved him once?”

“Very dearly.”

“Well then, Mary, I think no one has a double in love or friendship. If the loved one dies, or goes away, his place remains empty forever. We have lost feelings that he, and he only, could call up.”

At this point in the conversation Hyde entered, brown and wind-blown, the scent of the sedgy water and the flowery woods about him.

“Your servant, ladies,” he said gayly, “I have bream enough for a dozen families, Mary; and I have sent a string to the rectory.”

“Poor little fish!” answered Annie. “They could not cry out, or plead with you, or beg for their lives, and because they were dumb and opened not their mouths, they were wounded and strangled to death.”

“Don’t say such things, Annie. How can I enjoy my sport if you do?”

“I don’t think you ought to enjoy sport which is murder. You have your wherry to sail, is not that sport enough? I have heard you say nothing that floats on fresh water, can beat a Norfolk wherry.”

“I vow it is the truth. With her fine lines and strong sails she can lie closer to the wind than any other craft. She is safe, and fast, and handy to manage. Three feet of water will do her, though she be sixty tons burden; and I will sail her where nothing but a row boat can follow me.”

“Is not that sport enough?”

“I must have something to get. I would have brought you armfuls of flowers, but you do not like me to cut them.”

“I like my flowers alive, George. You must be dull indeed if you make no difference between the scent of growing flowers, and cut ones. Tomorrow Mary is going to Ranforth, you must go with her, and you may bring me some peaches from the Hall, if you please to do so.”

Then Hyde and Mary had a game of battledore, and she watched them tossing the gayly painted corks, until amid their light laughter and merry talk she fell asleep. And when she awakened it was sunset, and there was no one in her room but her maid. She had slept long, but in spite of its refreshment, she had a sense of something uneasy. Then she recalled the story Mary Damer had told her, and because she comprehended the truth, she was instantly at rest. The whole secret was clear as daylight to her. She knew now every turn of an event so full of sorrow. She was positive Rem Van Ariens was himself the thief of her cousin’s love and happiness, and the bringer of grief—almost of death—to Cornelia. All the facts she did not have, but facts are little; intuition is everything. She said to herself, “I shall not be long here, and before I go away, I must put right love’s wrong.”

She considered then what she ought to do, and gradually the plan that pleased her best, grew distinctly just, and even-handed in her mind. She would write to Cornelia. Her word would be indisputable. Then she would dismiss the subject from her conversations with Mary, until Cornelia’s answer arrived; nor until that time would she say a word of her suspicions to Hyde. In pursuance of these resolutions the following letter to Cornelia left Hyde Manor for New York the next mail:

To Miss CORNELIA MORAN:

When she had signed her name she was full of content, her face was transfigured with the joy she foresaw for others, and she thought not of her own gain, though it was great—even the riches of that divine self-culture, that comes only through self-sacrifice. She calculated her letter would reach Cornelia about the end of September, and she thought how pleasantly the hope it brought, would brighten her life. And without permitting Hyde to suspect any change in his love affair, she very often led the conversation to Cornelia, and to the circumstances of her life. Hyde was always willing to talk on this subject, and thus she learned so much about Arenta, and Madame Jacobus, and Rem Van Ariens, that the people became her familiars. Arenta particularly interested her, and she spoke and thought continually of the gay little Dutch girl among the human tigers of Paris. And the thought of her ended ever in a silent prayer for her safety. “I must ask some strong angel to go and help her,” she said to Hyde, “a city full of blood, must be a city full of evil spirits, and she will need the wings of angels round her—like a pavilion—so when she comes into my mind I say ‘angels of deliverance go to her.’ And I think she must be in a great strait now, or I should not feel so constrained to pray for her.”

“And you believe such prayer avails for deliverance, Annie?”

“I am sure it avails. When we invoke earnestly and sincerely the help of any higher and stronger intelligence than ourselves, the angels are with us. They come when the heart calls them; for they are appointed to be ministers unto those who shall inherit eternal life.” And Hyde listened silently, yet the words fell into his deepest consciousness, and after many years brought him strength and consolation when he needed it. Thus it is, that a good woman is a priestess standing by the altar of the heart, thus it is, that the very noblest education any man ever gets is what some woman—mother, wife, sister, friend—gives him.

Certainly the letter sent to Cornelia sped on its way all the more rapidly and joyfully for the good wishes and unselfish prayers accompanying it. The very ship might have known it was the bearer of good tidings; for if there had been one of the mighty angels whose charge is on the great deep at the helm of the Good Intent she could not have gone more swiftly and surely to her haven. One morning, nearly a week in advance of Annie’s calculation, the wonderful letter was put into Cornelia’s hand. She was passing through the hall on her way to her room, when Balthazar brought in the mail, and she took the little white messenger without any feeling but one of curiosity concerning it. The handwriting was strange, it was an English letter, what could it mean?

Let any one who has loved and been parted from the beloved by some misunderstanding, try to realize what it meant to Cornelia. She read it through in an indescribable hurry and emotion, and then in the most natural and womanly way, began to cry. No one could have loved her the less for that sincere overflow of emotions she could not separate or define, and which indeed she never tried to understand. It was only one wonderful thought she could entertain—IT WAS NOT THE FAULT OF JORIS. This was the assurance that turned her joyful tears into gladder smiles, and that made her step light as a bird on the wing, as she ran down the stairs to find her mother; for her happiness was not perfect till she shared it with the heart that had borne her sorrow, and carried her grief through many weary months, with her.

Oh, how glad were these two women! They were almost too glad to speak. Sitting still was impossible to Cornelia, but as she stepped swiftly to-and-fro across the parlour floor, she stopped frequently at her mother’s chair and kissed her. She kissed Annie’s letter just as frequently. It was such a gracious, noble letter. It was such a delight to know that friendship so unselfish was waiting for her. It was altogether such a marvellous thing that had come to her, that she could not behave as a superior woman ought to have done. But then she was not a superior woman, she was only lovable and loving, and therefore restless and inconsequent.

In the first hours of her recovered gladness she did not even remember Rem’s great fault, nor yet her own carelessness. These things were only accidentals, not worthy to be taken into account while the great sweet hope that had come to her, flooded like a springtide every nook and corner of her heart. In such a mood how easy it was to answer Annie’s letter. She recollected every word she had written to Hyde that fateful day, and she wrote them again with a tenfold joy. She told Annie every particular, and she forgot to say a word of reproach concerning the dishonourable retention of her letter by Rem. “It is altogether my own fault,” she confessed.

Even when this letter was on its way to Annie she was under such excitement that her whole body appeared to think and to feel; her beautiful hair had an unusual freedom, as if some happy wind blew it into exquisite unrestraint; her eyes shone like stars; her garments fluttered; her steps were like dancing; and every now and then, a bar or two of love music warbled in her throat. And oh with what joy the mother watched the return of happiness to her dear child! With her own milk she had fed her. In her own bosom she had carried and tended her. Night and day for nearly twenty years, like a bird, she had feverishly, prayfully, tenderly hovered over her; so there was great joy in the Doctor’s home and though he would say little, his heart grew lighter in his wife’s and daughter’s cheerfulness; for the women in any house make the moral and mental atmosphere of that house just as decidedly, as the sunshine or rain affect the natural atmosphere outside of it.

Now it is very noticeable that when unusual events begin to happen in any life, there is a succession of such events, and not unfrequently they arrive in similar ways. At any rate about ten days after the receipt of Annie’s letter, Cornelia was almost equally amazed by the receipt of another letter. It came one day about noon, and a slave of Van Ariens brought it—a piece of paper twisted carelessly but containing these few pregnant words:

Cornelia, dear, come to me. Bring me something to wear. I have just arrived, saved by the skin of my teeth, and I have not a decent garment of any kind to put on. ARENTA.

A thunderbolt from a clear sky could hardly have caused such surprise, but Cornelia did not wait to talk about the wonder. She loaded a maid with clothing of every description, and ran across the street to her friend. Arerita saw her coming, and met her with a cry of joy, and as Van Ariens was sick and trembling with the sight of his daughter, and the tale of her sufferings, Cornelia persuaded him to go to sleep, and leave Arenta to her care. Poor Arenta, she was ill with the privations she had suffered, she was half-starved, and nearly without clothing, but she did not complain much until she had been fed, and bathed, and “dressed” as she said “like a New York woman ought to be.”

“You know what trunks and trunks full of beautiful things I took away with me, Cornelia,” she complained; “Well I have not a rag left. I have nothing left at all.”

“Your husband, Arenta?”

“He was guillotined.”

“Oh, my dear Arenta!”

“Guillotined. I told him to be quiet. I begged him to go over to Marat, but no! his nobility obliged him to stand by his order and his king. So for them, he died. Poor Athanase! He expected me to follow him, but I could not make up my mind to the knife. Oh how terrible it was!” Then she began to sob bitterly, and Cornelia let her talk of her sufferings until she fell into a sleep—a sleep easy to see, still haunted by the furies and terrors through which she had passed.

For a week Cornelia remained with her friend, and Madame Jacobus joined them as often as possible, and gradually the half-distraught woman recovered something of her natural spirits and resolution. In this week she talked out all her frightful experiences in the great prison of La Force, and was completely overwhelmed at their remembrance. But the trouble which has been removed, soon grows far off; and Arenta quickly took her place in her home, and resumed her old life. Of course with many differences. She could not be the same Arenta, she had outlived many of her illusions. She took but little interest for a while in the life around her; her thoughts and conversation were still in Paris, and this was evident from the fact, that during the whole week of Cornelia’s stay with her, she never once named Cornelia’s love, or life, or prospects. Rem she did talk about, but chiefly because he was going to marry an English girl, an intention she angrily deplored.

“I am sure,” she said, “Rem might have learned a lesson from my sad fortune. What does he want to marry a foreigner for? He ought to have prevented me from doing so, instead of following my foolish example.”

“No one could have prevented you, Arenta. You would not listen even to your father.”

“Oh indeed, it was my fate. We must all submit to fate. Why did you refuse Rem?”

“He was not my fate, Arenta.”

“Well then, neither is George Hyde your fate. Aunt Jacobus has told me some things about him. She says he is to marry his cousin. You ought to marry Rem.”

As she said these words Van Ariens, accompanied by Joris Van Heemskirk entered the room, and Cornelia was glad to escape. She knew that Arenta would again relate all her experiences, and she disliked to mingle them with her renewed dreams of love and her lover.

“She will talk and talk,” said Cornelia to her mother, “and then there will be tea and chocolate and more talk, and I have heard all I wish to hear about that dreadful city, and the demons who walk in blood.”

“Arenta has made a great sensation, Cornelia,” answered Mrs. Moran. “She has received half the town. Gertrude Kippon stole quietly home and has hardly been seen, or heard tell of.”

“But mother, Arenta has far more genius than Gertrude. She has made of her misfortunes a great drama, and wherever you go, it is of the Marquise de Tounnerre people are talking. Senator Van Heemskirk came in with her father as I left.”

“I hope he treated you more civilly than madame did.”

“He was delightful. I courtesied to him, and he lifted my hand and kissed it, and said, ‘I grew lovelier every day,’ and I kissed his cheek and said, ‘I wished always to be lovely in his sight.’ Then I came home, because I would not, just yet, speak of George to him.”

“Arenta would hardly have given you any opportunity. I wonder at what hour she will release Joris Van Heemskirk!”

“It will be later than it ought to be.”

Indeed it was so late that Madame Van Heemskirk had locked up her house for the night, and was troubled at her husband’s delay—even a little cross:

“An old man like you, Joris,” she said in a tone of vexation—“sitting till nine o’clock with the last runaway from Paris; a cold you have already, and all for a girl that threw her senses behind her, to marry a Frenchman.”

“Much she has suffered, Lysbet.”

“Much she ought to suffer. And I believe not in Arenta Van Ariens’ suffering. In some way, by hook or crook, by word or deed, she would out of any trouble work her way.”

“I will sit a little by the fire, Lysbet. Sit down by me. My mind is full of her story.”

“That is it. And sleep you will not, and tomorrow sick you will be; and anxious and tired I shall be; and who for? The Marquise de Tounnerre! Well then, Joris, in thy old age it is late for thee to bow down to the Marquise de Tounnerre!”

“To God Almighty only I bow down, Lysbet, and as for titles what care of them has Jons Van Heemskirk? Think you, when God calls me He will say ‘Councillor’ or ‘Senator’? No, He will say ‘Jons Van Heemskirk!’ and I shall answer to that name. But you know well, Lysbet, this bloody trial of liberty in Paris touches all the world beside.”

“Forgive me, Joris! A shame it is to be cross with thee, nor am I cross even with that poor Arenta. A child, a very child she is.”

“But bitter fears and suffering she has come through. Her husband was guillotined last May, and from her home she was taken—no time to write to a friend—no time to save anything she had, except a string of pearls, which round her waist for many weeks, she had worn. From prison to prison she was sent, until at last she was ordered before the Revolutionary Tribunal. From that tribunal to the guillotine is only a step, and she would surely have taken it but for—”

“Minister Morris?”

“No. Twenty miles outside the city, Minister Morris now lives; and no time was there to send him word of her strait. Hungry and sick upon the floor of her prison she was sitting, when her name was called, for bead after bead of her pearl necklace had gone to her jailor, only for a little black bread and a cup of milk twice a day; and this morning for twenty-four hours she had been without food or milk.”

“This is what she did, and blame her I will not. When in that terrible iron armchair before those bloody judges, she says she forgot then to be afraid. She looked at Fouquier-Tinville the public prosecutor, and at the fifteen jurymen, and flinched not. She had no dress to help her beauty, but she declares she never felt more beautiful, and well I can believe it. They asked her name, and my Lysbet, think of this child’s answer! ‘I am called Arenta JEFFERSON de Tounnerre,’ she said; and at the name of ‘Jefferson’ there were exclamations, and one of the jurymen rose to his feet and asked excitedly, ‘What is it you mean? Jefferson! The great Jefferson! The great Thomas Jefferson! The great American who loves France and Liberty?’ ‘It is the same,’ she answered, and then she sat silent, asking no favour, so wise was she, and Fouquier-Tinville looked at the President and said—‘among my friends I count this great American!’ and a juryman added, ‘when I was very poor and hungry he fed and helped me,’ and he bowed to Arenta as he spoke. And after that Fouquier-Tinville asked who would certify to her claim, and she answered boldly, ‘Minister Morris.’ When questioned further she answered, ‘I adore Liberty, I believe in France, I married a Frenchman, for Thomas Jefferson told me I was coming to a great nation and might trust both its government and its generosity.’ They asked her then if she had been used kindly in prison, and she told them her jailor had been to her very unkind, and that he had taken from her the pearl necklace which was her wedding gift, and if you can believe Arenta, they were all extremely polite to her, and gave her at once the papers which permitted her to leave France. The next day a little money she got from Minister Morris, but a very hard passage she had home. And listen now, her jailor was guillotined before she left, and she declares it was the necklace—very unfortunate beads they were, and Madame Jacobus said when she heard of their fate, ‘let them go! With blood and death they came, it is fit they should go as they came!’ Arenta thinks as soon as Fouquier-Tinville heard of them, he doomed the man, for she saw in his eyes that he meant to have them for himself. Well, then, she is also sure that they will take Fouquier-Tinville to the guillotine.”

“After all, it was a lie she told, Joris.”

“That is so, but I think her life was worth a few words. And Thomas Jefferson says she was ten thousand times welcome to the protection his name gave her. I thank my God I have never had such temptation. I will say one thing though, Lysbet, that if coming home some night, a thief should say to me ‘your money I must have’ and if in my pocket I had some false money, as well as true money, the false money I would give the thief and think no shame to do it. Overly righteous we must not be, Lysbet.”

“I am astonished also. I thought Arenta would cry out and that only.”

“What a man or a woman will do and suffer, and how they will do and suffer, no one knows till comes some great occasion. When the water is ice, who could believe that it would boil, unless they had seen ice become boiling water? All the human heart wants, is the chance.”

“As men and women have in Paris to live, I wonder me, that they can wish to live at all! Welcome to them must be death.”

“So wrong are you, Lysbet. Trouble and hardship make us love life. A zest they give to it. It is when we have too much money, too much good food and wine, too much pleasure of all kinds, that we grow melancholy and sad, and say all is vanity and vexation. You may see that it is always so, if you look in the Holy Scriptures. It was not from the Jews in exile and captivity, but from the Jews of Solomon’s glory came the only dissatisfied, hopeless words in the Bible. Yes, indeed! it is the souls that have too much, who cry out vanity, vanity, all is vanity! For myself, I like not the petty prudencies of Solomon. There is better reading in Isaiah, and in the Psalms, and in the blessed Gospels.”

“To-morrow, Joris, I will go and see Arenta. She is fair, and she knows it; witty, and she knows it; of good courage, and she knows it; the fashion, and she knows it; and when she speaks, she speaks oracles that one must believe, even though one does not understand them. To Aurelia Van Zandt she said, my heart will ache forever for my beloved Athanase, and Aurelia says, that her old lover Willie Nicholls is at her feet sitting all the day long—yet for all these things, she is a brave woman and I will go and see her.”

“Willie Nicholls is a good young man, and he is rich also; but of him I saw nothing at all. Cornelia Moran was there and no flower of Paradise is so sweet, so fair!”

“A very proud girl! I am glad she said ‘no’ to my Joris.”

“Come, my Lysbet, we will now pray and sleep. There is so much NOT to say.”