BETROTHED.

The days came and went with slow, monotonous round in the old brown, weather-beaten house where Keith Kenyon lay ill unto death. Mrs. Lynne scarcely left his bedside. She was a skillful nurse, and in this case she felt more than an ordinary interest, for she had come to look upon Keith as a prospective son-in-law. When he was a child—a little fatherless, motherless babe—he had been placed in care of Mrs. Lynne's sister to be reared. It was after he had grown to be a youth of fifteen that he had been formally adopted by an old man in New Orleans, of whose name Mrs. Lynne and Serena were both ignorant; they had only heard of the mere fact of his adoption. The years had come and gone, and although he wrote occasionally to Mrs. Lynne, and always inclosed a kindly message and sometimes a few written lines to Serena, he had never confided absolutely in them, and they had refrained from asking questions. Year after year he had written that he hoped to find an opportunity to visit his old friends; but heretofore he had found it impossible to keep his promise.

There is a certain place, unmentionable to ears polite, which is popularly believed to be paved with good intentions. Keith Kenyon had evidently laid a block or two of this pavement; at all events, his intentions, though good, had come to naught. And now, just when the mother and daughter had given up all hope of ever seeing him again, he had suddenly appeared at their home. For all these years—the long, long time since their last meeting—years during which Keith Kenyon had not given many thoughts to Serena, and even then only thinking of her as his childish playmate, she had thought of him with a steady and unwavering interest and a fixed intention to some day become his wife.

The news of his adoption by a wealthy old man had not lessened her interest in Keith or her resolution to marry him. He would be rich some day. She was tired of the weary battle with poverty, and longed, with all her mercenary heart and narrow soul, to enjoy the advantages of wealth and position. And as the years went by, her purpose grew with them; she had but one object in life—to marry Keith Kenyon and share his fortune. Yet now that she had met him at last, her love for him had grown to such great proportions, that, even had he not been the rich man's heir in prospective, she would have been willing to marry him had he chosen her to be his wife. But fate had decreed that he should choose otherwise.

After Doctor Lynne's burial, Keith grew rapidly worse, and was soon in a raging fever, with small hopes of recovery.

Doctor Stone, the village physician, called every day to see the patient, and his wrinkled face grew graver and graver as he marked the alarming symptoms.

"I fear for the worst," he said to Mrs. Lynne at last.

And then into that astute lady's heart a swift inspiration rushed like a flood. Her eyes wore a look of resolution, and she shut her thin lips grimly together as she hissed, sharply:

"He shall make Serena his wife before he dies! She shall be his wife; and then she will be able to claim a portion of the fortune. It shall be so!"

She was passing the open door of the sick-room one day, when she was startled by hearing Keith's voice, weak and tremulous, calling her name.

She came to a halt, her face pale with surprise, for he had not spoken for several days, only the wild ravings of delirium.

"What is it, Keith?" she asked, going swiftly to the bedside.

His great dark eyes were lifted to her face with a wistful look in their depths.

"Beatrix!" he faltered, feebly. "I want Beatrix. Where is she?"

A look of fiendish hatred flashed into Mrs. Lynne's pale eyes, and the bony hands clutched each other fiercely.

"Beatrix is not here," she replied.

He started up wildly; then fell back upon the pillows, faint and exhausted.

"Not here?" he repeated, brokenly. "Oh, Mrs. Lynne! don't tell me that she is gone! Why, she could not go all alone; and he—he sent me here for her."

"Sent you for her? Who sent you?" demanded Mrs. Lynne sharply.

"Uncle Bernard. That was my business here in this place. He said that Beatrix was to come home to New Orleans to him, and so he sent me to escort her there. Tell me—where is she? Tell her to come to me. I want Beatrix—I want Beatrix!"

"You will never get her!"

Mrs. Lynne's breath was coming thick and fast; her pale eyes scintillated; her hands were clinching each other convulsively.

"You will never see Beatrix Dane again," she panted. "Shall I tell you why? She has left us forever—gone away to be married. She is married by this time. She went away, leaving you lying here upon this sick-bed. In vain I begged her to remain for a time with poor Serena and myself and help nurse you. But she only laughed and said that she could not alter her plans and postpone her marriage for the sake of a stranger. I tell you she is gone—gone forever, Keith; and she is married to a wealthy man, who is able to take good care of her. Put her out of your mind at once; she is not worthy a kindly thought from you."

But he only moaned over and over again, weakly, brokenly: "I want Beatrix—Beatrix, my beautiful Beatrix!" until Mrs. Lynne felt that she should go mad.

He had relapsed into delirium again, and the worst was before them.

Days went by; and it was a hand-to-hand fight with death. And away in that distant Southern city, old Bernard Dane waited impatiently for his recovery and return, the only news received by him being the telegrams which Mrs. Lynne sent him almost daily. Their import was always the same: "No better." But the day came at last when, weak and feeble as a newborn babe, Keith Kenyon struggled back to existence once more; and the first person upon whom his eyes rested was Serena Lynne. Constant watching and the cares of the sick-room had not improved her appearance; she was more sallow, and gaunt, and unlovely than ever. His eyes wandered slowly over the grim figure and smileless face, and he strove to speak.

"Mrs. Lynne," he said, softly, firmly, believing that the woman seated at his bedside was the mother instead of the daughter.

Serena started, and an ugly frown disfigured her face.

"Mrs. Lynne is not here," she returned, curtly. "It is I—Serena. You do not see well, Keith!"

A slow smile stole over his lips; he held out one feeble hand.

"I—I beg your pardon, I am sure," he said, the smile lighting up his wasted face like a ray of sunlight. "I am so grateful to you, Serena," he said, softly. "Under God, I owe my life to you."

She fell upon her knees at the bedside.

"I would not have cared to live if you had died," she sobbed, bitterly. "Oh, Keith—Keith! You are the very light of my life! Say that you care a little—even a little—for me!"

His face grew pallid, and an awful faintness crept over him.

"Of course I care, Serena," he faltered, brokenly. "You are like a—a sister to me."

"But I do not want to be your sister," she cried, boldly. "Let me be something nearer and dearer, Keith. Let me—"

She stopped short with a cry of horror. He had fainted dead away, and lay back upon the pillow as white as a corpse. With a wild shriek, and crying out madly that he was dead, she summoned her mother, and together they finally resuscitated him. But he was as weak and feeble as a living man could be. Should there be a second relapse, no human power could save him. When at last he had fallen into a refreshing slumber, Mrs. Lynne beckoned Serena out into the hall.

"If you have any hope of ever becoming Mrs. Keith Kenyon," she began in a dry, hard tone, "I advise you to secure him as soon as possible. Marry him as he lies upon that sick-bed, or, if that be inexpedient, make him enter into an engagement to marry you. I know Keith Kenyon. An engagement would be as sacred in his eyes as marriage itself. Do your best, Serena. If you fail to grasp this opportunity, you are lost. How can you ever content yourself to drag out your days here in this dead-and-alive place, with only a pittance to live on, with no pleasures, no society—nothing in the whole world but an endless and wearisome round of distasteful duties, no happiness, no love. And you do love Keith Kenyon, do you not, Serena?"

"Love him! Oh, my God!"

She sank into a seat and covered her face with her trembling hands, while a torrent of sobs shook her angular frame.

"Love him!"

Her hands fell helplessly to her side, and the tear-stained face and eyes swollen and dim with weeping met her mother's sympathetic gaze.

Mrs. Lynne had little sympathy with such weakness; but Serena was her daughter—her only child—and the mother's heart, jealous over her offspring, was sore for her daughter's sorrow.

"Love him!" repeated Serena, wildly. "I only live for him! I could not exist without him! Believe me, mother, this is no exaggeration. If I could not see Keith Kenyon and be with him sometimes I should die."

Her mother's thin lip curled contemptuously; but a glance into the tear-wet eyes and face full of keenest suffering, and the mother-love and mother-pity—which are almost divine—were in the ascendent once more.

"Bah! Love is only madness. But since you do love him in this mad way, Serena, you shall marry him!"

The words were low and fervent. It was as though that plain-faced, harsh-voiced woman had been suddenly and mysteriously endowed with the gift of prophecy. Would the prophecy come to pass? Time alone would tell.

The days went slowly by, and Keith grew daily stronger and better. One evening, when Serena was sitting beside the sofa, to which he had at last been promoted, he heard the sound of a stifled sob, and turning his head, found that she was weeping bitterly. He was still very weak and feeble, and the sight of her emotion fairly unmanned him.

"Serena! Serena!" he cried, frantically, "for Heaven's sake, tell me what is the matter! Are you in trouble?"

She lifted her pale face and tear-wet eyes.

"I am in the worst trouble that could happen to a woman," she faltered. "It sounds shameful and unwomanly to confess it to you, Keith; but—but I have come to dread the time like death when you will go away from us—go away from me forever, and leave me here to a dreadful fate. My heart is breaking with its sorrow; for I have loved you all my life, and I love you now so dearly that the thought of not seeing you gives me the greatest pain that I have ever known. I did not know that a human heart could suffer so and yet beat on. Keith, must I give you up? Will you not try to love me a little, and some time in the future let me be your wife? I would be such a good wife, Keith—such a good, kind, devoted wife! I would be willing to lay my life down to give you a moment's happiness. I would live for you, die for you, Keith! Believe me, I would make you happy, for I would sacrifice my every hope here and hereafter to that end, and you would never regret marrying me."

His eyes, dark and dilated, were fixed upon her eager face with a slow wonder in their dusky depths. He had never thought of such a thing as Serena Lynne lavishing such a wealth of affection upon himself. It did not make his heart thrill with ecstacy to think of it now.

"I—I do not understand you," he faltered, brokenly, manlike, trying to gain time by evasion. "I—I—It is quite impossible, Serena—quite!"

Her eyes flashed with an ominous light.

"If you are thinking of Beatrix Dane," she cried, angrily, "you are only wasting your time and committing a sin. She is another man's wife, Keith Kenyon. You can never be anything to her."

And Serena never dreamed that the "Uncle Bernard" with whom Keith Kenyon lived—his uncle only by adoption—was the Bernard Dane who had sent for Beatrix to come to his home.

Mrs. Lynne and her daughter both had placed no credence in Keith's assertion that he had been sent thither to escort the girl to her new home. They looked upon that as a vagary of delirium.

Serena urged her own cause until the poor young man's brain, weakened by his long and dangerous illness, grew too confused to grasp the situation or to realize what he was doing; and the day came at length when Keith Kenyon, worn out and weakened in mind and body until he was as feeble in judgment as a child, gave an unwilling consent to make Serena Lynne his wife.

That very day a telegram arrived for him from New Orleans, short and concise, as telegrams usually are.

It bade him return home at once, if he was able to travel; for his "uncle" had been stricken down, and lay at the point of death.