Chapter II: Part 2

Elizabeth, seeing this, felt remorseful for the second time that day. "Don't look so unhappy, auntie," she said, quickly. "It's not your fault--no, nor mine either; and, I suppose, it's not the fault of the Neighborhood. People can't help being narrow and conservative; they were born so. But then, Aunt Cornelia, when--when I don't have so many friends, you can't expect me to draw the line so awfully closely." Something like a sob crept into the girl's voice, but she went on with hardly a pause: "You mustn't think that I would want to know--any one. This man isn't like the rest of Amanda's friends. Only wait till you hear him sing--you would lose your heart, I'm sure, on the spot. And now, confess, auntie, you would like me to have my picture painted. The girls at school used to say that I would make a glorious picture. Do _you_ think I would make a pretty picture, auntie?" She went over to Miss Cornelia and put her arms around her, looking up into her face with laughing, brilliant eyes, from which all bitterness had disappeared.

"My darling." Miss Cornelia, bewildered by the quick change of mood, could not find words. She thought that Elizabeth would make the prettiest picture in the world; but to have told her so would have been to run counter to all her ideas of propriety. So she finally said, with due regard for accepted formulas: "You shouldn't think so much about looks, Elizabeth. If you are good, that's the main thing."

"Of course, it's the main thing," Elizabeth assented, "but I'm afraid if it came to a choice, I'd rather be pretty, auntie, and so would most people." She ended with a light little laugh, and Miss Cornelia, in spite of her principles, attempted no rebuke.

The look of gaiety soon faded from Elizabeth's face. With a quick, impatient little sigh, she walked over to the window, and looked out into the night. It was still and sultry; heavy storm clouds were gathering and obscured the sky. The old elm trees, growing close about the house, cast sombre shadows; they seemed to keep out what little air there was. Elizabeth, as she leaned her hot cheek against the cool glass of the window-pane, felt again a sense of stifling, of being in a cage. It was useless to beat her wings; life was outside, but she could not reach it. "Oh, I would give anything in the world," she thought "just to breathe, to be free, to know what life is."

Suddenly she turned around with a start. There was a voice in the hall; some one spoke her name. A moment later a young man was advancing towards her across the dimly-lighted room. Mechanically she went to meet him. She did not think of her aunts, she did not think of anything but his presence.

"Have I--come too soon?" Paul Halleck asked, as he took her hand.

_Chapter VI_

Elizabeth drove again, a few weeks later, through shady, fragrant lanes, on her way to Bassett Mills. It was early in the morning, but the sun was already hot. The wild-roses along the road-side had mostly departed, the grass in the fields had a parched look. It was a long time since any rain had fallen, and the roads were thick with dust. All the freshness of the early summer had faded. But for these signs of premature blight and the scorching effect of the sun, Elizabeth seemed to have no eyes.

She drove along in a happy dream. There was a brilliant color in her cheeks, a radiant light in her eyes. She bloomed like a rose that has unfolded every petal to the summer sunshine. The fields through which she passed were not the familiar pasture-lands and "places" that skirted the road to Bassett Mills; they were the flowery meadows of poetic Arcadia, on the road that led to Paradise.

It was something of a bore, under the circumstances, that she must first of all go to Bassett Mills, but Miss Joanna had intrusted her with numerous commissions, that she could not very well refuse to discharge. That was the reason why she had started so early. There was a brook in a meadow near by; a brook shaded by weeping willow trees, under which nowadays a young artist sat sketching for many hours at a time. Elizabeth's drives, or walks had for the last few weeks led no further. But to-day she had decided to go first to Bassett Mills, and be back in time for the usual engagement, of which her aunts knew nothing.

The affair was not really so clandestine. There was no reason why she should have kept it secret beyond a vague embarrassment, an unwillingness to speak about the one subject that occupied her thoughts. Miss Cornelia and Miss Joanna had, after the one protest, yielded to the inevitable; they had not even discouraged young Halleck's visits to their niece. They had gone so far as to admit, when he had come to tea at the Homestead, and sung and played for them afterwards for hours, that he was an extremely talented young man. It had been a most successful evening, Miss Joanna had not even gone to sleep. And yet, with it all, in both sisters there was some innate distrust, some lingering prejudice perhaps, that prevented them from succumbing entirely to the charm of his handsome face and beautiful voice. They were civil to him--painfully civil; but they did not welcome him as they would have welcomed young Frank Courtenay, who used to stare at Elizabeth in church every Sunday, but had never apparently mustered up courage to come and see her. He was much under the influence of his mother, who considered Elizabeth's hair "conspicuous" and had remarked that it was bad taste for a young girl to be _too_ well dressed--a fault that could not in justice be alleged against her own daughters.

Elizabeth, too, might have welcomed the visits of young Courtenay. There had been times when she had doubted, sadly, if she were really so pretty as the girls at school had seemed to think. But these times were past, and she had not a thought to spare for Frank Courtenay's heavy, commonplace good looks. Paul Halleck had assured her many times that she was beautiful, and had sketched her in every variety of pose, in that impressionistic style which Elizabeth had secretly thought rather ugly, before she learned to regard it as the last word in Art.

Elizabeth had learned many other things in the last few weeks. Halleck undertook her education in all artistic and literary matters, showing her how little she had hitherto known of this or that great light. He quoted Swinburne and Rossetti; he read her extracts from Maeterlinck and Ibsen; he opened for her the treasures of that school which Nordau calls degenerate. He had all the intellectual and artistic jargon of the day at his tongue's end. She sat at his feet and devoutly learned it all.

She knew his history, now. It was very romantic, and it lost nothing in the telling. He had a keen eye for artistic effect, and spared not one sordid detail of his early surroundings which served to throw into more brilliant relief his subsequent career. He told how the possession of a lovely childish soprano had raised him literally from the gutter, and procured him a position as boy soloist in a Chicago church, and how, later on, a patron was found, who sent him abroad to study. He had wandered from one European centre to another; learned to play in Dresden and to paint in Paris, and developed a fine barytone voice, of which great things were prophesied. In fact, he was a universal genius, and could do anything, except apparently earn a living, which indeed has been always hard for genius. And so at last he drifted back to Chicago, where he sang for a while in the same church where he had begun his career; but finally left for some reason or another, and tried his fortune in New York. He was debating now whether to go abroad again to study in earnest for the stage, and meanwhile he was on a walking tour, sketching about the country. He had come to Bassett Mills for the sake of old associations, and had stayed--well, he left it to Elizabeth to imagine _why_ he stayed.

All this was very interesting and romantic; far more so, Elizabeth thought, than any ordinary affair could have been, with some commonplace youth of the neighborhood. She had only one regret; she could not help wishing in her heart that Paul's early surroundings had been, if not more exalted, less familiar. She would have preferred him to have no associations with, no friends at, Bassett Mills. The place seemed to her, as she drove through it that morning, so hopelessly common, so unusually prosaic. The ugly, sordid houses, the people with their faces of dull stolidity, jarred upon the ecstatic tone of her mood. She could not imagine that genius could be born in such surroundings.

The discordant note was still more striking when, having discharged the greater part of her commissions, she entered the dry-goods shop, and found Aunt Rebecca in her most trying humor.

"So that's you, Elizabeth," she said, looking her niece severely up and down, while her thin lips moved at the corners. "It seems to me you're very much dressed up, driving round these dusty roads. The way you wear white is a caution! But I suppose for a millionaire like you it don't matter about the washing."

Elizabeth bit her lip. "I'm not a millionaire, you know Aunt Rebecca," she said, "but I like to wear white, and it's as cheap as anything in the end. Is Amanda in?" she added quickly, anxious to stave off further criticism. "I'll go back and see her if she is."

"She's in the parlor," said Amanda's mother, shortly. "She's got a headache. I guess she don't feel like seeing company," she added hastily, but the words came too late. Elizabeth had already left the shop, and was crossing the narrow, dark little hall that led to the parlor. Her heart beat rapidly as she did so. She felt an odd, utterly irrational desire to feast her eyes on the spot where she had first experienced such new and delightful sensations.

There was no music in the room now, no air of festivity. The atmosphere was close and musty, the sun poured in at the window beside which Amanda sat sewing. She bent closely over her work, her skin was more pasty than ever and her eyes were red and swollen. Elizabeth remembered her aunt's words about the headache; otherwise she might have thought that her cousin had been crying. She went over and kissed her with a friendliness born of her own superabundant joy. The lips she touched were dry and hot. Amanda did not respond to the caress. She stared stupidly at Elizabeth, as if half dazed by her sudden entrance.

"How are you, Amanda?" Elizabeth said. "I'm sorry you have a headache. Perhaps it's the heat. It's a terribly hot day, and the roads are so dusty. Aunt Rebecca implied that my dress showed that very plainly. It was clean this morning--does it really look so badly?" She walked over to the mirror and inspected herself critically, setting her hat straight and adjusting the white ribbon about her throat. It was a long narrow glass, framed in black walnut, and there was a shelf underneath it, which supported a large sea-shell. The whole thing reminded her of a similar arrangement at her dressmaker's in town, and seemed in some way the crowning feature of the prosaic, painfully respectable character of the room. She hated to look at herself there--the glass brought out all one's defects. But to-day, in spite of the trying glare of the sunshine, her own image flashed back at her, so brilliantly fresh, in her white dimity gown, so redolent of health and beauty, that she could not help smiling back at it, as at some delightful apparition. Ah, yes, it was good to be young and pretty, and to have a lover waiting for one near by. Her eyes brightened unconsciously, and she gave a little caressing touch to the shining masses of wavy hair which stood out, like red molten gold, against the broad brim of her shady white hat.

The other girl sat and watched her.

"You like to look at yourself, don't you?" The words rang out harshly, suddenly. Elizabeth started and turned around. It seemed to her for a moment as if some third person had spoken--some one with a strange, mocking voice that she had never heard before. But there was no one else in the room.

"Yes, you like to look at yourself." Amanda went on after a pause, more quietly, "you think yourself a beauty, and a good many people, perhaps, might agree with you. _He_ tells you so, I suppose. I daresay he tells you your hair's picturesque--he used to tell me that about mine. He was going to paint my picture, but it went out of his head when he saw you. Most things did, I guess. He--he hasn't been here since." The girl's voice broke in a quick, convulsive sob, and she stopped for a moment, but went on almost immediately: "If you hadn't come in that day, it would have been all right. We were keeping company; every one in The Mills knew we were. All the girls were jealous of me--as if he'd have looked at them! Some of them work in the factory, there's many of them don't even have a piano and sit in their kitchens. I know what's genteel, even if I can't talk all that rubbish about music and Wagner that you learned at school. And what good will all that do you when you're married? What do you know about mending and sewing and cooking? What sort of a wife would you make him? You'd ruin him in a month with your fine clothes. But men are such fools!" She gave a short mirthless laugh, her eyes glittered strangely. Elizabeth stared at her paralyzed, glued to the spot in helpless fascination. She had never heard Amanda talk so much before. Her words came quickly, fiercely, one upon another, like some overwhelming torrent that had been suddenly let loose.

"Why should you have so much more than me? Why should you have fine clothes, and a carriage, and go to school in New York, and have the swells in the neighborhood call on you? Was your mother any better than mine, or a hundredth part as good? She wasn't even respectable; no decent people at The Mills would speak to her before your father married her--I know that for a fact. And then to give yourself airs!" Amanda stopped short, panting, exhausted by her own vehemence. Elizabeth still stood before her powerless. When Amanda spoke of her mother the color rushed into her white face, and she made an effort to speak; but the words seemed to die away on her lips. Amanda, after a moment's pause, went on.

"It isn't that I care so much about that; you might have had everything else, if you hadn't taken--him. Why did you come in that day looking like a dressed-up doll? You hadn't been here for weeks, and I was glad. I didn't want him to know you--I wasn't afraid of the other girls. But you who've got so much--couldn't you have had the decency to leave him alone? Couldn't you see that he was mine?"

"Amanda," Elizabeth gasped out. "I--I didn't know. I--I never thought"--Her brain reeled, she stammered painfully, trying in vain for words to vindicate herself from this shameful charge. Amanda brushed her aside contemptuously.

"You didn't think?--no, you never do, of anything but yourself, your pretty face and pretty clothes! You're selfish and spoiled--every one knows it; you've had every wish granted till you want everything, and you won't be satisfied with less. But what's the good of saying all this to you?" she broke off suddenly, with a sharp change of tone. "I must be crazy; I've felt so, I'm sure, these last weeks. It won't make any difference--nothing I say can bring him back. And yet he'd have married me--if you hadn't come." She went to Elizabeth and gripped her by the wrist. "He kissed me once," she said. "Has he kissed you yet?"

"No," said Elizabeth, mechanically, "no." She shrank away a little and set her teeth. Amanda's grasp was painful, but she would not have cried out for worlds.

"Well, when he does," Amanda said, "remember this--he kissed me first. You can't take that away from me--I have the first claim." She let go of Elizabeth's hands and fell back a step. There were two deep red marks from her grasp. "Now go," she said, "go to him. I knew you were going to him--I saw you thinking of it, and it made me hate you. Go to him and tell him that I hope his love for you will last as long as it did for me." She laughed again harshly and then suddenly burst into violent weeping. "Oh, it's ignominious," she said, "it's contemptible. No one can despise me more than I do myself. I haven't any pride. I hate him--I hate him; yet I'd take him back now, if he'd come to me." She sank down on the sofa and hid her face in the red plush cushions, while her whole frame shook with convulsive sobs.

Elizabeth stood still in the middle of the floor. Mechanically she glanced at her reflection in the mirror; white, distraught, with startled eyes--a ghastly parody of the brilliant vision which had smiled back at her only a few minutes before. The hot sunlight, flooding the commonplace little room, seemed to bring out, with glaring vividness, all the tragic, sordid elements of the scene. A quarrel between two women about a lover! Could anything be more hopelessly vulgar and grotesque?

It was the sting of this thought that finally roused Elizabeth to speech. She raised her head with sudden haughtiness, and her words came clearly and fluently. "I don't know what you mean, Amanda," she said "by this scene. If there is any one whom you--you think I have taken from you, you can have him back to-morrow so far as I am concerned. I don't want any other woman's lover. It--it would be base. Whatever else you think me, I'm not--that. If it is Paul Halleck whom you mean, you can marry him, if you wish, to-morrow. At least you may be sure of one thing, that I never will." Her low, vehement voice died away, and she waited for an answer; but none came. Amanda only sobbed on hysterically, her face buried in the sofa-cushions.

Elizabeth stood looking at her for a moment, with a feeling in which pity, anger and repulsion were strangely mingled; then she hastily left the room by the door that led directly to the street. She had presence of mind enough to avoid the shop and her aunt's unfriendly eyes. She reached the carriage, and--un-heard-of thing--touched the white pony with the whip.

_Chapter VII_

They had left the last house behind; they were out in the open country. Elizabeth dropped the reins and let her tears flow unchecked--hot, blinding tears, the bitterest she had ever shed. At each familiar tree and landmark she sobbed with redoubled violence. Only an hour before she had driven along this same road in the ecstatic glow of her first romance. Now all the bloom had been rubbed from that romance, all the glory faded from the hero of her dreams; she herself was a woman who had been insulted, humiliated, dragged in the dust.

By degrees a few coherent phrases detached themselves from the confused mass of painful recollections, and stung more sharply than the rest. "My mother better than yours--she wasn't even respectable; no decent people would speak to her" ... Oh, it was too bad--too bad; she had not thought it was so bad as that. Amanda must have exaggerated--she would ask her aunts; but no, no she would never speak of that interview to a soul. It was humiliating enough as it was.... "He kissed me once. Has he kissed you yet?" No, thank Heaven! that indignity had been spared her. They had hovered as yet on the borderland of love; she had put off the inevitable declaration with instinctive coquetry, a vague unwillingness to be won too easily. She was glad now--glad and thankful; he did not know that she cared,--he should never know. She had no love for the man who had kissed Amanda.... "Selfish and spoiled--thinking only of herself?" Yes, she might be all that; but at least she would not take another woman's lover. The words "it would be base," rang in her ears. Had she spoken them, or Amanda? At all events, they were true. It would be base to marry Halleck now. In fact, she did not wish to marry him. It was he who had involved her in this horrible, sordid misery. Her aunts were right; there must be distinctions of classes. Had her father remembered this, people would not have it in their power to insult his daughter now.

Through all her complex feelings ran a sharp sense of anger against Amanda, mingled strangely with an involuntary pity, almost with an understanding of her point of view. It was not based on justice, but on fellow feeling. Amanda had resented her superiority; she, Elizabeth, knew what that was. She had felt the same herself, when smarting impotently under the patronizing friendliness of the other girls in the Neighborhood, and then had turned, with unconscious snobbery, to play the same part towards Amanda. The incongruous, grotesque humor of the situation struck her suddenly, and she laughed out loud in bitter irony. She had envied the other girls of the Neighborhood, Amanda had envied her, the girls at Bassett Mills had envied Amanda. Strange net-work of classes in a democratic country, of distinctions the more galling for their intangibility. Of one thing Elizabeth was convinced, that she could never herself "put on airs" as Amanda had said, again; there was not a girl in the whole countryside, blessed with a good mother, who could not look down on her, if she pleased.

Her tears were falling now so fast and blinding that she could not see the road; she was not even conscious that they had reached the spot where the white pony stopped now of his own accord. And even as he did so, a young man stepped forward and grasped the reins which had fallen from Elizabeth's nerveless hand; a tall, fair young man who had been standing for the last half hour, scanning anxiously, with his bright blue eyes, the glaring dusty road.

"Elizabeth," said Halleck (he had called her that for five happy days) "Elizabeth, why are you so late? And, for Heaven's sake, what's the matter?"

Elizabeth looked up and with great effort, stopped crying; but otherwise she made no sign of pleasure in his presence or even of recognition. She put up one hand, indeed, and straightened her hat, but this was a purely mechanical concession to the force of habit. She knew that her face was flushed and tear-stained, her eyes red and swollen; she was sure that she looked an absolute fright, and she did not care. She was past caring, at least for the moment.

"Elizabeth," Halleck repeated, more and more bewildered, "what is the matter? I've been waiting for you an hour. You've been crying," he added, stating unnecessarily an obvious fact. "Won't you tell me what it is?"

"Nothing--nothing," Elizabeth answered at last, in a voice that was still thick and choked with sobs. "I haven't been crying or," struck by the futility of denial, she added hastily "if I have it--it's no matter. Will you please let me pass?" She tried to take the reins from his hands, but he grasped them firmly, and laid the other hand on the bar of the wagon.

"Won't you let me pass?" she repeated stubbornly.

"Not till you tell me what's the matter."

He eyed her coolly, determinedly, all the habit of power depicted on the lines of his handsome face. She stared back at him defiantly, with her tear-swollen eyes. Her whole attitude breathed the spirit of rebellion; a spirit new in their intercourse. Halleck saw it, at the same time that he noted the disfiguring marks of tears on her face. Oddly enough, he had never admired her so much.

Nevertheless, he was determined to remain master of the situation. He glanced up and down the road; there were never many people passing, but it was not safe to rely on this fact.

"We can't talk here," he said. "Come into the field."

"I don't wish to," she said, stubbornly. "I'm going home."

He fixed his eyes upon her. "You shall not go home," he said quietly, "till you have told me all about it." She sat immovable, her pouting under lip thrust out in a way that she had sometimes, in moments of obstinacy and displeasure. She did not meet his eyes. "Don't be childish," Paul said, pleasantly, after a moment. "You know you must tell me what it is."

She looked up reluctantly, and met his steady gaze, under which she turned first white, then red, and slowly, as if fascinated, rose from her seat. Yet still her words were unyielding. "We may as well have it out at once," she said, coldly.

Halleck could not repress a thrill of triumph. It was sweet to test his power over this beautiful, high-spirited girl, to feel her will, her intellect, like wax in his hands. But he tried not to show this consciousness in his face. She was in a strange mood; he did not understand her. Gravely and respectfully he helped her to scale the stone wall, which separated the meadow from the road. Her hand barely rested on his, and her eyes were averted carefully, but he paid no heed. He fastened the white pony to a tree, then slowly and thoughtfully followed Elizabeth across the field.

The noon-day sun beat down upon them in all its scorching brilliancy; it was pleasant to gain the shade of their usual trysting-place. Here the little brook, which had rippled and sparkled over stones and moss all the way from the mill-stream, formed itself into a quiet pool, over which weeping willows spread out long branches, and seemed to admire their own reflection in the cool green mirror beneath. Elizabeth took her usual seat on a fallen moss-covered log, drawing, as she did so, her white skirts about her, with what seemed an involuntary gesture of repulsion, and Halleck, who was about to place himself beside her, flushed and bit his lip. After a moment's hesitation, he threw himself down sullenly on the grass a little way off.

"Tell me," he said, in a tone that was the more determined for this little episode "tell me now what the matter is."

Elizabeth's eyes were fixed upon the cool, green water at her feet. "I don't know why you think," she said, slowly "that it has anything to do with you."

"Not when you are a full hour late for our appointment? Not when you treat me like an outcast? Oh, Elizabeth,"--the young man's voice softened suddenly, skillfully--"how can you trifle with me so, when I love you?"

He caught, or thought he did, a quiver in her face, although her eyes were still resolutely bent upon the pool. "Yes, I love you," he repeated. "I've loved you, I believe, ever since the day you came into that horrid, stuffy little room, looking like an angel--with that hair and that skin--so different from Amanda."--

He stopped as an indignant wave of color flamed in Elizabeth's cheeks. "How can you speak of Amanda--like that?" she broke out passionately, "when you loved her too, or told her so at least, when you said the same things no doubt to her that you are saying now to me?"

A light broke in upon Paul. In his relief he laughed out loud. "Amanda," he said. "Amanda! So she has been talking to you? And you believed all the nonsense she told you? And that is why you acted so strangely. I thought it was something serious!" And he laughed again in sheer light-heartedness. So all this had been only jealous pique, after all.

The gloom on Elizabeth's face did not lighten. "You seem to find the idea amusing," she said, coldly. "I do not."

"Because you don't understand how absurd it is. I never made love to Amanda--if she made love to me"--Paul stopped, warned by a curious stiffening in Elizabeth's attitude that he was on dangerous ground. She was not like other girls whom he had known--he had noticed this before; she required special treatment. "My dear child," he said, in a calm, argumentative tone "really you are a little hard on me. A man can't measure every word he says to a girl. I may have paid Amanda a few compliments, flirted with her a little, if you insist upon it, but--that's not a crime, is it? And I never gave her a thought, I hardly remembered her existence, after I had once--seen you." There was unmistakable sincerity in his voice. "Look at me, Elizabeth," he went on anxiously, "look at me, and tell me that you believe me."

Elizabeth raised her troubled eyes to his. "I--I don't know," she said, slowly. She did believe him--to some extent, at least. But what he told her did not alter the fact that it was she who had taken him away from Amanda, that, but for her, he might have been her cousin's admirer still. And that, after all, had been the substance of Amanda's accusation.

"Tell me the truth," she said, suddenly "if I had not come in that day--if you had never seen me, would you--would you have married Amanda?" She fixed her eager eyes upon his face, and waited breathless for his answer. He gave it with a light laugh.

"Marry Amanda!" he declared, "well, hardly! Such an idea never entered my head."

"Then," said Elizabeth, slowly "you deceived her."

He shrugged his shoulders. "She deceived herself, I think," he said. "It's not my fault if she--imagined things. Why should I marry a girl like that? She's not pretty, she's stupid, ignorant. Bah, don't talk to me of Amanda." He disposed of the matter with a wave of the hand and another light laugh. Elizabeth felt a sudden conviction of the absurdity of her own behavior. The painful, scorching flush in her cheeks was beginning to cool; the burning, angry shame in her heart was dying away. The remembrance of Amanda's words grew fainter; Paul's handsome face, his air of triumphant health and life, were again in the ascendent.

He saw the yielding in her eyes and brought out his most effective argument. He took boldly the seat beside her on the log and though she shrank away, it was not, he thought, entirely with aversion. "My darling," he said, "don't let trifles come between us. I love you, you love me; isn't that enough? Elizabeth, you are the most beautiful woman in the world. Elizabeth, dearest" ... He put out his arm and drew her towards him. She still shrank away, fascinated yet trembling, frightened at this new delight, this thrill of pleasure in his touch.

"Don't," she gasped out, "Amanda"--He stopped her protest with a kiss.

And it was not till later, when she reached home, that she thought again of Amanda's words: "Remember, he kissed me _first_."

_Chapter VIII_

Miss Cornelia and Miss Joanna sat at the breakfast-table and looked aghast at Elizabeth, who had just informed them of her engagement. The old Dutch clock on the mantel-piece ticked loudly, the sunlight fell in shining bars upon the snowy table-cloth, the old Dutch china, the glistening silver. Miss Cornelia was reminded forcibly, painfully, of a morning in that same room many years ago, when Peter had announced his marriage. Now the shock was not so great, was not unexpected, perhaps; but it brought with it, if less horror, an even greater disappointment.

"Well," Elizabeth said, after a moment, when her important announcement had produced no response, and she looked proudly, yet half wistfully, from one to the other. "Well," she repeated, "have you nothing to say? Can't you--congratulate me?" Her voice faltered over the last words.

"My dear," Miss Cornelia tried bravely to respond to the appeal in the girl's tone. "Of course, we--we wish you every happiness," she stammered out. She stopped, for tears choked her voice. She looked despairingly at her sister. Was this the moment that they had so often talked of together, planning with delicious thrills of pleasure all they would say and do? "This china must be Elizabeth's when--when she marries, you know." "We must lay by a little for--for Elizabeth's trousseau." This in demure whispers to each other, for they would not for the world have suggested such a possibility to the girl herself. Nice girls, of course, must not think of getting married till the time came, but--with Elizabeth's beauty, that time could not be long delayed, not even in the Neighborhood. The fairy prince would appear some day; though he had never come to them, they believed devoutly that he would come to Elizabeth. And now--and now--the fairy prince had come, or Elizabeth thought so; but they were only conscious of an overwhelming sense of doubt.

"You know so little about him, my dear," Miss Cornelia could not help at last protesting.

Elizabeth opened her eyes wide in genuine surprise. "So little of him," she repeated. "Why, I--I know everything, Aunt Cornelia." And she smiled to herself in silent amusement. Had she not seen him, every day and twice a day, for a matter of four weeks. How long did they think, these older women, that it took to know a man? "I know that he loves me," she said, after a moment, descending to further particulars "and I love him, and that's enough."

"But you can't live on love," urged Miss Joanna, practically. "You must have some money, you know, and I shouldn't think he, poor young man, had anything--at least, judging by his clothes. Those artists never have, they say. And meat, and everything indeed, never was so dear as it is now."

"I didn't know you were so worldly, Aunt Joanna," said Elizabeth, loftily. "Do you want me to marry for money?" Miss Joanna was crushed. But as she reflected in her own justification, one had to have something to eat, let lovers say what they would.

"My dear," said Miss Cornelia, coming to the rescue with the little air of dignity that she could sometimes assume "we certainly wouldn't want you--not for the world--to marry for money. But one has to be--to be prudent. We have brought you up in a way--perhaps it was unwise--poor Mother would have thought so. But at any rate you know nothing about economy, and--and you have only a little money, my dear, and he, I suppose, has nothing."

"He--he expects to make a great deal of money soon," faltered Elizabeth, coming down a little from her heights of romance. All this prudence was like a dash of cold water in the face. She felt disconcerted, indignant, and yet conscious, through it all of some reason in her aunts' objections. Yes, it was true--she had not been brought up to economy, she was fond of luxury and pretty things. In all her wishes for change, she had never thought that it would be amusing to miss any of these.

Miss Cornelia saw that she had produced some effect. "I think," she went on, still speaking with unusual decision, "that the most important thing is to find out something about him. You can't marry a man whom we know nothing about, except that--that he was born at The Mills. We must investigate his character." Miss Cornelia felt, as she brought out this last sentence, that it sounded eminently practical, and it received from Miss Joanna, indeed, its full meed of respectful admiration. Elizabeth only smiled superior.

"You can investigate as much as you like, Aunt Cornelia," she said. "I know all about him." And so the matter rested.

But how could two elderly and innocent spinsters, who had never in their lives stirred two hundred miles from home, investigate the character of a young man who had lived in Chicago and Paris and Vienna and all the four quarters of the world apparently? They had no idea how to set about it. In this perplexity Miss Cornelia again rose to the occasion, and suggested that the Rector might be a fit substitute for that invaluable possession "a man in the family," who is always supposed to accomplish so much. And the Rector, when consulted, proved unexpectedly resourceful. He had made Paul's acquaintance, and learned the name of the church in Chicago where he had sung for so many years. He had discovered, too, that the Rector of this church was an old college friend of his, and he wrote to him at once, requesting full and confidential information as to the young man's character, antecedents, and prospects.

The answer seemed to the poor ladies a long time in coming; as a matter of fact, it arrived very promptly. The Rector of St. Anne's at Chicago regretted to inform his old friend and colleague the Rector of St. Mary's, at Bassett Mills, that he had no good account to give of Paul Halleck, who had not long ago been dismissed from the choir of his church, and had left behind him in Chicago many debts and a bad reputation. The young man was believed to have, as the Rector added, genuine musical talent; but like many artists and musicians, he was morally irresponsible, dissipated and reckless.

The Rector of St. Mary's repeated the verdict, as gently as he could, to the older ladies at the Homestead. They bore it better than he expected. There were compensations indeed in the very extent of its severity. Had Halleck been less evidently and irredeemably a black sheep, there might have been some doubts as to their own duty; but, as it was, they felt that they must break off the dreadful match at once, and at any cost.

Yet the heart of each sister misgave her as they sat in a solemn conclave, and summoned Elizabeth before it. She came, rosy, bright-eyed, fresh from talks with her lover and happy dreams of a brilliant future, which they were to share together. She stood listening in apparent indifference, while Miss Cornelia faltered out the painful result of their inquiries. And when the worst was told, she had turned perhaps a trifle pale, but otherwise she seemed unmoved.

"I don't know why you tell me all this, auntie," she said, slowly. "I--I am sorry to hear it, but it can make no difference."

"No difference!" Miss Cornelia repeated, stupefied. "No difference, Elizabeth?"

"No, it can't change my love for him," she said, defiantly. "He told me that he has enemies at Chicago, and that you would probably unearth a lot of old scandals; and I promised that it should make no difference. Perhaps some of them are true; I don't care. Auntie, I can't--I can't give him up," she went on with a sudden change of tone and clasping her hands appealingly. "I tried to once before, and--I couldn't. If he were to go away now and leave me, I--I should die. I couldn't bear to go on living without him." The girl's face was flushed, her voice tremulous with feeling; it was evident that she fully meant--or thought that she meant--what she said. Her aunts looked at her in helpless perplexity.

"My darling," Miss Cornelia faltered at last, "think how much better it is to give him up now than to--to marry him and be unhappy. You don't know--men are very bad;--one reads such things in the newspapers. If he were to ill-treat you, desert you."

"Ah, but he won't," said Elizabeth, smiling incredulously. "You needn't worry, Aunt Cornelia; we shall be very happy. But even if we were not," she concluded, with a sudden burst of defiance. "If I thought that he would beat me, treat me like a dog--I don't care; I should marry him to-morrow."

And she thrust out her full under lip, and stood facing them, with a look of obstinacy on her fair, girlish face, that for the moment bore a strong resemblance to her father.

To Miss Cornelia's mind there rose again, with startling vividness, the events of twenty years before. The recollection seemed to endow her with an unwonted and unnatural strength. She went over to where Elizabeth stood and took both the girl's hot hands in hers.

"Elizabeth," she said, desperately, "you don't know what you're saying. You will be miserable if you marry that man. You don't know what it is to live with a person who is beneath you, who--who drags you down. We know, my darling, we have seen it. Be warned by us, and give him up."

Miss Cornelia had never in all her gentle life spoken with so much vehemence. Elizabeth, in her astonishment, stood for a moment absolutely passive. She stole a glance at Miss Joanna; she was weeping quietly. Elizabeth's own face worked, her lip quivered. "I know whom you mean," she broke out, suddenly, in a quick hard voice. "You're thinking of my mother." And then, in the dismayed pause that followed, she dragged her hands away from Miss Cornelia's grasp and fled from the room.

The two older women looked at one another in silence.

"I didn't know," Miss Joanna said at last in a low, awe-struck tone "that the child knew anything about--about poor Malvina."

_Chapter IX_

"And so you let all this nonsense influence you?" Halleck asked this bitterly, staring up with moody eyes into Elizabeth's face. They were sitting under a wide-spreading tree, in a field not far from the Homestead. It was late afternoon and the shadows were long and peaceful. A ray from the sinking sun shot through the foliage overhead lighting up the red tints of Elizabeth's hair. Halleck's artistic eye rested upon them fascinated. He had never, as he told himself, been so much in love before.

"You give me up because of a little opposition?" he went on bitterly, roused to increased irritation by the thought of losing her.

"Why, what can I do?" The girl's voice was weary, and she threw out her hands with a helpless gesture. "They will give in to me, I suppose, if I insist; but it makes them too unhappy. I believe it would kill them. If they were unkind, I shouldn't care; but they only cry, and are so wretched, and I can't stand it. It makes me feel so ungrateful."

"And yet," said Halleck, anxiously, "you think they will give in in the end?"

"Oh, yes, they'll give in," said Elizabeth, wearily. "They'll give in, if I insist; and that's the very reason why I--what makes it so hard, you see."

"No, I don't see," said Paul, bluntly. "If you think they will give in, why are you so unhappy? But I understand how it is" he went on, harshly, "you don't love me. I'm too far beneath you--a Bohemian and an outcast. You are glad of an excuse to throw me over."

"Paul!" The indignant color flushed into Elizabeth's face. "How can you say such things," she asked reproachfully. "You know they are not true. I told my aunts that I would never give you up; I told them that--that I would marry you to-morrow, if I could."

"You told them that?" Paul exclaimed exultantly. He put his arm around her and drew her towards him. "Then keep your word, darling," he said. "Marry me to-morrow."

Elizabeth shrank away, startled. "Marry you," she repeated. "To-morrow, how could I?"

"Why not," said Paul, quietly. "Come up to Cranston and we will be married. Then let them say what they please."

Elizabeth was very pale. "I couldn't do that," she said in a low voice. "I don't want to be married so soon; and besides--it would kill my aunts."

He laughed. "Nonsense! People soon resign themselves to what they can't help. And then they needn't know--yet awhile. Listen, darling, this is my plan. You know that I want to go abroad--well, I have had a letter offering me a position in an opera company in Munich. If I accept it I start this week."

He stopped as Elizabeth gave a little cry and stared up at him with reproachful eyes. "This week," she said. "You go away this week?"

"Why, I can't stay here forever, you know," Paul said. "I've idled away my time unconscionably already--but that is your fault, Elizabeth. Now it is time I went to work. And that is why I say--marry me before I go. Then, while I am away, nothing can separate us."

Elizabeth, pale and thoughtful, seemed to ponder the suggestion. "Marry you," she repeated, slowly. "Marry you--now at once?"

"Yes, to-morrow," said Paul, boldly.

"And--and keep it _secret_?" she went on, with a troubled look.

"Yes, for a little while," said Paul, "for a few months, till I come back. I shall have made my name and my fortune, darling, I hope, by that time, and your aunts will be quite reconciled to me."

"Then wouldn't it be better," said Elizabeth, with much reason, "to wait till then?"

"Are you willing to wait--in uncertainty all this time?" he asked, reproachfully. "Ah, Elizabeth, it is evident that you don't love me as I love you. Such an absence would be unbearable to me, if I felt that some lover was likely to come along at any time and take you from me."

Elizabeth could not help reflecting that the danger of such a catastrophe did not seem imminent, in the present condition of the Neighborhood; but she did not put the thought into words. She only said, with some dignity: "I don't think that I am the sort of girl to change so easily."

"Ah, you can't tell," said Paul. "Women are fickle beings. I don't trust you, Elizabeth. I have a feeling that, if you don't marry me now, you never will. And why should you hesitate?" he went on eagerly. "It isn't so much that I ask. I don't even say--come abroad with me now; only give me the certainty that when I come back, I shall be able to claim you."

"You would have that certainty now," she still insisted. "I promise that I will marry you when you come back."

"Then why not marry me now," he asked, triumphantly.

Elizabeth could give no good reason to the contrary. The idea was vaguely alarming, yet it held for her a certain fascination. She sat listening in troubled uncertainty, while Paul discoursed with enthusiasm over the many advantages of his plan. He was exceedingly anxious, as he had said, to make sure of this beautiful girl, who was, he vaguely felt, a little above him--of a grade superior to that of the other girls whom he had known and made love to, for the space of a fortnight perhaps. He had been true to Elizabeth, now, for more than double that time. He really believed that he should be true to her always. There were other things that attracted him besides her beauty. The thought that Elizabeth was Miss Van Vorst of the Homestead was not unpleasant to him; the old house, the family silver, the family traditions, appealed to his artistic sense of fitness. And then though he was no fortune-hunter, and certainly would have made love to no girl whom he did not for the moment at least sincerely admire, he admitted to himself, frankly, that it was by no means inconvenient that Elizabeth should have a little money of her own and the prospect of more in the future. The Van Vorst property, while it was insignificant enough when measured by the standard of the Van Antwerps and other rich people in the Neighborhood, seemed by no means contemptible to Paul, who measured it by the standard of poverty-stricken Bohemia.

Elizabeth's feelings were more complex, less frankly selfish, much more anxious and uncertain. The money question did not enter into them to any great extent, though she had an instinctive dread of poverty, and she was convinced that, if once married to Paul, she would not be able to have the pretty gowns, and other luxurious trifles, which had hitherto seemed a necessity of life. But she was young and romantic, and this thought did not weigh with her very much. What most distressed her, and made her feel in some way vaguely in the wrong, was the trouble this, her first love affair, seemed to bring to others; to her aunts, to Amanda. She loved her aunts, and hated to run counter to their wishes; she did not love Amanda, and yet the thought of having injured her, though unconsciously, brought with it an uncomfortable sense of guilt.

She had not seen her since that terrible interview, which she still could not recall without a feeling of humiliation; but she had seen her aunt, who told her that Amanda was ill with some low fever--typhoid malaria, probably; there was always a good deal of that at The Mills. It was not considered wise that Elizabeth should see her; and besides, Amanda was delirious, and did not recognize any one. Elizabeth was more relieved than sorry to hear it. No doubt, she told herself, Amanda was already out of her head when she uttered that extraordinary outburst, and it was foolish to attach any importance to what she said in her feverish excitement. Still, Elizabeth did not like to think of it, much less of the promise she herself had given, voluntarily, in such forcible words. She had been so absolutely sincere in making it; she had broken it so completely within the hour. The whole affair was unpleasant, and weighed upon her more than those more serious charges against Paul, which had fallen vaguely upon her ear, not seeming to make any deep impression. His conduct to Amanda was at its worst a mere trifle in comparison.

Still she could not give him up. That broken promise to Amanda only proved this the more strongly. She could not face the prospect of life without him. And yet she could not face without terrible misgivings the prospect of further tears and remonstrances from her aunts. The two claims struggled for the mastery; on the one hand, the claims of the women who had brought her up, whose every thought for twenty years had centred in her; on the other, the claims of the man who had loved her in his light way some five weeks. Under these circumstances, it was inevitable that the claims of the man should predominate. And yet Elizabeth longed to satisfy them both.

Paul's plan seemed to suggest a compromise. And Elizabeth had not yet learned that compromise is never satisfactory to either side.

"Listen," she said, looking at him intently, with eyes that seemed to hold, even in the moment of yielding, a certain defiance of his power, "If I do as you wish, if I--I marry you to-morrow, I am free to--to come home at once, to go on with my life as if nothing were changed--not to tell my aunts, not to tell any one, till you come back? Do you promise this, on your word of honor?"

For a moment Paul hesitated. He had hardly expected her to yield so easily; perhaps if he pressed the matter she might be persuaded even to go abroad with him at once. But there were financial reasons which made that inexpedient just then. On the whole, Paul decided not to test his power too far.

"Upon my word of honor," he said, looking her steadily in the face "I promise that you shall be free as air, to go on with your life as you please, till I come back to claim you."

And so the thing was settled. Paul was to go to Cranston early the next morning to make all necessary arrangements; Elizabeth was to follow him a little later. They were to be married at once. Then Paul was to take an afternoon train for New York, Elizabeth was to return home, the whole affair should remain a secret.

Then Paul, radiantly triumphant, clasped Elizabeth in his arms, and pressed his lips to hers.

"To-morrow," he whispered, "to-morrow, my darling, at this time--though the world won't know it--still you will be my wife."

A strange feeling thrilled Elizabeth. She could not have told if it were pleasure, or some involuntary presentiment. But aloud she repeated mechanically: "Yes, I shall be your wife."

"You won't fail me, dearest," he said, scanning her face eagerly. "You won't break your word? You have promised--you won't fail me?"

"No," Elizabeth answered, "I have promised--I won't fail you."

And yet the thought crossed her mind irrelevantly, that she had broken a promise once already.