Chapter II: Part 2

About a fortnight after the disappearance of the jewel, a newspaper not averse to the elaboration of savory personalities concerning the wealthy leisure class published a carefully veiled discussion of the affair at Mrs. Ellison’s. No names were given, but hints were made of suspicion attached in a certain high quarter, involving a family of character and antecedents hitherto beyond reproach. There was a light touch suggesting that gallantry in the service of the fair may sometimes be made to reap rich reward. And the article, worded to excite curiosity without conveying facts, ended by forecasting a new chapter, at an early date, about the lost gem that would surpass in excitement anything so far derived from its adventures.

III

At this crisis of the matter of the Carcellini emerald Eunice Farnsworth, who had seen her lord depart for a banquet of public men, from which even her claims could not appropriately detain him, sat, one evening, quite alone. She had eaten a ridiculous little dinner of the kind affected by women deserted on like occasions, had retired to her morning-room upstairs, and was now sitting buried in the depths of an easy-chair, with an open letter upon her knee.

For the first time in her married life Eunice was unhappy. She had received that day, inclosed by her friend Mrs. Ellison, a copy of the mysterious newspaper article hinting darkly that the suspicions of those who knew were now turned upon a guest at the famous dinner where the jewel had disappeared. Read by a casual person the paragraphs were void of specific application; to the initiated there could be but one interpretation, and that connected with a most odious act Mrs. Farnsworth’s own dear brother, Tom!

“I am still far too wretched and broken up to think of coming back to town,” said her correspondent, who wrote from a Southern health resort; “and Gertrude is just getting back her nerve and tone. But rather than let such an insinuation pass unchallenged we would do anything, make any exertion. Of course, there are only a few people who could understand the detestable suggestion; but the hint that more is to follow fills me with dismay. Why _can’t_ they let the whole affair alone? It is _my_ loss, my misfortune. I have accepted it, and that ought to be the end. I have definitely withdrawn the case from the hands of the detectives, feeling assured that I could never take my place at the head of my own table again if I pushed the misery of suspicion into an innocent person’s life--and that person my friend and chosen guest. Arden may say, and probably does, to you, ‘Elizabeth was always obstinate.’ Perhaps I am; but in this case I have already had more than my share of distress and annoyance from outside comment. They will be having it next that my own Gertrude took the wretched emerald. I wish my poor husband had never spent a fortune in buying it for me. But this much is certain: if it is necessary for me to come back to town in order to refute the abominable insinuation against your brother, I will do so--at any sacrifice. The only thing that occurs to me is that Arden may be able to choke off any further mention of the affair in the newspaper that has done us this injury.”

“I could tell her,” thought Eunice, bitterly, “that Arden has already been in treaty with the editor to that effect, and that he could get no satisfaction, the man declaring that if the ‘gentleman’ alluded to was guilty of the theft, his high place in society makes it a public duty to expose him, especially since the owner of the lost jewel has so weakly backed out of her responsibility to justice.”

It was not a pleasant theme for thought. Eunice longed for the bright, strong presence of her brother to dissipate the clouds that seemed to close her in. But Tom was away in the West for an indefinite period. He had left town the morning after Mrs. Ellison’s unlucky dinner, from which he and his sister had withdrawn simply because it was impossible for them, in self-respect, to remain for a dance of which Carmichael was the leader. Carmichael no doubt had recognized their motive in quitting the house. For this offense against his vanity, and the refusal to know him that had preceded it, was it possible that he--

Eunice sprang upon her feet. She had solved the motive of the attack upon her brother. It was Carmichael they had to thank for the foul imputation. And upon this poor, lying, truckling creature, living upon his wits and the patronage of wealthy friends, she had once lavished the treasure of her young, impulsive love! A flood of shame and disgust ran over her. Then anger filled up the measure of her emotions. If she could only meet him--crush him with her disdain--make him confess the new offense he had committed against his former benefactor!

For Eunice, despite her marriage and the dignity that fact gave her, despite her husband’s wise control, was still a very young, impulsive woman, and in that moment felt strong enough for any deed of righteous wrath.

A servant, coming noiselessly into the room, presented at her side a little tray containing a card.

“But I told you I am not receiving, Jasper,” she said, without offering to take up the card.

“The gentleman said it is about a matter of business, madam, and that he will detain you a few moments only.”

She glanced at the name, and felt a throb of the heart that almost choked her utterance, for it was the card of Ashton Carmichael!

Here, in her house! He had ventured to cross her threshold! It must indeed be a matter of importance that had nerved him to come here!

“Say I shall be down at once, Jasper.”

Her spirit rose as she went down the broad stairway of her husband’s home. She was on her own ground, safely intrenched; he was the intruder whom a word could thrust from her door.

Something of this was apparent in her beautiful face, in her erect head, her eyes sparkling with indignation.

Carmichael, who had not sat down in the formal room of state into which they had ushered him, felt it, and winced. He had come there relying upon his unconquerable audacity, and to be so soon put at a disadvantage he resented bitterly. But he did not mean to let her speak first.

“I know what you would say,” he began, with an assumption of humility. “I am a pretender, a man who pushes himself where he is not bidden; a villain, if you like. But I have some feeling left, and I mean to prove it to you.”

She inclined her head with cold disdain, still standing before him.

“I put out of the question everything that relates to our own two selves--though if you knew all the story of that year--”

“You asked to see me on business, I understood,” she interrupted, as if he had come to peddle his wares in her drawing-room.

Carmichael blushed crimson. The sting of her manner was intolerable.

“I came, if you will have it outright, to offer to save you and your brother Tom from the scandals that are already attacking his good name,” he exclaimed, angrily. “For the sake of old times I can forgive your inhospitality, and even the insulting rudeness of your, and his, and your husband’s manner to me at the Ellisons’ dinner. I suppose you did not dream that entertainment was to terminate so unfortunately for you. The mischief this article in the ---- has done him is, in point of fact, incredible. I happen to have some control over the situation--”

“Then it _is_ your work! I thought so,” she said, cutting him short. “May I ask why you presume to come to me?”

“You are determined to think the worst of me,” he answered, growing white where he had been red. “I repeat that I came in friendship. I can be of service to you, and I offer to do my best. I can, in two words, get the forthcoming article suppressed, and will do so upon condition that you withdraw your enmity to me before the world; that you acknowledge and receive me in your house, and consent to overlook the past; that you induce your husband to treat me with common civility. This is not so much for me to ask from you--Eunice--the only woman I ever loved, who has gone from me forever.”

For one moment her eyes met his, and she saw that he spoke the truth in what he had said last--that in all his poor, mean, warped life his feeling for her had been the best he had known. But even this feeling he would now make the vehicle of his selfish schemes. Eunice tried to compass, but could not, the infinite pettiness of the bargain he strove to make with her. Her brain, confused and shocked, refused to see, what came to her afterward, that he could not, at this crisis, afford to meet the open suspicion and hostility of a man of Arden Farnsworth’s importance.

“I do not see--I cannot believe--that we should owe this to you,” she replied, more softly. “I can speak certainly for Tom, that he would resent your interference in any affair of his. If I have done you injustice in supposing you are responsible for our annoyance, I am willing to ask your pardon. But I am sure--quite, quite sure--we can none of us ever believe in you again.”

“You are indeed implacable,” he muttered.

That she did not ask him to be seated cut him to the quick. He lingered uncertainly for a few moments, then bowing to her, took his leave. The footman, standing in the hall outside, opened the door for him, then was summoned back by Mrs. Farnsworth.

“You will remember, Jasper, and tell the others to remember, that I am never at home to Mr. Ashton Carmichael again.”

The man, who, like the rest of his fraternity, knew all the figure-heads of polite society, went below and told his mates that there was “one house, anyhow, that cheeky young feller Carmichael was not to boss,” and he was glad to see him made to eat a little humble pie. More than ever her servants admired their fair young mistress, whose wit and spirit and beauty, joined to her friendly consideration for their feelings, had elicited their unanimous and not-to-be-despised applause.

“You are very brave and sagacious, my little wife,” said her husband, when she told him later on of her interview; “but you are playing an unequal game. That fellow, if my instinct is not at fault, will stop at nothing. And the key to the present overture to you, my dear, is that he’s afraid of me!”

“What can you have done to him, Arden, dear, besides scowling most unbecomingly whenever he has been near?”

“I stand, in a way, behind Elizabeth Ellison, who, if she changes her mind--and women have been known to do so--and takes my advice, will run a very good chance of recovering the Carcellini emerald.”

“Arden! What _do_ you mean? It isn’t possible you think--”

“Never mind what I think. Even to you, dearest, I am not prepared to say it in plain words. But this visit of his to-night, and his proposition to put us under obligation through this matter of Tom’s, is the most impudent bluff I ever heard of. To-morrow I wire for Tom. He will reach here in the course of the week, probably; and we shall go together to that newspaper office and force a withdrawal of their threatened revelation. Depend on it, the matter of Mr. Ashton Carmichael will not rest upon this evening’s work. The Carcellini emerald scandal is about to assume a new and interesting phase.”

* * * * *

At the clubs that night, and in many homes next day, it seemed that people had, simultaneously and without apparent new provocation, adopted Mr. Farnsworth’s view of the late excitement. Flaring up from the coals, the gossip about it began to burn with tenfold vigor. Some oracles went so far as to declare that Mrs. Ellison had recovered her jewel, had forgiven the thief (who had gone to reside on a ranch in New Mexico), and in token of gratitude for her signal mercy was about to present the Carcellini emerald to the Metropolitan Museum in Central Park. The hint given by the offending newspaper had not so far, prompted the general public to bring Tom Oliver’s name into the affair. He was too little known to the makers of paragraphs and the purveyors of contemporaneous news items to tempt the fate adumbrated for him by Ashton Carmichael to his sister. But any number of wild, vague, irrelevant stories were started, and left to drift down the tide of idle talk.

When Oliver, much disgusted on arrival in New York by the revelations of his brother-in-law, was about to set forth with that gentleman upon the disagreeable mission of stirring up the erring newspaper office with a very long pole, Mr. Farnsworth, in leaving his front door, was intercepted by a visitor--a young woman, closely veiled, and wet by a driving rain, holding an open umbrella in her hand.

“Eh? Very sorry, but--private business, you say?--and I am not to speak for publication? My dear lady, if you could oblige me with the least idea of what you intend to say I could better--”

They were standing in the open door, Tom a little in the rear of Farnsworth. Both men were surprised at her sudden, impetuous gesture in throwing back her veil, and revealing a strong, excited face.

“Mr. Oliver! I must speak to you, too. Don’t you remember Alice Carmichael?”

“This lady is entitled to the best respect any man has to give her, Farnsworth,” said Tom, offering her his hand. “It is a long time since we have met, but I should have known you anywhere. Farnsworth, mayn’t we step back into your little study, to the fire, and let Miss Carmichael tell us what is on her mind?”

“It seems that I am always doomed to come to you, Mr. Oliver, under stress of circumstance. This time, however, my errand shall be of the briefest. I meant only to give this”--and she held out a large brown envelope--“to Mr. Farnsworth for you. It contains, as you will find, the original of an article that was to go to press to-night. It was surrendered to me of his own free will by the author, who happens to consider himself under some obligations to me for past services. And it will not in any shape be duplicated or repeated. The greatest favor you can do me in return is to ask me no questions concerning it.”

“Do you debar me from telling you that I am everlastingly obliged to you?” cried Oliver. “You can imagine what it was, Miss Carmichael, to be summoned back to New York by my good brother here, to find a mine of malice and filthy lies ready to explode under my feet. I can’t tell you yet what the whole confounded business means. Indeed, I should be tempted to doubt the existence of this rot”--he gave the envelope a scornful shake--“unless you and Farnsworth vouched for it.”

“If you don’t mind I will look over the contents, to satisfy myself they are what we desired to get hold of,” said Farnsworth, withdrawing with the parcel to his desk.

“Do, please,” said Oliver, with a shrug. “I certainly shall not glance at them. Pray sit down by the fire, Miss Carmichael. I am sure your feet are wet, and you seem to be shivering. Let me ask my sister to come--”

“No, no!” she exclaimed, woefully, compressing her lips to keep back the tears evoked by his apparition. “This is a moment snatched from business hours. I must be off. I am not cold; it is nervousness, I suppose. Oh, think when and how I saw you last, and you will not wonder! And I have lately had much care. Please forgive me, Mr. Oliver; I shall be all right soon.”

Many and varied had been the experiences of other people’s griefs falling to Alice’s lot in her professional career. For so long she had been in the habit of putting a lock upon her own feelings, while absorbing those of her studies for the press, she could hardly believe she was giving way to emotion on her own account.

She had spent the previous evening on duty in the Tombs prison, gathering for publication the last utterances of a wretched woman about to be consigned for her crimes to life imprisonment. From here she was going on to the tenement-house district to write up the case of a starving family for whom a newspaper fund was to be created. Later that day she was due at a crush reception, where there were dresses to describe. Everywhere and every day of her busy, lonely life, she was the human atom last to be considered.

“I suppose you think I am rather a lunatic,” she went on, with an attempt at sprightliness, seeing the deep concern in Oliver’s face. “But you must not mind my giving way to this weakness. It is a relief to think that anybody cares. Now I shall go, please--not to keep you and Mr. Farnsworth longer.”

Farnsworth, a sheaf of typed sheets in his hand, came forward to join them upon the hearth-rug.

“This is the most diabolically ingenious effort of imagination I ever saw!” he exclaimed, impulsively. “What would be a fair punishment for such a tissue of insinuations that can be read in two ways, yet would succeed effectually in damning the person they are aimed at, I cannot think.”

The young journalist crimsoned to the roots of her hair.

“I have not read it,” she said, in a faltering tone. “I only--became aware--that it was in existence--and I was anxious to save it getting into print.”

“You have placed us under an obligation no money could discharge,” went on Farnsworth, kindly; “but--er--it would give me genuine pleasure to express our gratitude in some substantial way.”

“No, no; do not speak of it!” she cried. “Your wife will tell you, Mr. Farnsworth, if this gentleman does not, what a debt I am trying to repay.”

Before they could interpose she had left the room. Tom, overtaking her in the hall, urged upon her to accept his escort, or his assistance in some way; but with a melancholy smile she waved him off, and taking up her wet umbrella from the servant’s hands went out alone into the rain.

“You don’t mean to tell me that fine, frank womanly creature is the sneak’s own sister?” enquired Farnsworth, when Tom, looking and feeling crestfallen, went back into the study to explain her identity. “It seems incredible! I think her shyness with us is because she knows Ashton inspired every word of this offending article, that she, by good luck, has been able to abstract from the writer’s clutches. Probably some poor devil of a reporter she’s come across and befriended. Jove! that girl was made for better things than a life like hers. I must set Eunice to work to get her out of it.”

“You will not succeed,” replied Tom. “She is fine and self-helpful and proud to a degree, as her brother is the reverse. There is only one scheme that suggests itself to me,” he added, after a pause. “Somebody should marry her.”

“It will be a very brave body who will saddle himself with such a brother-in-law,” said Farnsworth, meaningly. “Don’t let your chivalrous sentiment run away with you, my friend. Unless I am greatly mistaken, Ashton Carmichael has in his possession the Carcellini emerald, and will ultimately come to grief. What’s more, I believe she thinks so, and that that accounts for her nervousness with us. If I knew more about him in the past I could better tell. I wish, in the interests of justice, Tom, you would answer me one question. Was the affair she alluded to of a nature to justify us in suspecting him of an act of criminal intent?”

“I cannot answer you,” replied the young man, bluntly. “For years what I know of it has never passed my lips; and I shall never again tell that story.”

IV

The morning’s drizzle had settled into a steady downpour when, after concluding her notes upon the fashionable world as seen at Mrs. Hathaway’s reception, Miss Carmichael, of the _Epoch_, put on her rubber overshoes, extinguished her smartest gown under a waterproof cloak, and unfurling her faithful umbrella, slipped down the steps and under the awning at the front door to take an east-side car for down town.

Her destination was not unfamiliar, for the car stopped at a crossing very near the house in which she previously visited her brother, Ashton. But as she rang the bell of his lodgings and awaited the coming of the maid, Alice’s heart beat with fierce excitement. To do what she now purposed to accomplish would put into requisition her best courage, tact, and persistence.

She had written to her brother asking an interview with him at the moment when her suspicions first fell upon his complicity with the much-talked-of newspaper articles about the loss of the emerald at Mrs. Ellison’s dinner. Upon his churlish refusal to receive her on any terms she had set her wits to trace out and discover the tool whom he had doubtless employed to do his noxious work.

This for a time she could not accomplish. But chance finally threw into her way the knowledge that on some previous occasion Carmichael had had so-called literary dealings with a man named Lance, a hack-writer of ability, whose bad habits were fast bringing his usefulness to an end. Now, indeed, fate played into her hands. The year before she had nursed Lance’s child through an illness ending in the girl’s death in her arms in the boarding-house where they were both living. For Alice, Lance would hazard his last hope of earthly happiness. She was to him a thing sacred and apart from his sordid world. When she sought him out, and asked him point-blank whether he had not been employed by her brother, Ashton Carmichael, to transmit certain information to a certain newspaper, the man was fairly staggered.

“Your brother!” he exclaimed. “That poor sycophant, whose pay even I blush to take? He whom we call among ourselves the ‘Little Brother of the Rich.’ Good Lord! You are as far asunder as the poles.”

So Ashton thought, but with a difference!

When Lance understood the case he hastened with almost pathetic eagerness to bring his finished material and lay it in her hands.

“Is this little all I can do for you?” he asked.

“No, Mr. Lance. You might promise me never to put your hand to such vile stuff again,” she said, looking him fearlessly in the face.

“The wording only is my own. He gave me the ideas. He said it would be a stinger to the man he hated most. As for the morality involved, I am past distinguishing between the grades of principle--since _she_ left me, and I see no more of you!”

“There _is_ something in which you might help me,” she added, after revolving matters in her mind. “I need to see my brother--to talk with him alone. He has positively refused to receive me in his rooms. I cannot push my way there in the face of servants. Could you bring us together, do you think?”

Lance brightened.

“Why not? I have an appointment to wait for him at six on Friday. The people of the house are used to seeing me come and go, sometimes with a stenographer. I don’t know if you are aware that he does a steady business contributing ‘society personals’ to our paper and to others. His terms are high, but they like to have him, because he’s a sure thing. Will you prefer to go with me or to meet me there?”

“I shall be there at a quarter before six,” Alice had said, drawing a long breath.

She found Lance sitting in the hall.

“This is the lady I told you was coming to take my place, Bridget,” said Lance to the servant, pleasantly. Despite his shabby looks the maids of the boarding-house liked him, whom they called “Mr. Carmichael’s clerk.” The woman answered him in a jovial tone:

“All right, Mr. Lance. The young lady can go on up and sit in the sittin’-room.” As Lance said good evening and went out she added, sociably: “You run right up, miss. Second story front. But, laws, I remember you was here before! Our Mr. Carmichael do be mightily run after by the newspaper folks. He’s such a high-flyer in society. But he ain’t well, I’m thinking; he looks like a sheet o’ paper nowadays.”

The winter’s day had closed in as Alice entered her brother’s room, and sat down by the window, listening to the drip, drip of the rain upon the sills. She wanted time to think before he should come in.

He would resent her intrusion angrily, of course; but that would be nothing in comparison with his wrath when he should know for what she came.

For days she had carried fear around with her, and slept with it at night. Putting together one thing and another that had come to her about the unlucky dinner at Mrs. Ellison’s, she had conceived the horrible suspicion that her brother was the thief of the ring. Since convicting him as the source of the slanderous article inculpating Tom, this suspicion had been growing into assurance. Until that morning her chief yearning desire had been to put Lance’s article safely into Mr. Farnsworth’s hands. That accomplished, she had for a moment breathed freer. Then the blacker weight had settled down again. A desperate resolve possessed her. She must recover the ring from Ashton, and restore it to its owner!

Did she not accomplish this, how could she answer to her dead mother, who with her last breath had prayed Alice to watch over the weakling of her fold, and to forgive him until seventy times seven?

Behind Alice was a line of Puritan ancestors who had lived and died strong in the faith and fear of a just God. Surely He would not permit her to fail now upon the threshold of such an endeavor. But how could she set about it? How induce Ashton to confess his crime unless he were sure he was found out?

As the moments elapsed that were to bring the sound of his foot upon the stair the ticking of his costly traveling clock over the mantel beat louder and louder on her ear. Her brow and hands were bathed in sweat, yet she was clammy cold.

Six o’clock! He could not be long now.

Oh! she could never bring him to own the truth. At the first hint of her mission he would not hesitate to turn her with ignominy from the house--to brand her as an impudent interloper.

If the ring were here on the table before her she would even dare to take it, and escape, flying till she had laid it in the right hands, risking anything to save her brother from the consequences of his sin and crime.

A single jet of gas burned low under a shade of crimson silk above the writing-table, littered with fantastic trifles in gold and silver, spoils of his cotillons, gifts of his admirers. With fervid fingers she turned on the full light, drew down the window-shades and looked about her. There was no desk, casket, or piece of furniture that seemed a likely hiding place for so rare a treasure. He would never dare to carry it about his person. Nor, so long as the clamor concerning it lasted, would he venture to dispose of the Carcellini emerald!

Her face burning with another’s shame, Alice went into the smaller hall-room, where his bed was and his dressing things were kept. Still the same commonplace furnishings, with a litter of clothes and boots and trinkets of the toilet. Here, too, she turned up the gas and lit it, terrified lest interruption should find her without excuse.

“For _her_ sake,” she repeated, to give herself courage in the search. Nothing was locked; all was at the mercy of the maid who arranged and dusted Ashton’s rooms. With her old instinct of making his belongings tidy, as she had been used to do when they lived together, Alice began straightening the ties, laying the handkerchiefs in piles, and putting the gloves in pairs.

Forgetting her real intent, she smiled as of old to find behind a lot of other things a box filled with a hodgepodge of buttons, sleeve-links, cigar-cutters, scarf-pins, tangled with shoe-strings, rubber bands, and other flotsam of a crowded chest of drawers. This was Ashton all over, careless fellow! For the hundredth time his loving sister would extract the rubbish from things of value, and set the whole to rights.

Out of the confusion of this receptacle she rolled a quaint curio in the shape of a thimble-case made from a carved Indian nut, with silver frame and settings tarnished for a long want of cleaning. The trifle was too old and shabby now to tempt anybody’s cupidity, but it aroused in Alice Carmichael a swelling tide of sentiment that overflowed her eyes and softened her heart to childlike tenderness. For it had been a gift to their mother long ago; had lain in her work-basket, and was once scrambled for by her children with eagerness proportioned to her withdrawal of it from their grasp. Later on it had been given to Ashton, because he had first discovered the trick of opening it by pressing a hidden spring. By some freak of chance it had knocked about among his belongings ever since.

Alice took the poor little blackened relic in her hand and went back with it into the sitting-room, where she dropped upon a chair, abandoning herself to retrospect. Away flew the hideous nightmare of her present quest. Ashton and she were children together, she loving him, sheltering him, proud of his beauty and accomplishments, following his lead with blind idolatry.

With this amulet in her grasp she longed to clasp him again in her arms, to talk with him of their mother, their old home; to laugh and chaff with him about the things of every day.

Mechanically her fingers fumbled with the thimble-case, turning it over and over to feel for the point of the carving that concealed its mystery. Smiling, she discovered at last the spring--touched it--the nut flew open--something dropped into her lap that she reached down to regain. She was astounded to find her fingers close upon a gem that at the gleam of gas-light falling full upon its lustrous surface sent up a bubbling, dazzling fount of greenish flame! She started with a convulsive movement of dismay. There could be no doubt that she held in her hand the Carcellini emerald!

Then flowed upon her soul a torrent of deepest misery. Once before her brother had been guilty of a theft--of moneys laid to Tom Oliver’s account as treasurer of a college fund. But she had paid that out of her poor earnings, and Tom, for her sake, had offered to hush the matter up, and give Ashton “another chance.”

And thus he had used his chance! The flaring radiance of the jewel seemed to taunt her anguish.

What should she do? Whither should she turn to save him once again? Rising, her feet refused to sustain her. As she stood dizzy, trembling, aghast, holding the precious jewel as she looked at it, the door opened and her brother came into the room. His eyes flashed anger at sight of her, but something more devilish inspired him when he saw what she had in her hand.

In two bounds he was across the room and had seized her. She shut her eyes, and uttered a prayer to God for strength. She was wiry and vigorous, and did not mean to let Ashton take the emerald from her if she could help it. At all costs she would save him from himself. He said not a word, nor did she. Each was fiercely determined to conquer in the struggle. Too well he knew that if he could regain his stolen prize, and turn her from his room, her lips would be sealed as before.

But he was not prepared for her physical resistance. At his approach she had slipped the gem into hiding in her dress, keeping her right hand clenched as if she still held it in her grasp.

Without mercy he bent her arm back and forth, hurting her cruelly, and at last, forcing her bruised fingers apart, saw that she held nothing between them. Then with a savage oath he struck her full across the face!

Alice staggered back, stunned and dismayed. But she did not waver in her intention to get by him to the door, and thence make her escape into the street. Once free of Ashton she would carry the jewel to Mr. Farnsworth or Tom Oliver if she could not reach its owner.

Ashton divined her scheme. His only hope lay in keeping her prisoner till he could force her to give up the gem. With more brutal words he started to cut off her retreat by putting his back against the door. His whole appearance was transformed by furious passion.

At that moment help came to her from a quarter on which she had not counted. She saw her brother shiver all over, and grow deadly pale. His left hand made a clutching movement toward his heart; he staggered forward, and fell--into her arms.

Alice had seen this once before--an occasion never to be forgotten. She knew the terror-stricken eyes, the awful, helpless appeal for relief from sudden oppression. His livid features brought back to her with agonizing force the face of their dying mother under like conditions. Exerting all her powers she dragged him to a sofa, laid him down, and flew to ring the bell, peal upon peal.

The maid who ran up to answer it gave one frightened glance into the room and rushed back to the landing to summon help from any one who might be passing on the stairs. Her call brought among others a gentleman just admitted into the hall below. In the maze of her feelings Alice hardly felt surprised to see Tom Oliver entering her brother’s room. She begged him, pathetically, to explain to the proprietors of the house her right to be there, then went on her knees again beside the prostrate form upon the lounge. In a very few moments a physician came, and Alice, giving place to him, let Tom lead her over to a window, where he left her looking out into the night.

Returning presently he told her that all was over. Ashton had died without coming back to consciousness.

“You will let me take charge of everything,” he added, with deep feeling in his voice. “When I stood with the doctor looking down at him I forgot what I came here to say--everything, in fact, but that I once loved him like a brother.”

“I think I know what you came for,” she answered, wistfully. “You meant to silence him for the future, and now death has done it--oh, how awfully!”

She shuddered. The pain of her body was beginning to make itself severely felt. It recalled to her the prize for which she had risked so much, that lay close to the tumultuous beatings of her heart. Above all things she longed for advice from Tom concerning it, but could not bring herself to speak the words that would incriminate the dead.

* * * * *

When, some months later Tom Oliver asked Alice Carmichael to be his wife she tried to make him understand that in addition to other reasons why she could not accept his “generous sacrifice,” there was one supreme obstacle between them.

“Do not tell me,” he said, with authority, “what you conceive this to be. I know all that I care to know of what has kept us apart till now. It is the future, not the past, that you and I have to deal with. I shall take you to live far away from the scenes of your sorrowful memories--and for the rest trust me!”

* * * * *

But no man, however thoughtful, however loving, can extinguish in a faithful woman’s heart the flame of her earliest tenderness. Often and again Alice Oliver thinks of the lonely, unhonored grave in which lies one who is never mentioned in her little family. Less often--but now always kindly--Eunice Farnsworth thinks of him, too.

* * * * *

The restoration to its owner of the great Carcellini emerald--without the ring--is well known to have occurred directly upon Mrs. Ellison’s return to town from her Southern journey. It was sent back to her as mysteriously as it had vanished. No clew was ever found that informed the public of the author of either its disappearance or its reappearance.

AN AUTHOR’S READING AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

AN AUTHOR’S READING AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

For some time Sutphen had been in proud possession of a Literary Club, the leading spirit of which organization was the lively and irrepressible wife of the chief banker of the town.

People in Sutphen, including her family, her followers and, last but not least, her husband, never knew what Mrs. Chauncey Stratton was going to do next for the benefit or entertainment of their lives. She rushed them from bazaar to out-door play, from concerts to cooking classes. She and her coterie of womenfolk had descended upon the editor of the principal newspaper, and made him give them one issue of his journal to be edited by them for charity. And about six months before she had instituted a series of fortnightly meetings, at which men and women were to meet for discussion of books and current events. After the president (of course, Mrs. Chauncey Stratton) had accomplished the matter of reading before the assembled club two or three papers embodying her own views of given subjects, and was getting a little tired of it, her friends began dimly to feel that something new would shortly be in order to brighten these occasions--something fresh and metropolitan, _fin de siècle_, that would carry Sutphen again up on the wave of novelty.

But like all great leaders, Mrs. Chauncey Stratton had malcontents in her camp--close to her person--sharing in her daily councils. The chief complaint made in vulgar parlance by these unsatisfied ones was that they were tired of being bossed.

The matter was under discussion one morning in the cozy library of the secretary of the club, a well-to-do spinster, Miss Cornelia Bennett, whose claim to literary cousinship was based upon substantial grounds. For some years she had been in the habit of sending slips of linen cloth to authors in America and Europe, with the request that they would inscribe thereon their names in pencil. These autographs, duly returned to and “backstitched” in color by Cornelia, were then assembled in a sort of “crazy quilt,” and sold for the benefit of a hospital for incurables. After this signal success in the world of letters, Miss Bennett had been elected without a dissenting voice to be Mrs. Stratton’s second in command. She was a meek, ashen-hued female, who, to all appearance, accepted it as her manifest destiny to walk in Mrs. Stratton’s tracks, never dreaming of such defiance as pushing ahead of her, or crossing her line of march. But, in reality, while engaged in covering for distribution among the members of the club the batch of new books ordered by Mrs. Stratton from New York, a strange spirit of revolt was kindling in her flat chest. Aiding Miss Bennett in her work, sat Mrs. Mark Grindstone, a large, dull, catarrhal lady, chosen to serve as treasurer of their organization--chiefly because she lived in a large, dull house, was sustained by a large, dull husband, and wore to church on Sundays a black velvet cloak bursting with jet beads and bugles at every pore.

Dull as Mrs. Grindstone was, she yet possessed the spirit of the traditional worm. “Of what use is it,” she asked herself, “to wear the handsomest cloak in Sutphen, if one is always to be ordered to the right about by Annetta Stratton?”

And “Why have I been in correspondence with the most prominent brain-workers of two hemispheres,” wondered Cornelia, “if here I am actually afraid to portion out the books before Annetta Stratton comes? If we had only a chance!” she murmured, making common cause with Mrs. Grindstone, “to show her that when called upon for independent action, we can be her equals in success.”

“We will make a chance,” said Mrs. Grindstone, after clearing her throat, rather unpleasantly, Cornelia thought. “What Annetta does not like to think is that other people can do things without her telling them how. It would be a good plan to keep quiet and go ahead, and do some big thing exactly as she means to do it--on the same scale, in every way.”

“Exactly!” said Cornelia, with animation, as she wrestled with the crackly brown paper enshrouding the last book of her pile. “One such lesson would be enough for Annetta.”

“Just so,” said Mrs. Grindstone, fairly slapping her last label into place.

“Look here, girls,” interposed old Mrs. Bennett, who always read her morning’s paper from the rising to the going down of its varied information; “fine times have come to Sutphen. Here’s a city caterer set up in that built-over block on Main Street, where Blink’s shoe-store used to be before the fire. There’s nothing he doesn’t offer to furnish to customers--bread, rolls, patty shells, ice-creams (French and American), birthday cakes, weddin’ cakes, salads, cotillon favors, Jack Horner pies--”

“You don’t say so?” interpolated Mrs. Grindstone with housekeeperish relish.

“Yes; and he undertakes to serve ‘dinners, luncheons, teas, and receptions with glass, silverware, and elegant services of china, competent waiters and chefs, awnings, camp-chairs, crash, tables, decorations--all in first-class style!’”

“For all the world as they do it in the city,” exclaimed Miss Cornelia, excitedly. “Mother, it does look as if Providence had rolled a stone out of our pathway. Everybody knows we could have had just as fine parties as Annetta Stratton if we’d only not had to ask her how to set about givin’ ’em. And so could you, Mrs. Grindstone. Your house is two feet wider than Annetta’s, four rooms on a floor, and splendid chandeliers in every room. Just the place for an evening reception, like the one I went to at Professor Slocum’s in New York.”

“I have often thought of it,” sighed Mrs. Grindstone. “Of course, there’d be some trouble to get Mr. Grindstone into it. He’s sort o’ set in his ways, and thinks it a sin to light more than one gas burner in a room. But we might get over _him_, if there was only any excuse to give a party--any brides or explorers or great folks that we knew, coming to town, that had to be entertained.”

“That’s it,” said Miss Cornelia. “We are as dull as ditchwater in Sutphen--unless Annetta stirs us up,” she added, reluctantly.

At this moment, enter Mrs. Chauncey Stratton, plump, rustling, well-dressed, with red cheeks like a china doll, self-satisfaction in every line of her face, in every movement of her person. At the bare sight of her the two conspirators shrunk into their shells. Old Mrs. Bennett, who had returned to the perusal of a column devoted to the wants of domestic service, alone preserved her equilibrium.

“My dear girls,” exclaimed the oracle, dropping into her chair at the literary table, “if I am late, put it down to the claims of excessive correspondence. And as I see you’ve finished with the books, let me lose no time in informing you that I have just had the good fortune to conclude successfully a negotiation for a lecture before our club from no less a literary light than Timothy Bludgeon, who is at the ---- Hotel in New York.”

“Bludgeon, the English author!” replied Miss Cornelia, faintly. “Not that I’ve much opinion of his works, since he refused me his autograph for my quilt, and even sent me a very tart letter through his secretary. But, still, he is the lion of the day.”

“Precisely,” observed Mrs. Stratton calmly; “so I made up my mind to get him--and I did!”

Mrs. Grindstone made a series of muffled sounds that might have been applause. In her heart she was struck with jealous indignation. Quick as a flash she and Cornelia saw open before them another vista in which Annetta would walk glorified, they remaining part of the inconspicuous crowd ranged on either side of her.

“I asked him to come for our meeting on the fifteenth,” remarked Mrs. Stratton, with the same exasperating composure born of certainty. “And he could just fit it in on his way to Boston. He will arrive on the 11 A.M. train on the fifteenth, and leave next morning at the same time, thus allowing to Sutphen just twenty-four hours. I have decided to give him a dinner in the evening, and to change the hour for the lecture to the afternoon.”

“Such assurance!” said both satellites internally. But they only murmured, “Splendid!” “Just like you, Annetta,” and the like.

“Of course, you and dear Mr. Grindstone will be included in my dinner list,” went on Mrs. Stratton, addressing her now speechless treasurer. “And you, Cornelia, will pair with old Major Gooch. Sixteen I can seat easily, all choice spirits, and the rest of the club will have to be satisfied with an introduction to Bludgeon over a cup of tea at five o’clock. Mr. Bludgeon will, I fancy, see that Sutphen is not so far behind New York in her style of doing things.”

“And what will the lecture be about?” ventured Cornelia, more than anything else to cover her own pique.

“Oh, that is of no consequence! Readings from his own works, possibly. But the name of Bludgeon is enough. It will exhaust a good deal of the reserve fund of the club to pay him his price, but I felt sure we could make that all right, Mrs. Grindstone. That I had decided it is best would, of course, be sufficient for the club.”

And the treasurer was to have no voice in this, her own especial branch of service! No wonder Mrs. Grindstone’s spirit rose! Old Mrs. Bennett, breaking in upon the conversation to read aloud an obituary notice striking her fancy, effected a happy diversion.

From that date Mrs. Stratton, absorbed in her own ambitious plans for a feast to the English author that should be described in the local prints, and perchance quoted in metropolitan news columns, saw but little of her two friends. It was observed by some lookers-on that Cornelia Bennett was seen moving about the streets with animation, paying frequent visits to the new caterer, Simonson, and preserving withal an air of pleasing mystery. Other people saw good Mrs. Grindstone going hither and thither in much the same way. And putting two and two together, Sutphen decided that there was to be at least a “chicken salad and oyster spread” in store for the members of the Literary Club, following the appearance on their platform of the great man, Timothy Bludgeon. The unliterary portion of Sutphen licked its chops at the suggestion!

But a week before the appointed time, out came a genuine surprise. Two sets of cards were issued simultaneously. One from Mrs. and Miss Bennett, inviting their friends to meet Mr. Bludgeon at luncheon on the fifteenth; the other stating that Mr. and Mrs. Grindstone would be “At Home” on the evening of the same day, at half-past ten o’clock, with the additional words, “To meet Mr. Bludgeon” inscribed across the tops!

Where now was the wind to fill Mrs. Stratton’s sails? In vain might she whistle for it, when her lion was due to roar at two banquets besides her own in the self-same day. And worse than all, Cornelia Bennett, in undertaking to give this ridiculous luncheon of hers, would actually take precedence in point of time of Mrs. Chauncey Stratton! Of course the affair would be a sad failure. Cornelia knew little, her mother less, of the customs of entertaining in modern society. Theirs would be homely doings. Turkey with cranberry sauce, for example; jellies in tall glasses set around a china _compotier_ of floating island; cakes, big and little. No lobster _farcie_, no mushroom on toast, French chops, birds, tongue in aspic, salads, ices--such as Mrs. Stratton would have ordered. Mrs. Grindstone’s festivity would be--equally, of course--on the same old-fashioned lines. Oyster stews and molds of ice-cream, the predominating element of the table. A smell of fried oysters enveloping all. Oh! Annetta well knew the sort of thing to expect. She pitied poor Mr. Bludgeon for falling into the hands of these stupid, pushing women, who were not satisfied to sit still and see her take the field of Sutphen’s hospitality to distinguished strangers. One thought occurred to her, to fill Annetta’s soul with consolation! The weak spot in Sutphen’s domestic panoply, as known to all Sutphen’s housekeepers, was the general prevalence of plain white or old willow-pattern china on the shelves. Most of Sutphen’s lords and masters preferred these varieties of porcelain, and had set their feet down upon any suggestion of change. Strange to say, even the amenable Mr. Chauncey Stratton had once asserted himself so far as to declare he preferred to eat his meals from the dishes he had been accustomed to ever since his wife and he had set up housekeeping. This was the crumpled roseleaf in Mrs. Chauncey Stratton’s couch of down. That her set of white porcelain rejoiced in gilded edges, while those of other people were plain, gave her but limited satisfaction. For two years she had been bending every energy of her mind toward securing a set of Royal Meissen--“onion pattern”--that she had seen in a famous shop in New York. For two years Mr. Chauncey Stratton had resisted her. His attitude was to be accounted for only by the saying of old Mrs. Bennett, “The very best and most biddable of husbands has his obstinate spot, my dear; and when a woman runs afoul of it, she might as well give up.”

Of late, coincidently with the threatened dinner to Mr. Timothy Bludgeon, Mrs. Stratton had seen a ray of light pierce the darkness surrounding this question of china for the table. In investigating the resources of Simonson, the New York _restaurateur_, her eyes had sparkled at the discovery in the rear of his premises of an entire service of “onion pattern” Meissen--or at least a good imitation of that desired original.

What an opportunity was here to deck out her board with an “effect” in porcelain of the latter-day style she aspired to introduce into Sutphen.

Little by little, the wily caterer had induced her to trust the whole thing into his hands. In cases where Simonson undertook to serve the feast throughout, it was his custom, he said, to supply also the table service, china, silver, dishes, candelabra, rose-colored candles with shades to match, side-dishes for bonbons--all. Under these conditions he guaranteed that Mrs. Stratton’s dinner should be the finest ever seen in Sutphen. And thus it came to pass that with a heart lightened of responsibility, but weighted with some apprehension as to the amount of the final bill, Mrs. Stratton had tripped away from Simonson’s. Her last word, an afterthought upon the sidewalk, which she returned to the shop to deliver, was to enjoin upon the glib caterer absolute silence regarding every detail of her arrangements.