Chapter I: A Few Pages From Clide De Winton’s Note‐Book (1)

It was not the reception I ought to have had; but that was my own fault. The old house was not in the habit of giving such a cold welcome to the eldest son who brought home his young bride. On the contrary, fireworks and bonfires, and bells ringing, and flags flying, and universal rejoicing both inside and outside the house, had been the traditionary mode of proceeding, on such occasions, since the Conquest, when it first owned a master of the name of De Winton. My earliest recollections of a distinct kind are of my father bringing home my step‐mother to the old place, and of my peeping out from my nursery‐window, and vaguely connecting the strange lady, who came in the midst of us heralded by such noise and splendor, with the story of the Queen of Sheba that my nurse read to me very often on Sundays out of a pictured story‐book. This infantine delusion had long vanished before I quite lost the sense of childish bewilderment that accompanied the occasion. I was an odd child, I suppose; old‐fashioned, but not at all precocious; and the dreamy impressions of childhood held their grasp on me longer than usual, probably from my having no children to play with and keep me from dwelling so long and so exclusively on the fancies of my own hazy little mind. I can recall vividly even now how I hated all the noise and fuss that followed the wedding; how I shrank from being dressed in my scarlet cashmere frock, and being sent for to the drawing‐room, and introduced to strangers, by my stiff, stately step‐mother, as “my son, Master Clide de Winton.” There seemed no end to the strangers that came trooping in to shake hands with my father and to be introduced to his wife. And then the dinners that were given, and the noise of music afterwards, that used to wake me up in the nursery, and make me dream such noisy, confused dreams when I fell asleep again! How I detested it all! And when I expressed something of this to my nurse, and wondered why the house, that used to be so quiet when we had it to ourselves, had become so full of noise and strange people from the moment my new mamma came home, she found no better comfort than to tell me that that was always the way after a wedding, and that when I was grown up and married myself I should make just as much fuss, and a great deal more, because I should be younger, and my wife too. It may sound absurd, like so many other reminiscences of childhood that were once bitterly real to all of us; but this horoscopic view of life poisoned many an hour of those nursery‐days to me. The fact that the dreaded ordeal was yet distant gave me no consolation. I leaped over the gulf that separated six years old from five‐and‐twenty, and saw myself miserable in the midst of a pandemonium of noise, and strange people, and dinners, and pianoforte‐ playing. I was no doubt a morbid little boy, and no doubt my nurse discovered this, and with the unconscious cruelty of her race took pleasure in playing upon my idle terrors. I know she used to terrify me by graphic descriptions of the wedding ceremonial from first to last; and the more I showed that I was terrified, the more eloquent and inventive—as I afterwards discovered—she grew. She had been three times through the performance herself, and thus was peculiarly qualified to speak of it. I remember once when she told me I would have to stand up before all the company at a long table and make a speech. I could bear it no longer, and I began to cry. This did not soften her; she only laughed at me for a silly little goose, and assured me that, when the time came, I would enjoy it all as much as I now enjoyed flying my kite and other juvenile amusements. I ran out of the nursery and away up to a garret where I sometimes hid myself when I expected to be sent for to the drawing‐room. and flung myself on the floor, and literally bellowed with misery. I suppose I cried myself to sleep, for when 1 awoke I was still in the same place, tired and cold. I considered quietly what I might possibly do to avert the catastrophe that so appalled me in the distance. I could think only of one thing: that was to run away before the wedding‐day arrived. I had heard stories about boys running away from school when they were very naughty or very unhappy; why should they not run away from home, if driven to extremities? This resolution soothed me. I crept down from my solitude a happier child than I had entered it.

If this account of myself sounds unnatural, I can only answer that it is true. If my step‐mother had been a loving, motherly woman, she would probably have found out something of these sufferings, and have sought to modify them by moulding my character; but she was not a woman to win a child’s confidence, even if she had tried; and she did not try to win mine. She found me shy, reserved, ungracious, and she left me so. She did her duty by me as far as she knew how. I was conveyed every day regularly from the nursery to the dining‐room after dinner. I grew resigned to the daily punishment after a time, and in reply to the usual questions, “Had I been a good boy?” and “Would I like an apple?” I learned to answer boldly that I had and that I would, and to stand straight on both legs and without wriggling. My step‐mother patted me on the cheek, and observed to my father that I was improving in my manners. She seldom went further than this in motherly caresses for the first two years after her marriage. Then my father died, and I can remember that she kissed me often, and was altogether more gentle in her manner towards me, and that I felt it, and liked the change, though I could in no way account for it. I was still miserably shy, and I retained the same intense dread of notoriety and fuss of every description. Perhaps it was this that partly decided her on sending me to Eton when I was barely old enough to be in the school‐room. Other motives may have added weight to this one, but I shall say nothing of that now. If her object was to cure me of the painful timidity which still beset me, it was perhaps a justification for sending the fatherless and motherless boy away from the solitude and isolation of a gloomy home into the stir and life of a public school, where shyness, like so many other foolish weaknesses, is quickly rubbed off by contact with those intolerant pedagogues—companions of one’s own age and rank. I was happy enough at Eton, in spite of the dreaded future that still loomed in the distance. I had forgotten the spectre of a possible wedding‐breakfast and its accompanying horrors. I knew now that it was in my own hands to suffer or to avoid them. Meantime, my natural timidity still asserted itself in a way that was much deplored by my step‐mother. I was an intelligent boy, and might have distinguished myself over my fellows, had I chosen; but the same morbid folly that had embittered my childhood now paralyzed my ambition, and prevented me trying for prizes in any department of study. Public speaking comes into play very much with candidates for honors at school, and the finest gold medal that was ever awarded for a Greek and Latin essay would not have tempted me, if I foresaw the necessity of reading the essay aloud before that redoubtable array of critics, my assembled masters and companions. I passed for an oddity, and so I was. My step‐mother sighed over it in her calm, correct way; regretted I had not the honorable ambition to make a name for myself and conquer a position amongst my fellow‐men, and so on. To this I modestly replied that I was satisfied with the name my fathers had transmitted to me, and which I hoped to carry honorably at least through life, if not proudly. Pride of birth was one of the earliest lessons she had endeavored to instil into my mind, and in this respect I did not prove as stubborn as in others. I remember saying, in reply to some remarks of hers as to the advisability of my distinguishing myself in some public career, “When a man has the good luck to be born a De Winton he is distinguished enough”; and I remember the smile of approval that accompanied her demure shake of the head.

I left Eton in course of time, and went to the university. The change from the now familiar world of school was accomplished with immense reluctance, and perhaps would never have been accomplished at all without the combined influence of my step‐mother, my uncle, Admiral de Winton, and Sir Simon Harness, who was one of my guardians and my father’s oldest friend. I soon grew to like my new life, and to make friends with a few of my new companions. I was still too shy to form friendships easily, or to be what is called popular. Everything however, went smoothly with me till I was a little over twenty, and then a circumstance occurred which woke up the old terrors, and showed too plainly that much of the puerile folly of childhood clung to me still. I am almost ashamed to write it at this lapse of time; but I shall have more grievous follies to confess by‐and‐by, so there is no use passing over this one. It arose out of a proposal to give a farewell dinner to a fellow who was one of our set and extremely popular. I chimed in heartily with the scheme the moment it was broached, but when one of my chums, out of pure mischief as I afterwards found out, suggested that we should one of us make a farewell speech, expressing the regret and so forth of the rest, and that I should be the speaker, I got savage, and was for not appearing at all at the dinner, unless they gave me a solemn promise that I should not be asked to open my lips, even to propose a toast. We were near quarrelling over it; the others were so amused at my anger and fright that they kept up the joke, and bullied me until I was in a downright passion. When it was over, and I had joined in the laugh against myself, my tormentor said, quite hap‐hazard, and not with the least idea of rousing me again:

“I say, old boy, how will it be when you come of age? You’ll be giving a grand blow‐out at the Moat, of course, and we’ll all drink to your health with three times three; but you will have to return thanks, you know, and address the tenantry, and that sort of thing. It will be awful fun to see you stammering and haw‐hawing, and assuring us that the affecting occasion is really—aw—too much for you—aw—and so forth. When is it to be? About this time twelve‐month, eh?”

I don’t know what I said to him. I think I felt he was too great a brute to be spoken to, except in a language which it would not do for a De Winton to use. But could this be true? Was I making a fool’s paradise to myself, while every day hurried me on to this dismal catastrophe?

I feigned a sudden call home on family business that required my presence, and started by the six A.M. train next morning for the Moat.

My step‐mother was surprised to meet me on coming down to breakfast—surprised, not startled. She was not a woman to be startled.

“Madam,” I said, after greeting her ceremoniously, according to my step‐ filial habit, “have you any plan in view respecting the event of my majority?”

“You speak in enigmas, my dear Clide. Pray explain yourself,” replied Mrs. de Winton; and went on washing her hands in that deliberate way of hers that always exasperated me. Perhaps it was this trick of perpetually washing her hands that made me think her so uncommonly like the picture of Lady Macbeth hanging over the library mantel‐piece.

“To be explicit, then,” I replied, “do you intend making a Coming of Age of it? Do you purpose setting the tenantry into fits making a fuss over me? In a word do you purpose calling up the seven devils commonly catted rejoicings and loyal demonstrations? Do you mean to do these things, madam?”

Whether she thought I had gone suddenly mad, or that, notwithstanding the early hour, I had been indulging too freely in convivial libations, I could not tell; but she decidedly thought I was laboring under some sort of cerebral inflammation. Suspending abruptly the ablutionary movement, she joined her hands coldly, and looking at me with a severe countenance, not devoid altogether of pity, “Clide, you surprise me,” she said. “I hoped that you had sufficient respect for yourself and for your ancestors to understand....”

“Madam,” I broke in, trembling with excitement, “I respect you and I respect my ancestors; but as to making a fool of myself for the gratification of their ante‐diluvian crotchets, I won’t do it. No; if every De Winton from the Flood down were to stalk out of his coffin and bully me, I won’t.”

“Won’t what?” demanded my step‐mother, looking now rather alarmed.

“I won’t have those seven devils let loose over the place,” I said defiantly; “and unless you pledge me your word of honor that there will not be anything of the sort, as sure as I’m a living De Winton I’ll bolt from the country, and never set foot in it again!”

“You misapprehend our relative positions altogether, Clide,” resumed Mrs. de Winton. “When the time of your majority has arrived, you will, by the very fact of its advent, be master to deal with it as you choose, quite independent of my wishes. I should hope, however, that by that time you will have conceived a better notion of your duty to society in your own person, and to the traditions of the illustrious race from whom it is your privilege to descend, than you seem to possess at present. It has been from time immemorial the custom in the family to celebrate with pomp and festive gatherings the majority of the heir. I am at a loss to understand why this venerable custom should inspire you with such irrational fury; why you should anticipate the welcome that awaits every De Winton on his coming of age otherwise than with a sense of grateful and honorable pride.”

I had calmed down when I discovered that I was my own master in the matter. Otherwise I should not have listened so patiently to the end of her tirade. When it was over, I began to feel rather ashamed of myself. I had been making a storm in a butter‐boat.

“If I have forgotten in the least degree the deference I owe you, madam,” I observed, twisting my wide‐awake to give myself what the French call a countenance, “I apologize for it.”

“I trust you will learn to control yourself, in future, for your own sake,” observed Mrs. de Winton, washing her hands again. “Be assured of one thing: I shall take no steps towards the celebration of the event, which is looked forward to by the tenantry with very different feelings from yours, without having your consent. I would not expose them or you to such an exhibition as that I have just witnessed. But you have twelve months to wait, and to improve, I hope, before your coming of age makes it necessary to remind you what that circumstance involves.”

“If it involves a fuss, madam,” I said emphatically, and waxing wroth again, “once more, I won’t have it. I’d rather never come of age!” And having delivered myself of this decided opinion, I wished her good‐ morning.

I came of age in due time, and fearing that, in spite of my commands to the contrary, the tenantry might get up some insane rejoicings and caterwaulings, I feigned illness and waited in London till the anniversary was a week old.

That Rubicon was no sooner safely passed than the other, the fearful one that had been the nightmare of my childhood, threatened to overtake me. I had so constantly announced at school my determination never to marry that my views on that subject were known to all who knew me, and the reputation of a woman‐hater preceded me amongst my own people. Still, the Moat being a fine old place, with a clear rent‐roll of fifteen thousand pounds a year, and I being an only son and in all other respects what dowagers call an “eligible young man,” the female mind of ——shire resented such a resolve on my part as premature and absurd, and set to work diligently to bring me to a better way of thinking. I pass over the history of that merciless campaign of match‐making mothers and enterprising daughters. The very thought of it now is painful to me. Enough that I came out of it unscathed. After two years of comparative quiet—for I persistently refused to be lured to the sirens’ caves in the neighborhood, and forced them to beard the lion in his den, which gave me no inconsiderable vantage‐ground over the enemy—the fire slackened, and I was left in peace.

My step‐mother did not attempt to coerce me; on the contrary, she commiserated my position, and more than once expressed her disapproval of the way in which, as she said, I was hunted down by all the marriageable womanhood of the county. She insisted on giving one ball when I came home, to introduce me to her own and my father’s friends and such members of the family as I only knew by name or very slightly; but after that she subsided, and my life was as free from fuss as any life in this fussy world could be.

“Clide,” observed Mrs. de Winton one morning, as we sipped our tea over the breakfast‐table, “do you think it quite impossible you should ever marry?”

“Well,” I said reflectively, “as far as a man can answer for himself, I should say quite impossible.”

“But how far is that?” observed my step‐mother with a sceptical smile. “You have not yet been put to the test. You have not yet come across the woman who could persuade you that marriage is the Elysium of man here below. Supposing—I merely put it in the light of a remote supposition—that you should come across her some day...?”

“I should probably accept my fate as many a wiser man has done before me, and capitulate on reasonable terms—namely, that we should be executed at six o’clock in the morning, no wedding‐dress, no bridemaids, no speechifying—no fuss, in fact, and nobody present but a beggar‐woman and a policeman. Then, when we come home, no entertaining, giving and taking dinners, and that sort of fuss that comes like the farce after the tragedy. If I ever meet with a pretty girl willing to take me and the Moat on these conditions, then I will not answer for the consequences.”

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One year after this conversation with my step‐mother I met that pretty girl; the result was what I tacitly foretold it would be. I married her. It happened in this way: I was seized with a desire to travel, and, instead of beginning with the stereotyped grand tour, I determined to go first to America. I had a hunger for grand, wild scenery. The vast primeval forests of the far West, the awful grandeur of Niagara, drew me powerfully; so off I set, accompanied by a confidential servant named Stanton. Shyness went for something in the choice. I felt attracted towards the new young continent as by a sense of homelikeness and kindred. I was not disappointed. Everything I saw there was at once novel and familiar. I could converse with the people in my own language, and was thus spared the mortification of stuttering out my inquiries in dubious French or German, or trumpeting them through an interpreter, as must have been the case on the grand tour.

Niagara appalled and fascinated me. Day after day I stood contemplating the torrents of foam that surged up to meet the great sheet of water that flung itself in a majestic arch of hard green crystal down into the boiling, creamy gulf. I gazed and gazed till sight was dim and sense was lost in a torpor of exquisite delight—neither trance nor vision, but a state that hovered between both. The thunder of the rushing waters, the sparkling of the prism that danced and flashed and faded with the changing lights, reflecting every tint in the sunset, until the cataract blazed before my dazzled eyes like a thousand rainbows melted into one, then fainted and died, leaving a uniform sheen of emerald in its place—all this was like some magnificent apotheosis that kept me spell‐bound, fascinated, entranced. I had come intending to remain three days; but a week slipped away and found me still at Niagara. At last I determined to break the spell. I must tear myself from the spectacle before it overmastered my reason; for there were moments when, after standing for hours looking down into the seething abyss of foam, I felt as if an invisible chord were drawing me on and on, nearer and nearer, luring me in a dreamy way towards the water. Then I would rouse myself and rush away; but it would not do to go on playing with a danger that was sweet and potent as a magician’s spell. I came out one morning to take my last look. It was just after sunrise. The falls had never looked so beautiful, the booming of the water had never sounded so solemn, the light had never evolved such a fairy tracery of jewelled glory on the silvery vapor and the green crystal. The effect was overpowering. For one moment it seemed to me that I heard the voice of Jehovah speaking in the roar of many waters; that I stood within the sanctuary, separated by an impenetrable and mysterious wall of thunder from the outer, visible world. A spontaneous and almost unconscious impulse made me uncover myself and stand bareheaded, as in the presence of the Unseen and Omnipresent. How long I stood thus I cannot say; I know that I was roused from my revery by a sound that struck in upon my dreamy deafness with strange and thrilling effect. It was the singing of a human voice; the words were inarticulate, but I knew the music well. It was a wild, weird Highland melody; the rhythm was barely distinguishable, as the notes rose and fell through the roar and boom of the waterfall, sounding nevertheless preternaturally clear and sweet, like the wail of a spirit or some sweet sea‐bird’s cry. What was it? Some Undine risen from the spray, and pouring out her lament to the wave? I dared not look round, so fearful was I to banish the songster. When the voice ceased, I turned my head and looked. Was I dreaming, or was it indeed a spirit that I beheld? I doubted at first. But as I kept my eyes steadily fixed on the figure, it moved towards me, and I knew that it was neither sprite nor shadow, but a woman, a young girl rather—for she seemed barely emerged from childhood to maidenhood—more beautiful than any picture I had ever seen or that my imagination had ever painted. She was small, below the middle height. Her hair fell in profuse ringlets or coils—it seemed an accidental arrangement—down her back; it was black and glossy as jet. Her eyes were lustrous and dark as a gazelle’s; her complexion almost colorless. She was dressed in dark green, a loose, unconventional sort of garment that draped her something after the fashion of a Roman stola; her straw hat had either fallen off or she had taken it off, and held it dangling from her arm; her hands were clasped, and her eyes fixed on the fall, as it plunged from the rocky ledge down, down into the eternity of waters.

She had come within a few yards of me before she seemed conscious of my presence—of anything but the majestic spectacle that was riveting her whole soul through her eyes. She walked on like a somnambulist. A sudden dread seized me. Was she asleep, or was she experiencing in its uttermost degree the terrible attraction that I had felt more than once, and walking on unconsciously to death? I advanced a few steps, so as to stand in her path as she drew near. The effect was instantaneous. She started as if some one had struck her. I thought she would have fallen, and rushed to prevent it by stretching out my arm. The movement apparently recalled her to the sense of where she was. With a slight acknowledgment of my courtesy, she turned quickly away, and hurried on out of sight. I followed her, and it was with an unreasonable thrill of delight that I saw her enter the hotel where I was staying. Who was this siren, or how did one so young and so beautiful come to be alone in this lonely place? Before the day was over I met her again. Chance brought us together once more in the same spot. This time she was not alone. An elderly man, whom she addressed as uncle, accompanied her. He was not prepossessing in his appearance, and I doubt whether I should have overcome my natural shyness so far as to address him, if he had not himself broken the ice by asking me if I had ventured to walk under the fall, and whether the experience was worth the risk. I assured him that it amply compensated for any imaginary danger that might exist, and volunteered to accompany him if he decided on trying it. This brought us into communication, if not into sympathy. I did not like him, consequently he did not like me. We both felt this instinctively, no doubt; there was an opposing element of some sort between us that made friendship impossible, though it did not prevent that kind of superficial intimacy which is almost inevitable amongst people of the same country who find themselves thrown close together under the same roof in a foreign land. He was Scotch, as I knew at once by his name, Prendergast, and by his accent. He was a thin, medium‐sized man, and could not have been more than forty, though his silver hair gave him a prematurely old look, which was perhaps increased by a settled expression of ill‐temper about the mouth, arising, so his niece affectionately alleged, from chronic tooth‐ache. He seemed indeed a martyr to that trying complaint, and wore his head tied up in a woollen comforter, which must have been miserably uncomfortable; for the days were hot and the nights as balmy as June. I fancied that his beautiful niece disliked him, or at least feared him considerably more than she loved him. I noticed how the merry, bright little creature started at the sound of his voice when he called to her sharply, and how she quailed when his cold, hard eye lighted on her in the midst of one of her childish peals of laughter, checking it as by a cold bath. It struck me even more than once that she cast a glance towards me, as if claiming my protection—against whom or what I could not imagine; but I was resolved to ascertain, and, if my assistance or sympathy could avail her, to let her have them at any cost. We happened to be alone on the third day after our first meeting. Isabel—so I heard Mr. Prendergast call her—was apparently as pleased at the opportunity as I was. She talked to me with the frank, artless _abandon_ of a child; and, without in the least intending it, she told me enough of her antecedents and position to satisfy me that I was right in supposing her not very happy with her uncle. She told me he was her guardian, and had brought her up since she was quite a child, her parents having died when she was five years old. Her mother was his sister; her father’s name was Cameron. He held a large tract of land in Canada, and had a great deal of money—“heaps of money,” was her childish estimate of it—in banks and things in England; and she, being the only child, was heiress to all this wealth. Mr. Prendergast had had the management of it up to the present, and continued to treat her as an infant, though she was now of age, she said. He had by nature a tyrannical temper, and it was increased and rendered irritable and fierce by years of tooth‐ache. He had been away in hot climates to seek relief for his exasperated nerves, and it was only on her account that he had returned to England of late. He had come out to America to look after her property, and also for the benefit of her health, which had required change and a long sea‐voyage. I felt grateful to him for this at least, as the sacrifice had evidently been crowned with success. Miss Cameron looked the very picture of health, and she said the voyage had made her stronger than she had ever been in her life. It had, however, proved very disastrous to Mr. Prendergast, whose teeth had not given him a day’s rest since they left England; “and of course this makes him very cross,” his niece observed deprecatingly, with a little sigh.

After this conversation we became perfectly at ease with each other, and tacitly watched for opportunities of renewing it. I need not say that I relinquished my plan of leaving the falls, which day after day grew more beautiful, more irresistibly attractive, to me. A week passed in a dreamy state of blissfulness, and then a crisis came. Mr. Prendergast, who had been howling all night in the room next to me with the tooth‐ache, set off after breakfast, in spite of his swelled face, with a party that were being taken to walk under the arch of the fall. He wound a quarter of a mile of Shetland shawls round his head, and, thus fortified, donned the leathern costume of the occasion, and down he went. Everything went well enough until he was emerging from the tremendous roar that had covered him in like a curtain, and was setting his foot on dry land above, when he was seized with a rush of blood to the head, and fell insensible to the ground. He was carried to his room, and lay there dangerously ill for several days. Isabel was not allowed to see him. The doctor enjoined absolute quiet as of the first necessity; no one entered the sick‐room but the medical man and a nurse whom he sent for to the nearest town. This catastrophe naturally threw Miss Cameron and me a good deal together. We wandered out to admire the falls by sunrise; we were to be seen there again at sunset, when the clouds rolled in golden cascades over the western sky, and made a spectacle of rival glory above and beyond the everlasting glory of Niagara. What could come of all this but what came of it? We loved each other, and we confessed it. It was a wild act on my part. I knew nothing of Isabel’s family and antecedents but what she had accidentally told me; but to a man in love, first love, what more was wanted? She bore a name that was ancient as my own. As to her fortune, I cared nothing for that. She told me it was already legally in her own power; that she was twenty‐one. I believed this, since she said it, but it required a strong effort of faith to credit that beaming young face with more than seventeen years in this cold world. Those were blissful days while we walked arm‐in‐arm through the yellowing forest, and alongside the river beyond the falls, cooing our young loves to one another, as foolish and as tender as any two Babes in the Wood. But Mr. Prendergast was getting well now, and called Isabel constantly to his side, and sternly catechised her as to what she did when she left him. He was to be down‐ stairs to‐morrow, and they were to leave Niagara in a few days, and sail for England by the next boat that left Quebec. She whispered this to me with white lips one morning, and then rushed up‐stairs to answer the call of the dragon, who was shouting to her from his open window. I waited till she came down again, and then drew her out into a favorite spot of ours at a little distance from the house.

“Isabel,” I said, “does your uncle know that we love each other?”

“Oh! no, no; he would kill me if he knew it,” she replied, speaking in a whisper, and looking up at me with an expression of terror and trust that nerved me to anything.

“What, then, are we to do? Shall I speak to him at once?” I asked.

“There is no use speaking to him; he will never let me marry you, Clide. Forgive me for making you unhappy,” she said, clasping her hands on my arm, while the big tears ran down her face. “I never ought to have let you care for me. I never ought to have let myself love you, but I could not help it; I could not help it.”

Her head fell on my shoulder, and the sobs shook the frail little figure that leaned against me with the artless confidence of a child.

“You _shall_ marry me, darling,” I cried; “no uncle that ever lived shall separate us. I swear it! We shall be married before we leave this. Trust to me to do everything; we will arrange it all before that old Turk knows or suspects anything. Promise only to trust to me entirely and to do as I ask you. Promise me, Isabel.”

She promised, placing her hand confidingly in mine.

Next morning, soon after sunrise, while Mr. Prendergast was still asleep, we two stole out to the little church where a few stray worshippers sang their hymns to the music of the waterfall, and were married by the old clergyman of the place. My man, Stanton, and the sexton were the only witnesses. It was indeed a wedding after my own heart, all done as quietly as if marrying a wife were as much an every‐day accident in life as taking a walk before breakfast. Isabel was, if possible, more delighted with the mode of proceeding than I was. I forget how she came to make the avowal, but I know it was quite spontaneous, that she hated the fuss and paraphernalia of a wedding in England as she hated a thunder‐storm; and that if she had been given her choice, she would infinitely have preferred this quiet little marriage of ours to the most magnificent display that could have been got up for her in Scotland. We were as happy as two children as we walked home together. But then came the business of telling Mr. Prendergast. Isabel declared she would rather die than enter his presence now alone; he would read her rebellious act on her face, and he would kill her. He was capable of anything when he was roused. I was not going to risk my treasure within his reach. I sat down and wrote a respectful letter, informing him that I had become the husband of his niece, and requesting his forgiveness for what might seem a violation of good faith, but which his own conscience would, I felt sure, find an excuse for in my behalf. I stated my fortune and position more accurately than I had been able to do to Isabel, who put her hand to my mouth when I attempted to speak of settlements and so forth, saying she wanted to hear nothing about my money. I now begged of Mr. Prendergast to let me know what his wishes were concerning his niece’s fortune, and pledged myself beforehand to conform to them, and prove by my conduct in this respect that money was the last consideration that had actuated me in marrying an heiress. In answer to this I received a curt line informing me that I had behaved like a scoundrel, and that, as a gentleman, Mr. Prendergast declined to meet me, and that I had better take myself off with my wife before chance threw me in his way again. Isabel was overjoyed at this unexpected issue. I was stung by the man’s insolence and his unjust accusations, but, on the whole, it was the easiest way of getting rid of him and securing myself and Isabel from his brutal temper and ungovernable violence.

We left Niagara that day. I wrote to my step‐mother, acquainting her that I was a married man, and announcing the day she might expect to see us at the Moat. I wrote for places in the next steamer, and we were fortunate enough to find two vacant ones at nearly the last moment in a splendid vessel that sailed from New York. It had occurred to me that before leaving America it would have been prudent and rational to make some inquiries concerning the landed property which my wife held in Canada; but as she did not propose this, I feared it might strike her unfavorably if I did, and suggest that her uncle’s insulting insinuations were not as unfounded as I wished her to believe. I therefore abandoned the idea, and we left the United States without my asking a single question on the subject.

The voyage homeward was delightful. Isabel formed plans for the future that sounded like songs from Arcadia, and drew a picture of our life at the Moat that looked like a vision of the Elysian fields. We stopped a week in London to extemporize a trousseau and purchase some trinkets, and then I took my wife to her Welsh home. My step‐mother gave her a gracious, if not a hearty, welcome. It was a very quiet home‐coming; nothing, indeed, could have been tamer. There were no tenantry to meet us, no rejoicings either in the village or at the house. I thought this strange, though it was strictly in accordance with the desires I had always expressed on the subject to my step‐mother. Isabel, however, was entirely satisfied, and confessed to me that she had been in a nervous flutter all the way home, fearing to find some horror in the shape of a deputation from the tenants or something awaiting us at our journey’s end.

A few days after our arrival, when I came down to breakfast alone, my step‐mother said to me, “Clide, it is time that you thought a little of business now. I think you told me that your wife’s fortune is in her own right; this is very desirable to begin with, but of course it cannot remain so. Your rights as a husband must be properly protected.”

“My wife’s affection and my confidence in her are the only security I require on that, madam,” I replied stiffly.

“The sentiment does honor to you both,” observed Mrs. de Winton, with an undertone of sarcasm that did not escape me; “but you do not expect Admiral de Winton or Sir Simon Harness to be satisfied with such a sentimental guarantee.”

“I understand you, and I respect your motives,” was my cold rejoinder; “but as I am not responsible to any one but myself for the good or bad management of myself and my property, I do not recognize any one’s right, trustee or relation, to interfere with me, and still less to interfere with my wife.”

“Who talks of interfering with your wife? You tell me she is an heiress with forty thousand pounds in the Funds and an estate in Canada. Your father’s widow and your late guardian and trustee have certainly a right to ask the whereabouts of the money and the land. Admitting that your wife be as devoted and as disinterested as you believe, is she entirely her own mistress? This tyrannical old uncle who has kept her in such bondage—how far did he or does he hold control over her fortune? For her sake as much as for your own you should put yourself in possession of these facts.”

This view of the case had not occurred to me. I saw the justice of it, and frankly said so.

“Isabel will put no obstacle in the way of a just and prudent arrangement; I am quite sure of that,” I said emphatically. “My only fear is that she should see in this horrid investigation a desire on my part to count my prize, and perhaps suspect me of having had a base, ulterior motive in marrying her; and rather than wrong myself or wound her by such a suspicion, I would sooner never see a penny of her money or an acre of her land.”

“And does your wife share these sentiments? Is she quite as indifferent about the matter as you are?” inquired my step‐mother.

“Every bit!” I answered vehemently.

“Did she tell you so?”

“Do you suppose I would ask her?”

“Ridiculous boy!” sneered my step‐mother. “But taking for granted that just at present she does share your juvenile folly and poetical want of common sense, how long will it last, do you think? A bride in her honeymoon is a very different being from a wife of a few years’ standing. She knows nothing of the value of money now; but when she finds herself the mother of a family, with daughters growing up to be married and portioned, she will awake to the value of it in a way that will astonish you. And when a few years hence she asks you for an account of her own splendid fortune, what answer will you make to her? You were too delicate to hurt her feelings by any inquiries about so insignificant a matter, so you left it to her uncle to see to it!”

“I said I was prepared to do what was necessary to protect her interests,” I replied. “I will speak to her on the subject this afternoon. What am I to do next?”

“Write to Sir Simon Harness, and beg him to fix a day to come down here; and when he has done so, you will write to the family lawyer, and request him to be here to meet him. Of course you will write to Admiral de Winton, as your father’s executor and your nearest relative now.”

“What a confounded fuss it will be!” I exclaimed impatiently, and, kicking over a footstool, I started up and began to walk up and down the room. “I wish I had married a milkmaid!”

“Don’t talk like a fool, Clide!” said my step‐mother. “I do believe your pretended delicacy and fear of hurting Isabel’s feelings are nothing but a cloak to cover your dread of a fuss!”

I was going to protest, but the door opened, and Isabel walked in.

She looked so beautiful in her pink cashmere drapery, breaking into the brown old wainscoted room like a sunbeam, that even my step‐mother was surprised into an involuntary tribute of admiration; and when my wife, coming up to her in that pretty, kitten‐like way that was so bewitching, stooped down to be kissed, my step‐mother responded quite warmly, and actually put up her hand to caress the sunny face after she had kissed it.

I felt so proud of my lovely Isabel, and so grateful to my step‐mother for this unfeigned recognition of her loveliness, that I was seized with a strong impulse to embrace them both on the spot. I restrained it, however, and we sat down to breakfast; my wife, as mistress of the house, presiding over the cups and saucers.

“Clide,” began my step‐mother (she prefaced every remark by my Christian name), as soon as Isabel had provided us respectively with tea and coffee, “what are we going to do to make Mrs. de Winton welcome amongst us? Now, don’t answer me with your usual lazy outcry about fuss. My dear,” she said, turning to Isabel, “you will have a great deal to do in the way of reforming him; and if you succeed, it will be little short of a miracle.”

“Isabel will find out my vices soon enough, without your enlightening her beforehand,” I protested. “It’s not fair to take away a man’s character without giving him a chance of redeeming it.”

“Then begin and redeem it in time,” said my step‐mother. “Here is a good opportunity. Have some people down from London to put the house in order, and then give a series of proper entertainments to introduce your wife to her new family and friends.”

“Oh! please ...” cried Isabel, pursing up her rosebud of a mouth, and joining her hands with a delicious little pantomime of fright.

“What! are you as silly as himself? Or has he spoilt you already?”

“I was ready spoilt for him, dear Mrs. de Winton. I hate being introduced; and as to refurnishing anything, I wouldn’t have it for the world. I adore old furniture!” declared Isabel.

“Old furniture is one thing, and shabby furniture is another,” observed my step‐mother, resuming the chronic rigidity of manner which Isabel’s beauty and sweetness had thawed for a moment. “If Clide had done me the honor of confiding his intentions to me in time, I certainly would have taken upon myself to make the house decently clean to receive you. I had for some time past urged on him the necessity of getting new carpets and curtains; it was not surprising he shrank from the annoyance of a few days’ hammering merely to make it habitable for _me_, but I fancied for his wife he might have undergone as much.”

“I shall be delighted to hear the hammers going for a month, if Isabel likes it,” I replied evasively.

“But I don’t like it; I hate it, Clide!” exclaimed my wife passionately.

“Well, then, you sha’n’t have it, my darling,” I said. My step‐mother sat back in her chair and washed her hands. She said nothing, but this was sufficiently suggestive.

“Have you announced your marriage to Sir Simon Harness?” she resumed after a pause.

“Not yet. I mean to write to him to‐day.”

“Who is Sir Simon Harness?” inquired Isabel.

“He was my father’s particular friend and the trustee during my minority,” I explained.

“You had better ask him to come down here for a few days to make your wife’s acquaintance,” suggested Mrs. de Winton.

“No, he sha’n’t!” broke in the angel in pink. “I don’t want to make his acquaintance. He’s a mean, disagreeable old man. Trustees always are. I hate them!”

I thought this charmingly innocent and childlike, though, it must be confessed, she put more vehemence into her manner than the case warranted; but remembering the type of trustee on which she had built her opinion of the class, I could not resent her prejudice against my old friends. My step‐mother took a less indulgent view of the _sortie_. Seeing me cast a smile of tender indulgence on the culprit, she looked at me very sternly.

“Do you mean to requite years of faithful kindness and interest in your concerns by such a gross breach of respect and common courtesy as not to invite Sir Simon Harness to your house on such an occasion as this?” she demanded.

“Isabel is mistress of her own house. I cannot insist upon her receiving any one against her will,” I replied; “but when I have explained to her what kind of man Sir Simon is, I think she will consent to make his acquaintance.”

Isabel peeped at me from behind the urn, and made a face indicative of anything but consent.

Luckily, my step‐mother did not see the little by‐play, and, taking her silence for acquiescence, she said, addressing me:

“And Admiral de Winton—of course you mean to ask him down?”

“Is that another trustee?” asked Isabel.

“Not exactly, though he often acted with Sir Simon in my affairs, being next of kin,” I said. “He was my father’s executor.”

“Executor! Why, that’s worse than a trustee! I won’t have him come here, Clide! You’re going to fill the house with horrid old men who will worry me to death. I know they will. But I won’t submit to it!”

She pushed away her cup with a sudden gesture that made the china rattle, and, flushing up scarlet, walked away from the table, and flung herself into a chair near the fire. If she had flung the tea‐pot at my head, I could not have been more taken aback. It was impossible to deny that the burst of temper was very becoming to her complexion, but ... I was conscious of a very distinct sense of disappointment. Yes, disappointment; there was no other word for it. As to my step‐mother, she looked from me to my wife, and from my wife to me. Isabel, meantime, sat trembling and excited, her eyes sparkling, her face glowing like an angry rose.

“Dearest....” I began, “really....”

“Oh! don’t,” she shrieked, and burst into a torrent of tears.

Mrs. de Winton, prompted either by delicacy or by disgust, got up and left the room, leaving me to conjure as best I could the storm that had suddenly broken out in my conjugal paradise. I was utterly at a loss to understand Isabel. She said she was inconsolable at having vexed me, but to all my entreaties and arguments would answer nothing except that she was frightened at strangers, and above all at horrid old men; and that if I loved her, I was not to introduce her to anybody, but to let us live all our lives alone in the dear old Moat. She wanted no society but mine, and surely, if I loved her, I ought not to want any but hers! This was irresistible logic to my heart; but my reason, being less infatuated, perversely refused to abide by it. There was no use at this crisis in broaching prudential arrangements as an excuse for inviting down my two friends. Such an insinuation would only have added fuel to the fire. Yet the new aspect in which my heiress‐wife was revealing herself made it clear that some such measures as my step‐mother had suggested were absolutely necessary to protect Isabel against her own folly and deplorable ignorance of life.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

The storm of sobs and tears subsided by degrees. Isabel declared she was ready to make any sacrifice of her own feelings to mine; that if I liked to invite all the trustees in Lincoln’s Inn and Chancery Lane down to the Moat, she would do her best to receive them properly, so that I should not be ashamed of my wife; but of course there was an end to her happiness. Arcadia was gone. All her dreams of romantic bliss had vanished into thin air. She was after all to be nothing more than a humdrum wife with a house to look after and guests to entertain.

“O Clide, Clide! is this what you promised me?” she cried, her voice still broken with sobs. “Is this my dream? or was it only a dream, nothing but the baseless fabric of a vision?”

She clasped her hands, and, throwing back her head, fixed her eyes on the ceiling, as if the vision were disappearing in that direction, and she were straining for a last glimpse of it.