It was a glorious afternoon, and not a single feathery cloud flecked the clear blue of the sky. The refreshing rain of the previous night had cooled the sultry August air, and all about the farm-house the grass had taken a brighter green and the flowers a brighter hue. Away to the westward, at the distance of nearly one-fourth of a mile, the woods were streaked with an avenue of pines, which grew so closely together that the scorching rays of the noontide sun seldom found entrance to the velvety plat where Walter had built a rustic bench, with Jessie looking on, and where Jessie and Ellen now were sitting, the one upon the seat and the other on the grass filling her straw hat with cones, and talking to her companion of the young graduate, wondering where he was, and if he didn't wish he were there with them beneath the sheltering pines.

Eight years had changed the little girls of nine and eight into grown-up, graceful maidens, and though of an entirely different style, each was beautiful in her own way, Jessie as a brunette, and Ellen as a blonde. Full of frolic, life and fun, Jessie carried it all upon her sparkling face, and in her laughing eyes of black. Now, as of old, her raven hair clustered in short, thick curls around her forehead and neck, giving her the look of a gypsy, her father said, as he fondly stroked the elfin locks, and thought how beautiful she was. Five years she had lived in Deerwood, and then, at her father's request, had gone to a fashionable boarding-school, for the only child of the millionaire must have accomplishments such as could not be obtained among the New England mountains. No process of polishing, however, or course of discipline had succeeded as yet in making her forget her country home, and when Mr. Graham, whose business called him West, offered her the choice between Newport and Deerwood, she unhesitatingly chose the latter, greatly to the vexation of her grandmother, who delighted in society now even more than she did when young. If Jessie went to Deerwood she must remain at home, for she could not go to Newport alone, and what was worse, she must live secluded in the rear of the house for Mrs. Bartow would not for the world let her fashionable acquaintances know that she passed the entire summer in the city. She should lose caste at once, she thought, and she used every possible argument to persuade Jessie to give up her visit to Deerwood, and go with her instead. But Jessie would not listen. "Grandma could accompany old Mrs. Reeves," she said, "they'd have a splendid time quarreling over their respective granddaughters, herself and Charlotte, but as for her, she should go to Deerwood;" and she accordingly went there, and took with her a few city airs and numerous city fashions.

The former, however, were always laid aside when talking to Ellen, who was by some accounted the more beautiful of the two, with her wealth of golden hair, her soft eyes of violet blue, and her pale, transparent complexion. As gentle and quiet as she was lovely, she formed a striking contrast to the merry, frolicsome Jessie, with her darker, richer style of beauty, and neither ever appeared so well as when they were together. In all the world there was no one, except her father, whom Jessie loved as she did Ellen Howland, and though, amid the gay scenes of her city home, she frequently forgot her, and neglected to send the letters which were so precious to the simple country girl, her love returned the moment the city was left behind, and she breathed the exhilarating air of the Deerwood hills.

She called Walter her brother, and had watched him through his college course with all a sister's pride, looking eagerly forward to the time when he would be in her father's employ, for it was settled that he was to enter Mr. Graham's bank as soon as he was graduated. And as on that summer afternoon she sat upon the grassy ridge and talked with Ellen of him, she spoke of the coming winter when he would be with her in the city.

"It will be so nice," she said, "to have such a splendid beau, for I mean to get him introduced right away. I shall be seventeen in a month, and I'm coming out next season. I wish you could spend the winter with me, and see something of the world. I mean to ask your mother. Father will buy your dresses to wear to parties, and concerts, and the opera. Only think of having a box all to ourselves,—you and I and Walter, and maybe Charlotte Reeves once in a great while, or cousin Jennie. Wouldn't you love to go?"

"No, not for anything," answered Ellen, who liked early hours and quiet rooms, and always experienced a kind of suffocation in the presence of fashionable people, and who continued: "I don't believe Walter will like it either, unless he changes greatly. He used to have a horror of city folks, and I do believe almost hated you before you came to Deerwood, just because you were born in New York."

"Hated me, Ellen!" repeated Jessie. "He shook me, I know, and I've been a little afraid of him ever since, but it did me good, for I deserved it, I was such a high-tempered piece; but I did not know he hated me. Do you suppose he hates me now?" and Jessie's manner evinced a deeper interest in Walter than she herself believed existed.

Ellen saw it at once, and so did the man who for the last ten minutes had been watching the young girls through the pine tree boughs. William Bellenger had reached Deerwood on the afternoon train, and gone at once to the farm-house, whose gable roof, small window panes, and low walls had provoked a smile of derision, while he wondered what Jessie Graham could find to attract her there. Particularly was he amused with the quaint expressions of Aunt Debby, who, in her high-crowned cap, with black handkerchief smoothly crossed in front, and her wide check apron on, sat knitting by the door, stopping occasionally to take a pinch of snuff, or "shoo" the hens when they came too near.

"The gals was in the woods," she said, when he asked for Miss Graham, and she bade him "make Ellen get up if he should find her setting on the damp ground, as she presumed she was. Ellen was weakly," she said, "and wasn't an atom like Walter, who was as trim a chap as one could wish to see. Did the young man know Walter?"

"Oh, yes," returned William. "He is my cousin."

"Your cousin!" and the needles dropped from the old lady's hands. "Bless me!" and adjusting her glasses a little more firmly upon her nose she peered curiously at him. "I want to know if you are one of them Bellengers? Wall, I guess you do favor Walter, if a body could see your face. It's the fashion, I s'pose, to wear all that baird."

"Yes, all the fashion," returned William, who was certainly good-natured, even if he possessed no other virtue, and having asked again the road to the woods, he set off in that direction.

Following the path Aunt Debby pointed out, he soon came near enough to catch a view of the white dress Jessie wore, and wishing to see her first, himself unobserved, he crept cautiously to an opening among the pines, where he could see and hear all that was passing. Jessie's sparkling, animated face was turned toward him, but he scarcely heeded it in his surprise at another view which greeted his vision. A slender, willowy form was more in accordance with Will's taste than a fat chubby one, and in Ellen Howland his idea of a beautiful woman was, if possible, more than realized. She was leaning against a tree, her blue gingham morning gown,—for she was an invalid,—wrapped gracefully about her her golden hair, slightly tinged with red, combed back from her forehead, her long eyelashes veiling her eyes of blue, and shading her colorless cheek, while her lily-white hands were folded together, and rested upon her lap.

"Jupiter!" thought William, "I did not suppose Deerwood capable of producing anything like that. Why, she's the realization of what I've often fancied my wife should be. Now, if she were only rich I'd yield the black-eyed witch of a Jessie to my milksop cousin. But, pshaw! it shan't be said of me that I fell in love at first sight with a vulgar country girl. What the deuce, they talk of Walter, do they! I'll try eavesdropping a little longer," and bending his head, he listened while their conversation proceeded.

He heard what Ellen said of Walter; he saw the startled look upon the face of Jessie as she exclaimed, "Does he hate me now?" and in that look he read what Jessie did not know herself.

"The wretch!" he muttered, between his teeth; "why couldn't he take the other one? I would, if the million were on her side," and in the glance he cast on Ellen there was more than a mere passing fancy.

She must have felt its influence, for as that look fell upon her she said:

"It's cold,—I shiver as with a chill. Let's go back to the house," and she arose to her feet, just as the pine boughs parted asunder, and William appeared before them.

"Mr. Bellenger!" Jessie exclaimed. "When did you come?"

"Half an hour since," he returned, "and not finding you in the house I came this way, little thinking I should stumble upon two wood nymphs instead of one," and again the peculiar glance rested upon Ellen, who had sunk back upon her seat, and whose soft eyes fell beneath his gaze.

The brief introduction was over, and then Ellen rose to go, complaining that she was cold and tired.

"We will go, too," said Jessie, putting on her hat, when Mr. Bellenger touched her arm, and said in a low voice of entreaty:

"Stay here with me."

"Yes, stay," rejoined Ellen, who caught the words. "It is pleasant here, and I can go alone."

So Jessie stayed, and when the slow footsteps had died away in the distance William sat down beside her, and after expressing his delight at meeting her again, said, indifferently as it were:

"By the way, I have just come from New Haven, where I had the pleasure of hearing the charity boy's valedictory. It is strange what assurance some people have."

"Charity boy!" repeated Jessie; "I thought Walter Marshall was to deliver the valedictory."

"And isn't he a charity scholar? Don't your father pay his bills?" asked William, in a tone which Jessie did not like.

"Well, yes," she answered, "but somehow I don't like to hear you call him that, because——" she hesitated, and William's face grew dark while waiting for her answer, which, when it came, was, "because he saved my life;" and then Jessie told her companion how, but for Walter Marshall, she would not have been sitting there that summer afternoon.

"Was Walter's speech a good one?" she asked, her manner indicating that she knew it was.

Not a change in her speaking face escaped the watchful eye of William, and knowing well that insinuations are often stronger and harder to refute than any open assertion, he replied, with seeming reluctance:

"Yes, very good; though some of it sounded strangely familiar, and I heard others hinting pretty strongly at plagiarism."

This last was in a measure true, for one of Walter's class, chagrined that the honor was not conferred upon himself, had taken pains to say that the valedictory was not all of it Walter's,—that an older and wiser head had helped him in its composition. William did not believe this, but it suited his purpose to repeat it, and he watched narrowly for the effect. Jessie Graham was the soul of truth, and no accusation could have been brought against Walter which would have pained her so much as the belief that he had been dishonorable in the least degree.

"Walter would never pass off what was not his own!" she exclaimed. "It isn't like him, or like any of the Marshall family."

"You forget his father," said the man beside her, carelessly thrusting aside a cone with his polished boot.

"What did his father do?" Jessie asked in some surprise, and her companion replied:

"You astonish me, Miss Graham, by professing ignorance of what Walter's father did. You know, of course."

"Indeed I do not," she returned. "I only know that there is something unpleasant connected with him,—something which annoys Walter terribly, but I never heard the story. I asked my father once and he seemed greatly agitated, saying he would rather not talk of it. Then I asked Ellen, but if she knew she would not tell, and she evaded all my questioning, so I gave it up, for I dare not ask Deacon Marshall or Walter either. What was it, Mr. Bellenger?"

William understood just how proud Jessie Graham was, and how she would be shocked at the very idea of public disgrace. Once convince her of the parent's guilt, and she will sicken of the son, he thought, so when she said again, "What was it? What did Mr. Marshall do?" he replied:

"If your father has kept it from you, I ought not to speak of it, perhaps; but this I will say, if Seth Marshall had his just deserts, he would now be the inmate of a felon's cell."

"Walter's father a felon!" Jessie exclaimed, bounding to her feet. "I never thought of anything as bad as that. Is it true? Oh! is it true?" and in the maiden's heart there was a new-born feeling, which, had Walter been there then, would have prompted her to shrink from him as if he, too, had been a sharer of his father's sin.

"You seem greatly excited," said William. "It must be that you are more deeply interested in young Marshall than I supposed."

"I am interested," she replied. "I have liked him so much that I never dreamed of associating him with dishonor."

"Why need you now?" asked the wily Will. "Walter had nothing to do with it, though, to be sure, it is but natural to suppose that the child is somewhat like the father, particularly if it does not inherit any of its mother's virtues, as Walter, I suppose, does not. He is a Marshall through and through," and William smiled exultingly as he saw how well his insinuation was doing its work.

"Tell me more," Jessie whispered. "What did Mr. Marshall do?"

"I would rather not," returned William, at the same time hinting that it was something she ought not to hear. "If your father had good reason for keeping it from you, so have I. Suffice it to know that it killed his young wife, my father's sister, and that our family since have scarcely recognized Walter as belonging to us. It wasn't any fault of mine," he continued, as he saw the flash of Jessie's eyes, and readily divined that she did not wish to have Walter slighted. "I cannot help it. Our family are very proud, my grandmother particularly; and when my aunt married a poor ignorant country youth, it was natural that she should feel it, and when the disgrace came it was ten times worse. There is such a thing as marrying far beneath one's station, and you can imagine my grandmother's feelings by fancying what your own father's would be if you were to throw yourself away upon—well, upon this Waiter, who may be well enough himself, but who can never hope to wipe away the stain upon his name," and William looked at her sideways, to see the effect of what he had said.

Jessie Graham was easily influenced, and she attached far more importance to William's words than she would have done had she known his real design; so when he spoke of her marrying Walter as a preposterous and impossible event, she accepted it as such, and wondered why her heart should throb so painfully or why she should feel as if something had been wrested from her,—something which, all unknown to herself, had made her life so happy. She had taken her first lesson in distrust, and the poison was working well.

For a long time they sat there among the pines, not talking of Walter, but of the city and the wondrous sights which Will had seen in his foreign travels. There was something very soothing to Jessie in William's manner, so different from that which Walter assumed toward her. Like most young girls she was fond of flattery, and Walter had more than once offended her by his straightforward way of telling her faults. William, on the contrary, sang her praises only; and, while listening to him, she wondered she had never thought before how very agreeable he was. He saw the impression he was making, and when at last, as the sun was nearing the western horizon, she arose to go, proposing that they should take the Marshall grave-yard in their route, he assented, for this, he knew, would keep him longer with her alone.

"Your aunt is buried here," Jessie said, as they drew near to the fence which surrounded the home of dead; "that is hers," and she pointed to the monument gleaming in the sunlight.

"Do you bury your bodies above the ground?" asked William, directing her attention to the flutter of a blue morning dress, plainly visible beyond the taller stone.

"Why, that is Ellen!" cried Jessie, hurrying on until she reached the gate, where she stopped suddenly, and beckoned her companion to approach as noiselessly as possible.

Ellen also had come that way, and seating herself by her grandmother's grave, had fallen asleep, and like some rare piece of sculpture, she lay among the tall, rank grass—so near to a rose tree that one of the fading blossoms had dropped its leaves upon her face.

"Isn't she beautiful?" Jessie said to her companion, who replied; "Yes, wonderfully beautiful," so loud that the fair sleeper awoke and started up.

"I was so tired," she said, "that I sat down and must have gone to sleep, for I dreamed that I was dead, and that the man who came to us in the pines dug my grave. Where is he, Jessie!"

"I am here," said William, coming forward, "and believe me, my dear Miss Howland, I would dig the grave of almost any one sooner than your own. Allow me to assist you," and he offered her his hand.

Ellen was really very weak, and when he saw how pale she was he made her lean upon him as they walked down the hillside to the house. And once, when Jessie was tripping on before, he slightly pressed the little blue-veined hand trembling on his arm, while in a very tender voice he asked if she felt better. Ellen Howland was wholly unaccustomed to the world, and had grown up to womanhood as ignorant of flattery or deceit as the veriest child. Pure and innocent herself, she did not dream of treachery in others. Walter to her was a fair type of all mankind, and she could not begin to fathom the heart of the man who walked beside her, touching her hand more than once before they reached the farm-house door.

They found the supper table neatly spread for five, and though William's intention was to spend the night at the village hotel, he accepted Mrs. Howland's invitation to stay to tea, making himself so much at home, and chatting with all so familiarly, that Aunt Debby pronounced him a clever chap, while Mrs. Howland wondered why people should say the Bellengers of Boston were proud and overbearing. It was late that night when William left them, for there was something very attractive in the blue of Ellen's eyes, and the shining black of Jessie's, and when at last he left them, and was alone with himself and the moonlight, he was conscious that there had come to him that day the first unselfish, manly impulse he had known for years. He had mingled much with fashionable ladies. None knew how artificial they were better than himself, and he had come at last to believe that there was not among them a single true, noble-hearted woman. Jessie Graham might be an exception, but even she was tainted with the city atmosphere. Her father's purse, however, would make amends for any faults she might possess, and he must win that purse at all hazards; but while doing that he did not think it wrong to pay the tribute of admiration to the golden-haired Ellen, whose modest, refined beauty had impressed him so much, and whose artless, childlike manner had affected him more than he supposed. "Little Snow-Drop" he called her to himself, and sitting alone in his chamber at the hotel, he blessed the happy chance which had thrown her in his way.

"It is like the refreshing shower to the parched earth," he said, and he thought what happiness it would be to study that pure girl, to see if, far down in the depths of her heart, there were not the germs of vanity and deceit, or better yet, if there were not something in her nature which would sometime respond to him. He did not think of the harm he might do her. He did not care, in fact, even though he won her love only to cast it from him as a useless thing. Country girls like her were only made for men like him to play with. No wonder then if in her dreams that night Ellen moaned with fear of the beautiful serpent which seemed winding itself, fold on fold, about her.

Jessie, too, had troubled dreams of felon's cells, of clanking chains, and even of a gallows, with Walter standing underneath beseeching her to come and share the shame with him. Truly the serpent had entered this Eden and left its poisonous trail.

For nearly a week William staid in town, and the village maidens often looked wistfully after him as he drove his fast horses, sometimes with Jessie at his side, and sometimes with Ellen, but never with them both, for the words he breathed into the ear of one were not intended for the other. Drop by drop was he infusing into Jessie's mind a distrust of one whom she had heretofore considered the soul of integrity and honor. Not openly, lest she should suspect his motive, but covertly, cautiously, always apparently seeking an excuse for anything the young man might hereafter do, and succeeding at last in making Jessie thoroughly uncomfortable, though why she could not tell. She did not blame Walter for his father's sins, but she would much rather his name should have been without a blemish.

Gradually the brightness of Jessie's face gave way to a thoughtful, serious look, her merry laugh was seldom heard, and she would sit for hours so absorbed in her own thoughts as not to heed the change which the last few days had wrought in Ellen, too. Never before had the latter seemed so happy, so joyous, so full of life as now, and Aunt Debby said the rides with Mr. Bellenger upon the mountains had done her good. William had pursued his study faithfully, and, in doing so, had become so much interested himself that he would have asked Ellen to be his wife had she been rich as she was lovely. But his bride must be an heiress; and so, though knowing that he could never be to Ellen Howland other than a friend, he led her on step by step until at last she saw but what he saw, and heard but what he heard. He was not deceiving her, he said, sometimes when conscience reproached him for his cruelty. She knew how widely different their stations were; she could not expect that one whom half the belles of Boston and New York would willingly accept could think of making her his wife. He was only polite to her, only giving a little variety to her monotonous life. She would forget him when he was gone. And at this point he was conscious of an unwillingness to be forgotten.

"If we were only Mormons," he thought, the last night of his stay at Deerwood, when out under the cherry trees in the garden he talked with her alone, and saw the varying color on her cheek, as he said, "We may never meet again." "If we were only Mormons, I would have them both, Nellie and Jessie, the one for her gilded setting, the other because——"

He did not finish the sentence, for he was not willing then to acknowledge to himself the love which really and truly was growing in his heart for the fair girl beside him.

"But you'll surely come to us again," Nellie said. "Jessie will be here. You'll want to visit her," and a tear trembled on her long eyelashes.

"I can see Jessie in the city, and if I come to Deerwood it will be you who brings me. Do you wish me to come and see you, Nellie?" and the dark, handsome face bent so low that the rich brown hair rested on the golden locks of the artless, innocent girl, who answered, in a whisper,

"Yes, I wish you to come."

"Then you must give me a kiss," he said, "as a surety of my welcome, and when the trees on the mountain where we have been so happy together are casting their dense leaves in the autumn, I will surely be with you again."

The kiss was given—not one—not two—but many, for William Bellenger was greedy, and his lips had never touched aught so pure and sweet before.

"I wouldn't tell Walter that I'm coming," he said, "for he does not like me, I fancy, and I cannot bear to have him prejudice you against me. I wouldn't tell my mother either, or any one——"

"Not Jessie?" Ellen asked, for she had a kind of natural pride in wishing her friend to know that she, who never aspired to notice of any kind, had succeeded in pleasing the fastidious William Bellenger.

"No, not Jessie," he said, "because,—well, because you better not," and knowing well his power over the timid girl, he felt sure that his wishes would be regarded, and with another good-by, he left her.

He had hoped that Jessie would be induced to accompany him to New York, and as there was a secret understanding between himself and Mrs. Bartow, the old lady had written, entreating her granddaughter to return with William.

"You have stayed in the country long enough," she wrote, "and I dare say you are as sunburnt and freckled as you can be, so pray come home. Everybody is gone, I know, and New York is just like Sunday, while I stay like a guilty thing in the rear of the house, to make folks think I'm off to some watering place. I wouldn't for the world let old Mrs. Reeves know that I have been cooped up here the blessed summer. It's all owing to your obstinacy, too, and I think you ought to come back and entertain me. Mr. Bellenger will attend to you, and you couldn't ask for a more desirable companion. Old Mrs. Reeves says he is the most eligible match in the city, his family are so aristocratic. There isn't a single mechanic or working person in the whole line, for she spent an entire season in tracing back their ancestry, finding but one blot, and that an unfortunate marriage of a Miss Ellen Bellenger with some ignorant country loafer she met at boarding-school, and who she says was hung, or sent to State prison, I forgot which. I am sorry she discovered this last, as in case you cut out Charlotte, and of course you will, it will be like the spiteful old wretch to blazon it abroad, though William ain't to blame, of course."

"I wonder I never told grandma that Walter was connected with the Bellengers," Jessie thought, as she finished reading this letter, which came to her the night when William, beneath the cherry trees, was whispering words to Ellen which should never have been spoken. "It's probably because I've not been much with her of late, and she never seemed at all interested in him, except indeed, to say that pa ought to get him a situation in a grocery, or something to pay him for saving my life. I wish she wasn't so foolishly proud," and as Jessie read the letter again, she felt glad that her grandmother did not know how nearly Walter Marshall was connected with the man who "was hung, or sent to State prison."

Gradually, too, there arose before her mind the whole array of her city friends, with old Mrs. Reeves and Charlotte at their head, and the idea of having Walter with her in the city the coming winter was not as pleasant as it once had been. Her grandmother might find out who he was; William would tell, perhaps, and she could not bear the thought of seeing him slighted, as he was sure to be if the tide, of which the old lady Reeves was the under-current, should set in against him.

"I've half a mind to go home," she thought, "before anything definite is arranged, and persuade father to secure Walter just as good a situation in some other place where he won't be slighted."

This allusion to her father was a fortunate one, for in her cool moments of reflection there was no one whose judgment Jessie regarded so highly as her father's. He knew Walter,—he respected him, too, and had often spoken with pleasure of the time when he would be with him.

"People dare not laugh if father takes him up," she thought, while something whispered to her that she, too, could, if she would, do much toward helping Walter to the position in society he was fitted to occupy. "I won't go," she said, at last. "I'll stay and see Walter again, at all events, though I do wish Will hadn't told me about his speech, and his father, too. I mean to ask him some time to tell me the exact truth." And having reached this resolution Jessie sat down and wrote to her grandmother that she could not come yet, she was so happy in the country.

This she intended taking to William in the morning, for she had promised to meet him at the depot and see him off. "I shall be rather lonely when he is gone," she thought, and walking to the window of her room, she wondered if Charlotte Reeves would succeed in winning William Bellenger.

"Her grandmother will strain every nerve," she thought, "but by just saying a word I can supplant her, I know, else why has he stayed here a whole week? Nell, is that you?" and Jessie started as the young girl glided into the room, her face unusually pale, and her whole appearance indicative of some secret agitation. "Where have you been?" asked Jessie, "and who was it that shut the gate?"

"Where? I didn't hear any gate," Ellen replied, trembling lest she should betray what she had been forbidden to divulge.

Had she confessed it then it would have saved her many a weary heartache, and her companion from many a thoughtless act, but she did not, and when Jessie, caressed her white cheek, and said laughingly, "Has my prudish Nell a secret love affair?" she made some incoherent answer, and, seeking her pillow, lived over again the scene in the garden, blushing to herself as she recalled the dark face which had bent so near to hers, and the tender voice which had whispered in her ear the name so recently given to her. "Little Snow-Drop," he called her when he bade her adieu, and the moon went down behind the mountain ere she fell asleep thinking of that name and the time when the forest tree would cast its leaf and he be with her again.