I.

"Mandy's jest crazy to go to New York," said Mrs. Powell to her friend Mrs. Thomas, who was spending the day with her.

The two elderly women were "kin" in that wide-reaching term that in Virginia stretches out over blood relationship to the remotest degree of fortieth cousinship. Mr. Thomas' mother had been a Powell, and it was from the Powells, she was accustomed to say with ill-concealed pride, that her son Vivian got his high spirit and his splendid eyes.

Amanda Powell had the identical dark brown eyes and apparently the same high spirit. When she was six and Vivian twelve, the two had been used to retire from family parties

anywhere from one to a dozen times in the course of an afternoon to have it out, in the back hallway, or in the garret, or even, when the excitement was intense, in the "far barn," a dilapidated building a quarter of a mile away from the house.

Vivian, even at the manly age of twelve, and in the face of all the traditions of chivalry, which to a Southern boy of that period exercised a very real influence over his attitude toward the softer sex, despite the vigilance of his mother and aunts, who were perpetually admonishing him to recollect that "Mandy was little and a girl besides," Vivian was tormented by a desire to subdue his spunky, small cousin at any cost of time and ingenuity. He had once made a great flourish with a hazel switch and raised a welt on her slim bare arm, which gave him immense satisfaction at the moment, and haunted him remorsefully for weeks afterwards. Amanda had promptly pulled out a lock of his hair, and then, setting her back against the side of the barn and gritting her tiny white teeth, had bidden him "come on" in a tone ringing with belligerent probabilities.

After that day a new element was added to the attraction the two children had for each other. Their attitude was much like that of two unfledged chickens who have had a fight ending in a drawn battle, and have a thirst for satisfaction. Whoever has watched a pair of very young roosters in the act of combat, knows how each one makes a peck and then draws off and stands upon the defensive, vigilant and defiant; another peck—then another rest, neither one giving in or running away until some intruder parts them.

Vivian and Amanda had continued upon these terms until increasing years rendered actual fighting impossible, and left to their antagonistic spirits only the resource of stinging words, and to hours of repentance the mere interchange of shy glances and softer speech, added to a fierce absorption of one another's society, which left the rest of the world completely outside.

The Powell and Thomas tribe had come in the course of time to accept the alliance between the fighting cousins as one of the mysterious results of the strange similarity of the two children in looks and disposition, and all the other young cousins had learned that these two black-eyed friend-enemies belonged to one another, and tolerated no interference in their relation.

Both were fatherless, and so, in either case, the young spirit that needed wise and loving restraint, had broken through the feeble curb of motherly fondness and gained freedom before achieving the self-control that prevents liberty from degenerating into license.

Amanda was now eighteen, and Vivian—just home from a two-years' term at the College of Virginia—was twenty-four. The two mothers, sitting together that afternoon, a week after Vivian's premature return from college, were anxiously alive to all the possibilities smouldering in such a period and fanned by recent separation and the excitement of inquiry into the changes a couple of years had wrought.

I should like to dwell for a moment upon the scene of this little motherly conference. It was the "settin'-room" of a large, old-fashioned mansion in central Virginia, and was one of two ample square rooms lying on either side of a great hall that ran straight through the middle of the house and lost itself in a broad porch in the rear.

Its newly white-washed walls were half covered with dusky old family portraits interspersed with bits of what Amanda called "bric-a-brac," meaning wood-cuts from the illustrated weeklies, brilliantly colored fans, and bunches of ferns and grasses tied together with ends of sash ribbon. The worn carpet covering the middle of the floor was an ancient and costly Axminster, and the few pieces of furniture were of massive mahogany, the long sofa and two armchairs covered with black haircloth, but overlaid with so many knitted tidies and scarfs that their dreariness was well concealed. In the deep, wide fireplace a big log burned slowly this chilly April day, and on either side of a spider-legged table drawn up before the blaze, sat and rocked the elderly ladies, dividing their attention between a small decanter of Madeira and a plate of Aunt 'Liza's delicious plum cake, and the subject of Amanda's craze to go to New York.

"Mandy's always had her own way about everything up to this," said Mrs. Thomas, her cool, pale blue eyes turning their wavering glance upon the plump, handsome face of her hostess, whose blooming cheeks were framed in snowy curls and set off by a lace fichu that came up high around the neck of her gray merino dress and was fastened in front by a pin made of her husband's hair woven into the form of a bunch of grapes. The term "motherly" described her accurately; her cheery smile, her ponderous but quick motions, her rich-toned voice and large, soft hands, all made up a personnel that drew hearts to her in affectionate confidence. She laughed in responding to her cousin's remark, a mellow, rippling laugh, such as you might have expected from her.

"I dunno what 'u'd happen if anybody wuz to set 'emselves up against Mandy," she said, shaking her beautiful white curls. "And I dunno's her way is sech a bad way. She don't like to have anybody say what she shall do and what she sha'n't, but give her her head and she's generous as the day, and good-hearted. The Powell disposition always wuz to be a leetle wilful, but the Major and I always got along well, and Mandy's like her pa. She was always wild to travel, and she's not had a great opportunity to see the world. If I could leave home—or had anybody to take her! But I reckon it'll have to be managed some way. Mandy's bound to go."

"There's one person 'u'd be glad enough to take her," said Mrs. Thomas. "He'd take her anywhere she wanted to go, shore."

"You mean Edgar Chamblin?"

"You know I mean Vivian, so what's the use o' talkin' 'bout anybody else? I seen cl'ar 'nuff, Nellie, five year ago, how things wuz goin' to be when them two growed up. It's nater, and I dunno's we kin help it, even supposin' we wuz to desire to."

A troubled look passed over Mrs. Powell's face; passed and left no trace, as a cloud passes over the sun. "Whatever is, is best," she had been saying all her life, when persons about her were complaining of fate and Providence and ill-luck. But beneath her optimism was a basis of sound judgment, and she always quietly made herself sure that nothing better was attainable before acquiescing in such arrangements as Providence allotted.

"Edgar Chamblin is jest sech a young man as I'd like to see Mandy marry," she observed placidly. "I've nothin' ag'in Vivian—you know I've always been as fond of him as if he wuz my own—but put fire and tow together! Now, Edgar's one of the kind that'd let Mandy do jest what she pleased. He's easy-goin'. Not but what he's sensible too, and steady. I'd be proud to hev Mandy so well suited in a husband as Ed'd suit her."

"I should think you'd know better'n to pick out who Mandy's goin' to marry," said Vivian's mother. "And I ain't so shore as it's the best thing fur a woman to have a husband give in to her every whip-stitch. Probably you dunno what it is to have a shiftless, no-account, no-back-bone sort o' creetur 'round under foot—"

"Lord knows, all I want's my child's happiness," sighed good Mrs. Powell. "If she and Vivian air fond o' one another, I'm not the one to oppose 'em. But I can't say now as I want it so. It stands to reason two black-eyed, high-strung people, both proud as Lucifer, must expect to have a stormy life together. Why, it'd make me tremble—the idee of 'em goin' away on a weddin' tour!"

"Vivian's a good boy, Nellie," answered his mother in a tone that trembled a little. "You know, yourself, he's a gentleman. No woman need be afeard of a man if he's a gentleman."

"My dear, the Major wuz a gentleman; no man more so. But I dunno what'd happened if I hadn't known how to manage him. You've either got to manage a man or be managed, and though there air women that need managin', and some that like it, I've never seen the man yet that's fit to be the head o' woman. I ain't sayin' they don't exist. I haven't been about much. But my mother had. She'd been everywhere. Her father was Commander in the Navy, as you know, and she said to me once: 'Nellie, I never yet see the man that was good enough for a good woman.' I don't go as fur as that. Ma was ruther high in her notions. But on the other hand it'd go mighty hard with me to have to stand by and see a man that married Mandy with his hand on top."

"Seems to me you needn't be afeard o' that if she has Vivian. It's been all along with them two that if one wuz ahead one day, t'other was shore to git ahead the next. You recollect the old saying: 'Pull Dick, pull deevil,' I reckon, Nellie?"

"That's the worst on it. I'm mortal afeard they'd kill one another. They ain't noways suited, Jane, and I trust to mercy that the thing's not to be."

Mrs. Powell pronounced her ultimatum with unusual energy, and rising, began to stir about the room, setting cushions and folding up pieces of sewing in a manner that evinced a wish to shake off a disagreeable impression. Never before had she felt a wish to fight the inevitable. She was not one of the thin-skinned, superstitious beings who claim to be intuitional, and she was content, ordinarily, to recognize events when they actually took place, and not spy them out beforehand in the clouds of fancy. But mothers seem to have a special sense that warns of coming danger, and this good mother had felt within the last few minutes a strange sinking at the heart in connection with thoughts of Mandy which made her very anxious and, as she put it, "fidgety," so that to sit still longer and discuss the matter of this undesired marriage was an impossibility.

"I sort o' hoped you wouldn't be averse to the children's comin' together, Nellie," were Mrs. Thomas's parting words as she settled herself in the broad carryall while the sun was still high, to drive the two miles to Bloomdale, where, standing back a little way from Main Street, was the modern brick house that her father, the general storekeeper "in town," had left her and to her eldest son George after her, the entail taking no account of Vivian, to whom she promptly gave up his father's farm the day he came of age.

As she took up the reins after this plaintive remark and turned her eyes reproachfully upon Mrs. Powell's countenance, beaming upon the parting guest from the broad doorway, another vehicle whirled around the curve and stopped, and two beautiful pairs of dark eyes smiled upon her, as Vivian himself sprang out and put his arm about Amanda with a zeal that was totally unnecessary to the furthering of that active damsel's descent to the ground.

"Where have you two been all this blessed afternoon, when I needed Mandy to hem them table-cloths?" said Mrs. Powell, her beaming countenance contradicting her complaint, as Amanda put both arms about her neck and kissed her with an affection that was as genuine as it was spontaneous.

"Been to Bear's Den," said Amanda, a rich color mantling her opal-tinted cheeks, and a shy, saucy smile curving a mouth formed for the torment of men, in more senses than one. Her voice was a modified edition of her mother's, lazy, rich and sweet, but with keener timbre. Under provocation it might become scornful, which Mrs. Powell's could not. She was tall and symmetrically built, her figure already showing the luxurious development that to girls of northern race comes only with an uncomfortable embonpoint. But there was not a trace of clumsiness in her make-up, which united energy and languor in singularly equal proportions.

A fair picture the little group made, when Vivian had placed himself beside his young kinswoman and stood, leaning against the pillar, his soft hat dangling from one hand, while the other surreptitiously held Amanda's under cover of her shawl. He was her match in beauty and very like her, but with lighter coloring, his mother's blonde tints reappearing in his ruddy skin and bronze-brown mustache. With equal fire of glance, there was yet something that was not present in her spirited countenance; a hint of petulance and selfishness. But it was counter-balanced by a wonderful tenderness of expression that now spread over his clear-cut features like a wave of moonlight, bringing out the rare charm that made Vivian at times irresistible.

His mother, watching him with all her heart in her eyes, caught her breath and dropped the reins on her lap as she met the significant look he turned toward her for a second, before bending his gaze, filled with its utmost persuasive power, upon Mrs. Powell.

"I reckon," he said slowly, his tones cutting the air decisively, yet quivering with a certain plaintiveness that recalled "Cousin Jane's" tremulous minor notes, "this is as good a time as any to tell you both that Amanda and I have made up our minds to try housekeeping together at Benvenew."

"After we come back from New York," put in Amanda with a saucy glance of reminder.

"Children," said Mrs. Powell, more solemnly than she had ever spoken in her life. She took a hand of each and looked from one to the other, while Jane Thomas scarcely breathed as she leaned out of the carryall toward them. "Children, if ye've both made up your minds, I've got no call to interfere with young folks' happiness, and I sha'n't. What I say now, I say once and for all, and I sha'n't harp on it. But I know both on ye pretty nigh as well as I know myself. I'm afeard my girl needs somethin' you can't give her, Vivian. You think you don't, honey," she added, squeezing the soft palm laid in her own, and longing for eloquence to express the meaning that was in her heart; "but you ain't a woman yet; you're only a child. And what you're a-goin' to turn out depends more'n you can think now, on the kind of marriage you make. I pity the man that sets his heart on makin' you over to suit himself. And you, my dear boy, air too rash—you ain't settled enough. And it's my duty to say, fur your own sake, that if you two try gettin' along together, you'll be ridin' over to your mother or to me some day with a mouthful of complaints 'gainst Mandy. And some of 'em 'll be just. There's a soft streak in Mandy and there's a hard streak, and I'm afeard you'll find the hard one."

"Why, mother!" said Amanda, astonished and a little alarmed at her jolly mother's grave discourse. The words meant nothing to her then. She turned a laughing glance upon her lover, who had listened with equal lack of comprehension. Now they with one accord drew closer together. Certainly, any advice which does not harmonize with the wishes of those matrimonially inclined is as the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

"We always meant to be married, Aunt Nellie," answered Vivian after a short pause. "No other girl would suit me, and she is satisfied with me. Arnt you, Mandy?"

"Yes," said Amanda without hesitation.

"Nellie," cried Mrs. Thomas, unable to contain herself any longer, "don't you make 'em feel you don't believe they'll be happy together. They ain't children now, and because they've always been sparrin' is all the more reason they'll settle down tame enough."

"I should just hate a man I couldn't have a good quarrel with, once in a while," the girl made a pretense of whispering to her mother, and giving Vivian a look which meant that he was to understand they were to have things as they wanted them.

"I've got no call to say any more," said Mrs. Powell, to whom this slight opposition had been an extraordinary effort. She felt that conscience could demand no more of her. So she kissed Amanda and then kissed Vivian, and Jane Thomas kissed them both and cried over them, as sentimental women cry when they get their heart's desire, and they all stood on the porch together for a few minutes, talking eagerly, perhaps to cover a little feeling that had been stirred up by the discussion; a foreboding that could not quite be laid to rest, whether, after all, this marriage was a wise one, a prudent one, and one from which good was to come.

Did Amanda feel this doubt? Perhaps the odd little shiver that came over her and that she shook off so lightly was a premonition she would have done well to heed, instead of turning, as she did, to lay her beautiful head on her lover's shoulder in a manner that was rather too deliberate to be altogether fond.

Did Vivian experience any fear of the future in this instant of promised fulfilment of his hopes? Not he. The time was as yet far distant when that buoyant glance which seemed to challenge fate was to be turned downward in melancholy resignation, and the impetuous outleaping of suggestion and comment that was natural to his enthusiastic temperament become hesitating appeal to one he feared to displease.

And the two mothers, watching this adored son and daughter and rejoicing in their joy, sympathizing and admiring with that admiration which is most perfectly free from envy, did their knowledge of human nature and their past experience not suggest that which must make them tremble in regarding these two heedless young creatures, both children of one haughty race, bent upon gratifying that impulse of mutual attraction which was more than likely to have its source in animal obstinacy than in reasonable, human affection?

But how limited is the outlook of elderly women in these little southern villages, where the history of a few lives constitutes their entire equipment in sociology, and to whom the idea of essential differences between sets of conditions superficially alike, can never present itself strongly. Mrs. Powell's motherly instinct had had its spasm of alarm, but had been quieted by the soothing reflection that marriage tames high spirits, and that the Rubicon of matrimony once passed, adjustment to circumstances must follow. Nothing else was conceivable. As for Jane Thomas, any picture of a future into which trouble might come to her son even from the "curse of a granted prayer" was beyond her imagination. All she had asked in life since Vivian was born was that he might have whatever was necessary to make him happy, and that spirited youth had succeeded in convincing her that happiness lay in having what he wanted. He wanted Amanda, and now he had got her. Mrs. Thomas rejoiced as far as her melancholy temperament permitted, and trusted the future to Providence. And in a month Amanda Powell had become "young Mrs. Thomas." A month is a short engagement in Virginia, but Vivian was impatient to open up his closed homestead, and start the farm going according to some new theories of farming, which chiefly took shape in patent fertilizer and an improved kind of harrow; also, the introduction of white labor to supersede the "lazy darkies."

And to Amanda marriage meant the pretty pearl ring her lover had placed upon her finger, the rustling white silk gown her mother had made for her in Ryburg, and—the wedding journey. Our wildest dreams are only re-combinations of what we have experienced or read of, and how could this girl of eighteen, for all her rich and varied nature, dream of the coming of responsibilities that would shake her frail fancies of married life like an earthquake, or of mental development that would awaken critical faculties to the extent of making her rebel against what she now accepted as matters of course; nothing better having presented itself to her mind?

She was satisfied that the wedding was conventionally correct, according to Fauquier County standards; that the day was bright; that she looked her best, and that Vivian was devoted without being uncomfortably demonstrative. For without at all understanding why it was so, the young girl, so full of ardor in all her attachments, had a virginal coldness toward her young lover that made her shrink with distaste from caresses and put aside any suggestion of an intimacy other than had always existed between them, and of which she foresaw merely an extension, not a transformation into anything more exacting.

Reared by an old-fashioned southern mother, watched and shielded as maidens once were when maternal ideas of duty included an anxious supervision over a daughter's reading, amusements, and associations, Amanda was in all essentials still a child, with only her natural dignity and womanly instinct to protect her amid the various perplexities and temptations the future might hold for her.

New York burst upon her eager senses as the first deafening crash of a full orchestra might salute the ears of a music-mad boy who had never heard anything more stimulating than the wheezy strains of a second-rate melodeon. Stunned but delighted, she gazed from the carriage windows upon the crowds, the stores, and the elevated railway, and thought that now she was seeing the world.

Vivian went to the Windsor, and as the youthful pair descended to the dining-room about seven o'clock and told a servant at the door that they wanted "supper," the lofty head waiter in condescending admiration, swooped down and led them to the extreme rear of the room, where, ranged in close proximity, were four other bridal couples as newly made as themselves.

But Amanda had come down in a white lawn gown profusely trimmed with pink satin ribbon, and heavy gold bracelets on her arms, bare to the elbow. The other brides wore walking suits and bonnets, with the exception of one, whose gown was of rich brocade, and whose supercilious face was set off by the most unapproachable coiffure Amanda had ever seen.

She had quick perceptions, and was keenly alive to any defect in her own appearance, and in ten minutes she suffered all the agony that would be felt by a finished woman of the world who had inadvertently worn full dress to a reception demanding bonnets. Yet, to the first test her metal rang true. With heightened color she went through the form of dining, and Vivian, whose sensibilities were as keen as hers and whose self-love was greater, took note of certain differences between his young wife and the other women, and felt himself aggrieved by her lack of taste. It was too soon, and he was too tender toward her for him to betray intentionally this slight annoyance. But an admitted cause of irritation is like the first rip in one's apparel; every movement that touches the rent extends it until the garment falls into rags.

Vivian had permitted himself the latitude of secret fault-finding, and from this to the next step it was easy.

Their first quarrel came within a week. The wonder is not that it came so soon, but that it was deferred so long. Yet, the immediate cause was absurdly trivial. They had arranged to drive to Clairmont and lunch in company with some friends of Vivian. But when the morning came he felt averse to carrying out the program. Perhaps his head ached, or he had slept ill, or the discovery that his trunk key was missing annoyed him unduly. But anyway he was out of tone.

One o'clock found him stretched out on the couch in their room yawning discontentedly over the Herald. Amanda, flitting about, suddenly became aware when her toilet was half made that he had not begun to get ready.

"If you don't hurry up I'll go off and leave you—lazy fellow!" she cried. "They talk about women being always the ones to keep people waiting. I'm sure it's the other way. I'm always ready for everything before you."

"I'm not going," said Vivian abruptly, directing a scowl toward the wall paper.

They had now been married eight days. A certain French author, renowned for his biting epigrams, remarks: "I do not believe there ever was a marriage in the world, even the union of a tiger and a panther, which would not pretend to perfect happiness for at least fifteen days after the marriage ceremony."

In this case was neither tiger nor panther; only a young man who had always lorded it prettily over the women in his family, and a girl who had been brought up to expect much deference. Perhaps in France it might have taken fifteen days for the glamour to wear off. But in America emotions exhaust themselves rapidly. Amanda, standing with one gloved hand stretched out before her, seemingly intent upon fastening the buttons, had begun to reflect.

"You ain't well," she observed coldly. "Probably you ate too much pie last night."

Now, among the trifles that grate upon the masculine mind, is having an indisposition referred to gastronomic indulgence. At such times a man is apt to consider that a wife but poorly replaces a mother.

"Amanda, I wish you would learn that all varieties of pastry don't come under the head of 'pie.' And I wish you wouldn't say 'ain't.' It's deucedly countrified."

"Oh," said Amanda. She deliberately took off her gloves and hat, and sat down upon an ottoman near the couch. Her color had arisen, and her black eyes had an ominous sparkle. "Is there anything else you wish?" She asked this aggressively. Her tone suggested that she had not forgotten that episode of the fight in the barn that lay a dozen years back. She was quite as ready to stand upon the defensive now as she had been then. But when women stand sentinel their guns go off inadvertently.

"I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself, Vivian Thomas!" then said Amanda. She felt that he ought to be ashamed; that his display of petulance had occurred at least a fortnight too soon; that aside from the general fact that she was in the right, as usual, he had put himself in the exceptional attitude of ill-treating a bride and trying to spoil her pleasure during the tour avowedly taken to give her pleasure.

"What of?" asked Vivian, shutting his eyes.

"Of the way you're acting," promptly answered Amanda. "If you were a little boy you'd deserve a whipping. As you're supposed to be a man——"

"Only supposed to be?" sarcastically put in the depreciated young gentleman.

"Well, act like a man, then!" said Amanda in a biting tone.

"You're acting like a shrew," he returned, not entirely without reason, for the girl-wife had worked herself up to quite a pretty rage. Yet, as is plain, the blame was his, and in his heart he knew it. But since he had evoked a display of temper he had a mind to bring her to the stool of repentance. As well now as later.

Amanda, upon her side was reminded that Vivian's mother had spoiled him, and she fancied that the time had come for her to establish the supremacy over him that was essential to the happiness of both. So mixed are the motives that direct any one of our actions that it is possible there lay side by side with this lofty determination of the spirited young woman a wish to prove her husband; to find out if he had strength of character sufficient to hold his own against her and bring her to the point he evidently aimed toward, of coaxing him into good humor. There was no suggestion of any such weakness in her next words.

"It's no use to talk sense to you," she remarked, as if considering ways and means. "Because you haven't got common sense. Ma always said that."

One can pardon reproaches provoked by the occasion, but a deliberate accusation delivered at second hand has the weight of society behind it. And the affront was the greater in this instance, in that Vivian had considered "Aunt Nellie" his firm friend. He turned a trifle pale, and rising to his feet began walking slowly up and down the floor. After a few strides he paused in front of Amanda and said:

"I guess your mother was right—if she meant I hadn't good sense when I wanted to marry you. I don't know as I've ever shown myself much of a fool, otherwise."

And then—it was only eight days since the ceremony, and they were both so young—somehow the quarrel died out, and they patched up a peace, and went to Clairmont after all, in a great hurry, and with spirits considerably ruffled. But neither of them enjoyed the day.

After that a great many things went wrong. There was money enough to pay their expenses for a month or so, but none to waste; and they wasted it. Accustomed to the use of carriages, as a matter of course neither of them thought of economizing in this line, until confronted with an appalling livery-bill. They did not know how to order a dinner À la carte, until they learned by costly experience, and the fees they bestowed upon the servants, although seemingly a trifle at the time, were matters of grave moment when the sum total of their expenditures for the month came under discussion.

It had been the plan to remain away six weeks, but upon the thirtieth day Vivian came up to his wife, who was talking with some other ladies upon the porch of the Grand Union Hotel—they were then at Saratoga—and said abruptly:

"Dear, can I speak with you a minute?"

Rather alarmed, Amanda accompanied him to a retired spot, and put herself in a listening attitude. It was an awkward minute for Vivian. He was the soul of generosity, and nothing gratified him more than to give to others pleasure, when it cost him no effort. Yet here he was in a deuce of a hole, and under the necessity of making a humiliating explanation to the person whom of all others he found it hard to confess to.

"Well?" said Amanda, rather impatiently, as he fidgeted about without saying anything.

"Well, my—dearest," said poor Vivian, with pathos, turning out an empty pocket, "we are in a fix. We've spent money a little too fast, and have only this left!" And he held up to view a five-dollar bill, and two silver quarters.

Amanda gave a gasp, and then collected her mental forces. She had a fund of practical common sense in her nature, and now when she summoned it for the first time it responded to call. The first impression her husband's confidence made upon her was to arouse a slight contempt, not attended to at the instant, but unconsciously stored away to be used on other occasions. When our friends gracefully ignore our blunders and follies is it to be supposed that they have really been blind to what they gave no evidence of perceiving? As well hope that the stone we flung into the wayside stream was totally lost when the ripples ceased, and that it found no home in the bed beneath.

"I have some money," said Amanda, hastily. "Do we owe for hotel bills?"

"No, I've just settled up everything. It was that opened my eyes. I had no idea I was so nearly broke."

"Then we can get home—I reckon—if we start right off. I have fifty dollars that mother gave me, the last thing. For 'extras,' she said. Perhaps she meant this."

She could not help the little fling. It was too hard to use this money, which she had reserved for a special purpose.

Vivian bit his lip and turned his back for a moment; but what was the use of making a fuss now? He was thankful upon the whole to get out of a bad scrape. It wouldn't be Amanda if she didn't say something unpleasant.

Ah, Vivian, has it come to this already? It seems the scars of certain little passages at arms have not faded away.

Upon a warm, sunshiny day in June they came home. Benvenew was in order, owing to the efforts of the two mothers, and Mrs. Powell's four-seated wagon was waiting at the little station, and her genial face smiled a welcome from the back seat.

"Darling mother!" murmured Amanda, yielding to the clasp of her mother's arms, and for one instant feeling as if the past month with its bewildering experiences, was all a wild dream, and she a child again, careless, irresponsible, and light hearted. The familiar sights, of which she had been weary not long ago, were charming; the smiles and nods from people they met warmed a heart that had been chilled and affrighted many times since she had left her Virginia home. Here, in her own clime, she was a princess, with friends to love her and listen to her with respect and sympathy.

They forded a stream and came to the old mill, standing half-buried in the marsh. Part of the roof was off and the rank, clambering vine of the wild grape had reached up and hung over the sides in graceful festoons. Their appearance started up a number of yellow butterflies that had been fluttering over the stream, and now rose in the air like a shower of golden sparks.

"How beautiful it all is," said Amanda. "I am glad to be home again. But where is Alex taking us?"

"To Benvenew, of course," Mrs. Powell answered. "Why, Mandy, dear, didn't you want to go right there, or would you ruther go home fur to-night? We thought probably you'd both prefer—but the laws knows I'd be glad to have you both come back with me."

"Why, ma, I forgot!" said Amanda. "And so I'm to begin my housekeeping right off. I don't know enough about it to take care of that big place."

"You'll have Ellen Digby to cook," said Mrs. Powell anxiously, "and little Admonia."

"Admonia!" exclaimed Vivian, looking around in some indignation from the front seat. "I can't have that harum-scarum creature on the place."

"You know Ellen really is a good servant," Mrs. Powell explained, apologetically. "And she won't come without the child. Admonia's twelve now, and she's really not so bad. She can be trained. There wasn't anybody else we could lay hands on."

"Never mind, ma, Admonia 'll do well enough," interposed Amanda. "She's a funny little thing, and I rather like her."

"Ex—actly!" Vivian observed, with an accent lately acquired. "I imagine Amanda training anybody."

We all have our secret pet vanities which undiscriminating persons, seeing only our surface beauties, are perpetually wounding. Amanda's vanity was a wish to be acknowledged sensible and practical. Beautiful, she knew herself to be, and to hear of that was an old story; but her executive ability was not yet proved, and she was very sensitive upon this point. And herein Vivian blundered. It did not occur to him that he hurt her feelings by depreciating her executive powers. He had been used to regarding her as a pretty play-thing, something to be petted and disciplined alternately. That she had an ambition to be something more was what he had not yet discovered. Perhaps the idea was one that he would have to blindly grope his way toward; for "we can only comprehend that of which we have the beginnings in ourselves," and in the handsome, suave, popular young Virginian the germ of common sense and good judgment was small; so very much smaller than his little world believed it to be.

"Mandy is a leetle apt to spoil the young niggers," said her peace-making mother. "But then she wuz always so powerful fond o' children."

Amanda patted her mother's shoulder, while a far-away look came into her eyes as she fixed them on a distant hill, where the newly plowed earth lay darkly red against the tender sky-tints, and the sun swept down upon one spot, covered with young wheat, and spread over it like the caressing touch of a golden hand.

She was passionately fond of children—this fiery, tender-hearted woman, who showed so many prickles to the grown people who approached her incautiously. And Vivian was not. So much the more diplomatic, so much the more polished, so full of gentleness toward women and forbearance toward their troublesome little ones—was it possible that it was he who failed in patience and kindness, and the forward Amanda who must be credited with the possession of both, when helpless hands were stretched out toward her? Fauquier County would have shaken its head over such a question. Fauquier County said that Vivian Thomas was the mildest and best humored young man in the world except when things happened that he had a right to be angry about; but that Amanda Powell was rather too spunky and high-strung for any man except a saint to get along with peaceably. For her mother's sake—and also, a little in spite of its preternaturally wise judgment—for the sake of certain winning ways of her own, the county people liked her; but Vivian, they adored.

And so, overshadowed by this disadvantage, of which she was not quite unconscious, the young wife descended from the wagon, helped out as gracefully and tenderly as he had helped her out of another vehicle the day we first saw her, by her courteous husband, and entered the door of her new home.

The first person they laid eyes upon was the shock-headed, wild-eyed little creature called Admonia, who dropped a flower-pot she was carrying through the hall, and without stopping to pick up the pieces, raced to the kitchen, shouting:

"Mis' Mandy and Mr. Vivian done come home, fur shore! Whoopy! Ain't I glad! Now, we'uns gwine ter have times!"

Admonia was a prophet.

II.

"Admonia!" called a woman's voice, and in a twinkling the owner followed and stopped in the last one of the long row of outbuildings that spread beyond the dining-room of Benvenew.

It was a mere shed, enclosed on three sides and open at the end, the sky showing through holes in the roof. The rough boarding that answered for a floor was broken in many places, and dirt and confusion reigned everywhere. Upon a stool sat a shock-headed, wild-eyed darkey girl of twenty or so, plucking the feathers from a couple of fowls, and throwing them upon the floor. Her heavy under-lip fell and her eyes rolled as the imperative tones of her mistress smote upon her ear, and she arose quickly, a cloud of feathers falling from her unspeakably dirty dress, and stood dangling a half plucked fowl, her dark brown face so immersed in gloom that all the features seemed to have run together, the whites of her eyes and her broad yellow teeth giving her the appearance of a bank of much soiled and partly melted snow.

"Admonia," said her mistress, pausing in the doorway, "where is Nellie?"

"Laws, Mis' Mandy, I dunno. I hain't saw de chile sence Mr. Thomas tuk her."

"When was that?" Amanda's voice had a peculiar ring which the girl recognized, and knew the cause of. Her dusky face softened into an expression of sympathy, and with the fluency of her race she uttered the first consoling thought that came into her head.

"Now, Mis' Mandy, honey, don' yo' tak' on—li'le Nellie she all safe 'nuff; her pa done tak' her wid him up ter he room on'y lettle bit ago. She was pesterin' him ter show her de stuffed owl what he done brung home frum Ryburg, an' he jes tuk her wid him ter show her. He—he all right, Mis' Mandy."

The last sentence was spoken in a lower tone, and the harum-scarum girl, whom everyone except her mother and her mistress considered irreclaimably rough and wild, averted her eyes from Amanda's pale face, and sitting down again began industriously plucking her fowls.

Without another word, but with one sharply indrawn breath that left her lips white, Amanda entered the house and ascended the stairs. As she drew near a rear room on the second floor sounds reached her ear that brought a flaming color into her cheeks and made her hasten her steps. The frightened, sobbing tones of a little child came from behind the closed door of her husband's room, mingled with a half articulate but apparently angry growl of a deep masculine voice.

Amanda turned the handle of the door with an expression that boded ill for the person who had evoked it. The door resisted her pressure. It was locked. Then, in a second, all the smouldering anxiety of the mother's heart leaped into furious flame.

"Open this door!" she commanded. There was no answer. The sobbing ceased.

"Mother!" called the child.

Amanda shook the door and pushed against it with all her strength. "Open this door, or I'll break it down!" So her grandfather might have thundered out an order to some refractory sailor on board his own good ship. The only reply was an oath. The man in his sober senses addressed by any one, especially a woman, in such a manner, must have been mild indeed, had he refrained from swearing. But a mother, maddened by such fears as lacerated this woman's heart, takes nothing into account but her own feelings. With swift steps she turned into her own room, brought thence a large and heavy hammer and gave the door the strongest blow her arms were capable of throwing against it. Another—and another. The lock yielded, and Amanda, holding the hammer under her left arm, flew into the room.

Could anything excuse or justify such violence in a wife? Would not the man who had met force with force and turning upon her, knocked her down, have been not only cleared but applauded by any court in a Christian country? And in Virginia, of all other places, the laws are made for the protection of men; and public sentiment is in harmony with the State's code.

Vivian Thomas must then either be despised by those of us who see him leaning against the wardrobe in a passive attitude, while the woman who had vowed to love, honor, and obey him, ten years before, effected this headlong entrance into his own sacred stronghold, or he must be considered a saint, enduring with superhuman patience the tantrums of a domineering wife. The critic may take his choice of opinions; only, let us note that the handsome man now averting his eyes from Amanda's scorching glance is not exactly the frank, fresh-looking fellow who brought his young bride to Benvenew. All the graceful bearing, the nobility of outline, and that indescribable beauty Nature confers upon her favorite sons, are still here. The silky brown mustache droops over sensitive red lips with tender, downward curves; the white brow is placid, and the nostrils delicate and fine. But the entire effect is different. A slight alteration of a few details has changed everything. The dark eyes have faded to a dull hazel, and the whites have taken on a yellowish tinge. The cheeks have rather too much color, the flush extending to the nose. In a word, Vivian's countenance, while retaining the refinement that seems a part of the very flesh of some organisms and independent of those shaping forces that ennoble or mar the faces of most people, betrayed some deterioration of the whole man.

He seemed rather embarrassed than enraged as Amanda, panting from her exertions and trembling from the terrible tension of her nerves, swept past him and picked up a little girl cowering in the corner.

Without staying for another look or word she clasped the child in her arms and left the room; the very atmosphere charged with the contempt that emanated from her haughty spirit and which Vivian felt, even in his dulled condition, to the core of his being.

She carried the little girl to her own room, and with hurried motions bathed her face, changed her dress, and put on her hat and cloak, all the while uttering low, endearing words, and pressing tender kisses on the little upturned face which was lovely as an angel's, with great, dark eyes looking out from a thicket of golden-brown curls.

"Are we going to grandma's, mother?" Nellie asked, as Amanda changed her wrapper for a black silk dress and took up her bonnet and gloves. Once before, about a year ago, after a scene between father and mother, which had deeply impressed itself upon the child's memory, she had been taken in the carriage to her grandmother's, and had remained there a week, her mother with her. It had been a week of rare delight, shadowed only by two things: her grandmother's remarkable gravity, and the indisposition of her adored mother.

"Yes, darling," Amanda answered hastily, as she threw some things into a satchel and arising from her kneeling posture before a chest of drawers, left the room with her child, locking the door behind her.

They went straight to the barn, where Amanda hitched up old Queenie, her own horse, to a rickety old phaeton, and drove out into the yard, Admonia holding the gate open and sniffling audibly as she muttered:

"Goo'bye, Mis' Mandy; goo'bye, li'le Nellie. Wish't I wuz gwine wif ye, so I does."

"Be a good girl, Admonia," said her mistress, bending down and giving the black hand a cordial shake. "Look after things as well as you can. You and your mother are all I have to depend on now, you know, since Pete is gone."

"Good-bye, Admonia!" called Nellie's liquid tones. "Please take care of my Bantam hen!"

With the blessed elasticity of childhood she had already partly recovered from the distress of the morning, and was able to entertain charming visions of the pleasure before her. But although there is in a child a superficial light-heartedness, so that we are led to flatter ourselves that its woes are soon over, it is certain that injuries inflicted in the spirit of injustice, sink deeply into the soul, and not through inability to forgive, but through inability to forget, the young heart once wounded in the tender spot of confidence, never again can put forth vigorous shoots of affection toward the person who has affronted it. Strange as it seemed to the world that in after years Vivian Thomas' fondness for his daughter never evoked in her any corresponding demonstration, valid reason might have been found by one acquainted with the experience of this and other mornings, why Nellie always listened to the praises bestowed upon her popular parent with a pensive smile, and why, in her dutiful attention to him, there was a reserve and hesitancy widely different from the cordiality of a relation free from doubt and fear.

Mrs. Powell met them on the front porch. She had on her sun-bonnet and gardening-gloves, and behind her stalked Alex, armed with her rake and hoe, his features expressing the contempt of his stronger nature for the woman's tools he carried, tempered with a respectful sort of indulgence toward the fancies of the best woman in the world.

Ten years had passed lightly over Mrs. Powell's fair countenance. At sixty she was a handsome and vigorous old lady, the wear and tear of life, felt only through sympathy with the troubles of others, showing mainly in a thinning of the silver curls over her temples, and a few lines about her true, mild, blue eyes.

Her first look told her that something was wrong with Amanda, and without any great strain upon her reasoning powers she understood that the trouble had reference to little Nellie. Nothing else brought that tense expression to the mouth of her beautiful daughter, nor kindled deep in her black eyes the glare that told of unendurable suffering and unquenchable resentment.

"I wuz jes' goin' to pot a few roses afore frost gits 'em," she said, after affectionate greetings had been exchanged. "Will ye set out hyar on the bench awhile, honey, an' we kin talk whilst I wurk?"

She hoped that in the course of a little quiet talk Amanda's fierce mood would give way to soothing influences, and that the injudicious things the impulsive woman was apt to utter when excited might remain upon this occasion unsaid. But now, as always, the conservative policy of the good woman only modified, but could not repress the burning indignation of a spirit that could easier pardon great injuries to itself, than the slightest wrong done to one who was incapable of self-defense.

Leaning her head back against the trunk of the ancient magnolia tree her grandfather had planted here, Amanda watched her mother dig and fuss among the roses and listened with slight response to her cheerful sentences, biding her time.

Nellie flitted about like a humming bird, coming every now and then to lay her little head against her mother's arm with a caressing touch that spoke well for the relation between the two. She stayed to carry water in her own tiny watering pot, when at last her grandmother could no longer make excuse to stop out of doors, and with a secret sigh, led her daughter into the house.

"Well, honey," she said, with an attempt at treating matters lightly. "You're not feeling jes' right to-day. Now, try to forgit all about whatever's been plaguin' you, and res' yo'self on the sofa, whilst I go an' see about somethin' nice fur dinner."

"No, no, mother. You know well enough Aunt Liza don't need any suggestions about her dinner. And I want to talk to you. I must. You'll be sorry if you don't listen to me."

"Don't I always listen to you, Mandy?"

"Yes, mother, but you don't always listen willingly. You seem to think that if things are not spoken about that it's the same as if they didn't exist. You think I'll stand things better if I'm quiet about them."

"No, my dear child; dear knows I'm ready an' willin' to hyar all you want to say if it eases yo' mind any. But, honey, I do hate to hyar yo' say sech hard things about yo' husband as you've said to me before when you wuz put out."

"Put out!" repeated Amanda, with scornful emphasis. "Oh, mother, why won't you see the thing as it is? A wife may bear with her husband and not let anybody know what she goes through, but a mother with a helpless little child to defend, will be up in arms against a brute, and if anybody says she is wrong to take her child away from a father that abuses her, why, they can say it. I know in my own heart what's right, and I'll not take it out in talk. I'll act."

"Mandy, darlin'," pleaded her mother. "Shorely you're exaggeratin'. Vivian's got his faults, and fur be it frum me to defend 'em. I said to Jane Thomas, only last week, at the Bush Meetin', that if Vivian could only be persuaded to come up to the bench then an' thar an' promise to leave off it'd make me happier'n I've been since you wuz married. And she said—I ain't tellin' you to rile you 'gainst Vivian's ma; yo' know she feels fur him, same's I feel most fur you—says Jane; 'If Mandy'd ashow'd a leetle more fondness Vivian he'd a been different. He always wuz dependent on affection, an' a lovin' woman could hev done anythin' with him. Mandy's been cold as a stun, an' it's no wonder'—I mean t'say she said it wuz a wonder 't he didn't go after other women."

A hot color rushed into Amanda's cheeks, and she spread her hands widely, with a gesture of repulsion. "Don't take the trouble to try to hide it," she said in a low tone. "Do you think I don't know what he races down to Richmond for every month or two—and where all the money goes to? Benvenew falling to pieces, Nellie and I with no clothes excepting what you give us, and he—gambler and libertine!"

"Mandy, Mandy, hush!" begged Mrs. Powell, alarmed at a much more forcible expression than Amanda had ever yet permitted herself.

"You know it's true, mother," Amanda answered in a softer manner. "You and I and his mother know all about it. Of course Mrs. Thomas blames me, and upholds him. If it hadn't been for her interference and continually taking his part, I might have made him behave himself better. I know all Fauquier County believes he's the injured innocent. I'm outspoken and he's deceitful. With his soft, smooth manner outside it's not surprising people think as they do; that my temper drove him to drink. And then he never gets so far gone in public as he does at home."

"Honey, that's somethin' to be thankful fur, shorely?"

"Oh, yes," said Amanda with a strange look. "Appearances are so much. Why, even our own minister took it upon himself, not long ago, to read me a sort of veiled lecture about the beauty of meekness in a woman. I'm tired—tired, tired of being eternally misunderstood, and of this sort of 'devil and angel' game—such as the children play—where he's the angel and I'm the devil."

Mrs. Powell rocked back and forth softly, her placid face expressing more concern than had ever appeared there before. There was a sustained earnestness about Amanda's bitter outpouring different from the hysterical anger she was used to show upon the occasions when she and her child appeared with their traveling bag at the Powell homestead.

"Dearie," she said hesitatingly, "do you pray about it?"

"We had better let that subject alone," Amanda answered quietly. "I might hurt your feelings, and I don't want to do that, mother dear. Poor ma! It isn't your fault. You didn't want me to have him."

"No, honey, but now you're married thar ain't nothin' else to do but to b'ar it. Fur the child's sake, Mandy, live as peaceable as you kin. Think how dretful it is fur her to see you two on bad terms with one another."

"The child! Yes, I should think—for her sake," cried Amanda, her wrath flashing forth again. "It is of her I'm thinking more than anything. Vivian Thomas hasn't any more love for his child than he has for anything outside of his own pleasure. He even abuses her!" And then she told of the scene of the morning.

"Poor little thing—poor little darling," said the grandmother indignantly; but adding in a soothing tone: "After all, Mandy, you know he is the child's father, and he maybe didn't hurt her much."

"What right had he to even go near her when he was in that condition? But, mother, I tell you, it's not only when he's the worse for liquor. I've known him strike her at other times. He's cruel. There was always a streak of cruelty in his nature. You won't believe it—nobody'd think it to see him, but I tell you he is born to impose on weaker people. Nellie is afraid of him, and he makes her little life miserable. I can't stand it. People have no right to bring a child into this world and make it miserable. It's my duty to take her away from such a father."

"Yo' can't do that," said Mrs. Powell.

"I can. I can go away and take her with me."

"Dearie, now yo're talkin' wild. Leave yo' husband?"

"Yes," said Amanda, vehemently. She got up and began to pace the floor. It was almost impossible for her to sit still, when excited, and her mother had long since accustomed herself to seeing her daughter moving back and forth with hurried yet measured steps, her hands clasped tightly in front of her, while she talked in tones always growing lower and clearer as her mind became more energetic.

"I've been thinking of this for a long time. I took a resolution last time it—it happened, that the next time he did anything to Nellie, I'd shake the dust of his place from my feet. It's not so much his drinking, mother—though I believe any woman has a right to leave a man that drinks, and that if there's danger of having children by him, it's her duty to leave him—but it's what he is altogether. I despise Vivian Thomas."

"I wish I knowed what to say to you. I know you ain't right, Mandy. It's a woman's place to stay by the man she marries, through thick and thin. 'Fur better or worse,' reck'lect."

"That was the old idea—the idea of people who made up the form for the marriage ceremony. It's a dead letter in our law to-day, and it's a dead letter in society, too. Does anybody expect men and women to stay tied all their lives to what's horrible? These are modern times, mother."

"I'm afeared this comes o' that visit o' yo'n to Chicago, to Cousin Lois' folks," lamented her good mother. "I dunno nothin' 'bout sech notions. But I do know somethin' 'bout what people think in Fauquier County. A woman that leaves her husband puts herself in the wrong, and no matter if she's innocent as the driven snow there's always a shadow hangin' to her. Jes' stop and think what folks'd say, my dear!"

"Aye," assented Amanda, bitterly. "I know what they'd say well enough. But Fauquier County isn't the world. Why, mother, out beyond these narrow boundaries of Virginia there's free territory where women own their own souls, and can think for themselves. They can even obey their own conscience if it leads them to go against the minister and the church."

Mrs. Powell raised a hand that trembled and put it up to her temple with a despairing gesture. Tears, almost strangers to her gentle, serene eyes, gathered and rolled down her cheeks.

"Pore Mandy," she said in a choking voice. "You's fur and away from any ground whar I kin meet up with you. I've knowed fur a spell back you ain't took no interest in the church, and I'm gre'tly afeared that's at the bottom o' your troubles. If you desert the Lord He'll desert you, honey. It's shore as I'm settin' hyar."

Amanda had kneeled down and pressed her mother's head against her shoulder; but as the good woman regarded her sadly, somewhat as she might have regarded a sinner about to be prayed for in her congregation, a melancholy, half-mocking smile succeeded to the concern on the worn, handsome face upon a level with her own.

"Do you think if I had worked for the fair last month, and had gone regularly to the sewing society all this while that it might have helped to make a different man of Vivian?"

"Maybe not, dearie; though the Lord wurks by means, an' we can't tell," answered her mother, naÏvely.

"Well, mother," Amanda said, "we can't think just alike about some things. You're good. You'd be good whether you were in the Second Baptist Church or in Egypt squatting before a hideous image. And I must be myself. I must do what I think right, no matter what other people think or say. And I think it right to take my child away from a father that ill-treats her, and who sets her a frightful example in every way."

"Why, you wouldn't want to cast such a slur as that on yo' daughter. People'd throw it up to her always—that her father an' mother didn't live together!"

"But if she was so much happier in other ways that she could afford to stand the talk, mother?"

"No, Mandy, no. Thar ain't no woman that's come uv a good family and been raised proper, an' to feel like a nice woman nat'rally does feel, but what'd ruther suffer anything else'n creation than to hev the finger o' scorn pointed at her an' know she or any o' her family'd done anything to desarve it."

Mrs. Powell had been wrought up to a point where her feelings demanded expression, and she continued with an earnestness and sincerity that had the effect of the finest eloquence.

"Even if thar air what yo' call 'extenuatin' circumstances,' you couldn't do this thing without bringin' 'pon yo'self the very hardest trial you could be set to endure. You couldn't be in any company without thinkin' uneasily, 'Would these people be willin' I sh'd be amongst 'em if they knowed how 'twas with me?' In church you'd fancy every wurd the preacher utters p'inted straight at you. And let alone yo'self, what wouldn't you go through thinkin' people wuz slightin' Nellie because o' you?"

"Mother, mother!" Amanda cried, "you mistake me. You're exaggerating the thing. I—I didn't mean divorce!"

"No, you don't mean it now, but it'd come to that. I feel it in my bones," said Mrs. Powell, solemnly.

"Well, now, dear, dear mother, listen to me," her daughter pleaded. "Suppose that—finally, that was the only way to save myself—to—to protect myself from—suppose we were in another place, in a northern city, where nobody knows me?"

"Thar ain't no place on the face of the 'arth so remote but what talk'd find you out."

"Shall we be martyrs, then, to a few old women's tongues? Am I to take the risk of"—Amanda bent and finished her sentence in her mother's ear.

"Honey, shorely ye kin leave that in the good Lord's hands!"

"I'd have been in a nice fix if I'd have left it in his hands all these years," said Amanda Thomas, with a look so skeptical and full of accusation against something seen only in her mind's eye, that her mother's pink color faded and left her pretty cheeks white. "That's where our creeds differ, mother. I believe in not leaving things to chance."

"I said leavin' 'em to the Lord," the old lady amended.

"It's the same thing," said Amanda, recklessly.

"Oh, Mandy, Mandy, it gives me a cold chill fur to hear you talk so."

"I won't talk so, then. Heaven knows I don't want to worry you any more than can be helped. But let's look at this thing reasonably. First, about Nellie. The child must and shall have a chance for a happy, peaceful life. She mustn't be tyrannized over, and hampered, and kept down; she ought to be well educated and have a fair chance in the world. And for that she must be away from here—and away from her father."

"Why, I sh'd think her pa wuz the ve'y one to help her to an eddication. Vivian's smart enough, an' ain't he been to college?"

"Yes, he's been to college, and he can sing sweetly, the girls say, and play the flute, and read Horace's odes in the original, and dance better than any other man in the county," said Amanda, despairingly. "But does all that make him a good father, or fit him to supervise Nellie's education?"

"I dunno what more you kin want, dear," answered her perplexed parent.

"Well! There are certain moral qualities. We needn't go into it. To come to myself. I'm a young woman yet, mother, only twenty-eight. Is my whole life to be ruined for this one mistake, made when I was a mere child, and ignorant of the world as a baby?"

"You forgit. A woman's life's sp'iled if she leaves her husband. Thar ain't no sech thing as takin' a fresh start with a livin' husband in the background o' your life. He'd be croppin' up yar an' thar an' ev'ywhar, wors'n a field o' nettles. Do you reckon Vivian's goin' to lose sight o' you? And, moreover, Mandy, if you sh'd go to the dretful pass o' seekin' a divorce, wouldn't the law give him the child?"

Amanda started, and bent her black brows fiercely. This was the first argument her mother had used that she was unable to answer.

"Of course the laws are all in favor of the men. Yes, they would give my innocent darling—my baby that is part of my own flesh and blood, that I've nourished at my breast, that I've suffered for and lived for these nine years—to a besotted, selfish, immoral man who would never fulfill one duty toward her, and who doesn't care for her the worth of his little finger. The only thing is that I don't believe he'd want her."

Mrs. Powell shook her head. "You can't depend on that. Men always want the last thing you might s'pose'd be any use to 'em. They want their own way, you see."

"Then the only thing I can do is to keep it a secret where I go. There are places enough."

"An' how'd ye git along, poor child? How'd ye do cooped up'n some mean leetle place without no run fur Nellie, an' without horses, nor anybody to do a han's turn fur ye? And, dearie, you know, even though I'd ruther you'd stay hyar by yo' duty, wharever you go my lov'd foller you, an' I'd always do all in my power. But money's the one thing we don't hev. If you're somewhar 't you hev to put yo' han' in yo' pocket fur ev'y livin' thing, even to an egg, or a slip o' parsley, how 'pon 'arth'll you do?"

"I mean to work, dear mother. I can sew, and embroider, and do lots of things," said Amanda, spreading her white hands and looking at them meditatively; not dreaming, poor, thing, of the thousands and thousands of other defter and more experienced hands stretched forth in the localities she thought abounding in lucrative work, for the merest shadow of employment, and the paltriest sort of recompense.

In Mrs. Powell's imagination Amanda was a rarely talented and capable woman, able to perform wonders, yet her shrewd common sense suggested difficulties that Amanda could not but recognize when they were pointed out, averse as she was to consider any details made against her plan.

They talked over the matter from every point of view, the elder woman reiterating the same arguments she had used already, and the younger one meeting them continually with that free, liberal interpretation of the gospel of individuality which youth has always flourished in the face of age and conservatism.

Mrs. Powell held out as stanchly as only a good, bigoted Christian woman, devoutly living up to the public opinion of an insular, mountain village, can hold out against modern heresies striking at the very foundation of her social system, and her religious beliefs. But Amanda had been for a very long time working herself up to her present resolution, and she stuck to her purpose with unflinching steadfastness, and had by supper-time succeeded in convincing her mother that she was in deadly earnest and not to be dissuaded. And after she had put Nellie into the great old-fashioned bed and tucked the coverlet about her soft, warm little throat, she only stayed by her long enough to be sure that the child was sound asleep, then kissing the curls floating out over the pillow, with a fervent affection such as no man had ever known from this woman with a genius for motherhood, she stole away softly, leaving the door ajar, and went back to the sitting-room to talk to her mother more definitely about the plans she had formed for the future.

But hardly had the two settled down before the fire when, with a rattle and a bang, very unlike her old-time timidity, Jane Thomas flung herself into the room.

"Sh—h!" said Amanda, as the heavy door slammed shut. "You'll wake Nellie!" She got up and set the door partly open again, then resumed her seat, pushing the chair away from the hearth to make room for her mother-in-law, but saying no word of welcome, for she felt that this visit was made with some special disciplinary intention toward herself.

If ever a woman's face and mien conveyed indignation and resentment of the splenetic sort, Mrs. Thomas' meager visage and thin figure manifested these sentiments as she fell into the chair drawn forward for her, and turned her watery-blue eyes upon her son's wife.

"Nellie!—to be shore!" she uttered in a spiteful whimper. "Pity but what yo'd hev a leetle consideration for other folks 'sides that child. Hyar yo've done pitched onter Vivian and attackted him with hammers an' druv him out'n his own house, an' made a scandal that'll ring through Fauquier County, and the saints above knows what it's all about. I thank the Lord I ain't got yo' disposition!"

"You've a great deal to be thankful for in the way of disposition," observed Amanda. She had closed her lips tightly, resolving to maintain absolute silence; but what woman can suppress the witty retort when her antagonist exposes a vulnerable point?

"Seems ter me I'd be a leetle mo' humble, consider'n' what yo've done. It'd become you ter be thankful 't yo' awful temper didn't do no mo' harm 'n it done. Not but what it done 'nuff an' mo'n I shu'd like ter hev 'pon my conscience."

"If you'd take a few of your son's sins upon your conscience it might give you something to do."

"Oh, I don't look fur nothin' but sass from you, 'Mandy Powell. Yo've a tongue the devil hisself 'd fly frum."

"If Vivian Thomas has run from it you must be right," answered Amanda.

Mrs. Thomas rocked back and forth till her chair creaked with a spiteful sound that seemed to her hearers to be an echo of her whining voice. She expatiated upon the deplorable effects of her daughter-in-law's fearful outbreak of the morning, and warned her that no man on earth was called on to put up with such tantrums, and that if she was locked up in the lunatic asylum it would be no more than she had a right to expect.

Amanda put a severe break upon her imperious spirit and said no more words in reply until at last Mrs. Thomas brought out her final taunt, that she had only run away for the purpose of getting Vivian to come after her and bring her back; and for this time she was mistaken. She would have to stay away a mighty long while if she waited for him to fetch her, and she'd be glad to creep home again by the time everybody cried shame upon her.

Then Amanda arose and stood before her adversary, tall and majestic, with her arms folded across her swelling chest, and her black brows bent in such a frown as made Jane Thomas' cowardly heart flutter, until she thought of the impossibility of a personal encounter with this woman, whom she would have given half her possessions to conquer and humiliate.

"I say to you here and now," said Amanda, using unconsciously an orotund quality of voice that, together with her pose, rendered her delivery so forceful that her words stamped themselves upon the memory of both her hearers: "I have left Vivian Thomas' roof forever. Spread the fact as fast as you please; gloat upon the scandal it will create in this gossiping little place, and tear my reputation to pieces as fast as you want to. No power under Heaven can make me look upon that man's face again, or pass a moment in his company!"

For a few seconds there was a hush in the air, as if a missile had been thrown, and an effect was looked for. People often experience this momentary apprehension when some peculiarly definite and emphatic stand has been taken by anyone; as if definiteness, in this changing world, was a crime to bring down punishment.

But effects rarely follow so swiftly as those that came upon the heels of Amanda's declaration. Hardly had her voice died away when her mother arose hastily, crying:

"Hark, what's that?"

There were sounds of dogs barking, voices exclaiming, and the quick, irregular gallop of a horse's feet coming up to the front porch. The three women stood looking at each other, when a wild figure with eyes starting out of its head, wool standing on end, and gown half torn from its back, burst into the room, and Admonia cried out in a hoarse voice:

"Mis' Mandy, Mis' Mandy! Fur de Lawd's sake, Mis' Mandy—Mr. Vivian done fell off'n he's horse inter Mowbry Gulch an' b'oke he's neck!"

III.

Mowbray Gulch was a danger-pit lying midway between Sampson's Tavern and Benvenew. The road narrowed after passing Bloomdale, and wound around the spur of the Blue Ridges known as Round Peak, in a manner only a native could have understood. Vivian had traversed the narrow bridle-path thousands of times without a thought of danger, galloping past at night in that spirit of confidence characteristic of a Virginia boy, said to be "born on horseback."

The accident must have occurred early in the evening, for a passer-by on his way home to supper found a hat and whip on the road near the edge of the Gulch, and looking down, discovered a man's form on the rocks, twenty feet below, lying perfectly motionless, with a white face upturned to the sky.

At least three hours had intervened between that and Admonia's alarm, and when the three women arrived in Jane Thomas' wagon (she had wept, and abused her daughter-in-law all the way) they had found many neighbors upon the scene, and the doctor bending over something stretched out on a mattress by the road-side.

"He is living," were the words they heard as they came up, and Mrs. Thomas broke out into wails of thankfulness, while Mrs. Powell breathed more quietly a prayer as grateful. Amanda said no word, but a deep sigh exhaled from her burdened chest, and she tried to draw nearer. A friendly hand held her back. Edgar Chamblin's blue eyes glimmered anxiously in the light of the lantern he was holding, and he said with kindly insistence:

"I wouldn't go nigh him jes' yet, Mis' Mandy. We're goin' ter tote him ovah t' cousin Evy Smith's. Her'n is the nighest house, an' Doctor Sowers says he must be taken ter the ve'y nighest place."

"Can't he be taken home?" wailed Vivian's mother. "I mean to my house whar he kin be taken cyar uv?" with a spiteful look at her daughter-in-law.

The doctor looked up anxiously. Vivian's closed lids had quivered for a second and a look of consciousness appeared, then faded away. With tender hands he was laid on the cot that now arrived and carried over the field to Miss Eva Smith's cottage, where the little bedroom off the parlor had been made ready for him, and the best bed was spread with every dainty piece of linen the spinster could draw from her treasured store.

So it was upon a lace-trimmed, hemstitched pillow-slip that the beautiful head of the injured man reposed, and over him was spread a silk quilt that had long been the pride of Miss Evy's maiden heart, and which she now brought forth with a solemn sense of consecration.

Miss Evy was a thin, fragile woman, with a figure that had once been willowy, but was now angular; blue eyes that once were like forget-me-nots, contrasting with tender, coral lips and baby blond hair; but tears shed in secret had washed the blue from her eyes and the peachy bloom from her oval cheeks, until only a faint reminiscence remained of the beauty which had captivated Vivian Thomas' boyish fancy. One of the peculiarities of Vivian's fortune was that the women he had wooed and forsaken remained faithful to him till death, cherishing no resentment and seeking no retaliation; but, instead, biding the time when by some act of service they could prove the strength of an affection that always had in it an element of maternal fondness.

Why some men whose paths through life are marked by the broken hearts of women should experience from those they injure the tenderness and leniency seldom or never accorded to better but rougher men is something only to be explained by the waywardness of feminine nature. The majority of women like to be martyred, but resent frank abuse. The weakly child of the flock easily converts his mother into a slave, even though she perceives through the veil of feebleness the force of egotism. And in the same way the man of soft manners, winning voice, and insinuating tongue, may play the tyrant at his pleasure, and be admired and adored by women whose slavishness is a conscious concession to some imagined delicacy that appeals to their maternal instinct.

In the humble heart of Miss Evy her girlhood's hero had maintained his place, notwithstanding her conscientious efforts after Vivian's marriage to think of him as something entirely apart from her life. Thinking of him was a privilege she allowed herself under certain restrictions. She thought of him when she prayed, when she sang in the choir on Sunday and Wednesday nights, and when she worked in her flower-garden. Most of all then, for long ago he had been used to stop his horse and stand outside the low stone fence, with his arm through the bridle-rein, and talk with her in a playfully sentimental way that she had thought the prettiest sort of love-making. And so, to keep him out of her mind when she tended her spotted lilies and trained the purple wistaria, was as impossible as it would have been to avoid the connection between the sky and the gracious heaven lying beyond.

It was an innocent indulgence that did not infringe upon the rights of Vivian's wife, and did no harm to the gentle woman herself; for it kept alive her faith in human nature and trust in the compensations Providence has in store for those who have been denied their heart's desire in this world. And these are feelings that die out in most of us under the scourge of disappointment and leave something worse than heartache in their room.

There had been days when the loneliness of her self-chosen, single lot had been too hard to be borne, and sometimes then Miss Evy would steal to the window of her little spare front room, and peep guiltily through a slit in the blue shade to watch for a sight of Vivian riding past, and when the longed-for vision appeared, she would start back with her hand on her heart and a hot color in her delicate cheek, but he never saw her, nor ever dreamed of her observation. If he had he would have dismounted and chatted with her for a few minutes at the gate; for Vivian was ever tender toward the women who worshiped him, and he would have valued the eloquent if silent appreciation of this faithful heart, and taken comfort in the sympathy she would have expressed at least in looks; rumor having carried to her news of scenes at Benvenew, little to Amanda's credit.

As she stood back behind the door, and watched from this little distance hands that had a better right than her own minister to the man she loved, a pang of jealousy sent its jarring quiver through all her nerves; but the next instant it was succeeded by the thankful feeling that it was hers to extend hospitality, to furnish the means of comfort, and mayhap, her privilege, while others rested, to help nurse him back to health.

There was something for everyone to do that night, for the country doctor worked with the bustle that grows out of the necessity of finding occupation for the officious onlookers who must not be offended. Something for everybody excepting Jane Thomas, whose hysterical condition made her such a nuisance that even Dr. Sowers could think of no more diplomatic suggestion than that she should go somewhere and lie down—and take some warm water and brandy.

"And me a Blue Ribboner!" she moaned resentfully.

Amanda was a born nurse; self-restrained, level-headed, tender and strong, she won golden laurels in the doctor's opinion as she quietly took her place at his side, and intelligently carried out his wishes without comment or question. Her mother went home at nine o'clock to take care of little Nellie, the doctor having stated his opinion that although there was concussion of the brain, Vivian's hurt would not necessarily prove fatal. The state of coma might be followed by brain fever, but with good nursing his fine constitution would bring him through.

"It's sartenly a special Providence," thought Mrs. Powell, when Amanda told her that she should stay at the cottage. "Don't you take a mite o' fear 'bout Nellie; you know she'd stay with me contented fur any length o' time," she said, as she left.

"But you'll bring her over to see me for a few minutes when you come to-morrow," Amanda urged, and her mother answered: "Uv coas, honey, we'll come over right 'arly. Don't you get wore out now; you and Miss Evy take tu'ns settin' up."

It had required considerable effort to induce Mrs. Thomas to see things in the light of her uselessness, and it was the doctor himself who finally carried her off and left the house to Miss Evy and Amanda. It was late when they found themselves alone in the little room where lay the still form of the man who was dearer than her heart's best blood to the one woman, and to the other—who shall say whether dear, or no?

Amanda had never been in love with the all-conquering hero of Fauquier County. At eighteen she had been in love with love; and Vivian was nearer the embodiment of her ideal than any other whom she knew. The highest powers of our nature remain latent in most of us for lack of opportunity to develop. It may be a talent, it may be a virtue that stays in the germ throughout all the ups and downs of our career, and that we pass on to our children to come out in them as practical capacity.

Although Amanda had in her nature a rare power of wifely devotion, it was of the royal order; it could not stoop, and so it died away. And in its stead had grown to mighty proportions the mother-love that extends in women of a high type beyond the instinctive care of her own young, to an all-embracing tenderness toward feeble creatures of every degree. The little ones, the helpless, the sick appealed to this strong, self-poised woman in a way that called out every capacity for self-sacrifice that lay in her, and she would have wrestled with death and all the evil powers to save from harm anything which confided itself to her protection.

The vigorous, healthy Vivian, contemptuously setting at naught her standards of duty, and wounding her dignity in a hundred ways, was so repulsive to her moral sense that she was ready to fly from him as from a pestilence. But Vivian cast down from his height of graceful insolence and dependent upon her kind offices, had claims before which every critical faculty bowed itself. All she thought of now was how to help him.

"Do you think he'll come to in his right mind?" asked Miss Evy in a low murmur, after half an hour had passed in silence. She could not stand it any longer. She felt as if she must say something. That handsome, calm woman seated at the head of the bed awed her, and at the same time irritated her. In some vague way she felt that Amanda was to blame for Vivian's accident. Like Mrs. Thomas she felt that if the wife had fallen into spasms of self-reproach it would have been more fitting than this display of courage and energy. Yet she was glad, too, for his sake that there was some one at hand able to "take holt and do whatever wuz needed."

Amanda looked over at the gentle spinster pleasantly, but replied only by a faint shake of the head. Her watch lay open upon the stand beside a glass of medicine, covered with a hymn book. Upon the book lay a thin silver spoon marked with the initials of Miss Evy's grandmother. It was one of six, and Miss Evy only used them upon rare occasions.

Amanda still wore her black silk, and over it she had tied one of her hostess' white aprons, made of fine nainsook and trimmed with a deep border of home-made lace. Aprons are the least neutral of garments, for they have the effect of bringing into view certain values in their wearer. By this touchstone some women are instantly proclaimed dowdies; others approved as domestic, and still others marked out as queens or fairies masquerading. The natural servant wears her apron smartly; the born chatelaine with an inimitable grace. Upon Amanda's magnificent figure the garment assumed the air of the imperial purple, and Miss Evy, watching her meekly, acknowledged in her successful rival some rare quality which she could not name, but which seemed to account for and justify the ascendancy she was said to exercise over all her family.

At midnight Vivian opened his eyes. "Whoa, Sultan!" he uttered in feeble tones, and made a motion with his hand as if he pulled upon the reins. Miss Evy started, but Amanda laid her finger on her lips and bending over him, said softly:

"Drink this, Vivian," putting a glass to his lips. He drank all she gave him eagerly, then his head fell back upon the pillow, and he slept till dawn.

Miss Evy was persuaded to retire toward morning. She would have preferred to sit there and watch, but she could not say so, and she was compelled to steal away upstairs, and leave Vivian to his wife, who kept unwinking vigil until the first glimmer of light shot through the closed blinds of the east window. Then she arose and put out the lamp, and noiselessly raising the window let the pure, fresh mountain air into the little room. During her watchful night her mind had been entirely occupied with Vivian's condition; she had not thought of herself. But now, as the sun touched the tip of Round Peak and crept downward till the whole valley was illumined with the light of a perfect October day, she became conscious, with a thrill of pain, of that feeling of personal life and identity which is so strong and vivid when, in some beautiful spot isolated from the whirl of cities, we open our eyes upon a new day.

There is no other joy so fine and none so fleeting, perhaps, as this stirring of our individual energies by the breath of that mighty living force that recreates us each morning after the apathy of night. At this instant of recognition the day belongs to us and the air resounds with a pÆan of wonderful hopes and promises, as if our single personality were the only concern of nature. Soon the responsibilities of our relations to others crowd out this sense of individual life and the momentary Sabbath-peace of the soul is broken up by the work-a-day hum of jarring machinery. So, swift upon the exaltation aroused in Amanda by the influence of an unshared sunrise, came the disappointing sense of check and defeat to her own purposes and plans, which had been wrought within the last few hours. None of the reasons that led to her decision to go away and begin a new life remote from these surroundings had altered. Fauquier County was still limited, narrow, and hostile to Nellie's mental development; Benvenew was still poverty-stricken, and no new resources suggested themselves. And Vivian was still the old Vivian, with all his vices upon his head, and likely with the first hour of returning health to repel and disgust her, just as he had been doing all along. Every condition she had dwelt upon as urgent cause of flight was unchanged; and yet, with lightning swiftness was accomplished that resolution, paralleled in the experience of every one of us, by which the one whose offenses had banished him from her consideration, was made through sudden appeal to pity, the object of first importance to her.

As Amanda turned from the window and approached the bed where Vivian was now opening eyes in which the light of reason was absent, she turned her back upon all the rosy hopes that had been dwelling in her imagination, and took up the burden of a hard and painful duty. For she was aware through the prophetic insight that flashes through our acts into the region of remote consequences, that out of the immediate obligation of nursing her husband back to health and strength, would grow ties that would cramp and fetter all her future. Her only defense against whatever his will might impose upon her had been in her feeling of antagonism. For, strong and self-poised as she was, she had the woman's weak-point of an intense susceptibility, and if she had achieved the wish to be hard as nails, the first touch from a beseeching hand would inevitably break through the crust and betray the lurking softness beneath.

It was with a quiver of fright that she realized, as she raised Vivian's head upon her arm and felt him weakly recline against it, that the barriers would soon be broken down between them, and that there might enter into her heart, destitute of respect and esteem that pitiful substitute for true affection, a self-immolating tenderness that leads judgment into abysses where poisonous plants grow, exhaling odors detrimental to sanity and health. The flash of fear came and went, and no one, save her mother, ever knew what Amanda's concession meant to her, and what it involved.

Miss Evy had passed a sleepless night, and at six o'clock she crept softly down to the door of Vivian's bedroom and stood for a moment before she knocked, listening for sounds that she dreaded to hear, the sound of incoherent murmuring, in femininely sweet tones.

"Come in," Amanda called, and she entered, with a scared, anxious face and timid step.

"He's out of his mind, ain't he?" she queried pitifully, and Amanda made an assenting movement of the head.

Vivian's delirium was not violent at first, and he submitted to requirements with a gentleness that was like his ordinary courtesy. But he recognized no one for many days, showing a preference, however, for Amanda and her mother, over all the others who came in to offer their services. His wife seemed to have a peculiarly soothing effect upon him, and with another variation from his attitude when in health, he was impatient and fretful whenever his mother appeared. Mrs. Thomas took this hard, and in the parlor of the cottage, where she sat most of the time seeing callers, she bewailed the ingratitude of her son, and whispered dark sayings against Amanda—"who wuz tryin' now to throw dust in people's eyes by makin' out she was dreadful fond o' him, when if the truth wuz told—"

It seemed as if everybody within ten miles around came with offers of help and utterances of sympathy; the last delivered only to Mrs. Thomas and Miss Evy, for few persons saw Amanda. For ten days she watched by Vivian's bedside with a devotion that completely revolutionized all Miss Evy's ideas of her, and astonished even her mother. And when, from the very jaws of death, Vivian came slowly back to life, he had become to her like a dear child, whom it was her duty to shield and minister to, and treat with a tenderness unmingled with criticism. Whether this mental attitude would continue was a question. Mrs. Powell held counsel about it with herself, and made it a subject of prayer: "That Mandy would go on bein' forgivin' an' lovin' an' that all'd go well betwixt her an' her husband."

The exquisite season of Indian Summer, the fifth season of the year in the mountain region of Virginia, set in early, and one morning when the air was so soft that it brought to the surface all the gentle, kindly impulses of hearts that stiffen and congeal under the rough touch of frost, Amanda found herself curiously moved as she stepped lightly about Vivian's room, waiting for him to awake.

It often happens that a mental preparation unconsciously takes place in us for events about to happen. A letter is on its way to us, and we think of the writer, sometimes expressing a solicitude the letter's contents justify. A friend visits us and we meet him with the remark that we were at that moment longing for his presence. Some catastrophe takes place that we were anticipating, and if a pleasure is in the air its approach is heralded by a peculiar elation and excitement that our occupations cannot account for.

These are more tangible things, and easier to understand than the subtle atmospheric changes that pass along from heart to heart. How can we explain the power affection has to send its prophet before to prepare for its coming? In some unexpected hour a certain something tugs at our heart-strings and tunes them up so that when the right hand is extended a melody is evoked that we did not think of or intend.

Amanda was a practical woman, not an emotional one, but she was not therefore any the less alive to fine shades of feeling. She dusted the bedroom with a piece of dampened cheese-cloth, set carefully upon the stand the slender necked Bohemian vase of flowers that were Miss Evy's morning tribute, and laid out clean towels beside the basin of fresh water upon the chair by the bed, as methodically as usual. Yet she was conscious of being in a state of expectancy, as if she stood upon the eve of something.

Vivian opened his eyes, larger and clearer for his three weeks' illness, and looked in her face with that solemn expression that accompanies the return of consciousness after the delirium of fever, and she trembled under the rush of tenderness that his gaze awakened.

"Amanda!" he said feebly, "you in here! Aren't you up early?"

"Not so very early, dear," she responded, very gently. "It's you who have slept late."

"Strange I don't feel more like getting up," he remarked. Then his gaze wandered over the room, and came back in perplexity to her face.

"Are you the genii?" he asked with a little smile.

"Am I what?" She thought his wits were wandering again.

"The genii. I must be Prince Camaralzaman. I went to sleep in my own room last night, and wake up in this, which I vow I never saw before."

"You were indeed brought here, but not from your own room. You have been here three weeks, Vivian. You fell from your horse into Mowbray Gulch and hurt your head, and you have had brain fever."

She spoke slowly, and he followed her words attentively, closing his eyes when she was through, and lying perfectly quiet for a minute. Then he said:

"Where is 'here?'"

"We are at Miss Evy Smith's. Her house was the nearest place, you know, and you had to be brought here."

"Evy Smith's!" he repeated, with a strange little laugh. "That's singular." After an interval, he added:

"Has she been nursing me?"

"She helped. She has been very, very kind. A sister could not have done more."

"She was always sweet and obliging," he observed. "But—Amanda, come sit down on the bed, won't you? My voice seems mighty weak, somehow."

"I mustn't let you talk," Amanda said. She sat down on the edge of the bed, and as she did so a flush settled upon her firm cheek and stayed there. Not for three years had she been so close to him. Perhaps he remembered, too. What he said was:

"So it is you who have been taking care of me? It was good of you, Amanda. I think you must have grown rather fond of me while I've been at your mercy here."

That unerring tact of his suggested exactly the right thing to say. Not a word to jar the delicate springs of feeling that had been set at work in her, and not a sign that he meant to take advantage of her changed attitude.

He was too weak to think such matters out. He merely obeyed the keen instinct that belongs to natures like his, in emphasizing by this casual allusion the leniency and indulgence she must naturally feel toward him under the circumstances.

Some people have the faculty of making us feel grateful to them for permitting us to serve them. Vivian had it. Amanda was so delighted to see him recovering that she almost felt like thanking him for it. Perhaps one reason for this humility was that she had not been free throughout his illness from the sting of self-reproach. Outwardly she had ignored Jane Thomas' bitter charge that her violent conduct had indirectly caused Vivian's accident. But in secret her conscience had taken her to task again and again for her severity toward him. If it had led to this she felt that blame should rightly fall upon her.

No faculty of our nature brings to us keener suffering than our sense of justice. Suppressed, it cries out continually; exercised, it leads to acts too positive to be endured in retrospect; and this relenting of a strong nature, this going back upon itself and its principles, is a common occurrence in daily life.

Great risk attends such changes of mental attitude, for character is built upon a belief in the correctness of our own judgment. If we ever come to a point where it appears probable that everything we have held to and believed in is a mistake, God help us!

Now, the strong point in Amanda's character was her unflinching uprightness. She had always dared tell the truth to herself, using no palliations. And in this way she felt certain of her ground. But now, for the first time, the demon of self-distrust had entered into her mind, and all her ideas and opinions became affected by it.

If she had been to blame in her attitude toward Vivian, how far was she to blame? In what respect was she right? Poor Amanda was now in a condition where Jane Thomas' stinging remarks could cause her discomfort. Strangely enough, her greatest consolation was in the attachment Miss Evy had formed for her.

"I don't know how I could ever have let myself think of you as I used to think, Mrs. Thomas," the gentle spinster had said once, when they were upon confidential terms. "I'm shore you're anything but unfeeling."

"Am I called that?" Amanda asked, not without a pang. She was no longer above caring what people said about her.

"Well, you know some people must have something to say about everybody," Miss Evy said, apologetically. "But since I know you, why, I think you're real good; even good enough for Mr. Thomas."

Amanda looked at her when she said that. Something occurred to her that she had heard a long time ago and forgotten.

"Thank you," she said, quite gently, and turned away.

Miss Evy's hospitality had not been worn out by the severe test made of it. As a convalescent Vivian had been endearing to the last degree. It was congenial to him to be waited upon, and the one severe and immitigable suffering incidental to his illness (and for which he secretly promised himself royal amends) was almost made up for by the knowledge that he had at last discovered Amanda's weak point, and could hereafter, at least in a measure, hold his own. Vivian did not put it just this way to himself. He had as great a genius for embroidering facts as Amanda had for truth. What he said was that he was glad to find that his wife was fond of him, after all. And in a beautiful spirit he forgave her, and took her to his heart.

This is what Fauquier County understood. But it did not forgive Amanda.

A year later the county might have forgiven her, if she had borne the misfortune that came to her more meekly. But revolutions of character are seldom permanent, and Amanda, after compromising with her own judgment because it found her consistently severe, entered into that debatable territory where we are swayed alternately by a desire to be gentle and an impulse to be sharp.

"I don't mean to reproach ye, honey," her mother said, one day when Amanda was spending the day with her; "but somehow, yo' temper ain't so even as it used to be. You wuz always high—wantin' things yo' own way. It ain't so much that now. But you's mo' easy upset than you used to be."

Amanda turned her dark eyes upon her mother. They were beautiful still. But that crisis of a woman's life when her beauty begins to fade had come to her early.

Upon her lap lay a three months' old baby. It had a look of vigor, and a certain weird beauty about its little face; but not for an instant during her almost passionate care of it had Amanda been able to forget something that the flowing robes concealed from casual glances. The child was hopelessly deformed.

"Yes, dearie, I know," said Mrs. Powell, her gaze following Amanda's as it was bent upon the sleeping infant. "I know it's a trial. And I'm ashamed I said anything. Nobody need t' wonder at yo' bein' a mite out o' gear. But trust the good Laud, Mandy, and He'll bring everything out right, yit."

"Will He straighten baby's back, do you think, mother? Or do you mean that He will make things right by letting it die?"

Mrs. Powell's color arose, and she did not venture to reply. Could any one but a mother wish the child to live?

"He will not die," said Amanda, laying her hand softly on the baby's thick golden hair. There was intense feeling in the low tone, but with her next words her voice took on a hard quality that Mrs. Powell had learned to associate with acute distress. "He will live," she cried, but not loudly; "live to reproach his father for a sin so dark that no one can name it. Aye, we must hush it up. This is a 'visitation of Providence,' in the opinion of our good friends. Well, I don't call it that. The truth is that it's a visitation of liquor, of——"

"Hush, hush, Mandy!"

"Excuse my lack of delicacy," said Amanda, with biting scorn. Not scorn of her mother, but of the idea of the county as reflected in her mother. She leaned back and drew a fleecy white shawl carefully over the baby's shoulders, then resumed sadly:

"I could stand it better, if I was free from blame in my own eyes. I tell you, mother, the only real hell is in knowing you're wrong, and feeling, to the bottom of your heart that you've brought suffering upon others by being wrong."

"My dear child," quavered good Mrs. Powell, "you's morbid. Yo' notion ain't the right notion at all. How could you ahelped the pore child's bein' so?"

"By standing to my colors. By obeying my own conscience, no matter what the world said."

"Mandy, yo' own sense must tell you't you couldn't ahelped it, noway. Even if you'd kept on thinkin' 's you done. It wuz took out'n yo' hands. You done yo' duty in stayin' by Vivian when he wuz laid low, an' nobody kin do mo'n their duty."

"It was my duty to nurse him. And after that—after he was well, I should have—gone."

"Now, I reely thought you got fond o' Vivian, an' I wuz thankin' the Laud for it."

"Oh, women are mostly fools," answered Amanda, sweepingly. "But don't thank the Lord for it, mother. The fruits of folly are more bitter than the fruits of wilful sins, I think."

"Mandy," said Mrs. Powell, rising in all the might of her sensible, hearty, well-balanced nature; "it won't do to be furever dwellin' 'pon what we've failed to do, an' what we ought to adone. This world ain't heaven, and we's right to rejoice with tremblin'; but there's a sayin' I want to recommend to yo' pore, worn heart: 'Again I say unto ye, rejoice.' That's it, honey. Stop worryin' an' frettin' an' leave things you can't alter if you wuz to kill yo'self tryin'.

"An' now I'm a-goin' to hev Liza make a co'n pudden' an' whip up cream fur the peaches, an' you must please me by puttin' away everything else an' givin' yo' mind to enjoyin' a right good dinner. Thar's miseries in the world, to be shore, but thar's comfort too, an' to my thinkin' it's mighty good common sense to take our fill o' creature comforts as we go along, fur we's only got a certain length o' time to stay 'pon this 'arth, an' we might as well make the best on it."

"There are some things that have no best side," said Amanda; but she said it rather faintly. After all, there was logic in what her mother expressed. She knew that nothing in the world now could alter her opinion of Vivian; nothing should ever again alter her attitude toward him. But was there any comfort or happiness to be got out of life still?

Mrs. Powell had left the room, after pressing a kiss upon her daughter's cheek, and another upon the hair of the sleeping baby.

Through the window came the sound of Nellie's voice, exclaiming to her little colored playmates in vivacious accents: "There's papa coming! Grandma said he was coming to dinner;" and in another moment she skipped into the room with her hand in that of the fine-looking man who appeared before his wife hat in hand, wearing a gentle, deprecating smile.

Amanda arose quickly, pressing her baby to her breast, and stood looking at him with fire in her eyes. Am I never to be safe from your intrusion? her look said. But her lips were mute, and with a lately learned self-control she remained silent, while he filled in the embarrassing moment with the graceful, fluent phrases ever at his command.

"What a magnificent woman she is," thought Vivian, as he threw himself into a chair, and began to entertain little Nellie with some funny anecdote, intensely conscious all the while of the stately, stern presence that ignored him.

Suddenly her gown brushed his knees as she passed him on her way to the door, and he glanced up rather uneasily.

"I'm only going to lay baby on the bed," she said in a low tone, not without the trace of contempt she could never nowadays keep out of her voice when speaking to him. But in the other room, while she was bending over her little one, there came to her one of those humorous suggestions that visit us now and then, to lighten our periods of depression.

"Man is, after all, only a kind of stomach, and friendship but an eating together." The sentence was from Carlyle, perhaps; anyway, it was applicable to the situation. What was the use of making such a serious affair out of living?

"Oh, yes, it is easy enough to be upon friendly terms 'if friendship is but an eating together,'" Amanda said to herself, grimly.

Half an hour later Mrs. Powell, sitting, flushed and anxious at the head of her hospitable table, rejoiced at the amenities that passed between her two guests, and whispered to her own heart that everything was coming out right, in the end. And to this determined optimism Amanda, who interpreted her mother's beaming looks perfectly, made no sign of dissent. But Vivian, even with his facile acceptance of all things in his favor, could not help but realize to-day, very strongly, that Amanda would never be to him, so long as she lived, anything but an icicle. With her temper, it might have been worse than that.