“I beg your pardon!” said a deep, familiar voice. Then the formality vanished from face and address. “Is this YOU?” holding out his hand in hearty friendliness that instantly dispelled Rosa's forebodings. “What or whom are you seeking in these wilds?”

The crystal beads glistened upon her lashes in the fulness and joy of her deliverance from doubt and fear, and before she could twinkle them back, broke into smaller brilliants upon her cheeks and the bosom of her dress. It was very babyish and foolish, but it is to be questioned whether she could have contrived a more telling situation had she studied it for a month.

“What is it!” inquired Frederic, kindly, not releasing the fingers that twitched, more than struggled, in his. “Have you been frightened?”

“Yes,” with grieved, but fearless simplicity, “I was frightened because I thought I had offended you—perhaps driven you away—and that I should never be able to ask your forgiveness for my cruel abruptness last night! In thinking about and worrying over this, I somehow lost my way, and was just trying to remember by what route I reached this strange neighborhood, when your appearance startled me.”

“You did not know, then, that this is Bachelor's Hall—the haunt of unmated Benedicts, wifeless visitors to the city, and celibate M. C.'s?” he rejoined, pleasantly. “Let me be your guide to more desirable as well as more accessible quarters!”

On the stairs he bent to scan her blushing countenance.

“How am I to punish you for your naughty distrust of my friendship and common sense? I have been too busy all day to spare a minute for social pleasure. I dined at two o'clock, having an appointment at three, returned at half-past five, and was just coming down to your parlor to look you up. Another bit of unimportant news, with which I should not have annoyed you if you had not merited a little vexation by your preposterous fancies, is, that, instead of taking an early train to Philadelphia, I have to-day entered into engagements that will oblige me to prolong my stay in this place until the first of February.”

He looked bright and cheerful, ready for sport or badinage. Rosa caught herself wondering many times during that evening, and the succeeding days of the three weeks they passed under the same roof, if she had dreamed of—not beheld with her bodily optics—that one stormy burst of passion which had been his farewell to the hope of a final reconciliation with Mabel Aylett.

He never spoke of her again, or referred, in the most distant manner, to his visit at Ridgeley. The omission was an agreeable one to Rosa for several reasons. Silence, she believed, was to oblivion as a means to an end. Judging from herself, she adopted the theory that people were apt to forget what they never talked of themselves, nor heard mentioned by others. Furthermore, she was relieved from the necessity of concocting diplomatic evasions, dexterously skirting the truth, to say nothing of plump falsehoods. These last cost her conscience some unpleasant twinges. To avoid narrating in full what had happened was a work of art. A downright lie was a stroke of heavy business, unsuited to her airy genius—and when the Aylett-Chilton complication was upon the tapis, it was difficult to avoid undertaking such.

For three weeks, then, Mr. Frederic Chilton and the Virginian belle visited concert, theatre, and assembly-room in company, sat side by side in the spectators' gallery of House and Senate chamber, walked in daylight along the broad avenues from one magnificent distance to another, and on home-evenings—which were not many—chatted together familiarly, the well-pleased Masons thought confidentially, by the fireside in the family parlor. It must not be inferred from their constant intercourse that he had the field entirely to himself. Gallants of divers pretensions—first-class, mediocre, and contemptible—considered with a practical eye to “settlement,” hovered about the fascinating witch as moths about a gas-burner, and had no citable cause of complaint of non-appreciation, inasmuch as she shed equal light upon all, save one. “My very old friend, Mr. Chilton,” she was wont to denominate him in conversation with those who inwardly called themselves fools for their jealousy of a man of whom she spoke thus frankly, with never a stammer or blush; yet they acknowledged to themselves all the while that they were both suspicious and envious of his superior advantages. However backward Frederic may have been in the beginning to monopolize the notice and time of his “sisterly friend,” he was not an insensate block, who could not perceive and value the compliment paid him by her partiality—ever apparent, but never unmaidenly. Impute it to whatever motive he might, the distinction titillated his vanity, touched, at least, the outermost covering of his heart. It might be pity, it might be pleasant, mournful memories of other days—it was most likely of all a sincere platonic affection, for one with tastes and feelings akin to hers that gave lustre to her eyes, and gentle meaning to her smile when he drew near. At any rate, it would be churlish not to accept the preference these conveyed, and to like her and his position as her chosen knight better every day; it was inevitable that he should marvel—not without melancholy-at the flight of time that brought so soon the day of parting.

The Masons, with himself, were engaged to attend a large party on the last evening of January. Without analyzing the impulse that constrained him to do so, he had refrained from reminding Rosa that his stay in Washington was so nearly over, and, with masculine consistency, he was half disposed to be affronted that she had forgotten what he had said to her of its extent. He had never seen her more lively—in more radiant spirits and looks—than she was upon the night of the 30th. He had dropped into her aunt's parlor about ten o'clock, and detected Rosa in the act of dragging her new ball-dress from the box in which the mantua maker had sent it home.

“Conceive, if you can—but you can't, being a man—what I have undergone for an hour and more!” she cried, at seeing him. “My treasure—the darlingest love of a dress I have ever ordered—was brought in exactly two seconds before a brace of honorables—lumbering machines that they are! knocked at the door. So, lest they should brand me as a frivolous doll (as if anybody with a soul, and an infinitesimal degree of love for the beautiful, COULD help admiring the divine thing!), I pushed the poor box under the sofa, and there it has lain in ignominious neglect, like a pearl of purest ray serene smothered in an oyster, all the time they were here. I was purposely cross and stupid, too, in the hope of getting rid of them the sooner. If you despise what most of your undiscriminating sex call fancy articles, consider a woman's fondness for a ravishing robe despicable and irrational, Mr. Chilton, you need not look this way. You could hardly have a severer—certainly not a more appropriate—punishment.”

“You depreciate my aesthetic proclivities,” he rejoined, catching her tone. “You would not trust my bungling fingers to help excavate the gem, I know; but I may surely use my eyes—admire, as we bid children do—with my hands behind my back.”

Notwithstanding his boast of knowingness in the mysteries of feminine apparel, he could not have told of what material the divine robe was made—except that it was some shiny white stuff, with wide embroidery upon the flounces. But Rosa, her aunt, and cousin had gone into ecstacies over it, and instigated by kind-hearted Mrs. Mason, the enraptured owner had rushed off to Mrs. Mason's chamber to try it on, returning presently in full array, elate at the “perfect fit,” and insisting upon a unanimous declaration that she “had never before worn anything one-thousandth part as becoming.”

“It is a winsome, fantastic, enchanting little being!” remarked Mr. Chilton, in soliloquy at his dressing-table, the next evening. “I hope she will enjoy the gathering to-night, as she hopes to do. Will she miss me at the next she attends?”

Then—laughing at the sentimental visage portrayed upon the mirror—“It would be the acme of ludicrous folly for me to disturb myself on that score. We have had a pleasant time together—she and I—and tomorrow it will be over. There is the whole story—except that, in a month I shall cease to think of her, unless her name is accidentally uttered in my hearing—I wish I could forget some other things as easily!—and she will probably be the affianced darling of one of the lumbering Honorables—the elder and homelier of the brace, I fancy, since he is the wealthier, and the humming-bird should have a fitting cage.”

Expressing in his composed lineaments and firm stride nothing like disconsolateness at the programme, he flung his cloak over his arm, took his white gloves in his hand, cast a passing glance at the glass to see that his whiskers and hair were in order, and ran down the two flights of stairs lying between Bachelor's Hall and the Masons' private parlor.

“Come in!” said a plaintive voice, in answer to his knock.

Rosa was alone in the cosy apartment. She was curled up in a great padded chair, set upon the hearth-rug. Her dress was a plain black silk; she wore a scarlet shawl, and her head-gear was some odd, but distractingly pretty construction of white lace, a square folded in two unequal triangles, and knotted loosely, handkerchief-wise, the points in front, under her chin.

“Not ready!” exclaimed Frederic, in merry reproach. “You, the model of punctual women!”

“I am not going!” sighed the humming-bird, dolorously. “I have had a horrid sore throat all day—and—a—headache—and Aunt Mary got frightened, and forbade me to put my head out of doors.”

“That is a heart-rending affliction! And could you not send the incomparable dress as your representative?”

“Don't laugh!” she said, jerking away her head. “I cannot bear it to-night—not that I care the millionth part of a fig for all the parties in christendom; and as for the dress, you think that I haven't a soul above such frippery and gewgaws: but I wish I had never seen it. I shall never wear it as long as I live!”

And out came the laced cambric to absorb the gathering dew.

“There is something in this I do not understand,” said Frederic, setting a chair for himself close to hers. “Are you really suffering? I imagined that yours was a case of simple cold, and that Mrs. Mason advised you to remain indoors chiefly on account of the weather. It is raining hard!”

“I am glad it is!” she replied, with the manner of one bereft of human sympathy, and extracting gloomy delight from the unison of nature with her morbid broodings. “And my throat isn't nearly so painful as I made Aunt Mary believe. I did not want to go out. Parties are an awful bore when one is sad-hearted.”

“You really must forgive me!” said Frederic, as she twitched her face away again at the laugh he could not suppress. “But sadness and you should not be thought of in the same week. Honestly, now! is not the inimitable fabric you sported for five minutes last night, at the bottom of what appears to you a fathomless abyss of woe? Have you tried the efficacy of rational consolation in the thought of how many more parties there will be this winter to which you can wear it? The Secretary of State is to give one in ten days, which is to be the sensation of the season. That of to-night is, in comparison, as a caucus to a general convention.”

“I shall never put on the hateful thing again. If Julia Cunningham chooses to bedizen herself in it, she is welcome to it—flounces and all. Yet I did like it! I had hoped—but no matter what! You had better be going, Mr. Chilton. Aunt and the rest of them went three-quarters of an hour ago.”

“Does a dress go out of fashion in so short a time?” persisted innocent Frederic, bent upon mitigating her sorrow. “If my memory serves me aright, I have seen ladies wear the same ball-dress several times in the same winter.”

“You will never see this on me,” snapped Rosa, her eyes ominously fiery again. “Did you hear me advise you of the lateness of the hour?”

“Suppose I decline appearing at all in the festal scene?” said the gentleman. “I shall not be missed. I will just run down and dismiss the carriage—then, with your permission, will return and spend the evening here.”

Her cheeks looked as if they had been touched with wet vermilion, when he resumed his place near her, and the folds of the handkerchief in her hand hung more limply.

“I ought not to allow this sacrifice!” she faltered gratefully. “Because I have the vapors, I have no right to keep you within reach of the infection. It is shamefully, wickedly selfish!”

“It is no such thing!” he contradicted. “If you would know the truth, I was, myself, averse to attending this 'crush.' But for your indisposition, I should hail with unmixed pleasure the chance that releases me from the obligation to form a part of the throng. It is far more in consonance with my feelings to pass this, our last evening together, as we have spent so many others, in quiet talk at this fireside. I had not supposed it possible that I could ever feel so much at home in a hotel—a Washington caravansary especially—as I have within the last three weeks. Do you know, or have you not burdened your memory with such unimportant memoranda as the fact, that I must set my face Philadelphia-ward to-morrow?”

“I had not dreamed that the time was so near at hand—it seemed such a little while since the evening of our arrival—until I happened, last night, after you left us, to take up Mrs. Rogers' invitation-card for this evening. THEN, I recollected!”

Her listless resignation had in it something piteous, and the lever of compassion impelled him to further efforts of cheer.

“I have to thank you for all the enjoyment of my visit to this, heretofore to me, dismal city. If you should ever visit Philadelphia—as I earnestly hope you will—you must acquaint me with your whereabouts immediately upon your arrival. I should be sorry to think that our friendship is to end here and now.”

“As well here and now, as anywhere and at any time!” returned Rosa, yet more resignedly. “And the end must come, sooner or later. This was what I was saying over to myself when you came in. I am a fool—a baby—to mind it!” angrily dashing away the obtrusive brine from her mournful eyelids. “I WISH you would leave me alone for a few minutes, Mr. Chilton, until I can behave myself!”

For a second it seemed that her companion would take her at her word, so puzzled and troubled was his countenance, and he moved slightly, as about to obey the petulant behest; then sat still.

“I have found no fault in your behavior!” he said, too coolly to please Rosa's notion.

“I know you despise me!” she burst forth, chokingly. “I believe I am hysterical, and the more I rail at my stupidity and folly, the more unmanageable my nerves—if it is my nerves that are out of order—become. But I have been so happy, so content and grateful, lately! And everything will be so different after—after TO-MORROW!”

Her voice had failed to a sobbing whisper, and the diaphanous cambric veiled her bowed face.

Frederic Chilton did not stir a finger or attempt to speak for a full minute, but in that minute he thought a volume, felt acutely.

This, then, was what he had been doing in his hours of relaxation from the business which had occupied his mind to the banishment of nearly every other consideration; that had driven into comparative obscurity the old gnawing grief which had incorporated itself with his being! The intimacy with a beautiful, sprightly girl had been a holiday diversion to him after arduous brain-labor, recreation sought conscientiously and systematically, that his mental powers might be clearer and fresher for the next day's toil in court and among perplexing records; in hunting up titles and disputed property, and proving their validity. He had gained the cause that had brought him to the capital, and cost him so much fatigue and anxiety, and was proud of his success. But what of this other piece of work? Would not the most cold-blooded flirt, who ever prated of fidelity, when he meant betrayal and desertion, blush to father this business? And she, poor, guileless lamb, must bear the pain, the mortification, perhaps the contumely, which ought to be his in seven-fold measure!

“Stay, Rosa!” he said, huskily, when she attempted to rise. “Do not leave me yet. I may not be altogether so unworthy, so basely callous as I have given you reason to suppose. Can it be that I have misconstrued what you have said, or do you really care that our separation is so near? I had not thought of this.”

“I understand.” She lowered her flag of distress and confronted him sorrowfully, not in resentment. “You believed me incapable of deep and lasting feeling; saw in me no more than the world does, a giddy coquette, feather-haired and shallow-hearted. Be it so. Perhaps it is best that you should not be undeceived. Such injustice and prejudice are the penalties a woman must suffer who wears a tinsel cloak over her finer affections—admits but few, sometimes but one, to her sanctum sanctorum. The gushing, loving, extensively-loving class fare better. You have been very kind and attentive to me in my strangerhood here, Mr. Chilton. I must always revert to your conduct with gratitude. By the way”—a hysterical laugh breaking into her dignified acknowledgment of benefits received—“that is the same, in substance, that you said to me a while ago, isn't it? So we are even—owe each other nothing.”

“Except to love one another.” The solemn accents hushed her reckless prattle. “Rosa, can you learn this lesson?”

She had shrunk down—sunk is not the word to convey an idea of the prostration of strength, the collapse of resolution, expressed by the figure cowering in the deep chair, its face upborne and hidden by the shaking hands. They were cold as ice, Frederic felt, when he would have drawn them aside.

“We will have no foolish reserves, my child. Much, if not all, the happiness of our future lives may depend upon our perfect sincerity now. You do not require to be told how poor is the offering of my heart. You are the only person who has ever entered into the secret of its emptiness and desolation; seen blight, where there should be bloom; ashes, where flame should glow. But such as it is, it is yours, if you will have it. If you are willing to trust yourself with me, I will cherish as I now honor you, truly and forever; leave no means untried that can add to your happiness. Dare you make the venture?”

Her unstudied caress was beautiful and pathetic in its lowliness of humility and earnest affection—too earnest for the commonplace outlet of words. It was to slip to her knees at his feet, and kiss his hand, then lay her cheek upon it, as some dumb, devoted thing might do.

Then she was lifted into his arms, and kissed with a fervor she mistook for awakening passion, and her heart bounded more madly in the belief that her victory was complete, that he would henceforward be hers in feeling as in name.

Yet the words breathed into her ear as her head rested upon his bosom might have taught her the fallacy of her conviction and her hopes.

“My noble, faithful girl! What have I to offer you in payment for all this?”

“I ask nothing, except the right to be with, and to serve you!” responded Rosa.

And she thought she spoke the whole truth for once.