Summer came on apace. The Cooking Club took a vacation, or rather turned into a gardening club, and studied the sensible part of botany and floriculture. People began to look at the waste land lying about, with envious eyes. Here and there some one started a garden, or indulged in a flock of chickens. The Webbers traded their snug cottage for a place on the outskirts of the town, with two acres of ground, which they improved rapidly. Men who had sold farms, and spent the money in vain business speculations, looked back regretfully, and in some instances hired where they had been proprietors. There was no money to be realized in farming, but if one could even make a living! No one was making money but those lucky fellows at Hope Mills. Of course that was a bubble, and would burst presently; but doubtless it was good while it lasted.

Miss Barry, Sylvie, and Mrs. Darcy went away to a pleasant, quiet seaside resort. Miss Barry appeared to be ailing a little. Mrs. Minor so far relented as to invite her mother and Irene to spend two months with her at Long Branch. Mrs. Lawrence consented, Irene refused flatly. "She had no money to spend for dress, and she would accept no one's charity," she declared in her haughty way. But she could not stay in the house forever: so she took long walks over wild country ways, angry with the world, herself, and every thing. A fierce-eyed, beautiful girl, clinging desperately to her isolation, and yet eating out her very heart in loneliness.

The time ran on rapidly. September came around. Hope Mills did not make as good a report this time. Business had been very dull. Sales were next to nothing. People did not need much in warm weather, and orders were very light. However, several other branches of industry in Yerbury improved a trifle. Railroads, stocks, and real estate were fast becoming dead speculations: so men ventured to put their money warily into business again.

But the bottom had not been reached. Early in October there was a tremendous failure of an old and well-known firm of woollen-manufacturers. The bankrupt stock was sold at auction. Then another, and various smaller houses. The market was suddenly flooded. No one could sell. No one seemed to need new garments of any kind. Men wore their old clothes, and shrugged their shoulders in a sort of contemptuous content, as if they had suddenly found a great charm in a half-worn, shabby overcoat. Robert Winston went hither and yon. Not a piece or a yard would any one take.

There was a great deal of discussion in various daily journals. The business had been overdone again. Foreign markets must be found. We could not compete with foreign manufacturers. Our wool was inferior, our looms were inferior, our men knew so little, and demanded such high wages. Then we never could do any thing under the present wretched tariff and the skinning system of taxation. It took all a man could make. Another sapient statesman declared nothing could be done without more money. The contraction had been so great that not a man could do business. Then came a long list of figures to prove what a very little money was left in the country. Newspaper war raged, first on this side, then on that. If we did this, we would surely be ruined: if we did not, then ruin was inevitable.

Jack used to try for some light, no matter how faint. It seemed to him, if the great men at the helm of the national ship would set to work vigorously to widen and strengthen the commerce of the nation, instead of discussing such frivolous issues, prosperity might dawn once more. He went over his political economists again, and realized sadly that men had always disputed these points, and that each writer or prophet was sure his was the only creed that would ever save the world, while by following any other they would surely go to ruin.

Winston and he took counsel together: then they called in Cameron, who looked blue enough.

"Any ordinary factory would shut down for the winter," said Winston ruefully; "but that would be to confess our scheme a failure. We are piling up goods—but for what—a grand auction-sale by and by? And the men have worked so cheerfully—no, we can't give up."

"Giving up is out of the question at present," Jack answered solemnly, as if he was passing his word at the bar. "Our balance at the bank has been expended, and we have some notes out that must be cared for in a month's time. Wages are falling, and it seems to look now as if we were coming back to the era of cheap living. The bargain was the ruling rate of wages, you know. I think they will have to come down."

"I will not give up beaten," declared Winston. "I'll have one more try. Keep up heart, shipmate."

With that Winston started West again. He talked, he plead, he offered for the mere cost of production,—just to get the money back would be something. The coal-venture of this winter had been much larger, though coal was declining, and the profit somewhat less. Everybody pared the margin to the mere skin. Winston had a little luck, however. Two sales of some note were effected, and a barter, that only a man with a shrewd eye for bargains, and a glib tongue, could have managed. Flour, apples, and potatoes were the stock this time. The workmen took them gladly, at a little less than store prices. They knew how full the wareroom kept all the time.

The first of January, wages were lowered. There was a little grumbling among some of the men, but the women took it in wiser part. The half-loaf was much better than no bread at all. They remembered the dismal year when there had been no employment, and stinted food purchased on credit. One wouldn't starve with flour and potatoes, nor freeze with a full coal-bin.

Hope Mills had exhausted every source,—had even paid a horrible discount, being hard run,—when Darcy wrote to Miss McLeod a true statement of affairs. If they could hold out until spring, times might be better. They were economizing as they never had before: yet the time had come when disaster really stared them in the face, unless they could find a true friend.

Miss Barry had generously offered him her store and her credit. Though there had been a time when she withheld Sylvie, and fancied Jack Darcy not quite the equal of her pretty niece, that time had long gone by. She knew now his genuine worth,—she had tested his integrity. Of course Sylvie would drift that way; and so, by many delicate turns, she showed Jack that she could trust him with any of her treasures.

"You are so good," said the honest fellow, with tears in his eyes,—for he was touched beyond measure. "If I can't get through I will gladly accept, unless the prospect is so bad that it would be sure to jeopardize any one's money. But I hope it will not come to that."

How breathlessly he waited for Miss McLeod's answer! The morning's mail did not bring it; night closed in without it. A chill drizzle had set in, freezing as it fell, and the keen air fairly flayed one's skin. Yet he dreaded to go in-doors, to hear his mother's pleasant voice. Cousin Jane had been called away by the illness and possible death of a relative, so they two were alone.

When Mrs. Darcy saw her son so grave and pre-occupied, his eyes sadly pathetic with trouble, mother-like, she tried to comfort with the small talk that women often offer, and that answers the purpose like bathing one's brow with Florida-water in a severe headache. She never mentioned business to him when in such moods. Now it was a bit of newspaper-gossip, concerning some discoveries in Greece, that he and Maverick had been quite eager about.

The poor fellow was distraught, and could not listen. He ate his supper, choking down the food, for her dear sake, missing strangely Cousin Jane's pungency and seasoning. Then he tried to interest himself in the paper, but could not; he paced the floor softly; he whistled a tune, for his mother's benefit also, but broke down in the middle.

"I must go out a little while," he declared in desperation.

"Not in this storm," said his mother pleadingly.

"Yes. I'll be back by—ten," looking at the clock. "It is too bad to leave you alone," with sudden regret, kissing her tenderly.

"I shall not mind for a while. But this wretched storm"—

He laughed, a little strained and forced; then he put on his great-coat, almost wishing that every man in the country was without, and had to buy one to-morrow. He tramped up the street, drawing long respirations, every one of which was nearly a sigh. Was this the way Mr. Lawrence felt when times went bad? Was some such trouble the cause of that fatal disaster? He bowed his head in a sort of touching and profound respect to the dead man. He experienced an earnest sympathy for all struggling capitalists. What did unreasoning labor know of such nights as these when every thing, even good name, was at stake! He wondered if his mop of curly hair would turn gray, and then, in a ridiculously trivial mood, remembered he must go and have it cropped. As well now as any time; but when he reached the barber's, the place looked so uninviting, with the smoky kerosene-lamps turned low. He did not stop: he used to wonder afterward how it would have been if he had, until he came to have a sincere and reverent belief in God as the disposer of human events, the Hand back of the curtain, that guided every step, and kept sacred watch even over two sparrows.

He walked down past Maverick's; but half a dozen people were in there, so he went on and on to the very end of the street, when by the dim light he saw a figure in advance of him, a woman, tall and stately, muffled in a waterproof and hood. There was something in the bearing different from most of the Yerbury women who ran out of an evening for a neighborly gossip, or some provender for their next morning's breakfast. There were no stores in this direction; it was quite lonely; perhaps she was going home. It would annoy her to be followed, doubtless; and on such a night as this no roughs would be abroad in this vicinity.

Jack Darcy was in that nervous state when the brain seems rarefied and empowered to wrest secrets from the very elements in his path. He pursued several chains of thought at once, with lightning rapidity, and, with curious mental inconsistency, dropped them, and lapsed into others. Now a sudden interest sprang up in this wandering traveller. He listened with the wariness of an Indian to her step. It had in it the essential principle of flight, but a baffled, fruitless longing for escape, rather than a nearing to some distant haven or goal. He had not used to be so keen in this subtile discrimination, until Maverick crossed his path, and helped him out of his psychological bondage. And ordinarily his senses had not the electric keenness of to-night.

The figure paused. The face seemed to turn to the drear, blank sky—was it in appealing, or a desperate daring? an impotent resistance, or a wild, agonizing prayer? The hands were thrown up: he had come gradually nearer, and could see them, ghostly white in the long feeble ray of the distant lamp. What was she deciding or asking? A shiver ran over him as the thought of suicide entered his brain. At all events, he must not let her go to destruction.

Her hands dropped. She took a few slow, irresolute steps, then turned and came so quickly, that before he could stir or think, she confronted him. A wild face with staring eyes, a wilder shriek ringing out on the night air, making muffled echoes around, a desperate plunge, and a fall. He sprang and essayed to raise her from the half-frozen hail-bed of the sidewalk; the hood fell back, and he was more than astonished at beholding the face of Irene Lawrence.

He appeared suddenly to comprehend the whole fact, though he came to know afterward that he misjudged her. Only a desire to put an end to life and suffering, real or fancied, could have brought her out this night, in the lonely neighborhood, still, not so far from her own home. He must take her back, and then go for Maverick, who had become quite a favorite with Mrs. Lawrence, and prescribed harmless remedies for her, since she insisted she must have them.

Jack Darcy never experienced a more exultant pride in his strength than now. He lifted the helpless form, settled the swaying head on his broad shoulder, and, clasping the body tightly, picked his way through the slippery streets, in a manner that would have done credit to an Alp climber. Round this corner and that, to the quiet, deserted street, where every window was closed, and perhaps half the inmates in bed. Only in one house was there a sound of life. Some one was playing an accompaniment for an evening hymn, and youthful voices were singing. Two lines floated out as he passed, making a kind of glow on the sullen night:—

Unconsciously he tightened his arms around this wanderer. Of course all their brief acquaintance had gone through his mind, especially the day when in her haughty pride and beauty she had given him that cold, insolent stare; but he forgave her freely, just as he had forgiven Fred's sin, unasked. How strangely he was destined to be mixed up with these Lawrences!

He paused on the low porch, where a honeysuckle rioted in summer, and was still full of withered leaves. His burthen had not stirred, and was a dead weight. Resting it against his knee, he pulled the door-bell gently, and waited.

"Is that you, Mr. Lawrence?" asked a voice from within.

"No. Jack Darcy," for he guessed rightly that it was Martha.

She opened the door.

"Don't be frightened, Martha," in a re-assuring tone. "It is Miss Lawrence."

"Oh, good heaven!" in tones of terror.

"Hush! do not disturb any one. Is Mr. Lawrence home? Where shall I carry her? she is in a dead faint."

"Bring her in the parlor. Oh, Mr. Darcy! where was she?" with a look of wild affright. "I did not know she had gone out. I always felt something would happen to her; and a long while ago I offered to go out with her, but she is so hard and disdainful that one soon comes to letting her alone. She made me promise not to tell her brother, or rather she defied me to: she wouldn't put any thing as a favor if she was dying. Talk about the pride of Lucifer! And I knew it would worry Mr. Lawrence dreadfully."

"Was she in the habit of going out—alone—at night?" asked Jack, in amaze.

"I think it was from pride," answered Martha simply. "You see, she needed some exercise, and she seldom went out in the daytime. And I don't think she is afraid of any thing. I never saw such a cold, bitter, strong girl—for she is only a girl yet. I've sometimes felt afraid she would do something desperate. Oh, if she would only let the Lord help her bear her trouble! And Mr. Lawrence is so kind and generous! He would do any thing for her. Oh, he ought to be home! There's the clock striking ten."

"And I must run for the doctor. Heaven grant she may not be dead! Take off her cloak, and try something"—glancing about in alarm.

Then he seemed to take one devouring look at the sculptured face, with closed lids, and jetty lashes sweeping the marble cheeks. Hurrying away, as if by some great effort, he ran down the street again, despatched Maverick, and hastened to Fred's office. The building loomed up dark and silent. He might possibly be at Garafield's house: he often went there of an evening, he and Mr. Garafield were so engrossed with their plans.

It was a long walk; but Jack strode on, getting rapidly over the ground. The hall-door was open, and Mr. and Mrs. Garafield were saying good-night to Fred. Jack waited until he came down the steps, and then called to him cheerfully. They linked arm-in-arm. The hail and rain had turned now to fine, hard snow, and the wind seemed to scurry through the deserted streets like a forlorn, wailing spirit.

Jack told his story briefly, also repeating what Martha had said about Irene's habit of lonely walking. He felt the sensitive nerves in the arm he held, quiver with a shuddering pain.

"Thank God it was you!" Fred said, with a great, tremulous gasp. "She is so strange, so cold and self-contained,—so bitter against fate! Believe me, Jack, I have tried my utmost"—and the voice broke with something like a sob.

"I know it, dear old fellow," drawing him nearer as the blast whistled around them.

"We never learned to make each other happy, you know. We never supposed we had any special duties to one another, so it was a new task to me. I tried to interest her in something, to make her more cheerful; but she would wrap herself in that haughty, unconquerable coldness. Yet if I had known or guessed"—

"After all, there is very little danger down your end of the town," said Jack, in that light, comforting tone. "There's nothing to call tramps or roughs; and, I dare say, to-night all would have gone straight if she had not run against me, as one may say, and the fright made her faint."

"But if it had been some one else! Oh, my God!"

"It was not; so never give that a second thought. There is no use in bringing up an army of 'might-have-beens' to worry you to death when you have escaped danger. And—here we are."

"You will come in, of course?"

Jack followed his friend. Maverick had succeeded in restoring Miss Lawrence to consciousness; but she was now in a burning fever and raging delirium. Outraged nature had at last asserted its sway.

"It is better so, I think," remarked Maverick, in a quiet, decisive tone. "She will have a severe run of fever, for this has been some time coming on; but she has youth and a naturally fine constitution in her favor. I believe she will pull through. But some arrangement must be settled upon. It will not do to take her up-stairs; for the effect upon your mother will be too great a risk. If you could bring a bed down here—to-morrow I will see about getting a nurse."

"I think it would be better to bring her bed down stairs," rejoined Martha. "The parlor is used so little. And she would be so much more comfortable"—

Martha's eyes went over the heavy, clinging dress, the disordered hair, the bracelets that were like manacles as she threw her arms about, moaning, muttering, and laughing shrilly. The eyes rolled wildly in their senseless stare, until one's blood almost curdled.

"We must get about it immediately," began Dr. Maverick. "She will be quieter presently, and I shall remain all night. Darcy, you watch her: do not let her injure herself, while we bring down the necessary articles."

Just at this juncture Mrs. Lawrence's bell rang. The noise had startled her from her first sound sleep. Dr. Maverick explained simply, and gave her a composing draught.

"A fever! Is it any thing contagious? Yes, it is better to keep her down there: my nerves are so weak, and I think I have a very sensitive, susceptible nature. I might take any disease so easily,—do you not think so, doctor?" and Mrs. Lawrence looked up from her frills and laces and snowy pillow with the helpless air of a child.

"Much better. She may be delirious, too, and that would distress you. Now be as quiet as possible, and try to go to sleep again. I shall remain to keep you both in order," with a laugh.

"That is very kind," she answered, with a pretty wave of her delicate hand. Her daughter might be dying below, but her nerves must be settled and cared for. Still, to do her justice, even in her intense selfishness, she never considered other people's ailments dangerous, while she held that her own precious life was constantly in peril. She talked of dying with the calmness of a saint, and admitted that there was no further charm to life, but still she must have the choicest care.

Under Martha's supervision they soon dismembered the bedstead, and brought down all necessary belongings. Jack had watched his charge, strangely exercised by her curious, changeful moods. Once she had looked meaningly at him.

"I might marry you," she said, in soft, mocking tones, her scarlet lips taking on a bitter, scornful smile; "but I should come to hate you so that some night when you lay asleep I should rise and murder you! I might endure you in London, where I could be in a continual round of gayety; but at Frodsham Park, with an old man like you,—May and December! May and December!" and she laughed shrilly.

She did not mean him, then! Honest Jack Darcy blushed to the roots of his hair, to his very finger-ends. Some old man had wanted her: well, she was braver and truer, then, than most people would admit.

The three came in, and transformed the parlor to a hospital-ward, without the simplicity. Jack suddenly thought of his mother, and hurried away. What an eventful walk it had been! and Hope Mills was quite driven out of his mind.

He found his mother frightened and hysterical; and drawing her down beside him he told her the story of his wanderings, expressing with some tender kisses his sorrow for her alarm, and advised her to go to bed at once, as he meant to do. And, though it might not be romantic after such an adventure, I must admit that in ten minutes my hero was soundly asleep, oblivious of both storm and business.

At the house he had left, there was but little refreshing rest. Mrs. Lawrence drowsed away when the confusion of re-arrangement had subsided. The gentlemen retired to the library while Martha disrobed her young mistress with inward fear and trembling, hardly being able to judge what was due to delirium, and what to natural imperiousness. Then Dr. Maverick kindly dismissed her.

"You will need your strength in the morning," said he. "Try to get at least one good nap."

He took his station at the bedside, and motioned Fred to an armchair just out of his sister's range. The opiate was not working successfully, but at present he did not consider it wise to increase it. He questioned him a little as to Miss Irene's habits and resources, and imagined the part withheld, from that rather reluctantly admitted. He understood that here kindred blood had not produced harmony, but a horrible discord, the more wearing in that every note had been muffled. The self-commiseration of the mother, and her weak love for her son that could only pity, but never encourage or brace to any vigorous effort; her total inability to comprehend any such character as her youngest daughter possessed; the wearisome platitudes enunciated in the belief that they were golden grains of worldly wisdom, the only kind she supposed existed; the weak, vapid repining that she had not married when she might have done so well, the discouraging certainty that no marriage was possible in this second-rate town, and that to remain single was a stigma and a misfortune. In her weak but querulous complaints, which she meant in part for sympathy, she had worn and exasperated Irene as much as Mrs. Minor: only here there were no lovers, and there Mrs. Minor looked upon every single man of means as a fish to be skilfully angled for.

If Irene had been thrown completely upon her own resources, if she had been compelled to step entirely out of her olden sphere, and earn her daily bread, there would have been a sharp, bitter fight, but the bracing mental atmosphere might have dispelled the thick darkness, the chilling vacuity, and evolved from the discordant elements a questioning and not easily satisfied soul, but one destined to develop into strength and nobler uses. But here, she said to herself, there was nothing. Friendship could not come to her aid—she would have none of it. No one should study her with curious eyes, to see how she bore her trials, her losses, the downfall of her pride. Strangers who had glanced at her with envy in her pretty pony-phaeton, or the magnificent family barouche, should not smile in triumph as they saw her walking by. As she had scorned others in her grandeur, so others would rejoice that she had been brought low. She had seen so much of the narrowness, the petty spite, the sharp stings of the world, that her sensitive flesh shrank at every pulse.

She could understand now how high-bred women, when friends and fortune had flown, had shut themselves in convents. That she would have been glad to do. Any entire renunciation would have met with her approval. But to gather up the threads of a commonplace existence, to find joy and solace in daily duties, to work for others, to even show others how trials and misfortunes could be borne to the perfect working-out of nobler aims and uses, was not for her. She had never been trained to any such purpose. A heathen of the heathens in a Christian country, the product of fashion, wealth, and so-called refinement.

In the solitude to which she condemned herself, she came to brooding over a desperate, worldly philosophy. Should she go back, and retrace her steps, and marry? There were days when she absolutely contested the ground inch by inch, and almost decided.

Her long rapid walks, generally at night when her brain was wild with the bitter warfare, had served a useful purpose, and kept her in better health. But the strain could not last forever. For days she had alternated between a chilly, stupid languor, and hours when her brain seemed on fire, when, indeed, she hated the whole world with a bitter, awful intensity. In this mood she had stolen out for her walk.

And now the outraged soul had burst its bonds, and revelled in a fearful revenge. All the ache and repression put upon it; all this silent endurance; all the solitary hours of maddening thought, the wasted riches, the spurned sympathy, the youth poisoned by false doctrines,—every secret sin committed against it, cried aloud, and would not be throttled, nor thrust back into the dreary dungeon.

Fred listened to her ravings in stunned, helpless astonishment. His trial had been so much less intense, after all. Could it be possible she had suffered this as she sat so like a statue in the little circle, disdaining every aid? His startled eyes questioned the doctor.

"Yes," was the reply: "she has been too much alone. She has brooded over these things until she has become morbid and imbittered. The curse of fashionable life is, that it provides a woman with no resources against a dark day, no wisdom, no faith in any thing outside of herself. And then we wonder at insanity! A thousand times better that the body should be racked with pain, if so be that the soul is purified in passing through these fires. It may be her salvation."