Chapter VI (2)

Oh, what a night they had! They couldn't sleep. They talked and argued, and then kept still for a while, only to break out again, it was so absurd. They both maintained that they had been there, but both felt sure the other one was either crazy or obstinate beyond reason. They were wretched; it was perfectly ridiculous, two friends at odds over such a thing; but there it was--"little room," "china-closet,"--"china-closet," "little room."

The next morning Nan was tacking up some tarlatan at a window to keep the midges out. Rita offered to help her, as she had done for the past ten years. Nan's "No, thanks," cut her to the heart.

"Nan," said she, "come right down from that stepladder and pack your satchel. The stage leaves in just twenty minutes. We can catch the afternoon express train, and we will go together to the farm. I am either going there or going home. You better go with me."

Nan didn't say a word. She gathered up the hammer and tacks, and was ready to start when the stage came round.

It meant for them thirty miles of staging and six hours of train, besides crossing the lake; but what of that, compared with having a lie lying round loose between them! Europe would have seemed easy to accomplish, if it would settle the question.

At the little junction in Vermont they found a farmer with a wagon full of meal-bags. They asked him if he could not take them up to the old Keys farm and bring them back in time for the return train, due in two hours.

They had planned to call it a sketching trip, so they said, "We have been there before, we are artists, and we might find some views worth taking, and we want also to make a short call upon the Misses Keys."

"Did ye calculate to paint the old _house_ in the picture?"

They said it was possible they might do so. They wanted to see it, anyway.

"Waal, I guess you are too late. The _house_ burnt down last night, and everything in it."

The Bringing of the Rose

BY HARRIET LEWIS BRADLEY

For certain subjects one of the most valuable works of reference in all Berlin was Miss Olivia Valentine's "Adress-buch," the contents of which were self-collected, self-tested, and abounded in extensive information concerning hotels and pensions, apartments and restaurants, families offering German home life with the language, instructors, and courses of lectures, doctors, dentists, dressmakers, milliners, the most direct way to Mendelssohn's grave in the Alte Dreifaltigkeits-Kirchhof, how to find lodgings in Baireuth during the Wagner festival, where to stay in Oberammergau, if it happened to be the year of the Passion Play, and so on, indefinitely.

Miss Valentine herself was a kind-hearted, middle-aged woman, who, as the result of much sojourning in foreign lands, possessed an intelligent knowledge of subjects likely to be of use to other sojourners, and who was cordially ready to share the same, according to the needs of the season. If it were November, people came asking in what manner they could take most profitable advantage of a Berlin winter; if it were approaching spring, they wanted addresses for Paris or Switzerland or Italy. It was March now and Sunday afternoon. Mr. Morris Davidson sat by Miss Valentine's table, the famous "Adress-buch" in his hand. "I suppose you don't undertake starting parties for heaven?" he said, opening the book. "Ah! here it is--'Himmel und Hölle.' I might have known it, you are so thorough."

"If you read a little further," remarked Miss Valentine, "you will see that 'Himmel und Hölle' is a German game."

"Oh yes, I remember now; we play it at our pension. It's that game where you say 'thou' to the you-people, and 'you' to the thou-people, and are expected to address strange ladies whom you are meeting for the first time as Klara and Charlotte and Wilhelmine, with most embarrassing familiarity, and it is very stupid if the game happens to send you to heaven. I wonder if there really is such a locality? I've been thinking lately I should like to go there; things don't seem to agree with me very well here. I've closed my books, walked the Thiergarten threadbare, sleep twelve hours out of twenty-four, do everything I've been told to do, with no result whatever except to grow duller." The young man yawned as he spoke. "Do excuse me; I've come to such a pass that I'm not able to look any one in the face without yawning. All things considered, I am afraid I shouldn't be any better off in heaven. I'm afraid I couldn't stand the people, there must be so many of them. I want to get away from people."

"I know exactly where to send you," said Miss Valentine. "I was thinking about it when you came in. It isn't heaven, but it is very near it, and it also begins with H; and you are sure to like it--that is, unless you object to the ghost."

"Oh, not in the least; only is the rest of it all right? Things are not, generally; either the drainage is bad or there is a haunted room, and every one who sleeps in it dies, and of course one cannot help sleeping in it, just to see how it is going to work."

"Nothing of the kind," returned Miss Valentine; "the drainage is excellent; and as for the haunted room, I once shared it half a summer with a niece and namesake of mine, and we were never troubled by any unusual occurrence, and we are both in excellent health and likely to remain so. The ghost is reported to have a Mona Lisa face, to be dressed in black, with something white and fluffy at the neck and sleeves, gold bracelets, a necklace and ring of black pearls, and she carries a rose. If her appearance means death or misfortune, the rose is white; if she is only straying about in a friendly way, the rose is red.

"The place is called the Halden--the Hill-side. I have taken the precaution to state vaguely that it is in the neighborhood of Zurich; I want to do all in my power to keep the spot unspoiled. There is so little left in Switzerland that is not tired of being looked at--the trees are tired, and the grass, and the waterfalls; but here is a sweet hidden-away nook, where everything is as fresh as before the days of foreign travel. I am going to provide you with the directions for finding it."

She sat down by the writing-desk, and presently gave a slip of paper to Morris Davidson, who put it carefully in his pocket-book.

"The castle of the Halden," Miss Valentine continued, "belonged to a certain countess, by name Maria Regina. There is a tradition that one night a mist coming down from the mountain concealed the castle from the village, and when it lifted, behold! the countess and her entire household had vanished forever, and not a word was ever heard from them again. The ghost-lady is supposed to be a sister of the Countess Maria Regina, and in some way connected with the death of a young Austrian officer who figures as a lover in the story; just whose lover no one seems to know, but it is surmised of Maria Regina's daughter, said to be a very aristocratic and haughty young person. The castle remained closed after this mysterious occurrence for about two hundred years, and then an enterprising Swiss-German had it put in order for a summer hotel. What are you doing? I believe you are making extracts from my 'Adress-buch.' Now that is something I never allow. I like to give out information discriminately, with personal explanations."

The young man showed what he had written. "Just a hint or two for Italy," he said. "I may go down there next week. If I do, I shall certainly turn aside and tarry a little at your Halden. I should like to try whether your ghost-lady would lead me into any adventure."

Miss Valentine did not see Morris Davidson again, but a few weeks later she received a letter bearing a Swiss postmark:

"DEAR MISS VALENTINE,--I am here, and in order to give
complete proof of it I sacrifice my prejudice and write on
ruled paper, with purple ink and an unpleasant pen, that it
may be all of the Halden. The place is exactly what I wanted
and needed. I am so delighted to have it to myself. I am the
only guest in the castle, the only stranger in the town. I
came to stay a day; I intend now to stay a week. Yesterday,
my first whole day, was perfect. I went by train to
Mühlehorn, and walked from there to Wallenstadt, came back
for dinner, and in the afternoon climbed the hill to Amden,
where I found a hepatica in bloom, and had a beautiful view
of the sunset. This morning there is a mist on the mountains,
which is slowly rising, so I am using the time for
letter-writing. Mountain-climbing is not yet inviting, owing
to the snow; but, on the whole, the season of the year is not
at all unfavorable. The loneliness is what I like best. The
people do not interest me; I avoid them, and must appear in
their eyes even more deluded than I am to come to this
secluded spot at this unseasonable moment and be satisfied
with my own society--no, not my own society, but that of
these kind brotherly mountains. From a prosaic pedant I can
almost feel myself becoming an ecstatical hermit, and my soul
getting ready to

'smooth itself out a long cramped scroll.
Freshening and fluttering in the wind.'

What a solid satisfaction it is to have a few days free from
railroad travel! I have made a roundabout journey, coming
here by way of Dresden, Leipsic, Cologne, Bonn, Frankfort,
Heidelberg, Strasburg, Freiburg, Basel, and Zurich. It was
all pleasant, but I am glad it is over. Please never
advertise the Halden as a health-resort; let it remain a
complete secret between us two, so that when we wish to leave
everything and hermitize we may have the opportunity. If it
were not for betraying this secret, I should like to
recommend the castle for its generosity. At breakfast I have
put beside my plate a five-pound loaf of bread, one slice of
which is fifteen inches long by six wide, and thick _ad
libitum_ dimensions, the delicacy of which even a Prussian
soldier would call into question.

"I haven't attempted to tell you what I think of your Halden.
It is impossible. I simply give myself over to a few days of
happiness and rest; all too soon I shall have to face the
busy world again.

"Most gratefully yours,

"MORRIS DAVIDSON.

"P.S.--I have not yet seen the ghost-lady. I thought I heard
her footstep last night in the hall and a rustling at my
door. I opened it, half expecting to find a rose upon the
threshold. I found nothing, saw nothing."

The letter was dated March 13th, and contained a pressed hepatica. Some two months later another letter came. It said:

"I am still here. My Italian journey melted into a Swiss
sojourn. If I stay much longer I shall not dare to go away, I
feel so safe under the care of these wonderful mountains.
What words has one to describe them, with their fulness of
content, of majesty and mystery? I go daily up the time-worn
steps behind the castle, throw myself on the grass, count the
poplar-trees rising from the plain below, try to make out
where earth ends and heaven begins as the white May clouds
meet the snow-drifts on the mountain-tops. I am working a
little again, but tramping a good deal more. I have not been
so happy since I was a boy. In a certain sense I have died
here, unaided by the apparition with the rose, unless,
indeed, she has come in my sleep, and that of course would
not count. I have died, because surely all that death can
ever mean is the putting away of something no longer needed,
and therefore we die daily--one day most of all. But although
I have never seen the ghost-lady, I have every reason to have
perfect faith in her existence. I was talking with our
landlord's aged mother about it to-day. She carefully closed
the door when the conversation turned in this direction,
begging me never to mention the subject before the servants,
and then in a half-whisper she gave me exactly the same
description that you did in Berlin."

Early in June a third letter came:

"Will you believe me when I say I have not only seen _Her_,
but _Them_; that I have sat with Them, and talked with
Them--the lost ladies of the Hill-side--with the Countess
Maria Regina, the proud daughter, the mysterious sister? No,
certainly you will not believe me.

"I write nothing here of the physical results of my stay.
Enough that I am ready for work; that I love my fellow-men;
that I no longer dread to go to heaven for fear of their
society; that I have formed an intimate friendship with the
village weaver and priest and postmaster; that when we part,
as we shall to-morrow, it will be affectionately and
regretfully.

"All this you know, or have guessed. What I am about to tell,
you do not know, and can never guess.

"It had been raining for a week. You remember what it is like
here when it rains--how damp, sticky, discouraging; how cold
the stone floor; how wet the fountain splashes when one goes
through the court to dinner. I was driven to taking walks in
the hall outside my room by way of exercise, and thus
discovered in a certain dark corner a low door to which I
eventually succeeded in finding a key. This door led me into
an unused tower dimly lighted, hung with cobwebs, and filled
with old red velvet furniture. I sat down on a sofa, and
before long became conscious that I was being gazed upon by
a haughty young woman, with an aristocratic nose, large dark
eyes, hair caught back by tortoise-shell combs under a
peculiar head-dress, having a gleam of gold directly on the
top. Her gown was of dark green, with white puffs let into
the sleeves below the elbows; around her tapering waist was a
narrow belt of jewels; the front of her corsage was also
trimmed with jewels. But the most distinctive feature of her
costume consisted in a floating scarf of old-rose, worn like
the frontispiece lady in some volume of 'Keepsake' or
'Token.' Imagine meeting such a being as this unexpectedly in
the long-closed tower-room of a castle after a week of Swiss
rain! I forgot time, weather, locality, individuality; I
began to think, in fact, that I myself might be the young
Austrian officer who was murdered. Presently I noticed that
my haughty young woman had a chaperon--a lady wearing a light
green picturesquely shaped hood; a kerchief of the same shade
bordered with golden tassels; a necklace of dark beads, from
which hung a crucifix. She was not pretty, but had very plump
red cheeks, and held a little dog. I learned, on nearer
acquaintance, that this was the Countess Maria Regina, and
as she then appeared so she had looked in the year 1695.

"We sat for a while silently regarding each other, Maria
Regina's cheek seeming all the time to grow deeper in color,
the point in which the green hood terminated more and more
distinct, the little dog making ready to bark, the daughter
with the floating scarf prouder and prouder, and I, as the
Austrian officer, hardly daring to move, lest the sister with
the rose should join the group, and that perhaps be the end
of me, when I had the happy thought of going in search of
her, and thus breaking the spell, and preventing the mischief
which might occur should she come uninvited. I left the sofa
and peered about, and could scarcely believe my eyes as I
came upon her standing by the tower window, pearls, black
gown, lace frills, and rose in hand, all there, although very
indistinct and shadowy, the Mona Lisa face looking discreetly
towards the wall.

"Now, my dear Miss Valentine, having related this remarkable
adventure, I am about to relate one even more remarkable. It
occurred this very evening, between seven and eight o'clock.
I had been off for the day with the village goat-boy and his
flock--the dear creatures, who have never had their bells
removed to be painted over with Swiss landscapes and offered
for sale as souvenir bric-à-brac. I had patted the goats
good-night and good-by, and going up to my room, thrown
myself into a reclining-chair, deliciously tired as one can
only be after a long day of Swiss mountain life. The door was
open, the room full of pleasant twilight, the three ladies
safe in their tower close by. I was thinking and wondering
about them, when I heard a rustling at the opposite end of
the room. Now, as you know, the place being spacious as a
banqueting-hall, objects at a distance, especially in the
half-light, might easily deceive one. This was what I thought
as I saw by the window a girlish form in black, with
something white at the neck and sleeves. I rubbed my hands
across my eyes, looked again, and, lo! my vision had vanished
completely, noiselessly, without moving from the spot; for
there had not been time to move. I sprang up and crossed the
room. On the window-ledge was a rose, and the rose was red.

"Another curious thing--the ghost-lady of the tower,
according to her own authority, was forty-nine in the year
1698. I don't know how ghosts manage about their age, but my
ghost of this evening couldn't have been over nineteen.

"Well, I have told my story. I wait for you to suggest the
explanation of the second part; the first will explain itself
when I bring to you, in a few days at most, and with the
hearty consent and approval of the castle's present
proprietor, the Countess Maria Regina, the haughty daughter,
the ghost-lady herself, as found on the rainy day in the
tower.

"I am so well, so happy, so rich in life and thoughts and
hopes! I owe it all to you, and I thank you again and still
again, and sign my last letter from the Halden with the sweet
salutation of the country, 'Grüss' Gott!'

"Devotedly yours,

"MORRIS DAVIDSON.

"_Midnight, June the first._"

In the same mail Miss Valentine received a letter from her niece and namesake, who was travelling with friends from Munich to Geneva.

"MY DEAREST AUNT,--I can't possibly go to sleep without
telling you about this beautiful day. Of course you knew we
were going through Zurich, but you did not know we were
going to give ourselves the joy of stopping for a little
glimpse of the Halden country.

"We took a very early train this morning, and without waiting
at the village, went directly on that glorious ten-mile walk
to Obstalden, and dined at the inn 'Zum Hirschen.'

"You remember it--there where we tried to express ourselves
once in verse:

"The pasture-lands stretched far overhead,
And blooming pathways heavenward led,
As on the best of the land we fed
At the pleasant inn 'Zum Hirschen.'

"Above us, a sky of wondrous blue;
Below, a lake of marvellous hue;
And glad seemed life--the whole way through,
That day as we dined 'Zum Hirschen.'

"And that was how life seemed to-day, but we were wise enough
not to attempt poetry. When we got back to the village at
night, we climbed up to the castle for supper. I did so hope
to see your Mr. Davidson; unfortunately he had gone off for a
long tramp. You should hear die alte Grossmutter talk about
him; she can't begin to say flattering things enough. And
where do you think I went, Aunt Olivia? Into our old room, to
be sure--your Mr. Davidson's room now--the door was open,
and so I entered.

"Oh, the view from that window!--the snow-tipped mountain
over across the quiet lake, the little village, the castle
garden, with its terraces and bowers! I wanted you so much!

"Suddenly I had a feeling as if some one were coming, and
very gently I pushed aside the panel door, closed it behind
me, and descended in the dark--not a minute too soon, as it
proved, because, firstly, when I looked back there was a
light in the room above; and secondly, the rest of the party
had gone to the station, expecting to find me there, and I
arrived just in time to prevent us from missing the train.

"And, oh, dear Aunt Olivia, your Mr. Davidson has made some
wonderful discovery. Die alte Grossmutter couldn't resist
telling me, although she wouldn't tell me what it was; she
said he was intending to bring it, or them, to you as a
present, and he might be wishing to make it a surprise, and
it wasn't for her to go and spoil it all. Now what do you
suppose it can be? I am consumed with curiosity, and could
shed tears of envy. He doesn't know a word about the secret
stairway. Die alte Grossmutter hadn't thought to mention it.
Imagine that! So exactly like people who possess unusual
things not to appreciate them. When you build your house do
put in a secret stairway, they are so convenient. The castle
garden to-day was a perfect wilderness of roses; we brought
as many as we could back to Zurich, and one I left on the
window-ledge of our old room--an unsigned offering from a
past to a present occupant. It was a red rose too, and
therefore of particularly good omen at the Halden. I wonder
if your Mr. Davidson has found it yet, and is asking himself
how it came?

"And now, my dearest Aunt Olivia, I kiss you good-night, and
end my letter with the sweet salutation which we have been
hearing all day from peasant folk--'Grüss' Gott!'

"Lovingly, your namesake niece,

"OLIVIA.

"_Midnight, June the first._"

Perdita

BY HILDEGARDE HAWTHORNE

I.--ALFALFA RANCH

Alfalfa Ranch, low, wide, with spreading verandas all overgrown by roses and woodbine, and commanding on all sides a wide view of the rolling alfalfa-fields, was a most bewitching place for a young couple to spend the first few months of their married life. So Jack and I were naturally much delighted when Aunt Agnes asked us to consider it our own for as long as we chose. The ranch, in spite of its distance from the nearest town, surrounded as it was by the prairies, and without a neighbor within a three-mile radius, was yet luxuriously fitted with all the modern conveniences. Aunt Agnes was a rich young widow, and had built the place after her husband's death, intending to live there with her child, to whom she transferred all the wealth of devotion she had lavished on her husband. The child, however, had died when only three years old, and Aunt Agnes, as soon as she recovered sufficient strength, had left Alfalfa Ranch, intending never to visit the place again. All this had happened nearly ten years ago, and the widow, relinquishing all the advantages her youth and beauty, quite as much as her wealth, could give her, had devoted herself to work amid the poor of New York.

At my wedding, which she heartily approved, and where to a greater extent than ever before she cast off the almost morbid quietness which had grown habitual with her, she seemed particularly anxious that Jack and I should accept the loan of Alfalfa Ranch, apparently having an old idea that the power of our happiness would somehow lift the cloud of sorrow which, in her mind, brooded over the place. I had not been strong, and Jack was overjoyed at such an opportunity of taking me into the country. High as our expectations were, the beauty of the place far exceeded them all. What color! What glorious sunsets! And the long rides we took, seeming to be utterly tireless in that fresh sweet air!

One afternoon I sat on the veranda at the western wing of the house. The veranda here was broader than elsewhere, and it was reached only by a flight of steps leading up from the lawn on one side, and by a door opposite these steps that opened into Jack's study. The rest of this veranda was enclosed by a high railing, and by wire nettings so thickly overgrown with vines that the place was always very shady. I sat near the steps, where I could watch the sweep of the great shadows thrown by the clouds that were sailing before the west wind. Jack was inside, writing, and now and then he would say something to me through the open window. As I sat, lost in delight at the beauty of the view and the sweetness of the flower-scented air, I marvelled that Aunt Agnes could ever have left so charming a spot. "She must still love it," I thought, getting up to move my chair to where I might see still further over the prairies, "and some time she will come back----" At this moment I happened to glance to the further end of the veranda, and there I saw, to my amazement, a little child seated on the floor, playing with the shifting shadows of the tangled creepers. It was a little girl in a daintily embroidered white dress, with golden curls around her baby head. As I still gazed, she suddenly turned, with a roguish toss of the yellow hair, and fixed her serious blue eyes on me.

"Baby!" I cried. "Where did you come from? Where's your mamma, darling?" And I took a step towards her.

"What's that, Silvia?" called Jack from within. I turned my head and saw him sitting at his desk.

"Come quick, Jack; there's the loveliest baby--" I turned back to the child, looked, blinked, and at this moment Jack stepped out beside me.

"Baby?" he inquired. "What on earth are you talking about, Silvia dearest?"

"Why, but--" I exclaimed. "There _was_ one! How did she get away? She was sitting right there when I called."

"A _baby_!" repeated my husband. "My dear, babies don't appear and disappear like East-Indian magicians. You have been napping, and are trying to conceal the shameful fact."

"Jack," I said, decisively, "don't you suppose I know a baby when I see one? She was sitting right there, playing with the shadows, and I--It's certainly very queer!"

Jack grinned. "Go and put on your habit," he replied; "the horses will be here in ten minutes. And remember that when you have accounted for her disappearance, her presence still remains to be explained. Or perhaps you think Wah Sing produced her from his sleeve?"

I laughed. Wah Sing was our Chinese cook, and more apt, I thought, to put something up his sleeve than to take anything out.

"I suppose I _was_ dreaming," I said, "though I could almost as well believe I had only dreamed our marriage."

"Or rather," observed Jack, "that our marriage had only dreamed us."

II.--SHADOWS

About a week later I received a letter from Aunt Agnes. Among other things, chiefly relating to New York's slums, she said:

"I am in need of rest, and if you and Jack could put up with me for a few days, I believe I should like to get back to the old place. As you know, I have always dreaded a return there, but lately I seem somehow to have lost that dread. I feel that the time has come for me to be there again, and I am sure you will not mind me."

Most assuredly we would not mind her. We sat in the moonlight that night on the veranda, Jack swinging my hammock slowly, and talked of Aunt Agnes. The moon silvered the waving alfalfa, and sifted through the twisted vines that fenced us in, throwing intricate and ever-changing patterns on the smooth flooring. There was a hum of insects in the air, and the soft wind ever and anon blew a fleecy cloud over the moon, dimming for a moment her serene splendor.

"Who knows?" said Jack, lighting another cigar. "This may be a turning-point in Aunt Agnes's life, and she may once more be something like the sunny, happy girl your mother describes. She is beautiful, and she is yet young. It may mean the beginning of a new life for her."

"Yes," I answered. "It isn't right that her life should always be shadowed by that early sorrow. She is so lovely, and could be so happy. Now that she has taken the first step, there is no reason why she shouldn't go on."

"We'll do what we can to help her," responded my husband. "Let me fix your cushions, darling; they have slipped." He rose to do so, and suddenly stood still, facing the further end of the veranda. His expression was so peculiar that I turned, following the direction of his eyes, even before his smothered exclamation of "Silvia, look there!" reached me.

Standing in the fluttering moonlight and shadows was the same little girl I had seen already. She still wore white, and her tangled curls floated shining around her head. She seemed to be smiling, and slightly shook her head at us.

"What does it mean, Jack?" I whispered, slipping out of the hammock.

"How did she get there? Come!" said he, and we walked hastily towards the little thing, who again shook her head. Just at this moment another cloud obscured the moon for a few seconds, and though in the uncertain twilight I fancied I still saw her, yet when the cloud passed she was not to be found.

III.--PERDITA

Aunt Agnes certainly did look as though she needed rest. She seemed very frail, and the color had entirely left her face. But her curling hair was as golden as ever, and her figure as girlish and graceful. She kissed me tenderly, and kept my hand in hers as she wandered over the house and took long looks across the prairie.

"Isn't it beautiful?" she asked, softly. "Just the place to be happy in! I've always had a strange fancy that I should be happy here again some day, and now I feel as though that day had almost come. You are happy, aren't you, dear?"

I looked at Jack, and felt the tears coming to my eyes. "Yes, I am happy. I did not know one could be so happy," I answered, after a moment.

Aunt Agnes smiled her sweet smile and kissed me again. "God bless you and your Jack! You almost make me feel young again."

"As though you could possibly feel anything else," I retorted, laughing. "You little humbug, to pretend you are old!" and slipping my arm round her waist, for we had always been dear friends, I walked off to chat with her in her room.

We took a ride that afternoon, for Aunt Agnes wanted another gallop over that glorious prairie. The exercise and the perfect afternoon brought back the color to her cheeks.

"I think I shall be much better to-morrow," she observed, as we trotted home. "What a country this is, and what horses!" slipping her hand down her mount's glossy neck. "I did right to come back here. I do not believe I will go away again." And she smiled on Jack and me, who laughed, and said she would find it a difficult thing to attempt.

We all three came out on the veranda to see the sunset. It was always a glorious sight, but this evening it was more than usually magnificent. Immense rays of pale blue and pink spread over the sky, and the clouds, which stretched in horizontal masses, glowed rose and golden. The whole sky was luminous and tender, and seemed to tremble with light.

We sat silent, looking at the sky and at the shadowy grass that seemed to meet it. Slowly the color deepened and faded.

"There can never be a lovelier evening," said Aunt Agnes, with a sigh.

"Don't say that," replied Jack. "It is only the beginning of even more perfect ones."

Aunt Agnes rose with a slight shiver, "It grows chilly when the sun goes," she murmured, and turned lingeringly to enter the house. Suddenly she gave a startled exclamation. Jack and I jumped up and looked at her. She stood with both hands pressed to her heart, looking--

"The child again," said Jack, in a low voice, laying his hand on my arm.

He was right. There in the gathering shadow stood the little girl in the white dress. Her hands were stretched towards us, and her lips parted in a smile. A belated gleam of sunlight seemed to linger in her hair.

"Perdita!" cried Aunt Agnes, in a voice that shook with a kind of terrible joy. Then, with a stifled sob, she ran forward and sank before the baby, throwing her arms about her. The little girl leaned back her golden head and looked at Aunt Agnes with her great, serious eyes. Then she flung both baby arms round her neck, and lifted her sweet mouth--

Jack and I turned away, looking at each other with tears in our eyes. A slight sound made us turn back. Aunt Agnes had fallen forward to the floor, and the child was nowhere to be seen.

We rushed up, and Jack raised my aunt in his arms and carried her into the house. But she was quite dead. The little child we never saw again.

At La Glorieuse

BY M. E. M. DAVIS

Madame Raymonde-Arnault leaned her head against the back of her garden chair, and watched the young people furtively from beneath her half-closed eyelids. "He is about to speak," she murmured under her breath; "she, at least, will be happy!" and her heart fluttered violently, as if it had been her own thin bloodless hand which Richard Keith was holding in his; her dark sunken eyes, instead of Félice's brown ones, which drooped beneath his tender gaze.

Marcelite, the old _bonne_, who stood erect and stately behind her mistress, permitted herself also to regard them for a moment with something like a smile relaxing her sombre yellow face; then she too turned her turbaned head discreetly in another direction.

The plantation house at La Glorieuse is built in a shining loop of Bayou L'Eperon. A level grassy lawn, shaded by enormous live-oaks, stretches across from the broad stone steps to the sodded levee, where a flotilla of small boats, drawn up among the flags and lily-pads, rise and fall with the lapping waves. On the left of the house the white cabins of the quarter show their low roofs above the shrubbery; to the right the plantations of cane, following the inward curve of the bayou, sweep southward field after field, their billowy blue-green reaches blending far in the rear with the indistinct purple haze of the swamp. The great square house, raised high on massive stone pillars, dates back to the first quarter of the century; its sloping roof is set with rows of dormer-windows, the big red double chimneys rising oddly from their midst; wide galleries with fluted columns enclose it on three sides; from the fourth is projected a long narrow wing, two stories in height, which stands somewhat apart from the main building, but is connected with it by a roofed and latticed passageway. The lower rooms of this wing open upon small porticos, with balustrades of wrought ironwork rarely fanciful and delicate. From these you may step into the rose garden--a tangled pleasaunce which rambles away through alleys of wild-peach and magnolia to an orange grove, whose trees are gnarled and knotted with the growth of half a century.

The early shadows were cool and dewy there that morning; the breath of damask-roses was sweet on the air; brown, gold-dusted butterflies were hovering over the sweet-pease abloom in sunny corners; birds shot up now and then from the leafy aisles, singing, into the clear blue sky above; the chorus of the negroes at work among the young cane floated in, mellow and resonant, from the fields. The old mistress of La Glorieuse saw it all behind her drooped eyelids. Was it not April too, that long-gone unforgotten morning? And were not the bees busy in the hearts of the roses, and the birds singing, when Richard Keith, the first of the name who came to La Glorieuse, held her hand in his, and whispered his love-story yonder, by the ragged thicket of crêpe-myrtle? Ah, Félice, my child, thou art young, but I too have had my sixteen years; and yellow as are the curls on the head bent over thine, those of the first Richard were more golden still. And the second Richard, he who--

Marcelite's hand fell heavily on her mistress's shoulder. Madame Arnault opened her eyes and sat up, grasping the arms of her chair. A harsh grating sound had fallen suddenly into the stillness, and the shutters of one of the upper windows of the wing which overlooked the garden were swinging slowly outward. A ripple of laughter, musical and mocking, rang clearly on the air; at the same moment a woman appeared, framed like a portrait in the narrow casement. She crossed her arms on the iron window-bar, and gazed silently down on the startled group below. She was strangely beautiful and young, though an air of soft and subtle maturity pervaded her graceful figure. A glory of yellow hair encircled her pale oval face, and waved away in fluffy masses to her waist; her full lips were scarlet; her eyes, beneath their straight dark brows, were gray, with emerald shadows in their luminous depths. Her low-cut gown, of some thin, yellowish-white material, exposed her exquisitely rounded throat and perfect neck; long, flowing sleeves of spidery lace fell away from her shapely arms, leaving them bare to the shoulder; loose strings of pearls were wound around her small wrists, and about her throat was clasped a strand of blood-red coral, from which hung to the hollow of her bosom a single translucent drop of amber. A smile at once daring and derisive parted her lips; an elusive light came and went in her eyes.

Keith had started impatiently from his seat at the unwelcome interruption. He stood regarding the intruder with mute, half-frowning inquiry.

Félice turned a bewildered face to her grandmother. "Who is it, mère?" she whispered. "Did--did you give her leave?"

Madame Arnault had sunk back in her chair. Her hands trembled convulsively still, and the lace on her bosom rose and fell with the hurried beating of her heart. But she spoke in her ordinary measured, almost formal tones, as she put out a hand and drew the girl to her side. "I do not know, my child. Perhaps Suzette Beauvais has come over with her guests from Grandchamp. I thought I heard but now the sound of boats on the bayou. Suzette is ever ready with her pranks. Or perhaps--"

She stopped abruptly. The stranger was drawing the batten blinds together. Her ivory-white arms gleamed in the sun. For a moment they could see her face shining like a star against the dusky glooms within; then the bolt was shot sharply to its place.

Old Marcelite drew a long breath of relief as she disappeared. A smothered ejaculation had escaped her lips, under the girl's intent gaze; an ashen gray had overspread her dark face. "Mam'selle Suzette, she been an' dress up one o' her young ladies jes fer er trick," she said, slowly, wiping the great drops of perspiration from her wrinkled forehead.

"Suzette?" echoed Félice, incredulously. "She would never dare! Who _can_ it be?"

"It is easy enough to find out," laughed Keith. "Let us go and see for ourselves who is masquerading in my quarters."

He drew her with him as he spoke along the winding violet-bordered walks which led to the house. She looked anxiously back over her shoulder at her grandmother. Madame Arnault half arose, and made an imperious gesture of dissent; but Marcelite forced her gently into her seat, and leaning forward, whispered a few words rapidly in her ear.

"Thou art right, Marcelite," she acquiesced, with a heavy sigh. "'Tis better so."

They spoke in _nègre_, that mysterious patois which is so uncouth in itself, so soft and caressing on the lips of women. Madame Arnault signed to the girl to go on. She shivered a little, watching their retreating figures. The old _bonne_ threw a light shawl about her shoulders, and crouched affectionately at her feet. The murmur of their voices as they talked long and earnestly together hardly reached beyond the shadows of the wild-peach-tree beneath which they sat.

"How beautiful she was!" Félice said, musingly, as they approached the latticed passageway.

"Well, yes," her companion returned, carelessly. "I confess I do not greatly fancy that style of beauty myself." And he glanced significantly down at her own flower-like face.

She flushed, and her brown eyes drooped, but a bright little smile played about her sensitive mouth. "I cannot see," she declared, "how Suzette could have dared to take her friends into the ballroom!"

"Why?" he asked, smiling at her vehemence.

She stopped short in her surprise. "Do you not know, then?" She sank her voice to a whisper. "The ballroom has never been opened since the night my mother died. I was but a baby then, though sometimes I imagine that I remember it all. There was a grand ball there that night. La Glorieuse was full of guests, and everybody from all the plantations around was here. Mère has never told me how it was, nor Marcelite; but the other servants used to talk to me about my beautiful young mother, and tell me how she died suddenly in her ball dress, while the ball was going on. My father had the whole wing closed at once, and no one was ever allowed to enter it. I used to be afraid to play in its shadow, and if I did stray anywhere near it, my father would always call me away. Her death must have broken his heart. He rarely spoke; I never saw him smile; and his eyes were so sad that I could weep now at remembering them. Then he too died while I was still a little girl, and now I have no one in the world but dear old mère." Her voice trembled a little, but she flushed, and smiled again beneath his meaning look. "It was many years before even the lower floor was reopened, and I am almost sure that yours is the only room there which has ever been used."

They stepped, as she concluded, into the hall.

"I have never been in here before," she said, looking about her with shy curiosity. A flood of sunlight poured through the wide arched window at the foot of the stair. The door of the room nearest the entrance stood open; the others, ranging along the narrow hall, were all closed.

"This is my room," he said, nodding towards the open door.

She turned her head quickly away, with an impulse of girlish modesty, and ran lightly up the stair. He glanced downward as he followed, and paused, surprised to see the flutter of white garments in a shaded corner of his room. Looking more closely, he saw that it was a glimmer of light from an open window on the dark polished floor.

The upper hall was filled with sombre shadows; the motionless air was heavy with a musty, choking odor. In the dimness a few tattered hangings were visible on the walls; a rope, with bits of crumbling evergreen clinging to it, trailed from above one of the low windows. The panelled double door of the ballroom was shut; no sound came from behind it.

"The girls have seen us coming," said Félice, picking her way daintily across the dust-covered floor, "and they have hidden themselves inside."

Keith pushed open the heavy valves, which creaked noisily on their rusty hinges. The gloom within was murkier still; the chill dampness, with its smell of mildew and mould, was like that of a funeral vault.

The large, low-ceilinged room ran the entire length of the house. A raised dais, whose faded carpet had half rotted away, occupied an alcove at one end; upon it four or five wooden stools were placed; one of these was overturned; on another a violin in its baggy green baize cover was lying. Straight high-backed chairs were pushed against the walls on either side; in front of an open fireplace with a low wooden mantel two small cushioned divans were drawn up, with a claw-footed table between them. A silver salver filled with tall glasses was set carelessly on one edge of the table; a half-open fan of sandal-wood lay beside it; a man's glove had fallen on the hearth just within the tarnished brass fender. Cobwebs depended from the ceiling, and hung in loose threads from the mantel; dust was upon everything, thick and motionless; a single ghostly ray of light that filtered in through a crevice in one of the shutters was weighted with gray lustreless motes. The room was empty and silent. The visitors, who had come so stealthily, had as stealthily departed, leaving no trace behind them.

"They have played us a pretty trick," said Keith, gayly. "They must have fled as soon as they saw us start towards the house." He went over to the window from which the girl had looked down into the rose garden, and gave it a shake. The dust flew up in a suffocating cloud, and the spiked nails which secured the upper sash rattled in their places.

"That is like Suzette Beauvais," Félice replied, absently. She was not thinking of Suzette. She had forgotten even the stranger, whose disdainful eyes, fixed upon herself, had moved her sweet nature to something like a rebellious anger. Her thoughts were on the beautiful young mother of alien race, whose name, for some reason, she was forbidden to speak. She saw her glide, gracious and smiling, along the smooth floor; she heard her voice above the call and response of the violins; she breathed the perfume of her laces, backward-blown by the swift motion of the dance!

She strayed dreamily about, touching with an almost reverent finger first one worm-eaten object and then another, as if by so doing she could make the imagined scene more real. Her eyes were downcast; the blood beneath her rich dark skin came and went in brilliant flushes on her cheeks; the bronze hair, piled in heavy coils on her small, well-poised head, fell in loose rings on her low forehead and against her white neck; her soft gray gown, following the harmonious lines of her slender figure, seemed to envelop her like a twilight cloud.

"She is adorable," said Richard Keith to himself.

It was the first time that he had been really alone with her, though this was the third week of his stay in the hospitable old mansion where his father and his grandfather before him had been welcome guests. Now that he came to think of it, in that bundle of yellow, time-worn letters from Félix Arnault to Richard Keith, which he had found among his father's papers, was one which described at length a ball in this very ballroom. Was it in celebration of his marriage, or of his home-coming after a tour abroad? Richard could not remember. But he idly recalled portions of other letters, as he stood with his elbow on the mantel watching Félix Arnault's daughter.

"_Your son and my daughter_," the phrase which had made him smile when he read it yonder in his Maryland home, brought now a warm glow to his heart. The half-spoken avowal, the question that had trembled on his lips a few moments ago in the rose garden, stirred impetuously within him.

Félice stepped down from the dais where she had been standing, and came swiftly across the room, as if his unspoken thought had called her to him. A tender rapture possessed him to see her thus drawing towards him; he longed to stretch out his arms and fold her to his breast. He moved, and his hand came in contact with a small object on the mantel. He picked it up. It was a ring, a band of dull worn gold, with a confused tracery graven upon it. He merely glanced at it, slipping it mechanically on his finger. His eyes were full upon hers, which were suffused and shining.

"Did you speak?" she asked, timidly. She had stopped abruptly, and was looking at him with a hesitating, half-bewildered expression.

"No," he replied. His mood had changed. He walked again to the window and examined the clumsy bolt. "Strange!" he muttered. "I have never seen a face like hers," he sighed, dreamily.

"She was very beautiful," Félice returned, quietly. "I think we must be going," she added. "Mère will be growing impatient." The flush had died out of her cheek, her arms hung listlessly at her side. She shuddered as she gave a last look around the desolate room. "They were dancing here when my mother died," she said to herself.

He preceded her slowly down the stair. The remembrance of the woman began vaguely to stir his senses. He had hardly remarked her then, absorbed as he had been in another idea. Now she seemed to swim voluptuously before his vision; her tantalizing laugh rang in his ears; her pale perfumed hair was blown across his face; he felt its filmy strands upon his lips and eyelids. "Do you think," he asked, turning eagerly on the bottom step, "that they could have gone into any of these rooms?"

She shrank unaccountably from him. "Oh no," she cried. "They are in the rose garden with mère, or they have gone around to the lawn. Come"; and she hurried out before him.

Madame Arnault looked at them sharply as they came up to where she was sitting. "No one!" she echoed, in response to Keith's report. "Then they really have gone back?"

"Madame knows dat we is hear de boats pass up de bayou whilse m'sieu an' mam'selle was inside," interposed Marcelite, stooping to pick up her mistress's cane.

"I would not have thought Suzette so--so indiscreet," said Félice. There was a note of weariness in her voice.

Madame Arnault looked anxiously at her and then at Keith. The young man was staring abstractedly at the window, striving to recall the vision that had appeared there, and he felt, rather than saw, his hostess start and change color when her eyes fell upon the ring he was wearing. He lifted his hand covertly, and turned the trinket around in the light, but he tried in vain to decipher the irregular characters traced upon it.

"Let us go in," said the old madame. "Félice, my child, thou art fatigued."

Now when in all her life before was Félice ever fatigued? Félice, whose strong young arms could send a pirogue flying up the bayou for miles; Félice, who was ever ready for a tramp along the rose-hedged lanes to the swamp lakes when the water-lilies were in bloom; to the sugar-house in grinding-time, down the levee road to St. Joseph's, the little brown ivy-grown church, whose solitary spire arose slim and straight above the encircling trees.

Marcelite gave an arm to her mistress, though, in truth, she seemed to walk a little unsteadily herself. Félice followed with Keith, who was silent and self-absorbed.

The day passed slowly, a constraint had somehow fallen upon the little household. Madame Arnault's fine high-bred old face wore its customary look of calm repose, but her eyes now and then sought her guest with an expression which he could not have fathomed if he had observed it. But he saw nothing. A mocking red mouth; a throat made for the kisses of love; white arms strung with pearls--these were ever before him, shutting away even the pure sweet face of Félice Arnault.

"Why did I not look at her more closely when I had the opportunity, fool that I was?" he asked himself, savagely, again and again, revolving in his mind a dozen pretexts for going at once to the Beauvais plantation, a mile or so up the bayou. But he felt an inexplicable shyness at the thought of putting any of these plans into action, and so allowed the day to drift by. He arose gladly when the hour for retiring came--that hour which he had hitherto postponed by every means in his power. He kissed, as usual, the hand of his hostess, and held that of Félice in his for a moment; but he did not feel its trembling, or see the timid trouble in her soft eyes.