The short December day was drawing to its close; but, though the month was December, the temperature was not that which is usually associated with the season. Instead of gray skies, leaden waters, and brown or snowy earth, there was a sky of glowing beauty, a glittering sea, and a land covered with the evergreen foliage of the South—for it was December in Florida. At noon the sun had shone with uncomfortable power on the broad plaza and old Spanish houses of St. Augustine; but now that his last rays were gilding the ancient fort and the Moorish belfry of the cathedral, the air was full of that delicious softness—a caressing warmth without heat—which in such latitudes makes the mere fact of existence a delight.

On the gray sea wall there were several loiterers; but, as the sun finally sank, and the purple veil of twilight fell over land and sea, most of these departed, leaving only two girls, who still paced the narrow promenade, talking earnestly.

At least one was talking earnestly—the other only listened. But the mere fact of listening can be eloquent sometimes, and this girl’s face seemed made to express all things eloquently. It was a delicately molded face, with a pale complexion and the most gentle and lustrous eyes possible to imagine. As yet she was altogether immature in appearance and manner, being not more than fifteen years of age, but her slender figure gave indications of more than ordinary grace when time should have transformed its angles into curves, just as her face promised to prove even more than beautiful when a woman’s soul should shine out of those eyes, now soft as a fawn’s and innocent as a child’s.

Her companion was more ordinary in appearance, yet nine people out of ten would have admired her most. She was an exceedingly pretty girl, and, being four or five years the senior of the two, possessed all the advantage of presence and of manner which such a difference in age at this period of life bestows. Her face had none of the delicate regularity of the face beside her, but her features were charmingly piquant, her complexion brilliantly fair, and her sunny, hazel eyes were full of mirth. At least they were usually full of mirth, but this evening there was a shade in them that looked like anxiety. It was she who had been talking for half an hour, while the girl who clung to her arm listened with rapt attention. As they still paced up and down in the twilight she went on:

“You understand now, AimÉe, how it is, and how I am almost at my wit’s end to know what to do. I declare it is almost enough to make one wish one were ugly, to be tormented as I am!”

“I would not wish that,” said AimÉe. “It is like a novel—only better—to be as pretty as you are, and to know that two men love you to distraction; that you are almost engaged to one, but that you love the other and are going to elope with him—”

“Hush!” cried the other, with a pressure of the arm she held almost as sharp as the tone of her voice. “Think, if somebody were to hear you! I am not going to elope with him! That is just the point. I have promised—but I can not, I can not! I like him—of course, I like him—but I don’t like him well enough to ruin all my life for him, to give up everything and break mamma’s heart. AimÉe, I can’t do it.”

“What are you going to do, then?” asked AimÉe, while her eyes seemed to grow momently larger and darker and more full of interest.

To an impressionable girl of fifteen, with her head full of romances, all this was thrilling beyond expression. A beautiful girl, a worldly mother, two ardent suitors, and an elopement planned—what could any romance furnish better? Yet it was here in her own every-day world, and she was promoted to the dignity of receiving the confidences of the heroine. What could life hold more exciting, save the joy, of which she as yet hardly dreamed, of being a heroine herself?

“What are you going to do?” she repeated in a voice as sweet and as full of dramatic expression as her eyes. “If you have promised to go to-night, how can you break your promise?”

“Breaking my promise does not matter at all,” said Fanny Berrien, impatiently; “but getting rid of Lennox Kyrle without trouble does matter. And how it is to be done I do not know, unless you will help me.”

“I will do anything—anything in the world!” said AimÉe, fervently. “But how can you make up your mind to give him up?”

“It does not exactly mean giving him up,” said Fanny, “though I suppose it will come to that at last,” she added with a sigh. “But just now I only want him to understand that it is quite impossible for me to go with him. He is so impetuous and rash, he will not understand at all how I am placed; and if I do not meet him at the time when he expects me, he will be quite capable of coming for me—as he has threatened to do—and then there would be a fearful state of affairs!”

“He must be like young Lochinvar,” said AimÉe. “I should think you would adore such a lover as that.”

“He has given me more trouble than any other man in the world, so I suppose I ought to adore—or else hate him,” said Miss Berrien. “Of course, you don’t understand about these things, AimÉe, and I ought not to be talking of them to a child like you, only I have nobody else to talk to; but Lennox Kyrle is one of the men to whom one can’t say no. He has more power over me than any one else in the world, and yet I am not at all sure that I want to marry him.”

“Why not?” asked AimÉe, who was drinking in these new ideas as a plant absorbs water.

“Oh, for a great many reasons,” replied the other. “For one thing, I am not sure that I want to be domineered over for the rest of my life; and then he has nothing in the way of fortune—at least nothing to speak of. Now, AimÉe, you know it is not at all pleasant to want money and not have any.”

“No,” said AimÉe decidedly—she evidently understood this—“it is not at all pleasant.”

“And Mr. Meredith is rich, and will be richer; and he is devoted to me, and mamma is anxious that I shall marry him, and I like him very well—when I don’t see Lennox! So I have nearly made up my mind not to see him any more.”

There was a pause. AimÉe felt that this was a very unheroine-like decision, a lame and impotent conclusion for a romance; but she did not know what to say, being somewhat confused by the multiplicity of new ideas presented to her consideration.

“At all events, I can not go to-night, though I was mad enough to promise him that I would,” pursued the young lady desperately. “And I can not see him; if I did, I should go. I am ashamed to think how little will of my own I have when I am with him—in fact, I have none at all. He simply makes me do whatever he likes. So I dare not go to meet him, and this brings me to the point I have been trying to reach all this time—will you go for me?”

If she had asked AimÉe to spring from the wall into the waves washing softly against it, the girl could hardly have been more surprised. Her face showed this plainly, but after an instant’s hesitation she said:

“I will do anything that I can for you—where do you want me to go?”

“It will not be pleasant at all, and I feel as if it was very selfish to ask it of you,” said Miss Berrien. “But then you are only a child, and it can not compromise you as it would compromise me; and you are as brave as a lion, so you won’t be afraid to come here after dark, will you?”

“Here?” said AimÉe, glancing around.

“Yes, here,” answered her companion. “A boat, with Lennox in it, will be here at midnight. You must tell him that I can not come, that I—But never mind, I will give the message at the time. Will you do it for me?”

If AimÉe’s courage failed at such a prospect, she felt that it would never do to betray as much. She had pledged herself to do “anything,” and she must not fail when something was demanded.

“Yes, I will do it,” she said, “if there is no other way; but why can you not write and let him know?”

“Write!” repeated the other. “Why, you foolish child, have I not told you where he is?”

“I don’t think you have,” said AimÉe—conscious, however, that in the multiplicity of statements which had been made to her, the particular statement relative to Mr. Kyrle’s whereabouts might not have received due attention.

“He is there,” said Fanny with a comprehensive wave of her hand toward the Atlantic Ocean. “Did I not tell you that he is in a yacht?”

“Oh! has he a yacht?” cried AimÉe; “and can you refuse to go with him?”

“I might not refuse if it was his own yacht—for a man must be very rich to afford a yacht—but it is not his own. It is borrowed from a friend ‘for this occasion only,’” said Fanny, with a slight laugh. “His plan is certainly very well arranged. He borrows the yacht, as I have said, runs down here, lies off the inlet and brings a boat up to St. Augustine for me—I step into it, we return to the yacht, run to Key West or Pensacola and are married, then cruise for a month among the West Indies. How would you like such a programme as that, AimÉe?”

“How would I like it?” repeated AimÉe. Words were evidently too weak to express her sentiments; but she clasped her hands and her eyes shone like stars. “It would be glorious!” she cried, with a thrill in her voice. “I never read of anything more beautiful. I don’t believe, I can’t believe, but that you mean to go.”

“You may believe it, then,” said Miss Berrien, shortly. “It is very well to be romantic when you don’t have to pay a price for romance; but when you do, and it is such a heavy one as a life of poverty—sailing and love-making can’t last forever, and what is to come after? I asked myself that question, and the answer made me stop.”

“I wonder if it was not Mr. Meredith who made you stop?” said AimÉe. “I saw the diamonds he brought you; but, though diamonds are very pretty, they are not as good as a lover like young Lochinvar.”

“You will change your mind when you are a little older, my dear. Lovers are plenty, but diamonds—However, it is not certain that I will take them. It is only certain that I can not throw away everything by going with Lennox to-night. He must wait.”

“But perhaps he won’t wait,” said AimÉe. “If he is so impetuous, perhaps he will say that it must be this night or never.”

“There is no danger that he will say anything of the kind,” replied Fanny, with a comfortable assurance of her own power. “He will never give me up until I am married to somebody else. He makes love like an angel,” she added, with a stifled sigh. “I have had a great many lovers, of course, but nobody that I ever liked half as well as Lennox. But I must not think of him; and as for seeing him—well, if I did that, I should be on board the Ariel before day. I will give my chance of a cruise over to you, AimÉe.”

“I only wish I could take it,” said AimÉe, with the most evident sincerity.

“Now we must go home,” said the other, glancing out at the darkening water. “But first come and let me show you exactly where the boat will be to-night.”

Twilight had given way to night, and the sky was thickset with golden stars, when the two girls reached the door of their boarding house. A stream of light from the dining room, and a clatter of knives and forks and voices announced that supper was in progress, so they turned at once into that apartment.

A party of about a dozen people—chiefly feminine—were gathered round the table. One of these, a handsome middle-aged lady, looked up when the two entered.

“Why are you so late, Fanny?” she asked. “You know that I do not like you to be out after dark without an escort.”

“But it is so hard to get in before dark, mamma,” said Miss Berrien, taking her place at the table. “It is lovely on the sea wall at twilight, and the air—oh, what a feeling it gives one! Do you suppose it can be ozone?—ozone in the air, I mean? Well”—as nobody appeared able to answer this question—“whatever it is, it is wonderful in its effect. My appetite is a most serious fact, and I am quite ready to do justice to your good things, Mrs. Shreve.”

Mrs. Shreve—an elderly faded widow, who presided at the head of the table—smiled faintly. The faintness of the smile was not owing to any disapproval of her young boarder’s appetite, but was due to the fact that, like a good many other estimable people, she lived persistently in the shadow rather than in the sunshine of life.

“I like to see people with good appetites, Miss Fanny,” she said in a tone which seemed to imply that appetites were perhaps a slight mitigation of the sadness of existence. “Try the cup cakes; they are nice to-night.—Why, Miss AimÉe, you are not eating anything!”

“I am not hungry, Mrs. Shreve,” replied AimÉe, who could not say that she was incapacitated by excitement from eating, and who looked with amazement at Fanny’s gastronomic performances. How a girl on the eve of a promised elopement, with a lover on his way to meet her, could exhibit such a keen appreciation of cup cakes and other delicacies was quite beyond AimÉe’s comprehension.

Her attention thus directed to the latter, Mrs. Berrien glanced at her.

“What is the matter with you, AimÉe?” she asked. “Your eyes are shining as if you had been listening to a ghost story.”

“She has been listening to a moral lecture,” said Miss Fanny, giving AimÉe an admonitory touch under the table, “and she is reflecting upon it.”

“Nothing is the matter with me, Aunt Alice,” said AimÉe. “I have no appetite—that is all.”

“Want of appetite is very far from being the trifling thing that most people consider it,” said an elderly gentleman on the other side of the table, who certainly himself had no ground for complaint on that score. “There is no effect without a cause, and no physical derangement which may not be attended with the most serious results. If people would only be warned in time—”

“I suppose nobody would ever die,” interposed Fanny, a little flippantly; and then, feeling that to talk of dying to a company chiefly composed of invalids was not the extreme of tact, she went on hastily: “O mamma! who do you suppose I met at the hotel to-day? Your old friend Mr. Denham, who is here for his throat—that same throat of which he has been talking ever since I can remember. I also saw the English gentlemen who are going soon on that hunting expedition which Mr. Meredith thinks of joining, and which I should like to join, too.”

“I have no doubt the party would be glad to receive you as a recruit, Miss Berrien,” said one of the ladies with a smile. “At least it is easy to answer for one member of it.”

“Yes, I think I might count on his vote,” returned Miss Berrien, composedly.

After tea this young lady retired for some additions to her toilet, while AimÉe—who felt as if she lived, moved, and had her being in a dream—went into the parlor and sat down ostensibly to read. She was usually a great bookworm, having been a devourer of all kinds of literature from her earliest childhood, and to-night she had a novel which at another time would have absorbed all her attention. But for once the letters danced before her eyes and conveyed no meaning to her mind. The romance of reality in which she was so soon to play a part engrossed all her thoughts. How would she acquit herself? What would she be called upon to do? How could Fanny possibly be so composed when her fate was hanging in the balance? These questions formed the burden of AimÉe’s reflections, while her head was bent and her dark eyes rested on the open page of the book which she held.

Suddenly, however, she roused with a start, for some one said, “How are you, this evening, Mr. Meredith?” and looking up she saw Miss Berrien’s lover number two crossing the room.

A man with whom the world went well and easily was Mr. Meredith, evidently. Rather short, rather stout, rather rubicund, but not ill-looking, and apparently not cast by Nature for that villainous part which is assigned in melodramas to the obnoxious suitor, AimÉe’s gaze followed him with a species of fascination. This man, commonplace as he appeared, was, unconsciously to himself, one of the dramatis personÆ in the romance now proceeding. “If he could know!” thought the girl, with a thrill.

Exemplifying the proverb that ignorance is sometimes bliss, Mr. Meredith sank easily into a seat and began talking to one or two people, without observing the solemn young eyes regarding him from a shady corner. “If he could know!” AimÉe thought again when Fanny entered, bright, sparkling, coquettish, and gave him her hand as he came eagerly forward to meet her. If there was a single weight on Miss Berrien’s mind, a single cloud on her spirit, no one could possibly have suspected it; and AimÉe began to wonder somewhat if the whole thing was not a jest, when, in the midst of the lively banter which with Fanny generally did duty for conversation, she sent a sudden, swift glance across the room, which made the wondering girl understand that it was reality after all.

The glance conveyed a warning, and fearing lest she might unguardedly betray to Mrs. Berrien’s quick observation that something unusual was in the atmosphere, AimÉe rose and with her book in her hand went quietly from the room. As her slender young figure passed, two ladies near the door looked up and nodded a kindly good-night.

“What a sweet girl that is!” said one of them. “She seems the embodiment of gentleness.”

“She is so pretty, too,” said the other. “At least, she promises to be pretty—and there is so much mind and soul in her face!”

“Poor child! I fancy it is doubtful what will become of her,” said the first speaker. “Her father is dead, and her mother has married again—married a certain Major Joscelyn, who is very much gone to pieces in all respects. I know the family well, and Mrs. Berrien was talking to me about the Joscelyns—whom she dislikes exceedingly—the other day. AimÉe, you see, is her brother’s child, and for that reason she has her with her at present. ‘I found that the Joscelyns were simply making her a drudge,’ she said, ‘and her health was breaking down under it, so I decided to take her for a time at least. Perhaps, when Fanny is married, I may adopt her altogether.’”

“She can well afford to do so if Miss Fanny establishes herself in life as well as that,” responded the other, glancing significantly across the room.

AimÉe meanwhile—altogether unconscious of being a subject of discussion—went to the chamber which she shared with her cousin, and, without striking a light, sat down by the open window through which even at night the air came with balmy softness. She felt strangely puzzled, and strongly averse to the service which she had pledged herself to perform; yet the idea of retreating did not for a moment occur to her. She had promised Fanny, and she must perform whatever was exacted from her in fulfillment of that promise. But how much she shrank from this fulfillment it is difficult to say. This impetuous lover, whom Fanny herself was afraid to face, what would he say, what would he do? Would he rage with passion, or be overwhelmed by despair? AimÉe decided that she would prefer passion to despair, for she had a most tender heart, and the sight of distress always unnerved her. She pictured to herself the Ariel lying off the bar, with the eager lover pacing her deck, sure that happiness was within his grasp, fancying no doubt that Fanny, like himself, was counting the hours to their time of meeting; and then a picture of the scene in the parlor below—of Fanny gay and enchanting, of Mr. Meredith fascinated and amused—rose before her mental vision. “How can she?” the girl thought. “How can she? To bring a man here just to disappoint him! It is—yes, it is shameful!”

As she so sat and so thought, a clock tolled out ten strokes. Soon thereafter the different inmates of the house—being chiefly of middle age and quiet habits—were to be heard exchanging good-night salutations on the staircase and in the hall, several doors closed, and then AimÉe heard her aunt’s footsteps approach her chamber. There was no light, and the girl hoped it would pass on—for she had the feeling of a conspirator, and dreaded to be addressed by one whom she felt as if she was betraying—but Mrs. Berrien paused, opened the door and looked in.

“Are you asleep, AimÉe?” she asked.

“Oh, no, Aunt Alice,” replied AimÉe’s voice from the window. “I am sitting here.”

“What! in the dark, and by an open window! Are you trying to take cold? What is the matter?”

“Nothing at all,” answered AimÉe, conscious that guilt was in every cadence of her voice. “It is so warm that I did not think I could take cold, and I—I like to look at the stars.”

“Close the window at once and go to bed,” said Mrs. Berrien. “You need not wait for Fanny. She will probably not be up for some time. Why are you so foolish and so peculiar, my dear? It is better for you to stay down-stairs in the evening.”

“I will hereafter, if you desire it,” replied AimÉe, lowering the window as she spoke. She was always docile to the least suggestion, but at that moment she would have promised obedience in anything, to atone for the deception she was aiding to practice.

“Well, good-night,” said Mrs. Berrien. “Have you matches at hand?”

“Oh, yes,” answered the girl, glad not to be obliged to show her face.

As her aunt went away, she threw herself on the outside of her bed, and lay there almost motionless, but wide awake for another hour—the delightful hour for which Mr. Meredith invariably waited, for in it he had the society of his pretty ladylove to himself. Fanny, however, who always sent him away punctually on the stroke of eleven, was to-night not remiss in doing so. Ten minutes after that hour the door of the chamber opened, and that young lady appeared, bearing a light which flashed full in AimÉe’s face.

“Oh!” she cried, “how you startled me with your great, solemn eyes! You foolish child, have you not been asleep? I hoped when you went away so early you would take a good sleep, and be fresh and ready for my little errand.”

“I am ready,” answered AimÉe, “but as for having gone to sleep, how could I? It is all too exciting!”

“One would think it was you who were going to elope,” said Fanny, putting down her lamp. “As for me, I am so tired of men, that if it were not for mamma I would go into a convent, where I would never hear of them again. You can not fancy how Mr. Meredith has been tormenting me, until I have half promised to marry him just to get rid of him.”

“But you will not get rid of him if you marry him,” said AimÉe, with her eyes more great and more solemn than ever.

“Simpleton!” returned Fanny. “Of course not; but between promising and doing a thing there is a very great difference, as poor Lennox will find out to-night. Dear me!”—sitting down meditatively on the side of AimÉe’s bed—“I wonder what made me such a fool as to imagine for a moment that I would go with him? The mere thought makes me shudder—to be running off wildly and being seasick (the idea of my forgetting that I always am seasick!) instead of going to bed comfortably and getting up to-morrow to torment Mr. Meredith by flirting with one of those handsome Englishmen!”

“O Fanny, are you not ashamed!” said AimÉe. “To think what Mr. Kyrle must be feeling at this moment, while you—”

“Yes, really, I am ashamed!” said Fanny, hastily. “It is abominable conduct, I know. But you see I am shallow—shallow as that”—indicating about a quarter the depth of her little finger—“and I can’t help it if one nail drives out another in my mind. I wonder if it is my mind or my heart, by the by? Well, anyway, in me. It is not my fault that I am shallow; and, on the whole, I think I rather like it. One has a much easier life. Isn’t it a great deal wiser for me to make the best of things as they are, for instance, than to be distracted about Lennox Kyrle, who I really like better than anybody else in the world, if I let myself think of him?”

“I—I don’t know,” said AimÉe, who found this question too deep for her solving. “You must decide, of course.”

“I have decided,” said Fanny. “Things are best as they are. But now we must have done with talking and proceed to action. In the first place, I will tell you exactly what you must say to Mr. Kyrle when you meet him.”

“Yes,” answered AimÉe, beginning to shiver at that anticipation.

“You are to say,” went on Fanny, “that I feel it is impossible for me to take such a desperate step as to elope with him; that it would break mamma’s heart; and—and that it would ruin his life, for I should only tie him down to hopeless poverty. Say that I am sorry, and blame myself dreadfully, that my feelings will not permit me to see him, and that—be sure to make this point emphatic!—he must not dream of attempting to see me. My resolution can not be changed. I am sure I can trust you to put it all as well as possible, AimÉe—you have a great deal of tact and judgment.”

“But why not write it?” demanded AimÉe, whose dismay was not soothed by this compliment.

“My dear child, could he read a letter in the dark?” asked the other, impatiently. “Besides, I never write; I have learned too much of the mischief that lurks in ink. Tell him all this as quickly as you can—and be sure to make it very positive about his not trying to see me—and then run back to the house as fast as possible. How lucky it is that we live so near the water, else I could not let you go!”

It is safe to say that, in this view of the case, such lucky proximity was something for which AimÉe did not feel very grateful as she rose to prepare for the expedition. Her courage was sadly failing, not so much on account of the lonely walk through the midnight streets, as from the realization of the strange and awkward position in which she would be placed. She was trembling like a leaf from nervousness and excitement as Miss Berrien enveloped her in a large, dark cloak, and drew the hood over her head.

“Now,” said Fanny, glancing at her watch, “it is time for you to go. I hate—oh, I hate dreadfully to send you! If there were any other way—”

“But there is none,” said AimÉe, trying to smile. “And I am not afraid.”

“It seems so cowardly to send you,” said Fanny, half under her breath. “Yet I can not trust my own resolution if I met Lennox!—and then if it should be discovered—”

Her pause said more than many words. At that moment the Meredith diamonds, and all that the Meredith diamonds represented, shone brightly before her eyes. To risk the loss of them by keeping this midnight tryst, was more than she could dare. And the girl before her looked up with brave, generous glance from under the dark hood.

“Don’t think of it, Fanny,” she said. “If you were discovered, what would everybody say? while if I am, it does not matter. Nobody knows or cares about me! Come, now, and let me out. You’ll wait downstairs to let me in, will you not?”

“Yes, indeed, I shall wait and count every instant. For Heaven’s sake come back as quickly as you can! And be certain, very certain, that it is Lennox Kyrle to whom you speak. It would be awful if you gave the message to any one but him!”

Being a little excited, and not at all sleepy, it chanced that Mr. Meredith, after parting with Miss Berrien, betook himself to the sea wall, where he proceeded to pace to and fro, smoking a cigar and wrapped in very agreeable thought. Despite her coquetry, Fanny had yielded to his suit more than ever before, and he felt no doubt that in the end she would yield altogether. He liked to be played with in this manner. It was not enough to discourage—Fanny was too wise for that—but just enough to give a zest of uncertainty, to sustain and keep alive the interest which in similar affairs had more than once failed him. In short, he was completely conscious of being in love, and very much pleased with the same, finding in it none of the “pang, the agony, the doubt,” which are poetically supposed to accompany the tender passion, but only an agreeable stimulation. He was even conscious of feeling distinctly sentimental, and disposed to cast lingering glances at Mrs. Shreve’s house whenever he came to the spot where it entered into his range of vision.

On one of these occasions he was surprised by a sudden and very unexpected sight—the opening of the street door and the emerging thence of a figure. For an instant he had a startled sensation; the next he said to himself, “It is only a servant, of course.” But a moment later he knew that it was not a servant. How he knew it, is difficult to tell; but he felt instinctively sure from the walk, the bearing, and the motions. He stood still, a prey to very odd sensations, and watched the approach of the figure that had in every line a familiar aspect. If it was not Fanny, who could it be? He knew that all the other inmates of the house were elderly people, except AimÉe, of whom he did not think at all. But to conceive that it could be Fanny, alone and disguised in the streets at midnight, was impossible. He said to himself that it was impossible, yet his pulses were beating in a most unaccountable manner, and there was a sound in his ears like the rush of many waters. It was natural that at this moment he did not pause to ask himself whether or not it would be honorable to act the part of a spy: he only felt that he must know who it was that came forth from Mrs. Shreve’s house at midnight, with Fanny Berrien’s air and movement.

Meanwhile the shrouded figure walking so swiftly, with head bent down, did not see him. Poor AimÉe’s pulses were beating tumultuously like his own, and she was thinking of nothing save her desire to accomplish her errand and return to the shelter of the house she had left. The night seemed to her invested with terror, and the sound of her own light footsteps on the quiet street brought her heart into her throat. It is doubtful if she would have noticed Mr. Meredith had he stood immediately in her path; she certainly cast no glance either to right or left, but hurried forward to the place Fanny had designated, intent only upon one object, to deliver her message and return.

As she mounted the sea wall she heard the sound of oars, and when she paused, shrinking and trembling on the steps that led down to the water, she saw in the starlight the dark outline of a boat containing two or three figures. Her heart gave a wild bound and then seemed to stand still—for was not this the moment of fate; was not the impetuous lover, who would take no denial, before her?

Certainly one of the figures sprang from the boat as she appeared, and reached her side with all the impetuosity conceivable in the most desperate lover. Before she could speak she found her hands in a close clasp, and a voice was saying, in a tone of eagerness and delight:

“So you have come; you are really here!”

Even at this moment it struck AimÉe that there was surprise as well as delight in the voice. Evidently Mr. Kyrle had been by no means sure that Miss Berrien would appear. But the rapture of his greeting made it harder for AimÉe to explain that she was not the person so eagerly welcomed, and when she tried to speak her voice failed. She could only gasp, after a moment:

“I have come to tell you—”

“Never mind what,” interrupted the young man eagerly, with probably a prudent fear of what the communication might be. “You are here; that is enough. There will be time to tell me anything and everything when we are afloat. Come, here is the boat.”

He drew her toward him, and so compelling was his grasp that AimÉe felt that in another moment she might be in the boat and en route for the West Indies. This gave her the courage of desperation. She made a determined effort to release herself as she said more clearly:

“You are mistaken. I am not the person you think. I have only come to tell you that she can not come.”

“Not the person I think!” repeated the young man. He released her hands and fell back a step in his amazement. The violent revulsion of feeling which he underwent was evident in his voice, and the sharpness of his disappointment so pierced AimÉe’s heart that she forgave the sharpness of his tone, as he went on:

“Then who are you—and why are you here?”

“I am Fanny’s cousin,” the girl replied, then suddenly checked herself. “But you—who are you?” she said. “I was told to ask your name before I gave any message.”

“There is no doubt who I am,” he replied, sternly. “My name is Lennox Kyrle. What message have you for me?”

“Only that—that Fanny can not come,” answered AimÉe, tremulously. She paused and clasped her hands nervously together, trying to recall all that Fanny had impressed on her mind to be delivered, but only the principal points remained, and before she could gather them into shape, as it were, Mr. Kyrle justified his character for impetuosity by breaking in:

“That she can not come,” he repeated. “Is that all, after having brought me here? Why can not she come?”

The indignant emphasis of the last question was, under the circumstances, natural enough; and, confronted with it, AimÉe felt in every fiber the shame of the answer which she was bound to give:

“Because she—has changed her mind,” she said desperately, grasping the main fact and forgetting all the fluent words with which Fanny had clothed it. “She bade me tell you that she is very sorry, but that she can not elope with you and break her mother’s heart.”

“Her consideration for her mother is most admirable,” said the young man with grim sarcasm. “It is only a pity that it did not influence her a little sooner. And so she is ‘sorry’ that she can not elope! She could say no more for the calamity of missing a ball.”

“Fanny has not very deep feelings,” said AimÉe, in a voice of as sincere compunction as if the feelings in question had been her own, “but I think she is sorry.”

This simple statement, made in that sweet, pathetic voice, said a great deal more than the speaker intended to Lennox Kyrle. He was silent for an instant, then spoke in a softer tone:

“I know that she is easily influenced by those around her,” he said, “and so this might have been anticipated. But if I were to see her—”

“Oh, that is impossible!” interrupted AimÉe, hastily. “She charged me to tell you above all things not to attempt to see her.”

“Ah!” said the young man. Keen disappointment and mortification were in his tone, but also something of comprehension. “Then there is another lover,” he said.

AimÉe did not reply. It was no part of the message with which she was charged to enlighten Mr. Kyrle with regard to the other string to Miss Berrien’s bow; and since his assertion was fortunately an assertion, not a question, she suffered it to pass unanswered, forgetting that silence, in this case as in many others, was equivalent to assent.

“That accounts for everything,” said the young man after a pause—in which, perhaps, he had waited for contradiction—“and I only regret that I should have given Miss Berrien the pain which I am sure she must feel acutely of treating me in this way. But it may relieve her sorrow, perhaps, to know that it is the last opportunity she will ever have to inflict a pang upon me. I have been the slave of her caprice and my own folly long enough. As I came here I resolved that this should be the decisive test. If she cared for me, she would go with me; if not, it was well to know the truth and be no longer the plaything of a coquette. Well, I am here, and she refuses even to see me. She breaks her word and throws me over without compunction. It is the end. Tell her that from me.”

It flashed across AimÉe’s mind, as he spoke, that this was very much the ultimatum which she had prophesied, but she had not been prepared for the stern resolution of the voice which uttered it. Plainly, Mr. Lennox Kyrle meant all that he said, and Miss Berrien’s comfortable belief that he would remain her slave as much as ever was a delusion of her own vanity.

“I will tell her,” the girl answered, in a subdued tone. “I wish I had been able to—to give you her message better. She said a great deal—”

“Which I can easily imagine,” interposed Mr. Kyrle. “It is not necessary that you should make an effort to remember it.”

Thus discouraged, AimÉe felt that she need no longer remain, that she had done all that was required of her, and might now return with speed to the shelter of the roof for which she longed.

“I must go now,” she said, yet still she hesitated. She longed to say a word of sympathy, but it was not easy to do so. At length, however, she summoned courage, and spoke quickly:

“I am sorry, very sorry for you,” she said. “It is dreadful to trust and—be deceived. I would not have come on such an errand, only it was necessary you should know, and Fanny could not come.”

It is not too much to say that these words brought her personal individuality for the first time to the attention of the man before her. Up to this time he had not given a thought to the consideration of who or what she was. To him she was simply the mouthpiece of and means of communication with Fanny Berrien. Now it suddenly occurred to him that here was a young, shrinking girl, who had come alone at midnight to bring him the message of the woman who had failed him.

“She could not come, but she could send you,” he said, suddenly rousing to something like indignation, “though I hear from your voice that you are young, and this is no fitting time or place for you. Do not let me detain you longer—or, rather, let me take you at once back to your home.”

“Oh, no, no!” cried AimÉe, mindful of Fanny’s promise to watch and wait for her, and fearing an encounter of the two at Mrs. Shreve’s respectable door. “You must not think of it. I have only a short way to go, and the streets are quiet.”

“Do you think I will force my way in to her?” said the young man, scornfully. “I assure you that I have not the least desire to do so. What have I to say to her? Nothing, except that I shall never trouble her again, and that I can trust you to say for me.”

“I shall say it,” AimÉe answered, feeling not altogether disinclined to do so, “but I beg you not to come with me. I shall be at home in a minute. Indeed, you must not come.”

“I will not insist, then,” he said, hearing in her tone how greatly she was disturbed. “But you must go at once. This is a service that only selfishness would have asked of you.”

“I came willingly,” said the girl. “It might have compromised Fanny, but I am of no importance—it can not harm me. I am only sorry that I had to bring you such a painful disappointment.”

“If a man is a fool, he must suffer, and deserves to suffer,” said Mr. Kyrle, with a decision that did credit to his common sense. “But you are as kind as you are brave, and I shall not forget you. Now, go.”

AimÉe needed no second bidding. She turned and hastened back in the direction of Mrs. Shreve’s house and Mr. Meredith, who had watched the meeting and conversation from afar, divided the while between an overwhelming desire to break in upon it and the salutary fear of making himself ridiculous, had the satisfaction of seeing the door open and close upon her.

“Oh, what a time you have been, AimÉe!” cried Miss Berrien as she opened the door. “I have been in an agony! What kept you so long?”

“Have I been long?” said AimÉe. She was almost breathless, and as she sank down on the first seat at hand, pale and trembling now that the need for exertion was past, Fanny’s heart smote her for her words of reproach.

“Of course it has seemed long to me,” she said, “but I do not suppose it really has been long; and what does it matter about me in comparison to you—you poor, brave child! What a selfish wretch I was to send you! You look perfectly overcome, and I have not even a glass of wine to give you.”

“I don’t want any wine,” said AimÉe. “After a while—when my heart stops beating so dreadfully—I will tell you—all about it.”

“Yes,” said Fanny, eagerly, “but at least you can tell me this now—did you see him?”

AimÉe nodded, being for the moment past speech; and Miss Berrien at once locked the door, as if she feared Mr. Kyrle might be on the other side. Then she watched AimÉe anxiously, and when the latter presently opened her lips as if to speak, interposed with a warning whisper:

“No, no—not here. We must go upstairs. Are you able to walk?”

“Oh, yes—why not?” answered AimÉe. “I was out of breath when I came in; that was all.”

“You looked as if you were about to faint,” said Fanny, taking up her lamp. “How thankful I am that it is over, and that you are safely back!”

AimÉe might have assured the speaker that her thankfulness on this point was trifling compared to her own, but the action of her heart not being yet sufficiently regulated to make speech easy, she silently followed Miss Berrien’s stealthy footsteps upstairs.

Once safely in their own room, Fanny was full of eager questioning.

“You saw him!” she exclaimed. “Did you give him my message? How did he take it? What did he say?”

“Yes, I saw him,” replied AimÉe. “He was waiting, and at first could scarcely believe that it was not you—”

“Poor fellow!” cried Fanny, in feeling parenthesis.

“But when he understood that it was not you, and that you meant to throw him over,” proceeded AimÉe, not without a sense of pleasure in the recital, “he was very indignant, and he told me to tell you that you would never have another opportunity to treat him in such a manner, and that he came here meaning this to be the decisive test: that if you cared for him you would come with him, and that if you did not come he would never ask you again. It was to-night or never.”

“‘To-night or never!’” repeated Miss Berrien. For a moment she was too much amazed to say anything more. Then her customary easy philosophy reasserted itself. “He must have been awfully angry,” she observed, “and when a man is angry he will say anything. But for his sake I am rather glad that he takes it in this way; he will not feel the disappointment so much. I was afraid that he would be desperate, and insist on seeing me. It is a great deal better that he should be furious, and talk about ‘to-night or never’—which, of course, is all nonsense. It may be never, indeed”—with a slight sigh—“but, if so, it will not be his fault.”

“You would not think so if you had heard him,” said AimÉe. “Whether you marry Mr. Meredith or not, I am sure that Mr. Kyrle will never ask you to marry him again.”

“You do not know Mr. Kyrle as well as I do, my dear,” said Fanny, complacently. “He will be quite certain to ask me whenever he has a chance. I only hope he may not have a chance soon. I hope you told him that he must go away at once?”

“No,” answered AimÉe, “I did not tell him anything of the kind. In the first place, you never told me to do so, and, in the second place, I would not if you had. It was bad enough to bring him here only to disappoint him. You have no right to order him to go away.”

“Upon my word, you seem to espouse Mr. Kyrle’s cause very warmly!” said Fanny. “Right or no right, I wish I had sent him word to go away at once. It would be terrible if he stopped here and met Mr. Meredith.”

“It would not surprise him,” said AimÉe. “As soon as I told him that you said he must not attempt to see you, he exclaimed, ‘Then there is another lover!’”

“Did he?” said Fanny, with a laugh. “How like him! He always had that kind of penetration. One might try to deceive him, but he would go straight to the root of the matter. But then, of course, jealousy helped him in this case. He knows me well enough to be sure that, if I had not somebody else, I would not want him to go away.”

“So it is not him—it is just somebody—that you want,” said AimÉe, indignantly.

“Not exactly,” replied Fanny. “But you are a child—you don’t understand.”

“I should be sorry to think that I would ever understand such heartlessness,” said AimÉe.

“Your sympathies must have been greatly wrought upon by Lennox,” said Miss Berrien, composedly. “It is not surprising; I know how he can influence one. Ah, I shall never have such another lover! You may think me heartless, and, luckily for myself, I am not very much troubled with my heart, but if I chose to let myself go, I could be as desperate about Lennox Kyrle as—as he is about me. If his rich uncle would only die and leave him a fortune—But there is no hope of that.”

“If he has a rich uncle, why is there no hope of his dying and leaving a fortune?” asked AimÉe.

“Oh, he will die some day—no fear about that,” said Fanny, vindictively, “and he will leave a fortune of a million or two. But poor Lennox will not get it. That is all hopelessly settled. The old wretch has made his will in the most elaborate form, and left his money to found some kind of an institute that is to bear his name and have his statue. It is all a miserable piece of vanity and self-glorification; but he will be called a ‘public benefactor,’ and all that stuff, after ruining Lennox’s life—and mine.”

“I don’t think he will ruin yours,” said AimÉe; “but poor Mr. Kyrle, what will he do?”

Fanny shook her head in a way to intimate that this gentleman’s prospects were dark indeed.

“He might have done very well,” she said, “but then, you see, he is impracticable, and that is what would make it such madness to marry him. His uncle told him frankly that he had not the faintest intention of leaving him a fortune, but that he would give him an opportunity to make one for himself. ‘I’ll give you a better start in life than I had,’ he said, ‘and if you don’t take advantage of it, that will be your fault.’ So he offered him a place in his business house, which, of course, meant the entire control and reversion of the business; and would you believe that Lennox declined the offer?”

“Why?” inquired AimÉe, wisely refraining from any expression of opinion.

“Because he has no liking for commercial life—as if that had anything to do with it! He tried it for a while, then gave it up, saying he could not waste the best years of his life in work that he disliked. So he has gone into literature, and is connected with a newspaper. Conceive the difference! And fancy me dragging through life as the wife of a ‘special correspondent’!”

“But he may be a famous author some day,” said AimÉe, with brightening eyes.

“He may—and again he may not,” responded Fanny, dryly. “And even if he were a famous author, it does not follow that he would be anything save a poor man. Now, I was not made to be the wife of a poor man; any one can see that.”

“I—suppose not,” said AimÉe, slowly. These were mercenary ideas to be introduced into the world of her young dreams of romance; but she took them in as she had already taken in the facts of faithlessness and heartlessness, and no doubt assimilated them, by some mental process, to such knowledge of human nature and human life as she already possessed.

“But now I think we have talked enough,” said Fanny. “If you are not ready to go to sleep, I am. I feel so light and comfortable to think that I have safely disposed of the Lennox difficulty! It has been a dreadful weight on my mind ever since I received his letter saying that he was coming. I was at my wits’ end. I did not know what to do until I thought of taking you into my confidence. You have been a perfect jewel, AimÉe. I shall never forget the service you have done me, and if ever I have a chance to repay it in kind, I will.”

AimÉe laughed. She had not a keen sense of humor, but it occurred to her that Fanny was about as likely to do for another what had been done for her this night, as she—AimÉe—was likely to elope.

“I am sure that you will never be called upon to repay it in kind,” she said. “I can not imagine myself promising to elope; but if I did promise, I would go!”

“I dare say,” replied Fanny. “You are romantic, and you would enjoy—or you think you would enjoy—dangers and difficulties. But as for me, I like the comforts of life.”

Ten minutes later AimÉe was listening to the soft, regular breathing which told how the speaker was enjoying one of the comforts of life. It was incomprehensible to the girl who was still tingling with excitement from head to foot, and felt as if sleep would never visit her eyelids; but her thoughts did not long dwell on Fanny. They went back to the lover, for whom her tender heart ached as she pictured him returning alone to the yacht which waited the coming bride in order to spread its wings for the South. What a cruel thing it was to let him come—only to disappoint him! Indignation and pity were mingled in her mind; and as hour after hour of the silent night passed, she still lay wide awake, her great, solemn eyes, as Fanny called them, fixed on darkness, but her fancy seeing plainly the starlit deck of the Ariel, where a figure paced alone.

Toward daylight, weariness overcame even excited imagination, and AimÉe fell asleep. When she awoke it was from a dream in which she fancied herself on board the Ariel, and that Fanny had come to take her away. “AimÉe, AimÉe!” said the familiar voice; and when she woke, it was to find Fanny’s voice indeed sounding in her ears, and Fanny’s eyes anxiously gazing at her.

“What is the matter?” she cried, rousing herself at once. “Have I slept very late? Is breakfast ready?”

“Breakfast is over long ago,” Fanny answered. “I would not disturb you, for I thought you had certainly earned the right to sleep as late as you pleased; and fortunately mamma never comes down to breakfast, you know. But I have come to rouse you now, because something dreadful has happened. O AimÉe, what do you think?—Mr. Meredith saw you last night!”

“Mr. Meredith!” cried AimÉe. She sat up in bed, a picture of consternation. “It is impossible!” she gasped. “I saw no one. He could not have seen me.”

“There is no doubt about it,” said Fanny. “He certainly saw you—saw you talking to Lennox, and he thought it was me.”

“You?”

“Yes. And I could not make him believe otherwise except by telling him that it was you. Even then he seemed to doubt; so I said I would bring you to tell him yourself. O AimÉe, it is mean beyond words to ask such a thing of you; and yet there will be no good in what you did last night, if you refuse to do this!”

“But—I do not understand,” said AimÉe. “How will it make any difference? I went for you.”

“But he does not know that,” said Fanny. “He thinks—oh, my dear, you must forgive me!—that you went for yourself.”

“You told him so?” said AimÉe, in a voice that did not sound like her own.

“How could I help it?” answered Fanny. “He had been nursing his anger and jealousy all night, and when he came this morning I hardly knew him. He was ready to leave me at a word, and I should never have seen him again. So what could I do but tell him that the person he saw was you?”

“You could have told him the truth,” said AimÉe. “I am sure he ought to have been satisfied to hear that you sent Mr. Kyrle away.”

Fanny shook her head. “You don’t know men,” she said. “And I did not know Mr. Meredith before this morning. He was so angry, that I saw at once he would never forgive me if he knew the truth; so there was nothing to do but deny the whole thing. I suppose it was cowardly; but I am a coward. There is no doubt of that.”

AimÉe agreed that there could be no doubt of it; but the frankly admitted fact did not make her own position better. As far as she could understand, Fanny had boldly transferred the whole matter—intended elopement, broken promise, midnight tryst—to her shoulders, and asked her to acknowledge it. She could hardly realize all that was demanded of her.

“Do you mean to say,” she asked, “that you told Mr. Meredith that I had promised to go away with Mr. Kyrle?”

“What else could I tell him?” replied Fanny, desperately. “O AimÉe, don’t you see: what is the good of what was done last night, if I acknowledge it this morning? I should lose Mr. Meredith just as much as if I had gone with Lennox. So I thought I might trust you. I thought you would help me. It is only to say it was you last night; the rest will be understood.”

“The rest—that is, the falsehood!” cried AimÉe, indignantly. “O Fanny, how can you ask it—how can you? I did not mind what I did last night, though it was hard enough. I would do that, or anything else of the kind, over again. But this I can not, I will not, do!”

“Then,” said Fanny, sitting down with a gesture of despair, “there is simply no hope, and I wish I had gone with Lennox. It is useless for me to face Mr. Meredith again. If I told him that you refused to come, he would never believe that it was not me last night. Well,” with a long-drawn sigh, “I suppose it serves me right. But I am sorry for poor mamma.”

Sobs followed, while AimÉe sat staring at the wall before her. Fanny’s grief did not touch her as much as it should have done, perhaps, for she understood exactly the degree and quality of the regard which that young lady entertained for Mr. Meredith, and she did not yet realize that disappointment over the loss of possible diamonds might be as acute as that over the loss of a lover. But the allusion to Mrs. Berrien had more effect. AimÉe knew that her aunt’s heart was set upon Fanny’s marrying Mr. Meredith, and for her aunt AimÉe felt that she was bound to do much—for was she not the only person in the world who had ever given a thought to her sad girlhood, or attempted to throw a little sunshine upon it? There was not much in common between Mrs. Berrien and her niece; but on the side of the latter there was a deep sense of gratitude. “Should I hesitate to do anything for Aunt Alice, who has done so much for me?” she asked herself. It was this she was thinking while Fanny sobbed.

Presently she said abruptly, “Is Mr. Meredith downstairs yet?”

“I don’t know,” replied Miss Berrien. “I told him to wait for me, but he may have gone. I hope he has. I can never face him again.”

“I am sure,” said AimÉe, tremulously, “if you would only make up your mind to tell him the truth—”

Fanny interrupted her by a petulant motion. “Pray talk of something that you understand,” she said. “If you will not help me, of course I can not force you to do so, but allow me to be the best judge of my own conduct.”

Poor AimÉe! Her own eyes filled with tears—tears far more genuine than Fanny’s. How, after all, could she refuse this service which was asked of her? It was hard, infinitely harder than the one of the night before, but it seemed to her that she was bound to do it—to immolate herself and the truthfulness which was one of the strongest instincts of her nature—in order that her aunt’s desire might be accomplished. With an effort she said, at length:

“And if I were to do what you ask—if I told Mr. Meredith that it was I last night—should I have to tell him anything else?”

“No, no,” cried Fanny, with eyes sparkling through her tears. “That is all. Leave the rest to me. I don’t ask you to say a thing which is untrue.”

“It is all the same if I let it be understood,” said AimÉe, dejectedly. “But I suppose I must do it—if Mr. Meredith has not gone.”

“Oh, I don’t think he has gone,” said Fanny, forgetting her contrary statement of a moment back. “I told him that you had not risen this morning because you were awake nearly all night. So, if you will dress quickly, he will not think we have been long.”

Thus animated, AimÉe rose, dressed as quickly as her trembling hands would permit, and followed Fanny—who dried her tears with wonderful celerity—down-stairs. When they reached the parlor door Miss Berrien took her companion’s hand in an encouraging pressure. “Don’t be afraid,” she whispered. “I will not let him annoy you.”

At a more auspicious moment AimÉe might have resented this offer of protection from the person who was dragging her into the lion’s jaws; but she had no opportunity to do so, for the next instant they were in Mr. Meredith’s presence.

It had never occurred to AimÉe before that this was at all an awe-inspiring presence; but now she felt herself trembling from head to foot before the rotund, genial gentleman, who looked unusually pale and grave, and whom she was going to aid in deceiving. It was this last consideration which made a coward of her, and fastened her eyes to the floor as she entered the room.

“Here is my cousin, Mr. Meredith,” said Fanny, whose conscience did not apparently make a coward of her. “She has kindly come to satisfy you as to who it was that you saw leave this house, go to the sea wall, and return last night.”

AimÉe lifted her glance and looked at Mr. Meredith then—who, in turn, looked at her. More than ever her eyes were at this moment the eyes of a startled fawn, and as they gazed at him full of wistful appeal and fright and pain, he said to himself that with such eyes deception was not possible. He had thought only of Fanny before, but now he felt a sudden thrill of pity and compunction for this girl whom his suspicions had placed in such a position.

“I am very sorry,” he stammered. “I had no desire to interfere in anything which did not concern me; but I thought—I believed—It was you, then, whom I saw last night?”

“Yes, it was I,” answered AimÉe. She spoke with a clear distinctness for which Fanny blessed her, and met his steady gaze unflinchingly. As long as it was the truth—so she said to herself—she did not mind.

Mr. Meredith, on his part, was staggered by her self-possession. Shrinking as she looked, there was no faltering in her speech, no shame in her manner. From her calm and ready answer, it might have been the most natural thing in the world for a young girl to leave her home at midnight to hold a tryst on the sea wall.

“I beg your pardon,” said the amazed man, who began to think that a girl capable of this coolness was capable of anything else—although up to this time he had looked upon her as an insignificant child, fit rather for dolls than love affairs—“but it was so strange to see a lady go out at such a time that—one could not help drawing certain conclusions. And the thought of you never occurred to me, for I should have said you were much too young for anything of the kind. And—by Jove! you are too young!” he added, with honest warmth. “Your aunt should be informed.—It is not right,” addressing Fanny, “that such an affair should be allowed to go on.”

“I thought I told you that it was at an end,” said that young lady, coolly. “AimÉe sent Mr. Kyrle away; and I promised her that if she came down to satisfy your doubt, she should not be annoyed further.”

“I have no desire to annoy her,” said Mr. Meredith, “but she is so young that really—This Mr. Kyrle can not be a man of honor, to try to make such a child elope!”

“AimÉe looks more of a child than she is,” said Fanny, hurriedly; “and—and I have told you that it is all over. Mr. Kyrle is gone.—And now, AimÉe, that you have satisfied Mr. Meredith, I think you may be allowed to go also.”

Perhaps it was something in her tone which roused renewed suspicion in Mr. Meredith’s breast. He looked from one to the other; his brow lowered, and he said, stiffly:

“If you have no objection, I should like to ask Miss”—he found he did not know her name—“Miss AimÉe a question or two.”

“You have no right to question her about her own affairs,” said Fanny, who feared what AimÉe might reply to those questions. “I promised that she should not be annoyed.—Come, AimÉe!”

But AimÉe read rightly the lowering cloud on the suitor’s brow and held her ground, resisting Fanny’s attempt to draw her away, and looking up with her clear glance into the suspicious eyes bent on her.

“You think, perhaps,” she said, meeting his suspicions boldly, “that I am saying this to shield Fanny; that it was not I who met Mr. Kyrle last night. But you are mistaken. It was I. I will swear it, if you like.”

“There is no need of that,” said Mr. Meredith, still somewhat suspicious, but again disarmed by those candid eyes. “I should be satisfied by your word. Only, it is strange—”

He paused—for at that moment the door opened, and a servant appeared, saying:

“If you please, Miss Berrien, Mr. Kyrle asks to see you.”

Fanny’s courage was of good metal that it did not fail altogether at this juncture. She felt for a moment as if it must, and if Mr. Kyrle had followed the servant into the room it is certain that she would have thrown up her game in despair. Thought is so quick that even in the midst of her consternation there was a flash of keen regret that she had not followed AimÉe’s advice and told Mr. Meredith the truth; but it was too late for candor now. What would have been graceful confidence an hour before, would now seem only the desperate resource of exposure. She looked at the door, fully expecting to see Lennox’s face; but when she understood that he would not enter without permission, her courage rose to the difficulty and her ready wit perceived a way of escape.

“It is you whom he wishes to see, AimÉe,” she said, addressing that terror-stricken young person. “Go to him at once, and take him into Mrs. Shreve’s sitting-room. You can speak to him there quietly. But pray make him go away as soon as possible. Remember, mamma may be down any moment.”

She fairly pushed AimÉe from the room before the girl could utter a word or collect her thoughts, and then turned with great self-possession to Mr. Meredith.

“He is an impetuous young man, who will not take ‘No’ when it has been said to him,” she observed, “so it is best that AimÉe should say it over again herself. He thinks, no doubt, that I am influencing her.”

“You should influence her,” said Mr. Meredith. “You should see that there is an end to such folly at once.”

“I have influenced her,” said Fanny, very truthfully. “But for me, she would not have sent him away last night. And so you were positive that it was me whom you saw!” she went on, with absolutely mirthful eyes. “It is true, AimÉe is as tall as I am; but then she is so slight, and so unformed—”

“How could I tell that at night?” said Mr. Meredith. “And how could I think of her? She always seemed to me a mere child. I confess that I thought only of you—and a most miserable night I spent in consequence,” he added, feelingly.

“I am not at all sorry,” said Miss Berrien, with uncompromising decision. “You had no right to think such a thing for a moment, after all that I have said to you. It was shameful! It shows that you have no trust in me—no real regard and respect for me. If I did what was right, now that I have proved how you misjudged me, I should never speak to you again!”

“Oh, you would not be so cruel as that, I hope!” said the now humbled and alarmed suitor. “Because, after all, I was hardly to blame—I forgot all about your cousin’s existence; and you know you have never promised anything, so I had no right to feel certain of you.”

“You will never have the right if you can not trust me better than this,” said Fanny, perceiving her advantage and pressing it ruthlessly.

It was not difficult to foresee the state of subjection to which Mr. Meredith would soon be reduced in order to make amends for the mistake into which he had been betrayed. Miss Berrien was determined upon two things: first, to keep him well engaged until she was sure that Lennox Kyrle had left the house, and, secondly, to revenge herself for the fright she had suffered; but despite her self-command, her nerves were in a state of considerable tension, and it is to be feared that it was rather a bad quarter of an hour which he was called upon to endure.

Not so bad, however, as that of poor AimÉe, who was sent forth to again encounter and overcome the ill-used Mr. Kyrle. She found him standing at the hall door—a slender, handsome young man, whose refined face and brilliant, eager eyes presented a type as widely different from Mr. Meredith as it is possible to conceive. He turned quickly at the sound of her footstep, and AimÉe felt as if the glance which fell on her pierced to her trembling soul. But there was nothing which she desired or had need to conceal, so she came forward, the movement of her slight, shrinking figure reminding him of the night before, and her dark eyes full of an unconscious appeal.

“I am sent,” she said, in a low, hesitating voice, “to tell you—” And then she paused. What had she been sent to tell him?

“To tell me that Miss Berrien is engaged and declines to see me, I presume,” said Mr. Kyrle, quietly, coming to her assistance. “I anticipated some such message. But may I ask why Miss Berrien has developed this sudden fear of meeting me? She certainly can not think that I will proceed to extremities and carry her off by force. It is possible that she might have feared something of the kind last night, but now—”

“Oh, pray don’t say such things here!” interrupted AimÉe, finding her tongue in sheer dismay, as she glanced in apprehension from the staircase, down which her aunt might descend at any moment, to the parlor door out of which Mr. Meredith might issue. “Fanny told me to take you into this room, where we can speak quietly,” she went on quickly. “Will you come for a moment?”

She opened, as she spoke, a door which led into a small sitting-room. It was Mrs. Shreve’s private domain, but Fanny (who was her prime favorite) had obtained permission to use it in emergencies like the present, and when directing AimÉe to go there she knew that Mrs. Shreve was at this time out of the house.

Mr. Kyrle hesitated an instant, then followed AimÉe into the room, and when she had closed the door looked at her a little curiously.

“Why do you let your cousin put such a duty as this upon you?” he asked, abruptly. “Why do you not decline to aid her selfishness and duplicity? Then she would be forced to come and face the truth herself.”

“I do not think it would do her any good,” replied AimÉe, simply, “and I am sure it would not do you any at all. I have come because she asked me—that is all. I do not approve of the way she is acting”—with a grave shake of the head—“but I could not refuse to help her, for she is in a difficulty.”

“I can very well imagine what it is,” said Mr. Kyrle, grimly, “and I assure you that I have no desire to add to the embarrassment of her position. I am simply here to end in a definite manner what I have been foolish enough to regard as a tie between us. I believe I told you last night that I would make no effort to see her, and had I followed my inclination I should have adhered to that resolve. But a little reflection showed me that to leave our relations as she desired them to be left was impossible on my part. It is necessary”—he spoke with emphasis, drawing together his straight, black brows in an unconscious frown—“that she shall clearly understand that by her own act she has ended all between us. I have a right to demand that she will see me in order to hear this.”

“Of course you have a right,” agreed AimÉe, thinking the while how different this was to the pleadings Fanny had anticipated; “but just now it is impossible for her to see you, so the best thing you can do is to go away. I promise you that I will tell Fanny whatever you wish.”

“I have no doubt of that,” he said. “Any one who would undertake for another what you have already undertaken in this matter can be trusted, I am sure, to make a truthful report. But there are some things which should be said face to face; so I must beg you again to request Miss Berrien to see me. I will not detain her more than a few minutes.”

“But—” said AimÉe, and then she paused, asking herself what she could possibly urge that would be likely to influence this very determined young man, and save Fanny from the Nemesis that seemed about to overtake her. The absolute self-forgetfulness of her wistful gaze, as she stood with her hands clasped tightly together, struck Kyrle in the midst of his own preoccupation; but before he could speak she went on hurriedly: “If it were possible, Fanny would see you, I am sure. But she is placed in a very trying position just now, and she can not help herself—she can not see you. If you would only believe this and go away, perhaps some other time—”

“I believe it because you say it,” answered Kyrle, moved by a sudden impulse of compassion for the distress on her face, “and for your sake I will go. But there will be no other time, so far as any attempt of mine to see Miss Berrien is concerned. Her refusal to receive me, coming after her conduct of last night, makes it impossible that I shall ever again approach her. May I ask you to be my embassador, as you have been hers, and tell her that I disregarded her wishes and attempted to see her, not because I desired in the least to change her resolution, but because I wished to bring matters between us to a positive and definite conclusion. I did not want to leave any loophole for misunderstanding. Be kind enough to make this clear.”

“I will,” said AimÉe, in feverish haste to be rid of him. “I promise you that I will make it perfectly clear. And shall I tell her that you are going away at once?”

“At once,” he replied, with decision. “She need fear no further annoyance of any kind from me; and you need not fear being sent again on such an errand as that of last night. At least there is no possibility of your being sent to me, and I strongly advise you to decline to serve Miss Berrien in that manner again.”

“She is not likely to ask me to serve her in that manner again,” said AimÉe. “But though it was not pleasant, I would rather do that than—some other things,” she added, with a keen recollection of the service she had lately been called upon to render.

“It was simply unpardonable to have sent you on such an errand,” said the young man, his indignation growing with his interest in the childlike creature. “What if you had been seen and recognized! She should have known, if you did not, the grave risk you ran.”

AimÉe was too loyal to acknowledge that she had been seen, so she only repeated her former statement: “It would not have mattered. I am of no importance at all; nobody thinks of me.”

“Apparently not,” said Lennox Kyrle dryly. To his credit it may be said that nothing had so completely disillusioned him with regard to Fanny Berrien, not even her perfidy toward himself, as her selfishness toward her young cousin. To take advantage of a child’s ignorance and generosity, to put her into a position that might have seriously compromised her, seemed to him an act so unworthy, that he could not entertain a shade of respect for the woman who was capable of it. “But it does not follow that, because nobody thinks of you, nobody should think of you,” he went on with energy. “You should think of yourself, and not allow your cousin to make use of you in this manner.”

“I am quite willing to be made use of, if I am not asked to do anything wrong,” said AimÉe, simply; “and it seemed to me that it would have been worse in Fanny to go away with you, than to send me to tell you that she could not go.”

“Perhaps so,” said he, unable to resist smiling, “and I am quite willing to acknowledge that it was better she did not keep her appointment—better to break faith than keep it with an unwilling heart; but she might have had courage enough to own the truth herself.”

“She was afraid of you,” said AimÉe, candidly. “And then there was the danger of her being seen. If Mr. Meredith had seen her—”

She stopped short—confusion and alarm painted on her face—conscious how far her tongue had betrayed her. There was an instant’s hope that Lennox Kyrle would not observe the name which had slipped out, but the next moment proved that hope vain.

“It would have been awkward, certainly, if Mr.—Meredith, did you say?—had seen her,” he replied quietly. “But how if he had seen you? Perhaps he did!” (with a sudden flash of comprehension). “I remember now that after you left, as I stood watching to see you safely home, I noticed a man on the sea wall who seemed watching you also. If that is the case, he shall understand the truth. I will go to him myself.”

“Oh, no, no!” cried AimÉe, in an agony of apprehension. “You must not think of such a thing! You would only do harm to Fanny, and no good to me—for how does it matter what Mr. Meredith thinks of me? I am of no importance.”

“You have said that several times,” answered Kyrle, “but I beg to differ with you. Because you are a child now, it does not follow that you will always be a child, and the time must come when you will understand that it is of great importance that you should not be suspected of making midnight appointments like that of last night. It was in a measure my fault that you were sent on such an errand, so I am bound in honor to let the truth be known.”

“And ruin Fanny’s prospects?” said AimÉe, who felt that the situation was critical, and that something must be done at once to restrain the impetuosity of this young man. It was characteristic of her that the first idea which occurred to her was of an appeal to his generosity. “You can do that,” she went on, fixing him with her dark, earnest eyes, “but it will seem like a revenge—and a very mean one. You will injure Fanny, you will make a scandal that will almost kill my aunt, and you will do me no good—for nobody knows anything now except Mr. Meredith, and he cares nothing about me. But if you go to him, everybody will soon know something, though not the truth.”

Lennox did not answer immediately. He simply stared at her, so much was he struck by her decision and good sense. It was true what she said. By interfering he could do no good, and it would certainly look like a revenge—“and a very mean one.” AimÉe had instinctively struck the right key. While a man of different nature might have stretched out eager hands for any form of revenge, this man drew back from the chance put into his hand as if from a viper.

“You are right,” he said, after a moment. “I should place myself in a false position by interfering, and perhaps do more harm than good. But, all the same, it is a shame that the truth should not be known, and a greater shame that your cousin should trade upon your generosity. However, you will say that is no affair of mine. It is true. And since I can do no good to any one except by going away, I will go without loss of time. Only one thing more: besides my message, will you deliver this into your cousin’s hand? I have no longer the right to retain it—nor the inclination.”

He drew from his pocket as he spoke, and gave to her, a small golden locket which contained, AimÉe afterward discovered, a picture of Fanny and a curl of her sunny hair. As she received it, a voice suddenly sounded in the hall which brought dismay to her soul, for it was the voice of Mrs. Shreve, and this is what Mrs. Shreve was saying:

“Come in, if you please, sir. I will send and let Mrs. Berrien and Miss Vincent know that you are here.”

“Miss Vincent!” said AimÉe, in a frightened whisper. “That is me—and nobody ever comes to see me! Who can it be?”

Meanwhile Mrs. Shreve’s voice went on amiably: “You wish to see them in private? Then step into my sitting-room, where you will be altogether private, and—Oh! Miss AimÉe!”

It was a tableau for a moment—the open door in which stood Mrs. Shreve, bonneted and shawled; AimÉe a picture of confusion, with the locket in her hand; and Lennox Kyrle, tall, straight, and handsome, standing before her. The scene, to all appearances, told a story evident to the dullest comprehension; and it was not alone to Mrs. Shreve’s eyes that it was revealed. Behind her was a young man whose glance over her shoulder took it all in.

The tableau lasted only a moment; for AimÉe, seeing the face over Mrs. Shreve’s shoulder, uttered an exclamation of surprise, in which pleasure evidently bore no part. “Percy,” she cried, “is it you?”

“Yes, it is I,” answered the young man, coming forward as Mrs. Shreve moved aside. He cast a look of angry suspicion at Kyrle, then, taking AimÉe’s hand—which she made no movement to offer—bent and kissed her cheek: “You did not expect to see me,” he said.

“No; why should I?” she answered, blushing so furiously that it was evident his salute was not a customary matter. “Why have you come?”

“To see you—and to take you home,” he answered, with another suspicious glance at Kyrle.

This the latter returned with one of coldly careless scrutiny, and then held out his hand to AimÉe.

“I will not intrude longer,” he said. “You will wish me bon voyage? I am leaving St. Augustine immediately.”

“Oh, yes,” answered AimÉe, eagerly. “I wish you bon voyage with all my heart, and I shall not forget—”

She paused abruptly—remembering that she must not say, “I shall not forget to give your message to Fanny”—and of course the sudden pause and blush which accompanied it could bear but one interpretation to the looker-on.

“I shall not forget your kindness,” said Kyrle, conscious of the false position in which she was placed, and angry at his inability to right it. But, fearing to do harm and complicate matters further by any attempt in that direction, he felt that the best thing he could do was to go. So with a parting bow he left the room, hearing, as he went, an angry voice saying:

“Who is that man, AimÉe?—and what is the meaning of this?”

AimÉe looked straightly and bravely into the questioner’s face.

“That,” she said, quietly, “is Mr. Kyrle. You do not know him, so we need not discuss his visit. Tell me why you have come for me. Is mamma ill?”

“No,” answered the young man, whose sufficiently good-looking countenance was very much disfigured by the frown with which he was regarding her; “she is very well, but it is necessary that you should go home at once. And I did not come a day too soon, if this is how you are engaged.”

“What do you mean by this?” asked AimÉe, indignantly—Mrs. Shreve having withdrawn in search of Mrs. Berrien. “I do not know why you should speak to me in such a manner because you find a visitor—”

“A visitor!” interrupted the other, angrily. “Do your visitors usually leave such cards as that?”

He pointed, as he spoke, to the locket which AimÉe had forgotten that she still held in her hand. She now thrust it hastily into her pocket; but, though her face crimsoned, she still regarded him with dauntless eyes.

“It is no affair of yours,” she said. “I am not called upon to give you any explanation. I am here under Aunt Alice’s care.”

“An admirable care it seems to be,” said he, sarcastically. “It is fortunate that I have come to take you out of her hands.”

“I can not understand why any one should have thought it necessary to send you,” said AimÉe. “It is a new thing that what I do should be considered of importance by any one.”

Then there was a moment’s silence. It was impossible for Mr. Percy Joscelyn—which was this young gentleman’s name—to deny that it was indeed a very new thing for AimÉe’s actions to be of importance in the opinion of her family. Her repeated assertion that it did not matter to any one what she did was founded on most undeniable fact, or had been a short time before. And if all was changed now, if her actions had suddenly become of very great importance, it was for a reason difficult to state when thus confronted with what yesterday had been the truth.

Fortunately, a diversion occurred at this point which relieved him from the inconvenience of answering her remark. The door opened and Mrs. Berrien entered.

“Why, Percy, how do you do?” she said. “This is a great surprise.”

“Yes,” said young Joscelyn, as they shook hands, “I suppose so. But I have come for AimÉe.”

“Indeed!” said Mrs. Berrien, looking as much surprised as AimÉe herself. “What is the matter? Is her mother ill?”

“No, my stepmother is in very good health,” was the reply. “But it is necessary that AimÉe should go home. There has been—ahem!—a great change in her circumstances.”

“In her circumstances!” repeated Mrs. Berrien, while AimÉe’s eyes grew wide and startled. “What has happened?”

“She has inherited a fortune,” said the young man in tones of such solemnity as the announcement warranted.

“AimÉe—inherited a fortune!” cried Mrs. Berrien. If he had announced that AimÉe had suddenly been transformed into a royal princess it could hardly have seemed to her more incredible. “You are surely mistaken.”

Percy Joscelyn smiled with an air of superior knowledge. “In such matters there is not much room for mistake,” he said. “You have heard, I presume, of Henry Dunstan?”

“My brother’s half-brother—my stepmother’s son by another marriage? Of course. But he went to South America and died years ago.”

“On the contrary, he died only last month; and, having lost his wife and only child, he made a will just before he died leaving his fortune to the children of his half-brother, Edward Vincent, of whom, as you know, AimÉe is the only child.”

“My dear AimÉe, this is indeed a change for you!” exclaimed Mrs. Berrien, turning and embracing the startled girl with honest warmth. “I am as pleased as if a fortune had been left to myself. Now I need feel no more anxiety about your future.”

“I shall never forget who was the only person who ever did feel any,” said AimÉe, clinging to her as though some danger threatened.

Mrs. Berrien smiled. She knew that it was true; that she had indeed been the only person who had ever given a thought to the future of the fatherless girl, and she was not sorry that AimÉe should recognize the fact. It was the reward for a good action, which she deserved, because no such reward had seemed even remotely possible when the action was performed.

Naturally, however, this was not very pleasant for the representative of the Joscelyns to hear; and, being a young man with a considerable drop of venom in his nature, Mr. Percy Joscelyn felt impelled to reply to the implied charge by bringing a countercharge.

“I am sorry that AimÉe imagines you to be the only person who felt any anxiety for her future,” he said, stiffly. “But if I may judge by the position in which I found her when I arrived, it was at least not a troublesome anxiety in the present.”

Mrs. Berrien looked at him with haughty surprise. “May I inquire what you mean?” she asked. “You have found her in exactly the position she would have occupied as my daughter.”

“Indeed!” said he, with what AimÉe inwardly called “Percy’s disagreeable smile.” “You are, of course, the best judge of that. But I found her with a young man, evidently exchanging love-tokens. If that is a liberty you would allow your daughter, I can only say I am sure my stepmother would prefer an anxiety that would take another form.”

Regarding him for a moment as if she thought he had taken leave of his senses, Mrs. Berrien then turned to AimÉe:

“What is the meaning of this?” she asked, “What is he talking about? There is nothing that I can imagine more improbable than that you were ‘with a young man exchanging love-tokens.’”

“I was not—O Aunt Alice, I was not!” cried poor AimÉe, divided between indignant wrath and the desire to burst into tears. “Percy did find a—young man here; but he was only a—visitor.”

“But when have you taken to receiving such visitors?” said Mrs. Berrien with amazement. “And I was not even aware that you knew any young men—O AimÉe, this is indeed a shock. I could not have believed it. I should have said that you were one of the last girls in the world to be guilty of such conduct.”

“I have not been guilty of any conduct to which you need object, Aunt Alice,” said AimÉe earnestly. “I would not deceive you—indeed, I would not.”

“Then who was the visitor Percy found with you?” asked Mrs. Berrien.

AimÉe looked at her piteously without speaking—for did not loyalty to Fanny seal her lips? Had not Fanny been as anxious to keep the knowledge of Lennox Kyrle’s visit from her mother as from Mr. Meredith? The girl was so absorbed in this thought that she forgot how useless it was to attempt to conceal a name which had been revealed to Percy Joscelyn, and which he now hastened to supply.

“AimÉe seems to have forgotten the name of her visitor,” he said, “but she informed me that it was Kyrle.”

“Kyrle!” repeated Mrs. Berrien. The truth flashed on her. She gave a searching glance at AimÉe, and read the whole story in the girl’s beseeching eyes. She remembered then that Mrs. Shreve had told her that Mr. Meredith was in the parlor with Fanny. What could be plainer than that Fanny had sent AimÉe to ward off anything so undesirable as the appearance of her old lover? But with this knowledge came also the consciousness of an unpleasant dilemma. To tell the truth for AimÉe’s justification would be to put Fanny in the power of Percy Joscelyn, who would take pleasure, Mrs. Berrien felt sure, in injuring her by letting the truth be known. Could she do this? Was such a sacrifice demanded of her? The woman whose heart was set upon her daughter’s brilliant marriage, yet who was of an upright nature and had honestly done her best for this orphan girl, knew an instant of sharp struggle—and then AimÉe spoke:

“Yes, it was Mr. Kyrle, Aunt Alice,” she said. “I hesitated to tell you, because I know you do not like him. He was here only a few minutes, and he is going away immediately.” She paused for an instant, then added, “I do not expect Percy to trust me, but you will, I am sure.”

“Yes, my dear,” said Mrs. Berrien, with a sense of mingled shame and relief. “I should have to forget all that I have ever known of you if I could not trust you. I am glad to hear that Mr. Kyrle is going away. But Percy”—looking at that young man—“may be sure that the visit to you had no such significance as he was quick to imagine.”

“I have not much imagination,” said Mr. Joscelyn, “but I am quick to trust the evidence of my eyes; and if AimÉe will kindly produce a locket which she put in her pocket a minute ago, you may change your opinion with regard to the significance of Mr. Kyrle’s visit.”

“I can trust AimÉe,” repeated Mrs. Berrien, trembling lest AimÉe should produce the demanded locket, “and I will not attempt to force her confidence. It is not to-day for the first time that her actions have become of importance to me,” she added with much stateliness of manner, “and therefore I do not need to be schooled in my duty toward her. Now we will dismiss the subject. When do you wish to take her away?”

“The sooner the better, I think,” replied the young man with considerable spitefulness of emphasis. “There is, of course, much to be done.”

“But AimÉe is too young to do anything with regard to business,” said Mrs. Berrien.

“Her mother is anxious to see her,” said Mr. Joscelyn—a statement which made Mrs. Berrien smile, and produced in AimÉe a sense of deepening amazement—“and it is necessary that she should begin at once to prepare for the position she will occupy.”

“What will that be?” asked Mrs. Berrien, a little dryly. “Have you learned the amount of her fortune?”

“Not precisely; but the letters received from Rio speak of it as very large.”

“And so you are transformed into a South American heiress, my dear little AimÉe?” said Mrs. Berrien, with a smile, putting her arm caressingly around the girl, who answered, between a laugh and a sob:

“I do not know what to think of myself under such a transformation.”

If AimÉe did not know what to think of herself under the transformation of her changed fortunes, those around her knew very well what to think. Never again would any act of hers be reckoned of no importance by the world, which, whatever shrines it may desert, is always faithful to that of the golden calf; and when Fanny Berrien learned that it was a great heiress whom she had sent to keep her rendezvous on the sea wall, and whose name she had, in the minds of two people at least, linked with that of Lennox Kyrle, she stood aghast at the realization.

“For, of course, since AimÉe is to be such an important person, I have done her a great injustice,” she confessed to her mother. “I should never have sent her if I had not thought her too insignificant for it to matter; and the same consideration made me say what I did to Mr. Meredith. How could it harm AimÉe, I thought! and now—”

A dramatic gesture concluded the sentence, but did not lighten the cloud on Mrs. Berrien’s brow. Indeed, Fanny said afterward that she had never seen her mother so angry as on this occasion.

“If the change of fortune had not occurred, and AimÉe had remained as insignificant as you thought her, I should say that you were guilty of shameful and inexcusable conduct,” said Mrs. Berrien. “To send her—a child under my care—on an errand that might have compromised her even more than it has done; and then to shield yourself by placing her in a false position—I could not have believed you capable of it! And the question now is, what am I to do? I can not leave AimÉe under the imputation of having been ready to elope with Lennox Kyrle.”

“I see no particular harm in the imputation,” said Fanny, “especially since Mr. Meredith is the only person who knows of it, and I will see that he holds his tongue.”

“You forget that Percy Joscelyn found Mr. Kyrle with AimÉe.”

“And what then? He has only his suspicions of some love affair between them—and why should not AimÉe be supposed to have a love affair? I had half a dozen at her age.”

“Fanny, I am ashamed of you!” said her mother, severely. “Is this a proper spirit in which to look at a matter in which you have been gravely and deeply at fault? Have you no generosity, that you are willing to let your young cousin bear the consequences of your frivolity?”

“It is her generosity that makes her willing to bear them,” said Fanny. “But if you insist, mamma, I can set the matter straight, so far as she is concerned, by telling Mr. Meredith the truth. Of course, he will never speak to me again, and I don’t clearly see how that will do any good to AimÉe. But still, if you insist—”

“I suppose I ought to insist,” said Mrs. Berrien, in a low tone. “It is a shame if I do not. And yet—you have put me as well as AimÉe in a position for which I shall never forgive you!” turning sharply to her daughter—“you have made it almost impossible for me to say what must be done. I should like to see you married to Mr. Meredith, but I shall always feel that such a marriage is bought too dearly if it can only be bought by putting your young cousin in a position which may throw a cloud over the brilliant prospects of her life.”

“Mamma, if you will excuse me, that is all nonsense!” said Fanny. “How can it possibly throw a cloud over AimÉe’s prospects—which I heartily wish were mine!—that one or two or three people believe her to have had a youthful love affair with Lennox Kyrle? Lennox is a very nice person—though you would never believe it—and he may be a famous man some day.”

“It is you who are talking nonsense,” said Mrs. Berrien, curtly. “It is not necessary to discuss Mr. Kyrle. Fortunately, he is a gentleman—there is that much to be said for him; otherwise we will put him aside. You say that it can not injure AimÉe’s prospects to be supposed by two or three people to have had a youthful love affair with him. In the first place, what is known to two or three people will certainly be known to many more; and, in the second place, it is a great injury to any girl, in the opinion of people whose opinions are worth consideration, to have had any such affair, much less to be supposed to have been on the verge of an elopement. As I have said, it would be bad enough if AimÉe had remained insignificant; but now, with her prospects, I can not endure it!”

“Then my prospects are at an end, and I might as well bury myself at once!” cried Fanny, who began to fear that her mother was seriously in earnest. “It is not only that I shall lose Mr. Meredith—for of course there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it—but I shall be hopelessly compromised, and I can not even fall back upon Lennox Kyrle, for he has gone off in a rage, swearing that he is done with me forever. So you might as well make up your mind, mamma, that I shall be left on your hands.”

“Fanny, you distract me!” said her mother. “Do you propose that I shall let this thing go on, and suffer AimÉe, who does not know what she is doing, to start in life with this story fastened upon her?”

“AimÉe knows perfectly well what she is doing,” said Fanny, “and if she does not mind why should you? As for her changed position, when people have money they can do exactly what they please, and the world never dares to find fault. That is my experience. But here she comes herself. Ask her what she wishes. I promise to abide by her decision.”

It was indeed AimÉe, who entered like an angel of peace. She never looked more childlike or gentle, yet her simplicity now as ever was the simplicity of good sense, and as she came forward she glanced appealingly from the anxious daughter to the distracted mother.

“I was in the next room; I could not help hearing, Aunt Alice,” she said. “I have come to thank you for thinking so much of me, and to beg you to let things be as they are.”

“My dear child, it is generous of you to desire it,” said Mrs. Berrien, “but I do not feel that I have a right to accept such a sacrifice. I must think of your future.”

“Have you not always thought of me?” said the girl, coming forward and in her earnestness kneeling down by her aunt’s chair. “You know, and I know, that nobody else has thought of me at all. And will you not let me repay you in the least for your kindness and your thought? It is such a little thing that I want you to let me do. Fanny is right. What difference does it make whether two or three people believe that I was going to elope with Mr. Kyrle? It can not hurt me; but if it were known of her it would hurt her very much. I saw Mr. Meredith this morning, and I am certain that he would never forgive her if he learned the truth now. It is too late. You can make things worse, Aunt Alice, but you can not make them any better now.”

Mrs. Berrien gave a little gasp. It was true, all that the simple, quiet voice said. Things might easily be made worse, but it was too late to make them better. She perceived this, and was not sorry to perceive it, even while despising herself for being convinced. But what could she do, with Fanny’s imploring eyes on one side, and on the other AimÉe’s resolution?

“I ought not to yield,” she said. “Whether things were made better or worse, the truth should be told.”

“Oh, no; if the truth would do harm, instead of good, why should you tell it now?” said AimÉe, with guileless casuistry. “I wanted Fanny to tell Mr. Meredith at first, but she would not, and now it is too late. You must let things be, dear Aunt Alice. Promise me that you will let them be.”

The insistent voice and eyes carried their point. Mrs. Berrien hesitated a moment longer, then meekly yielded.

“I am wrong, I know I am wrong,” she said, “but I can not withstand you both. AimÉe, I shall never forgive myself if this throws any shadow of trouble on your life. Remember, if it ever does, and you wish the truth known, call upon me and I will tell it.”

AimÉe shook her head, smiling.

“I am not afraid that the occasion will ever come,” she said. “I am too glad to be able to do something for you, who have done so much for me.”

But Mrs. Berrien was not the only person who felt concern about the very unjust suspicion that might be cast upon AimÉe. Lennox Kyrle, as he went out, with Percy Joscelyn’s angry question ringing in his ears, said to himself, indignantly, that it was shameful that such a misconception should be allowed for a moment to exist, and that, if Fanny had neither the courage nor sense of justice sufficient to induce her to speak, it was his plain duty to do so. Only one consideration deterred him, and this was the consideration AimÉe had so artfully brought to bear, that to reveal the truth would on his part appear to be the revenge of a jilted man.

“My lips are sealed,” he thought, wrathfully, “and Fanny Berrien knows it, so she allows this child, who is too young and ignorant to understand what she is doing, to bear the consequences and the odium of her conduct. It is infamous, and I will not submit to it! Something must be done.”

But to declare in the warmth of righteous indignation that something must be done, and to decide what that something should be, were unfortunately very different things. Mr. Kyrle felt himself impotent in the face of the double force of feminine resolution arrayed against him, and yet he was determined that matters should not be left as they were. The more he thought of it, the more he was revolted by Fanny Berrien’s selfishness and duplicity, and the more eager he became that she should be made to bear the burden of her own misdoing. But how was this to be accomplished? He walked away from Mrs. Shreve’s door after asking himself the question, and finding no answer short of that method which would be open to the suspicion of being dictated by revenge. One thing, however, he determined—that he would not leave St. Augustine at once, as he had declared his intention of doing. That Fanny Berrien very much desired his departure, was in his present mood an incentive to remain. Yes, he would stay for a day at least, and see if circumstances might not make it possible for him to set matters in their true light.

At the hotel where he had taken up his quarters—for this was before the era of palatial hostelries in the quaint old Spanish town—he saw Mr. Meredith and Percy Joscelyn, and might have been amused by the glances, not of love, which both men cast upon him, but for the fact that he clearly understood the misconception in the mind of each; and to be held guilty of tempting a girl hardly out of childhood to elopement, was as outraging to his pride as to his sense of integrity. It is to be regretted that he did not encounter Miss Berrien at this period, for that lively and easy-going young lady would assuredly have heard some truths, clothed in caustic language, which might have proved of benefit to her. But instead of Miss Berrien, it was AimÉe whom he encountered again, in a manner most unexpected to both. One of the girl’s greatest pleasures during her stay in St. Augustine had been to spend much of her time in an orange grove on the outskirts of the town, to which she had a right of entrance, as it belonged to Mrs. Shreve’s son. Other people also went there occasionally to walk under the picturesque trees and pluck the golden fruit that gleamed out of the glossy foliage; but AimÉe would take books or work with her, and spend hours alone in what seemed to her an enchanted world of soft sunshine, balmy air, and sweet odors. It was therefore a place that she felt she could not leave St. Augustine without seeing again—the more especially that, after the events of the morning and the tremendous change that seemed impending over her, she needed a little time for quiet reflection. And quiet reflection in the house with her aunt and Fanny was an impossible thing.

So it came to pass that, in the last hour of a perfect afternoon, Lennox Kyrle, who had been taking a walk while chewing the cud of unpleasant reflections, was attracted by the appearance of a figure coming along the road on which he was tramping. His sight was remarkably keen, and after an instant, although the person was still distant, he had no doubt who it was.

“It is that little girl!” he said to himself. “I call this good luck, for really the only thing I can do, as far as I perceive, is to make another appeal to her to tell the truth. Yet to go back to that house to see her was impossible. So it is surely a fortunate chance that brings her here—and alone, too!”

The next moment he feared that he had congratulated himself too soon. The figure paused an instant and then disappeared. Had she also recognized him, and desired to avoid meeting him? He thought it likely, but determined grimly that she should not succeed. Since to reach Fanny and scorch her with reproaches was impossible, his next best chance was to work upon AimÉe, and this he vowed to himself that he would not be prevented from doing. If she had gone into some house, he would remain on the road until nightfall in order to waylay her on her return home; but if she had perhaps taken another road—The suspicion of this made him quicken his steps, so that a few minutes after AimÉe’s disappearance he reached the spot where he had seen her last. No house was in sight, but it was evident that she had entered a gate which led into an orange grove, the beautiful alleys of which he had admired as he passed it on his way out an hour before. Indeed, as he gazed eagerly and quickly down the green vistas filled with sunset light he perceived what he sought—the graceful form pacing slowly along one of the overarched ways.

To decide and to act was more a synonymous thing with Lennox Kyrle than with most men. He did not give a thought to any question of intrusion or trespass. He opened the gate and went in, striding quickly down the path in which he perceived the slender, girlish figure. He was not conscious at the moment of bestowing much attention upon the scene around him, but its aspect came back to him so vividly afterward, that the sensitive plate which we call memory must have retained it with unusual fidelity. Long afterward he could see distinctly the floods of level sunlight slanting through the tree-trunks and turning the very air to amber, the wealth of glistening evergreen foliage, the boughs laden with what seemed the golden apples of classic fable, the indefinable charm of the Southern atmosphere, and above all the delicate, childlike presence like a vision of youth flitting down the sunlit vista.

But if there was a satisfaction to him in thus finding an opportunity to deliver the thoughts which had turned so hotly within him all day, there was not the least satisfaction for poor AimÉe, when, hearing a quick tread advancing behind her, she turned to confront the last person in the world whom she had the least desire to see. She stood still, clasping her hands instinctively together as she uttered a low cry of dismay.

“O Mr. Kyrle!” she gasped. “I hoped—I thought you had gone away.”

Little as Kyrle was in a mood for smiling, he could not but smile at this ingenuous address. “I am sorry to disappoint you,” he said, “and to break my word—for I promised to go, didn’t I? But there are reasons that seemed to make it imperative for me to remain a little longer. And, as it chanced just now, while I was taking a walk, I saw you enter this place, and I hoped you would pardon me if I followed you.”

“But why?” inquired AimÉe, far too disturbed to be polite. “Why should you want to see me, and why—oh, why haven’t you gone away? Fanny would be dreadfully worried if she knew you were still here.”

“What Miss Berrien might think does not trouble me in the least,” he replied, quietly; “but I am sorry to annoy you. I really did not think, however, that merely seeing me would annoy you so much. Why should it? I have no intention of harming any one.”

“Without intention you may do great harm,” she replied, quickly. “And I can not understand why you should stay, when you promised—”

“I will tell you why,” he said as she paused. “But is there no place where we can sit down for a few minutes? I will not detain you long.”

She pointed to a bench not far off, a favorite seat of her own, and one to which she had been on her way when he overtook her. “We can sit down there,” she said, with manifest reluctance, “but I do not see the necessity—”

“Never mind seeing it,” he said. “Simply oblige me—if I must put the matter on that basis. I am sure you will admit that I have been badly enough treated to merit a little consideration.”

“You have certainly been very badly treated,” said AimÉe, her eyes softening with sympathy at the memory of his wrongs. “I hope you don’t think I forget it, or that I can ever cease to blame Fanny; but—but making things worse can not make them better. And it seems to me that you can only make them worse by staying here.”

“As far as Miss Berrien is concerned,” he said, as they walked toward the bench and seated themselves, “I assure you that I have not the least desire to make them either worse or better. It seems strange—does it not?”—he broke off abruptly, “that this time yesterday I was looking at the setting sun filled with thoughts of her, and longings for the moment that would bring us together, and that now there is not a woman whom I know in the world that I would not sooner entertain the thought of marrying. It is a great change to be wrought in twenty-four hours. And do you know what has chiefly wrought it?”

“Her conduct, I suppose,” answered AimÉe. “It was bad enough to have wrought anything; and yet,” she added, reflectively, “I don’t really believe that Fanny herself thinks it was very bad. She is—light, you know.”

“Yes,” assented Kyrle, dryly, “very light. However, what she thinks is a matter of no importance. And it is not her conduct to me that has chiefly wrought the change of which I speak, but her conduct to you.”

“To me?” said AimÉe, looking up at him with a startled expression. “Oh, pray, don’t think of that. You don’t understand—Fanny never meant to do me any harm. I was perfectly willing to go last night, and it was not her fault that Mr. Meredith, instead of going home, as he should have done, stayed on the sea wall and saw me.”

“Pardon me,” said Kyrle, “but I think it was distinctly her fault. To have sent you on such an errand was in itself absolutely inexcusable; but afterward to let it be supposed that you went of your own accord—that you were the person about to elope—there is no language strong enough to characterize such cowardly duplicity. You wonder why I am still here? It is because I determined to see you, and say to you that if you do not tell the truth, I will. This shameful deception, this trading on the generosity of a child, shall not continue.”

AimÉe looked up at him. When had she seen any one so moved with indignation and generous wrath? She thought again that this man was far from the ductile wax Fanny Berrien imagined him to be; but, righteous as his resentment and anger were, it would not do to allow him to act upon them. Yet how could she hope to influence or bend the fiery resolution that breathed in his look and words?

“It is too late,” she said at last. “I have promised, and I have made others promise, that things shall be left as they are, and nothing would induce me to speak. Fanny is selfish and thoughtless, but she never intended deception. It all—came about because Mr. Meredith frightened her, and she was afraid to tell the truth. Fanny is a little of a coward, you know. She is very sorry—really sorry, I assure you; but if she told Mr. Meredith now, he would never forgive her.”

“And so you advise her to continue to deceive a man whose affection for her should entitle him at least to fair dealing?” said Kyrle, bitterly. “Is a man, then, never certain of truth from a woman? In Fanny Berrien I am not surprised. But your eyes look as if you ought to know what honor and honesty are.”

The eyes of which he spoke filled with tears. No other reproach could have cut AimÉe so deeply. Twenty-four hours earlier she would have said that honor and honesty were the forces that would always rule her life; and now—she could not deny that from this high standard she had ignominiously fallen. And how was it possible to explain what compelling impulse of gratitude had made it seem a duty to violate the strongest instincts implanted in her nature? She looked at Kyrle with the overbrimming crystal drops almost ready to fall, and he, meeting the pained humility of that look, felt as if he had struck a helpless child.

“I suppose it was wrong to have helped Fanny when it came to a question of deception,” she said, “but you do not know how unkind and ungrateful it would have seemed of me to refuse. It looked such a little thing—just to say that it was I whom Mr. Meredith saw last night. And that was true. Oh, yes” (quickly), “I know that it is as bad to imply a falsehood as to tell it. But—but what could I do? I owe so much to my aunt!”

“I have no right to hold you to account,” said Kyrle. “Only let me ask if you think it possible to owe any debt of gratitude great enough to demand a sacrifice of integrity in payment?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, simply. “I am sorry if I have done anything very wrong, but I will tell you why I felt compelled to make almost any sacrifice to shield Fanny.” She hesitated a moment. It seemed a difficult subject to approach, and Kyrle was about to beg her not to distress herself in order to give him an explanation to which he had no claim, when she went on hastily: “You see, I am only partly an orphan. My father is dead, but my mother is living and has married again. She is very much under the influence of Major Joscelyn—that is my stepfather—and I have always felt, though perhaps I was wrong, that she does not care much about me. The Joscelyns have never liked me; so I was very unhappy at home, when Aunt Alice came and took me away. I can not tell you how different life was to me when I went to live with her and Fanny. They have both been so kind and affectionate, they have done so much for me, of whom no one else ever thought at all, that there is not anything—not anything,” repeated the passionate young voice, “that I would not do for them. And I can not regret what I have done, though I am sorry it seems to you so wrong.”

“It is chiefly wrong to yourself,” said Kyrle. “I wish I could make you see this as I do. It is not less than a crime against your future to allow people to suppose—for what one person knows, many people are pretty certain to know—that you were not only engaged in a love affair, but on the point of eloping with me last night.”

A deep blush, beautiful in its tint but painful in its intensity, spread over her face. She looked away from him and her lip trembled. He saw that some instinct which had been dormant before was waking in her, and making her understand the outrage which such a misconception would do her childlike youth, and he pressed his advantage remorselessly.

“You can not possibly comprehend what injury the story might do your life at some of its most critical moments,” he said; “but your aunt, Mrs. Berrien, will comprehend, and to her I shall go. I am deeply enough concerned in the matter to have a right to demand that the truth shall be told.”

“If you go to my aunt,” said AimÉe, turning upon him quickly, “you can distress her very much, but you can not tell her anything which she does not know. All that you have said about possible injury to me she has said and I had much trouble in persuading her to let things be as they are. You must not think any wrong of her. She knew nothing until Percy Joscelyn, my stepbrother—who came in, you remember, this morning—charged her with not having taken proper care of me, because he found you in Mrs. Shreve’s sitting-room with me. It was like his effrontery to dare to speak so to her!” the girl interpolated, with flashing eyes. “Yesterday no Joscelyn of them all would have cared what became of me; only Aunt Alice cared. But to-day, because it seems they have learned that I am rich, Percy ventures to insult her!”

Nothing could have surprised Kyrle more than this sudden flash of indignant anger in one who had seemed to him gentle to a fault. But he was a man of quick perceptions, and all the intense affectionateness, the passionate gratitude and loyalty of the girl’s nature, were revealed to him in that moment of emotion. He was deeply touched and interested, for in this instant he understood that it was no vulgar love of intrigue, no lack of rectitude, no obtuseness toward the finest things of life, that had made AimÉe play her part in Fanny Berrien’s commonplace comedy of flirtation. Instead of comedy it had become tragedy to the girl, with her keen sense of honor, her high standard of loyalty, and her delicate instinct of the claim which love and trust given create in a generous mind. But there were motives, deep-rooted in her nature, strong enough to make her do violence to all these things and stand firm as Fanny’s shield. Kyrle almost forgot the point he was himself intent upon in his interest in the springs of feeling and action thus laid bare before him.

“And so,” AimÉe went on, “when Aunt Alice heard that you had been there she knew, of course, what it meant, and she insisted on hearing everything. Then she said the truth must be told; that Mr. Meredith must know why I went out last night; that now I am rich—why are things so much more important when people happen to be rich?—it would not do for any one to imagine that I had been going to elope. But Fanny said that Mr. Meredith would never forgive her if he heard the truth now, and I begged Aunt Alice on my knees to let me do this little thing in return for all she has done for me. So at last she yielded, and I was very glad, and—and it can not be that you will go to her and make more trouble. Why should you concern yourself about me?” she demanded, turning to him with another but somewhat lesser flash in her eyes. “What is it to you if I do this?”

“Well, for one thing,” replied Kyrle, “I am myself somewhat concerned in it, for I assure you that I am not the kind of man to endeavor to persuade a girl of your age to elope, and naturally the imputation of having done so is not very agreeable to me.”

“Oh!” said AimÉe, with a look of contrition, “I never thought of that. I forgot that it could not be pleasant for you to be suspected of such a thing. You must forgive me for being so selfish; and yet”—she paused an instant and gazed at him with a passion of entreaty in her eyes, which at that moment he thought were at once the most expressive and the most beautiful he had ever seen—“and yet,” she went on in a low, thrilling tone, “if you could only be generous and kind enough to allow it to be believed of you by the only person who knows anything about it, I, for one, should be grateful to you as long as I live!”

But for the gravity of her appeal Kyrle could have laughed at the absurdity of the situation; and yet her simplicity, her utter lack of thought for herself, touched him again beyond measure. “My dear child,” he said—for in truth he did not recall her name—“I feel as if I might do almost anything, simply because you wished it; but you do not know what you ask in this matter. You tell me that you have become rich, which means important in the world, and yet you desire to darken the fair promise of your youth with such a story as this would speedily become in the mouth of gossip. It is impossible—it would be a shame! I can not consent to it.”

“But what can you do?” she asked, dropping appeal and regarding him now with nothing less than defiance in her dark eyes. “Is it not true that a gentleman is bound never to betray a woman’s secret? How, then, can you betray Fanny’s? As for me, I will never speak.”

There was no doubt of that. A hundred oaths could not have expressed resolution more firmly, more immovably, than those simple words. And what could Kyrle reply? He knew well that he could not betray Miss Berrien’s secret, and it was the consciousness of this that had made him so determined to influence AimÉe. But now he was forced to own himself completely baffled. AimÉe’s strength of will was greater than any force he could bring to bear against it, and there was nothing left but to accept the situation created for him as best he might.

“You are right,” he said at last. “A gentleman is bound in honor to keep a woman’s secret; so Miss Berrien is safe from me. If she chooses to shelter herself behind you, and you choose to allow her to do so, I have no power to prevent it. But I am sorry that I have failed completely to make you understand what a great mistake you are committing. To save an unprincipled flirt from the consequences of her double-dealing, you are laying a cloud on your own life at its beginning.”

“I care nothing about that,” said the girl, with honest indifference. “I am only sorry that Mr. Meredith should be deceived, and that you have to bear (though only in his opinion) that imputation of which you spoke a few minutes ago. But I am going away to-morrow; and since it seems I am of some importance now” (a sigh), “I suppose the Joscelyns will keep me always; so he and everybody else will soon forget all about this.”

“I assure you that I shall never forget it,” said Kyrle. “It is an episode calculated to remain in a man’s memory. The heartless, selfish woman who has made a fool of me, I shall indeed have no trouble in forgetting; but the part you have played, mistaken as it is, I shall long remember. I only wish you had displayed such qualities as you have proved yourself to possess, in a better cause. Given a good cause, you would be a heroine. And now”—he rose as he spoke—“this time it is good-by. Since I have failed completely in the end for which I remained here, I shall return at once to the yacht. Will you shake hands with me and tell me your name? One should surely know as much as that of a young lady with whom he is supposed to have nearly eloped.”

But AimÉe could not jest on such a subject. She gravely told him her name and put out her hand. For long he carried with him a picture of the slender presence, the delicate face looking wistfully into his, as if to make sure that this time he could be relied upon to depart, and the golden sunset glory seen through the orange boughs behind her.

“Good-by,” he said, gently. “I am sorry I have not moved you. Some day you will see that I am right, and I only hope you will not then too much regret that you did not follow my advice.”

He pressed her hand warmly, released it, and walked away, down the green vista of the grove.

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