"FATE HAS DONE ITS WORST."

—Emerson.

Four o'clock striking in Mrs. Conway's parlor, and our three friends variously disposed therein; Mrs. Conway trifling with some light affair of fancy work, in bright-colored Berlin wool; Bruce with the daily paper; Lulu, a trifle restless, and sitting before the piano, striking low, wandering chords and symphonies, turning now and then an impatient glance at the newspaper that diverts the gentleman's attention from her. Women are invariably jealous of newspapers.

"What a nice thing it is to be interested in politics," she says, petulantly, at last.

He is deeply immersed in a synopsis of the speech of Senator Winans, having missed it the preceding day by being absorbed in contemplation of the Senator's wife; but he looks up to retort, lightly:

"What a nice thing it is to be a belle and take on airs."

She pouts, with a toss of her small head, then smiles.

"Meaning me?" she queries.

"Meaning you," he answers, glancing at the white fingers that go straying over the keys, waking a low accompaniment, to which she sings, softly:

"Meaning the mammoth bouquet that came this morning with the captain's compliments?" he interrupts her to ask, with a glimmer of fun in his dark eye.

She breaks off, laughing, half-blushing, and saucily retorting:

"Indeed, no. Were I ever so avaricious a flower-vendor I could not part with the gift of the gallant captain."

"By the way," he says, suddenly and mischievously ("by the way" being a byword of the captain under discussion), "it strikes me as rather droll that such a charming flirtation should have sprung up between you and Captain Frank Fontenay—the man who tried to help kill me, and the little fairy who helped cure me."

"Ah, yes, now I think of it," with an infinitesimal shudder, "he was Senator Winans' second in that affair. Well," saucily this, "you could not have been seconded by a finer gentleman."

He rises and saunters over to her side, out of reach of Mrs. Conway's ears, who is near the window (exactly what Lulu wishes him to do). Long ago he has read, like an open page, the pure, adoring heart of this girl—no vanity in him, for it is so palpable to all; to a certain degree he loves her, admires her fresh, young beauty, her sunny ways; means certainly some day to make her his wife; and something under her surface gayety now that reveals a wistful, unsatisfied yearning touches him to greater tenderness than he has ever felt for her before. As he bends to speak she turns her head, with a deepening flush; the movement wafts to him the subtle fragrance of a white rose worn in her brown hair, and the words she longs to hear die unspoken on his lips. What is there in the fragrance of a flower that can pierce one deeper than a sword-thrust with the sweet-bitterness of memory? What kinship does it bear to the roses that blossomed in other days, in other hands that we have loved? Who can tell?

Impatiently he disengages it from its becoming brown setting and tosses it far from him.

"Never wear white roses where I am, Lulu; I cannot bear their perfume—it absolutely sickens me. I like you best in scarlet. It suits your piquant beauty best."

"Did she wear white roses?" she queries, with inexpressible bitterness, and reaching conclusions with a woman's quick wit.

"She wore white roses—yes," he answers, slowly, as if impelled by some power stronger than his own volition; "and, Lulu, she sat one evening with her lap full of white roses, and her hands glanced among them as white as they—you have heard the whole story before—and the only really cowardly act of my life, the only dastardly speech of my life, was made then—oh, Heaven! I shall never forget the eyes she lifted to my face; white roses always stir me with remorse—always breathe the funereal air of dead hopes."

"It is a sin to love her so—now," she whispered, under her breath.

"I know, I know; but cannot you understand, Lu, that this is remorse that has built its habitation over the grave of love? Another love is rising in my heart above the wreck of my earlier one, but my regret for what I caused her to suffer then—for what I have unwittingly caused her to bear since—is, and must ever be, unceasing."

"You need not grieve so deeply," she urges, trying to comfort him. "She found consolation—she has 'learned to love another.'"

"Yes, my loss was his gain, but still the influence of what I did in the past throws its blighting consequence over her life; but let us not speak of it, Lulu. There are themes more pleasant to me—ah, if I mistake not," glancing out of a near window, "there's the captain's faultless equipage outside—do you drive with him this evening?"

"I believe I did promise him," she says, reluctantly, and the next moment the fine-looking captain is ushered in, and Bruce goes back to his former seat.

Coolly polite are the greetings between the two gentlemen. The words that pass between them are of the briefest, while Lulu goes for her wrappings.

He smiles, as standing at the window he meets her regretful smile, and knows how much rather she had been with him than dashing off in that handsome phaeton.

She carries that smile in her heart as they whirl down the avenue, past the White House, and off by a pretty circuitous route for the little city of Georgetown. There is a glow on her cheek, a sweet, serious light in her eyes, a slight abstraction in her manner, that charms her companion. He bends near her, a sparkle in his blue eyes, a gratified smile on his lips, for he fancies that he has called that added charm to her face.

She has taken his heart by storm, and before she can realize it, he has capitulated and laid the spoils of war at her feet—namely, the battered old heart of a forty-year-old captain in the U. S. A., a brown-stone front on Capitol Hill, and fifty thousand dollars.

She looks up in utter amaze at the fair blonde face of the really handsome veteran, with its rippling beard and sunny expression of good-humor, then her eyes fall, and she softly laughs at his folly in the charmingly incredulous way with which some women refuse an offer.

"My dear sir, you do me too much honor, and I would not for the world exchange my maiden freedom for 'a name and a ring.'"

The captain is not so very much disheartened. He is of a sanguine temperament, and says he will not despair yet—in short, means to try again at some fitting future period; and she, leaning back, listless, half sorry for him, and a little flattered at his preference, wishes with all her heart that this were Bruce Conway instead.

"Ah! by the way," he breaks in presently, "there is a rumor—I beg your pardon if I offend—but is it true, as society declares, that you are to marry Conway?"

Her heart gives a great muffled throb, that almost stifles her, then the small head lifts erect and calm.

"It is not a fact—at least, I am not aware of it—unless, indeed, society means to marry us willy-nilly."

"Society has made worse matches," he lightly rejoins. "Conway is a prize in the market matrimonial—Miss Clendenon certainly has no peer!"

She laughs. Indeed, it is one of her charming ways that she laughs at everything that can be possibly laughed at, and since her laugh is most musical, and her teeth twin rows of pearls, we can excuse her—ah, how much nonsense we pardon to youth and beauty!

"Ah, by the way," (this favorite formula), "talking of Conway reminds me of my friend, Winans—in the Senate, you know. A strange affair that of his child—don't you think so?"

She is busy fighting the wind, that blows the long loose strands of her solitary brown ringlet all over her pink cheeks, and turns half-way to him, the sunny smile utterly forsaking her lip, answering vaguely and in some surprise:

"What about it? I have heard nothing."

"Have not?—ah!" as they turn a corner and come upon a lovely view of the noble Potomac. "There you have a fine view, Miss Clendenon."

She looks mechanically.

"Yes, it is grand, but—but what did you say about the child of Senator Winans?"

"Ah, yes, I was going to tell you, I had not forgotten," he smiled. "Why, it seems that his wife was in the city, and he called on her last evening at the hotel where she is stopping—he told me, poor fellow, in confidence that they parted more bitterly alienated than before. I blame him, though, the most. I know his hot temper, you see, Miss Lulu—and he desired her to send the child and nurse around to his hotel this morning, that he might see as much as possible of the child before she returned to Norfolk, as she designed doing to-day."

"Well?" she breathes eagerly.

She is twisting the wayward ringlet round and round one taper finger and listening with absorbing interest as he goes on.

"Well, Norah O'Neil, the nurse, took the child very punctually to its father at ten o'clock this morning. He received them in his private parlor that opened on a long handsome hall, where similar parlors opened in a similar manner. And—but this cannot be interesting to you, Miss Clendenon, since you do not know the parties."

"On the contrary, I am deeply interested," she said. "Go on if you please."

"Well, it seems that Winans kept the little thing so long with him that it began to grow hungry and fretful. Winans suggested that Norah, the nurse, you know, should go down to the lower regions of the hotel and bring up some warm milk and crackers for the hungry child. She went, attended by a waiter Winans summoned for the purpose, and remained some time—ah! Miss Clendenon, here we are on Prospect Hill with a charming sea-view before us—and there—you see that romantic-looking cottage not a stone's throw from us—that is the home of the well-known novelist, Mrs. Southworth."

"Ah!" she said, brightly, turning a look of deep interest at the spot. "But about the child—what happened while the nurse was gone?"

"In a moment, Miss Lulu," touching whip to the prancing iron-gray ponies and setting them off at a dashing rate. "Yes, as I was saying, Winans played with the child that kept fretting for Norah and the milk, and I dare say he grew tired of playing the nurse—I should in his place, I know—and thought of taking a comfortable smoke. He left the baby sitting on a divan, stopped into his dressing-room, selected a good weed, lighted it, and stepped back again."

"And what happened then?" Lulu inquired.

"Would you believe it!—the little thing that could no more than toddle by itself—that he had left but a moment before, sitting on the divan, fretting for Norah and its milk—it was gone."

"Gone—where?" asked Lulu, staring blankly at him.

"The Lord in heaven knows, Miss Clendenon. Winans ran to the door—it had stood ajar all the time for fresh air—and looked up and down the hall for him, in vain though. Then the nurse came up with the milk, and they began to search together, called up the waiters, alarmed the whole house, in fact; and all was useless. Every room was searched, every one inquired of, but not a trace of the child was found; he was clearly not in the house. I happened in just then and joined in the search. At four this evening the search had become widespread; two detectives have scoured the city, and it seems impossible to throw the least light on the affair. Winans is perfectly wild about it—never saw a man suffer so."

"Oh, how dreadful!" breathed Lulu, "and who broke it to her—the wretched mother?"

"Norah absolutely refused to go to her with news which she said must certainly kill her. Winans shrunk from the task in the same desperate horror. She does not know it yet, and he clings to a hope of finding it before dark, and sending it back by Norah as though nothing had happened; but I fear he will fail. Little Paul has undoubtedly been stolen for the sake of a ransom, no doubt, or his fine clothes; and it is probable they will get him back, but scarcely to-day."

"Oh, poor unhappy Grace!" murmured Lulu, and all her miserable, half-indefinable jealousy of the beautiful woman melted in a hot rain of tears for the terribly bereaved young mother.

The captain, greatly surprised at this feminine outburst, was really at a loss to offer consolation. Having all a man's horror of woman's tears, he let the sudden rain-storm have its way, and then hazarded a remark:

"Why, you do not know her; I beg your pardon, do you?"

"No," brushing away the pearly drops with a dainty lace-bordered handkerchief. "I have seen her, heard her trouble, and take a very deep interest in her, and," as she dried the last tear and looked pensively up, "I am such a baby that my tears are ready on all occasions."

"An April day," is his oft-quoted comment, "'all smiles and tears.'"

Silence falls. Captain Fontenay looks a little sad, intensely thoughtful, evidently revolving something in his mind.

"You speak of having heard of Mrs. Winans' troubles," he ventured at last. "Mrs. Conway is one of her friends, I believe?"

"Yes, she has known Mrs. Winans for years—loves and admires her greatly."

"Perhaps then," pulling his mustache doubtfully, as they drive slowly on, and looking anxious as to how his remark will be received, "perhaps since Winans and the nurse both are so reluctant to carry the news to Mrs. Winans—perhaps Mrs. Conway would be a proper person to break it to her—that is if she would undertake the painful task."

"I am sure she would do so; painful as it would be to her I feel she would rather it were her than a stranger; she could tell it more gently than one unaccustomed to Grace—I call her Grace because I have gotten into the familiar habit from hearing Mrs. Conway call her so," she said, apologetically.

"Then, if you think so," he makes answer, "I will call on our return and ask her to do so, seeing Winans afterward to let him know of her willingness to assume the unpleasant task. Then, if he thinks best, I will call and take Mrs. Conway to her hotel."

They drove back, and broke the sad news to Mrs. Conway. Shocked, surprised, and grieved as she was, she eschewed for once the nerves of a fashionable, and professed herself willing and anxious to go to the bereaved young mother.

At seven o'clock that evening the captain called for her.

"No tidings of him yet," he said, "and Winans is anxious you should go to her at once and break it with all possible tenderness, with the assurance that he expects at any hour to find the baby and bring it to her. Norah will come back after it is told. Poor lady! fate has done its worst for her."

At the door of Grace's room let us pause, dear reader. We have heard the moan of that aching, tortured heart so often, as she quailed before the shafts of fate, that we dare not look on the agony whose remembrance will haunt even the callous heart of the fashionable and world-worn Mrs. Conway through all her future years. It was the agony of Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they were not.