Chapter III: Part 3

She left him and went home through the stillness and the fast gathering shadows of the evening. The days were already growing shorter. She noted the fact mechanically; noted too that the deep glowing crimson of the sunset foretold a hot day for the morrow. She entered the house and looked in at the dining-room; the table was set out for tea with all the wonted care. Her aunts sat each at one end; they were neither of them eating and both had red eyes. In the centre of the table stood Elizabeth's favorite cake--the kind with the raisins in it, which she used to beg for as a child, and which was reserved either as a reward for virtue, or for consolation in some childish trouble. Now in this trouble that was so far from childish, poor Miss Joanna had bethought herself of the old attention, and brought out the favorite cake as the only means of comfort within her power. Elizabeth could not see it without a lump in her throat.

She smoothed her ruffled hair before the glass and came in quietly to her usual place at the table. They looked up nervously at her entrance, but neither spoke; they did not reproach her with being late or ask where she had been. Miss Joanna pressed upon her the various dainties, reminding her that she had eaten no dinner; otherwise the meal was a silent one. It was not till near the end of it that Elizabeth spoke in a strained harsh voice unlike her own.

"Paul is going away." That was what she said. "He--has an engagement to go abroad. He goes to New York to-morrow. I--I hope you are satisfied."

And then she stopped, for the look of tremulous relief on both their faces was almost more than she could bear. The raisins in her favorite cake seemed suddenly to choke her. She began to doubt, after all, whether she would go to Cranston the next day.

_Chapter X_

This was Elizabeth's last thought that night; it was her first in the morning. She dressed herself carefully, putting on white, according to the custom which had aroused Aunt Rebecca's criticism; and all the while she asked of the reflection that stared back at her with perplexed eyes out of the mirror: "Shall I go, or shall I not?" She put the question to a rose when she got down-stairs, repeating as she ruthlessly destroyed each petal. "Yes, no, yes, no?" But the flower answered with a "no," and she threw away the last petal in disgust.

"I think I shall drive over to The Mills this morning," she announced quietly at the breakfast-table. "There is some ribbon I want to match." Her aunts looked up startled. They wondered simultaneously at what hour Halleck was to leave for New York. Yet what if after all the child wished for one last meeting?

"You don't think it's--it's too hot to go over there to-day, my dear?" Miss Cornelia ventured at last uncertainly.

"No, I don't mind the heat," Elizabeth answered indifferently, as she sat playing with her knife and fork. She was very pale and had no appetite. This seemed to them only natural. They hoped that when the young man were once out of the way, their darling would be herself again.

"We must take her to the sea-shore for a little while," Miss Cornelia observed when Elizabeth had left the room. "She needs change of air." Miss Joanna cheerfully assented. The idea and the sacrifice which it involved (since to go away from home, even for a few weeks, seemed a terrible undertaking) consoled them both greatly.

And meanwhile Elizabeth went her own way. It was not till she was seated in the carriage about to start on her drive, that she observed as if by an afterthought: "Oh, by the way, if I can't match the ribbon at The Mills, I may go to Cranston for it by the trolley, so don't be worried if I don't come back till late, and don't wait dinner." Her aunts looked at one another questioningly; but she drove off at once, before they could offer any objections.

And so Elizabeth drove towards Bassett Mills. The day was dry and hot, as were most days that summer. The sun beat down out of a brazen sky, the roads were white with dust, the grass in the fields was sere and brown. The locusts all along the way kept up a loud, exultant song, the burden of which was heat.

To Elizabeth, as she drove on, there began to be something ominous in it all; in the heat and the dust and the dazzling sunshine and the locusts with their eternal noise. They seemed all part, and she with them of some horrible nightmare; she was under some spell which benumbed her, deprived her of the capacity for thought, of all but the power to keep doggedly on the way to Bassett Mills. What she should do when she got there she did not know; her brain was torpid, there was a strange ringing in her ears. It was the sun, no doubt, that was affecting her head; it would be wise to turn back, or she might be ill. But still she kept on.

It was not far from noon when she reached Bassett Mills. There was little life about the place this hot morning; the mill-stream even seemed to dash less tumultuously, and showed signs of running dry. A group of men stood outside the drug-store, which was a great meeting-place, and discussed the drought. It was decided that if it continued the crops would be ruined; but hopes were founded on the fact that prayers for rain were to be offered in all the churches on Sunday.

"But there's not much use praying for rain," said one skeptic, "when the wind's due west."

Elizabeth heard the words as she drove up, and, alighting tied the white pony to a post and bribed a small boy to "keep an eye" on him. Then she joined the group in front of the shop, who were some waiting for the trolley, others merely passing the time of day. She did not go into the dry-goods shop to try to match her ribbon; she knew that such ribbon as she wanted was not to be had at Bassett Mills. She stood idly listening to the men's conversation, and wondering if it were indeed true, as the skeptic had declared, that it was useless to pray for an event already determined by natural causes. She had been brought up to believe implicitly in the efficacy of prayer, and had added to her usual formula that morning a petition of unwonted fervor that she might be enabled in this perplexing situation to decide for the best. But perhaps there was no use in praying; perhaps one was not a free agent. Fate, she thought, had evidently determined that she should go to Cranston that morning to be married, since it was a thing that might so easily have been prevented--by an objection from her aunts, an offer of company on the expedition, even by the white pony going lame; she would have yielded, or so she thought, to the merest trifle, glad to have the decision taken out of her hands. But everything had been made easy; it evidently was to be. And an implicit believer in heredity might have observed that the matter had been decided for her, by events and influences which had moulded her character even before she was born. It was in just such clandestine fashion as this that her parents had once gone up to Cranston to be married; and it might be that some mysterious hereditary instinct, some force over which she had no control, was now constraining their daughter, under the same circumstances, to act in the same way.

Elizabeth, fortunately or otherwise, did not think of this. She only knew that she was standing outside the drug-store with the other loiterers, straining her eyes along the dusty white road for a sight of the trolley; and that, even while she doubted the wisdom of waiting, some fascination held her rooted to the spot. When the trolley came she took her seat at once. After all a trip to Cranston meant nothing; she might simply buy her ribbon and come back.

The trolley started off fast and jerkily, creating a teasing wind, that seemed to blow from some fiery furnace. Elizabeth clutched her hat with one hand, while with the other she tried to shield her eyes from the flying dust and glare. Soon they were past the cemetery and the straggling outskirts of Bassett Mills, out into the open country, with rolling meadow and upland on either side, all withered, scorching under the sun's fierce rays. An occasional wagon met them, wrapped in a cloud of dust; the trolley was hailed now and then from some solitary farm-house, and came to a sudden stop. The ride seemed endless, but that they were approaching Cranston was at last made evident by unmistakable signs; by the advertisements staring at them from trunks of trees and the expanse of stone walls; by the asphalt pavement that succeeded the rough country road, the increasing quantity of bicycles, carriages and dust; and finally by the neat rows of Queen Anne villas, with their gabled fronts and terraced gardens sloping to the road. Then the car, with a last triumphant jerk, turned a corner and landed its passengers squarely in the High Street of Cranston.

Elizabeth alighted rather limply, and stood looking about her in a dazed sort of way. A country woman laden with parcels addressed her timidly. "Excuse me miss," she said, "but would you tell me the best place to go for stockings?"

Elizabeth started and stared at her, as if the simple question had been put in Hebrew. Then in a moment she recovered herself and directed the woman very civilly. She watched her bustle off upon her round of errands, then turned and slowly walked into the confectioner's shop. It was there that she had promised to meet Paul.

There was no one, as it happened, in the front part of the shop, where candy and cake were sold; no one in the little restaurant at the back. Elizabeth sat down at one of the small marble-topped tables; her head was aching, her eyes blood-shot, she was conscious of nothing but a feeling of pleasure in the coolness and darkness, of relief from the outside glare. Mechanically, she glanced at the small mirror, that hung at an unbecoming angle opposite on the wall, and felt a slight shock at the sight of herself--pale, worn, with blood-shot eyes, her white gown dusty and bedraggled. No, she did not look well--she had never looked worse in her life. Her lips curled in an unmirthful smile, as she thought irrelevantly of Aunt Rebecca, and of how she might have held forth on the folly of wearing white for such a dusty ride. And thereupon with a sudden pang, came the thought of Amanda--Amanda, tossing no doubt just then in the delirium of fever. The unpleasant idea struck Elizabeth of a resemblance between her own white face in the mirror, and her cousin's face as she had last seen it, with those staring, red-rimmed eyes. Certainly, there was a latent family likeness; but it took unbecoming conditions such as these to bring it out. She wondered languidly if any one else had ever noticed it.

Poor Amanda! Was she still, in her delirium, fretting over Paul? Or was she, perhaps, secure in Elizabeth's promise, and the pleasure of having separated them? What would she think if she knew that Elizabeth was even now waiting for him here in Cranston--waiting to be married to him? But with this thought the spell of indifference which had rested upon Elizabeth seemed suddenly to fall away, and there swept over her a sudden sense of revolt, of shame and repulsion. She started impulsively to her feet. No, she could not be married--not in that way; it was clandestine, disgraceful. There was still time to escape. If only she could reach home, without seeing Paul! She made one quick, blinded rush for the door, and then, a tall figure stood in her way, and her hands were seized in a man's eager grasp. His handsome, exultant face looked into hers.

"My brave girl," he said. "So you have not failed me."

_Chapter XI_

Elizabeth with a great effort wrenched her hands away from Paul's grasp, and fell against one of the marble-topped tables. Her face was white, her dull eyes looked up at him with a sort of terror.

"I--I have failed you," she said, speaking slowly and thickly, with parched lips. "I have come, but I--cannot stay. I was going when you came in."

"Elizabeth!" The look of exultant joy faded slowly and reluctantly from Paul's face. "Elizabeth, what do you mean? Why did you come if you don't mean to stay?"

"Because I--was crazy." She was trembling now, and she clung to the table for support; but still she was firm. "I--I didn't think what I did. Now I--I know. It would be wrong to marry like this--so secretly. I must go home. Let me pass." She spoke the last words quickly, imperiously, and made a motion as if to brush past him; but he stood motionless in the door and blocked her way.

He was very angry; she had never seen him so before. The emotion lent a curious brute strength to his fair, sensuous beauty. His face was as white as hers, his full red lips were set in a curve of unwonted determination.

"Listen to me, Elizabeth." He had never spoken to her in such a tone before. "I won't be trifled with like this. I have made all the arrangements. I won't have you--jilt me now. You must come with me, or I--I'll know the reason why."

She met his gaze defiantly. "You can't compel me to come you know," she said. And again she would have passed him, and again he stopped her. She did not try a third time, but sank into a chair and put up her hands to her face. A sudden faintness came over her; it might have been the heat, or the sharp, conflicting play of emotion. He followed her and gently took her hands from her face and looked into her eyes.

"Don't be foolish, darling," he said, persuasively. "You know that you love me, that you are only playing with me. You wouldn't really throw me over now."

She looked up reluctantly, fascinated as she had often been before, by the mere physical attraction of his beauty. "I--I don't know," she began slowly, and then stopped frightened at the sound of voices in the shop. A dread flashed over her all at once of a scene in a place like this. The trifling, frivolous consideration turned the scale in Paul's favor. She rose, shook off his grasp, and gave a hasty glance in the glass.

"No, I won't throw you over," she said. "It's all wrong but--as you say, it's too late now. Take care--some one is coming." She gave a warning look at the door, as Paul pressed her hand.

So the threatened scene was averted and Elizabeth's fate was sealed. The people who, after buying candy in the shop, came into the little back room for some ice cream, saw a young woman arranging her hair before the glass, and a young man waiting for her--a not unusual sight.

What followed seemed in after life a dream to Elizabeth. There were times when she tried to think that it had never happened; that the whole thing was a mere figment of the imagination. But on that day she was quite conscious that it was she herself, in very flesh and blood, Elizabeth Van Vorst, who walked by Paul Halleck's side through the glaring, sunny streets of Cranston, went with him into a dimly-lighted church, let him place a ring upon her finger, spoke her share in the marriage service, and wrote her maiden name for what should have been the last time, in the parish register. The clergyman was very old and mumbled over the service; the witnesses, two servants of his, were old and feeble, also, and took but small interest. The church was damp like a tomb after the heat without; Elizabeth found herself shivering as from a chill. It was a relief to come out again into the heat which had been so oppressive before. But on the church steps Elizabeth gave a little cry. A funeral was slowly filing past, its black trappings standing out in incongruous gloom against the noon-day brilliance.

Elizabeth looked at Paul. He had turned very white, and he too was shivering. "It is a bad omen," he said, in a low voice, as if to himself. He said no more, but led the way carefully in the opposite direction from that which the funeral had taken.

They found themselves in a part of Cranston unknown to Elizabeth. The road was bordered on either side by flowering hedges and led apparently into the open country. There were no houses in sight; for the moment, even no people. Halleck suddenly turned and clasped Elizabeth almost roughly in his arms, while he pressed passionate kisses upon her brow, her lips, her hair.

"My darling," he cried "I can't--I can't give you up. I was mad to promise it. Let everything go and come with me to New York."

"No, no, I can't," she murmured faintly. "I can't." His vehemence stunned, bewildered her; but instinctively she struggled against it. "You promised," she cried out indignantly, "you promised that I should be free--till you came back. I've kept my word, you must keep yours."

He let her go and for a moment they eyed each other steadily. This time the victory remained with her. "Did I really make that promise?" he said at last with a sigh. "Well, if I did, I must keep it, I suppose. But, Elizabeth, you must be made of ice--you can't love me, or you wouldn't hold me to it."

Elizabeth was chiefly conscious of an overpowering sense of relief.

"I do love you," she said, soothingly, "but indeed it is better--much better to let things be as we arranged them. I can't go to New York in this dress"--she gave a little tremulous laugh, as she glanced at her fluffy muslin skirts. "Only a man could suggest such a thing. And then my aunts!--they would be distracted. No, no, I must go home at once. You will be back in six months," she went on, trying to console him. "They will pass very quickly."

"Six months," he sighed. "It is an endless time." He was the picture of gloom as they turned and walked steadily back to the busy part of Cranston. And she, too, had her regrets. The compromise was satisfactory to neither.

At the corner of the High Street they parted. There was no opportunity for more than a hand-clasp, a few hurried words of farewell. Then he went his way to the railroad station, and she hurried to the trolley. The country woman with the many parcels was there before her, and told where she got the stockings, and how much she paid for them.

Back again went the trolley, along the asphalted road past the Queen Anne villas with their terraced gardens, past bicycles, carriages, wagons, and always clouds of dust; out into the open country, with rolling meadow and upland on either side, simmering in the heat of the summer afternoon, to which the morning heat was as nothing; Elizabeth sitting upright, shading her eyes from the glare, with aching head and burning eyes, and throbbing brain that refused to take in the reality of what she had done. This was her wedding journey.

An hour later the white pony brought her home.

"Did you--did you match your ribbon, dear?" Miss Joanna inquired anxiously. Elizabeth stared blankly for a moment.

"I--I never thought of the ribbon," she cried at last, and burst into hysterical laughter.

_Chapter XII_

It was that time of year when the Neighborhood, and the whole riverside, are in their glory. Day after day dawned clear and frosty, to warm at noon-day into a mellow brilliance. On every side stretched wooded meadow and upland all aglow, resplendent in varied tints of crimson and russet, magenta and scarlet, blending in a glorious scheme of color, till they melted at last into the soft gray haze, which rested, like a touch of regretful melancholy, on the tops of the distant hills. Over the fields the golden-rod was still scattered profusely, amidst the sober browns and purples of the bay, and the pale lavender of the Michaelmas daisies. Red berries glistened on the bushes, the ground was covered, every day deeper, with a carpeting of fallen leaves and chestnut burrs.

On one of these autumn days, when the light was fading into dusk, Mrs. "Bobby" Van Antwerp came to call at the Homestead, and found no one at home but Elizabeth, who was kneeling on the hearth-rug, staring into the fire.

Elizabeth's thoughts were not pleasant ones. She had refused to go to Cranston with her aunts that afternoon, for she had never been near the place since that hot July day, nearly three months before, when she had forgotten to match her ribbon. What construction her aunts placed upon the episode she never knew. They did not allude to it in words, but treated her with added care and solicitude, as if she were recovering from some illness. In pursuance of this theory, they took her to a highly recommended and very dull seaside place, where she was extremely bored. She returned in better health, though hardly better spirits. She had now a new trouble, which increased as the autumn advanced. Paul's letters, at first many and ardent, grew fewer and colder, till they ceased altogether. Elizabeth's last letter remained unanswered, and she was too proud to write again. No doubt, she told herself, his thoughts were occupied by some new attraction. With a sudden flash of intuition, she realized that for Paul there would always be an attraction of some kind, and generally a new one.

This unpleasant perception had one good result, at least; it lightened her sense of remorse towards Amanda. She had long ago got over the ordeal of seeing her cousin again, and the strange scene between them had been relegated to a curious phase of unreality, covered up and almost obliterated, as such scenes not infrequently are among relations and intimate friends, by the thousand commonplace incidents of every-day life. And yet some sort of apology had been proffered by Amanda, as she sat up in her white wrapper, very pale and hollow-eyed, with her red hair cut short, and just beginning to come in in soft waves like Elizabeth's--a thing she had always desired.

"You know," she said, in her weak voice "I was real sick that last time you saw me. I was just coming down with the fever."

"I know you were," Elizabeth said gently, conquering the thrill of anger which swept over her at the recollection.

"I guess I said some queer things," Amanda ventured next, and gave an odd, furtive look from her light eyes.

"You certainly did," said Elizabeth, coldly. Not all the pity she felt for Amanda's weakness could avail to make her speak in any other way.

"Well, I guess," Amanda said, after a moment and closing her eyes as if wearied out, "people aren't accountable for what they say when they're sick."

"No," said Elizabeth, "I suppose not." And with this tacit apology and its acceptance, this episode between the cousins might be considered closed. Certainly, on Elizabeth's side, it was not only closed, but forgotten, in the pressure of far more serious troubles.

As she knelt that afternoon looking into the fire, a vision of her future life--colorless, empty, without joy or love--seemed to stare back at her from its glowing depths. The years stretched out before her, a dreary waste--without Paul. She was sure that he would never come back; the bond between them seemed the merest shadow. He had forgotten her in three short months, while she was more in love than ever, since she had never fully realized, at the time, the void that he would leave behind him. For a short time her life had bloomed like the summer; and now nothing was left to her but the fast-approaching gray monotony of the November days, and the bleak cold of the winter.

Upon these cheerful reflections entered Mrs. Bobby Van Antwerp, in a short skirt somewhat the worse for wear, with dark eyes that shone brilliantly beneath her battered hat, and her small piquante face glowing with health and exercise.

"Don't get up," she said. "What a beautiful blaze!" She sat down to it at once and held out her small, gloveless hands to its pleasant warmth. "I walked all the way," she announced, triumphantly, "and I thought I would just drop in, and perhaps you'd give me a cup of tea."

One must have lived in the Neighborhood to appreciate the informality of all this. People paid calls in their carriages, with their card-cases and their best Sunday gowns--it was not good form to come on foot, even had the distances permitted. But the young woman always spoken of as "Mrs. Bobby" though her claims to a more formal designation had long since been established, was a law unto herself and cared little what the Neighborhood's laws might be. Elizabeth had already noticed that this great lady, the greatest lady in the Neighborhood, treated her with more friendliness than other people of less assured position with whom she was, theoretically, on more intimate terms. This curious fact, and the cause of it, occupied her thoughts while she rang the bell and ordered tea, a little flustered inwardly, but outwardly calm, and comfortably conscious of the becoming neatness of her serge skirt and velveteen blouse. Whatever her troubles might be, she had not yet reached so great a pitch of desperation as to neglect her appearance.

"Aren't these autumn days beautiful!" said Mrs. Bobby, making herself at home by unfastening her coat and tossing aside her hat, whereby she disclosed to view a somewhat tousled halo of curly dark hair. "I tell Bobby that just these few days in the autumn make up to us for the bother of keeping the place, though in summer it is fearfully hot, and unspeakably dull all the year round. It must be very dull for you," said Mrs. Bobby, coming to a sudden pause.

"Oh, yes, it's dull," Elizabeth admitted, with a little sigh.

Mrs. Bobby laughed.

"Why don't you say 'oh, but I am so fond of the place,' or 'but I'm not at all dependent on society,' as the other girls in the Neighborhood do?"

"I don't know," said Elizabeth, reflectively. "I don't think, for one thing, that I am so awfully fond of the place; and as for society--I have never had any, so naturally I get on without it."

"But you would enjoy it, if you had it?"

A curious brightness shone for an instant in Elizabeth's eyes. "Ah, yes, I should enjoy it," she said, quickly. "I'm sure I should."

"I'm sure you would, too," said Mrs. Bobby. She seemed to reflect a moment. "Don't you go away in August?" she asked at last.

"Yes, this year we did," said Elizabeth. "We went to Borehaven. It--it wasn't very amusing." She stopped short blushing as if the last words had been wrung from her unawares; but Mrs. Bobby's smile seemed to invite confidence.

"Tell me all about it," she said. "Was it very terrible?"

"Yes, very," said Elizabeth, frankly. "There were a good many girls who used to promenade up and down, and a number of old ladies who sat in rows on the piazza and criticized the people and grumbled about the table; and they one and all treated us as if we had committed some crime. We were quite distressed till we found out that it was nothing personal--only the way they always treat new arrivals."

"Ah, I know the type of place," said Mrs. Bobby "and the people. Were there any men?"

"A few who were called men--about sixteen, I should think--most of them--but they didn't interest me particularly." And Elizabeth blushed, as she remembered the reason which had made her indifferent, at least to such men as Borehaven could boast of. Mrs. Bobby noticed the blush.

"What!" she said to herself "another attraction in this wilderness? Not that stupid Frank Courtenay--I hope not. Yet there isn't and never has been another man in the place that I ever heard of." While she pondered this problem the tea-things were brought in, and Elizabeth seated herself at the small table, behind the old silver urn, in the full glow of the firelight, which played on her hair and brought out the warm creamy tones of her skin. Mrs. Bobby watched her silently with her bright dark eyes, her small, pointed chin supported on her hand.

"You ought to go to town for the winter," she announced at last abruptly. This seemed to be the upshot of her reflections. Elizabeth looked up with a little start, and a momentary brightening of the eyes, which faded, however, instantly.

"Oh, my aunts could never bear to leave here," she said. "They have so taken root in this place. Besides," she went on, constrained to greater frankness by the consciousness of that quality in Mrs. Bobby herself "what would be the use if we did go? We know so few people. It would be horrid to be in New York and not know any one or go anywhere."

"Yes, that wouldn't be pleasant," admitted Mrs. Bobby, to whom indeed such a state of things was inconceivable. "But you would know people," she went on, after a moment "every one does somehow. There are your cousins, the Schuyler Van Vorsts, for instance."

"Who would probably never notice us," said Elizabeth "or if they did, would ask us to a family dinner."

"Well, that certainly would be worse than nothing," Mrs. Bobby admitted. "But--how about your old school friends? You must have known some nice girls at Madame Veuillet's. You would see, no doubt, a great deal of them."

Elizabeth shook her head. "I doubt it," she said. "They spoke--some of them--of asking me to stop with them, but they have none of them done so. They don't even write to me any more. It doesn't take long for people to forget one, Mrs. Van Antwerp," said poor Elizabeth, putting into words the melancholy philosophy which experience had lately taught her.

"My dear child," cried Mrs. Van Antwerp, "you're too young to realize that--yet." She put out her hand in her warm, impulsive way, and touched Elizabeth's. "I can promise you one thing," she said. "If you come to New York, I'll do what I can to make it pleasant for you."

Elizabeth looked up with glistening eyes. "You're--you're awfully kind," she began, stammering. In another moment she would have burst into tears, and perhaps, in the sudden expansion, confided everything to this new friend--in which case her life's history would have been different. But just then she heard the sound of wheels, and immediately she stiffened and the habit of reserve, which had been growing upon her during the last three months, reasserted itself. When her aunts entered, in a little glow of excitement after their day at Cranston, Elizabeth was sitting quite cool and placid behind the tea-things, absorbed in the problems of milk and sugar.

The rest of Mrs. Bobby's visit seemed to her rather dull. They sat around the fire, and Mrs. Bobby drank her tea and ate a great many of the little round cakes which accompanied it, and which she praised warmly, to the gratification of Miss Joanna, who had made them. She told them all about her domestic affairs, and Bobby's affairs, and the family affairs generally, and was altogether very charming and as the Misses Van Vorst expressed it, "neighborly;" but still she said not a word further of their going to town, or of that pleasant if rather vague promise she had made in a moment of impulse, which perhaps she already regretted. It was not till she held Elizabeth's hand at parting that she invited her, as if by a sudden thought, to dinner on the following Friday.

"It will be dull, I'm afraid," she said. "Only the Rector and his wife, and the Hartingtons, and Julian Gerard, who is coming up over Sunday. You will be the only young girl, and I want you to amuse Julian. We dine at eight. Do come early, so we can have a talk beforehand."

Elizabeth, entirely taken by surprise, had only time to murmur an acceptance, when Mrs. Bobby hurried off, being hastened by the arrival of her husband, who had called for her and was waiting outside in the dog-cart. "Friday, remember," she called out from the yawning darkness beyond the door, "and come early." Then Bobby Van Antwerp's restless horse bore her off.

The Misses Van Vorst returned to the drawing-room, in a state of considerable excitement.

"Think of my dining at the Van Antwerps!" Elizabeth exclaimed, still rosy from the unexpected honor. "I was so taken aback that I could hardly answer properly. But how on earth am I to amuse Julian--whoever he may be, and what have I got to wear?"

"It's a--a very nice attention," said Miss Cornelia, complacently. "She's never asked the Courtenay girls, I know, from what their mother told me. She said they thought it a pity she was so unsociable. I think, sister, when we see them we might mention that we don't find her unsociable--just casually, you know. As for what you can wear, my dear--either your white crepe or white organdie is quite pretty enough, and much nicer than anything the Courtenay girls would have."

"To think of dinner at eight o'clock!" said Miss Joanna, who was only just recovering her powers of speech. "So very fashionable! I wish, dear, if you can, you would notice what they have. Mrs. Bobby says her cook is very good at croquettes. I wish you could tell me, dear, if they are better than ours."

"I'm afraid I shan't be able to think of croquettes," said Elizabeth, "what with the burden of being on my best behavior and entertaining Mr. Gerard. I think by the way, that he must be that dark man I have seen sometimes in their pew on Sundays. Which would he like me best in, do you suppose--the white crepe or the organdie? I must get them both out, and decide which to wear."

Elizabeth's spirits were as easily exhilarated as they were depressed. She ran up-stairs, humming a gay little tune which had not come into her head for many a day. This dinner at the Van Antwerps', with the prospect of meeting a few of her neighbors and apparently, one unmarried man, might have seemed to many people a commonplace affair enough; but to Elizabeth it was a great occasion, and for the rest of the evening, bright visions of future pleasure danced before her eyes. That night, for the first time in many weeks, she did not cry herself to sleep, thinking of Paul.

_Chapter XIII_

"And you really think I look nicely?" Elizabeth asked this question in tremulous excitement, as she stood before the long pier-glass in her room on the night of her first dinner-party. The maid was on her knees behind her arranging the folds of her train, Miss Joanna stood ready with her cloak, and Miss Cornelia hovered a little way off, admiring the scene. Elizabeth held her head high, there was a brilliant color in her cheeks, her eyes shone like stars. You would hardly have known her for the same girl who had struggled with sad thoughts and disappointed hopes in the twilight only a few days before. This seemed some young princess, to whom the good things of life came naturally, unsought, by the royal prerogative of beauty.

"You--you look lovely," faltered Miss Cornelia, forgetting her principles in the excitement of the occasion "and your dress is sweet."

"It is fortunate I had it cut low, isn't it," said Elizabeth, as she clasped a string of pearls, which had once belonged to her grandmother, about her round white throat. "There, do I look all right? You're _sure_ my skirt hangs well? I wanted a white rose, but we have no pretty ones left." A slight cloud of discontent crossed her face, but vanished instantly; since really, as she said to herself, she looked very nice even without flowers.

"Don't be late," entreated Miss Joanna. "Just think if the dinner should be spoiled!"

"Yes, it would be very bad manners," added Miss Cornelia "not to be punctual."

"I don't know," said Elizabeth, doubtfully. "It's rather countrified to be too early." But still she drew on her gloves and put on her cloak, and started a good half-hour before the appointed time, in deference to Miss Joanna's fears for the dinner and Miss Cornelia's sense of the value of punctuality.

The clock was striking eight as she entered the wide hall of the Van Antwerps's house, and read, or fancied that she did, in the solemn butler's immobile countenance, an assurance that she was unfashionably prompt. The demure little maid who followed him and took Elizabeth's cloak, regretted to inform her that Mrs. Van Antwerp was not quite ready, but would be down directly, and hoped that Miss Van Vorst would excuse her unpunctuality. Elizabeth's heart sank, but the maid was ushering her into the drawing-room, and there was no retreat. Yet she shrank back involuntarily, as the long room yawned before her, empty, except for one person whom she did not know; and thus she stood for a moment hesitating, her warm Titian coloring framed against the dark plush of the portiere, and her white gown falling about her in graceful folds, of a statuesque simplicity almost severe, but from which her youth and rounded curves emerged all the more triumphant. Her heart beat fast and there was a deep burning color in her cheeks, but she held herself erect, with the proud little turn of the head that seemed to come to her by nature.

The tall dark man who was turning over the leaves of a magazine at the end of the room, looked up as she entered and gazed at her for a moment in silence. Their eyes met; for an instant he seemed to hesitate. Then he rose and walked slowly towards her.

"You must let me introduce myself, Miss Van Vorst," he said, and his voice was like his movements, very deliberate, yet it was clear-cut and pleasant in tone. "My name is Gerard. Mrs. Van Antwerp told me I should have the pleasure of taking you in to dinner."

He spoke so quietly and naturally, and seemed to accept the situation with such absolute indifference, that whatever awkwardness it might have contained for a young girl nervous over her first dinner, was instantly removed. Elizabeth felt grateful, and yet perversely a little piqued that this grave, dark man should place her at a disadvantage, that he should be perfectly at home and know exactly what to do, when she was nervous and flustered. But that kind Providence which had endowed Elizabeth with so many good gifts had given her among others a power to cover inward perturbation with a brave show of self-possession.

"I'm terribly early," she was able to say now, quite lightly and easily, though still with that uncomfortable beating of the heart. "My aunts are very old-fashioned, and insist on punctuality as one of the cardinal virtues."

"In which they are quite right, I think," said Mr. Gerard, smiling. "But when you know Mrs. Van Antwerp well, you will have learned that it is the one virtue in which she is utterly lacking."

"I--I don't know her very well," Elizabeth admitted, regretting somewhat that she could not assert the contrary. "I have never even been here before," she added, glancing about the room, whose stateliness was a little overpowering.

"Really! Then wouldn't you--a--like to come into the conservatory and look at the flowers?" suggested Mr. Gerard, who seemed to have charged himself with the duties of host. "Oh, you needn't wait for Mrs. Van Antwerp," he added, smiling, as Elizabeth hesitated. "I know the time when she went to dress, and can assert with confidence that she won't be down for another half-hour."

So Elizabeth found herself led, somewhat against her will, into the famous conservatory, of whose beauties she had often heard; but with which, it must be confessed, she was less occupied than with the man by her side, at whom she cast furtive glances from beneath her long lashes. He was tall--decidedly taller than herself, though she was a tall woman, and rather broadly built than otherwise. His dark, smooth-shaven face, which had lighted up pleasantly when he smiled, was in repose rather heavy and impassive, with an ugly, square chin, that seemed to indicate an indomitable will, of a kind to pursue tenaciously whatever he might desire. In contradiction to this, his eyes, except when a passing gleam of interest or amusement brightened their sombre depths, had a weary indifferent look, as if there were nothing in the world, on the whole, worth desiring.

"And this is the man," thought Elizabeth, "whom I am expected to amuse. He doesn't look as if it would be an easy task. But no doubt Mrs. Bobby has given him the same charge about me, and he is trying, conscientiously, to obey. That's why he's taken me in here to show me the sights, the way they do to the country visitors." Her heart leaped rebelliously at the thought, even while she was saying aloud mechanically: "'What a fine azalea!' I wonder if I look like a countrified production. My gown isn't, at least; but then--he wouldn't appreciate that fact. It probably would be the same to him, if it came out of the Ark; he isn't the sort of man to notice, one way or the other. I don't believe he cares for women--no, nor they for him. He's not at all good-looking, and he must be--thirty-five"--she ventured another glance. "Oh, that, at least. His hair is quite gray on the temples. 'Yes, those orchids are beautiful. I never saw anything like them.' I must do my duty and admire properly; he thinks me very unsophisticated, no doubt. I don't think I like him. Did Mrs. Bobby think it would amuse me to--amuse him? But perhaps he is thinking the same thing about me." And she stole another glance at his face, but could not read, in his half-closed eyes and unmoved expression, any indication of his real feelings.

They had made the round of the conservatory, when suddenly he stopped. "Don't you--want a flower for your gown," he asked. He looked about him reflectively. "Let me see," he said. "You would like it to be white." Elizabeth wondered how he knew that. After a moment's hesitation, he chose a white rose and gave it to her. She fastened it carefully in her gown, where its green leaves formed the only touch of color.

"How does it look?" she asked innocently, and raised her eyes to his, where unexpectedly they encountered an odd gleam, of something that seemed neither wholly interest nor yet amusement, and that made her look down again quickly, while the warm color mantled in her cheeks. It was a moment before he answered her.

"It looks well," he said then, quietly, "and suits your gown." And they sauntered back slowly to the drawing-room.

Mrs. Bobby came hurrying in by the opposite door, fastening as she went the diamond star in her black lace.

"My dear child," she said, kissing Elizabeth, "what must you think of me! It is all Bobby's fault for taking us such a long drive, and I see he is not down yet either, the wretch! But Julian has been entertaining you, so it is all right. I'm afraid though that he has been taking away my character unmercifully, telling you that I am always late, and other pleasing things of the kind."

Gerard's smile again softened his face. "Do me justice, Eleanor," he said. "You know I don't say worse things of my friends behind their backs than I do to their faces."

She laughed. "I should be sorry for them if you did," she returned. "But here," she went on, as voices were heard in the hall, "here, in good time, are the Rector and his wife. What a blessing they didn't arrive sooner!"

The words had hardly left her lips before the Rector and his wife were ushered in, the latter uttering voluble apologies for being late, and laying all the blame on the erratic behavior of the village hackman, who feeling an utter contempt for people who did not keep their own carriages, reserved the privilege of calling for them at what hour he pleased. The theme of his unpunctuality was so engrossing that the Rector's wife would have enlarged on it for some time, had she not caught sight of Elizabeth, and in her surprise subsided into a chair and momentary silence. And then strolled in Bobby Van Antwerp, fair, well-groomed, amiable, and mildly bored at the prospect of entertaining his neighbors; and immediately afterwards followed the Hartingtons, still more bored at the prospect of being entertained; after which they all went in to dinner, and Elizabeth found herself seated between the Rector and Gerard.

"You live here all the year round, don't you?" the latter said to her, somewhere about the third course, when he had given utterance to several other conventional remarks, and she had grown accustomed to the multiplicity of forks at her plate, and had decided that the light of wax candles, beaming softly under rose-colored shades, was eminently becoming to every one. She looked at him now with an odd little challenge in her eyes, called forth, in spite of herself, by the wearied civility of his conversational efforts.

"Yes, I live here all the year round," she said, in her clear, flute-like voice. "I--I'm a country girl, you see."

He smiled. "You are to be congratulated, I think."

"Do you think so?" asked Elizabeth, in genuine surprise.

"Why, yes, I love the country; don't you," he said tranquilly.

She was silent for a moment, her eyes resting absently on the graceful erection of ferns in the centre of the table, which rose, like a fairy island, from a lake of glass. "It's not a conventional thing to say," she answered at last, slowly "but if you want the truth"--

"I always want the truth," said Gerard.

"Well, then, I don't think I do care for the country," she said. "I've had too much of it. I--there are times when I detest it." She spoke with sudden vehemence, and she met his wondering gaze with eyes that were curiously hard.

Gerard's face clouded. "You don't care for the country," he said, slowly, "and yet you live here all the year round?"

"Ah, that's the very reason," she said, lightly. "People always tell you that you don't appreciate your blessings; but how can you reasonably be expected to, when you don't have any voice in choosing them?"

"If you did, you probably wouldn't like them any better," he retorted. "And it would be more annoying to think that you had had a voice in the matter and had chosen wrong."

"Perhaps," said Elizabeth, "but I should like to make the experiment." And she stared again thoughtfully at the feathery forms of the ferns.

"Well, if you had your choice," said Gerard, lazily, "what would you choose as an improvement on the present state of things?"

She turned towards him with a slight start. "What should I choose," she said, slowly "as an improvement on my life just now?"

"Yes, if you had a fairy Godmother," suggested Gerard.

"With unlimited power?" questioned Elizabeth.

He laughed. "Well, not quite that, perhaps," he said, "but--a fairy Godmother who could give you a good deal. A very charming one, too," he added, in a low voice.

Elizabeth knit her brows and pouted out her full lips, in apparently deep reflection. "If I had a fairy Godmother," she said, musingly, "and she were to give me three wishes--three, you know, is the magic number in the fairy tales--why, I should choose first of all, I think, a season in town"--

"Which you might tire of in a month," suggested Gerard.

"Not at all," said Elizabeth, decidedly, "because my second wish would be for the capacity to be always amused."

"And do you really think," said Gerard, "that you would like that--to go through life as if it were a sort of opera bouffe?"

"Why not?" said Elizabeth. "I'm a frivolous person. I confess I like opera bouffe."

"For an evening, perhaps," said Gerard, "but after a time you'd get tired of it--oh, yes, I'm sure you would--and you'd begin to think"--

"Ah, no, I shouldn't," she interrupted him, eagerly "for that's what my third wish should be. I should ask for the power never to think. Thought--thought is horrible." She spoke the last words very low, more to herself than him, and broke off suddenly, as an odd, frightened look crept into her eyes. Gerard watched her in some perplexity.

"This girl," he said to himself "who must be, I suppose, somewhere about twenty, and has seen, according to Eleanor, nothing of the world, talks sometimes like a thoughtless child, and sometimes like a woman of thirty, and an unhappy one at that. I can't quite make her out." Aloud he said, in an odd, dry voice that he had not hitherto used towards her, "Now that you have pretty well in theory at least, reduced yourself to the level of a brainless doll, why not ask, now that you are about it, for the power not to feel? Then you would really be a complete automaton, and nothing on earth could have power to hurt you."

Elizabeth had grown very pale, and her hands were tightly locked together under the table. "Ah," she said, wearily "I've exhausted my three wishes. And, besides, it's too much to ask. No fairy Godmother, I'm afraid, could give one the power not to feel."

"Be thankful for that," he said, quickly. "A woman who has no capacity for suffering is--is--would be unspeakably repellant."

"Would she?" said Elizabeth, dreamily. "I should think, for my part, that she would be rather enviable." She sat staring absently before her, and Gerard did not try to break the silence. In a moment Mrs. Hartington on his other side claimed his attention, and Elizabeth was not sorry. She felt vaguely resentful towards him for having made her think of unpleasant things, which she had resolved not to do that evening. The dinner went on, and she helped herself mechanically to dish after dish which was pressed upon her. The Rector turned to her and made a few labored remarks, adapted as he thought to her youthful intelligence, and she answered them absently. Bobby Van Antwerp told, in a languid way, a funny story for the benefit of the table, and the conversation grew general for awhile. Dinner was nearly over when Gerard said, turning to her with a pleasant smile:

"I'm not a prophet, and yet I am going to venture on a prediction. In a little while, I think, you'll find your fairy Godmother, and have your season in town, though I don't know if the other things will be thrown in; and then some time in the course of it, I'll ask you if you are satisfied, and you'll tell me perhaps, that you are sick of it all, and are pining for the country, the green fields, and--a--the view of the river"--

He stopped as Elizabeth interrupted him flippantly. "Oh, no, never," she cried. "I'd prefer city streets to green fields any day, and as for the river--I've looked at it all my life, and I'm afraid I've exhausted its possibilities." She was quite herself again, her cheeks were pink; she looked up at him with laughing eyes. "Confess that you think me terribly frivolous," she said; "confess that you disapprove of me entirely."

"On the contrary," said Gerard, with rather a cold smile "I think there is a good deal to be said for your point of view--and as for disapproval, that's a priggish sensation that I hope I don't allow myself to feel towards any one. Wait till I see you in town," he went on, more genially "and then perhaps we'll agree better."

"Ah, but you never will see me in town," she said, sadly.

"Never?" he returned, slightly raising his eye-brows. "That's rather a rash prediction. I think I may have the pleasure of meeting you there before very long. You see I believe in fairy Godmothers," he added, lightly, as Mrs. Bobby gave the signal, and, rising, he pushed back Elizabeth's chair.