Van Hupfeldt bowed himself into the drawing-room. His eyes wandering weighingly with a quick underlook which they had from the face of Violet to that of Mrs. Mordaunt, and back again to Violet. He saw what pleased him, smiles on both faces, and his brow lightened. He was a man of about forty, with a little gray in his straight hair, which, parted in the middle, inclosed the forehead in a perfect arch. He stood upon thin legs as straight as poles. His hands and feet were small. His features as regular and chiseled as a statue’s; he looked more Spanish than Dutch.

Mrs. Mordaunt received him with a pressure of the hand in which was conveyed a message of sympathy and encouragement, and Van Hupfeldt bent toward Violet with a murmur:

“I am glad to see you looking so bright to-day.”

“You observe quickly,” said Violet.

“Some things,” answered Van Hupfeldt.

“Our good hostess has been dreaming of soldiers, Mr. Van Hupfeldt,” put in Mrs. Mordaunt, lightly, “and it seems that such a dream always brings good news to her guests; so my daughter is feeling the effects of it.”

Van Hupfeldt looked puzzled, and asked: “Has Miss Violet heard that her orchids are flourishing in her absence, or that those two swans I promised have arrived?”

Violet and Mrs. Mordaunt exchanged glances of approval of this speech, the latter saying: “There are brighter things in the world than orchids, thank Heaven! and a kind deed may be more white and graceful than all the swans of Dale Manor.”

Van Hupfeldt looked still more puzzled—a look which was noted by the women, but was attributed by them to a wish not to seem to know anything of the joyful note, and was put down to his credit. After some minutes’ talk of a general nature, Mrs. Mordaunt went out. Violet sat in an easy-chair at one of the balcony windows. Van Hupfeldt leaned against the embrasure of the window. He seemed to brace himself for an effort before he said to her:

“This is Monday evening, and since Saturday, when I brought you from the cemetery, I have not once closed my eyes. If you continue to manifest this inconsolable grief for your sister’s fate, I must break down in some way. Something will happen. I shall go crazy, I think.”

“You mean very kindly, I suppose,” answered Violet, with lowered lids; “though I do not see—”

“No, you cannot see, you do not know,” said he, with a certain redness and strain in the eyes which made it a credible thing that he had not slept in some time. “But it is so. It has been the craving of my life to save you from this grief. Let me do it; you have to let me do it!”

“How save me?” she asked, with an upward glance under her long lashes, while she wondered at the blaze in the man’s eyes. “I am not to be saved from it by any means, though it will be lessened by the proofs of my sister’s honor and of her child’s fair name, and by the discovery of the whereabouts of the child. There are no other means.”

“Yes, there are! There is the leaving of your present life, the companionship of one who will have no care but to make you happy, to redress a little in you the wrong done to your sister. That is my motive—God knows!—that is my main motive—”

“Surely I do not understand you aright!” cried Violet, somewhat dismayed by his outburst. “Your motive is to redress a wrong done by some one to my sister by devoting yourself to make me happy? Certainly, that seems a most nobly disinterested motive; but is philanthropy of this sort the best basis for the kind of proposition which you are making me? Philanthropy most certainly would wear thin in time, if it did not rest on affection—”

“Do you doubt that I have affection?” he demanded, his voice vibrating with ill-repressed passion.

“As an afterthought?”

“How as an afterthought, when my life itself depends upon continually seeing you, and seeing you happy? I tell you that if you were to refuse my prayer this evening, if anything was to happen now or in the future to thwart my cravings with respect to you, my mind is made up, I would not continue to face the harrowing cark of life. Say ‘No’ to me, and from to-morrow evening you will be tortured by the same worm of remorse by which the man who caused the death of your sister must be gnawed and gnawed. You talk of affection? I have that. I do, yes, I do love you; but that would be the flimsiest motive compared with this passion which casts me at your feet.”

“I don’t understand him,” sighed Violet to herself—and no wonder, for Van Hupfeldt’s words came from him in a sort of hiss; his eyes were bloodshot; he stooped close over her, with veins standing out on his forehead. It was clear enough that the man’s soul was in this wooing, yet he made so little pretense of the ordinary lover’s love. He left her cold, this woman made for love, and she wondered.

“Tell me quickly,” he said, “I think that your mother is not unwilling. Only let me hear the word ‘Yes,’ and the ‘when’ shall be left to you.”

“Pray listen, Mr. Van Hupfeldt,” said Violet, bending over her knee, which she slung between her clasped fingers. “Let us reason together; let us understand each other better. I am not disposed to be unfriendly toward you—do not think that—nor even to reject your suit unconditionally. I owe you much, and I see that you are greatly in earnest; but I am not clear. Your motive seems to be philanthropic. You have said as much yourself, you know. Still, philanthropy is only warm; it is never hot to desperation; it never commits suicide in despair of doing good. That, then, is the first thing which I fail to understand in you. And, secondly, I do not grasp why you desire any closer relation to be set up between us for my happiness, when I assure you that nothing but the rehabilitation of my sister’s name could lighten my unhappiness, and that, this once done, nothing further could possibly be done by any one to attach me more to life.”

“But I am older than you, and know better,” answered Van Hupfeldt, seating himself beside her, speaking now more calmly. “You know nothing of the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. Travel alone would give you a new outlook. I should ever be inventing new pleasures and excitements for you. Sometimes, already, I lie awake at night, thinking them out. I am very rich, and all my wealth should be turned into one channel, to delight you. You know nothing of society in the States, of the brilliance and abandon of life across the Atlantic. And the Paris beau monde, with its charm and wit and easy joyousness, you know nothing yet of that. I should find the means to keep you constantly gay, to watch you in ever new phases, costumes, jewels—”

The thought passed through Violet’s mind: “He has distinguished manners, but a vulgar mind,” and she said aloud: “So that is how you would wean me from sorrow, Mr. Van Hupfeldt? I should prefer a week of Dale Manor with my birds and flowers to a cycle of all that.”

“Then it shall be Dale Manor rather than ‘all that,’” he agreed. “It shall be just as you would have it, if only you will be happy, and will give me a glance one day which means ‘My happiness is due to you.’ May I have another peep at the locket?”

Violet took a locket from her neck, pressed a spring, and showed within a miniature in water-colors of the dead Gwen. She shivered a little. Though she was speaking of her sister, the man’s sudden request jarred on her.

“I like to look at it,” said Van Hupfeldt, bending closer. “It reminds me of you—chiefly about the mouth and chin, about the dear little chin. She suffered, yes, she tasted sorrow, and since she suffered, you must not suffer, too. I kiss her instead of you, because she was like you.”

This, certainly, was an odd reason for Van Hupfeldt’s tenderness to the miniature, but Violet’s heart instantly warmed toward him for his pity of her beloved; and when he replaced the locket round her neck, saying: “So, then, do we understand each other now?” she found it hard to answer: “I’m afraid that I am as far from understanding as ever.”

“That will come in time, trust me,” said he; “but as to that little word ‘Yes,’ is it to be taken as uttered now?”

“No, not now,” she said gently, “though do not go away thinking it may never be. Let me be frank, Mr. Van Hupfeldt. You know quite well that I am not at present disposed to worship your sex, and that is really so. Honestly, I don’t think that the human species adorns the earth on which it lives, least of all the male part of it. If I wished to marry, I believe I should choose some poor tiller of the fields, who had never seen a city, or heard of the arts of vice. You see, then, that the whole notion of marriage must be sufficiently distasteful to me. I wouldn’t and couldn’t give myself; but I am quite willing to—to make a bargain.”

“A bargain?” He started, and his dark eyes stared at her blankly.

“Yes, it is better to be candid. When you have cleared my sister’s name, or found the child, as you hope to be able to do, then, if you desire me still the same, you will again speak to me. I cannot definitely part from my freedom without a certainty that you will be able to do what you hope; and it is only fair to you to let you know that I should probably consent to give the same promise to any other man who would and could do this much for me.”

Upon this Van Hupfeldt’s brow flushed angrily, and he leaped to his feet, crying: “But that will never be! Clear your sister’s name? You still talk like a child—”

Now it was Violet’s turn to stand up in astonishment, as she saw her castle in the clouds diminishing. She stared in her turn, with open lips, crying: “Do you say this? that it will never be?”

“How can you set a man’s life on the chance of the realization of such a mere dream?” asked Van Hupfeldt, irritated, saying more than was wise.

“A dream?” murmured Violet, as if in a dream herself. “Then, who is it that has sent me this?”

Thereupon she drew from her pocket David Harcourt’s unsigned note. She held it out to Van Hupfeldt, and he, without touching, leaned over and read it; apparently slowly; more than once, so Violet thought. He stood there looking at the letter an unconscionable time, she holding it out for him to read, while the man’s face bled away inwardly, as it were to death, and some power seemed to rivet his eyes, some power stronger than his effort to withdraw them.

The thought passing through Van Hupfeldt’s soul was this: “Some one knows that she was a ‘duly wedded wife.’ But who? And how? To him it is somehow ‘a pretty certain thing’; and the proofs of it ‘may sooner or later be forthcoming’; and then he will give these proofs to Violet.”

“I see, then, that it was not you who sent it to me,” said Violet at last, and, as she said it, a certain gladness, a little thrill of relief, occurred somewhere within her.

Van Hupfeldt straightened himself. His lips were white, but they smiled dreadfully, though for some part of a second he hesitated before he said: “Now, who told you that?”

“I do not, of course, know the facts,” said Violet; “but I should like to.”

“You may as well know,” said Van Hupfeldt, turning away from her. “Yes, I sent it.”

Violet flushed. His manner did not carry conviction even to a mind not used to doubt the spoken word. It was horrid to think he was lying. Yet an odd sheepishness was visible in his face; his voice was not strong and brave.

“Well, I am still in a maze,” she murmured. “Since it was you who sent it, and since you say in it that my sister’s honor is now ‘a pretty certain thing,’ and that ‘the proofs will be forthcoming,’ why did you say a moment ago that it is ‘a mere dream’ to look forward to their forthcoming?”

Van Hupfeldt was looking out of the window. He did not answer at once; only after a minute he replied without looking round: “It was I who sent you the note. Yes, it was I; and what I say in it is true—somehow—true in some way; but I did not wish you to make the realization of those hopes a condition of your giving yourself to me. Hence I said that your stipulation was ‘a mere dream.’ Now, you understand; now, I think, all is clear to your mind.”

Violet sighed, and made no answer. All was not so very clear to her mind. One thing only was clear, that the nobility with which she and her mother had credited Van Hupfeldt in sending the note anonymously, so that he might not claim a reward from her, was not a deep nobility; for he had promptly volunteered the information that it was he who had sent it. She felt some disgust. A woman disillusioned about a man rushes to the opposite pole. Let him but be detected to be not the hero which she had thought him, and steep is his fall. Henceforth he is not only not a hero but less than nothing in her eyes. Violet paced aimlessly through the room, then went to the window farthest from that at which Van Hupfeldt stood, and the unspoken words on her lips were: “The miserable man.”

At last Van Hupfeldt almost rushed at her, with the cry: “The promise on that sheet of paper in your hand shall be fulfilled, and fulfilled by me, I vow, I swear it to you! But the fulfilment of it must not be made a condition of our union. The union must come first, and then the fulfilment; and the quicker the union the sooner the fulfilment.”

“No, I will not have it so.”

“You must!”

“You are to release my wrist, Mr. Van Hupfeldt!”

“You must!”

“But why hold me?”

“Listen—your sister was a wedded wife. I know it, I have reason to know it, and I am certain that, if you marry me, within six months after the marriage I shall be in a position to hand you the proofs of everything—to tell you truly the whole history from beginning to end—”

“But why six months after? Why not six months before?”

“I have reasons—there are reasons. What I shall have to tell will be a pain to you, I foresee, a pain; but perhaps not a pain which you will be unable to outlive. Nevertheless, from what I already know of your sister’s history, I see that it must be told you after, not before, our union. It is a terrible history, I—gather, a harrowing tale. You don’t even guess, you are far from being able to hear it now, even if I could tell you now. Violet! say ‘Yes’ to me!”

“What? Without understanding anything?”

“Yes, Violet, turn to me! Violet, say ‘Yes’ to me!”

“But what guaranty—”

“My pledged word, nothing else; that is enough. I say that within six months, not more, from the day of our marriage you shall have all that you desire to know, even the child shall have been found, for already I am on its track. But unless you consent, you will never know, the child will never be found; for I shall be dead, and the knowledge which I am in course of gathering shall die with me. If you will not give yourself, then, agree to that bargain you spoke of.”

“One gives, in a bargain, for something one receives.”

“It is the only condition on which we can come together. I could not bring you to-day the proofs that you long for, even if I had them. It must be six months after—not less than six months after—and for then I promise, calling Heaven to witness. Believe in me! Not all things that a man says are true; but this is true. Violet, for Gwen’s sake, within a week—the sooner it’s done, the sooner you hear—within not more than two weeks—”

Violet, sore beset, shielded her eyes with a listless hand. Van Hupfeldt was pleading like a man battling for his last earthly good. And yet, and yet, he left her cold.

“I don’t doubt your promise,” she said with a charming shyness; “but it is a great matter, you give me no guaranties, you may fail, and then all will have been in vain.”

“I won’t fail. I shall so manage that there will be no chance of failure. And to prove my faith, if you say ‘Yes,’ I think I can undertake that within only two months after the marriage the child shall be unearthed, and within six the proofs of his legitimacy shall be handed you. That’s fair—that seems fairer—come, now. Only the marriage must be prompt in that case, without a fortnight’s delay. I can’t offer better terms. What do you say to it?”

Violet, without answering, suddenly cast herself upon the sofa-head, burying her face in it. A bitter lamentation came from her, so thin and low that Van Hupfeldt could scarce hear it. He stood over her, looking at her, his heart in his mouth; and presently, bending to her, he whispered: “Tell me!”

“God knows!” came from her brokenly.

He put his lips on her hair, and she shivered. “It is ‘Yes,’ then,” said he; “but pity me still more, and say that it shall be at once.”

“No,” she sobbed, “I must have time to think. It is too much, after all—”

At that moment Mrs. Mordaunt entered. Violet, aroused by the opening door, stood up with a bent head, an averted face, and Van Hupfeldt said, with a sort of frenzied laugh, to Mrs. Mordaunt: “See how the days are lengthening out already.”

Mrs. Mordaunt looked at Violet with a query in her glance; and Violet’s great eyes dwelt on her mother without answering by any sign that question of lifted eyebrows. The girl was puzzled and overwrought. Was it so that men won women, that some man had won her sister? Surely this was a strange wooing!