Chapter I

Mr. Theodore Vance Townsend awoke to the light of a spring morning in New York, feeling at odds with the world. The cause for this state of variance with existing circumstances was not at sight apparent. He was young, good-looking, well-born, well-mannered, and, to support these claims to favorable consideration, had come into the fortunes of a father and two maiden aunts,—a piece of luck that had, however, not secured for him the unqualified approbation of his fellow-citizens.

Joined to the fact that, upon first leaving college, some years before, he had led a few cotillons at New York balls, his wealth and leisure had brought upon Townsend the reproach of the metropolitan press to the extent that nothing short of his committing suicide would have induced it to look upon anything he did as in earnest.

With an inherited love of letters, he had dabbled in literature so far as to write and publish a book of verse, of fair merit, which, however, had been received with tumultuous rhapsodies of satire by the professional critics. The style and title of "Laureate of the 400," applied in this connection, had indeed clung to him and made life hateful in his sight. To escape it and the other rubs of unoccupied solvency, he had made many journeys into foreign countries, had gone around the globe, and, in due course, had always come to the surface in New York again, with a sort of doglike attachment to the place of his birth that would not wear away.

Of the society he was familiar with, Vance was profoundly weary. Of domestic ties, he had only a sister, married to a rich banker, and in possession of a fine new house, whose tapestries and electric lighting occupied all her thoughts and conversation that could be spared for things indoors. Away from home, Mrs. Clifton was continually on the wing, attending to the demands of philanthropy or charity, and to cultivation of the brain in classes of women of incomes equal to her own. Whenever her brother dined with her, she entertained him with a voluble flow of conversation about these women and their affairs, never failing, however, to exhibit her true sisterly feeling by telling Vance that she could not see why in the world he did not marry Kitty Ainger and settle down.

By dint of much iteration, this suggestion of Kitty Ainger as a wife had come to take languid possession of the young man's brain. Besides, he liked Miss Ainger as well as admired her, and was perhaps more content in her company than in that of anybody else he knew.

On the spring morning in question, he had awaked in a flood of sunshine and fresh air that poured through the open windows of his room. His cold bath, his simple breakfast, his ride in the Park, brought his sensations of physical well-being to a point that almost excited his spirits to strike a balance of youthful cheerfulness. He forgot his oppressive belongings, the obloquy they had conferred upon him in the minds of men who make public opinion about others as citizens, his unreasonable stagnation of ambition.

As he cantered along the equestrian byways of the Park, and felt, without noting, the stir of new life in nature, he grew light of heart and buoyant. And as this condition increased, his thoughts crystallized around the image of Katherine Ainger. She, too, loved her morning ride; no doubt he should meet her presently. He had not seen her since Thursday of last week, when he had taken her in to dinner at Mrs. Cartwright's; and he had a vague idea she had resented him a little on that occasion. Her talk had been a trifle baffling, her eyes evasive. But she had worn a stunning gown, and was by all odds the best-looking woman of the lot. How well she sat at table, by the way! What an admirable figure for a man who would be forced to entertain, to place at the head of his board in perpetuity!

Their families, too, had always known each other. And she was so uncommonly level-headed and sensible! Agreeable, too; no whims, no fancies. He had never heard of her being ill for a day. As to temper and disposition, they matched all the rest. She had never flirted; and, marrying at twenty-six a husband of twenty-nine, she would give him no possible anxiety on that score.

Yes, his sister was right; everybody was right. Miss Ainger was the mate designed for him by heaven; and he had been a fool to dawdle so long in making up his mind to accept the fact.

As the sunshine warmed him, and his horse forged along with a beautiful even stride beneath him, Vance worked up to a degree of enthusiasm he had not felt since he played on a winning football eleven in a college game. That very day he would seek her and ask her to be his wife. They would be married as soon as she was willing, and would go away in the yacht somewhere and learn to love each other. He would have an aim, a home, a stake in the community. At thirty years of age, he should be found no longer in dalliance with time to make it pass away.

Vance, enamored of these visions, finished the circuit of the Park without seeing the central object of them, with whom he had resolved to make an appointment to receive him at home that afternoon. He rode back to the stable where he kept his horse, left it there, and, getting into an elevated car, went down-town to visit his lawyer, going with that gentleman afterwards into the stately halls of the Lawyers' Club for luncheon.

At a table near him, Vance saw, sitting alone, a man named Crawford, whom he had met casually and knew for a hardworking and ambitious junior member of the New York bar. They exchanged nods, and Vance fancied that Crawford looked at him with a scrutiny more close than the occasion warranted.

"You know Crawford, then?" said Mr. Gleason, an old friend of Vance's father. "He began work with our firm, but had an offer for a partnership in a year or two, and left us. He's a tremendous fellow to grind, but is beginning to reap the benefit of it in making a name for himself. If that fellow had a little capital, there is nothing he could not do, in this community. He has never been abroad, has had no pleasures of society, leads a scrupulously regular life, drinks no liquors or wines of any kind, and is in bed by twelve o'clock every night of his life. His only indulgence is to buy books, with which his lodgings overflow. We have always supposed him to be a woman-hater, until latterly, when straws seem to show that the wind blows for him from a point of sentiment. He was in the Adirondacks last summer, in camp with a friend, and I've an idea he met his fate then. After all, Vance, my dear boy, marriage is the goal man runs for, be he what he may. It will develop John Crawford, just as it would develop you, in the right direction; and I heartily wish you would tell me when you intend to succumb to the universal fate, and fall in love."

"I heartily wish I could," said Vance, with a tinge of the mockery he had that morning put aside.

At that moment, Crawford, who had finished his luncheon, passed their table, hat in hand, bowing and smiling as he did so. A waiter, jostling by, made him loosen his hold of the hat, a rather shabby light-brown Derby, that rolled under Vance Townsend's feet. It was lifted by Vance and restored to its owner before the waiter could reach the spot; and again Vance thought he detected a look of significance, incomprehensible to him, in the frank eyes Crawford turned upon him as he expressed his thanks.

"It would have been a benefit to Crawford's friends to have accidentally put your foot through that hat," said Mr. Gleason, laughing. "He is accused by them of having worn it ever since he was admitted to the bar. But then, who thinks of clothes, with a real man inside of them? And no doubt the girl they say he is going to marry will right these trifling matters in short order."

"I like Crawford; I must see more of him," replied Vance. "He strikes me as the fellow to pass a pleasant evening with. I wonder if he would come to dine with me."

"If you bait your invitation with an offer to show your first editions, no doubt of it," said Mr. Gleason. "But to go back to our conversation, Vance. When are we to—"

"I decline to answer," interrupted the young man, smiling, nevertheless, in such a way that Mr. Gleason built up a whole structure of probabilities upon that single smile.

Yes, Vance decided, everything conspired to urge him toward his intended venture that afternoon. When, about four o'clock, he turned his steps in the direction of Miss Ainger's home, he had reached a pitch of very respectably loverlike anxiety. He even fancied the day had been unusually long. He caught himself speculating as to where she would be sitting in the drawing-room, how she would look when he laid his future in her hands.

At that moment, he allowed himself to remember a series of occasions during the years of their friendship, upon any one of which he believed he might have spoken as he now meant to speak, and that she would have answered as he now expected her to answer. Ah! what had he not lost? In her gentle, equable companionship, he would have been a better, a higher, a less discontented fellow. All the virtues, charms, desirable qualities, of this fine and high-bred young woman, who had been more patient, more forgiving, than he deserved, were concentrated into one small space of thought, like the Lord's Prayer engraved upon a tiny coin. But even as his foot touched the lowest step of her father's portal, he experienced a shock of doubt of himself and of his own stability. He tarried; he turned away, and strolled, whither he knew not.

In the adjoining street lived Mrs. Myrtle, an aunt of his, to whom, it must be said, Vance rarely paid the deference considered by that excellent lady her just due. She inhabited the brown-stone dwelling in which, as a bride, she had gone to housekeeping when New York society was still within limits of visitors on foot. Not that that made any difference to Mrs. Myrtle, who had always kept her carriage, and had, about twenty years back, been cited as a leader of the metropolitan beau monde.

In those days, whether on wheels or a-foot, everybody went to Mrs. Myrtle's Thursdays. Her spacious drawing-rooms, papered in crimson flock paper, with their massive doors and mouldings and mirror-frames and curtain-tops of ebonized wood with gold scroll decorations, their furniture in the same wood, with red satin damask coverings, had, in their time, contained the elect of good society. The pictures upon Mrs. Myrtle's walls, and the statuary scattered on pedestals about the rooms, were then quoted by the newspapers, and by those so favored as to see them, as a rare display of the highest art, accumulated by an American householder. One of the earliest affronts of many unintentionally put upon his aunt by Vance had been his contemptuous shrug of the shoulders when called upon by her, shortly after his return from his first winter spent in Italy, to view her "statuary."

Since then, Mrs. Myrtle had, little by little, come to a perception of the fact that her "art collection" was not, any more than its mistress, an object of the first importance to New York. But Vance had been always associated in her mind with the incipient stages of enlightenment, and she loved him accordingly. Her love for Vance's sister, Mrs. Clifton, who refused to pay her tribute, and belonged to the new "smart set," was even less.

Upon Mrs. Myrtle, Vance now resolved to pay a long-deferred duty-call. Admitted by an old negro butler, he was left alone in the large darkling drawing-room, in the shade of the crimson curtains, amid the ghostly ranks of the statues, to ruminate until Mrs. Myrtle should make her appearance. Little thought did he bestow upon the duration of this ordeal. He was well occupied, and, for once in his life, heartily ashamed,——first, of his indecision upon the Ainger door-steps, and, secondly, of the fact that he had put in here to gain courage to return there.

Mrs. Myrtle's heavy tread upon her own parquet floor aroused him from meditation. His aunt was a massive lady, who wore black velvet, with a neck-ruff of old point-lace; who, never pretty, and no longer pleasant to look upon, yet carried herself with a certain ease born of assurance in her own place in life, and cultivated by many years of receiving visitors. Her small white hand, twinkling with diamonds, was extended to him with something of the grand air he remembered his mother, who was the beauty of her family, to have possessed; and then Mrs. Myrtle, seating herself, fixed an unsmiling gaze upon her nephew.

"I—ah—thought I would look in and see how you are getting on," he said, with an attempt at jocularity.

"But it is not Thursday," she answered, cold as before. "I make it a point to see no one except on Thursday, or after five. And it is not yet after five."

Townsend, who could not dispute this fact, was at a loss how to go on. But Mrs. Myrtle, having put things upon the right footing, launched at once into an exposition of her grievances against him, his sister, and the ruling society of latter-day New York.

"I am sure if any one had told your mother and me, when we first came out, what people were to push us against the wall, and to have all New York racing and tearing after their invitations, we should never have believed it. It's enough to make your poor mother come back from the dead, to revise Anita Clifton's visiting-list. And I suppose the next thing to hear of will be your marriage into one of these bran-new families. I must say, Theodore, although it is seldom my opinion is listened to, I was pleased when I heard, the other day, that you were reported engaged to Katherine Ainger. The Aingers are of our own sort; and her fortune, although it is not so important to you, will be handsome. She is one of the few girls who go much into the world who still remember to come to see me; and she has been lunching here to-day."

"Really?" said Vance, turning over his hat in what he felt to be a most perfunctory way.

"Yes; if you or Anita Clifton had been here in the last two months, you might have found out that I have had a young lady—a Southern cousin—stopping in the house."

"A cousin of mine?" queried the young man, indifferently.

"My first cousin's daughter, Evelyn Carlyle. You know there was a break between the families about the beginning of the war, and, for one reason or another, we have hardly met since. When I went to the Hot Springs for my rheumatism last year,—you and Anita Clifton doubtless are not aware that I have been a great sufferer from rheumatism,—I stopped a night or two at Colonel Carlyle's house in Virginia, and took rather a fancy to this girl. I found out that she has a voice, and desired to cultivate it in New York, and so invited her to come on after Christmas and stay in my house."

Vance was conscious of a slight feeling of somnolence. Really, he could not be expected to care for the Virginian cousin's voice. And Aunt Myrtle had such a soporific way of drawling out her sentences! He wished she would return to the subject of her luncheon-guest, and then, perhaps, he might manage to keep awake.

"So you invited Miss Ainger to-day, to keep the young lady company?" he ventured to observe.

"If you will give me time to explain, I will tell you that Katherine Ainger and she have struck up the greatest friendship this winter, and have been together part of every day. I wish, Vance, that you could bring yourself to extend some attention to your mother's first cousin's child. From Anita Clifton I expect nothing—absolutely nothing. Not belonging to the 'smart set,' whatever that may be, I make no demands upon Anita Clifton. But you, Vance, have not yet shown that you are absolutely heartless. When Eve goes home, as she soon will, it would be gratifying to have her able to say you had recognized her existence."

"I will leave a card for the young lady in the hall," he said, awkwardly; "and perhaps she would allow me to order some flowers for her. Just now, Aunt Myrtle, I have an engagement, and I must really be going on."

He had risen to his feet, and Mrs. Myrtle was about shaping a last arrow to aim at him, when the door opened, and a girl came into the room.

"Oh! Cousin Augusta," she said, in the most outspoken manner, a slight Southern accent marking some of the syllables enunciated in a remarkably sweet voice, "I have been taking your Dandie Dinmont for a walk, and he has been such a good, obedient dear, you must give him two lumps of sugar when he comes to tea at five o'clock."

As Mrs. Myrtle performed the ceremony of introduction between them, Vance became conscious that he was in the presence of one of the most radiantly pretty young persons who had ever crossed the line of his languid vision. Equipped in a tailor-made frock of gray serge, a black hat with many rampant plumes upon her red-brown hair, a boa of black ostrich feathers curling around her pearly throat and caressing the rosiest of cheeks, his Cousin Eve surveyed him with as much indifference as if he had been the veriest casual met in a crowd in Fifth Avenue. Two fingers of a tiny gloved hand were bestowed on him in recognition of their relationship, after which she resumed her interrupted talk about the dog.

"You understand that Mr. Townsend is a relative, my dear?" asked Mrs. Myrtle, in her rocking-horse manner. "You have heard me speak of him?"

"Yes; oh, yes, certainly," Eve said, with preoccupation. "But to us Virginians a cousin means either very much—or very, very little."

"The presumption, then, is against me?" he asked, determined not to be subdued.

"Is it? I had not thought," she answered, hardly looking in his direction. Vance took the hint and his departure. When again out of doors, he straightened himself, and walked with a firmer, more determined tread, conscious of a little tingling in his veins on the whole not disagreeable. In this mood, he reached the corner of the street in which dwelt Miss Ainger, and was very near indeed to passing it, but, recovering himself with a start, turned westward from the Avenue, and again sought the house from which he had gone irresolute a little while before.

The door was opened for him by a servant, who did not know "for sure," but "rather thought" Miss Ainger was in the drawing-room. While following the man across a wide hall, Vance espied, lying upon a chair, a man's hat—not the conventional high black hat of the afternoon caller, but a rusty brown "pot" hat, of an unobtrusive pattern.

"Humph! the piano-tuner, no doubt," he said to himself, and simultaneously recalled the fact that he had seen the object in question, or its twin brother, that same day. Before the footman could put his hand upon the knob of the drawing-room door, it opened, and the owner of the hat came out. It was indeed Crawford, dressed in morning tweeds, as Vance had seen him at luncheon in the Lawyers' Club, his plain, strong face illuminated with an expression Vance knew nothing akin to, and therefore did not interpret.

But Vance did know Miss Ainger for an independent in her set, a girl who struck out for herself to find clever and companionable people with whom to fraternize; and he was accordingly not surprised to meet Crawford here as a visitor. As once before that day, the two men exchanged silent nods, and parted. Vance found Miss Ainger caressing with dainty fingertips a large bunch of fresh violets that lay in her lap and filled the room with fragrance.

Kitty Ainger, a daughter of New York, calm, reserved, temperamentally serious, fond of argument upon high themes, cultivated in minor points to a fastidious degree, handsome in a sculptural way, had always seemed to him lacking in the one grace of womanly tenderness he vaguely felt to be of vast moment in a young man's choice for a wife.

To-day, as she greeted him, her manner was gentle and gracious to perfection. Perhaps it so appeared in contrast to that of the fair Phyllida who had flouted him in his Aunt Myrtle's drawing-room; perhaps Kitty was really glad of this first occasion in many days when they were alone together, undisturbed.

The thought caused a wave of excitement to rise in the suitor's veins. He wondered how he could have held back, an hour before, when upon the threshold of such an opportunity. But then, had he made appearance, no doubt there would have been other visitors,—Crawford, for instance, whom Miss Ainger was plainly taking by the hand, to lead into society, as clever girls will do when they find an unknown clever man; Crawford, who did not know enough of conventionality to put on a black coat when he called on a girl in the afternoon; Crawford, poor and plain, a man's man, whom the Ainger family no doubt regarded as one of Kitty's freaks. Yes, Crawford would have been a decided interruption to this tÊte-À-tÊte.

Now, there was an open sea before Vance, and he had only to launch the boat, so long delayed, a craft he at last candidly believed to be freighted with the best hopes of his life. They talked for awhile upon impersonal subjects—Kitty exerting herself, he could see, to be agreeable and sympathetic with her visitor. In the progress of this conversation, he took note with satisfaction of the artistic elegance of her dress (of the exact color of the Peach Blow Vase, he said to himself, searching for a simile in tint), with sleeves of sheenful velvet, and a silken train that lay upon the rug. Her long, white fingers, playing with the violets, wore no rings. Her slim figure, her braids of pale brown hair, her calm, gray eyes, attracted him as never before, with their girlish and yet womanly composure.

"Why have you never told me," he said abruptly, "of your friendship with that little witch of a Virginia cousin of mine who has been staying with Mrs. Myrtle this winter?"

"If you wish me to tell you the truth, it was because she asked me never to do so," replied Kitty, coloring a little. "You have met her?" she added eagerly.

"Yes, to-day; a little while ago, when I called upon my aunt. But how could she know of me? What reason was there for her to avoid me?"

"Evelyn is an impulsive creature," was the answer; and now the blood rushed into Kitty's cheek, and she was silent.

"Impulsive, yes; but how could she resent a man she had never seen; who had not had the smallest opportunity to prove whether or not he was obnoxious to her? That is quite too ridiculous, I think. You, who have so much sense, character, judgment, why could not you exercise your influence over this very provincial little person, and teach her that a prejudice is, of all things, petty?"

"She is not a provincial little person," said Kitty, with spirit. "And she does not merit that patronizing tone of yours."

"If you take her under your wing, she is perfection," he answered lightly, as if the subject were no longer of value for discussion. "But before we begin to differ about her, only tell me if it is my Aunt Myrtle's objection to me as a type that my truculent Cousin Eve has inherited?"

"I hardly think so. Please ask me no questions," the girl said, uncomfortable with blushing.

"As you like. It is veiled in mystery," he said, rather piqued. "At least, you won't mind informing me if she got any of her ideas of me from you. No, that is hardly fair. I will alter it. Did you and she ever speak of me together?"

"What if I tell you yes, and that, every time we met?" exclaimed Miss Ainger, plucking up courage when thus driven into a corner.

To her surprise and dismay, Vance took this admission quite otherwise than she had meant it. In Eve's attitude toward him, he thought he read a girlish jealousy of the object preoccupying the affections of her friend.

"I see. I understand," he said, with a gleam in his eyes she had not seen there in all of their acquaintance. Until now, the hearth-rug had been between them. With an animation quite foreign to him, he crossed it, and leaned down to take her hands. At once, Kitty, withdrawing from his grasp, rose to her feet and faced him.

"I think there is some great mistake," she said, very quietly. As Vance gazed at her, he became aware that he had until now never seen the true Kitty Ainger, and that her face was beautiful.

"You repulse me? You have never cared for me?" he said, fiercely.

A wave of color came upon her cheeks, and her eyes dropped before his to the violets in her hand.

"I must tell you," she said, after a pause, during which both thought of many things stretching back through many years, "that I have just promised to marry Mr. Crawford."

Chapter II

The day of Miss Ainger's marriage with Crawford, which took place in New York, a month later than the events heretofore recorded, found Vance Townsend on horseback in Virginia, following, with no especial purpose, a highway that crosses the Blue Ridge Mountains to descend sharply into the valley of the Shenandoah.

Before leaving home, he had acquitted himself of conventional duty to the bride by ordering to be sent to her the finest antique vase of his collection,—a gem of carved metal that Cellini might have signed,—filled with boughs of white lilac, his card and best wishes accompanying it. Then, with a heart overburdened, as he fancied, with regretful self-reproach, he had turned his back upon the chief might-have-been of his experience.

Katherine, who had, in fact, passed many days in her paternal mansion unsought by him, was now invested with a veil of tender sentiment. In his waistcoat pocket he carried an unfinished poem, addressed to her,—or to an idealized version of Miss Ainger,—which, at intervals on his journey, he would take out and polish and shape with assiduity, forgetting sometimes to sigh over it in his zeal for metrical construction.

The morning of the day that was to see the prize he had lost become definitely another's beheld Vance bargaining with a farmer—a former cavalryman in the Confederate service—to ride one of the two horses he had shipped by train from New York, and serve as guide in the war-harried region through which he desired to pass.

The process was a simple one, the sum negligently offered for his services for a day sufficing to cover the expenses of ex-corporal Claggett for a fortnight, and leave a margin to fill his pipe with. Therefore, the rusty squire in attendance (to whom the treat of bestriding a steed like this would have been requital all-sufficient), the riders left the village that had sheltered Townsend for the night, and at once set out to ascend a long and toilsome hill, giving views on every side of an enchanting prospect.

"I don't mean to appear boastful, suh," observed Mr. Claggett, modestly, "an' I ain't travelled much myself out o' this State, but I've heerd people say this 'ere view beats creation."

"It is very fine, certainly, Claggett," replied Vance, halting to look back at the wide expanse of hill and valley mantled with springing green, the far-off, grassy heights serving as pasture for sheep and cows, and scattered with limestone boulders, against which redbud and dogwood in blossom made brilliant patches; with mountains beyond, above, everywhere, and all of that exquisite, velvet-textured shade of blue, so soft and melting it seems to invite caress.

"By Jove! It is well named the Blue Ridge," Vance went on, approvingly.

"Jest there, Mr. Townsend, in that very spot where the old red cow's a-munchin' in the grass, was where Pelham stood when his artillery let fly at them plucky Yankee cavalry that was behind the stone wall firin' like fury at our Confeds."

"And who was Pelham?" asked the visitor, with interest.

"Never heard o' Pelham? Well, I wouldn't 'a' thought it," was the compassionate answer. "Why, suh, he was a boy,—major of artillery—nuthin' but a boy,—an' they killed him early in the war. But he'd the skill an' the sense of an old general; an' there wornt no risk to himself he'd stop at in a fight. He'd just swipe vict'ry, every time, suh, Pelham would; an' he was the pride an' idol of our army. Thar! them johnny-jump-ups are growin' where his gun stood, an' he rammin' charges into it with his own hand, when he sent that murderin' volley that made batterin'-rams out o' the stones o' the wall here, an' druv the poor Yankees behind it into Kingdom Come. Things look different to me, suh, now. I was a youngster, then, run mad to git into any kind o' fightin'; but I've got sons o' my own now, an' I can't somehow see the pints in all that killin' we did in our war, like I used to. But I can't think o' fellers like Pelham without wantin' to be in it again, suh.

"Why, at Snicker's Gap (heard o' Snicker's Gap, Mr. Townsend?) that lad, who was commandin' Stuart's horse-artillery, charged on a squadron of cavalry that had been botherin' him with its sharp-shooters, and, with a gun that they'd dragged by hand through the undergrowth, fired a double charge of canister into their reserves. Then, suh, he charged agin,—a reg'lar thunderbolt that sally was,—picked up sev'ral prisoners an' horses, an', limberin' up his gun like wild-fire, hurried back to his first position, his men shoutin' for him all the while."

"Those were stirring days for you, Claggett," said Townsend, whose blood began to answer to the man's enthusiasm.

"Yes, Mr. Townsend, they were so; but you mustn't let me impose on you with my war stories. My present wife, suh,—a young lady I courted in King William, about the age of my oldest daughter,—she won't have me open my mouth 'bout war stories at our house. Says I tire everybody out with my old chestnuts, suh; an' perhaps I do. The ladies like to do a good deal of the talkin' themselves, I've noticed, Mr. Townsend."

With a subdued sigh, Claggett subsided into silence, but not for long. The names of Stuart and Mosby and their officers were ever upon his lips, interspersed with anecdote and gossip concerning the country people whose dwellings were only occasionally seen from the road. Here and there, in the distance, chimneys behind clumps of trees were pointed out as belonging to old inhabitants who had held on to their homes through storm and stress of ill-fortune since the war.

"Since you are from the Nawth, I would like to tell you, suh, that nobody who is anybody among our gentry ever lived in a village. They lived to themselves, suh, an' the further away from each other the better. If you had the time, suh, an' were acquainted with the families, I could show you some places that would surprise you. An' the ladies an' gentlemen, Mr. Townsend, of our best old stock are as fine people as any on God's earth, I reckon. Pity you ain't acquainted, as I said. It would give me pleasure to take you inside some of the gates of our foremost residents."

Vance noted with amusement that Claggett did not assume to be on a social plane with the people he extolled, but had accepted the tradition of their superiority as part of the Virginian creed. Laughing, he joined in the honest fellow's regret at his ineligibility to take rank as a guest in the neighborhood.

"Though it seems to me, Claggett, now that I think of it, I have a kinsman somewhere hereabout. Do you know anything of a family of Carlyles—Colonel Carlyle, I believe they call him?"

Claggett's manner underwent instant transformation.

"Colonel Guy Carlyle, of the Hall, suh?" he exclaimed, eagerly. "That's in the next county, a matter of twenty or thirty miles from here. I had the luck to serve under the Colonel, Mr. Townsend, and he'd know me if you spoke my name. You'll be goin' that way, suh? We'll strike north from Glenwood, and get there by supper-time."

"Hold on, Claggett, you'll be pouring out my coffee and asking me to take more of the Colonel's waffles, presently. Colonel Carlyle married my mother's cousin, but I fancy would not recognize my name as quickly as yours. I have certainly no grounds for venturing to offer myself as an inmate of his house."

"Beg your pardon, suh, but the Colonel'd never get over a relation ridin' so near the Hall an' not stoppin' there to sleep," persisted Claggett. "It's a thing nobody ever heard of, down this way."

"I shall have to brave tradition, then," answered Vance, indifferently.

"It's a fine old place, suh. House built by the Hessian prisoners in the Revolution, and splendid furniture. They do say there's one mirror in the big saloon that covers fourteen foot of wall, Mr. Townsend. Yanks bivouacked in that room, too, but didn't so much as crack it. An' chandeliers, all over danglers like earrings, suh. For all they ain't got such a sight o' money as they had, Miss Eve, she's got a real knack at fixin' up, an' she's travelled Nawth, an' got all the new ideas. You must 'a' met Miss Eve when she was Nawth, Mr. Townsend. Why, suh, she's the beauty o' three counties; nobody could pass her in a crowd, or out of it."

"I have met Miss Carlyle, Claggett," Vance said, growing uncomfortable at the recollection. "But only once, and for a moment. As you say, she is a beautiful young woman."

"Then you will stop at the Hall, suh?" pleaded his guide.

"No," said Vance, briefly. "We will go on to Glenwood, and sleep there at the inn. To-morrow, you shall show me as much of the country as I have enjoyed to-day, but I am here for travelling, and not to cultivate acquaintance, understand."

"Up yonder, on the hill-top, suh," observed Mr. Claggett, ignoring rebuke, "when we git through this little village we're comin' to (I was in a red-hot skirmish once, right in the middle of the street, ahead, suh), is a tree we call the Big Poplar. It marks the junction of three counties, an' 'twas there George Washin'ton slept, when he was on his surveyin' tour as a boy, suh—you've heard of General Washin'ton up your way, Mr. Townsend?"

"Yes, confound you," said Vance, laughing at his sly look.

"General Lee halted at that point to look at the country round, on his way to Gettysburg. A great friend of Colonel Carlyle was the General, suh; you'll see a fine picture of the General in the dinin'-room at the Hall. Colonel Carlyle lost two brothers followin' Lee into battle, suh, but we call that an honor down here. They do say little Miss Eve keeps the old swords and soldier caps of them two uncles in a sort o' altar in her chamber, suh. Heard the news that Miss Eve's engaged to her cousin, Mr. Ralph Corbin, in Wash'n't'n, suh? It's all over the country, I reckon. He's a young archytec', an' doin' well; but down here nobody knows if a young lady's engaged for sure, till the day's set for the weddin'."

At this point Vance interrupted his garrulous guide to suggest that they should seek refreshment for man and beast in the hamlet close at hand; and the diversion this created turned Claggett from the apparently inexhaustible subject of the Carlyles.

They rode onward, the genial sun, as it mounted higher in the heaven, serving to irradiate, not overheat, the beautiful earth.

From this point the road went creeping up, by gentle degrees, to the summit of the mountain, beyond which Shenandoah cleft their way in twain. Traversing Ashby's Gap, the efflorescence of the woods, the music of many waters, the balm of purest air, confirmed Vance's satisfaction in his choice of an expedition. Descending the steep grade to the river, they crossed the classic stream upon the most primitive of flat ferry-boats, and on the further side passed almost at once into a rich, agricultural country, upon a well-kept turnpike, where the horses trotted rapidly ahead.

Claggett, strange to say, did not resume allusions to the Carlyle family; but upon reaching a certain cross-road, he ventured an appealing glance at his employer.

"Turn to the right here, to get a short cut to Carlyle Hall, suh."

"Where does the left road take us?" asked Vance, shortly.

"You kin git to Glenwood that way, Mr. Townsend. But it's a roundabout way, an' a new road, an' a pretty bad one, an' it's just in the opposite direction from Colonel—"

Vance answered him by riding to the left.

A new road, with a vengeance, and one apparently bottomless, the horses at every step plunging deeper into clinging, red-clay mud; but the obstinacy of Vance kept him riding silently ahead, and the trooper, with a quizzical look upon his weather-beaten face, followed. Miles, traversed in this fashion, brought them into the vicinity of a small gathering of houses, at sight of which Vance spoke for the first time in an hour.

"Claggett."

"Yes, suh?" This, deferentially.

"If I ever go back of my own free will over that infernal piece of road"—he paused for a sufficiently strong expression.

"Yes, suh?" said Claggett, expectantly.

"You may write me down an ass."

"Yes, suh," Claggett exclaimed, with what Vance thought a trifle too much alacrity. "Better let me go befo' you for a little piece, Mr. Townsend," added the countryman. "Just where the road slopes down to the crick, here, it's sorter treacherous, if you don't know the best bit."

Vance, choosing to be deaf, kept in front. He traversed the creek in safety; but, in ascending the other side, his horse plunged knee-deep into a quagmire,—throwing his rider, who arose none the worse except for a plaster of red mud,—and emerged evidently lamed.

"He's all right, suh, excep' for a little strain," said the ex-trooper, after his experienced eye and hand had passed over Merrylad's injuries.

"We will go at once to the hotel in the village, and get quarters for the night," said Vance, ruefully. "I've a change of clothes in that bag you carry, so I don't mind for myself. But I wouldn't have Merrylad the worse for this for anything."

"The trouble is, Mr. Townsend," answered Claggett, "that you may get quarters fit for a horse here, but you won't be stoppin' yourself, I'll tell you."

"Nonsense! Come along! You lead Merrylad; I'm glad to stretch my legs by a walk," and the young man started off at a good pace, plashing ever through liquid mire, that overflowed street and so-called sidewalk.

There was no sign of an inn of any kind. A few dilapidated houses of the poorest straggled on either side the street, at the end of which they came upon a country store and post-office combined. Three or four mud-splashed horses hitched to a rock; as many mud-splashed loungers upon tilted chairs on the platform before the door. That was all.

"Better take 'em on to old Josey's, Charley," called out a friendly voice to Claggett.

"Yes, old Josey will do the correct thing by them," remarked a full-bearded, sunburned gentleman, who, seated astride of a mule, now came "clopping" toward them through the mud, from the opposite direction.

"I am really afraid, Mr. Townsend," Claggett said, persuasively, "that we shall be forced to go on a mile or so further, to old Josey's."

"And who in the thunder is old Josey?" exclaimed Vance, testily.

"Never heard o' him up Nawth, suh?" answered the trooper, with a twinkle in his eye. "He's the big person o' this part,—an old bachelor,—Mr. Joseph Lloyd, who runs the best farms and raises the best stock in the neighborhood. The truth is, not many visitors come here, unless they are booked for Mr. Lloyd's."

"What claim have I on him, unless I can pay my night's lodging and yours? I will leave you and the lame horse here, and make my way back to-night to Glenwood."

"To get to Glenwood, you'd have to pass over right smart of that mire we came through," said Claggett, pensively.

"Then, in Heaven's name, let us go to Josey's," said Vance, laughing, in spite of his bad humor.

They bade farewell to the village, and went off as they had come, Vance choosing to walk, the trooper leading the lame horse.

And now, in defiance of his plight, his melancholy appearance, the accident to his favorite, Vance yielded himself to the spell of a region that became at every moment, as he advanced, more wildly beautiful. The sun, about to set, sent a flood of radiance over hills high and low, over a broken rolling country dominated by the massive shaft of Massanutton Mountain, rising like a tower above his lesser brethren. That the "mile or two further on" stretched into four or five, the young man cared not a jot. His lungs filling with crisp, invigorating air, he strode forward, and was almost sorry when the dormer-windows of an old house shrouded by locust-trees in bloom appeared upon a plateau across intervening fields.

"Now for my best cheek!" he said to himself. "What am I to say to old Josephus? Ask for lodging, like the tramp I look? Hang it! I believe I'll sleep under the nearest haystack, rather!"

While thus absorbed, Mr. Theodore Vance Townsend, the fine flower of various clubs, did not perceive that he was an object of varying interest and solicitude to three persons looking over the fence of a pasture near-by, where cattle were enclosed.

Two elderly gentlemen surveyed him closely. A girl, who had tossed a glance at him over her shoulder, seemed to find more attraction in the Alderney heifer, whose saucy rough tongue was at that moment stretched out to lick salt from a velvet palm, than in the mud-stained wayfarer.

"That's no common tramp," said one of the gentlemen to the other. "If you will stay here with my Lady-love, I'll just go and investigate his case."

Vance Townsend had, perhaps, like other mortals, known his "bad moments" in life. But he felt that there had been few like this, when the old gentleman, issuing through a gate opening from the pasture, came to him with a quick, decided step.

The younger man took off his hat. The older did likewise. And then Vance, between a laugh and a groan, told his story, confirmed by the apparition at that moment, in the distance, of the horses and Claggett, who was himself afoot.

"Say no more, my dear fellow, say not another word," interrupted the astonished old gentleman. "My name is Lloyd, and I'm the owner of that house behind the locusts, where I'm delighted to take you in, and Charley Claggett, too. We'll find out what's the matter with your horse, quick enough. Welcome to Wheatlands, sir, and just come along with me."

Before Vance fairly knew how, he found himself in a "prophet's chamber," looking upon a sloping roof, where a martin was nesting within reach of his hand. Tapping the panes of the upper sash of his window, a branch tasselled with sweet-smelling blossoms swayed in the breeze. Outside, he had a wide and glorious view of field and mountains. Inside, he possessed a clean, if homely, bedroom, at the door of which a soft-voiced negro woman was already knocking, to ask for his bespattered garments.

Vance was delighted. When he furthermore found left at his portal a tub with a large bucket of ice-cold water from the spring, together with his bag, he began to think that Virginia hospitality was not to be relegated among things traditional.

The soft Virginia dusk was closing upon the scene, when our young man, leaving his room, went down-stairs, through a hall hung with trophies and implements of sport, and out of an open door upon the "front porch," to look at the evening star hanging above the mountain crest. In this occupation he found another person indulging likewise, and in the clear gloom discovered the face and figure of a young and singularly graceful girl, who without hesitation accosted him.

"Mr. Lloyd has told us of your mishap," she said, courteously. "He is congratulating himself that it happened near enough to let him help you out of it. I hope the horse will fare as well as the master."

"Merrylad will be all right, thank you, so Claggett has been up to tell me. It appears that Mr. Lloyd, in addition to his other attractions, is a famous amateur vet."

"You will find he has all the virtues," she said, laughing. At that moment, a lamp, lighted by the servant in the hall, sent a stream of illumination upon them. To Townsend's utter surprise, he saw the face of his cousin, Evelyn Carlyle.

"You!" he heard her say, in a not too well pleased tone; and "You?" he repeated, with what he felt to be not a distinguished success.

"How extraordinary that it should turn out to be you!" she began again, first of the two to recover her composure. "Did you think—were you, that is, on your way to visit us?"

"Nothing was further from my thoughts," he answered, bluntly. "I, on the contrary, believed myself to be going in the opposite direction from where you live."

"Of course," she said, somewhat piqued. "It is impossible you should have known that papa and I came yesterday on a visit to dear old Cousin Josephus. I beg your pardon if I was very rude."

"It is certainly not a welcome that seems inspired by what I have been led to think is Virginia cordiality," he answered, coolly.

"But I have asked your pardon, and that's not the way to answer me. You might grant it, never so stiffly; and after that, we, being thrown together this way through no fault of either of us, might agree to be decently civil before papa, who can have no idea how I feel toward—I mean what my reasons are for feeling—well, never mind what I mean," she ended, vexed at his immobility.

"I quite join with you in thinking it would be very silly to take any one else into this armed neutrality of ours. I shall at the earliest moment, to-morrow, relieve you of my presence. Suppose, until then, you try to treat me as you would another unoffending man under my circumstances."

"Yes. You are right. It would be better, and it would not worry papa and Cousin Josephus," she said, reflectively. "Well, then, if you were another man, I should begin by asking you what brought you to Virginia. No; that would not be at all polite, would it? I think I shall just say nothing at all."

"Not till you let me assure you that I came because a fellow I know told me he had made a driving tour in this part, last year, with his wife, and had found it rather nice—and another reason was, that I wanted to get away from myself."

"You are very flattering to our State," she said, bridling her head after a fashion he found both comical and sweet. She was silent a little while, then resumed, more gently:

"I was thinking of what you last said, and maybe I have done you an injustice. Maybe you are to be pitied more than blamed."

"Do you mean because I spoiled a good suit of clothes and hurt my horse's leg?"

"No; not that. You are clearly not in need of sympathy. There! They are going to ring the supper-bell, and you must go and be introduced to my father, as his cousin. He is the dearest daddy in the world, and will be sure to try to make you come to visit us at the Hall."

"Am I to understand this is a hint not to accept?"

"I could stay on here, you know," she said, in a businesslike way.

"You are perfectly exasperating," he exclaimed, and then the summons came to go into the house. Just before they crossed the threshold, she appeared to have undergone another change of mind. Turning back swiftly, in a voice of exceeding sweetness she breathed into his ear these words:

"Please, I am sorry. I ought not to keep forgetting, ought I, that you are a stranger within our gates, and a cousin, really?"

"Is she a coquette?" Vance began to ask himself, but was interrupted by a sortie of his host in search of him.

Chapter III

Vance Townsend had reckoned without his host when he made the declaration that he would relieve Miss Carlyle of his presence the following day. The kind owner of Wheatlands, indulgent to every man and beast upon his premises, had yet a way of holding on to and controlling guests that none might resist.

Vance, however, did not try very hard to resist the invitation to stay at least until "Thursday, when the Carlyles would be running away home." An evening spent with the kind, simple, yet cultivated people who formed the little coterie at Wheatlands (there was among them a widowed cousin with her unruly boy, and a cousin who had been unfortunate in his investments) had, somehow, quite upset our hero's notions upon many points.

Claggett, dismissed with a douceur, the liberality of which consoled that worthy countryman for an early reunion with the lady who would not allow him to tell stories of the war, took an affectionate leave of his employer. In his manner Vance detected more satisfaction in the vindication of Virginia customs than regret at the severance of their relation. The little triumph Claggett might readily have derived from the incident of the wayfarer's meeting, in spite of himself, with his relations was heroically suppressed. And before Townsend had turned upon his pillow the morning after his arrival, a telegram had gone to the town where his luggage had been left, ordering it to be sent by train that day.

Vance had been told that breakfast would be at nine; and, awakened at half-past seven by a bird on the bough in his window, he abandoned himself to a lazy review of his impressions of the family. Of his Cousin Eve he had seen little more than what has already been told. After filling her place at a bounteous supper-table, where the talk was chiefly absorbed by the three gentlemen, she had vanished, in company with the widowed cousin, and was invisible thereafter—the men sitting together till midnight in the large, raftered hall, with a fire in its wide chimney, that served the old bachelor for a general living-room.

Vance could not remember to have seen a face of finer lines, a manner of finer courtesy, than that of his seventy-year-old host, who, in spite of the rust of desuetude in worldly ways, carried his inbred gentility where all who approached him might profit by it.

That he was a politician went without saying; and, indeed, the talk once directed in the channel of national government had kept there until they separated. On a claw-footed table holding a lamp beside Mr. Lloyd's easy chair, covered with frayed haircloth, Vance saw lying a crisp new Review of English publication, and all about were piled newspapers and magazines, while shelves displayed row upon row of the antique, tawny volumes that had made up the complete library of a country gentleman in the days of old Josephus's grandfather.

Around the hearth, coming and going with every opening of many doors, gathered dogs of fine and varied breeds. One old patriarch of a St. Bernard, who attached himself particularly to the stranger, had remained close to Vance's feet, and gravely escorted him to bed.

In his kinsman, Guy Carlyle, a handsome man of fifty odd years, who in a military youth had been noted for deeds of daring that rang through the army of Northern Virginia, but had long since resigned himself to the peaceful pursuits of agriculture, Vance saw the origin of Eve's rare beauty. He also became aware that, of a large family of sons and daughters born to the now widowed Colonel, Eve was the sole survivor; and it did not need the expression that irradiated her father's face when her name was touched upon to show in what estimation she was held by him.

The tinge of melancholy in Mr. Carlyle's manner had, however, no effect like repression of the cordial friendliness he extended to the newcomer. Vance had gone to rest with a feeling that he had conferred a genuine favor upon his two elders by according to them, as he had, his company.

Spite of these conditions of good-fellowship, he awoke next morning conscious that there was one under the roof with him who had the power (and no desire to withhold it) to make him far from comfortable; to puzzle him, to banter him, to pull him up with a jerk at the moment he might feel that he was getting reasonably ahead with her; to punish him, it would appear, for some offence he could not own to having committed.

It was very clear that Eve thought him a poor fellow, mentally and morally; that, apart from her specific grudge against him, of nature unknown, she was not in the least inclined to pay tribute to his position, fashion, culture, wealth,—the appendages of Vance Townsend's personality people around him had always been disposed to make so much of. In the firmament of American society, he took himself to be a planet of first importance. In other lands, he had enjoyed more than a reasonable share of social success. Why should he here, for the first time in his life, feel like a man coming in fancy costume to a dinner where all the other guests wore plain clothes?

It must be the doing of that girl. She it was who, with a few words, a cool glance or two that appeared to read his soul, had brought him into this strait; and Vance was still young enough to feel himself flame with resentment of her. Then fell upon his mental ear the soft cadence of her voice, asking his pardon for having possibly misjudged him, and his anger passed.

As from Eve he went on to think of Kitty Ainger, now Mrs. Crawford, Vance was surprised at the freedom from soreness the reflection left upon his mind. Mrs. Crawford, he even reflected, was really an admirable woman—just the wife, as everybody had said, for a rising fellow like Crawford, who would surely reach the top! She had shown her good sense in taking him. Was it possible Vance had ever thought anything else?

On a table near the bed lay the contents of a pocket emptied overnight—among them a folded paper, inscribed with the latest and most satisfactory draft of his verses to Kitty. This he now seized, and, upon re-reading it, a flush that was not of tender consciousness overspread his face. Regardless of the loss to the world of poetry, ignoring the recurrent efforts that Calliope had witnessed, he deliberately tore it up, and went to the open window prepared to scatter the tiny remnants upon a matin breeze.

A view of wide green plains, with here and there a clump of noble trees, of soaring blue hills beyond them, all shining in the morning sun, met his eye; and almost directly beneath his window were a couple of horses, of which one was bestridden by old Josephus, in a nankeen coat and venerable Panama hat; the other, little more than a colt, was held by a negro and saddled for a woman's use.

"Lady-love! Lady-love, I say!" called out the old gentleman, in a voice of Stentor.

"Coming, coming, come!" gaily answered somebody; and in a moment Vance's Cousin Eve appeared.

Springing lightly upon the segment of an enormous tree that served as horse-block, she dropped into her saddle, and devoted herself to subduing the juvenile remonstrance of her steed.

With the fragments of his effusion to Kitty Ainger still in hand, Vance felt a curious sensation, as though the old world had suddenly become young and beautiful and tuneful; and then, from his ambush, he heard Josephus say:

"I'd half a mind to rouse up our visitor, and take him with us to see the sheep in Six-Acre Lot. The ride before breakfast would have given him a good idea of the way my land lies."

"O Cousin Josey, I am so thankful you did not!" answered Eve, with sincerity unmistakable.

"Tut, tut, my dear child," began Mr. Lloyd, rebukingly; but Eve, who just then succeeded in starting her colt in the right direction, was off and away, sending back a trill of laughter to her ancient cavalier, who made good speed to follow her.

The new conviction of his folly in having agreed to remain under the same shelter with Miss Carlyle did not prevent Mr. Townsend from making his appearance with an excellent appetite at the breakfast-table, whither he was duly escorted by Bravo, the old dog he had found outside his bedroom door waiting to take him in charge.

With Bravo and another dog or two at heel, Vance had walked off his pique over dew-washed slopes of short, rich grass to a summit near the house, to be joined on the return by Colonel Carlyle, who had strolled out to meet him.

Breakfasts at Wheatlands were justly considered the chefs d'oeuvre of old Josey's cook. Vance, helping himself to quickly succeeding dainties seen for the first time, cast a mental glance backward to the egg and a cup of tea that formed his accustomed meal at home. Half-way in the repast, Eve, who had been changing her habit to a pretty cotton gown, slipped into place between her father and the widow, who was pouring out the coffee.

"What! What!" said Cousin Josey, detecting her absence from a seat at his side, that would have brought her face to face with Townsend. "My Lady-love desert me like that? Come back, little runaway, and see your Cousin Vance taste his first mouthful of a Wheatlands ham!"

Thus adjured, Eve could but take the seat indicated; and Vance, who had determined to be no longer oppressed by so small and pink a person, bestowed on her an openly admiring glance that angered her anew.

"We must leave you to Eve's mercies this morning, Mr. Townsend," observed their host, at the conclusion of the repast. "Carlyle and I have promised to ride over to the County Court to hear a case tried, and to call on the Judge, who is an old college chum of the Colonel's. We shall be home to dinner at two, and you young people must entertain each other until then."

"Could you not manage not to show so plainly what you feel?" asked Vance in his cousin's little ear, as they left the table. "Pray believe that I am not a party to the infliction put upon you."

They had strolled bareheaded out under the trees shading the lawn about the house.

"Shall we never have done quarrelling?" said Eve, wearily. "Just as I think I begin to feel kindly toward you, something happens, and I break down again."

"Were we not moderately successful last night, when I assumed to be somebody else?" he asked.

"Yes; that is better. I will treat you as I would any other man stopping here—any one not of your exalted class, I mean."

"That was a quite unnecessary taunt. But I will allow it to pass if you agree for to-day—until the gentlemen return—to treat me as you would Mr. Ralph Corbin, for example."

"What do you mean?" she asked, quickly. "Ralph is the dearest, most obliging cousin I have, and I impose upon him dreadfully. If he were here, I should begin by sending him indoors to fetch my hat and parasol from the hall rack, and a new magazine I left in the window-seat, and tell him to call the dogs to come with us—What! you can't intend to condescend to wait upon a mere girl, a country cousin?"

He was off and back again with the articles demanded, showing no enmity in the smile offered with them to her acceptance. But he did not at once surrender the periodical, or until he had satisfied himself of the contents of the page held open by a marker of beaten silver.

"You don't mind my looking at what you read?" he asked.

"If you like. It is some verses—not what you would care for, in the least, but they have given me great pleasure."

A glance showed him that his suspicion was correct. The stanzas in question had been written by him some months before, and sent, unsigned, to the editor.

"Will you tell me what you fancy in these?" he said, with fine indifference of manner.

"Why does one like a flower, or worship a star? They suit me, I suppose, and I am learning them by heart."

His own heart throbbed with a schoolboy's glee and pride. But he said nothing, and walked beside her light figure, in the round of garden and orchard, bringing up in the stable-yard. Here, a space paved with grass-grown cobblestones was bounded on three sides by frame structures, now, in their decay, as gray and as fragile-looking as hornets' nests.

"And the little house built of limestone, with one window, was put up in Colonial days, for refuge in case of an Indian raid. Mr. Lloyd will tell you one of his best stories, about an adventure of his ancestor in there, when three white men successfully resisted a band of red-skins. Perhaps our aboriginal anecdotes would bore you, however. If so, give us only a little hint, and we desist. Now, shan't we go in and see your horses?"

She lifted the latch; Vance followed her, past stalls where the occupants gave her immediate recognition, to those in which his own pair were comfortably ensconced. Merrylad, ungallant fellow, would have none of the young lady, but at the touch and voice of his master, turned his beautiful head sidewise to lay it upon Vance's shoulder with affection.

"I am, at last, an illustration of the legend, 'Some one to love me,'" he said, laughing. "So you thought I had forsaken you, old man? Not I, my beauty. Gently, gently, you are too demonstrative."

"I can't imagine life without horses and dogs; can you?" she said, with the quickly growing comradeship of a child. "There; I was determined that Merrylad should let me stroke his neck!"

From the stables, whose inmates seemed to have put them upon a better footing, they passed again under the pink-blossomed arcades of an apple-orchard, to pause beside a curious indentation, like a dimple, in the turf.

"Just here," began Evelyn,—"but I shall not tell you, unless you promise to be properly impressed,—a sad fate overcame a dishonest negro servant of Mr. Lloyd's ancestor. He—the servant, I mean—was a fellow much given to acrobatic feats, and was accustomed to divert his master's guests by tumbling and turning cart-wheels. One day, he robbed old Mr. Lloyd's money-chest, and filling his pockets, went out in the orchard, and testified his glee by standing on his head."

"What happened? Evidently something of a supernatural nature."

"The earth opened, and out came a great hairy red hand," said Eve, "(I am telling it to you as my nurse told it to me) and 'cotched him by de hayde, and drawed him down.'"

"What evidence do they offer of this event?"

"That is the thrilling part. About fifty years ago, when the present owner was just of age, some men at work in this place dug up a treasure of golden 'cob-coins,' clipped here and there to regulate their value, as the custom was in olden days. And there, wedged in the earth where the gold lay scattered, was the skeleton of a man standing upon his head!"

"Proof positive," said Vance, laughing.

"I thought I should convince you. As an actual fact, the coins brought six hundred dollars at the Philadelphia mint, and the money was distributed among the finders."

"Imagine how many darkeys have stolen out here, since, to work at night with pick and shovel! I suppose that accounts for the depression of the sod."

"I myself found a George II. coin in the garden yesterday. See! If I were to give it to you, do you think it would bind you to continue to be 'some one else,' during the rest of your stay with us?"

He took the bit of copper she held out, wondering, as he had done the night before, whether this kindly mood meant coquetry, then deciding it was but the frolic spirit of a wholesome and untrammelled youth not to be restrained. Whatever it meant, he would profit by it. A creature so bright, so impulsive as this, his new-found cousin, was not within his ken, even if the occasional prick of her wit did keep him in an attitude of self-defence.

"Her cheeks are true apple-blossoms," he found himself murmuring, irrelevantly, as he pursued her through the tunnel of orchard boughs. "But her lips—what? Ah! bard beloved, I thank you—'Her mouth a crimson flower.' That's it. 'Her mouth a crimson flower.'"

"What are you talking about, back there?" exclaimed his guide, turning sharply to call him to account.

"Did I speak aloud? I was—ah—only wondering where we are going to bring up?"

"Do I tire you? Perhaps you are not used to walking. Never mind; we shall soon reach the graveyard, and then you can sit upon the stone wall and rest."

"I think I can last to the graveyard," meekly said the young man, whose tramps in the Alps and Dolomites and Rockies had included of "broken records" not a few.

"Now, you are laughing at me," she said, suspiciously. "But you know I have never heard of you except as a lounger in clubs and a leader of cotillons."

Vance thought it useless to protest.

They now reached an enclosure under a grove of maples, where, motioning him to sit upon a low wall tapestried with moss and fern and creepers, she perched upon the gnarled root of a tree, and, opening her book, prepared to become absorbed in it.

"Suppose you read aloud to me," he suggested, with cunning aforethought.

"This?" she said, doubtfully, surveying his verses. "Oh, no; I think not. You would hardly care for this. It is something quite out of your line, don't you see? The writer gives expression to a perfectly straightforward, yet eloquent, expression of a true man's true feeling, about a thing of every day. It is not only that the words are lovely and the sentiment is noble, but the measure ripples like a stream—Why, what is the matter with you? One would think you know the author."

"I am afraid, upon reflection, that I do not know the author," he said, drawing back into his shell.

"If you did, I should get you to thank him for me for this," she resumed. "They say authors are always disappointing to meet, after one has idealized them through their writings. But he would not be. No; I would trust him, through everything, to be a noble gentleman. Of course he is unworldly. I believe he lives in a remote Territory, and despises petty conventionalities of society, especially those in New York. And I think he never even heard of that dreadful 400 of yours."

Vance, smiling at her girlish nonsense, felt himself, nevertheless, lapped in the Elysium of her speech.

Then her mood changed to pathos, as she told him the story of "Cousin Josey's" single episode of love, ending in the mound beside them, where slept the old man's bride-betrothed of seventeen,—a ward of his mother,—who had died of a tragic accident, forty years agone.

"And every day, since, he has come here. See, there are fresh wood-violets upon her breast. And the dear old man has never thought of such a thing as giving her a successor. Now, let us go. There are lambs to show you, and a lot of other things."

The passing cloud was gone from her April face. She was again radiant, and in some bedazzlement of mind he arose and followed her.

Townsend's acquaintance with his Virginia cousins had, as might have been expected, prolonged itself into a visit to Carlyle Hall; and he was on the eve of departure, after a stay of two weeks in that delightful refuge, before he realized how much his fancy had begun to twine around the place and its inmates.

Sentiment for the young creature who was its ruling spirit he did not admit, other than the natural tribute of his age and sex to hers. Nor did he give her credit for more than temporary feeling on any point disconnected with her strong local attachments. Her father, her home, and those she grandiosely called her "people"—meaning, he supposed, the individuals indebted to Providence for having been born within the limits of her State—were the objects of Eve's warm affection.

Vance felt sure her courteous thought of him was the result of only transmitted consideration for a guest. So soon as he should quit the pleasant precincts of the Hall, he feared he must put aside his claim to even this consideration. This condition of affairs worried our young man more than he cared to admit to himself. To no one else would he have confessed that the fortnight had been spent by him in a daily effort to impress upon her a personality widely different from her conception of it. Now, at the end of his enterprise, he was conscious that he had not advanced in the endeavor; and this last evening in her company was correspondingly depressing to his amour propre.

They were sitting together in a window-seat of the drawing-room, looking into an old-world garden with box walks, a sun-dial, and a blaze of tulips piercing the brown mold. From the western sky, facing them, the red light was vanishing, and in the large, dim room a couple of lamps made islands of radiance in a sea of shadows. In the library, adjoining, sat the Colonel, reading, his strong, handsome head seen in profile from where they were.

Sounds of evening in the country, the sweet whistle of a negro in the distance, alone broke the spell of silence brooding over the old house. Vance hesitated to further disturb it, the more so that Evelyn had been in a mood of unusual graciousness. Nor did he, in truth, feel prepared to broach the discussion of certain things he had put off until now.

"To-morrow," he said at last, with a genuine sigh, "I shall be on my way northward, and this beautiful, restful life will be among my has-beens."

"Too restful, I'm afraid," she cried, in her brusque, schoolgirl fashion. "Your Aunt Myrtle always speaks of Virginia as nothing but a 'cure,' which she is clearly glad to have accomplished and lived down."

"It has been a cure for me in another sense. I wonder if you know what you have done for me?"

"I?"

"Yes. Don't fence with me now. For once, believe in your cousin, who is, after this, going to leave you for a long time in peace. Tell me; when I shall have gone, and that big, comfortable 'spare room' is put in order again for the next guest, shall you sometimes think of the subject of your missionary labors in the past two weeks?"

"But I have never undertaken to reform you," she said, in a vexed tone. "It is absurd for you to think I imagined myself capable of that. The best I could hope for was that your visit should pass without our coming to open conflict. Papa could tell you I promised him to try that this should be so."

"Then I am indebted to your father for the modicum of personal consideration you have vouchsafed me?"

"And Cousin Josey—yes," she answered, with startling candor. "At the same time, I must say, I like you now better than I believed I ever could. It makes me wish with all my heart I could trust you."

Vance felt a sting that was not all resentment, or all pain. The expression of her eyes, so fearless, so intense, waked in him a feeling that, in the moment they had reached, he desired nothing so much in all the world as to win this "mere girl's" approval. The color deepened in his face, as he said:

"And yet you have given the author of those verses, who happens to be myself, credit for something in which you could place faith?"

"You—you?" she exclaimed, starting violently. "Ah no! Don't destroy my ideals."

"This may be wholesome, but it is certainly not pleasant," he said, praying Heaven for patience.

There was nothing of her customary light spirit of bravado in the manner in which, after a pause, she next spoke to him.

"I hardly know how—for the sake of others, I mean, not on my own account—to ask if it is possible you have not, in connection with me, given a thought to one who was my daily, intimate companion all of last winter."

"That!" he interrupted, with a dry laugh. Why not arraign her for the wreck of me?"

"You understand me, I see," she said, with meaning. "Let me say this, then: that I hold a trifler with women's hearts to be the most despicable of characters. A man who is too indolent or too infirm of purpose to deny himself the pleasure he gets from watching his progress in a girl's affections is an offender the law mayn't reach, but he deserves it should. That he makes his victim old before her time, in his gradual, refined disappointment of her hopes, may not count for much, in your estimation. But—but—oh! I could not have believed it of the person who wrote those verses!"

There were tears in her honest eyes, a tremor in her young voice. Save for these, Vance, who had walked away from her a dozen steps, would have continued to put distance between himself and this "angel at the gate."

As it was, he controlled himself sufficiently to return and say, in a hard, strained voice:

"I shall not attempt to change your estimate of me. But I am glad you have given me an opportunity to tell you that on the day I saw you first, I went directly from my aunt's house to ask Katherine Ainger to be my wife. Some day, when you are older, and know more of the world, and take broader views of poor humanity, all these things may seem to you different. Then you may, perhaps, admit that, with all my faults, I could never be such a cad as you have pictured. In the little time that we are together now, please, let us say no more about it."

He walked away, joining the Colonel, to engage that unsuspecting gentleman in an exhaustive discussion of politics.

Eve sat for awhile in her dusky corner, absorbed in thought. She had decided to say a few words to him, before he should go, that might contribute to her relief rather than his. But Vance gave her no opportunity to speak any words to him, except those of conventional farewell. Betimes, next morning, he took leave of his cousins; and the Virginia episode was over.

After he had left, Eve locked herself in her room, and gave way to a burst of tears.

Chapter IV

In a railway carriage that had long before left Genoa with the ultimate intention of getting into Rome, a girl sat, tranced in satisfaction, looking from the window, throughout an afternoon of spring. To speed thus leisurely between succeeding pictures of a scenery and life she seemed to recognize from some prior state of existence—although now, in fact, seen for the first time—was a joy sufficient to annihilate fatigue.

The milk-white oxen ploughing the red fields; the peasant women at work amid young vines; the sheets of wild flowers; the pink and white and blue-washed villas, with their terraces and palms and flower-pots; the hedges of roses, and groves of olive and eucalyptus; above all, the classic names of stations, albeit placarded in a commonplace way,—made Miss Evelyn Carlyle, lately a passenger of a steamer arriving at Genoa from America, turn and twist from side to side of the carriage, and flush and thrill with satisfaction, after a fashion causing her father, who accompanied her, to rejoice that they occupied their apartment undisturbed.

As evening closed upon the scene, she at last consented to throw her head back upon the cushion of the seat, and admit she was a prey to the mortal consideration of exceeding hunger. Since leaving Genoa, a roll and some cakes of chocolate, only, had supplied the luncheon for a journey of ten hours. Therefore, when the train, stopping after dark at a little buffet, was promptly forsaken by its passengers, Eve and her father joined the eager throng craving refreshment at the hands of a perspiring landlord and his inefficient aids.

"If I could only make these fellows understand, perhaps they would stop to listen," said Colonel Carlyle, growing wroth at the struggling, vociferating, jostling crowd massed in a small room, snatching for food like hungry dogs.

"Allow me to—By Jove, it's the Colonel!" said a voice behind him, whose possessor was trying to pass on.

"Ralph Corbin! Where did you drop from?" and, "Ralph, this is too delightful" were the greetings received by the young man thus unexpectedly encountered.

"I am on my way from Nice to Rome to meet—er—some friends who are expected there for the Silver Wedding festivities," said he, with becoming blushes.

"I know," exclaimed Evelyn, gleefully. "I was sure they had something to do with it."

"But it's uncertain whether they have returned from Greece yet; and it's awfully jolly to meet you, anyway, Eve, and the Colonel. Here, let's get some food, and I'll go in your carriage for the rest of the way, of course. I'd not an idea you were coming out this year."

"Nor we, until a fortnight since," said Eve.

Ralph capturing a supply of bread, and fruit, and roast chicken, they made off with their booty to the train, and the evening passed in merry chat and explanation of their plans. Evelyn, however, by no means lost the consciousness of her advance for the first time upon Rome; and when, after crossing the Tiber at midnight, and catching glimpses, on either side the railway, of ruins that heralded their vicinity to the goal of her hopes, she was keyed to high excitement.

Ralph laughed at her disappointment as the train ran slowly into a large, modern station lighted by electricity, and decorated with hangings of gold and crimson, a crimson carpet spread across the platform to one of the doors of exit. When they enquired of the facchino who took their bags in charge, what great arrival was expected, the man answered with an indifference worthy of democratic New York: "It is for the Silver Wedding of their Majesties, Signor; but there are so many Kings and Emperors and Princes in Rome now, we have ceased to take account of them."

"We have struck Rome at a crowded season," said Ralph, "and I don't know that you are going to like it overmuch. I say, Eve, if Somebody doesn't come for another week or so, what a heaven-send you and your father will be to me for company!"

"That is the most cold-blooded way of making use of us to kill time with," said Eve; but she bestowed on him a well-pleased smile. To her, Ralph had been ever a chum,—a dear, good fellow, who was the best of company. His unexpected appearance here promised to add tenfold to her pleasure, while his hopes in the affair hinted at between them had been, for some time, familiar to her in detail.

"And all this while I have never told you," he went on, in his boyish manner, "that at Nice I fell in with that swell New York cousin of yours, Vance Townsend. Not half a bad chap, if he is rather close-mouthed. Shouldn't wonder if he's in Rome, now, like everybody else in this part of the world."

"Townsend?" said the Colonel, with animation. "Glad to hear there's a chance of seeing him. Just a year—isn't it, Eve?—since he visited us at the Hall. Well, there's no doubt we are in luck, if we meet Vance as well as you, Ralph."

"The funny part of it is," whispered the joyous Ralph to Evelyn, "some of the people we both knew in Nice put it into Townsend's head I was coming here to meet my fiancÉe. And you know, Eve, I am not engaged to her yet; her mother put us on probation for six months. The six months are out next week, though, and I don't think it would hurt Maud's mamma to hurry herself a little bit to get here, do you? How you will admire Maud's style, Evie! Her hair is dark as—" etc., etc., until Evelyn cut it short by jumping into the carriage drawn up in waiting for them.

Just now, she was not as well prepared to listen as usual. Certain feelings she had believed extinct proved themselves to have been merely dormant. Even the spectacle of Rome en fÊte, by night, its bands and fountains playing, its streets still filled with lively promenaders, did not wholly distract her from this sudden tumult of an emotion she was not prepared to define.

Constantly, during the crowded days that followed, while they drove hither and thither, attracted but provoked by the jumbling of ancient and modern in these haunts of history, she tried to persuade herself she was not ever on the alert to see somebody who did not appear. For, from among the many acquaintances and a few friends encountered in the streets of the sociable little city, Vance was persistently missing.

Ralph, however, whose sweetheart also kept her distance, proved his philosophy by devoting his days to the Carlyles; and thus, under a sky blue as the fabled Elysian fields of Virgil, the festal week went on. Wherever their Majesties of Italy and Germany passed in public, they were greeted by thoroughfares black with people, windows and balconies blazing with flags and draperies, the clash of bands and the clank of soldiery.

The coachman engaged for the service of our friends would contrive, wherever bound, to take on the way some passing show of sovereigns; and, upon a certain fair day, for no reason avowed, he drove them into the tangle of vehicles and people always seen surrounding the doors of the Quirinal Palace whenever there was a chance to catch glimpses of royalties upon the move. There ensconced, the saucy, bright-eyed fellow stood up, pretended his inability to get out of the snarl, gesticulated, talked to his friends and threatened his enemies in the crowd, while visibly rejoicing in the opportunity to see all likely to occur in that coveted quarter.

"Look here, cabby, if you don't move out of this to the Baths of Caracalla in just two minutes and a half," began Ralph, at last, in emphatic English; but he had no reason to go on, as the driver, seeing the young man's face, gathered up the reins, and extricated himself with much dexterity from the crowd.

Neither of his passengers noticed that a gentleman, in a carriage just then crossing theirs, looked at them, leaned forward, gave orders to his coachman, and at once proceeded to follow on their tracks.

In the glorious ruin of the greatest of temples to athletic exercise, Evelyn drew a deep breath of delight. Nothing in Rome, not even the Colosseum, had so impressed her with the grandeur of bygone achievement in architecture as this wondrous pile, with its vast spaces, the gray walls breached by Time, out of which maidenhair grew and crows were flying—"crying to heaven for rain," as the guide poetically explained; the stately columns of red porphyry grouped around the beautiful mosaic floors; the lace-like traceries of carven stone; the niches and pedestals from which marvels of old sculpture had been removed; over all, the air that is gold and balm combined!

Evelyn leaned against a column abstractedly, while Ralph and her father walked about, discussing with their guide facts and statistics of the Thermae. They had indeed strolled quite out of her sight, when a shadow on the pavement beside her caused her to look up. If an answer to thought be no surprise, then was not Evelyn surprised; for the person confronting her was Vance Townsend.

"I have known that you were in Rome ever since the night you arrived," he said, without preamble other than coldly offering her his hand. "I happened to be at the station to meet an English friend, when you came out; and I saw you get into your carriage and drive away."

"Then you can hardly claim to have earned a welcome from us, now," she began to say, lightly, but found it impossible to go on, checked by the look upon his face.

"I make no pretences," he said, bitterly. "If you care to know that I have either kept you in view every day since, or else have gone for long rides into the country, where I saw nobody, it is quite true. I have done everything foolish, everything foreign to my principles and habits, to satisfy, or to get away from, the feeling the sight of you aroused in me. I wonder what you'd think, if I told you I've been wandering about pretty much ever since I parted with you, a year ago, trying to get you out of my head. Many's the letter I've written to you and destroyed. Twice I set out to see you, and once I got back into the neighborhood of your home. When I saw you in the crowd at the station here, I actually thought I was possessed—" He checked himself. "I beg your pardon. I have no right to say these things to you, I know."

"You? You?" she could only repeat, bewildered by the meaning in his tone and the expression of his eyes. "Is it possible that you—"

"That I fell in love with you that time when you were holding me to account for a thousand transgressions, committed or not committed? Yes, it is quite possible. That need not prevent our remaining good friends, need it? I hope I've too much common sense to ask you to indulge in a discussion of these points, now; during the past week, I've been engaged continually, and I trust with some success, in disposing of the last remnant of hope I may have cherished that some day things might work around to give me at least a chance."

"You make me very unhappy," she exclaimed.

"That is far from my wish," he said, more gently. "Just at present you ought to be walking on roses. There! Your father and Corbin are coming back this way. I want to ask you to help me to excuse myself in your good father's sight, if I seem unsociable."

"One word," she said, the blood flaming into her cheeks. "It is due you to know that long ago, soon after you left us, I received a letter from Katherine Crawford,—a letter that made me understand many things I had judged harshly in your conduct."

"Mrs. Crawford has been always kind to me," he answered. "And no one rejoices more than I in her present happiness."

"Yes, she is happy,—perfectly so,—and her life is full of the duties that best suit her. She says it was all planned out for her by Providence, and kept in reserve until she was fit for it."

"So runs the world away!" he exclaimed, with a whimsical gesture.

After that, the others came, and there was much talk of the subjects naturally presenting themselves. When they moved out of the enclosure to go to the carriage, Vance walked with the Colonel, following Evelyn and Ralph.

"You will dine with us at our hotel this evening?" said the older man, at parting.

"I am sorry that I am engaged," Vance answered, with appropriate courtesy, "and that to-morrow I am off for Sicily. Sometime, later on in your wanderings, I shall hope to run upon you again. This is the worst of pleasant meetings in travel, is it not?"

When they were seated in the victoria, he shook Evelyn's hand last.

The day was finally at hand that was to bring Ralph's sweetheart—with her incidental father, mother, two younger sisters, and a governess—to the quarters engaged for them at Rome. In the young man's enthusiasm, he did not forget to wonder what cloud had passed over his Cousin Evelyn's enjoyment of the place, the sights, the season. He even consulted the Colonel as to whether Eve might not be unduly affected by the crowded condition of the town, and proposed for them to change to a quieter spot. And Eve's father, who had had his own anxieties on this point, prevailed upon her to give up the engagements she had made with apparent zest, and resort to Naples and Sorrento.

To Naples, accordingly, they went, the faithful Ralph accompanying them, at the cost of a night-journey on his return to Rome for the day that was to see his happiness in flower. He drove with them to their hotel, through the interminable streets, lined with palaces and thronged with paupers, and saw them ensconced in pleasant quarters facing Vesuvius, whose feather of smoke pointed to good weather. They dined together in a vast salle-À-manger, where, in a gallery, was conducted during their repast a noisy and mirth-provoking concert of fiddlers, mandolins, and guitars,—the performers singing, shouting, dancing, as they played. There was an hour before his train left, in which, while the Colonel smoked upon the balcony of their sitting-room, Eve walked out upon one of the quays with her cousin; and this hour Ralph determined to improve.

In the last day or two, trifles had shown this astute young man that the depression of his cousin (for whom he cherished no grudge because, a year or two before, he had been wild to call her wife, and she would not hear of it) had been coincident with the meeting in Rome with Townsend. That very morning, he had found at his bankers', had read and put into his pocket, a letter written by Vance on arriving at Taormina, which had thrown upon the subject a new and surprising light. Just how to convey his discoveries to Evelyn, the most proud and sensitive of creatures about her sacred feelings, he had not yet decided.

They talked of the bay, of the mountains, of Vesuvius. Calmed and enchanted by the hour and scene, Eve wore her gentlest aspect, and Ralph felt emboldened to begin.

"This is as it should be," he said, with an air of generalizing. "You will go to Sorrento and Amalfi and Capri, and your roses will come back. I shall not forget you, Evie dear, because I am getting what I most want in life. You have always been to me a thing apart, and I've told Maud so, over and over again. By and by, I shall bring her to the Hall, and let her see you at your best, as its mistress. For you are not quite the same over here, Evie, as in Virginia air."

"Perhaps I am growing old," she said, smiling. "But never mind me. We shall miss you, Ralph, and it will require the greatest heroism to do without you. After this journey, nobody need tell me that 'three is trumpery.' We know better, do we not?"

"Why not send for your other cousin to take my place?" said Ralph, seeing his opportunity. "He is at Taormina, and would come, undoubtedly. I had a letter from him this morning, by the way. The most characteristic letter,—just like the man."

No answer. Ralph felt as he were treading a bridge of glass.

"To explain it, I should have to go back to the evening of that meeting in the Baths of Caracalla. He came to me at the hotel, and after a friendly chat, just as he was leaving, took occasion to say some uncommonly nice things about my relations with (as I thought) Maud; so I thanked him, and gushed a little about her, maybe,—in my circumstances, a fellow's excusable,—and off he went, I never suspecting that he all the time thought I was going to marry you."

Here Ralph was rewarded by a genuine start and a blush, but still Eve did not speak.

"A day later," Ralph went on, determined now to do or die, "something I recalled of our conversation made me realize the mistake he was under, and I wrote him a letter explaining it. Such a time as I had to find his whereabouts! His banker had no instructions to forward anything, and I won't tell you all the ups and downs of trying to get at him. Finally, in despair, I sent the letter, on the chance, to Taormina, and from there he answered me."

At this point, in revenge for her indifference, the diplomatist remained, in his turn, silent, until Eve, who could bear it no longer, turned upon him her beautiful young face, glowing in the evening light with an eager joy. "And—and?" she exclaimed, impetuously.

"He is a good sort—Townsend," went on Ralph, reflectively. "I've an idea, Evie, that if you and he could have managed to hit it off, you would have suited each other capitally. He would be the kind likely to settle down into a country gentleman, too; and you would never be happy in town. He has brains and a heart, in addition to his good looks and manners, and a restrained force of character that would be an excellent balance for this little impulsive lady, whose only fault is that she jumps at conclusions instead of working to them."

"You are perfectly right about that, Ralph," she said, laughing away a strong desire to cry. "I am learning wisdom, however, with rapidly advancing years. And you do only justice to my Cousin Vance, in your estimate of him. No doubt," here she swallowed a nervous catch in her voice, "if he told the truth in his letter, he congratulated you upon being allied to some one other than the young person who made his visit to Virginia last year a very hard test of patience, to say no more."

She stopped, and tried to turn away her head. But Ralph, looking her gently in the face, read there what gave him courage to launch the last arrow in his quiver.

"Whatever he said, I saw through it, Evie dear. And I—I could not wait to write an answer. I telegraphed my advice to come to Naples as fast as steam can carry him."

Shortly after her conversation upon the quay with Ralph (who, returning to Rome, had been duly translated into anticipated bliss), Eve and her father took advantage of a perfect Sunday for the excursion up Mount Vesuvius.

In a landau with two horses,—a third to be annexed on the ascent,—they traversed the long street formed by the villages of San Giovanni, La Barra, Portici, and Resina, stretching from the parent city—a street suggesting in the matter of population a series of scattered ant-hills. Such a merry, dirty, shameless horde of all ages, who, abandoning the dens they called homes, had issued forth under the sun blazing even at that early hour of morning in his vault of blue, to bivouac in the open highway, was never seen! Marketing, chaffering, vending, gossiping, cooking, eating, drinking, performing the rites of religion and of the toilet, the hum of their voices was like the note of some giant insect. It was when a stranger's carriage came in sight that the air became suddenly vocal with shrill cries for alms; vehicles and horses were surrounded, escorted by noisy beggars, whose half-naked children offered flowers, or turned somersaults perilously near the wheels.

Resina passed, they could breathe more freely. The street turmoil was succeeded by the peace of a country road mounting between lava walls, over which glimpses of sea, of deep-red clover in fields, of vineyard or lemon grove, were finally succeeded by glorious, unobstructed views of the mountains, bay, and city. In the region of recent overflows, they saw the most curious spectacle, to the newcomer, of fertile garden-strips of green, where clung tiny houses, pink or whitewashed, daring the mute monster overhead, while close beside them the mountain-side was streaked with ominous stains marking the spots where other homes had defied him just one day too long.

Higher still, in the track of the overflow of 1872, they experienced the striking effect of entering into a valley of desolation between walls of living green. Here, the lava in settling had wreathed itself into the forms of dragons couchant, of huge serpents, and other monstrous shapes that lay entwined as if asleep. Up above, arose the main cone of the crater, smooth as a heap of gun-powder, vast, majestic, cloud-circled; taking upon itself in the intense light a blooming purple tint; the smoke issuing from its summit now soon melting into space, now showing dense and threatening.

Evelyn, in whom the novelty as well as beauty of the scene had aroused fresh spirit, looked more like her old self than her fond father had seen her for many a long day. But it is fortunately not given to parents, however solicitous, to see all the workings of young minds; and the good gentleman would have been indeed surprised had he divined the mainspring of her animation. While he was indulging in a few mild objections to the length and slowness of the drive, the rapacity of wayside beggars, the heat of the sun, etc., such as naturally occur to the traveller unsupported by sentimental hopes, to our young lady the condition of motion was a necessity, and the act of getting upward a relief.

For the plain truth was that, since the last talk with Ralph, Evelyn had given rein to a thousand emotions repressed, during the months gone by, with stern self-chiding.

Until now, recalling the year before when Vance had left her to an unavailing sense of regret for her harsh judgment of him, she had hardly realized what their intercourse together had meant to her. But the period of his visit was, in fact, succeeded by one in which her salt of life had lost its savor; and Evelyn, to her dismay, found that her affections had gone from her keeping to this man's, acknowledged to have been the suitor of her friend.

That Katherine had refused Vance, and straightway married another lover, made very little difference to one of Eve's rigid creed in these matters. To her, love declared was love unchangeable; with air her heart she pitied Vance for his disappointment, and blamed herself for having repeatedly wounded him without reason. By means of this mode of argument, she had naturally succeeded in raising Townsend to the pedestal of a martyred hero, which, it may be conceived by those of colder judgment, did not lessen his importance in the girl's imagination.

As the months had gone on, and she had had nothing from him save packages of books and prints sent according to promise, as to a polite entertainer who is thus agreeably disposed of by the beneficiary of hospitality extended, her feelings had taken on the complexion of hopeless regret for an irrevocable past. What Eve had henceforth to do, according to her own strict ordinance, was to live down the impulse that made her give her heart unasked. The stress of these emotions had, in spite of her brave efforts, so worked upon her health that the Colonel, as fond of home as a limpet of his rock, determined to try for her the change of air and experience, resulting as we have seen.

And now, on this dazzling day, a "bridal of earth and sky" in one of the loveliest spots upon earth, she kept saying to herself, "By to-morrow—to-morrow, at latest—he will be with me! And then—and then—and then—!"

The carriage halted at a little wayside booth for the sale of wines and fruit. A dark-skinned woman, bearing a tray of glasses, with flasks of the delusive Lachrymae Christi (made from the grapes ripened upon these slopes) came forward to greet them. On Evelyn's side, a hawker, with shells and strings of coral, and coins alleged to have been found imbedded in the lava near at hand, importuned her. But, rejecting the others, she beckoned to a pretty, bare-legged boy carrying oranges garnished in their own glossy, dark-green leaves; and so busy was she in selecting the best of his refreshing fruit, she hardly observed that another claimant for her attention had appeared close beside the wheel.

"Please go away, my good man," she said at last, laughingly, without giving him a glance. "Indeed, I want nothing you can supply."

"That is a harsh assertion," Vance said, in a low tone meant for her ear, and then proceeded to greet both his cousins outspokenly.

He had reached Naples early that morning; had ascertained at their hotel that they were engaged to start for Vesuvius at a given hour; fearing collision with a party of strangers, had set out alone to walk up the mountain and take his chance of intercepting them; and had waited here for the purpose.

"After you had been journeying all night?" said the Colonel, with unfeigned surprise. "Why, my dear fellow, in your place I should have—"

Just then he intercepted, passing between Evelyn and Vance, a look that startled him. That his sentence remained unfinished nobody observed. The Colonel drew back into his corner, as if he had been shot.

If she had divined her father's feeling, Eve could not have pitied any one who was gaining Vance. And Vance, at that moment, believed all the world to be as happy as himself!

To a love-affair so obvious, the ending naturally to be expected is of the old-fashioned and inevitable sort. In the beautiful Indian summer of the following autumn in Virginia, these two people were duly married at the Hall. From far and wide came relatives to wish them joy; it was like the gathering of a Scotch clan at the summons of the pipes. Prominent among the revellers at the dance following the nuptial ceremony was Cousin Josey, who, in a pair of antiquated leather pumps with buckles, led down the middle of a reel with his cherished "Lady-love." To please the old boy, Evelyn had worn the little string of pearls bought by him, years before, for a bride who was never to be. And so everybody was content, and one of the cousins said it was "exactly like a weddin' befo' the wah."