The wild fawn
Date: 2024-02-07T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Women dancers -- France -- Fiction; Businessmen -- Virginia -- Fiction; Upper class -- Virginia -- Fiction

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Title: The wild fawn

Author: Mary Imlay Taylor

Release date: February 7, 2024 [eBook #72891]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1920

Credits: D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILD FAWN ***

THE WILD FAWN

BOOKS BY
MARY IMLAY TAYLOR

A CANDLE IN THE WIND
THE IMPERSONATOR
THE REAPING
CALEB TRENCH
THE MAN IN THE STREET

THE
WILD FAWN

BY
MARY IMLAY TAYLOR
AUTHOR OF “A CANDLE IN THE WIND,” “THE IMPERSONATOR,” “THE
REAPING,” “CALEB TRENCH,” “THE MAN IN THE STREET”

NEW YORK
MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY
1920

Copyright, 1920, by
MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

THE WILD FAWN

THE WILD FAWN

I

Mrs. Carter looked up from her breakfast and glanced anxiously at the clock.

“I wonder where that postman can be!” she exclaimed fretfully. “He’s always late nowadays.”

“Nonsense!” retorted her husband, unfolding his newspaper. “It’s because you want a letter from William. The postman will be along all right.”

Mrs. Carter sighed. She could not understand the gap in her son’s correspondence. William was her eldest and the pride of her heart. At twenty-seven he had been a success in business. He had dominated the family, advising his stout, deliberate father, overwhelming his lame brother Daniel, and bossing the two younger children, Leigh and Emily, until, goaded to frenzy, first one and then the other of the worms turned. As the only girl in the family, Emily reached the limit of her endurance long before Leigh came into the battle as a feeble second.

But not even Emily could stem the tide of Mrs. Carter’s devotion to her first-born. It had cost her many a sleepless night when, more than a year ago, William Henry Carter had been selected by a well-known mercantile firm to go to Japan. It had been a crowning opportunity for William; to his mother it was a source of mingled pride and anguish. She packed his trunk with unnumbered socks and collar-buttons—she was sure he couldn’t get them in Japan—and she smuggled in some jars of strawberry jam, “the kind that dear Willie always loved.”

Afterward her only solace had been his letters. She overlooked his ungrateful wrath when the jam jars broke into the socks, and fell back on her pride in his continuing success, and on the fact that he had been permitted to come home via the Mediterranean, and was to act for his firm in Paris.

Now, after an absence of fourteen months, he might be home at any moment; but there had been a gap in the correspondence—no letters for more than two months. The maternal anxiety would have communicated itself to the family, if it had not been that William’s company had heard from the young man in the interim, and could assure the anxious Mr. Carter that his son was well and doing business with eminent talent and success. Mr. Payson, the head of the establishment, lived in town, and he was liberal in his praise.

Mrs. Carter’s mind dwelt upon this with a feeling of maternal pride, still tempered with anxiety, when she became aware that Emily and Leigh were quarreling openly because of the latter’s unfeeling remark that a girl with a snub nose and freckles should never do her hair in a Greek knot.

“It’s enough to make a cat laugh,” said Leigh. “What have you got to balance that knob on the back of your head?”

“Leigh, dear, don’t plague sister so,” Mrs. Carter remonstrated mildly.

“As if a boy like Leigh knew anything about a girl’s hair!” cried Emily indignantly. “It’s a psyche-knot.”

Leigh laughed derisively; but at this moment, when the quarrel had become noisy enough to disturb Mr. Carter, it was interrupted by the entrance of the morning mail. Miranda, the colored maid of all work, appeared with a replenished coffee-pot and a letter for Mrs. Carter.

The anxious mother gave a cry of joy.

“My goodness—it’s from Willie!”

The interest became general, and five pairs of expectant eyes focussed on Mrs. Carter as she opened the envelope, her fingers shaking with eagerness. Miranda, to whom the fifth pair of eyes belonged, became unusually attentive to Daniel, and insisted on replenishing his coffee-cup.

“This was written in Paris,” Mrs. Carter exclaimed eagerly, “and—and posted in New York! I wonder! ‘Dear mother,’” she began reading aloud, her voice tremulous with joy, “‘I’m coming home on the Britannic, and I’m bringing you the—the——’”

She stopped short, her mouth open like a fish’s, and a look of horror glazing the rapture in her eyes.

There was a profound and expectant pause. Daniel, the least interested member of the group, managed to drink his hot coffee with apparent relish, and sixteen-year-old Emily ate a biscuit, but Mr. Carter, who had laid down his newspaper to listen, became impatient.

“What’s the matter, mama?” he asked peevishly. “You look scared. Is William going to bring you a crocodile from the Nile?”

Mrs. Carter rallied.

“N-no, not exactly—that is——” She looked absently at the maid. “Miranda, go down to the ice-box and look it through. Let me know just what’s left over. I’ve got to ’phone to the market immediately.”

“Yes’m.”

Miranda, descrying a sensation from afar, retired reluctantly. She couldn’t hear quite as well in the kitchen entry when all the windows were open.

Mrs. Carter waited until the pantry door closed behind the maid; then she turned her horrified eyes upon her family.

“William’s married!” she gasped.

“Married?” echoed Mr. Carter angrily. “You’re crazy! William’s got too much sense. You haven’t read it straight. Give me that letter!”

He stretched out a fiercely impatient hand, but Mrs. Carter ignored his order.

“Listen! I did read it right. I know my own boy’s writing. I’ll read it aloud—listen!”

Mr. Carter thumped the table.

“Why in thunder don’t you read it, then? We’re listening! Of all the crazy notions! Married—you’ll find it’s ‘meandered.’ Go ahead!”

Mrs. Carter rallied her forces again, aware that Daniel and Leigh and Emily were gaping in amazed incredulity. She turned the letter over to the first page, caught her breath, and began.

“‘Dear mother,’” she read again, unsteadily this time, “‘I’m coming home on the Britannic, and I’m bringing you the sweetest daughter-in-law in the whole world. Her name is Fanchon la Fare, and she’s the cleverest, the dearest, the most devoted girl in France. I can’t tell you how beautiful she is, but you’ll fall in love with her at first sight—just as I did. She’s small, “just as high as my heart,” mother, and she’s got the eyes of a wild fawn——’”

“Wild fawn—thunder!” ejaculated Mr. Carter, unable to restrain himself. “Give me that letter!”

This time Mrs. Carter surrendered it. She passed it down via Daniel, who was looking unusually pale. His face startled her, and, while Mr. Carter was reading the letter, she met her second son’s eyes. They gave her another shock.

“Dan,” she whispered in an awe-struck voice, “I—do you think he was engaged to—to——”

She mouthed a name, unable to finish her sentence under the young man’s look. Daniel frowned, his white lips closing in a sharp line, but Emily spoke up unabashed.

“Willie’s engaged to Virginia Denbigh. She’s got his ring. I’ve seen it on her finger.”

“Oh, Emily!” her mother sank back in her chair, feeling weaker than ever. Her boy, her Willie! She couldn’t believe that he would do anything like that. She shook her head indignantly at Emily. “Hush!” she whispered.

“He is, too!” her daughter insisted. “Why, mama, you know he is!”

Mrs. Carter cast a miserable glance at her husband, who was still reading the letter. He was a big, broad-shouldered man, with a ruddy face and bristling gray hair. Although usually a man of fairly equable temperament, his expression at the moment was almost ferocious. He had grown very red, and his eyebrows were bushed out over the bridge of his nose in a scowl that transformed him.

Leigh nudged the unsympathetic Emily under the table.

“Gee, look at father!” he murmured.

Emily, who had resumed her breakfast, nodded with her mouth full. She had played the trump card, and she was quietly observing Daniel. He was as white as a sheet, she thought, and those big eyes of his had a way of smoldering.

“It’s because he’s had a bad night, I suppose,” Emily mused, “or else——”

She speculated, gazing at him; but she did not arrive at any conclusion. She was interrupted by a furious sound from the foot of the table. It was fortunately smothered, but it had the rumble of an approaching tornado.

“The young donkey!” Mr. Carter exclaimed aloud. “My word, I thought William Carter had sense!”

Mrs. Carter’s amiable, distressed face emerged a little from behind the big silver hot-water urn which had descended in the family, along with a Revolutionary sword and the copper warming-pans.

“Can you find out anything, Johnson?” she asked faintly. “I—I can’t! He doesn’t even say where they were married or—or anything.”

“Married in a lunatic asylum, I suppose,” Mr. Carter returned fiercely. “He says—as plain as can be—that he hasn’t known the creature three months!”

“Good gracious! I didn’t get as far as that, I——”

William’s mother stopped short; she was afraid of making matters worse. Emily, who had stopped eating to listen, came suddenly to the surface.

“Listen, mama! She’s French, isn’t she?”

“I—I suppose so, dear.” Mrs. Carter shuddered slightly. “I’m afraid she is.”

“Then I don’t see how Willie did it in three months. I read somewhere—in a magazine, I think—that it took months and months to court a French girl, and both parents have to say ‘yes,’ and you’ve got to have birth certificates, and the banns have to be posted for three weeks, and even then you can’t do it in a hurry; you’ve got to have a civil marriage and a religious marriage, and—and everything!”

“Good Lord, Emmy! How does a fellow run away with his best girl?” Leigh asked.

“He can’t!” Emily, having the floor, held it proudly. “He just can’t! It wouldn’t be legal; he’s got to have his birth certificate.”

“Humph!” Mr. Carter glared over the top of William’s letter at his wife. “William didn’t happen to carry his birth certificate hung around his neck, did he?”

Mrs. Carter shook her head, her eyes fixed on Emily. For the first time she felt it was to be her portion to hear wisdom from the mouths of babes and sucklings.

“Emmy, are you sure you read all that?” she inquired anxiously.

“Of course she did, mother,” said Daniel, speaking for the first time, his low, deep voice breaking in on the shrill excitement of the family clamor. “It’s French law.”

That settled it. Daniel had studied law in old Judge Jessup’s office, and there was nothing in law, domestic and international, that Judge Jessup didn’t know. Mr. Carter turned his distorted countenance upon his second son.

“Is that really a fact, Dan?”

Dan nodded. He was not eating. He had thrust aside an almost untouched breakfast. The hand that he stretched out now for a glass of water was a little unsteady, but his father did not notice it. Mr. Carter was scowling at the letter again.

“It’s as plain as day here, he’s known her less than three months. Take three weeks for the banns out of that, and you get seven or eight weeks. The young donkey! Where were her people, I’d like to know?”

Mrs. Carter gasped. Horrible thoughts had been assailing her from the first, and she could no longer suppress them.

“D-do you think she can be respectable?” she quavered tearfully.

Mr. Carter was mute. He had no adequate language in which to express his own views upon that point, but his gloomy look was eloquent.

There was a horrible pause. Leigh and Emily exchanged glances. There was a little satisfaction in hers; she had exploded a bombshell second only to William’s letter, and now she interrupted her father’s forty-second perusal of that document.

“Papa,” she said in her solemn young voice, “Willie was engaged to Virginia Denbigh, and I don’t believe she’s broken it off at all!”

“Hush up, Emmy!” cried Daniel angrily. “Leave Virginia Denbigh out of it. You’ve no right to talk about her. William’s married!”

“I guess I’ve got a right to tell the truth!” Emily flared up. “Willie was engaged to Virginia Denbigh up to last week—and I know it!”

But, to her surprise, it was Leigh who broke out suddenly.

“What does it matter?” he cried. “If William’s fallen in love at first sight, he can’t help it, can he? It’s too much for a fellow, isn’t it? When a man sees a woman he loves at first sight—it’s—it’s like a tornado, it bowls him over!”

“Eh?”

Mr. Carter turned and stared at his youngest son. So did his mother. Leigh was a high-school boy preparing for college. Emily, blond and snub-nosed and honest, had missed beauty by the proverbial inch that’s as good as a mile, but Leigh was a handsome boy. He had the eyes of a girl, too.

“Love at first sight?” bellowed Mr. Carter, getting his breath. “What d’you know about it, you—you young idiot?”

Leigh reddened, but he held his ground.

“I know—how I’d feel,” he replied hotly.

“Oh, Leigh!” his mother smiled indulgently. “You’re such a child!”

“I’m not!” he retorted with spirit. “I’m eighteen—I’m a man!”

Emily giggled provokingly, and Mr. Carter struck the table with his fist.

“Shut up!” he roared. “I’ve got one donkey—I don’t want another! What did you say, Emily?”

“I said Willie was engaged to Virginia Denbigh and——”

Daniel, with a suppressed groan of anger, rose from the table; but his father stopped him.

“Wait!” he said sharply. “I want to get the stuffing out of this. What do you mean, Emily?”

“I mean just exactly what I say, papa,” cried his daughter, giving Daniel a look of triumph. “Virginia’s got Willie’s ring on the third finger of her left hand, and he wrote her letters—love-letters—from Japan. I guess I know; I saw her reading one. I guess any girl could tell that!”

“You’re nothing but a child!” Mr. Carter exclaimed angrily, but he was searching back in his own mind. He had always planned this match between his favorite son and Virginia Denbigh, and Emily’s words went home. He reddened. “Dan, do you know anything about this?” he demanded, turning on his son.

Daniel, who was standing with his hand on the back of his chair, just as he had risen, averted his eyes.

“I’d rather not say anything about it, father,” he replied after a moment. “It’s—it’s not fair to Miss Denbigh, is it, to discuss it?”

His father, who had been observing him narrowly, thrust William’s letter into his pocket.

“I see it’s true,” he remarked dryly, “Emily’s got more candor than you have, that’s all.”

Daniel made no reply to this. He reached for his cane and moved silently toward the door, aware of Emily’s cryptic gaze.

Mr. Carter, meanwhile, broke out stormily again, striking the edge of the table.

“I’m ashamed of William!” he growled. “My son—and no sense of honor! I—I’d like to thrash him!”

No one replied to this. Daniel opened the door, went out, and closed it gently behind him. In the pause they heard his slow, slightly halting tread as he went across the hall to the front porch and descended the steps. As the last echo of his footsteps died away, Emily turned to her father.

“Why, papa, didn’t you know why Dan wouldn’t tell about Willie and Virginia?” she asked wisely.

Her father cast a startled look at her, his eyes still clouded with wrath and mortification.

“No. Why?”

Emily smiled across at Leigh.

“Dan’s in love with Virginia himself, and Willie cut him out. That’s why!”

Mr. Carter stared at her with exasperation. She was going a little too far, and her annihilation was impending when Mrs. Carter suddenly uttered a cry of horror. She had picked up the newspaper. It was local, but it often copied bits from the New York dailies, when the bits were likely to interest the town.

“Oh, good gracious, here’s a marriage notice from a New York paper!” she cried, pointing it out with a shaking forefinger: “‘William Henry Carter and Fanchon la Fare.’ Papa, they weren’t married until they got to New York—the very day Willie posted that letter!”

Mr. Carter snatched the paper from her hand and read the notice; then he slammed it down on the table with a violence that made all the dishes rattle. He was fairly choking with rage now.

“Came over on the steamer with him, of course!” he shouted. “You get the idea, mama? A French girl! Came over on the same steamer—seven—nine days at sea—and got married in New York. My word!” he fairly bellowed. “What kind of a daughter-in-law d’you think we’ve got? I ask you that!”

“Oh, papa—sh!” gasped his wife weakly. “Think of these children——”

“Sh?” he shouted. “Sh? With this thing out in black and white? D’you think people haven’t got eyes? The whole town’ll read it—trust ’em for that! French laws—birth certificates—banns—chaperons—I’d like to see ’em—wow!”

There was a crash of china, and Mrs. Carter rose and fairly thrust Leigh and Emily out of the room. For the first time in her experience with him, Mr. Carter had become volcanic.

II

Daniel Carter, having left the family conclave so abruptly, descended the steps to the garden-path and walked slowly—almost painfully, it appeared—to the gate.

He was a tall young man of twenty-five, thin from long suffering, and a little angular, and he was lame. He was not using a crutch now. Dr. Barbour had succeeded in alleviating the old trouble and Daniel could do very well with a walking-stick. But his face, pale and hollow-cheeked, showed the lines of old suffering, and to-day there were dark rings around his fine eyes. The fact was that, at that moment, his heart was beating so heavily that its clamor seemed to fill his ears. A strange thing had befallen him. He had been stricken with horror and anguish at an insult to one he loved, and—almost at the same instant—he had felt a wild, unreasoning relief. It would not do, he must not let his mind dwell upon it. The habit of repression, the habit of endurance, the older habit of suffering, came to his aid. He set his teeth and walked straight out of the front gate and down to the end of the street. Then he paused almost unconsciously, because this spot, at the side of a hill, gave him a wide view of the town, and he often stopped here a moment on his way to and from Judge Jessup’s office, just to catch this glimpse of his native hills. The poet in Daniel loved this view.

The sun was on the hills to-day, except where the shadow of a passing cloud moved across the wide vista like a pillar of smoke to guide the wayfarers toward the Promised Land. The sun shone, too, on the roofs of the houses that clustered at Daniel’s feet, and it caught the gilt on a cross-crowned spire and flashed it against the background of the trees. The only vivid thing, it seemed, in the whole scene, where the gray of old shingled roofs and the sober tints of the time-worn houses blended with the greens and browns of nature. For it’s an old town, nestled in the hills, at the southern edge of one of the Middle States. A State, by the way, that is a good deal more southern than middle. So old is the town, indeed, that its tree-embowered streets have been trodden by the valiants of other days. The early settlers came here and found the spot fair, Indian traders bartered here, and heroes of the Revolution lie buried in the quaint old cemetery. The place has been long asleep, napping sweetly in the southern sunshine, drowsy and fragrant and restful—of a summer day. But lately the stirring of greater things has begun in the town. Life has grown busier, more noisy, more insistent. The ancient aristocracy has begun to feel the wave of democracy at its threshold, the old kernel is bursting and the strong young oak is thrusting its tap-root down into the rich black loam of the ages. But the background is unchanged, the fond heart can still dwell on the lovely profile of the blue hills, melting at noon into the more ineffable blue of the sky, and upon the dark green cloak of verdure that enfolds the foot-hills, and unrolls its ample edges to the very rim of the meadows.

The grape-vines still blossom fragrantly in the backyards of the old-fashioned dwellings, where negro slaves used to flit in and out, and, at evening still, sweet negro melodies float along the highways. Awhile ago, when Johnson Carter was a child, turbaned mammies used to fry chickens and make beaten biscuits to sell at the railway station—then a mere wayside shed with a platform. They saved many a famished traveler in the days when dining-cars were few and far between. Though, curiously enough, there were never any parts to a chicken but its legs. Tradition paints them as chicken centipedes, though hunger relished even a drumstick and a soggy, beaten biscuit. Little pickaninnies hung about, too, peddling chincapins, while an elderly matron of a sow disported herself in the adjacent gutter. But behind them, and in spite of them, the town stood enfolded in its lovely verdure and its blossomings, like an ancient bride in a constantly rejuvenated wedding garment, smiling and peaceful and secure.

Daniel Carter loved the town. Ambition might lead him elsewhere, but his heart would linger affectionately here. There was an unbreakable tie—he had suffered here, both in the flesh and in the spirit. He had lived his happy childhood here, whole and sound. He had climbed the hills and raced across the meadows. Then came his accident, the long interval of pain, and the deadly certainty, at last, that he was crippled. But through it all the trees had rustled their new leaves and the heavenly hills had lifted up their heads. Pain forges a tie deeper than the ties of joy. Dan loved the town.

As he walked down the old street to-day its familiarity eased the pang at his heart. His pain was vicarious, he imagined how Virginia Denbigh would suffer when she knew. He raged, too, against his brother—the brother whom he had always loved and trusted! For there had been a bond between the two elder Carter boys, cemented by the death of the two children who came between Daniel and Leigh. Now, a reflection of his father’s anger at William sent the blood up to Daniel’s pale forehead. He was very sensitive for the honor of the Carters, and William’s conduct—in Daniel’s eyes—constituted a high breach of honor, it was conduct, in fact, unbecoming a gentleman.

And Virginia Denbigh——?

Words failed; a kind of blind fury seized him; he longed to cross the ocean, or to meet the steamer in New York, and drag the strong, powerfully built William all the way upon his knees to Virginia’s feet, to beg her pardon.

He was thinking this, with a stinging and humiliating consciousness of his own physical disability, when he finally turned from his post of observation and began to descend the hill which led to Judge Jessup’s office. It was a curious fact that his mental state had an effect on his bodily affliction, and, when his mind was in conflict, his limp—usually no more than a slow, halting step—became almost painful. He was limping very badly and leaning on his cane when he saw an equipage approaching that was as unmistakable as Noah’s ark would have been, had it been harnessed to a couple of stout old dappled grays and started on the turnpike to Ararat. This was an old-fashioned wagonette, drawn by two elderly grays, and driven by George Washington Lucas, old Uncle Plato’s grandson, a coal black negro, attired in a rubbishy bottle-green livery and a white straw hat.

Alone on one of the rear seats, which ran length-wise in the wagonette, was a slim figure in a flowered organdy, with a wide leghorn hat looped down at the sides by the broad pink ribbons that were knotted coquettishly under her chin. It was an old hat, made to do, if the truth be told, but it framed a charming face, and shaded the eyes that were greeting Daniel Carter.

At a word from her Lucas drew rein and she leaned forward, smiling.

“Let me give you a lift, Dan,” she called to him, sweetly.

For the first time in his life Daniel’s heart sank at the sound of Virginia Denbigh’s voice. He came up, hat in hand, to answer her, and Virginia was startled, in her turn, for Daniel was blushing. He was red to his hair and it gave a bizarre effect to his usually pale face. “He’s hurt because he thinks I pity his lameness,” Virginia thought.

“We’re going the same way, Dan. Get in, I feel queer sitting here all by my lonesome,” she said gaily. “Grandpa couldn’t come to-day.”

But he could not get in. The thought of taking advantage of her kindness when he knew what his brother had done, was too much for Daniel.

“Thank you a thousand times, but I’ve only got a few steps to go now, Virginia,” he replied, forcing a smile though his lips felt stiff. “The colonel isn’t ill, is he?”

“No, he’s planting,” she laughed, puzzled by the young man’s manner. What could be the matter with him? she wondered. “I’ve got to do the marketing, get the mail and buy a newspaper. Some one stole ours this morning. Has—have you heard from William yet, Dan?”

Daniel had laid one hand on the edge of the wagonette while they spoke, it tightened now—as something seemed to tighten about his heart. He couldn’t tell her!

“Mother got a letter this morning.”

Virginia’s clear eyes fixed on him, discerning something behind his words. She blushed suddenly and painfully, leaning back in her seat.

“I’m so glad! Mrs. Carter was so anxious. I haven’t heard myself for a long time,” she added steadily, bending another searching look on William’s brother.

Daniel could not meet it; he flinched. “He’s quite well,” he said thickly, “he’s in New York now, I think. He was to sail on the Britannic. She ought to be in.”

“Oh!”

Virginia’s exclamation was involuntary, but it died in her throat. What could it mean? No letter and William in New York? Then suddenly she colored with happiness, her heart beating wildly. Of course! She understood it now; it accounted for the silence, too. She leaned forward, her clasped hands on her knees, her eyes—beautiful and soft and caressing—dwelling upon the unhappy Daniel.

“I know—he means to surprise me!” she cried. “Dan, you shouldn’t have told.”

Daniel experienced a feeling of dissolution. He withdrew his hand from the wagonette, and leaned heavily on his cane. To let her think this, and to-morrow——!

“I—I don’t think that’s just the idea, Virginia,” he said gravely.

She met his eyes, still radiant; then, slowly, reluctantly, the light faded from hers, and the color receded from her cheeks, even from her lips. She gasped. Then she glanced around at the stout, unmoved back of George Washington Lucas. To her aroused perception even his ears seemed to move, and she was heavily aware that the nigh horse was stamping an impatient foot, troubled by an insistent fly. She moved nearer to the end of the wagonette and bent over Daniel, her eyes fixed on his face again.

“Did—did he speak of me, Dan?” she asked in a low voice.

Daniel swallowed the lump in his throat. “I—I don’t know—I didn’t see the letter.”

She drew back, blushing as quickly as she had paled. With an odd little groping gesture she put up her hand and pulled at the pink bow under her chin. Then she laughed, and the sound of her laughter hurt him like a blow.

“I’m keeping you,” she said lightly. “Give my love to your mother. I’m sorry you won’t come with me. Drive on, Lucas.”

Daniel stood back, bare-headed, following her with his eyes, his heart in a tumult. He felt as if he had struck her, and yet he had not told her the worst.

As the old horses started, Virginia remembered him. She looked back and waved her hand.

“Goodbye!” she called to him, and, after a moment: “Good luck!”

Daniel stood gazing after her. He found himself, for the moment, unable to move. He watched until the old wagonette, with that slim young figure so erect at the side of it, vanished in a cloud of dust in the distance. It seemed to him that his heart stood still, too, within him. For the first time in his life he felt helpless, he felt physically as if he had been beaten. Why had he been forced to do it? Why, he stormed inwardly, was it his lot to give her the first warning? How she would hate him! Hereafter he would be in the same class with William, she would despise the whole family. He stood there shuddering, and he might have remained there a long time if old Mrs. Payson had not driven past in her new motor-car and shrilled to him that it was a “fine morning,” and she had seen something—he didn’t catch what it was—in the morning paper.

It roused him, he straightened himself and walked on, as fast as his limp permitted.

Judge Jessup was already at his desk when Daniel opened the door. He growled a greeting, sorting his mail. The judge had a high Roman nose and the kind of chin we associate with Benjamin Franklin. Owing to a formidable growth of eyebrow, his expression was sometimes abnormally fierce. But this morning there was a gleam of triumph in his eye.

“We’ve won that Ryan appeal,” he announced in his deep voice. “Judge Loomis handed down his decision just before court adjourned yesterday. Hear about it, Dan?”

“Yes, sir.”

The judge went on opening his letters, while his young pupil and associate took off his coat, hung it up and sat down at his own desk in his shirt sleeves. He was very pale now and he began to work mechanically, scarcely aware of the older man’s fiery way of disposing of his own business.

“Old man Barbour has kicked up another shindy with Allen,” the judge continued. “I reckon we’ll get that case, too. By the way, did you look up that option for Allen?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Humph!” the judge rubbed his chin and turned his swivel chair slightly. He could see Daniel now sitting at his desk, his white face set and his hands lying idle on a folded sheet of paper. He was staring straight in front of him. The judge prodded again.

“Kenslaw wants you to handle his case. I reckon you’d like that, eh?”

“I suppose so, sir.”

The judge eyed the young man critically.

“What’s the matter, Dan? Got the pip?”

Daniel, a little startled, smiled and shook his head.

“Nothing the matter, Judge.”

The judge shrugged, turned to his desk and spread out the morning paper. His eye fell suddenly on that item in the column of personal mention which had already smitten the Carter family. He stared at it a moment in silence. Then he began to whistle softly, and his eyes fixed themselves on a spot at the far end of the tree-shaded street. It was a white guide-post and on it was printed, in large black letters, the magic words:

“1½ miles to Denbigh Crossing.”

III

Colonel Denbigh was walking to and fro at the back of his house, considering it. There was no doubt at all that it needed a new coat of paint. It needed it almost as much as the colonel needed the extra money to pay for it. He chuckled a little, pulling at the ends of his long white moustache.

“Neither of us likely to get it,” he thought, “and I reckon I look almost as much out of repair as the old place does anyway!”

Then his eye traveled down the long road which led to the town. He was expecting his granddaughter and the morning newspaper. Viewed from this angle, the road was a thing of beauty. It turned a curve above the crossing and passed through a grove of chestnuts. They were yellowish-white now with bloom. Beneath them the road ran like a ribbon, while on either hand the colonel glimpsed the friendly roofs of his neighbors’ houses. The farthest one, set back among the trees, was Johnson Carter’s. Over there was Judge Jessup’s; beyond that was the spire of the oldest church. In the graveyard behind it four generations of Denbighs lay buried. At the corner of Mrs. Payson’s place a blossoming pear tree stood like a lovely ghost. The warm, still atmosphere was filled with the fragrance of early blossomings, here and there a field was pink with clover. There was a warmth, a stirring, the promise of a hundred springs in the rich loam, where the new grass thrust up its strong young blades, and in the old apple-tree that showered the colonel’s shoulder with its falling petals. He found some of them on his sleeve and looked at them musingly; he was thinking of the days when he had gathered apples from that tree for his wife. Mrs. Denbigh had been dead many years, and their only son and his wife. Gone, too! The old man took off his hat and passed his hand absently over his white head, a little sadness in the very gesture. Virginia and he were the only ones left, he reflected, and then he smiled. He always smiled when he thought of Virginia. He was very proud of his young granddaughter.

“There’s a girl for you!” he thought fondly, “pretty as a picture. A straight-thinking kind of a young creature, too, bless her heart!”

He was sorry that his estate did not warrant a little of the old-time style for her. She deserved it, but—the colonel shook his head, eying the house again. It was a rambling, old-fashioned affair with a belvidere on the flat roof and two verandas. It had a beauty of its own, fortunately, for it had lost a good deal of its exterior decorations and it was deplorably weather-stained on the north side.

The colonel was still viewing it when the dogs began to bark at the lower gate. He turned quickly and saw his two big pointers greeting Mr. Carter. But that gentleman did not notice them as much as usual. There was, indeed, something odd about him. His stout, middle-aged figure seemed to sag down a little at the shoulders and his head drooped. He looked, as he came slowly up the path, like the bearer of bad tidings. He shuffled as he walked and seemed interested in his feet.

The colonel, a little surprised at this early visit, shouted a greeting to him.

“Hello, Carter! What’s the matter? You’re walking as if”—the colonel chuckled—“as if you had a bunion.”

Mr. Carter raised his abashed eyes reluctantly to the old man’s fine, smiling face.

“I declare I felt as if I’d been stealing his chickens!” he told Mrs. Carter afterwards. However, he achieved a moment of cordiality as he shook the colonel’s hand.

“I—I was coming this way,” he said a little hoarsely; he wasn’t a good liar. “I thought I’d just drop in. How’s the garden coming on? I’ve put in my limas.”

The colonel, eying him, pulled his moustache.

“They’ll rot. It’s too early. Plato told me that the peas were up well and we’ve got spinach. Sit down, Carter, I’ll call Plato. Have a julep? Or is it too early?”

“Too early altogether. I—the fact is, I can’t stay but a minute. I——” Mr. Carter glanced around wildly, groping for a topic, any topic, to introduce his subject. His choice wasn’t exactly an apt one. “I see that speckled hen of yours gets out of the coop still.”

His host looked around.

“So she does! Can’t keep her in at all. Kind of strong-minded. She’s got fifteen chicks, too. Wanting a setting of leghorn eggs, Carter? I can give you one. Got the finest lot of layers in the county.”

Mr. Carter continued to stare moodily at the speckled hen; she had led him astray.

“I don’t know,” he replied thoughtfully. “I’ll—I’ll ask Mrs. Carter.”

The colonel stared.

Plato, a gray-headed old negro, appeared.

“Wants yo’ juleps, Col’nel?”

“Not now, Plato. Mr. Carter says it’s too early.”

Plato grinned and bowed to the visitor.

“Howdy, suh. Hopes yo’-all is well. Heared from yo’ son, suh?”

Mr. Carter’s heart jumped and then sank with a thud. Plato had achieved it.

“This morning, Plato. He’s in New York now, I hope. He’s well, too, and—and——”

“I’se sho glad t’ heah it, suh,” said Plato and withdrew, still bowing.

Mr. Carter, with his mouth open, stared after him helplessly. He felt now that he should never get his news out unless some one shook it out of him! The colonel did not help him.

“So! Well, I’m glad William’s coming back. We’ve missed him. Judge Jessup was speaking of him last night. A fine fellow, he thinks him. By the way, Carter, Jessup gave me a young apple-tree last spring. There’s something the matter with it. I believe it’s got San José scale. Come here and look at it, will you?”

Mr. Carter trailed the colonel’s tall, thin figure across the lawn, and the two pointers came to meet them.

“Down, Jim! Down, Rover!” ordered the colonel, reaching the tree. “There—if you’ll look close along that lower limb—see?”

His visitor approached the limb indicated and stared at it moodily. Then he swallowed hard.

“Think it’s scale?” the colonel asked anxiously.

“Darned if I know!” said Mr. Carter violently. “Denbigh, I came to tell you—— The fact is, my son’s made an ass of himself. He——”

“Yes?” the colonel stood still, politely amazed. “Which son, Carter?”

“William. He—he’s married!”

There was a little silence and then the colonel laughed dryly.

“Was that what ailed you? On my word, Carter, I began to think you’d got creeping paralysis of the brain. Who’s he married?”

“I don’t know.”

“What!”

“No, I don’t! It’s some French girl—Fanchon—there, I can’t remember! We just heard this morning. The—the young donkey hasn’t known her three months.”

Colonel Denbigh broke off a twig and began to whittle it.

“Case of love at first sight, I presume,” he commented calmly. “I wouldn’t take it so hard, Carter, you may like her.”

Mr. Carter made an inarticulate sound which ended in his throat. His eyes avoided the colonel’s.

“Mrs. Carter’s all broken up,” he said hoarsely. “It’s a shock. Of course we don’t know anything. But—that is—I—I’m afraid, William’s behaved badly. Virginia, you know?”

Colonel Denbigh started slightly. Then he closed his pocket-knife and put it in his pocket.

“What about Virginia?” he asked quietly.

Mr. Carter hesitated, then he reddened. “You know how we all love you and Virginia,” he said hurriedly. “We—we hoped there was something—the fact is, Emily says William was—was engaged to Virginia. I—I want to know, Colonel. I want to know if my boy’s behaved like that?”

“You’re mistaken, Mr. Carter,” replied the colonel loftily. “No man who was engaged to Virginia Denbigh could, or would, forget it.”

“But, Colonel, I thought——” Mr. Carter was purple now with embarrassment.

“You’re mistaken, sir,” the colonel held his head high, “entirely mistaken.”

Mr. Carter felt like a gold fish splashed out of its globe. He gasped and swallowed hard. He remembered, too, that his wife had told him not to come. “You’ll only make a mess of it, papa,” she had warned him, between her sobs, “You’re always putting your foot in it!”

“I beg your pardon, Colonel. I—well, you see—it was because I think so much of her—of Virginia, I mean, that I came. I—I thought if my boy—my boy, William Henry Carter, had done a thing like that— Well, sir, I’d feel like disowning him!”

The colonel stood still. He had thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, and his eyes were fixed on the distant road.

“You were mistaken, sir, that’s all. There comes Jinny now.”

Mr. Carter, following his eyes, saw the ancient wagonette entering the old gateway. Lucas was driving placidly, the old grays were ambling up the broad moss-grown driveway to the front door. Alone in the back sat a slim young figure. Virginia was reading a newspaper. Mr. Carter remembered that fearful item in the personals and cold perspiration stood out in beads on his forehead.

“I’ll have to go,” he said thickly. “I’m late now at the office. We’ve been all upset.”

“Better look at this San José scale,” said the colonel grimly, his eyes still on the wagonette.

Lucas had stopped half-way to the house and Virginia jumped down. She was coming toward them now. In one hand she held the newspaper, in the other some hothouse roses. Mr. Carter, making hot-foot for the gate, came full upon her.

“Why, Mr. Carter!” she smiled radiantly. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“I—I stopped by to get a setting of leghorn eggs,” said Mr. Carter, mopping his forehead. “It’s a hot day, Virginia.”

She laughed. “I thought it was cool. Please take this rose to Mrs. Carter from me, won’t you? Mrs. Payson just cut them for me; they’re from her new greenhouse. She calls them ‘Kentucky Sunsets.’”

Mr. Carter took the rose and stumbled blindly for the open. He was suffocating with mortification. If William wasn’t engaged to her, he, Johnson Carter, had made a donkey of himself, and if William was engaged to her! Mr. Carter wiped his forehead again, absently thrust the rose inside the crown of his hat and set the hat firmly on his head with the rose leaves hanging out at the back—like the tail of a kite. They were still fluttering there as he plodded down the road toward his office, his face red and his heart sore.

Meanwhile, Colonel Denbigh had crossed the lawn to meet his granddaughter. Virginia gave him the newspaper without comment and retired to an old stone bench near the rustic table which served her grandfather as a writing-desk and refreshment table in summer time. She was engaged now in arranging Mrs. Payson’s roses while the colonel pretended to read the news. They both heard the horses going around to the stable and Lucas’ voice as he called to them to go into their stalls.

The colonel rustled the newspaper and laid it down. Then he took off his hat and pushed back his white hair. He was a brave man, but he was perspiring at every pore.

“Jinny,” he said at last, so abruptly that she started and looked around. He caught her eye, winced, and plunged in. “Mr. Carter was here just now.”

“Yes?” Virginia listened expectantly, a little flush on her cheeks.

The colonel wiped his forehead. “It’s a hot day!” he observed. Then, casually: “Yes; he’s heard from his son. He’s coming home with——”

“Yes?” Virginia drew her breath quietly, averting her eyes. “Soon, grandpa?”

The colonel choked. He had to go to the table and drain a glass of water. “Yes. He—he’s made a darned fool of himself, Jinny, he’s—he’s married.”

“I know,” Virginia rejoined in a low voice. “I just read it in the newspaper.”

The colonel, looking into the bottom of his tumbler, was aware that the bees had got into the honeysuckle. They sounded like a full brass band in his ears. He could not stand it any longer, he looked sideways at Virginia. She was still sitting on the old stone bench, her roses in her lap. She wasn’t looking at him and he could see her profile. It was very pale now, but she still had an adorable nose. It came from her mother’s side; the Denbighs had long ones with a hump, called politely Roman. Her grandfather, watching her intently, saw her slip a ring from her finger and put it into her pocket. As she said nothing, the colonel got his breath. “She’ll want to know, I’ll tell her the rest now,” he thought. “It’s like pulling a tooth—better get it over.”

“He’s married a French girl. Only known her three months. He’s bringing her home.”

Virginia rose quietly, gathering up her roses. She started to speak, but her lips trembled and she gave it up. She put the roses in the bowl on the colonel’s table and filled the bowl with water. Her hands were quite firm.

“I hope she’s nice,” she said at last, in a low voice.

The colonel, who had caught her eye, made a rash movement, he was going to take her in his arms. But she straightened herself.

“Please d-d-don’t!” she gasped, and ran up the steps into the house.

Colonel Denbigh stood, looking after her, his eyes full. Then he smoothed his hair again and put on his hat. Thrusting his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat he walked up and down.

“She’s game!” he thought proudly. “By gum, she’s a Denbigh. God bless her!”

At this moment Plato emerged from the house with a tray.

“It am time fo’ yo’ julep, Col’nel,” he remarked, setting down a glass that showed a green sprig of mint in crushed ice.

“Plato,” said the colonel thoughtfully, “what was it you used to tell me about old Colonel Colfax and his daughter?”

Plato flicked a little dust off the edge of the table and showed his ivories.

“Yo means ’bout Miss Ann an’ dat Mist’ Gibbie?”

The colonel nodded, his eyes on the far end of the sunny path to the orchard.

“Mist’ Gibbie was courtin’ Miss Ann, suh. He warn’t no ’count at all, no, suh, but Miss Ann, I reckon she thought a heap of him. Anyways, Col’nel Colfax, he didn’t say noffin much, no, suh, he jest kinder watched ’em. Den, ’bout six months after Mist’ Gibbie come courtin’, jest when we was all expectin’ a weddin’, come t’ find out Mist’ Gibbie was hangin’ round widder lady. Yes, suh, she’d come t’ town from New York, an’ she hab a heap ob money. Dey got talkin’ round at de clubs an’ de hotels an’ so on, suh, ’bout how Mist’ Gibbie done gib Miss Ann Colfax de mitten ’long ob dis lady. De col’nel—yo’ remembers him, suh? Well, de col’nel comes in one day, walkin’ kinder ob straight-like an’ sets down on de porch. ’Peared like to us, suh, we was all down in de kitchen, an’ de kitchen got a bead righ’ on de side porch—it ’peared like t’ us dat de col’nel was expectin’ company. Miss Ann, she was up-stairs, way back, lyin’ down wid a headache. Been cryin’, so Sally Johnson, her maid, say. Well, suh, it got on t’ ’bout two o’clock, an’ it was one ob dese yere white dust days. De rooster out in de road, he’d been dustin’ himself righ’ smart. Mr. Gibbie comes up. He comes ’long quiet-like, suh, expectin’ t’ see Miss Ann, an’ we was watchin’ because we done know de col’nel had seed him out wid de widow. De col’nel gits up, suh, an’ stands wid his hands in his pockets, awaitin’, terr’ble quiet. An’ Mist’ Gibbie, he comes up an’ asks fer Miss Ann. De col’nel, he look him up an’ down an’ he done say noffin, noffin at all. Den Mist’ Gibbie, he comes up de steps an’ he asks fer Miss Ann agin. Says he: ‘I was engaged t’ yer daughter, suh, an’ I wants ter see her.’ ‘Yo’ can see me, suh,’ says de col’nel. Den we didn’t heah what Mist’ Gibbie says. All t’ once, Col’nel, dere was somet’ing doin’. Col’nel Colfax, he lets fly one foot, suh, an’ Mist’ Gibbie, he lands smack on top of de rooster in de dust an’ dey rolls ober togedder. Dat was de las’ time Mist’ Gibbie asks fer Miss Ann Colfax, suh, it sho was.”

Colonel Denbigh pulled his moustache thoughtfully.

“Did he kill the rooster, Plato?” he asked solicitously.

Plato laughed. “No, suh, he was a heap more scared den de rooster.”

The colonel sighed. “Those were great days, Plato.”

“Dey sho’ was, suh!”

“I wish they’d come back,” Colonel Denbigh added regretfully, shaking his head.

IV

It was a clear, starry night, and the long black plume of smoke from the engine was plainly visible as the train rounded the curve and came slowly up to the station. It seemed to approach solemnly, with a certain portentous stateliness, its long line of lighted cars mysteriously welded together and suggesting a giant caterpillar suffering from internal conflagration.

The soft spring night, so illusive in its fragrance and its stillness, was suddenly riven by the fierce clamor of the monster’s bell, and the long platform of the station shook and trembled under foot.

Mr. Carter and Daniel waited at the gates, detailed for this painful duty by the panic-stricken Mrs. Carter. The train was late, and they had been waiting fifteen minutes. Daniel patiently leaned on his cane, while his father gripped the iron bars at times with the air of an exasperated tiger looking for a victim. Aware of other people also waiting and within ear-shot, they had said little to each other; but as the train finally approached, Mr. Carter broke out with a suppressed rumble.

“The young donkey!” he said for the hundredth time. “I—I wonder what I’m here for, anyway?”

Daniel, who had borne a good deal already, pulled at his sleeve.

“They’ll hear you. For Heaven’s sake, make the best of it!”

Mr. Carter gave utterance to a sound that seemed to be a cross between a grunt and a bellow, but the thunderous arrival of the engine drowned all other noises, and he fell silent while he stared gloomily down the long aisle between the tracks where the passengers were disembarking.

“There’s William,” said Daniel in his ear.

“Where?” Mr. Carter experienced a strange, sinking feeling around the diaphragm. “Oh, I see!”

The two stood silent, trying to get a good view through the crowd.

“My word, Dan, has he married a kid? She’s no size at all!”

Dan went forward, his halting walk jarring anew on his father. Mr. Carter hated to have one of his boys a cripple, but to-night he felt that Daniel was heroic. He followed in a panic.

William saw them.

“Hello, Dan! How d’you do, father? Here—here’s your new daughter,” he added in a lower, more vibrant tone, drawing his wife forward, pride in his face.

Mr. Carter made a desperate plunge, tried to think of something to say, stumbled badly, and surprised himself and both his sons by suddenly kissing the bride.

“Welcome home!” he said loudly. “We’re all mighty glad to see you. We——”

He stopped short with his mouth open, amazed at his own performance. He had never intended to do anything of the kind. He was suffering from stage fright, his mind became a blank, and he simply stared.

But the bride was not at loss. His greeting seemed to touch her. She held out both hands with a fluttering, birdlike gesture, one to him and one to Dan, and she lifted a lovely, animated face.

“Vous parlez Français?” she cried eagerly, with shining eyes.

Mr. Carter looked about aghast.

“Good Lord, William! Can’t she speak English?”

He was answered with a chorus of laughter. Young Mrs. Carter, William, and Daniel giggled outrageously.

“Of course she does, father! She’s half American,” replied William.

But the laugh had broken the ice. Mr. Carter looked more narrowly at his daughter-in-law, and discovered that her eyes were lovely. She raised them to his now with a look that suddenly recalled William’s description. They were soft and brown and tender, with something sylvan and untamed in their lucid depths.

“By George, a wild fawn, of course, of course!” thought Mr. Carter, and he offered her his arm.

She took it, clinging to him a little with a touch at once soft and confiding. There was the ghost of an elusive fragrance in her hair, and in the light veil that floated across his shoulder. It suggested violets wet with dew, and even Mr. Carter was intuitively aware that there was something unique, something distinguished and amazing about the small figure, so slight and graceful, and the delicately poised head.

“Of course I speak English,” she murmured softly in his ear as they threaded the crowd, followed by William and Daniel and two porters with innumerable bags. “Mais, hélas! I wanted to speak French to you because I love it. It’s the language of my heart, and you”—there was a lovely tremor in her voice—“you’re so good to me here in this smoky place—like a father! I—oh, I know—je t’adore!”

Mr. Carter, unaccustomed to the language of extravagance, had a pleasurable feeling of elation. Hitherto, his performances in the social line had been unappreciated, even in the bosom of his family. He had frequently felt like a dancing bear, but now all was changed; this little French girl knew a good thing when she saw it.

“That’s all right, you’re William’s wife,” said Mr. Carter, “and I’m mighty fond of William. His mother thinks he’s a chip of the moon, I’ll tell you that!”

“Tiens!” The girl drew in her breath quickly. “Then I’m afraid—she will never like me!”

Mr. Carter, who felt that this time he had really put his foot in it, covered his confusion by hustling her into a waiting taxi. Daniel and he had secured one, but it was necessary to take another for the hand-luggage, and Daniel rode home in that, alone with the bags and umbrellas, while his father and William sat with the bride.

Daniel, who had exchanged a word or two with his brother as they crossed the station together, was aware of William’s uneasiness. In the familiar station, confronted with his father and his brother, and all the old realities of his home life, William must have suffered some kind of a shock. He had even said, rather thickly, as they walked along:

“How are they all? Judge Jessup, Dr. Barbour—the—the Denbighs?”

Daniel, staring straight before him, had answered shortly. All their friends were in good health, he said. But he had previously caught William’s eye, and something in its expression rankled in Daniel’s mind. He glanced moodily at the heap of luggage in the cab with him, topped by a small green-leather bag with the initials “F. L. F.” in silver on the flap. She was pretty; he had perceived the subtle charm of the small, irregular face and the beautiful, wild eyes. Yet he was not reassured; he was, in fact, vaguely uneasy.

Then he reflected bitterly that he was a prejudiced judge. He had never been able to get the look in Virginia Denbigh’s eyes out of his mind. He could see them still as he gave her the first warning. The blood went up to Daniel’s ears and burned there; he abhorred that little green bag.

Both taxis slowed down at the Carters’ door, a stream of light flowed out of the house, and Mrs. Carter, frightened and tearful, appeared at the threshold, supported on either hand by Leigh and Emily.

Daniel, busying himself with directions about the hand-luggage, escaped the ordeal of the greeting, but he caught a glimpse of his mother trying to be nice to the bride and then crying on William’s shoulder. When Daniel finally entered the house, the young stranger had taken off her hat and tossed aside the light furs that she had worn with such a daring effect of style. Her brother-in-law was almost startled, she looked so small, so delicate, and so young. Her hair was fluffy and dusky and riotously pretty; it escaped into curls about her little ears and on the nape of her white neck. Her dress, too, in the extreme of the prevailing mode, was a little daring in its display of both neck and ankles.

As Daniel entered, she had discovered Emily, a gawky girl of sixteen, and was displaying a flattering interest in her that covered the embarrassed Emily with blushes. Mrs. Carter tried to save the situation by urging her daughter-in-law to come up-stairs.

“I’ve got the very best room ready for you, my dear,” she said tremulously. “You’ll want to arrange your things and come right down. We’ve waited supper for you.”

“How sweet of you, maman! I may call you maman, mayn’t I?” She laid a light hand on Mrs. Carter’s arm, raising her soft eyes to her face. “If I’m good I may call you that—toujours—toujours, n’est-ce-pas?”

“For Heaven’s sake, Fanchon, don’t talk French to mother!” her husband exclaimed. “She doesn’t know a word of it—and you can speak English.”

“I used to speak French quite a little, Willie,” Mrs. Carter protested, coloring faintly; “but I—I’m a little rusty!”

Mr. Carter laughed.

“Mama can just about say, ‘oui, oui,’ like a pig,” he said bluntly. “You women hurry up; I want my supper.”

Fanchon, with one foot on the stairs, turned and kissed her hand to him.

“I’m coming,” she declared. “I’m starving, too. I won’t be ten minutes!”

“She means two hours,” said William, his eyes following the small figure with a look that did not escape either his father or Daniel.

“She’s turned his head,” the latter thought moodily, not unaware of the charm of the light, hurrying voice and the accent, delicate and sweet, that made her English so exotic.

At the moment, too, Leigh appeared, laden with Fanchon’s luggage. Like a beast of burden he toiled up behind the women, plainly captivated. William, seeing it, grinned and laid his hand on Daniel’s shoulder. Daniel was the only one who had, so far, shown no signs of capitulation.

“Well, Dan, got any of those old cigarettes in your room?” he asked jocularly.

Daniel yielded, returning his smile, and the two brothers, anxious perhaps for a little talk together, went up-stairs.

Left alone—marooned, as it were—on the old Turkey rug in the hall, Mr. Carter prowled about for a moment, his mind in a maze. He looked into the dining-room, wondered if supper was ready, and finally went into the library and sank heavily into his favorite chair. He had a confused feeling of amazement that the room looked just as usual—the same old books around the walls, the same old portrait of an ancestral Carter over the fireplace, and the guttered chairs, looking as homelike and shabby as ever. Even the litter on the table—it hadn’t set itself in order, this corner of the house having escaped the cleaning up for the bride. There was the same old lamp in the center, and his old brier-wood lay there, too.

He sighed, slowly rubbing the back of his head with one hand, while he gazed reflectively at the other. He was confusedly aware of an elusive fragrance about his fingers, the ghost of a perfume, and he had a dazzled consciousness of those wild-fawn eyes, and the red lips, and little pointed chin. He had a guilty recollection, too, of calling his son a young donkey.

He was still sitting there, staring into the vacant fireplace, when he heard the rustle of skirts and felt his wife’s entrance. He did not look up; he seemed to feel an unsympathetic atmosphere, and he heard Mrs. Carter drop into a chair by the table with a heaviness that suggested collapse after an ordeal.

He waited, expectant, but nothing happened. The silence, in fact, grew rather thick. Mrs. Carter sat there, saying nothing, though she swallowed once or twice rather audibly. Unable to endure it any longer, her husband broke the pause.

“She’s mighty pretty,” he said at last, apparently addressing the fireplace.

His wife said nothing. She only turned a slow, absent look toward him, her mind at work on some problem too deep for him.

“Maybe it’ll turn out better than we thought, mama,” he ventured again.

“Maybe,” she assented reluctantly. “Poor Willie.”

“Poor fiddlesticks! He’s in love.” Mr. Carter frowned heavily. “I reckon a man has a right to pick his own wife, anyway,” he decided finally.

Mrs. Carter gave him another mysterious look—a look that seemed to deplore his ignorance. Then she rose, murmured something about supper, and left the room. She was going up the front stairs, but she heard William coming down, and, for the first time in her life, she avoided her first-born. With a feeling of guilty panic, she fled up the back stairs. She could hear the bride still moving about in the best parlor chamber, and she slipped past it and crept softly into Emily’s room.

At the moment her daughter was standing in front of the looking-glass, staring fixedly into it, but Mrs. Carter did not notice this. She shut the door behind her with the air of a conspirator. Her knees felt weak under her, and she needed sympathy, the sympathy of her own sex. Of course, Emily was a child, but she was a girl child.

Mrs. Carter drew a long breath and put her finger on her lip. Her astonished daughter viewed her a moment in alarm; then a look of understanding dawned in Emily’s eyes, and she stood quite still, waiting. Mrs. Carter tiptoed across the room and whispered:

“Emily, do you think she paints her eyes?”

Emily shook her head.

“It’s her eyelashes. I looked hard at ’em, mama, and she does something to them. They look thick and soft like feathers. I think they’re just lovely!”

“Emily!”

“I do! That’s why her eyes look so nice. I’m going to find out how she does it, too.”

“Emily Carter, aren’t you ashamed of yourself? I—oh!” Mrs. Carter wiped her eyes. “I’m so ashamed—for Willie! My son’s wife with make-believe eyelashes! It—it isn’t respectable!”

“I wish I knew how she did it,” said Emily. “Anyway, I’m going to find out.”

Mrs. Carter, having dropped into a chair, buried her face in her handkerchief. She had been longing for a good cry, and this was her first moment of real enjoyment. Her comfortable shoulders rose and fell convulsively, and her daughter caught the muffled sounds of grief. Emily did not heed them, but turned again to her mirror. She had short, blond eyelashes, a good two shades lighter than her blond hair. She viewed them now with the cold eye of an unbiased critic.

“Light eyelashes are horrid,” she said to herself with a glitter of determination in her eye. “I must find out how she does it.”

“My daughter-in-law!” sobbed Mrs. Carter under her breath. “My Willie’s wife, and—and she chalks her nose—I saw it myself!”

V

The Carters, after a few days, tried to settle down and get used to it, but the new Mrs. Carter never quite let them do it. She kept taking them by surprise, with a kind of flying grace that left them speechless. She was making rapid conquests, too. Leigh had become her slave. He followed her about in an embarrassed state of subjugation, and spent long hours in his room writing sonnets, dedicated to Fanchon, or, more often, to “another’s wife.”

Emily, meanwhile, was making some curiously subtle alterations in her own appearance, as yet undiscovered by her anxious mother. She had successfully negotiated a loan of three dollars from Daniel—for purposes unknown.

In one way or another, the bride had made progress with them all; she had fascinated, or dazzled, or perplexed first one member of the family and then another. It was only Daniel, the student and philosopher, who still resisted. In the rôle of an observer, he maintained an unruffled tranquillity.

It was this very thing—his inaccessibility, his aloofness—that ruffled young Mrs. Carter. At first she had not noticed him—a pale young man who limped; but after a while she caught herself watching him, expecting something, she knew not what. She was tantalized by his silence, his drawling Southern speech, his quiet observation. In a hundred little ways she had tried to take him unawares and failed. Then he grew interesting, and she studied him. She had that love of conquest that some women have, and she had not conquered Daniel.

Quite unaware of the interest he had excited, Daniel pursued his usual course, except in one direction. He had had neither the heart nor the courage to go to the Denbighs. It seemed to him that he could never bear to see again that look in Virginia’s eyes, a look that was not for him—and not caused by him, thank God! It followed him when he worked in Judge Jessup’s office, on briefs that were soon to make him famous, and when he walked, meditating, under the stars. It could not be shut out, because Virginia’s face, her eyes, her smile, had been with him so long in secret.

He had tried to thrust the image out when he thought she was to be his brother’s wife, but now he did not try to battle with it. He would, indeed, have loved to dwell upon it, but for that look of doubt and pain in her eyes when she first heard of William’s marriage. Love’s vision is excruciatingly clear when it is looking at love revealed. He knew now! And he had found it too hard to go there; he felt as if he had, in some mysterious way, become heir to his brother’s falsehood. He was bearing a vicarious punishment by denying himself a sight of Virginia’s face; but he thought of her with a constancy that shut out his brother’s bride.

He was thinking of Virginia one day when he came in rather earlier than usual, and, finding the library empty, sat down to write a letter or two. He chose his place, too, because there was a picture of Virginia on the mantelpiece—a small photograph of her as a schoolgirl, which she had given to his mother. It was framed and standing there beside the old ormolu clock.

As Daniel wrote he looked up at the picture with that curious sense of companionship that lonely people, people who have suffered, draw from such inanimate images of those they love. It comforted him. He lit his pipe and began to write. For the moment he forgot his lameness, that lameness which seemed to him such an insuperable barrier to his own hopes of happiness.

The house was quiet. His father and William had not yet come in, his mother and Emily seemed to have effaced themselves, and he knew that Leigh was taking an examination at school. It was very peaceful. The old, worn room had a certain shabby dignity, the company of books looked down at him, and through the open window he could see a snow-white lilac in full and splendid bloom. He halted his pen for a moment, and looked out at the sunshine that seemed to bathe the delicate blossoms in a shower of splendor.

He had utterly forgotten the sensation of the household, his brother’s wife, and he was taken unawares. The door behind him opened softly, he perceived the scent of violets, and Fanchon entered.

“Ma foi.” She stood looking at him, her head on one side. “I didn’t know you were here!”

Daniel laid down his pen. He had come to expect something new every time he saw her.

“Does that matter?” he asked, smiling, aware that she was dressed for the street and that she looked lovely, a dark, bewitching little creature with haunting eyes. “I don’t matter. Come in, do!”

She came, watching him, and put out her hand.

“Mais non! Let us be friends,” she said softly, with a kind of childish frankness.

“I thought we were friends already,” he retorted, touching the hand lightly and flushing in spite of himself.

She shook her head.

“Non, non, you don’t like me!”

Daniel rose and drew forward a chair.

“Pardon me, madame,” he said gaily. “I forgot my manners. You see, I’m your brother and I don’t remember.”

She perched lightly on the arm of the chair, waving him back to his seat.

“It isn’t that,” she retorted quickly. “You don’t like me, monsieur!”

He leaned back in his own chair, watching her, wondering just what she meant.

“Perhaps you’re mistaken. Perhaps I do like you. Why shouldn’t I?”

She laughed, throwing one arm lightly across the back of the chair and letting the light flash on the jewels she wore on her small fingers—extraordinary jewels, Daniel thought, for William’s wife.

“Mais non, I know! I feel things here!” She touched her heart lightly, the dark eyes misting suddenly, the red lips trembling. “I—I can’t live unless I’m loved!”

“If we all felt like that there’d be a good many deaths,” Daniel remarked.

For a moment she made no reply, but her face seemed to grow pale and small and appealing.

“She’s either a creature of a hundred moods,” he thought musingly, “or she has an extraordinary facial control.”

Fanchon seemed to feel his thought. His very attitude, aloof and challenging and critical, affected her. She shivered, covering her eyes with her hands.

“Don’t look at me like that!” she cried passionately. “Mon Dieu, I can’t bear it! You—you hate me!”

Daniel reddened; he found himself in an uncomfortable position. Had he shown his hostility so strongly? Had he let this wild young creature see that he felt she was an interloper?

“You’re talking nonsense, Fanchon,” he said gravely. “I hate no one—as far as I can remember. I’m a colorless fellow, you know, and a cripple. I don’t count.”

She lifted her face from her hands at that and looked at him again, her dark eyes soft, tender, almost caressing.

“Why do you think of that so much?” she asked him kindly. “It hurts you all through to your soul, I see it! Yet it doesn’t matter—ça ne fait rien! You’re only a little lame, it is so interesting, si distingué.”

“Thank you,” he smiled bitterly. “If you keep on, Fanchon, I shall have cause to love you in good earnest. I hate being lame.”

“I know it!” Her eyes still dwelt on his with a kind of wild softness—the sylvan, fawn-like look again. “And I care—see? Yet you can’t like me! Oh, I know”—she shook her head—“I always know—because I’ve been unhappy, too.”

“You?” he smiled, this time with amusement. “You seem to me a thing of thistledown and sunshine, a sprite, a nymph—anything but unhappy.”

She clasped her hands on her knee, looking at him dreamily.

“Ah, mais non, that’s because you don’t know! I’m an orphan; I had no one—until William came.” Her face softened, glowed, grew infinitely tender. “Guillaume de mon cœur! Before that—I will tell you. Maman died when I was two years old. She was Irish—she was born in southern California, but all her people were Irish. She was poor; she worked in a little inn near a great fruit-grower’s ranch. Mon père”—Fanchon made a sudden grimace—“I didn’t like him. You think that’s wicked? I didn’t love him. He was French and he made wine upon the ranch. He married the Irish girl, and I was born.”

She stopped, her chin in her hand, thinking. Daniel, listening, smiled inwardly. Involuntarily his eyes lifted to the portrait of the ancestral Carter.

“Shade of my ancestors!” he thought amusedly. “An Irish waitress and a French wine-maker!”

But Fanchon’s voice, light and sweet and tantalizing, went on.

“Papa took me to Paris after maman died. He put me in a convent and left me there. That’s all. I never saw him again, though he sent money now and then. At last he died. Voilà!” She clenched her hands passionately. “No one loved me, no one cared whether I lived or died except the good sisters.” She leaned over and laid one hand lightly on the table, looking at him. “Do you wonder now—that I’m so wild?”

“I didn’t know you were wild,” Daniel replied, smiling. “I’m sorry—poor child!”

“No one else was sorry!”

“Oh, yes, I think some one else must have been—besides William,” said Daniel.

She drew her breath quickly, biting her lip. For a long moment she studied him; then, with a shrug, she reached for a match on the table and looked at it, turning it over in her hand.

“I——” She glanced over her shoulder at him, her eyes veiled by their long lashes. “Please give me a cigarette,” she pleaded. “William didn’t want me to frighten your mother. I’m—I’m dying to smoke!”

Daniel stared, not so much at the request as at the sudden change. It was as if she had dropped a mantle and revealed her true self. The tragedy and pathos which, a moment before, had made her so appealing, so childlike, vanished. She sat on the arm of the chair, a daring little figure, one hand stretched out, the other holding the match ready to strike. Her face, too, sharpened, and seemed to have lost its soft beauty.

There was something keen and reckless about it, and the darkened lashes and reddened lips gave it a bizarre effect, almost like a mask.

“Please—a cigarette!” she pleaded.

Daniel thrust his hand into his pocket, produced his cigarette-case, and held it out.

“Better smoke when mother isn’t on hand,” he counseled her. “She’s old-fashioned, you know.”

Fanchon drew a long breath of content, lit the cigarette, and began to smoke. She smoked, daintily, her eyes changing and the long-fringed lashes shading them. Gradually, visibly, she relaxed, the sharpness softened, the eyes grew languorous.

“What heaven!” she said after a moment. “It’s dreadful, isn’t it, when you’ve always smoked, and you can’t get it? I—I think I should have stolen it soon!”

“I see!” Daniel laughed softly. “You should always smoke, Fanchon. Without it you’re a prey to sadness, to memories, to imagination. With a cigarette you’re happy!”

“Mais non, I’m not happy!” She lifted her lashes and gave him a fleeting glance. “But it soothes me. I’m not happy, because”—she rose and stood looking at him, the cigarette in her fingers—“because I know you all wanted William to marry her!”

With one of her sudden, birdlike dives, she touched the picture of Virginia Denbigh on the mantel. In spite of himself, Daniel started violently and colored. An impulse, as sudden and uncontrollable as her movement, made him spring to his feet. He wanted to snatch the picture from her hand; but he restrained himself, lifted his pipe from the table, and knocked the tobacco out into his father’s ash-tray.

“Why do you think so?” he asked her quietly, beginning to refill the pipe.

She laughed, but he saw that the hand which held Virginia’s picture was trembling. She did not answer him in words, but turned and looked at him over her shoulder, her dark eyes glowing in a face that seemed colorless except for the scarlet lips. Daniel, aware of the look, avoided it, a sudden fear in his heart. Something, something subtle and inexplicable, moved him. With an effort of self-control—greater than he knew—he took the picture of Virginia out of her hands and replaced it on the shelf.

“Why do you think that about it?” he asked.

She laughed.

“I know it! I know the kind—jeune fille à marier! Whenever your mother looks at me in here, she looks at that picture and sighs. And your father stares at it and stares at me—comparing us!” She laughed again, a little wildly. “Mon Dieu, I know!”

Daniel frowned.

“You let your imagination run away with you,” he said sharply, returning to his seat and lighting his pipe.

He wanted to make her feel that she had transgressed foolishly. He wanted to be a shield for Virginia Denbigh—wanted it passionately.

Fanchon watched him, her head lowered. She looked, he thought, like a slender bewitching sorceress about to work a spell upon him—or upon Virginia’s picture.

“Ah!” she said slowly and softly. “I can’t make you like me—you’re my enemy!”

Daniel stared, aghast, groping for words. But she did not wait; she turned, ran out of the room, and slammed the door behind her. She left Daniel still staring, half-perplexed, half-amused. He was angry, too.

“The little whirlwind!” he said below his breath.

Then he thought of William with a qualm of pity. Not that he thought that William greatly deserved it, for Daniel’s heart still flamed with anger for Virginia Denbigh; but William was plainly unequal to this—this handful! The observer of the family, Daniel had already suspected a rift in the lute. He knew that his brother was no longer radiantly happy. William had, in fact, the air of the uneasy keeper of a new leopardess, not yet broken in to the etiquette of the zoological park. Daniel had intercepted warning glances, signs, and murmurs between the two, and he had seen William’s evident embarrassment when Fanchon came in contact with his mother.

“He’s been expecting this,” Daniel thought, and smiled, reaching for his pipe again.

It had gone out twice already, and he began to coax it. Before he could rekindle it, the door opened—softly this time—and Mrs. Carter came in with a pale face and staring eyes. She stopped tragically just at the threshold.

“Dan, was she smoking?” she gasped out in an awed undertone.

“I’m afraid she was, mother. Why?”

Mrs. Carter clung to the back of the chair Fanchon had just vacated.

“I thought so! I—I saw it, Dan! She went out of the front door of my house—my son’s wife—smoking a cigarette,” she cried in a climax of horror.

Daniel tried to stem the tide.

“She’s been educated in Paris, mother. Lots of women smoke.”

“Not in our set, Dan, and not in the street, anyway!” Mrs. Carter sank into the chair. “Daniel, I—I’m mortified to death!”

“Nonsense! She’ll stop after a while—when she finds out you don’t like it. Never mind, mother, make the best of it. Very likely no one saw her but you.”

“Saw her!” Mrs. Carter sat up straight and stared at him. “Do you happen to know who are talking to William at this very minute, at the end of this street, just where she’s sure to meet them?”

Daniel laid down his pipe, turning a little pale.

“No,” he said slowly. “Who?”

“Colonel Denbigh and Virginia!”

Her son said nothing, but he turned his eyes slowly away and looked out of the window at the white lilac.

“Virginia Denbigh!” wailed Mrs. Carter. “Think, just think of Virginia smoking!”

And she burst into angry, shamed, helpless tears.

VI

Colonel Denbigh and Virginia had arrived at the corner of the street after a lengthy discussion.

“I suppose I ought to call,” the colonel had said thoughtfully, pulling his mustache.

“Of course!” said Virginia. “I’ve called already, but they were all out.”

“Couldn’t you manage it that way for me, Jinny?”

She laughed, blushing furiously.

“I really wanted to see her, grandpa. They say she’s astonishingly pretty.”

“Humph! I don’t gossip,” the Colonel grinned; “but Sallie Payson said to me, ‘The bride paints her face!’”

Virginia looked at him absently, her eyes thoughtful.

“I wonder! I met Emily yesterday. You know what a blond child she is? She has short, almost white eyelashes naturally.”

Her grandfather nodded.

“Yes, pig lashes—I remember. What about ’em?”

Virginia laughed weakly.

“She’s painted them. It gives her the most singular look. I can’t think her mother knows!”

“She’s at the monkey age. She’s copying Mrs. William, of course.” He stood a moment, thinking, his thumbs in his waistcoat, and his fine white head bent. “It’s too bad! I—I suppose I’ve got to call, Jinny?”

She hesitated, and he turned his head slowly, looking at her with a fine reluctance. If she was distressed, he did not want to see it. But he was reassured by her face. It was calm; there was only a little higher color in her cheeks, but her eyes sparkled.

After a moment she answered him.

“I don’t see why you have to go. William’s such a young man, and I’ve called and left your card. Perhaps you needn’t—not at once, grandpa.”

“I don’t want them to think——” he stopped with his mouth open, he had come very near to speaking out—“I don’t want to hang back,” he concluded lamely; “but, confound it, Jinny, I don’t want to go alone!”

She laughed a little nervously.

“You needn’t. I’ve got to ask her to sing at the concert on Friday. Emily told me she had a lovely voice, and it’s got around that she’s a sensation—a beauty, you know. Mrs. Payson and Mrs. Barbour made me promise to ask her to sing. It’s for the Carters’ church, anyway, so of course it’s all right.”

“You mean that concert to pay the church debt off?” The colonel looked thoughtful a moment; then suddenly he guffawed. “Going to ask her to sing in a Sunday-school hall—before all those strait-laced people—a girl from Paris? I reckon I’ll go, Jinny!”

“I hope you will, and pay five dollars for a front seat. It’s really going to be very good, grandpa. Caraffi—the pianist, you know—is going to play. He’s expected Friday morning. His manager, a man called Corwin, came over to arrange for it yesterday. I’m very glad that I don’t have to deal with him again!” she added with a shudder.

The colonel gave her a quick look.

“Why?”

She laughed.

“Oh, for no reason—except that he’s terrible! A—a person!”

“What sort of a person?”

“Showy. He wears a huge diamond ring and very sporty clothes. He’s got a perfectly beautiful mustache and sparkling eyes, and—well, he’s just terrible!”

“Humph! How about Caraffi, then?”

“That’s different, of course. Caraffi plays exquisitely. I heard him last year, you know, in Baltimore. I was so glad when we could get him to come. It makes us sure of success, and we’ve all worked hard.”

“You have,” the colonel remarked dryly; then he rose reluctantly from the old garden-seat where they had been sitting. “I suppose we might as well go, Jinny, and get it over.”

“You mean—to call upon Mrs. William Carter?”

She spoke in a low voice. For the first time there was a note in it that betrayed the pressure she was putting on herself. It did not tremble, but it hurt the colonel’s ear.

He glanced at her quickly, and caught the soft flush on her downcast face. He thought she had never looked so pretty.

“Yes,” he replied slowly. “When I’ve got to have a tooth pulled I like to get it over. Suppose we go now, Jinny?”

“All right,” she smiled cheerfully. “I’ll ask her for Friday, and get that over, too. You see, they put me on the musical committee.”

“Going to play, child?”

She shook her head.

“After Caraffi? Heaven forbid!”

“I bet you a dollar you could beat him at it!” said the colonel with fine loyalty.

His granddaughter laughed, taking his arm affectionately.

They walked down the quiet street thus, his fine white head towering over hers. The colonel was a tall old man, and he walked with the erectness of a soldier. He had run away at sixteen to be a drummer-boy in Lee’s army, and long afterward, as loyal to the Union as he had been active against it in his boyhood, he got his title in the Spanish war, fighting under General Wheeler. He had the military bearing still, and he sometimes saluted when he met one of the old neighbors trudging past him on the familiar street.

It was a pleasant street, where the quiet houses stood well back among the trees, and here and there white-clad figures rocked on the verandas. The elms arched beautifully overhead, the sunshine flickering through the close-leafed branches and falling in a shower of light in the center of the old, white road. It was peaceful, rural, and profoundly quiet. Virginia and the colonel, who loved it, counted six different kinds of birds.

“There’s a black-and-white warbler,” said Virginia. “Look, grandpa! It’s the first I’ve seen this year.”

“I love the old cardinal best,” the colonel replied. “There he is, right on Mrs. Payson’s magnolia. Hello, Jinny, isn’t that William Carter at the corner?”

Virginia, who had been looking at the warbler, started perceptibly. She even put her hand out quickly and caught at the nearest fence-paling, for she had long ago dropped the colonel’s arm. This was the first time she had seen William since his return, and the shock of it sent the color away from her face and brought it back with a rush. She was rosy when she looked around.

“He seems to be alone,” she said quietly.

The colonel nodded.

Meanwhile, the encounter was inevitable, since they were moving toward William, and William, after a moment of almost visible hesitation, was moving toward them.

“Why, how d’you do, Colonel Denbigh?” said young Carter nervously. “I—I haven’t seen you since I came back.”

“No,” replied the colonel dryly, shaking hands. “I live at the same place, though.”

William Carter blushed. He and Virginia greeted each other silently. She was quite natural and sweet, but William’s blush deepened. Across the ocean, under the spell of other emotions and far different surroundings, it had seemed so easy to forget home ties—even ties of honor; but it was not easy here. The very palings in the old fences seemed to shriek at him.

He remembered painfully the sleepless night he had spent in Paris after that wild moment when he forgot himself and asked Fanchon to marry him. It had been a night haunted with his own sense of the fine things in life, and he remembered that—after the tumult had passed—he had had the sense to burn Virginia’s letters. He could see, even here, the pile of ashes in the little grate in his room at the hotel. The ashes of Virginia’s faithful, cheerful, loving words! He shuddered.

“We were just going to call on your wife,” said Virginia simply.

As she spoke she raised her clear, untroubled eyes to his. It seemed as if she wanted to reassure him by a look—since they could scarcely speak of it again—that he was forgiven. She wanted bygones to be bygones.

“Do you think she’s at home?” she added gently, partly because William seemed incapable of speech.

He pulled himself together.

“I don’t know—I suppose she is.”

He glanced vaguely in the direction of his father’s house.

The colonel, who was standing, planted firmly with his feet well apart, and stroking his mustache, regarded him with no very friendly gaze. He saw a violent change come over the young man’s flushed face. The flush deepened and his glance toward his home became a fixed and stony stare. The colonel followed it, discovered the cause, and stopped pulling his mustache.

Fanchon, emerging from the house in a tempest of emotion, ran down the garden-path and started up the street, still smoking Daniel’s cigarette. She smoked it gracefully, but with the confidence of long habit. The small figure, too, had an assurance, a swinging grace, that seemed to differentiate it from any other figure in the world. There was a Parisian elegance, too, about her dress, and she wore a most amazing hat—a coronet of feathers, flashing red and black, a hat that no one else could have worn with such astonishing charm and style. In fact, from the tip of the highest crimson feather to the end of her tiny shoe, she was an artistic creation. Two or three passers-by walked sidewise and one little pickaninny stood transfixed, in imminent danger of swallowing a lollypop.

Colonel Denbigh coughed.

“Your wife?” he asked William politely.

William, very red, nodded.

“I want you to meet her,” he muttered hastily. “Just a moment——”

He hurried toward Fanchon. Colonel Denbigh caught Virginia’s eye and shook silently.

“Gone to capture that cigarette!” he murmured. “I think I’ll not call to-day.”

“Hush!” whispered Virginia, and blushed again, painfully this time, for her eyes were on the other two.

William, having met his wife, turned and came back with her, the sun shining in their faces. They could be seen much more plainly than they could see. Fanchon had tossed away her cigarette and was looking at her husband, with something in the lift of her small face and the gestures of her quick, nervous hands, suggesting anger.

“She’s wonderfully pretty,” Virginia thought, “but a strange little exaggerated creature—and—and William’s wife!”

She was aware that her own heart was beating heavily, but she held up her head. Meanwhile William came up.

“My wife, Colonel Denbigh. Fanchon, this is Miss Virginia Denbigh. We—we’re old friends,” he added lamely.

Fanchon looked at them with shining eyes. Her beauty—a delicate, captivating, elusive kind of beauty—seemed soft and childlike at the moment. In spite of the flagrant hat and the flagrantly loud stockings and the amazing style of dress, she was dainty, graceful, altogether delightful. And she wanted to please. She smiled at them softly; she spoke very little—in a light, hurrying, childish voice—and she was very deferential, very gentle, to Colonel Denbigh.

“She’s lovely,” Virginia thought generously. “I can’t blame him!” Aloud she gave Fanchon the invitation to sing at the concert. “Caraffi is to play, so you mustn’t think it’s just an ordinary concert,” she explained. “We’d be delighted if you could give us a song—a French song, if you will.”

Fanchon hesitated, she even blushed, and she raised her dark eyes to Virginia’s with that peculiarly engaging wild-fawn look.

“Moi! I’m afraid I don’t sing well enough,” she said deprecatingly.

“She sings beautifully,” William interposed eagerly. He was warmed to the heart by her evident success; he saw that the colonel and Virginia thought her lovely. “Don’t let her off, Virginia!”

The name slipped out with the sound, so subtle and yet so unmistakable, that betrays long and tender intimacy. It slipped out, and William stopped short, reddening to his hair. It was not merely calling a beautiful girl by her Christian name. It was saying a thousand things at once; and he felt it, like a thrill of electricity, running through Fanchon. Besides, Virginia blushed, her eyes meeting his with a sudden appeal, a kind of silent prayer.

“Please don’t—not in that way!” she seemed to say.

Fanchon laughed gaily and lightly, looking from one to the other. Then, with a captivating gesture, she laid her small fingers on Virginia’s arm.

“Merci du compliment!” she said, sweetly. “I’ll sing—just one song—for you!”

Virginia, who had recovered her composure in an instant, smiled back at her.

“That’s all we could hope for, Mrs. Carter. I can put your name on the program, then—and the song?”

Fanchon nodded, an elfish look in her eyes now.

“Oui, par example—I can sing anything?” she asked.

“Oh, sing something nice—it’s for the church, Fanchon!” said William hastily.

“She means something nice,” said Virginia. “Of course—anything you’ll give us,” she added, sweetly, drawing away a little.

Evidently she did not quite mean to go back to the house with them. William saw it—and flushed again.

“You two were coming to call, weren’t you?” he asked bluntly.

Virginia glanced at her grandfather, and the colonel shook his head.

“Some other day. It’s”—he looked at his watch—“it’s near dinner-time now, Jinny.”

She assented, and they drew away graciously. In spite of that first happy moment when the impression seemed so good, there was something wrong. William felt it. He glanced nervously at his wife, but she was smiling. He had never seen her look more lovely or less dangerous. He drew a long breath of relief and urged the Denbighs to come soon.

“Some evening,” he suggested. “Father will be delighted to see you, colonel, and Fanchon will sing for you both.”

“Then we’ll surely come soon,” said Virginia.

They managed to get away, and William had an uneasy feeling as he saw them retreating toward their home. He was positive that they had been coming to call. It all embarrassed him. It had been an ordeal, and he had felt it keenly. He had always held a good opinion of himself. The successful eldest son of the family, he had had the éclat of his success at home; but to-day, face to face with Virginia, he had felt—he grew hot all over at the thought of how he had felt.

His wife’s voice startled him.

“Are you going back to the house?” she asked in an odd tone.

He started, looking at her reluctantly.

“Why, yes, I was. Shall we walk a little way, instead?”

She shrugged, turning without a word and going back with him. At another time he would have thought that there was something strange about her, but to-day he did not notice. They walked quite a distance without speaking. The silence was growing apparent when Fanchon broke it.

“So that’s the girl who’s in love with you!” she said abruptly.

William reddened.

“Don’t say that!” he exclaimed hastily. “I never said that!”

She laughed, and he grew angry.

“Listen, Fanchon, I’ve got something to say to you!”

She gave him a sidelong look.

“Dis donc,” she said.

“I wish you wouldn’t smoke on the street. American girls never do it.”

“Street?” Fanchon looked about her vacantly. “Ciel, do you call this a street?”

“Yes, I do. It’s a street in my home town,” replied William doggedly. “I’m sorry you don’t like it. We’ve got to live here, you know.”

“Here?” She looked at him now, her lip trembling. “Toujours?”

Suddenly she began to laugh, softly at first, and then wildly, hysterically, dashing tears from her eyes.

William, nonplused, simply stared. He no longer understood her.

VII

The difficulties of St. Luke’s Church had been very great. The interest on the debt was heavily in arrears, and the Ladies’ Association, selected from the active female members of the congregation, had labored early and late to find its share of the money. There had been fairs and tableaux and even Mrs. Jarley’s waxworks, but none of these things had done more than collect a tax on the members of the church. Outsiders had been absolutely shy, and the members were beginning to find a hole in both sides of their pockets. They made dainty articles for sale—splashers and whiskbroom holders and aprons—and dressed dolls and baked cakes, and then went to the bazaar and solemnly bought them back again. It had become a little wearing on sensitive nerves and pocketbooks.

Finally, as a brilliant climax, old Mrs. Payson conceived the idea of a concert that would be fine enough to coax the reluctant dollars from the Presbyterians and the Baptists, the Methodists and the Universalists and the Catholics—in fact, an entertainment that would draw the town. The Sunday-school hall, a gift from Dr. Barbour’s father, was large enough to seat almost a theater audience, and it had a fine platform, furnished with footlights, and wide enough not only for a grand piano but for a number of famous singers.

The question of paying the singers had, at first, staggered the ladies, but Mr. Payson had finally come to their relief. As the wealthiest member of the congregation, he usually had to make good the deficiencies, and he proposed to pay for some first-class performers if the ladies of the association would guarantee that they could fill the hall at good prices—five dollars for the best seats, two-fifty for the second best, and one dollar and fifty cents for children. If they sold every seat at these rates, they could cover the deficit, and Mr. Payson would escape another and heavier levy.

It was Virginia Denbigh who finally achieved it. She had taken hold with the ardor of youth and the executive ability which Colonel Denbigh proudly claimed was an attribute of his family. The thing was done. The pianist, Caraffi, was engaged and one fine singer, besides a first-rate orchestra from out of town.

“No one,” said Virginia, “will pay to hear our own people, even if they play better.”

The wisdom of this diagnosis of the popular sentiment was demonstrated by the sale of tickets. As the night drew near, it became apparent that not a seat would be vacant. The invitation to young Mrs. William Carter was a brilliant coup. The town was anxious to see her and to hear her; the announcement that she would sing—probably a French ballad—had rushed the last seats up to a premium. For William Carter’s sudden marriage abroad had aroused no small amount of gossip.

The hall began to fill early. Virginia Denbigh, who had come down with her grandfather, glanced over it with a thrill of pleasure.

“We’re going to make it,” she said softly, “every cent! Look, grandpa, they’re selling the last seats for five dollars—away back, too!”

“Scandalous!” retorted the colonel. “Can’t see a thing there but the top of Mrs. Payson’s bonnet, and there’ll be a draft from the door. You’ve got no conscience, Jinny. Make them sell those for a dollar.”

She laughed, patting his arm.

“You go and take your seat; I’ve got to be back in the reception-room to meet the singers.”

The old man nodded, making his way to a front seat, and looking about him interestedly as he went.

The congregation was there in force, with the rector and his wife well down in front; but, for the first time in the history of their church entertainments, the rest of the townspeople appeared there, too. Colonel Denbigh counted three ministers and half a dozen deacons. The black coats and white neckties were well forward, and there were three old ladies, patrons of the church, already seated, with their ear trumpets at their ears. On the rear benches the young people were congregated, and, as the hall filled, the young men of the town stood about in groups in the aisles and behind the last seats.

But it was a very solemn gathering, after all.

“Sunday-school meeting,” thought the colonel. “Hard-shelled Baptists and Methodists on one side, and High-church Episcopalians and Roman Catholics on the other. Needs something a little sprightly to make ’em sit up and take notice. I wonder——”

He looked about him curiously, and then he saw Mr. Carter going slowly down the aisle, followed by his wife and Emily.

“Hello!” said the colonel. “Didn’t expect such luck. You’ve got the seat next to me, Mrs. Carter. How are you, Emily?” He glanced rather sharply at the girl as he spoke, startled by her unusual appearance, for Emily’s white eyelashes were now a dark brown, and her nose was whitened. “Bless my soul!” thought the colonel, and then, to Mr. Carter: “Where’s William and his pretty wife?”

“William isn’t coming,” Mr. Carter replied shortly, seating himself heavily and feeling of his necktie. “He’s at home, smoking a pipe with Dan. His wife”—Mr. Carter glanced at the lighted platform, filled with a grand piano and many palms—“I suppose she’s coming. She started with Leigh half an hour ago. He’s bringing her.”

“Humph!”

The colonel tried to think of something more to say, but Mrs. Payson relieved him. She fluttered across the aisle.

“Dear Mrs. Carter, we’re all crazy to hear your new daughter sing! Judge Jessup says she’s got a lovely voice.”

Mrs. Carter smiled tremulously and blushed.

“Yes,” she said faintly, but with some pride in her voice. “The judge heard her the other night. She’s—she’s coming with Leigh.”

As she spoke there was a flutter and stir in the audience, and Mrs. Payson retreated hastily to a front seat. Judge Jessup had just appeared on the platform with a tall, thin man who wore an immaculate dress-suit and displayed an amazing head of black hair.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the judge in his deep bass, “it’s my duty and my pleasure to introduce the great pianist, Signor Caraffi.”

Colonel Denbigh led the applause, and for a moment it was deafening. The pianist, thrusting one hand in the front of his white satin waistcoat, bowed low. Judge Jessup discreetly withdrew into the shadow of the palms where—at intervals—the audience glimpsed white skirts and pink skirts and blue skirts, and two or three amazing pairs of feet skirmishing behind the foliage and between the substantial green tubs. But even these things became less diverting when the hirsute gentleman began to play.

“Oh, how wonderful!” breathed Mrs. Carter with relief.

Colonel Denbigh nodded.

“Looks like a hair-restorer advertisement,” he replied gently; “but he can play. I reckon it’s genius that makes his hair grow!”

It certainly looked like genius, for he was really a great pianist. For a while he held the audience spellbound. Splendid music filled their ears and, in some cases at least, stirred their souls. Even the more frivolous listeners forgot to make fun of the huge, shaggy head as it bent and swayed and nodded while the pianist forgot himself and forgot the world in his conflict with the instrument—a conflict that always left him supremely master of heavenly harmonies.

Back in the little room behind the platform, Virginia listened and forgot that she was worn out with superintending it all; forgot that she still had her anxieties, and would have them until the last number was successfully rendered, for Mrs. William Carter was next on the bill, and Mrs. Carter had not come. Not yet! Virginia was waiting for her, much against her will, for there were two or three operatic strangers waiting also, and that intolerable man Corwin, Caraffi’s manager.

Virginia was aware of him, aware of his sleek good looks and his watchful eyes. Finding them fixed in her direction, she turned her shoulder toward him, and was thus the first to see the arrival of Fanchon and Leigh. They came in softly, Fanchon on tiptoe, listening to Caraffi, and Leigh laden with her wraps and her music-roll, his young, flushed face turned adoringly toward his sister-in-law.

Virginia could not blame him. It seemed to her that the girl—she looked no more than seventeen or eighteen—was wonderfully pretty. For Fanchon had stopped just inside the door, where the light fell full upon her, and was listening, her head a little bent and her finger on her lips. She had given her wrap to Leigh, and stood there, a shining little figure, in white and silver, much décolleté, her slender arms and her lovely young throat unornamented. Her gown—a Parisian thing, Virginia thought—clung to her in a wonderful way, like the shining calyx of a flower; and yet it floated, too, when she moved. Her dusky hair, her wonderful dark eyes, and the piquant little face, needed no better frame than the glimpse of starry night in the open door behind her and the glimmer of shaded lights overhead.

Virginia went forward.

“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said softly. “Your number is the next one, Mrs. Carter.”

Fanchon turned to answer, putting out a small, bejeweled hand, confident and smiling, a sparkling little creature. Then suddenly there came a change. She stopped short and stood motionless. She scarcely seemed to breathe. It was as if some force stronger than her will had arrested her.

Watching her face, Virginia felt the shock of it, without knowing what it was—fear or hate, or a mingling of both. But Fanchon’s eyes were fixed on Corwin, and they were no longer soft. It was not the look of a wild fawn, but of a tigress at bay. Something within, some feeling as strong as it was extraordinary, transformed her. For an instant she seemed to flinch, then she stood facing him.

The man, turning as suddenly, saw her. He jumped to his feet.

“Fanchon la Fare!” he exclaimed, and came toward her, speaking rapidly in French.

Virginia turned away. She did not want to listen, but she heard an exclamation from Fanchon, and saw her leave Corwin standing, an odd look on his face.

Leigh, who had been busy with the wraps, turned, saw the meeting and Fanchon’s face. He dropped his burden and crossed over to her quickly.

“What did he say to you, Fanchon?” he panted. “If he was rude to you, I’ll—I’ll thrash him!”

Fanchon laughed a wild little laugh.

“Dear boy!” she said softly, and stroked his hand. “Je t’adore!”

Leigh flushed, his lowering gaze fastened angrily on Corwin, and Virginia drew a breath of relief when she heard the applause outside. Caraffi had given them a cheery encore; he was coming off the platform, and Fanchon must go on. Virginia called to her softly.

“Now, please, Mrs. Carter!” she said.

Fanchon turned and looked at her, saw by her face that Virginia had seen too much, and her eyes blazed with anger. She took a step forward and snatched up her music-roll, running her fingers over the leaves and biting her lip.

“Tell them to play this, please,” she said, with her head up.

Without looking at it, Virginia took it to the director of the orchestra, glad to escape the little scene. It seemed to her that the air was charged, and she knew that the wait had been too long already. She could hear the impatient stir outside.

There was, indeed, a little stir of impatience in the hall. Two or three young ushers went up and down the aisles with pitchers of iced water, and the rear seats began to fill up with gentlemen who were eating cloves. The rest of the audience studied the program, expectant. “No. 2, Mrs. William Carter, solo,” appeared on it in fine type.

“My daughter-in-law’s going to sing next,” said Mr. Carter, remembering the broken engagement and putting out a feeler. “Seen her yet, colonel?”

“Saw her the other day.” The colonel clasped the top of his cane, leaning on it, and looking absently at an amazing pair of feet and ankles that he saw approaching from behind the palms. “She’s mighty pretty.”

“Think so?” Mr. Carter smiled. “Notice her eyes? Something fawn-like about them—and velvety. We’ve got to calling her—among ourselves, of course—‘the wild fawn.’”

At this moment one of the old ladies behind them interrupted. She tapped Mr. Carter’s shoulder with her fan.

“I do like music,” she said in a loud whisper. “It’s so churchy. I can’t hear much, but I feel it down my spine. Now, tableaux—well, sometimes they’re not just the thing, but music for the church, it’s—it’s safe!”

Colonel Denbigh, overhearing, pulled his mustache. His ear had caught the first notes of a piece that was not “churchy”; it was far too light and too fantastic.

“The kind of tune that makes a fellow sit up and take notice,” the colonel thought. “I wonder——”

He got no farther before he was drowned in applause. A small, graceful, shimmering figure had slipped out from behind the palms. Fanchon stood in the center of the stage, her slender arms raised and her hands clasped behind her head, her eyes bent downward, the shadowy hair framing a low, white brow, her red lips slightly parted. If she heard the applause, she did not heed it. She made no response; she only waited.

Then, as the soft, seductive strains began to fill the hall with music, she began to sing—softly at first, then rising note by note until her clear soprano floated upward like the song of a bird. Then, just as the tension seemed to relax and a deep sigh of pleasure came from the most anxious of the audience, she began to dance.

Still singing, she danced wonderfully, strangely, wildly. Her skirt, clinging and shimmering and floating at the edges, clung to her. It unfolded like a flower as she stepped, and folded again about her slender ankles, above the marvel of her dancing feet. She swayed lightly from side to side, her slender body the very embodiment of grace and motion, as her dancing seemed to be the interpretation of the music, subtle, seductive, wonderful. So might the daughter of Herodias have danced before Herod Antipas!

Breathless, the good people in the front rows stared. Movement was impossible, every sense seemed suspended, everything but the sensation of amazement. Mrs. Carter looked in a frightened way at her husband and caught the twinkle in Colonel Denbigh’s eye. Then she saw her rector mop his forehead with his handkerchief, and she raised her shamed eyes to the stage. Fanchon was pirouetting on one toe! Applause had started in the back rows, among the black sheep, and was running down the side aisles like a prairie-fire when Mr. Carter abruptly rose.

“Excuse me,” he said roughly to Colonel Denbigh as he clambered over him. “I—I’ve forgotten something!”

Mrs. Carter half rose and then sank back, pulled down by Emily, but she seemed to hear, through the spluttering applause, her husband’s crashing exit.

It might be said that Mr. Carter had the effect of a stone thrown from an ancient catapult, he went with such bounds and rushes. For a stout man his performance was little short of miraculous. He covered the distance to his own door in ten minutes, got out his latch-key, found the key-hole unerringly in the dark, went in, and banged the door to with a violence that made the ornaments on the hall mantel rattle.

The hall was vacant, but he saw a stream of light coming out of the library, and headed violently for it. William was alone, huddled in an easy chair, smoking and reading. Mr. Carter came in and shut the door. Then he advanced on his son with a face of thunder.

“William Henry Carter,” said he, “you’ve married a dancer—a French dancer!”

William, overtaken by the unexpected, laid down his book and stared. But his father only roared the louder. He seemed to think that his son had grown suddenly deaf.

“Do you hear me, sir?” he bellowed fiercely. “You’ve married a—a dyed-in-the-wool ballet-dancer!”

VIII

It was an hour later when Miranda, looking very dark and showing the whites of her eyes to an alarming extent, opened the front door for Mrs. Carter, Emily and Leigh.

“Mist’ Carter says, please, ma’am, yo’ come inter de libr’ry,” said the colored servitress in a sympathetic undertone.

Mrs. Carter cast an apprehensive look at her daughter.

“I guess you two had better go up-stairs,” she whispered.

Emily nodded, and started for the staircase, but Mr. Carter shouted from the library:

“I hear you-all out there—come in here!”

They went. Leigh, having forgotten to put down Fanchon’s extra wraps, brought up the rear, his flushed face just appearing above a mass of chiffon, lace and fur.

Mr. Carter, striding up and down the room alone, caught sight of his youngest son first.

“Put down those things!” he shouted. “You look like a dromedary.”

Leigh obeyed, but he straightened himself and stood, sullenly, his eyes on the ground. His father took no further notice of him.

“I’d like to know if any of you knew what that girl was going to do to-night?” he demanded fiercely.

Mrs. Carter sank weakly into the nearest chair.

“No, we didn’t! Wasn’t it awful? I was so mortified. The Baptist minister went out just after you, Johnson, and the rector was as red as could be. I’m sure I don’t know what he thought!”

“Thought! Where is she?”

“William came for her, and took her out to supper at the inn,” said Emily in a weak voice.

Like Leigh she stood back, unsympathetic, but she was a little frightened, too.

“Humph! Took her out to supper, eh?” Mr. Carter thundered. “I reckon he thought he’d better! I gave him a piece of my mind.”

“Oh, papa! He was as white as a sheet.” William’s mother pressed her handkerchief against her shaking lips. “He didn’t know, of course. He wasn’t to blame, dear—you shouldn’t have done it!”

“Wasn’t to blame?” Mr. Carter blazed with wrath. “Didn’t he marry that ballet-dancer? Didn’t he bring a French ballet-dancer home here and foist her on a decent, respectable family? He wasn’t to blame, you say? By Jove, I wish he was small enough to thrash!”

He was still walking up and down. As he swung around, Leigh faced him.

“She’s a lovely creature!” the boy cried passionately. “That dance was beautiful—everybody thought so!”

“Oh, Leigh!” gasped his mother. “Dr. Fanshawe was ashamed to look at it!”

“Old idiot!” cried Leigh. “You’re all making her unhappy—any one can see it. Nothing but criticism from morning until night—I call it cruel!”

Mr. Carter stared at him a moment in amazed incredulity. Then he jeered.

“Hear, hear!” he cried. “Wisdom from the mouths of babes and sucklings! Do you want to marry a ballet-dancer, too, sir?”

But his son’s blood was up.

“I call it a burning shame!” he cried. “She’s come here, a foreigner, and she wants to love us, and you’re talking brutally about her. She’s exquisite, she was to-night, she——”

“Go to bed!” shouted Mr. Carter. “Shut up and go to bed!”

Mrs. Carter rose hastily and gave Leigh a little shove.

“Go!” she whispered. “There, there—don’t aggravate papa.”

Leigh, shaking with anger, yielded ground reluctantly.

“She’s an angel!” he shouted at the door. “I won’t have her abused!”

“Did you marry her!” Mr. Carter asked with fine sarcasm. “Maybe I’ve made a mistake; I thought it was William.”

Leigh almost choked with indignation.

“He isn’t here—I won’t have her talked about.”

“Go to bed!” thundered Mr. Carter, taking a step forward.

“I——” Leigh began to sputter again, but his mother thrust him out and shut the door.

“Do speak lower, Johnson,” she sobbed. “I know Miranda listens.”

“I don’t care a hang whether Miranda listens or not,” said Mr. Carter. “That boy’s an ass—talk about his being a genius!”

“Oh, papa, he’s only eighteen,” said Mrs. Carter deprecatingly, “and she’s made up to him from the very first.”

“He’s an ass!” repeated Mr. Carter. “And I guess the whole town knows I’ve got a ballet-dancer——”

He stopped; his eye had suddenly lighted on Emily. She was huddled in a frightened attitude behind her mother’s chair, and the light was strong on her face. Her father stared.

“What’s the matter with that child’s eyes?” he demanded suddenly. “They look like burnt holes in a blanket!”

Mrs. Carter, following his look, suddenly noticed her daughter’s eyelashes and nose. In an illuminating flash she remembered that first night in Emily’s room.

“Oh, Emmy!” she gasped. “You’ve painted your eyelashes!”

Emily clung to the back of her chair.

“I had to, mama. They’re horrid and white.”

“Good Lord, that minx is teaching my daughter to paint her face! Mama, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Can’t you watch your own children?” bellowed Mr. Carter, beside himself.

“Emmy, I’m ashamed!” Poor Mrs. Carter sat gasping, her mouth open. “I never dreamed—what’s that on your nose?”

Emily seized her handkerchief and began to rub the offending feature.

“It’s nothing, mama—just a little liquid powder.”

“You march up-stairs and wash your face!” said her father. “Hear me? Don’t let me catch you painting up like that—singing doll!”

Emily began to cry.

“It’s—it’s nothing, papa. Everybody does it. The girls think I look so nice.”

“Wash your face!” shouted her father. “March up and wash your face!”

“I don’t want to!” sobbed Emily. “The girls say my eyes look twice as——”

Mr. Carter seized her by the shoulder and turned her toward the door.

“Want me to wash your face?” he asked her grimly. “No? I thought not. Well, then, you march!”

Emily, sobbing loudly, marched. They could hear her stumbling up-stairs, crying as she went.

“Oh, papa, you were awful!” Mrs. Carter wiped her own eyes. “The poor child!”

“Do you suppose that I’m going to let my daughter paint her face?” Mr. Carter fairly bellowed. “I reckon I’ve got enough in a daughter-in-law! I’ll see to Emmy myself, if you can’t!”

“Johnson, you know I didn’t notice.”

Mr. Carter emitted another roar, and finally threw himself into a chair and thrust his feet out.

“What did that fool William do?”

“You mean to-night?” Mrs. Carter dried her eyes. “He just met us at the door. He was so white he scared me, and he took Fanchon off in a taxi—in that scandalous dress! Said he’d give her a supper out to-night. I’m afraid you’ve done it this time, Johnson. What did you do to the poor boy?”

“Poor donkey! I told him what I thought of that woman—called by my name, too—a woman dressing like one of those yellow East Indian dancing-girls—that’s what I told him.”

“Johnson!”

“I did! What do you s’pose the congregation thought? By George, it made me hot all over. Did you see her legs?”

“You mean her stockings? They were a little startling. I told her so before we started.”

“Startling? My word.”

Mr. Carter relapsed into a terrible silence. Mrs. Carter sat helplessly looking at him. She was thinking of that dance, that terrible, amazing, dazzling dance. What a pretty creature, too! That was it; she had turned William’s head; and Leigh’s and Emily’s, too. Those painted eyelashes! For a moment Mrs. Carter half laughed.

“It’s funny—I can’t help it, Johnson,” she said, feebly apologetic, as she met his irate eyes. “I was thinking of Emmy trying to paint her lashes.”

“I’m glad you think it’s funny,” he retorted hoarsely. “Don’t see the joke myself. I’ve got too much daughter-in-law, that’s my trouble!”

“Hush! There’s some one now—they’ve come!” Mrs. Carter tiptoed to the door and listened, coming back, relieved. “No, it’s only Dan.”

“I wish William had Dan’s sense!”

“I wish Dan would marry a nice home girl. It would make things better,” sighed Mrs. Carter.

“Daniel marry?” Mr. Carter raised his voice again to a roar of discontent and hopelessness. “Who d’you think Dan could marry? What kind of a girl d’you think would pick a cripple?”

“Hush!”

Mrs. Carter, very pale, rose and shut the door; but she was too late. Daniel, suspecting the trouble in the library, had started for his own room. The stairs were just outside the library door, however, and he could not help hearing every word his father said. In fact, Mr. Carter’s irate voice rang out like a trumpet. “What kind of a girl d’you think would pick a cripple?”

Daniel, clinging to the banisters, ascended more wearily than usual. The stairs turned at the landing, and he was out of sight when his mother shut the door. He never used a cane in the house now. He was well enough to get along with a heavy limp, and he made no noise as he crossed the upper hall and went into his own room. Once there, he locked his door, and, crossing to the window, stood staring out with absorbed and thoughtful eyes.

The night was perfect. A young moon had set, and there seemed to be, instead, a myriad of stars. He could discern, too, even in the darkness, the darker profile of the hills, and, nearer at hand, the clustering beauty of foliage, pierced here and there with the lights of near-by houses, which shone in the darkness, without any discernible outlines behind them, like fallen stars. The air was fragrant and soft, with the sweetness of flowering grapes, familiar and homelike, amid all that blended early blossoming.

He could hear soft, blurred sounds, too—the hum of insect life, the piping of frogs, the murmur of the brook that flowed not a hundred yards away. He stood motionless, thinking, and glad of the cool night air on his hot cheeks and brow. He felt as if some one had dealt him a physical blow, and his bruised flesh was still quivering under it.

“What kind of a girl d’you think would pick a cripple?”

Daniel shut his lips sharply over his clenched teeth. It wasn’t a new idea; it wasn’t even a suggestion. He had known it all along, he told himself, and yet the bare words were brutal. They seemed to brand him like hot iron, to shrivel into his shrinking flesh and leave the mark there.

“Cripple!” He remembered, in a flash, his well days—the days when he was like other boys, before the fall which lamed him. He remembered his own young scorn of the weakling and the maimed, the repugnance that the physically strong often feel toward the physically disabled. Yet there was nothing disfiguring in his trouble. He was lame, but he was not twisted; he only halted in his walk. But, none the less, he was a cripple.

“What kind of a girl d’you think would pick a cripple?”

Daniel stared steadily out into the night, as if the starry darkness held the answer. One by one he saw the lights go out in the houses near at hand. Farther off, lights still shone in the town but darkness grew and grew. Then, far off, he detected a moving thing, saw a leap of flame and sparks as the smoke belched from the funnel of the engine. He could trace it coming nearer and nearer, and then he heard the clamor of its bell at the crossing, strangely distinct at night.

He turned slowly away, lit the lamp on his table, and, going to his desk, took out the picture of Virginia that he had stolen from the mantel down-stairs after Fanchon’s attack upon it. He brought it to the table, and, setting it down beside him, began to write. From time to time, as he wrote, he glanced up at the young face in the frame, and felt an exquisite sense of companionship. He was not alone; the picture kept him company. The pallor of his face, too, gradually changed, and a slight color rose in his cheeks. He took off his coat and lit his pipe. Well into the small hours he worked steadily on a case for Judge Jessup.

He was aware of doors shutting below, aware that sounds gradually ceased and sleep drenched the household, but he worked on with the passionate zeal that only an ambitious man can feel—a man who has no other end in life but to forget himself in the fury of his toil. Yet, all the while, the young face of Virginia bore him mute company, and sometimes it seemed to smile upon him.

At daybreak, the fury of his thirst for work slaked, he lifted a haggard face to the light, glanced at the picture, and stretching his arms across the table laid his head upon them with a groan. He fell asleep there from sheer exhaustion and was sleeping when the sun rose.

IX

William Carter took his wife to the inn for supper. He had appeared at the door of the Sunday-school hall with a taxi and abruptly bundled Fanchon into it. It was just after her performance on the stage and before the audience began to disperse. In fact, they heard the strains of some very churchy music coming from the orchestra, as if an effort was being made—delayed but strenuous—to soothe the startled spectators of Fanchon’s amazing dance.

William said nothing. He sat in the dark interior of the taxi with a face as white as paper, and Fanchon, watching him covertly, saw that the hand he laid on the window shook. She leaned back in her corner, twisting a strand of pearls around her throat—a strand that she had put on after the dance—and watching him; but she said nothing.

She had danced so wildly, indeed, that she was still panting and throbbing with excitement. She seemed to feel the thrill of the music even in her feet. It was intoxicating, it was what she loved—the glamour of the lights, the music, the motion. Her whole body vibrated, she could scarcely sit still, her feet still moved restlessly. She loved it!

Yet she felt that heavy silence of her husband, the stiffness of his body as he sat there, and she had caught a glimpse of his ghastly face. She bit her lips, staring out into the night, her bosom heaving passionately. She felt like a beautiful wild bird in a trap.

She stared, too, at the quiet street, with inveterate dislike of its quietness. She saw the group of loungers in front of the chemist’s, the belated pedestrians at the crossing. There was a glimpse of shadowing trees. Pendent branches swept and swayed before feebly lighted show-windows, where the shades were partly drawn down, and the infrequent street-lamps shot occasional lances of light across their dingy way. One such shaft struck on William’s profile and revealed his tightened lips.

Fanchon wondered. She had not been aware of Mr. Carter’s catapultic exit, and she did not know how much her husband knew. Some one must have telephoned him—whom, she could not conjecture. She shrank away from him a little, thinking, and Corwin’s face rose before her mind’s eye. She saw again the confidence of his smiling, mocking eyes, and she shuddered.

William seemed to feel it and gave her a quick look, but said nothing. The taxi had stopped in front of an old-fashioned inn. It was a long, low building with a glassed-in dining-room, built to accommodate the stream of motorists who had begun to tour the mountains and scatter gold and gasoline in their wake.

Into the new dining-room—a plain, bare place with rows of white-covered tables and a few lean palms on pedestals—William conducted his wife. Half a dozen negro waiters came forward. He selected one he knew, chose a remote table, and gave his order for supper.

“I suppose you want wine?” he said shortly to Fanchon—almost the first words he had addressed to her.

She shrugged, slipping off her wraps and amazing the other diners with the marvels of her costume.

“Mais non,” she replied indifferently. “I’m heated; I never drink wine when I have danced.”

William, who was giving his order, stopped short a moment, his eyes down, and she saw him pant like a man short of breath. But in another moment he had despatched the waiter with his order and drained his glass of water.

“Mon Dieu!” said Fanchon, watching him with dark, mysterious, brooding eyes. “How can you? Iced water—it’s bad for your liver!”

“Drat my liver!” said William hoarsely. Then he leaned across the table, his eyes raised to hers at last and spoke in a low, even voice for her ears alone. “What have you been doing, Fanchon?”

She had never seen that look in his eyes before, and the blood rushed back to her heart. She could not answer for a moment; her lips moved without words.

“Do you hear?” he repeated sternly. “What have you been doing to-night?”

“I sang, you know I sang,” she replied at last, but her eyes quivered and shrank away from his, and there was something about her like a child expecting a blow.

But William did not heed it; he was still white with passion.

“You did more than sing,” he rejoined coldly. “You danced me into an insult!”

Her eyes dilated.

“An insult—you?”

“Yes, an insult. Father saw you. He came home and told me what he thought of you, and of me for letting you do it!”

Fanchon put her hand to her throat. She felt choked again, but her beautiful, wild, fawn-like eyes clung to his face.

“You danced,” he went on bitterly. “What did you dance? One of those—those fandangoes?”

Her face changed; a glimmer of light, of mischief, shot across it, and she let her jeweled hands drop in her lap.

“Oui, I danced! Mais que voulez vous? Am I not a dancer? You—it is you who are ashamed, mon ami!” she added bitterly. “Why you marry me, then?”

He threw himself back in his chair, his clenched hand falling on the table with a gesture as poignant as it was desperate.

“You’ve let the cat out of the bag! This place—these provincials! Why, this place is full of it by now. Did you think you were in Paris?”

“In Paris?” she laughed wildly. “Mon Dieu, non! ‘O Paris, c’est chez toi qu’il est doux de vivre, c’est chez toi que je veux mourir!’”

“Drop that chatter!” he said harshly. “You speak English as well as I do.”

She did not answer for a moment; then she leaned across the table, looking at him, her face white and her eyes sparkling.

“You’re ashamed that you married me, a dancer—n’est-ce-pas?”

He averted his face. She caught only the haggard whiteness of the profile, and she saw his hand, stretched on the table, clench and unclench nervously. She drew a long breath.

“You’re ashamed of me,” she said in a low, quivering voice, recoiling from him. “I—I see it!”

“I loved you,” said William passionately. “I loved you, I asked you to consider me, and—you do this!”

“You loved me!” she repeated the words slowly. “You—loved—me!”

She let the accent fall on the past tense, but he was deaf to the implied appeal.

“Fanchon, you knew what they’d think of it here—you must have known. Why did you do it?” he cried impatiently. “It’s like your cigarette in the streets—you like to do these things!”

“Mais oui, I like to do them!” she replied softly. She laughed lightly. “I’m naughty, William, but”—she leaned toward him again, looking at him with her fawn-like eyes—“I’m sorry!”

Her look, her voice, her very attitude expressed surrender, and the softness of her tone appeased him. He turned his head reluctantly and looked at her. The light was behind her, making a nimbus behind her lovely head, her soft, dark hair, and her white forehead, and the beauty of her eyes. Her dress, too, the dancer’s silky, shimmering, clinging robe, seemed to reveal just enough of her white neck and arms. She was a thing so young, so exquisite, and so subtly charming that he caught his breath. She looked as she had looked the first time he saw her, when he lost his heart and his head. Her dark eyes clung to his. “Et toi?” she murmured softly, exquisitely, her lips trembling a little.

Involuntarily he put out his hand and touched hers as it lay on the table, and the tenderness of that touch was a caress. For the moment he forgot his father and his own anger. She was bewitching, and she was his own! What did it matter if these narrow-minded provincials were shocked at her dancing?

Yet he was aware that while she accepted his caress, accepted his forgiveness, and gave him a soft and caressing smile, she was changed. Something had come between them—something so subtle, so immaterial, that he could not grasp it; but he felt ill at ease. He said nothing, he did not know what to say, he felt that the grievance was honestly his, and yet, in some mysterious, unfathomable way, she had put him in the wrong.

He laughed uneasily and began to move the glasses about awkwardly, jingling the ice in them like a child. He was glad, too, that the waiter returned at that moment, with the supper. He changed his order again and called for wine.

“I’m tired,” he explained to Fanchon. “I feel as if I needed it.”

She shrugged, elevating her brows and glancing around the room, aware that necks were craned here and there, and that some newcomers were staring steadily at her. One of them—a short, stout, bald-headed man in a dress-suit with a wide expanse of shirt-front—kept gazing at her, and after a while at William. He gazed and rubbed the top of his bald head, and then ate—taking large mouthfuls and gulping them down—while he still gazed at her.

Fanchon, seeing it, looked demurely at her plate, toying with her fork. She wanted to laugh, but she remembered her husband’s horror of the sensation she had just made, and she was aware, too, of another figure farther away. She flushed a little, saying nothing, and William, still feeling that little rift in the lute, busied himself filling his wine-glass again.

Fanchon, who had never seen him drink wine, lifted her heavy eyes from her plate to watch him. She knew he had already filled his glass four times.

“He’s not a drinking man,” she thought shrewdly. “He’s unhappy because he’s married me, a dancer!”

William lifted his fifth glass slowly to his lips.

“It’s not bad wine, Fanchon,” he said lightly; “but we had better in Paris.”

She shook her head.

“In Paris you didn’t drink wine, mon ami.”

He reddened.

“Didn’t I? I——” He stopped short.

The stout, bald-headed gentleman had risen abruptly from his table and was approaching theirs. He did not look at William, but bowed to Fanchon.

“Mrs. Carter, I believe?” he said suavely. “Mrs. William Carter?”

Fanchon smiled.

“Mais oui, and—Mr. William Carter,” she added archly, looking at the astonished William.

The fat man bowed again, then he produced a card-case and laid his card on the table.

“I’m Samuel Bernstein,” he said proudly, “president of the Unlimited Film Company. Perhaps you’ve heard of me, Mr. Carter?”

“No!” said William shortly, frowning. “I haven’t had the pleasure.”

Mr. Bernstein gave him a pitying glance.

“Go to the movies?” he asked mildly.

William nodded.

“Sometimes.”

Mr. Bernstein elevated his brows. He looked at Fanchon, and his face changed and glowed with appreciation.

“Guess you go, madam,” he said in a confident tone, “a lady of your talent! Excuse me”—he bowed first to one and then the other—“if you’ll permit me, I’ll sit down. I’ve got a word to say—business, you know, strictly business.”

Fanchon’s eyes danced. She threw a mocking look at William’s stiffening face.

“Sit down, Mr. Bernstein,” she said sweetly. “Voilà! I love the movies!”

“There!” Bernstein beamed, drawing up a chair. “I knew a lady of your talent must love ’em.” He waved his hand gracefully, speaking to William now, but including William’s wife. “I want to say, sir, that I witnessed that dance to-night, and—well, sir, it hit me straight in the bull’s-eye! Never saw it better done—never! I congratulate Mrs. Carter, sir, and I congratulate you. It was a gem!”

William, very red, inclined his head stiffly, but Fanchon was radiant with smiles.

“Merci du compliment!” she murmured.

“Eh? Oh, you’re French, ain’t you?” Mr. Bernstein returned her smile genially. “Corwin was telling me you were Mamselle Fonchon lay Fare. That would sound a top-liner, too, on a bill-board. Corwin—you know him? Yes? Well, he’s running a vaudeville show somewhere now, besides that hairy piano man, and he wants you in his show. I suspicioned that right off.”

“My wife isn’t a show-woman!” thundered William, his brow black.

“No offense, no offense, Mr. Carter!” Mr. Bernstein waved a fat hand on which a diamond flashed magnificently. “I don’t cotton to these cheap shows myself. Now, madam, I’m a business man, and I’ve got a proposition to make to you, a gilt-edged proposition.” He edged his chair nearer, looking from Fanchon to William and back again, with the air of a benefactor. “It’ll appeal to you, sir. It’s dignified, it’s fine, and it’s money, sir, good money! Now, I saw that dance to-night and I says to myself, ‘Sammy Bernstein, if you’re a man you’ll beat it after that first thing,’ and I’m beating it. Madam, I’d offer you, as a starter, five hundred dollars a week to give that dance in a picture, a high-class, six-reel picture, for the Unlimited Film Company!” Mr. Bernstein flung himself back in his chair, thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his white waistcoat, and beamed upon them. “Five hundred dollars a week, madam, and your expenses—for one picture. You can’t beat that—Corwin ain’t going to beat that!”

“My wife won’t go into the movies!” said William, white with anger.

Mr. Bernstein reddened.

“I reckon you don’t understand, sir. The Unlimited Film Company is a star company, sir; it does the finest pictures in the country; we’ve got more stars than any other company this side of the Rockies. We got ’em, and we treat ’em right.”

William rose furiously.

“My wife isn’t looking for an engagement, sir, so we bid you good evening!”

Mr. Bernstein rose hastily.

“I say—no offense——”

“You’re very good,” said Fanchon softly, lingering an instant as William strode away; “I’m not in it—not now! My husband doesn’t like it, you know. Adieu, monsieur, et merci!”

She was smiling, a little flushed, altogether charming, as she lifted her fawn-like countenance to his red face. Mr. Bernstein relaxed and grinned knowingly.

“I see! I’m sorry, madam. Put my foot in it, eh?” He lowered his voice. “I’ll make it eight hundred a week—see?”

She nodded, but William had turned a white face toward them, and she fled lightly, following him in his hasty stride through the now crowded dining-room. She had caught her wraps up hastily and thrown them about her shoulders, and the chiffon frills framed her small, pointed chin.

The diners—belated motorists and traveling salesmen—stared delightedly. The scene was as plain as a charade, the angry young husband and the lovely, coquettish, frivolous young wife. Fanchon caught whispers of admiration and glances of sympathy. At another moment they would have pleased her, would have appealed to every instinct of her light, admiration-loving nature, but to-night she saw some one ahead, some one whom she must pass, and she was thinking, thinking hard and fast, her heart beating pitifully under the splendor of her dancing dress.

Meanwhile William stalked ahead, with his square jaw set and his eyes stormy. He wanted to wring Bernstein’s neck and he could not. It made his hands clench and unclench nervously at his sides.

As they neared the door, a tall man rose from a crowded table and greeted Fanchon in French with an effusion that made William halt. Corwin caught his eye and bowed.

“Present me to your husband,” he said to Fanchon.

She turned with that delicate grace which made her small figure seem so light and buoyant. She had rallied all her forces, all her will. She smiled, her eyes shining dangerously.

“William, this is my old friend, Mr. Corwin.”

William shook hands stiffly.

“We’re just going,” he said shortly. “Good night!”

Fanchon laughed, half-apologetic, half-coquettish; but she found herself hurried out into the hall.

“Who’s that fellow?” asked William sharply. She was still laughing, half hysterical.

“Caraffi’s manager, Aristide Corwin—I’ve known him for ages.”

William grunted.

“Looks like a Monte Carlo gambler,” he said, and signaled for a taxi.

X

Virginia bade Lucas stop the horses. The old wagonette was on its way out to Denbigh Crossing, and Daniel Carter had just come in sight. Virginia thought she had never seen him look so pale.

“He looks ill, and his limp is bad, too, poor fellow!” she breathed to herself; but she smiled, leaning over the back of the seat to shake hands.

“Where have you kept yourself, Dan?” she asked kindly, with the sweetness in her tone that Daniel had come to recognize as pity. “Grandfather has been asking for you.”

“I’m afraid he wants the book he lent me,” said Daniel, looking up at her and aware of the softness of her glance. She looked lovely, that same old shade hat looped down and the knot of pink under her chin; but the muslin dress was dotted white Swiss this time, with a little opening at the neck that showed a lovely throat. “I’ll bring it back this week.”

“Fie! As if he wanted the old book! We’ve missed you, Dan.”

He flushed boyishly and let his eyes dwell upon her. And, for the first time in her life, Virginia blushed consciously under Daniel’s look.

“Have you really?” he asked eagerly.

“Really and truly!” She nodded at him, smiling. “I should have written you a note about it—invited you to dinner, in fact, if it had not been for our—our concert—” She blushed this time, remembering suddenly that there must have been an earthquake in the Carter house. “I’ve just finished settling up the accounts with Mrs. Payson,” she added hurriedly. “I’m glad it’s over!”

There was a ghost of laughter in Daniel’s eyes, but he kept a sober face.

“It was a success, then, Virginia?”

“Oh, yes! We paid in our full share; no one out of pocket except Mr. Payson. You know, he paid Caraffi. Dan, did you hear Caraffi play?”

He shook his head.

“I’d rather hear you.”

“Mercy! Don’t say that out loud.” She laughed, but her blush deepened. It seemed to-day as if there was something new in Daniel, something she did not understand. “Come and hear me play, though, and I’ll believe you.”

Daniel glanced at the very conscious but decorous back of Lucas, and smiled. No one was ever worried about what Daniel said!

“I’m coming. I’ve been wanting to come all along,” he said gravely; “but—I’m afraid of wearing out my welcome.”

She looked surprised, then, catching his eye, realized that Daniel had been afraid that William’s brother was unwelcome. She blushed gloriously this time.

“You couldn’t—you couldn’t if you tried,” she said softly. Then to the coachman: “Go on, Lucas. I mustn’t keep you, Dan, but be sure you come soon.”

He stood bare-headed in the sunshine, watching the old wagonette disappear; then he put on his hat and walked haltingly and slowly toward the court-house. He was to address the jury in the afternoon, and in some way the sight of Virginia always helped him. He seemed to carry her smile, like sunshine, into the old dim court-room. He always spoke well afterward, so well that he was getting the name of an orator without being aware of it.

Plato had just served a light lunch for Colonel Denbigh on the lawn. The old man, sitting under his favorite horse-chestnut-tree, ate sparingly and drank one iced julep, made in the old Virginia style. He had finished, and Plato was holding the lighter for his cigar.

“Go to the concert the other night, Plato? Miss Virginia says you carried her bundles, and she thinks you heard it all.”

Plato held the lighter dexterously.

“Yessuh, I went ’long wid Miss Jinny. Didn’t pay no ’mission fee, jus’ walked righ’ in, same as Miz Payson an’ de quality. Yessuh, de music mighty fine, but I was lookin’ at young Miz Carter when she was dancin’. Dat’s what done took dis yere nigger!”

The colonel puffed at his cigar, a twinkle in his eye.

“Like it, Plato?”

“Yessuh! It was de mos’ circumspecklar dancin’ I ever see, suh, it sho was. I ain’t seen nuffin like it since de circus. But Mirandy Parsons, de collud girl dat works at Miz Carter’s, she says dere was terr’ble goings-on dere ’bout dis yere dance. She ’lowed Mist’ Carter mos’ throw a fit.”

Colonel Denbigh took off his hat and ran his fingers through his white hair.

“It was a great dance, Plato, a great dance.” He shook with silent laughter. “Some of the weaker brethren had to leave, though.”

“Dey sho did, suh! I met de Baptist minister comin’ out, an’ de ladies was wid him. Dey was sayin’ something ’bout dat dance in de Bible, an’ ’bout John de Baptist’s head on a charger. Seems like he took it hard—I don’t mean John de Baptist, but de minister. Done paid five dollahs fo’ his sittin’, an’ couldn’t set out no five dollahs’ worth. Dat’s what got him mad, suh, it sho was.”

The colonel shouted with laughter.

“He got more than five dollars’ worth out of that dance, Plato! There’s Miss Jinny now,” he added, glancing down the driveway. “You go and help her out with her packages.”

The old wagonette had entered the gateway, and Plato hurried off across the lawn; but the horses stopped short, and Virginia got out, meeting some one who had entered from the opposite direction. The colonel, well in the shade of his horse-chestnut, removed his cigar from his mouth. He was startled. The visitor was William Carter.

While Plato was taking a number of small packages from the wagonette, the pair greeted each other in the sunlit space of the old driveway. Something in their faces made the colonel rise silently and deftly beat a retreat. He passed behind the old box hedge and made his way back to the house.

“I reckon they’d like to have it out by themselves,” he thought.

Virginia, meanwhile, came across the lawn with William Carter. She stopped as she came near the horse-chestnut.

“Why, I thought grandfather was here!” she exclaimed, and then to William: “Won’t you sit down? I’ll call him.”

“But I didn’t come to see him,” said William quietly. “I came to see you, Virginia. I suppose I may sit down just the same?”

She blushed.

“Of course!” She took off her hat and laid it on the rustic table, and the sunshine seemed to caress the strands of gold in her soft hair. “We like to sit out here, you know, in summer. It seems so good to be out-of-doors. Do you notice what a view we have, since they cut that new street through?”

She was talking hurriedly, a little nervously, not looking at him. It was their first moment alone together since his return, and Virginia was not quite sure of herself. She pointed out the view.

William turned and looked at it absently.

“You can see a long way, can’t you?”

“Yes; and there’s such a glimpse now of blooming things. The old magnolia’s full of buds.”

“Fanchon doesn’t like these things,” said William moodily. “They bore her. She says she’d rather see one of those electric signs in New York, flashing Budweiser beer in and out, than sit here and count lightning-bugs!”

Virginia laughed, blushing again.

“What would we do if we all liked the same thing?” she asked lightly, and then, very sweetly: “William, I think your wife is beautiful. At first, one can’t decide, the face is so charming, so piquant; but when she smiles and those dark eyes of hers dwell on you—she’s beautiful!”

William said nothing for a moment. He was sitting in the colonel’s chair, his hat on his knees, and Virginia could see new haggard lines in his face. He did not look at her, but away toward a distant spire that appeared above the thick foliage, like a finger pointing upward.

“Yes, she’s beautiful,” he admitted at last, almost with reluctance.

Virginia, aware that he was thinking of days long ago, when he had taken her to church and carried her books home from school, felt her breath coming short. She was trying hard, but if he would not meet her half-way, how could she patch it up?

She averted her face, toying with her grandfather’s empty glass. The ice still jingled in it a little, and William started. He remembered jingling the ice in the glasses on the inn table, and Fanchon’s eyes seemed to mock him. He drew a long sigh.

“I hope you don’t mind my sitting here, Virginia,” he said gravely. “It’s—it’s so homelike. I can’t bear to go. I suppose lost spirits hang around sometimes outside the gates of paradise.”

Virginia caught her breath this time. She dared not look at him. She had taken a ring out of her pocket and held it out in the palm of her hand; but now, looking at his set profile, she hardly dared to speak of it. Her hand trembled; he was unhappy, and he had come to her! Something like fear showed in her eyes, but she forced herself to speak.

“I wish you’d come in and see grandfather. He’d be glad, I know. We meant to come to see your wife again—some evening when you would be at home.”

William lifted his head slowly and looked at her.

“Virginia, I got the letters you sent me,” he said in a low voice. “The reason I didn’t return yours was—I burned them one night in Paris just before—”

He stopped, unable to go on, red in the face; but she was quite calm. His very embarrassment steadied her.

“That’s all right,” she said. “I’m glad you spoke, because I wanted to give you this.” She held out her hand with the ring in her palm. “I know it belonged to your grandmother. I was afraid to trust it to the mails. Here it is, William.”

He held out his hand stiffly, without looking at her, and Virginia had to put the ring into it.

“Thank you,” he said in a low voice.

Then he looked in a dazed way at the ring lying in his hand. The color slowly receded from his flushed face and left it pale. He remembered the day he had put it on her finger!

So did she; but Virginia was a brave woman. She could not help seeing his face, and, being a woman, she knew. She could shape the whole story easily now. She had heard rumors of Mr. Carter’s wrath at Fanchon’s dance, and she knew what William must have felt. The talk must have reached him. This was the recoil. She loved him, and she understood. It would have tempted another woman; it frightened Virginia. She tried to think of something to say, but she could not.

They sat silently, the shade of the horse-chestnut stretching over them. Beyond them the sun shone on the old lawns and flower-beds. They were so motionless that a robin, searching for worms, came almost up to their feet.

“Do you mind my sitting around here?” he asked again in a low voice. “It’s the most restful place I’ve found.”

She steadied her voice.

“It is a restful place. Once we thought we’d have to give it up, but some stocks paid in, and we saved it. I’m so glad!”

William straightened himself.

“I didn’t know that.”

She was startled. She had not thought that he would take it in this way. Everything led them into the shoals, it seemed. She smiled, but her lips shook.

“I don’t think any one knew it but Dan,” she replied gently. “Dan helped us save it.”

“Dan?” He turned and looked at her, plainly startled, too, by another thought. “Dan?”

She met his look steadily this time.

“Yes, Dan. He’s so good to us. I think he’s very noble.”

William stared at her, paling again. A kind of fury came into his look, and she saw it. He was jealous of Dan! She understood now. That poor girl, his wife, had been a wild fancy, an episode, no more, and he was waking up.

She rose slowly to her feet.

“Come,” she said. “I’m going in. Grandpa is there, and you must come in and see him.”

She turned as she spoke, and William got to his feet, still white and haggard, his eyes following her. But Virginia stopped abruptly. Before them on the lawn, unheard and unseen in her approach, stood a small, white-clad figure in a daring scarlet hat, pale and piquant.

“I don’t think you heard me,” said Fanchon softly, her dark eyes flashing from one to the other. “You weren’t listening!” And she laughed shrilly.

William crimsoned, but Virginia was calm.

“No, we didn’t,” she replied simply; “but I’m glad to see you. We were just going into the house—will you come, too?”

Fanchon lifted her fawn-like eyes slowly to the other girl’s face. There was something noble in it, too noble for the retort that was on the end of her sharp tongue. She colored angrily.

“Of course! I came to call,” she said lightly. “William got ahead of me, I see.”

Virginia did not reply to this. She was already at the piazza steps.

“Please come this way,” she said lightly.

But Fanchon did not answer her. She had approached her husband, her large eyes mocking him, her lips parted. A strange look, half elfish, half fond, was on her face.

“You needn’t be in such a hurry to hide that ring,” she said below her breath. “I know about it. There was one letter you forgot to burn, mon ami!”

He turned from red to white. His only comfort was Virginia’s noble, unconscious look as she led the way into the house.

XI

Colonel Denbigh accompanied his guests to the door, and, after the farewells were sufficiently prolonged to suit his old-fashioned ways, he stood on the piazza and watched them to the gate. Fanchon turned there, a small, graceful creature, and kissed her hand to him. The colonel waved. William raised his hat, and the two figures turned off into the street.

As they grew smaller in the distance, Virginia came out and stood beside her grandfather.

“A pretty creature,” said the colonel thoughtfully. “Claws in velvet! What do you think of her, Jinny?”

“I don’t know,” Virginia replied honestly. “She’s pretty—but there’s something I can’t describe. She’s like a wild bird just put in a gilt cage. It’s a terribly trite simile, but it fits her. She’s beating her wings.”

“That’s poetry, Jinny,” said the colonel, chuckling. “It’s because she’s young and pretty. If she’d been a man, with that kind of an eye, we would have said something about beating his hoofs—I mean cloven ones. She sings like a bird, dances like a fairy, and behaves—well, I remember that Mrs. Payson called her something in French. What was it, eh? Maybe it takes French to express her.”

Virginia flushed.

“She called her a little étourdie. Of course she does queer things; she’s not well-bred, and she seems like a bundle of impulsive whims, but she’s rather captivating in all of them, and fascinating in some.”

“Humph!” The colonel pulled his mustache thoughtfully. “I see you’re determined to like her, Jinny.”

“I want to—yes.”

“You can’t,” said the colonel gently, laying his hand on her shoulder. “It’s a case of sugar and salt, you can’t mix ’em. Don’t try too hard, Jinny. Leave her alone.”

Something in his tone made Virginia look up quickly.

“Why, sir?”

Colonel Denbigh hesitated; then he blushed like a girl.

“I don’t talk scandal, Jinny, you know that, but I hear some. Let her alone.”

“Oh, that dance—”

He shook his head.

“No, not the dance. That only unloosed tongues. You spoke of that man, Caraffi’s manager—what was his name?”

“Corwin. A horrid creature,” said Virginia, suddenly recalling Fanchon’s face when she saw him in the waiting-room of the hall.

The colonel nodded.

“Corwin—that’s the name. Well, William’s wife knows him, she’s been seen walking with him. There’s talk about it. It may be all false, but I’d rather you kept away.”

Virginia had grown very thoughtful.

“I remember now, grandfather. She seemed afraid of him, poor girl. He’s a terrible creature, I’m sure—I wonder if he isn’t doing it on purpose? Starting the talk, I mean.”

“Very likely,” said the colonel dryly; “but he’d have to have something to start on. When there’s so much smoke, there’s some fire. I don’t like her, and yet”—he smiled—“what a pretty creature!”

“She’s not twenty, I’m sure. I think it’s wicked to talk so about her.” Virginia flushed generously. “Why are people so cruel?”

The colonel smiled.

“Jinny,” he said gently, “that little woman wouldn’t raise her finger to save you from the gallows.”

Virginia’s blush deepened.

“That doesn’t matter, grandfather!”

The old man looked at her proudly. She was standing beside him, her tall young head nearly level with his own, and her charming profile toward him. She had a look that was better in his eyes than mere beauty—a look of noble purity. He had never known her, even in childhood, to tell a falsehood. He patted her shoulder.

“I leave it to you, Jinny. I reckon I can trust you. But there’s one thing I want to say.” He hesitated, then he finished firmly: “That boy, William, disappoints me. He’s lost his grip. He’s been keeping gay company, I reckon, and he looks as if he’d been drinking. If it wasn’t for his lameness, Daniel’s twice the man!”

Virginia said nothing. She couldn’t; her heart was beating in her throat. She remembered William’s face when she returned the ring.

The colonel kept his hand on her shoulder, and they stood together, looking out across the close-cut lawn. Lucas, having put up the horses, was running a lawn-mower near the gate. It was that hour when the shadows begin to lengthen and one perceives the fragrance of the honeysuckle. It seemed to penetrate the late, warm afternoon, and to gather bees.

“Jinny, who’s that man—the fat man with a bald head?” the colonel asked presently. “He’s either a real-estate man or a lunatic. He wants to buy the place, I reckon. See him?”

Virginia, who had been in a trance, roused herself. Her eyes fell on a stout figure advancing toward the piazza, hat in hand.

“He wants to tune the piano, grandpa, or to varnish the mahogany tables.” She laughed softly, and fled lightly toward the door. “I’m going. You can send him away. I refuse to be varnished!”

The colonel heard her flight to the stairs; but he stood his ground and waited, a twinkle in his eye. The stout man approached steadily, with an expression of genial politeness. He had an air of feeling his own importance, but being willing to condescend. He wore a finely-tailored suit, a sport necktie with a diamond pin, and in the sunshine, his bald head looked like a piece of polished pink coral set in Florida moss.

“Colonel Denbigh, I believe?” he said suavely.

The colonel bowed politely.

“That’s my name, sir.”

Mr. Bernstein presented his card.

“I’d like a word with you, colonel. Strictly business—important, confidential business.”

The colonel regarded him a moment with the same twinkle in his eyes; then he descended the piazza steps.

“Come this way, Mr. Bernstein. I like to sit out of doors. Have a cigar?”

Mr. Bernstein accepted. They had reached the back of the house now, and he stopped short.

“Gee, what a view! Ain’t that about three thousand feet out there? Finest three-reel picture I ever got in a bird’s-eye view! Only wants a little life in it, colonel—a cow and a rough-rider, and maybe a couple of bandits. It’s just the set—with them mountains behind.”

The colonel, who had reached his favorite seat under the horse-chestnut, looked startled.

“I reckon you’re a movie man, aren’t you?” he inquired mildly.

“Had ’em before?” Mr. Bernstein looked anxious.

“One or two. This place seems to appeal to them. Sit down, Mr. Bernstein, you’ll find that seat comfortable. I always take this one—I’m getting old and set in my ways. I suppose it’s the place you’re interested in?”

Mr. Bernstein edged his chair closer to the wicker table and leaned across it.

“Say,” he began with a glow of enthusiasm, “this place and that servant and you! It would be great. I says to Greenfield—he’s my best director—I says to him before I came up here, ‘Now what we want is one of them old-time, sort of before-the-war Southern aristocrats.’ When I saw you, colonel, I—gee, sir, I says to myself: ‘Sammy Bernstein, there’s your man!’ It ain’t your clothes, colonel, it’s the way you look. Say, I’ve got a fellow at the studio—dress him up in a silk hat and white tie and patent-leather pumps, and he looks like a duke. But you put that guy into his every-days, and, bless your soul, you wouldn’t know him from a tin-peddler! Now, it ain’t so with you. You’d look the part in your shirt-sleeves. When I saw you, I says to myself: ‘Sam Bernstein, there’s the real article—ain’t any near-seal about that, either!’”

“Mr. Bernstein, say no more,” said the colonel. “I’m a modest man!”

Bernstein expanded, smiling.

“Sir, I’ll make it two thousand dollars for this place, that old negro, and you in one five-reeler. Two thousand dollars down! Isn’t any work in it. You just stand and look natural.”

This time the colonel’s eyes did more than twinkle; he laughed heartily.

“Mr. Bernstein, I never looked natural before a camera in my life. I’m afraid we can’t come to an agreement. I’m too old for the movies, sir. I’ll have to decline.”

Bernstein’s face fell.

“You don’t mean it, colonel; you can’t mean that!”

The colonel nodded, then he pulled a moment at his cigar.

“I’m afraid I do mean it. Perhaps Plato—that’s my man—might be interested. I’ll ask him.”

Bernstein held up his hands.

“Not without you, colonel!” He sat and stared for a moment at the old man opposite, a look of hopeless commiseration on his face. “Say,” he groaned at last, “you people down here haven’t got any enterprise! This is my second experience. I’m surprised, colonel; I’m pained. This town—it’s perfect, sir, for the part, it’s kind of dead-and-alive and shady, and there’s the pickaninnies. You could do any amount of close-ups and cut-backs on ’em. Gee, it’s too bad!” He shook his head regretfully.

“I reckon you could get the pickaninnies all right,” remarked the colonel comfortingly. “Tried it?”

Mr. Bernstein shook his head.

“No, sir! I’ve been after Mrs. William Carter. Know her?”

The colonel, a little startled, took the cigar from between his teeth.

“I have that honor, sir.”

The motion-picture manager turned his head slowly and gave him a cryptic look. Then he knocked the ashes from his cigar, stuck it in the other corner of his mouth, and resumed sadly:

“It was that dance of hers. That’s what took me! At the church sociable, colonel. Believe me, I was never so thrilled in my life. I was doin’ the town, looking for a place”—Mr. Bernstein waved his hand with a melancholy air—“for this place, sir. Well, I was goin’ down Main Street, an’ I see them headlights. ‘Something doing here,’ thinks I, ‘an’ I’ll have a look.’ Didn’t expect anything; but somehow I went in, an’ the very first thing I see is that dance. Gee whiz! I says to myself: ‘Sammy Bernstein, this is your lucky day; this is a find!’”

Colonel Denbigh laid down the stump of his cigar and pulled his mustache.

“I suppose you’ve asked her?”

“I did. And I’ll say right now that I don’t think—what’s his name?—Mr. William Henry Carter’s got any horse-sense. He took on as if I’d insulted him when I was offerin’ his wife five hundred dollars a week. That’s what I offered, Colonel Denbigh—five hundred dollars a week, good money.”

The colonel looked reflective.

“I’m afraid we’re behind the times down here, Mr. Bernstein. I reckon Mr. Carter doesn’t like publicity. We’re quiet, backwoods people, sir,” he added with a twinkle. “I know the lady. She’s mighty pretty, and I agree with you she’d make a mighty fine picture. Just the style you want, too.”

“No, sir, not my style. The public—well, it’s this way. They like ’em small, an’ this lady’s just the pattern—a cute, dark little thing. Personally”—Mr. Bernstein sighed—“I like ’em large. Now there’s Rosamond Silvertree—you know her, of course, colonel?”

Again the colonel smoothed his mustache thoughtfully.

“Can’t say that I do, sir,” he replied gently. “Pretty name, though?”

“Don’t know Rosamond Silvertree?” Mr. Bernstein struck the table with the palm of his hand. “Sir, you’re behind your times! She’s a motion-picture star, sir! She’s my ideal woman, Colonel Denbigh. She’s five feet eleven inches, and she weighs one hundred and eighty-seven pounds. She’s a peach, sir! Got those blue eyes that go to the heart, and her hair’s the color of butter—makes you think of good butter in spring-time! I have her on the screen all the time. The poor girl’s nearly worn out. The only trouble is you can’t always get men to play opposite to her. Greenfield comes up one day last month. ‘Sammy,’ says he, ‘I can’t put Rosy in “The Dream of the Harem.”’ ‘What in thunder d’you mean by that?’ says I. ‘Can’t do it,’ says he. ‘Jack Pickling’—that’s our leading man—‘Jack Pickling looks like a shrimp beside of her!’ What d’you think I did, Colonel Denbigh?”

The colonel shook his head gravely.

“I’ve no idea, sir. Put her on a diet?”

“Diet? Rosy? No, sir! I fired Jack Pickling!”

Bernstein lay back in his chair and smiled. He felt that he had reached the climax, but the climax was lost on Colonel Denbigh.

“If your leading lady is so fine, I shouldn’t think you’d need Mrs. Carter,” he observed mildly.

Mr. Bernstein smiled with a superior air.

“That’s just why I do need her! You see, Rosy won’t do for these little teeny-weeny ingénue parts. She’s too grand! Mrs. Carter’s the kid for those. That’s what I want her for. But this Aristide Corwin”—Mr. Bernstein leaned over the table and touched the colonel’s sleeve with his fat forefinger—“Aristide ain’t behaving like a gentleman, Colonel Denbigh. He knew the lady in France, and he’s got some kind of a pull. I guess he wants her in vaudeville again. She’s been there once, I know. He’s using his methods—they ain’t mine, sir! He’s talkin’ bad, he—”

Colonel Denbigh rose abruptly and stood looking down on Mr. Bernstein from his full height.

“I know the Carters, sir,” he said sternly. “I’ve known Mr. Johnson Carter since I was a young man. His boys played on this place. I have the honor of his daughter-in-law’s acquaintance. You will kindly drop this subject, sir!”

Mr. Bernstein rose also. He was very pale, but the small eyes in the creases of his fat face looked honest. They even looked indignant.

“No offense, colonel,” he said, “no offense. If you’re a friend of the lady, I think you ought to know. Corwin’s been persecuting her before. I’ve heard he drove her out of London. He’s after her again, he means mischief. I know Aristide! If you’re—”

He stopped with his mouth open. The colonel had walked away and left him.

“Well, I’ll be darned!” said Mr. Bernstein, staring after the old man’s erect figure. “I’m darned! Now, Sammy Bernstein, that comes of trying to help a woman. Never again!”

He selected a cigar from the box that Colonel Denbigh had unwittingly left upon the table, and, having lit it with the colonel’s match, he went slowly and thoughtfully away. As he went, he sighed.

“Too bad, too bad!” he muttered. “Take him all around, the lean way he stands—with striped trousers an’ that property coat—he’d make just an ideal close-up! I wonder”—he rubbed his bald head thoughtfully—“I wonder if he’d have dropped if I’d offered him three thousand dollars to play Uncle Sam opposite to Rosy’s Liberty?”

XII

Mrs. Johnson Carter sat in the old rocker in the library, rocking nervously, her feet tapping the floor. Her usually placid face had of late become as troubled as an inland lake assailed by contrary winds. It was growing full of new puckers and furrows between the eyes.

She crossed and uncrossed her hands in her lap, and glanced absently from time to time toward the window. She happened to be alone in the house except for Miranda. An occasional sound from the region of the kitchen informed her that the colored maid of all work was at the helm; but not even the recklessness of Miranda’s slams and thumps moved Mrs. Carter from her chair. She was waiting for some one to come in—some one to whom she could unbosom herself.

As the time passed and she heard the monotonous ticking of the clock on the mantel, she was seized with a kind of panic. She dreaded Mr. Carter’s arrival. If he came first, she might break down and tell him, and she was afraid to tell him. She wanted Daniel. Unconsciously, in her hour of need, she always turned to Daniel now. William had been her mainstay, but it was obvious that William could not be her mainstay any longer. The old saw about a son marrying a wife held good in his case.

She waited, and the clock ticked tumultuously, as clocks do when you wait. She began to rock violently again, and she nearly upset herself by a tremendous start when the door finally opened. She thought it was Mr. Carter, but it was only Emily with some books under her arm.

Emily came to the door of the library and looked in. She had long ago obeyed her father’s order and washed her face. It was guiltless even of becoming makeup, but she had an unnatural look to her mother for all that.

“What’s the matter, mama?” she asked. “Where’s Fanchon? Has Leigh come in?”

Mrs. Carter shook her head. She had stopped rocking and was staring at her daughter. Emily saw it and retreated.

“I think I’ll go up-stairs,” she said hurriedly. “I passed the exams, mama. Mr. Brinsted says I can go to high school in September.”

A gleam of momentary pleasure shot across Mrs. Carter’s worried face, but she did not withdraw her fixed gaze.

“Emmy, you come here,” she said suddenly. “I want to look at your dress.”

Emily backed.

“Oh, I want to go up-stairs, mama. I’m hot and tired. Mr. Brinsted’s so prosy. Sallie Payson says—”

Mrs. Carter rose and made a dive at the hem of her daughter’s skirt.

“Well, I declare!” she exclaimed. “I couldn’t think what made it hang like that! You’ve been taking it in on every seam to make it narrower.”

Emily pulled away, blushing.

“It was just horrid—all out of style, mama!” she cried. “I hate to—to look like a frump!”

Mrs. Carter straightened up from her consideration of the skirt.

“Where did you get those striped silk stockings, Emily Carter?”

Emily, backing toward the door, looked sullen.

“Dan gave me the money,” she answered shortly. “I wanted something like other girls.”

“I never saw such awful stockings in my life!” replied her mother. “Your legs look like barbers’ poles. You take them off, or I’ll have to tell your father.”

Emily grew tearful.

“I—I think you’re real mean, mama. I hate to be a frump!”

“Who called you a frump?” her mother asked severely.

“N-no one—but Fanchon says the people here are all provincials and frumps—all of them!” stormed Emily. “And I think we’re awful frumps ourselves!”

Mrs. Carter gazed at her in a dazed way; then she retreated to her rocking-chair.

“Emily, you go up-stairs and rip those inside bastes out of that skirt. It looks frightful; it hangs all up and down in waves! And listen—”

Emily, still sniffing violently, was half-way to the stairs.

“Listen, Emily, you take off those stockings, too. They’re vulgar. If you don’t, I’ll have to do it myself.”

“I don’t see why I can’t wear them!” Emily stormed. “I’m grown up, I’m sixteen, and Fanchon has a pair like them.”

Mrs. Carter flushed.

“You go up-stairs and take them off!” she cried, with her first dash of anger. “I don’t want my girl to look like Fanchon!”

Emily grasped the banisters and shouted.

“She’s lovely; she’s stylish! I think you and papa are just awful to her. You’re setting Willie against her, too. Leigh thinks so; he says he’d do anything, he’d die for her!”

Mrs. Carter looked a little startled, but she rallied.

“Leigh’s only eighteen,” she observed dryly. “It’s very easy to die for people at eighteen! You’re impertinent to your mother, Emily. Go up-stairs and study for an hour. Mind you take off those stockings!”

Emily began to cry. She cried easily, large tears rolling out of her light-blue eyes. She went up-stairs looking like Niobe, and she cried all the time she was taking off her stockings.

Mrs. Carter stopped rocking and thought. She thought deeply. Emily’s outburst and Leigh’s devotion were such obvious things, and yet—

She lifted her handkerchief and pressed it against her trembling lips. Was William really being set against his wife? Mrs. Carter was a good woman, and the thought distressed her.

She did not resume her rocking, she sat motionless, looking straight ahead of her, her face red. She was still sitting there when Daniel, returning early from court, stopped at the door and looked in.

“What’s the matter, mother?” he asked pleasantly. “You look out of sorts.”

“Oh, Dan, please come in here a moment; I want to talk to you.”

Daniel looked a little surprised, but he came in obediently, putting a pile of law-books and papers on the table as he sat down to listen. His mother saw the papers.

“Did you win that case, Dan?”

His face lit up.

“Yes. Just heard the verdict. We’ve got it, mother!”

She flushed with pleasure.

“Dan, the judge says you’ll be a great man some day. You’re a born orator!”

“Nonsense!” said Daniel, but he blushed.

It seemed to his mother’s anxious eyes that he was less worn and tired than usual; but her mind was full of other things.

“Dan,” she began in a low, horrified voice, “have you seen anything? I mean—Fanchon and that—that man?”

Daniel shook his head.

“I’m too busy, mother.”

Mrs. Carter sank back in her rocking-chair and looked weak.

“I saw them this morning. I’d been to market. Mrs. Payson came along in her new limousine, and she stopped and picked me up. I don’t know why it had to happen so, but the chauffeur took the short cut for this house—you know, the little lane behind the Methodist church.”

She paused for breath, and Daniel nodded. He was very grave now.

“As we turned the corner we both saw them—I mean Mrs. Payson and I—and of course the chauffeur did, too, come to think of it. Fanchon was talking to that man—I think his name’s Corwin.”

“Well, mother, if she knows him, perhaps she had to speak to him.”

“Speak to him? They were walking up and down in that out-of-the-way corner, and they were quarreling. I’m sure they were quarreling. They didn’t notice us.”

“Quarreling?” Daniel laughed. “I thought you were going to say that he was making love to her.”

“It’s just the same thing—the way they looked. Mrs. Payson thought so, too. Daniel, there’s talk about them; I know there is! What shall I do?”

“Don’t you think you’d better leave it alone, mother?” Daniel suggested. “I’m not sure that we’re not to blame. Fanchon seems to think we are.”

“You’re not taking her part, are you, Dan? Emily—that child’s ridiculous, she’s copying her—Emily says we’re setting Willie against her.”

Daniel smiled.

“I’m afraid Emmy’s right,” he said quietly. “It’s too bad, mother.”

“We never meant to do that—I mean your father and I!” cried Mrs. Carter with emotion. “I can’t see why those two children adore her so. Emmy says Leigh would die for her!” she added with a tremulous laugh.

“She’s got Leigh twisted about her finger—that’s true enough,” said Daniel, smiling grimly. “I found a poem of his the other day. It was addressed to ‘my soul-mate’! The mate was plainly Fanchon. Poor Leigh—he’ll survive it!”

“I don’t think Willie really cares about her! I’ve been watching and watching. He’s sickened of it all, poor dear boy! I know he’s always loved Virginia Denbigh,” she added with conviction.

Daniel was silent for a moment, and then he spoke with determination.

“He has no right to care for Virginia or any one now but this poor girl. He’s married her, and—” He paused, and added more quietly: “Mother, I think she needs him.”

“There! She’s got you on her side with those—those fawn eyes of hers!”

Daniel laughed.

“She calls me her enemy,” he replied dryly.

Mrs. Carter looked exasperated.

“That’s just like her! She’s so absurd, so stagy—in a quiet family like ours, too! She makes me hot all over.” She shuddered. “I can’t forget that dance and those ministers.”

“Wasn’t it rather biblical, mother?” asked Daniel, and for the first time he laughed happily.

Mrs. Carter rose from her rocking-chair and walked absently to the window, blinking a little as she looked out into the sunshine. She sighed.

“Daniel, do you think I ought to tell your father?”

“Tell him what, mother?”

“About Fanchon and that man behind the church.”

“Good Heavens, no!”

“I’ve always told your father things that—that concerned us all.”

“Mother, you know what father would do—he’d storm at William, and William’s right on edge now. For Heaven’s sake, let them alone—those two, I mean!”

She drew a breath of relief.

“I’d rather not tell,” she confessed; “only I felt—I felt as if I should.”

“What good would it do!” her son asked her gravely. “It would only make matters worse.”

“But, Danny”—she called him Danny sometimes, as she had when he was two years old—“she’s Willie’s wife, and she’s being talked about!”

“Hush!” said Daniel, lifting a warning hand.

Unheard by either of them, the front door had opened and closed. Fanchon crossed the hall lightly, her quick ear catching their voices. She came to the door now and stood there with flashing eyes.

“You were talking about me,” she said with her amazing and terrible frankness. “I heard you!”

“Oh, good gracious!” Mrs. Carter fled hastily to the door that opened into the kitchen pantry. “I’ve got to go and see Miranda,” she panted, and went out and shut the door.

Daniel, left alone, rose from his chair. He was flushed, but his eyes twinkled.

“We can’t help it, Fanchon,” he said amiably. “You’re the kind, you know. You don’t leave any neutrals in your territory.”

She came in and flung her hat down on the table, uncovering her lovely, spirited head. She was dressed in a pale-yellow, clinging garment that seemed to reveal every line of her small figure, and certainly displayed her ankles, in silk stockings as amazing as Emily’s.

“You’re awfully good people,” she said bitterly. “Mon Dieu! I’d rather meet some bad ones—who’d let me alone. You’re helping to make my husband hate me!”

Daniel’s face sobered.

“You’re doing William an injustice,” he said quietly. “I’m sure he doesn’t hate you. I’m very sure, too, that I’m not trying to make him.”

She lifted her eyes slowly to his face and scanned it. Then she bit her lip.

“No, I don’t think you are,” she replied with emphasis; “but your mother does, and so does your father. And there’s no need of it—there’s enough without that!”

Daniel, who was still standing, leaned against the mantel, supporting himself and watching her gravely, unsmilingly.

“Fanchon,” he said gently, “you don’t understand. It’s been your misfortune to come to us without knowing us. We’re just old-fashioned, stodgy people, and you amaze us. You’re like a bird of paradise in a chicken-yard. Give us a little time, Fanchon.” He paused and then added soberly: “My brother loves you.”

She tossed her head, her bosom rising and falling stormily.

“Leigh does!” she cried in a choked voice. “The boy—Leigh!”

“I mean William,” said Daniel.

She stared at him, breathing hard.

“You think so? Voilà! You haven’t heard him quarrel, you haven’t seen how he takes your mother’s side and your father’s side against me! And”—she laughed wildly—“you haven’t seen him alone—under the horse-chestnut tree—with that paragon, Virginia Denbigh!”

Daniel’s arm fell from the mantel. He said nothing. He walked slowly to the table and picked up his books and papers. But Fanchon was stinging with anger. She had seen Mrs. Carter’s face, she had been treated with cold politeness by Mr. Carter, her whole wild, stormy nature was up in arms. Because she saw it hurt, she struck and struck deeply.

“I tell you she’s stealing his heart away from me. Mais hélas, it doesn’t matter, she’s a paragon and I’m a dunce! She—”

Daniel walked past her out of the room without a word. But Fanchon followed him to the door, white with rage.

“Mon Dieu! You needn’t feel like that!” she cried shrilly. “She says she’s sorry for you because you’re a cripple.”

Daniel did not pause. He heard her, but he went on, toiling slowly upward. He never once looked back at the little creature in the doorway, but went steadily on with a white face and haggard eyes.

XIII

Fanchon did not go up-stairs. She flung herself face downward on the lounge in the library and writhed there, beating the old silk cushions with her small, furious fists. In the bitterness of her heart she thought she hated them all, every Carter who was ever born! Because she was so angry, so wilfully hurt, she had wreaked her vengeance upon Daniel. She had told him a falsehood, and now, thinking of it, she tore at the cushions and wept hot tears.

She had no idea why she had done it. She hated Virginia Denbigh, because she knew the Carters loved Virginia. They had wanted William to marry her, and she believed they were making William hate his wife. She believed it from the bottom of her soul. But why had she struck at Daniel?

Perhaps it was because he was William’s brother; perhaps it was because Fanchon had divined that he loved Virginia.

Virginia, with her calm, lovely face, had become a nightmare to Fanchon. She quarreled with her husband, and she goaded and teased him, because the Carters did not like her, because their attitude was so superior. Then she laid it all to Virginia!

Fanchon had done nothing lately but quarrel with William. He had objected to Corwin, had forbidden her to have him at the house. Fanchon, who feared Corwin, might have rejoiced had she not resented her husband’s tone. He had been set on, she thought, by Mr. Carter.

Since that fatal dance Mr. Carter had been coldly civil. He hadn’t considered it his duty to scold his daughter-in-law, but he snubbed her. Fanchon, carrying her head high, had nevertheless been cut to the heart by it. She loved admiration, she loved applause, she lived on excitement, and she had none of these things, unless she counted the admiration of Leigh and Emily—two children, as she thought scornfully, who didn’t know any better!

As she lay there on the old lounge, strange, ancestral passions stirred in her, wild impulses of rage and melancholy. She had had a bitter time. The very place was intolerable; she hated it, and she knew that the place hated her. The stodgy, monotonous domestic life—she had to face that, too—three meals a day with the Carters!

If they had liked her, if they had even made her welcome and forgiven her unconventional ways, it might have been different, she thought; but now she hated them. She knew that Mrs. Carter had seen her in the church lane with Corwin. Mrs. Carter had no idea of the quarrel she had with Corwin, or her fear of him, but she must think ill of her and run home to tattle about it!

Fanchon sat on the old lounge and dashed hot tears from her eyes. She pictured herself sitting at the luncheon-table with the family. She could see them! Mr. Carter and William would not be at home; but there would be Leigh, making moon eyes, a sentimental boy, and Emily with her white eyelashes and her honest, snub-nosed face, and Mrs. Carter, her fair hair fading in ugly streaks, and her absence of eyebrows. Daniel, too, his dark, handsome head bent and his eyes indifferent—he had never liked her! Even Miranda, moving around cumbersomely with the dishes, would show the whites of her eyes when she looked at her, as if she was watching something strange and outlandish.

“I might be a Fiji Islander, from the way they look at me!” Fanchon sobbed angrily, staring about the old room with its familiar, guttered armchairs, its littered library-table—where Mr. Carter’s pipe lay beside his accustomed place—and at the dull, ancestral Carter over the mantelpiece.

The portrait filled the latest Carter bride with a kind of fury. She rose from the lounge and went and stared at it.

“Ugly old thing!” she cried angrily. “You’d hate me, if you could!”

She felt a sudden sensation of suffocation. The place was too small for her; she couldn’t breathe in it. She went to the window and leaned out, staring blankly at the peaceful scene. The Carter house was well on the outskirts of the town, and she could glimpse a distant meadow where a spotted cow moved placidly. A few red chickens crossed her vision, picking in the grass. A colored maid in the next house was pinning some clothes on the line. Down the quiet street an ice-cart trundled its sober, dripping way. It was quiet again when the sound of wheels receded; then suddenly a rooster crowed. He crowed tremendously in a fine, deep bass.

“Mon Dieu!” cried Fanchon.

She drew back from the intolerable prospect, and heard Miranda setting the table for luncheon. The faint jingle of glasses and the occasional rattle of china warned her. The domestic meal was approaching with its unfailing regularity. She could not bear it. She ran out of the room, and had one foot already on the lowest step of the stairs, when the door opened and Leigh came in.

“Fanchon!” he cried eagerly, his boyish face flushing to the hair.

An imp of perversity stopped her. She stood balanced, one hand on the banisters, looking back over her shoulder. There was at least one Carter she could manage, and she knew it. Those fawn eyes softened and glowed.

“Leigh!” she responded softly. “Mon brave garçon!”

He put his books down and came toward her with shining eyes.

“Oh, Fanchon, what mites of feet you’ve got!” he exclaimed, looking at the foot that she was displaying on the step. “I never saw a foot as small as that.”

She smiled.

“You think so, chéri?”

She moved the small foot a bit, looking down at it, pensive, aware that he could see also the charming sweep of those dark lashes. Leigh, long since subjugated, dropped on one knee beside the lowest step.

“If I were a prince, I’d follow that shoe,” he laughed up at her, his boyish eyes adoring. “I’ve read some French about a lady’s feet—in a novel. It fits your feet, Fanchon.” He blushed. “I’m not sure I pronounce very well, but it was this: ‘Petits pieds si adorés!’”

For a moment her lips trembled, half mirthful, half tearful. She leaned toward him and stroked his hair caressingly, her light, soft fingers thrilling him.

“Je t’adore, mon Leigh!” she whispered.

Then she laughed elfishly, put one of her slender fingers on her lip and ran up-stairs like a whirlwind.

Leigh slipped out of her mind in an instant. She did not even see the adoring look that followed her. She was bent on escaping that stodgy family meal, and she was in hot haste. She had thought of a way to evade it—to evade them all for a while.

She was fond of riding on horseback, and William had taken her out on several occasions. He would have taken her more frequently if her modish habit had not shocked the sobriety of the old-fashioned town. It had been made in Paris, and it had startled the streets through which they rode. After one or two experiences William had quietly let the rides drop. Fanchon knew why he had done so, and it made her angry. To-day she thought of it again, and she longed for the fresh air in her face and the swift gallop. Even the stupid country roads were tolerable for the sake of that.

She went to her closet and dragged out the famous breeches and riding-coat. She was putting on the stylish leggings when Miranda knocked.

“Please, ma’am, Miz Carter, she say ain’t you-all comin’ down t’ luncheon? De chops is gettin’ cold.”

“I don’t want any luncheon,” Fanchon called to her without opening the door. “Say that I’ve got a headache.”

She heard Miranda retreating heavily; then she slipped on her riding-habit, found her hat, and, opening the door softly, stole down-stairs. She could hear Mrs. Carter talking to Daniel in a hesitating voice, and she heard Leigh answer something. She did not want them to talk to her. She could not bear it. She opened the door gently, slipped out, and started almost at a run for the livery-stable where she knew William had hired the horses.

Mr. Carter had lunched down-town. He did so when he was very busy, and he was on his way back to his office when he encountered Judge Jessup. The judge halted him and shook hands.

“Dan’s won the case!” he said with elation. “Why weren’t you in court to hear your son plead, Carter?”

Mr. Carter reddened a little. He had been thinking of William and William’s wife, and this was a keen relief. He relaxed.

“I was busy. How did the boy get on, judge?”

The judge clapped his big hand on his old friend’s shoulder.

“Carter, he’s going to be a great lawyer! I’m as proud of him as if I’d hatched him myself.”

“Poor Dan!” Mr. Carter’s face softened while his eyes smiled. “He ought to have something to make up—I hate to see him so lame!”

“Nonsense! It doesn’t hurt his brains, man!” Jessup exclaimed hotly. “He only limps a little. He’s the smartest boy you have, Carter.”

Mr. Carter smiled broadly.

“Think so? I wouldn’t like to say that. William’s done well, Payson tells me; he said so a month or two ago. They’re all pleased with the way he handled things abroad.”

“Eh?” the judge cocked a humorous eyebrow. “I thought the most William did over there was—to get married!”

Mr. Carter met his eye, faltered, and groaned. The judge laughed.

“You don’t appreciate Dan. Now, as I was saying—”

He stopped with his mouth open. A horse came down the main street at a hard gallop. There was a distinct sensation. The drivers of passing vehicles sat sidewise; a string of little half-dressed pickaninnies streamed along the edge of the sidewalk in eager but hopeless pursuit. A street-car that had stopped at the crossing failed to go on because conductor and motorman were gaping after the vision.

Riding cross-saddle, in the latest extreme of fashion, was young Mrs. William Carter. The apparition would have startled them at any time, but the lady was already famous, and her progress might be viewed somewhat in the light of a Roman triumph.

Very pale, her dark eyes shining and her lips compressed, Fanchon struck her steed sharply with her riding-crop. The horse, a spirited young bay, came on at a gallop, with the clatter of maddened hoofs, followed by the stream of pursuing children and their wild shouts of applause. In this fashion Fanchon dashed past Judge Jessup and Mr. Carter and disappeared in a cloud of dust on the highroad.

A comet could scarcely have had a more startling effect. Mr. Carter said nothing, but his color became apoplectic. He stared after her for a minute, and then, with a set face, he turned to the judge.

“What were you saying? Oh, I remember—yes, yes, I’ll come in to-morrow and hear Dan address the jury,” he said hastily.

The judge smiled grimly.

“The verdict was reached to-day, Johnson. You’re a bit behindhand.” As he spoke he held out his hand. “Congratulations on Dan,” he said heartily. “I’m in a hurry. Want to walk back to my office with me?”

“No!” said Mr. Carter.

He knew what Jessup thought, he suspected him of shaking with suppressed laughter, but the judge looked innocent enough. They shook hands again absently, having forgotten that they had done so twice already, and Mr. Carter strode away. He knew that he was stared at, and he walked fast, his face still deeply red. At the door of his office—he was in the insurance business—he found his office-boy gaping down the street.

Mr. Carter stopped short.

“Here, you! Go into that office!” he said sharply. “What are you doing out there, you young ninny? You’ll be picked up for a street-corner loafer if you don’t mind your own business better!”

The alarmed youth retreated before him, apologizing. Mr. Carter, with his hat still on, strode past the clerks in the outer office, went into his own room, and slammed the door with such force that the glass rattled.

One of the young stenographers looked up from her work and laughed silently at the other.

“Seen his daughter-in-law?” she inquired in a whisper.

The other girl nodded.

“She’s awfully pretty and swell, anyway,” she murmured. “Oh, my—Minnie, look!”

Across the street was the old road-house where William and his wife had supped after the dance. As Mr. Carter’s stenographer looked out now she saw a hastily saddled horse led to the door. A tall man came out and swung himself into the saddle. It was Corwin.

The two girls across the street rose silently and leaned over their machines to watch him. He rode well, turning his horse around, starting at a quick trot, and breaking almost at once into a gallop.

“He’s gone after her, Minnie!”

Minnie nodded; then, hearing a noise in the inner room, they dropped into their places and worked furiously. Mr. Carter opened the door, looked in, and closed it sharply again. They heard him return to his desk.

Minnie pulled her companion’s sleeve.

“He saw him!” she whispered.

The other girl assented, touching her lips with her finger. They could hear earthquakelike sounds within, and they rattled away at their typewriters, demurely silent; but through the open window they could see, far in the distance, the furious horseman disappearing down the turnpike.

His horse was a powerful animal, a far better traveler than the young bay that had carried Fanchon. The two girls in the office speculated in silence, and worked rapturously. Young Mrs. Carter was the most exciting thing in a dull town at a dull time of the year, and they were grateful to her.

Mr. Carter kept them late that day and worked them hard. Usually an easy taskmaster, he called them in during the afternoon and gave them page after page of dictation. It was half past six when he slammed down the top of his desk, locked it, and went home.

He walked, and it was a long way. It was seven o’clock when he opened the front door with his latch-key.

The family were already at dinner—all but William, who was walking up and down the hall, looking haggard. Mr. Carter came in and hung his hat upon the rack.

“Waiting for any one?” he asked his son dryly.

William raised his head.

“Yes, Fanchon. She hasn’t come in yet. I’m expecting her any moment.”

“You needn’t,” his father retorted grimly. “She’s out riding with that fellow—Caraffi’s manager.”

William said nothing, but he stopped short. Mr. Carter, after eying him for an instant, went on into the dining-room. His wife, Daniel, Emily, and Leigh were sitting around the table, eating the second course disconsolately.

“I thought you’d never come—and we were hungry,” Mrs. Carter said apologetically. “Miranda, go and get the soup for Mr. Carter. I had it kept hot,” she added, glancing anxiously toward the hall door.

They could hear William walking to and fro again. As Miranda disappeared for the soup, Mr. Carter looked up. He glanced at his wife meaningly.

“She’s out riding with that man,” he said in an undertone.

“Johnson!”

His wife’s dismay only brought a grim smile to Carter’s face. He unfolded his napkin without further comment. Before Miranda returned with the soup-tureen, Mrs. Carter rallied sufficiently to lean over and murmur across the table:

“I’ve got a lot to tell you—that dreadful girl was with that man this morning—behind the Methodist Church! I saw—”

She stopped, for Leigh had risen suddenly. He flung his napkin on the table and stalked out of the room with a white face. Mr. Carter stared after him.

“What the—” he began.

Emily touched his hand warningly. Miranda was returning.

“Leigh’s awfully mashed on Fanchon,” Emily whispered irrelevantly, returning to her dinner.

Mr. Carter shut his mouth hard, and the conversation languished. Daniel spoke once about the weather, and his father nodded.

“Judge Jessup handed out a lot of compliments for you to-day, Dan,” he remembered suddenly.

Mrs. Carter looked pleased, but even this fell flat. They could hear William’s tramp continuing after Leigh went up-stairs. Mr. Carter rose once and went to the door.

“Aren’t you coming in to eat your dinner, William?” he demanded.

“I’ve dined,” William replied shortly.

“Then I think you’d better go into the library and sit down,” said his father meaningly.

William, halting in his walk, stared for a moment, puzzled. Then he understood, and a deep red went up to his forehead. Without a word, he turned, went into the library, and shut the door.

Miranda had brought on the dessert, but only Emily and Daniel ate it. There was a heavy silence. Mr. Carter sat moodily, apparently listening, and Mrs. Carter could think of nothing to say. She tried two or three times and stopped, aghast at her own temerity. The three vacant chairs—William’s, Fanchon’s, and Leigh’s—seemed to gape at them. Daniel finally rose.

“I’ve got to prepare a paper for Judge Jessup,” he remarked quietly, and left the room.

They heard him light his cigar and go up-stairs. It was then that Mr. Carter rose also and went as usual into the library. Emily and her mother, left alone, gaped at each other in a startled way. They heard voices in the library, and then a heavy silence, filled with the odor of tobacco. Emily began to be a little frightened.

“Mama, do you suppose she’s run away?” she whispered in an awed tone.

Mrs. Carter cast a frightened look toward Miranda’s retreating figure, and shook her head.

“I don’t know, Emily. Suppose we go and sit in the parlor? I don’t think papa wants us in the library.”

They spent the evening sitting in the little unused parlor that Fanchon hated. It was full of heavy stuffed furniture and old-fashioned cabinets. Accustomed to a family gathering in the library, they languished there, watching the clock.

“It’s getting awfully late,” said Emily finally, after an interminable hour. “Where can she be?”

“Emily,” said Mrs. Carter irrelevantly, “I wish you wouldn’t say that Leigh is ‘mashed’ on her. In the first place it’s absurd, and in the second it’s vulgar.”

“But he is,” insisted Emily. “He’d get down in the mud and let her walk on him—like Sir Walter Raleigh’s cloak. He says so.”

“Nonsense!” Mrs. Carter, trembling with nervousness, discovered that it was half past ten. “You go to bed,” she ordered shortly.

After her daughter went up-stairs, she sat for a long time, waiting. She was puzzled by the silence in the library. From time to time she went to the window and looked out anxiously; yet she had no real hope that her daughter-in-law would appear. She felt sure that Fanchon had run away, and the disgrace of it made her face burn. She turned the gas down and sat in semi-darkness, ashamed to look at her own image in the long mirror between the windows.

The Carters had always had such good wives, such loyal, faithful women. She had not failed herself, she had done her best, and William, her first-born, the pride of her heart—must he be disgraced?

She sat there watching and listening until nearly twelve o’clock. Still she heard occasional sounds from the library. Finally, worn out, she crept up-stairs to her room; but even there she continued to listen and tremble at intervals.

At last she heard the sounds of locking up the house and her husband’s heavy step on the stairs.

Mr. Carter came into the room and slammed the door. His wife had crept hastily into bed, and she lay there, shivering a little with dread.

“What did you say to him, papa?”

“Say? Not a blamed word!” Mr. Carter sat down and pulled off his boots, flinging one down with violence. “I guess I don’t have to say anything,” he remarked grimly. “I reckon the fool’s got about enough. Marrying a French ballet-dancer!”

Mrs. Carter drew a long breath.

“Where do you s’pose she is, Johnson?”

“How do I know? He’ll have to get a divorce—that’s as plain as the nose on your face. Then I suppose the donkey’ll want to marry Rosamond Silvertree, or Bloomie Bloomingkitten, or some other actress.”

“Oh, hush!” groaned Mrs. Carter, burying her head in her pillow with a sob. “I can’t bear it! Poor Willie!”

Mr. Carter restrained his tongue, but he flung the other boot into the corner with a bang more eloquent than words.

XIV

Down in the library William Carter waited alone. He was glad to be alone. Aware of his father’s attitude, he had dragged through a fearful evening. Mr. Carter had sat at the table, smoking and reading his newspaper. He had said nothing about the one subject that was uppermost in both minds; but at intervals he had lowered his paper sufficiently to fix a fierce eye on the clock and then to turn it significantly upon his son. Without meeting his glance, William felt it. With the tide of rage and grief rising in his own heart, that hostile eye—which seemed to say, “I told you so!” was intolerable.

He was thankful when his father’s stout figure disappeared into the front part of the house. He heard the vigorous locking-up without protest. It was evident that Mr. Carter had decided that Fanchon wouldn’t return that night, and he was bound to lock up as usual. In fact, he did it a little more violently than usual. It was an overt act which relieved his feelings. Then, carrying a pitcher of iced water, he went heavily up-stairs, and his son heard the sharp closing of his bedroom door.

It took no very vigorous imagination, either, to fancy his mother’s anxious inquiry for the truant, and the subsequent comment on the situation. Even in the solitude of the library William’s face burned. He was bewildered, too. He knew that he had reached a crisis, and he did not know how to deal with it. To do anything seemed only to publish his own misery. He had telephoned twice to the livery-stable already, and been assured that Mrs. Carter’s horse was still out.

He had no idea where she had gone, and to follow, even in a motor, would be senseless enough. It was a fine night; a full moon lighted the roads. If she meant to return, she could get home so easily that he could not believe she intended to do so.

As for Corwin, William had only seen the man two or three times, and was cognizant of the gossip only through his father. People didn’t talk to him.

His father had seen Corwin follow Fanchon, but had Fanchon planned it all? Or had the man—a hard, coarse-looking brute—pursued her without any invitation, without her consent? William Carter did not know; he only felt a blind rage that he had suddenly been forced to doubt his wife. It was hideous—simply hideous!

They had been quarreling lately nearly all the time—petty quarrels. Fanchon evidently hated the place, she seemed to hate even her husband’s people, and he had found her becoming wilder and stranger every day. He knew she longed to go back to Paris, or at least to New York; but William had never brought his mind to consider even the possibility that she was disloyal, or could be. He could not believe it now, but he found that the conviction was deep-rooted in his father’s mind, and he saw it in his mother’s kind, worried eyes.

What had they heard? He did not know—at least he was sure he did not know it all. He saw something of it in Leigh’s white face to-night. The boy was fond of Fanchon. William felt relief to think that at least one member of his family liked her.

He watched the clock until the hands indicated midnight. Where could she be? He walked the floor again.

Unobserved, he could give way to his agony of mind. Had there been an accident? Had Fanchon been hurt?

The suspense was fast becoming a deep and keen agony. He was shaken. He knew that his thoughts had wandered to Virginia, to the peace he might have had. Had Fanchon seen it? Was she tormenting him in a wild fit of jealousy, or—intolerable and monstrous thought!—his wife in flight with a man who looked to him to be no more than a common gamester?

How still it was! Through the open window the soft night air poured in; and now it had a difference, a perceptible quickening, the keenness of the morning. It was nearly one o’clock.

He flung himself into a chair and waited, burying his head in his hands. He tried to think coherently, but he could not. Then a thrill ran through him as the telephone-bell rang at his elbow. He snatched up the receiver. A man’s voice called for Mr. William Carter—a gruff, half-drowsy negro voice.

“Yes, yes! What is it?” he questioned.

“De boss tol’ me to watch out fo’ dat horse Miz Carter hired, suh. I’s been up all night—dat horse jes’ come in dis minute. He’s drippin’, an’ he ain’t got no rider, suh.”

William dropped the receiver and stood motionless, as if turned to stone. Good God, how he had wronged her! There had been an accident!

A vision of Fanchon lying by the wayside, her lovely face cold in the moonlight, her helpless, pretty, idle hands flung out, pierced his heart. He groaned aloud. Then his sickened brain cleared and he roused himself. He must get help, hire a motor, and go out to search.

He raised his head sharply. His strained ear caught a sound at the front door. He crossed the room almost at a stride, switched on the light in the hall, threw back his father’s elaborate chains and bolts with a shaking hand, and flung the door open. On the threshold, deadly pale and dripping wet, stood his wife.

“Fanchon!”

His first impulse of wild relief was lost in another and a stronger feeling. The look on her face checked the words on his lips.

She came in slowly, reluctantly, putting out a small, groping hand. As the light from the hall lamp fell full upon her, he saw that she had lost her hat, and that her pretty hair clung in wet curls to her forehead. All the gaiety and frivolity of that Parisian habit was gone. It was torn and muddy and wet. But she did not go to him, she did not exclaim that she had been hurt and half drowned. She walked past him, a little unsteadily, and went into the library.

William shut the door and followed her. She had dropped into a chair and lay there, half reclining, her arm across the back and her face hidden on it. Her husband stood looking down at her in silence for a moment; then he turned without a word and went into the dining-room, poured some brandy into a glass, and brought it.

“Drink this!” he said peremptorily.

She lifted the glass slowly, and, without raising her eyes, tasted the liquor and then thrust it aside.

“I know what you think!” she said in a low voice. “It isn’t true—I’ve done nothing—nothing at all!”

His face hardened.

“Why do you say that, Fanchon? I haven’t accused you.”

She turned with a gesture of impatience.

“I know they have—your father and your mother!”

William, who had taken the glass from her, set it down on the table.

“You’re wet through,” he said coldly. “Go up-stairs and change. You can talk afterward—if you want to.”

“I don’t care if I’m wet!” she answered a little wildly. “I’d rather bear wet than your face!”

“I’m sorry my face is so unbearable. I had no thought when I saw you but anxiety. There’s been an accident. You haven’t even told me whether you’re hurt!”

“It wasn’t an accident,” said Fanchon. “The horse got down in the stream and wallowed. I had to get off to save myself, and when he came out he ran off.”

William lifted his eyes reluctantly to hers.

“That horse has just come in, Fanchon. I got a telephone as you came up the porch steps.”

She did not seem to grasp the significance of this. She put up a wandering hand and pushed back her damp hair.

“I can’t help it!” she said sharply. “It’s so—I never would have got here but for a motor. Some people—perfect strangers, too—were coming this way, and they brought me. We came faster than any horse could go.”

“Where were you? Where did the horse roll?”

“At Fanshawe’s Creek—you know, half-way to the Mountain Inn.”

William turned abruptly and walked across the room and back again.

“That wouldn’t take an hour and a half for a horse,” he remarked dryly. “It’s one o’clock, Fanchon.”

A flame of red shot up in her white cheeks.

“I think he got into the water at about eleven o’clock. I tried to make him ford the stream, and he—he just got down and wallowed in the water. I had to get off.”

“You went out just after luncheon—while mother was at lunch, in fact—and you were coming home on those lonely roads at eleven o’clock at night, alone?”

She sat up in her chair at that, her flushed face turned fully toward him, and something like a flame kindling in her fawn-like eyes.

“Of course your mother told you!”

“Told me what?”

“About my talk with Corwin in the lane.”

William stared at her.

“My mother told me nothing. I didn’t mean to tell you, I didn’t mean to say anything,” he added grimly; “but since you’ve said so much, I will. I heard from father that Corwin followed you out on the turnpike to-day—to the edification of the town! Was he with you at the creek?”

Fanchon sat quite still, looking at him, her large eyes seeming to grow larger and darker in her white face. He returned the look as steadily, not in anger, but with a kind of grimness new in her experience with him. Neither of them moved, and the stillness in the room was so deep that they both heard the familiar sounds outside. The church clock struck in the distance, and some cocks crowed. The fresh breeze stirred the curtains in the window while the shaded lamp on the table flared up with the little gust. In the flare William saw the misery on his wife’s face.

“Fanchon, that man’s pursuing you—he’s a villain! What has happened? Tell me—I have a right to know!”

Something in his changed tone touched her. She sank back in her chair, covering her face with her hands.

“Mon Dieu!” she murmured brokenly, and then, as her emotions swept her away, she burst into wild and uncontrollable weeping, her sobs shaking her from head to foot.

Something in the passion of her tears, and in the crumpled helplessness of the small figure in the chair, touched William in his turn. He stood looking at her without moving, thinking unhappily. He had made a mess of it; but after all it wasn’t all her fault. It was his, and he still loved her. From what he had suffered to-night he knew that he loved her. Suddenly he bent over the small, writhing figure and spoke.

“Tell me, Fanchon,” he said hoarsely. “Must I thrash that villain?”

Very slowly she raised her head, very slowly and reluctantly she raised her tear-drenched eyes to his.

“I—I didn’t go with him, I didn’t want to see him—he followed me.” She hesitated, trembling. “I don’t know how to tell you. He overtook me and he made me come back. I’d lost my way. He made me go back to the inn—we ate dinner together.”

“You dined at a public road-house with that man—a man I wouldn’t ask to my father’s house?”

She nodded, biting her lips.

For a moment he was hot with rage; but he curbed it. He wanted to be just, and he was deeply moved. As she sat there she looked as she had looked once in Paris, when he had first seen her—a butterfly of a creature fighting to live, fighting hopelessly in the midst of glittering, sordid surroundings. He hadn’t been blinded, his eyes had been wide open, but he had fallen in love with her; and he had been moved, too, by compassion. He had snatched her out of that gay, hollow sham of a life, and he had meant to save her, to keep her safe. Yet, as she sat there now, she looked forlorn and helpless and beset.

“Fanchon,” he said gravely and gently, “tell me why you did this. You didn’t mean to do it, you didn’t set out to do it—why did you? See, I trust you—I’m asking you to tell me the truth.”

“I lost my way.” She repeated it as if she had a lesson by rote. “Corwin overtook me and made me turn back. I was hungry, and we ate dinner at the same table—in the public dining-room. Then—then I didn’t want him to ride back with me—and I went out of the side door and started alone. When I came to the crossing above Fanshawe’s Creek, I didn’t know which way to go, and I chose the wrong road. I rode so far that I got frightened. I asked at a house out there—a woman with a queer name—Quantah, I think. I had to come back to the crossing. Then, when I did get to the creek, the horse lay down in the water. I sat and waited, dripping, until a motor picked me up. That’s all.”

“No,” said William, “that’s not all. You’re afraid of that man, Fanchon!”

“I!” she laughed tremulously. “Why do you think that?”

He was watching her, and he saw her eyes change. He was right. She was afraid of Corwin.

“I don’t think it,” he said gravely. “I know it. Go on, Fanchon; tell me the rest.”

“I have nothing to tell,” she replied slowly, deliberately, but with shaking lips. “You—you don’t believe me, n’est-ce-pas?”

William, looking steadily into her face, made no reply. His changed, white face frightened her. She rose unsteadily to her feet, a forlorn little figure.

“I’m not afraid of Corwin,” she said angrily, “not a bit! Ciel, why should I be afraid of any one? I ask you that, mon ami!”

He still said nothing, his grave eyes on hers. Fanchon returned his look—tried to return it steadily. She had told him a falsehood. She had never been afraid of falsehood; it was an easy way of escape. But now, under his eyes, she flinched. She blushed scarlet, put out a wavering little hand, and tried to catch at his, but he moved away.

“Go up-stairs,” he said gravely, without anger, in the remote tone of a man who no longer cared. “You’re worn out; you’ll take cold. I told you so before. Go up-stairs to bed. Shall I rouse Miranda? Do you need help?”

“Help?” she shivered, but not with cold. “Non, non! No help for me—here!”

As she spoke she turned, lifted the discarded glass of brandy to her lips, and drained it. Then, without looking at him again, she left the room.

The light was still on in the hall, but she felt her way to the stairs blindly. She was crying. She had not intended to lie to him, but it was so much easier than to tell the truth. She clung to the banisters for a moment, sobbing bitterly; then, dashing the tears from her eyes, she went on, aware that he was still standing motionless where she had left him.

As she dragged herself to the head of the stairs, she was suddenly aware of a figure in the upper hall. She stopped and looked around in a panic. She expected her father-in-law, but it was only Leigh.

“Are you safe?” he asked eagerly. “There’s been an accident—I knew it! You’ve been hurt, Fanchon?”

She looked at him in surprise.

“Where were you, Leigh?”

“I’ve been up all night. I knew William was, too, and I’ve waited.”

He was eighteen, but he looked younger, and his boyish face was white with anxiety. With a sudden impulse, Fanchon laid her hands on his shoulders.

“I’m safe—quite safe, dear boy!” she whispered, and, lifting her pale, beautiful face to his, she kissed him lightly on both cheeks. “Dear Leigh—dear brother!” she murmured. “I shall love you—toujours!”

Leigh, unused to being kissed, turned from white to red, but he felt as if he had received an accolade.

XV

The only member of the Carter family who left the house with a cheerful face on the following morning was Daniel. There had been practically nothing said at breakfast. Fanchon kept to her room, William briefly explaining the accident at the creek and adding that his wife had a chill. Mrs. Carter went up to see her, but was refused admittance. So was Emily. Mr. Carter read the newspaper more thoroughly than usual, and Leigh ate in a dream.

Daniel, aware of the strained atmosphere, found difficulty in suppressing a smile. He had encountered, at intervals, the expressive whites of Miranda’s eyes. She had carried up Fanchon’s breakfast, and she knew Job Wills, the hostler at the livery-stable, who had come by in the morning, on his way home after an all-night shift. What Miranda did not know about Mrs. William Carter’s ride wasn’t worth knowing. Her eyes nearly upset Daniel’s gravity; but he finally left the house, feeling a little guilty. It was wrong to find amusement in an incident that seemed so tragic to the others. Daniel therefore suppressed the twinkle in his eyes and set out for Judge Jessup’s office.

His way lay through the church lane and down to the lower corner of the main street. It was a way that, at this season of the year, was full of blossoming. It was past time now for the early flowers, but an old-fashioned clustering yellow rose climbed over the Paysons’ fence and tossed its fragrance and its falling petals to the passers-by like the confetti at a carnival. A scarlet-hooded woodpecker was climbing the tall trunk of the old oak by the churchyard gate.

Daniel walked slowly. Rapid motion increased his limp, but when he moved in his usual leisurely way his step only halted a little. He was no longer thinking of his own family, nor of the whites of Miranda’s eyes. His mind had reverted, as it usually did, to Virginia Denbigh.

He was not startled, therefore, when he saw her standing at the corner of the church. She was not wearing her big hat to-day, but an odd little bonnet-shaped affair that showed her pretty hair and her white forehead, and she was dressed in pink. He thought it was the most lovely shade of pink he had ever seen.

She smiled as she saw him coming.

“I was waiting for you, Dan.”

He flushed, and his eyes shone.

“I like that bonnet, Virginia. At first I thought I couldn’t like anything but the big hat, but this shows your hair. It’s like sunshine to-day.”

She laughed.

“My hat was a thousand years old! This is brand-new—I trimmed it.”

“I wish I could do anything so well,” he said in a tone of real regret. “I couldn’t.”

“Not even a speech to the jury?”

She laughed a little tremulously. Something in Daniel always touched her. She supposed it was his accident.

“Any one can address a jury,” he replied, “but no one but you could trim that bonnet, Virginia.”

“If you praise it so much, I shall never take it off.” She laughed again, but her eyes grew very grave and kind. “Dan, I heard you speak in court yesterday.”

He was startled.

“Really? Where were you, Virginia?”

“Oh, way back! I was passing the court-house, and I heard two colored men speak about it. One said: ‘Dan Carter, he’s makin’ a great speech, yessuh, he sho’ is. ’Pears like he’s got dat jury all bemuzzled!’” Virginia laughed delightedly. “I went in after that. It was so crowded I thought I’d have to stand, but Mr. Payson was there near the door, and he made some one bring a chair. I could just see the back of your head, Dan, but I heard.”

His face glowed now.

“How strange!” he exclaimed in a low voice. “I knew you were there. No, I didn’t see you, Virginia. I was speaking, and suddenly—well, I felt that you were there. I remember I half looked around. I thought you’d smile at me.”

She gave him a quick, startled look—a look that seemed to express some new perception of him; but his eyes were averted. He was smiling absently, as if talking to himself.

“I didn’t smile, Dan,” she said softly. “I was too deeply touched. I don’t know why we all felt that way, but we did. Yet when I took your speech to pieces in my mind I found how simple it was. You just told us that man’s story, but you told it so simply it went straight to our hearts.”

He smiled.

“That’s all I can do, Virginia. I’m a simple fellow—I can only tell the simple truth. There’s no cause for all this—this fanfare of trumpets in the newspapers, I mean—about my speech. Anybody could do it.”

She shook her head.

“Nobody else could do it. That’s just it. You’re like Lincoln, Dan. They say he thought nothing of the Gettysburg address. I believe he wrote it on his way there. I wish you’d tell me when you’re going to speak again. I want to be there; I want to hear you ‘bemuzzle’ the jury again.”

His eyes lit up.

“Will you come? Really?”

“Every time—if you’ll tell me. You can phone me, Dan.”

He drew a long breath.

“I shall make great speeches, sure enough, if you’re there! I couldn’t help it. Only I wish you’d sit where I can see you—will you, Virginia?”

She laughed.

“In which hat, Dan?”

He considered a moment.

“The old one, please! When I have dreams about you I see you in that hat.”

“I’m afraid it’s given you nightmare! I didn’t know it was as bad as that!”

She laughed again, a little tremulously. Suddenly she began to see what she had never quite seen before. Poor Daniel cared for her! She was afraid that he cared more than she had dreamed. It touched her so much that her eyes misted.

“Nightmare? Not a bit of it. I tell you what to do, Virginia—when you’re through with it let me have it. I’ll hang it up over my desk when I want an inspiration. A poor lawyer needs an inspiration. The law’s as dry as dust.”

She lifted her eyes reluctantly but smilingly to him. She had almost been afraid to meet them, but she was not now. Dan’s look was just the same look he had always given her—and she had never understood!

“I’ll give it to you for a waste-paper basket,” she said gaily.

Then she stopped, her hand on the stone gate-post of the old church. They had been walking slowly through the lane, and Daniel halted, surprised.

“Going in here, Virginia?”

She smiled.

“Yes. There’s to be a Sunday-school festival. Besides, they’ve just cleaned up the church. I took all our prayer-books away for the refurbishing; now I’m going to put them back in the pew.”

As she spoke, he glanced down at the armful of books she held. He had been to church with the Denbighs more than once, and he remembered the colonel’s big prayer-book and hymnal and the books for their guests. He had used that old red one himself. Then his eye fell upon two smaller ones of brown morocco with Virginia’s monogram on the clasp of the case.

“You’re still carrying your old set, Virginia,” he remarked thoughtfully. Here was a chance for a gift, perhaps. “They’re worn at the edges.”

She looked down, blushing suddenly.

“Are they? I hadn’t noticed.”

Something in her tone had made Daniel take the books from the pile on her arm. It was a set, prayer-book and hymnal bound in one and prettily mounted. He slipped the clasp and opened them. A faded pansy slipped between the pages. He clasped it hastily and handed it back.

“I thought I knew them,” he said hastily.

“Yes?” Virginia’s eyes avoided his. Her lips were trembling, he thought. “I’ve had them a long time. William—your brother—gave them to me when I was just sixteen.”

“I wonder,” said Daniel, looking up at the old church, “how long ago they planted that English ivy! There’s a perfect mantle of it, isn’t there?”

“Grandfather says the old rector planted it—the one who married grandfather and grandmother in this very church.”

“I suppose he did as much for my grandparents,” said Daniel. “I wonder if they gave him a good fee!”

“Oh, you lawyer!” cried Virginia, and laughed happily.

But Daniel continued to look at the ivy. He had seen her face.

“She still loves William,” he thought bitterly.

Virginia, hiding her confusion, began to ascend the old stone steps.

“Why, there’s your father!” she exclaimed suddenly. “I didn’t know that he often came this way.”

Daniel, who was very pale again, looked around.

“He counted on walking down with me, I fancy,” he remarked quietly, aware of the thunderstorm in Mr. Carter’s face.

Virginia saw it, too, and made haste.

“I’m going in now. Good-by, Daniel, and remember—about that next speech.”

He watched her as she went into the old church, stopping at the door to wave a greeting to his father. Framed thus, she made a picture that he kept in his mind all the day and many days thereafter.

Mr. Carter came up, a little out of breath and very red.

“Going my way, father?”

“I suppose I am!”

Mr. Carter slowed his steps to suit his lame son’s gait. He was moody, and he had his morning paper done up like a club in his hand. He slashed viciously at the church snowball as they reached it.

“My Lord, to think of that lovely girl—and what I’ve got for a daughter-in-law!” he growled.

Daniel, who understood the process of his father’s mind without asking any questions, said nothing.

“I’ve got a nickelette-show, a ballet-dancer, a runaway-with-a-gambler daughter-in-law, that’s what I’ve got!”

They had reached the street now, and Daniel checked him.

“Hush, father!” the young man said gently. “Some one will hear you.”

“Hear me?” bawled Mr. Carter. “Hear me? Drat it! D’you suppose the whole town doesn’t know? I met Dr. Barbour when I came out of the house just now. He says the Bulls, those new people at the corner of Hill Street, brought her home last night at one o’clock—I mean this morning—in a motor. What d’you suppose they’ll say?”

“Perhaps they’ve got some sense and won’t say anything,” suggested Daniel, thinking of the prayer-book and Virginia’s face.

“They told Barbour, and he’ll tell every one—and it isn’t twelve hours old.”

“We can’t do anything, father. Give the girl a chance. William says it was an accident.”

“An accident? And your mother saw her flirting with Corwin in the morning!” Mr. Carter could not restrain his ire. “I tell you, Dan, I wouldn’t mind so much if William wasn’t behaving like a lummox. He won’t get a divorce. He told me so this morning.”

“Good Heavens, why should he? It isn’t as bad as that. She’s only a wild girl, and she hates our ways. Why shouldn’t she? We’ve been finding fault with her from the beginning. I don’t see why you spoke of a divorce to William.”

“Why?” Mr. Carter set his teeth. Then, as they got to the corner, he spoke his mind. “I want him to get a divorce, behave like a gentleman, and marry Virginia Denbigh—if she’ll have him.”

“I’m sure Virginia wouldn’t have him, if he got a divorce to ask her,” said Daniel quietly. “She’s not that kind of a woman.”

“She’s in love with him,” replied Mr. Carter; “but I don’t care for that, either, if I can make the fool shake off this—this wildcat!”

Daniel, who had reached Judge Jessup’s door, smiled.

“I’m really sorry for the wildcat,” he said quietly. “She’s alone, and she hasn’t a friend—unless you count Leigh.”

“Leigh’s a ninny!” Mr. Carter retorted, and went on, still storming, to his office.

But by twelve o’clock he had worked some of his temper off. The process of cooling down began and ended, too, in sympathy for William. After all, it was hardest on William. He had been a donkey, but he had—in common with the other Carters—a natural horror of notoriety for his women-folks.

Divorce and scandal! Mr. Carter, thinking hard, could not recall a single case in his own family. Of course Uncle Duff Carter had quarreled with his wife, but it was about a back lot that adjoined their place. He wanted to sow it to oats for his horses, and his wife wanted to keep it for a private burial-ground for the family. There hadn’t been the least bit of scandal about that quarrel, and it was made up before his uncle died. He was buried, by the way, in that same back lot, with a monument of Florentine marble. His widow had her own way!

As for a runaway wife, or any kind of a wife who wasn’t what Mr. Carter called “a lady,” there was no record of it. William, his eldest son and the pride of his heart, seemed about to make the first break in a long line. It must distress William as much as it did his father.

Mr. Carter began to feel the greatest compunction about his son. The boy had behaved like a donkey, but there was no use in crying over spilt milk. The only way was to help him set it right. Of course, if the talk got no farther, and William chose to forgive her and could keep her in hand, there was nothing to be done about it.

As Mr. Carter’s rage against Fanchon began to cool, he saw the advantage of suppressing the scandal and making her behave. He had no very clear idea of how this should be done, except his firm belief that any sensible man could prevent such doings in his own household. He belonged, too, to a type of manhood that has long ago decided on the simplest method to avenge an insult to his family. He couldn’t recall an ancestor who under such provocation would fail to shoot his man. Times had changed now, but Mr. Carter felt an intense desire to annihilate that brute, Corwin.

He had no intention of mentioning this to William. The cooling-off process had reached the stage of common sense; but he felt that he must talk things over with his son. He had experience of life, if he had no experience with a recalcitrant wife, and he wanted to suggest some kind of restraint for his daughter-in-law. It seemed to him a perfectly practical thing—because he had never tried it. A moral strait-jacket for Fanchon appealed to his mind, at the moment, more strongly than any other idea in life.

He got through the morning’s work, lunched alone, and then waited until three o’clock. At that time he could endure it no longer. He had caught his two girl stenographers whispering, and he had seen the office-boy watching the inn opposite, where Corwin had stayed the day before. The office-boy brought Mr. Carter’s resolution to a head. He closed his desk sharply, snatched up his hat, and started for William’s office.

The office was situated on the top floor of the Payson Building. William was the buyer and traveling agent of Mr. Payson’s chain of department-stores. There was only a modest branch store in the home town, but in larger cities there were towering beehives bearing the name of Payson.

William had traveled abroad for these stores, and now, in his private office here, he was still directing the foreign correspondence of the firm. It was a position of great responsibility, and it carried a handsome salary and perquisites. Mr. Carter was proud of his son’s advance and proud of his ability to keep up with it. It was his pride in him that made this unfortunate marriage such a bitter disappointment.

He passed through the crowded shop, glancing at the long aisles of merchandise and noting the rugs—some of them brought from Turkey by William, others imported by his advice to be sent to the larger markets in the North. At the elevator Mr. Carter encountered Mr. Payson—the rich man who had paid for the singers at the concert where Fanchon had made herself notorious.

“I’m going up to see my son a moment,” said Mr. Carter, as they shook hands.

Payson nodded, but he did not repeat his commendation of William. Instead, he looked rather odd and spoke about the weather.

“Fine for the crops,” he said; “but we need more rain.”

Mr. Carter assented. He felt uneasy. There was something odd in Payson’s manner. The magnate got off at the second floor, and the elevator continued its ascent. At the top Mr. Carter got out and hurried to his son’s door. As no one answered his knock, he opened it and went in.

It was a good-sized office, furnished in accordance with Mr. Payson’s ideas of business—that is, in the latest and most solid fashion. On a table in the center of the room stood a bottle and a glass, and William Carter was stretched in a chair beside it, lying half on the table, his head down, sound asleep.

Mr. Carter stood aghast. He could see the haggard profile and the dark rings under the closed eyes. Worn out with his heart-breaking night vigil, William had fallen asleep; but his father felt that he was looking on the wreck of his son’s life, that William, in his misery, had sought oblivion in the old and time-honored way.

XVI

Leigh Carter had attained the dignity of his eighteenth birthday a few days before the arrival of his brother’s bride. He had done fairly well at the high school, and was preparing now, during vacation, for a preliminary examination for the university which had educated the male Carters for generations.

Leigh had some mental gifts and a taste for poetry, which seemed to indicate a literary career, and his fond mother regarded him as a budding genius. There was a wide gap in age between the two younger and the two older Carters, occasioned by the death of three intervening children, and Mrs. Carter’s affections had always centered on her baby boy, as she still called Leigh—to his great indignation. Her pride had been in William, her sympathy for poor Dan, but her doting fondness was for Leigh.

Mr. Carter did not approve of it. He had warned her more than once that she couldn’t bring up anything but an incubator chicken in that way and make a success of it.

Leigh wasn’t exactly a success. The latent manhood in him had scarcely stirred. He was a tall, lanky youth with a handsome, boyish face and the eyes of a girl. He had been a dreamer, too, and had spent much time in reading romances from the news-stands; but he was a good boy, he had cultivated no vices, and “milksop” was the worst charge that other youths of his set could make against him.

He had reached the impressionable age without falling deeply in love, and his mind and heart happened to be in a peculiarly receptive state when Fanchon suddenly burst upon his vision. Her beauty, the subtle charm and mystery of those fawn-like eyes, and her caressing voice, captured his youthful fancy. He could understand why William loved her, and he became at once her slave and worshiper. Then, when he saw the attitude of the family revealed in pitiless criticism, he became her still more devoted champion. Fanchon saw it, and she coaxed the boy into still deeper infatuation. It was her triumph to secure at least one ally in a hostile family, and she used him as a buffer. She always had a kind word for Leigh, a soft pat of the hand, an errand which she conferred as a favor. Leigh, immersed in romantic visions, saw her as the loveliest and most persecuted of beings, and he was ready to give battle to the entire family in her behalf. As Emily expressed it, he would have made himself into Sir Walter Raleigh’s cloak for Fanchon to tread upon.

The storm that had followed upon her disappearance on horseback had beaten upon Leigh’s nerves. He had lashed himself into a dumb fury in the solitude of his room because his father and mother dared to doubt his paragon, and William, her husband, merely sat and waited for her to come back. William’s supineness was the last straw. Leigh had been in a frenzy when Fanchon finally returned, and the meeting on the stairs and her soft kiss of gratitude had gone to his head. He had refused to join a game of baseball that afternoon because he wanted to go home and complete a poem to his sister-in-law.

Fanchon had sent him on an errand to the nearest chemist. She had given him a prescription for some headache powders, she said, and Leigh did not know that he was returning with a peculiarly effective preparation of “bloom” that she usually applied at night. He carried the package with something of the air and feeling with which Sir Lancelot might have worn the colors of Elaine.

It happened that his way led him past a corner of the main street, where Mr. Bernstein had just made special arrangements for showing Rosamond Silvertree’s feature pictures at the little local theater. Mr. Bernstein himself, in a new plaid suit with a diamond scarf-pin, was viewing a poster of Rosamond in the effective, if rather startling, costume of “A Belle from Borneo.” He had encountered Leigh on one or two previous occasions, and knew him to be the youngest son of Johnson Carter. As the boy approached, looking a little pale from his night’s vigil, Mr. Bernstein eyed him shrewdly.

“Looks like a regular moon-calf,” he thought; “but I guess he’s got gumption enough to take a warnin’ to the rest of ’em. Hello, young man!” he called out. “Been in to see this picture? Greatest picture on the screen! There’s a matinee to-day and two showings to-night.”

Leigh shook his head, stopping to gaze in some amazement at the highly colored portrait of the fair Rosamond.

“Gee!” he remarked. “She’s fat!”

“Fat?” Mr. Bernstein blew his cheeks out and stared at him with a kindling eye. “Fat, boy? Why, she’s superb! That’s Rosamond Silvertree, the most beautiful star on the screen!”

Leigh giggled. He giggled like a girl, a faint pink color coming into his beardless cheeks, and his girlish eyes dancing.

“How much do you suppose she weighs?” he asked gleefully. “Looks to me like four hundred pounds—and some spangles!”

“Miss Silvertree’s a lady, young man!” retorted Mr. Bernstein reprovingly. “She’s got one of the finest figures I ever saw. Spangles? I want you to know that there’s one scene where she’s got on the fetchingest costume—five yards of chiffon and fifteen pounds of crystal spangles! It’s beauty, classic beauty, on the screen.”

Leigh suppressed a giggle this time, and only smiled inanely, edging away.

“Looks kinder foolish,” Mr. Bernstein reflected, but he laid a detaining hand on Leigh’s arm. “See here, you’re Leigh Carter, ain’t you?”

Leigh nodded. He half expected an offer for the screen, and he lingered, coloring like a girl.

“Then I guess I can say a word to you—confidential, you understand?” Mr. Bernstein winked slowly. “Entirely confidential—between gentlemen, see?” he added with a stroke of inspiration.

Leigh, flattered in spite of himself, nodded. Mr. Bernstein linked an arm in his.

“Step this way,” he said casually. “Don’t want to attract attention. Now, Mr. Carter——” He paused, allowing the formal address to sink in. It did. Leigh straightened up. “There’s a fellow over at the inn named Corwin. Heard of him?”

Leigh’s color deepened.

“I think so,” he said stiffly.

Mr. Bernstein nodded.

“He’s Caraffi’s manager. Caraffi’s up at the Hot Springs, taking baths to reduce his flesh, or to make his hair grow, and Corwin’s killing time down here. Now I ain’t meaning any offense. I’m speaking as a friend, you understand? This man, Corwin, he ain’t a gentleman. He’s a sport an’ a gambler an’ a loafer. He ain’t any nearer being a gentleman than that there lamp-post’s near being a brindled cow. He gets full, too, and when he does he talks, see?”

Leigh, beginning to suspect the drift of the talk, was becoming furious.

“I take no interest in Mr. Corwin,” he said sharply. “If that’s all you’ve got to say, Mr. Bernstein——”

“Hold on!” said Mr. Bernstein impatiently. “I’ve got to tell one of your family—for the sake of the lady. If you want to protect your sister-in-law from scandal, Mr. Leigh Carter, you’d better listen. I ain’t believing the talk myself, but it ain’t my business. If it was, I’d lam the feller good an’ plenty!”

Leigh stared at him. He did not want to listen, but he was boy enough to want to hear. He breathed rather short.

“I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Bernstein,” he cried excitedly. “I won’t hear talk of my sister-in-law!”

“Say!” Bernstein tapped his shoulder with a fat forefinger. “Ain’t it better for you Carters to hear it than the whole town? I ask you that? Ain’t it up to you Carters to shut his mouth?”

Leigh faltered, then he set his young teeth hard and flung his head back.

“What does he dare to say about Mrs. William Carter?” he demanded fiercely.

“I ain’t telling you all he says,” Mr. Bernstein replied meaningly. “I ain’t soiling my mouth with it—he’s a bad one! But he’s saying now—to-day—that she started to run away with him yesterday, and then got scared an’ come back at one o’clock in the mornin’—”

“That’s a lie!” cried Leigh. “A black lie! Where is he?”

“Shucks!” said Mr. Bernstein. “You’re a boy. Don’t you go lookin’ for him. You tell your father, Leigh Carter. He had oughter know it, he—say!”

Leigh had torn himself away and dashed off at a pace that left Mr. Bernstein gasping.

“Well, I’m darned!” he exclaimed. Then he relaxed, and stood looking after Leigh with something like satisfaction. “I guess he’ll tell ’em. They wouldn’t listen to me, and that Corwin—something oughter be done to him. He ain’t no gentleman!”

Mr. Bernstein walked slowly and thoughtfully back to the “Belle from Borneo” poster. He felt that he had done his duty. He bore no ill-will to little Fanchon la Fare, and he hated Corwin.

Leigh, meanwhile, turned off the main street into the quiet lane behind the church and stopped to think. He stopped, panting, on the very step where Virginia had stood talking with Dan. His hot young blood was beating in his head with a noise like a sledge-hammer. Fury choked him. He remembered his own hours of anguished suspense last night, Fanchon’s return after her accident, and her light kiss on his cheek. Her knight had received his accolade; he would not fail her!

Sitting under the old tree where the scarlet-headed woodpecker had bored a neat hole, Leigh made up his mind. Bernstein had told the truth about Corwin—that he knew. He couldn’t doubt Bernstein. The little man’s earnestness had been apparent.

Corwin must be dealt with. Leigh Carter would deal with him, too, at once. He was no child to run to his father. Besides, his father didn’t like Fanchon. Lately he had thought his father an unjust man.

As for William—Leigh remembered William’s supine waiting last night. Leigh did not mean to wait now. He would carry out the thing he had in mind.

He had read once of a man like Corwin slandering a noble lady. The hero—Leigh’s favorite hero, by the way—had seized a horse-pistol, ridden fifty miles on a mustang, confronted the villain, held his pistol to his head, and forced him to write and sign a retraction that made the lady’s character shine out as clear as noonday. Getting his breath on the old stone step of the church where he had been baptized, Leigh made up his mind as swiftly as the mustang had galloped. He took off his hat, wiped the drops of perspiration from his boyish forehead, and, straightening his collar and tie, rose and went straight home.

It happened at the moment that there was no one in the house but Miranda and his mother. As he entered, he heard his mother’s voice in the kitchen.

“Miranda, get me those pitted cherries. I’m going to make a pie for dinner. Leigh loves cherry pie!”

He paused with his hand on the banister, thrilled with that poignant moment. Unknown to Mrs. Carter, her son was about to act a man’s great part, to avenge the honor of the family, and she—oh, grotesque thought—she was making cherry pie for him!

But he could not wait even for such thoughts as these. He ran up-stairs and into his father’s room. In the upper draw of the old mahogany highboy was a pistol. Mr. Carter kept it loaded as a precaution against mythical burglars. Leigh found it, thrust it in his pocket, and walked slowly down the hall.

Fanchon’s door was open. She had gone out, but she had left the room in sweet confusion. He caught sight of the trailing silk and chiffon of her tea-gown—one of the family amazements—lying across the bed. On a chair hung her riding-jacket, left to dry. There was an elusive fragrance of violets, the same fragrance that always hung about her person. Evidently she had forgotten her headache, or she had gone out to walk it off.

Very reverently Leigh laid the chemist’s package on a chair near the door. Then he saw a small glove lying on the floor. He picked it up, kissed it solemnly, and thrust it into his pocket. The illusion was complete—he bore his lady’s glove.

Aristide Corwin was alone in his room at the inn. It happened that his open windows commanded a clear view of Mr. Carter’s office opposite, and of the sign over the door—“Johnson Carter, Insurance and Loans.” Corwin had been staring at it moodily. He hated it for some reason.

Not that he thought much of the Carters. His business was with Fanchon, not with William Carter. But he hated that office, and he hated the whole tribe, at the moment, because Fanchon had outwitted him. She had made a fool of him. He had had his revenge, he was making the town ring with his talk, but he was not even with her yet—not yet! His eyes kindled fiercely at the thought of her. He had been drinking. Two bottles still stood on his table, and his glass was full.

He was a man who had been handsome in his first youth, but his face had coarsened and his hard eyes lowered. He rose, stripped off his coat, and sat down again in his shirt-sleeves, his collar unbuttoned from his big throat. He was hot, but he kept on drinking. It was late now, near supper-time, and there came a knock at his door.

“Come in!” he said harshly.

The door opened, and Leigh Carter entered. Corwin did not know him, he did not remember having seen him with Fanchon, but he saw a slender boy of seventeen or eighteen, well-dressed and deathly pale, with the eyes of a girl.

“What do you want, kid?” he demanded sharply, setting down his glass.

Leigh walked straight across the room to the table and stood looking down at him, an image of young scorn and wrath.

“I’m Leigh Carter,” he said, breathing quickly. “I’ve heard the infamous story you’re telling about a lady—my sister-in-law, Mrs. William Carter—a story that she ran away with you last night. I’m here to demand the truth. Did you—did you dare to tell such a story here?”

Corwin’s first stare of surprise gave way to a slow, insulting grin. He measured Leigh from head to foot. Then he laughed.

“Yes,” he replied truculently. “I did say that—and a damned sight more, Mr. Leigh Carter—kid. And it’s every bit true!”

Leigh’s hands shook as he grasped the edge of the table.

“You’ll take that back, Mr. Corwin,” he said in a low voice, leaning forward and looking at the man opposite.

Corwin laughed, tilting his chair and putting his feet on the table. His very nonchalance stung the boy opposite with a fresh sense of insult.

“Will I?” he mocked. “Who’s going to make me do it?”

Leigh, white with passion now, flashed scorn upon him.

“I will! You can’t say things like that about my brother’s wife!”

Corwin stared at him, still laughing; then he lowered his feet to the floor and rose. Standing, he overtopped the slender Carter boy by half a head.

“Your brother’s wife, eh?” he sneered. “Look here, child, you go home and eat your supper. Don’t you get worked up over Fanchon. I’ve known the lady quite a spell. If I whistled”—Mr. Corwin threw his head back and walked across the room toward Leigh, flushed with liquor, truculent, intolerable—“if I whistled, she’d run off with me to-morrow. I don’t because”—he came closer to Leigh now, laughing and sneering, insult in every line of his coarse, flushed face—“because I don’t want her!”

Leigh swung around and faced him, shaking with rage.

“You lie!” he cried hoarsely.

Corwin only laughed boisterously.

“You fool kid, you don’t know the lady. She——”

He leaned over, thrust his face close to Leigh’s and whispered. The boy sprang back.

“Stop!” he almost shrieked. “I’ll fight you! I’m a Carter, and I challenge you to fight a duel!”

The man laughed loudly again.

“A duel with you? You kid!”

“Yes, with me!” Leigh trembled with passion. “You’ve got to fight—I’ll send my seconds. You’re a coward, sir, and a liar!”

Corwin caught him suddenly by the shoulder.

“See here, you Carter boy!” said he. “You’ve called me a liar twice to-day. I’m not a liar—I’ll show you! Fight duels for that woman? Bah! I don’t fight kids—I box their ears!”

He sneered and slapped Leigh’s face. The boy, with a cry of passion and shame, wrenched himself free, snatched the pistol from his pocket, and fired pointblank.

The noise of the report rang in his own ears with a deafening crash, and there was a little whiff of smoke. Leigh reeled back, his horrified eyes fixed on the floor.

Corwin had crumpled up like a sack of meal and lay there in a heap, stone dead.

XVII

Plato was removing the tray from the wicker table in the garden. The colonel, sitting under his horse-chestnut, observed the operation thoughtfully, smoking one of his big cigars.

“Yessuh, if yo’ wants to buy a horse yo’ can hab it cheap—dat’s what Job Wills says. He was down to Miz Carter’s dis mornin’ talkin’ to dat yaller girl, Mirandy. She done tole me. It am a good horse, col’nel, only got dat habit ob rollin’ in de water.”

“Pretty bad habit, Plato,” observed the colonel. “Don’t know as I’d like to have Miss Jinny rolled into the water.”

“Dat’s what happened to Miz Wilyum Carter, suh. She got rolled in de creek, an’ she didn’t get home till round one o’clock in de mornin’. Mirandy, she say Mist’ Carter, he mos’ throw a fit. Dat’s de reason de livery-stable done wanter sell dat horse. Job Wills, he say he’s good horse, but he’s de rollin’est horse he ever see—in a stream.”

The colonel looked thoughtfully at the end of his cigar.

“Suppose I bought him, Plato? How about the rolling habit?”

“Ain’t noffin’ ter dat, suh, but to keep him out’n de water. I ’members ole Col’nel Colfax, suh, he done had dat horse, Pole Star, son ob de ole Black Star, suh, dat won all dem races. Mighty fine horse! De col’nel couldn’t ride dat horse ’less dere was a drought. Sho! He sen’ him down to de races every year. I reckon dat horse wins more races den any odder horse in dis country, yessuh! Yo’ ’member old Judge Berrien?” Plato began to shake with reminiscent laughter. “Yessuh, dat ole man mighty mean to Col’nel Colfax. Yessuh, he comes up to dinner one night, an’ he wants to ride home. He was allus borrowin’ horses, an’ he mighty slow ’bout returnin’ ’em. Didn’t never own no horse, but he was allus ridin’. De col’nel, he fuss ’bout a bit, den he calls out loud: ‘Heah, yo’, August!’ August was de col’nel’s groom. ‘Yo’, August, bring ’round Pole Star!’ It had been rainin’ in de mornin’ an’ de creek was all up to de bridge. De judge, he mighty pleased to ride Pole Star. He ain’t been gone long befo’ de col’nel, he say: ‘August, yo’ go down to de creek. I reckon de judge wants to return dat horse.’ August, he went,” Plato chuckled. “Pole Star, he was rollin’ in dat creek, suh. August, he say he look ’round, don’ see noffin’, den he see de judge. Fo’ de Lawd, suh, August, he declar’ he done thought it was one ob dese yere doodle-bugs jus’ up outen de groun’ wid its legs all mud. De judge, he got in de water an’ den he got in de mud. He say: ‘Yo’ take dat damned horse back to Col’nel Colfax, an’ yo’ tell him I ain’t ridin’ no porpuses!’”

The colonel laughed.

“Plato,” he said, “I don’t think I’ll buy Job Wills’s horse for Miss Jinny—not after that!”

Plato wagged his head.

“I done tole Mirandy dat I was sho’ yo’ won’t buy no sech horse, suh.” Then, as he finally took up the tray, he added: “Miss Jinny say to tell yo’-all she done ask Mist’ Dan’l Carter to dinner, suh.”

The colonel looked at his watch.

“I didn’t know it was so late, Plato. Where’s Miss Virginia?”

“She an’ Mist’ Dan’l in de parlor, suh. Miss Jinny, she been playin’ fo’ him. She step out an’ tell me to tell yo’ she ask him to dinner.”

“You get out a bottle of the old Burgundy, Plato,” said the colonel, and then added hastily: “Oh, no, I forgot—he doesn’t drink anything but water. But, all the same, I like Mr. Daniel.”

“Yessuh,” said Plato. “Mighty good lawyer. I done heah Judge Jessup say he wouldn’t wonder if Mist’ Dan’l git to be Pres’dent United States hisself!”

The colonel laughed. Then he rose slowly to his full height, ran his fingers through his white hair, and started for the house. He was going in to see Daniel. He liked to talk to him. But, as he entered the wide, old hall, he heard the soft strains of Virginia’s music. He stopped involuntarily to listen. She was playing an old tune, a love-song that the colonel loved. Virginia’s grandmother had played it to him.

The old man stood listening, his eyes dreaming. Music is the most poignant of all reminders. The old hall was the same into which he had led his bride so many years ago. There was Grandfather Denbigh’s clock in the corner, with the sun and the moon and the stars inlaid on its dial. There was the high chair in which one Governor Denbigh had sat. Things were shabby, the rug under his feet was frayed, but the dear familiarity of it all moved his heart.

He felt a lump in his throat, and tried in vain to swallow it. Without disturbing Virginia’s playing, he moved to the door of the drawing-room and looked in.

It was nearly six o’clock in the evening, and the western sun shone warmly in the wide window behind the piano. It warmed and mellowed every object in the quaint, old-fashioned room. It touched on the dull gold frame of General Denbigh’s portrait painted by Peale; it showed the tall harpsichord by the chimney-place, and the quaint, spindle-legged chairs with their shabby damask seats. The walls, mellowed by time, had the ruddy tints that form a background for old pictures and dull furniture.

The sunshine caught a corner of the mahogany table and glinted on a cabinet that held Captain Denbigh’s corals, collected long ago in the South Seas; but it did more than that. It touched the golden hair on Virginia’s head and illuminated the delicate beauty of her unconscious profile, her simple white dress, her slender wrists, and her white hands.

The colonel looked at her fondly. He thought her the loveliest girl in the State. He was on the point of entering softly, to draw up a chair and listen, when his eyes lighted on Daniel Carter.

Daniel, the lame brother of William, Daniel the unobtrusive, had not heard Colonel Denbigh. He sat with his profile also turned toward the door, leaning a little forward, one elbow on the lame knee, the other hand resting on the arm of his chair, and his pale face turned toward Virginia. Unconsciously she played, unconscious of an observer, and Daniel watched her. His dark eyes followed her movements as her delicate fingers swept the keys, and his own hand tightened on the arm of his chair until the knuckles whitened.

The colonel, watching him, had no longer any doubt that Daniel shared his admiration of Virginia. Something in the tense young face made the colonel turn quietly away, and walk soberly out on the front piazza.

“I reckon I’ll smoke another cigar before dinner,” he said to himself. “Poor boy, it’s a pity he’s lame. And, Jinny? Well, Jinny liked his brother.”

The colonel lit his cigar and tramped rather heavily up and down the piazza.

Meanwhile, Virginia played on to the end of the piece; then she turned and looked over her shoulder. Meeting Daniel’s eyes, she felt again that sudden shyness that she had felt before the church, and she laughed tremulously.

“Do you remember what old Dr. Samuel Johnson said about music, Dan?” she asked lightly. “I was thinking of it just now. He said that it excited no new ideas in his mind, and prevented him from contemplating his own.”

“Very like him,” said Daniel. “He never saw anything but his own ideas. I’ll admit that it stops me from contemplating mine—I contemplate you instead.”

Virginia laughed gaily this time.

“I shall play for you no more, then. Your ideas are worth too much. Lucas told me this morning, as we drove out from town, that Judge Jessup expects you to be ‘Pres’dent United States, yessuh.’”

Daniel reddened.

“I wish the judge wouldn’t make me appear such a fool. He’s always talking; he’s like your old Samuel Johnson.”

“I think he knows what he’s talking about, Dan,” she replied gently, her serious eyes on his thin face. “You’re working too hard; ambition’s eating you up. Why, Dan, how thin you’ve grown!”

He smiled.

“I know it. The judge asked me, not long ago, if I had the pip.”

They both laughed this time.

“Daniel,” said Virginia irrelevantly, “I heard you were going into politics. Mr. Payson told me that you were standing for nomination for the Legislature.”

He nodded, regarding her thoughtfully.

“It seems strange, Dan,” she observed after a moment. “I never thought you cared for that sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing, Virginia?”

“Politics.” She paused and smiled at him a little, her color rising. “I thought you were a kind of poet.”

“You’re thinking of Leigh; he’s our infant genius. I’m only a stodgy lawyer.”

Daniel leaned back in his chair, thinking. His eyes, traveling over Virginia’s bright head, rested suddenly on a little portrait of a baby boy that hung above her piano in an oval frame. He recognized it with a grim tightening of the lips. It was an old picture of William at the tender age of three. His mother had given it to Virginia when she thought Virginia was to be William’s wife. Doubtless it was an awkward thing to give back, and perhaps—Daniel did not finish the thought.

“I’m going into politics if I can,” he said dryly. “I’ve got to have some interest, Virginia. A cripple can’t sit still and think about being a cripple.”

“I wish you wouldn’t dwell so much on that,” she rejoined quickly. “You think too much of it.”

“But I don’t speak of it often,” he replied bitterly. “I try to hold my tongue.”

“You scarcely ever speak of it, Daniel,” she assured him gently. “I’m glad you spoke of it to me, though. I take it as a compliment.”

“Why?”

He spoke sharply, his brows down. Virginia gave him a clear, sweet look that made him wince with misery—though she did not know it.

“Because I’m sure you wouldn’t speak of it at all if you didn’t believe that I felt for you; that I was your friend.”

He drew a quick breath, pressing his lips together. There was a moment of silence; then he laughed discordantly.

“Oh, I know you! I remember how you took that maimed dog home when you were a child. All the others wanted it killed. I can see your eyes blaze now. How you fought for him! He had a right to live, you said. You always felt for the halt and the blind.”

“That dog was a comfort,” returned Virginia stoutly. “It wasn’t any merit to be good to him. He was the best watch-dog we ever had.”

“No one but you would have nursed that ugly, old, lame dog. It’s your pity, Virginia—that’s what I’m trading on—when I talk of my lameness.”

Virginia rose suddenly from the piano and came over to his side. Before he knew what she was going to do, she had laid one of her firm young hands on his shoulder.

“Hush!” she said sternly. “You’re getting embittered; you’re losing the proportion of things, Daniel. If you talk like that I shall not pity you; I shall not even be your friend. Remember the gifts you’ve got, the brains God has given you. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Daniel Carter?”

He did not answer for a moment. He sat quite still, looking up into her face soberly, aware of her hand on his shoulder.

“What am I to do if I can’t help feeling that way, Virginia?” he asked at last in a low voice.

“You mustn’t; I forbid you!” she said quickly, but she faltered.

She had come to him with the impulse of a sister; she had felt herself a sister to Daniel so long. There was no coquetry in it, only her sympathy for him. She knew how he had suffered. But now, suddenly, meeting his uplifted eyes, Virginia became self-conscious. She blushed, and her hand fell from his shoulder. With almost a feeling of panic she retraced her steps and sank back upon the piano-stool.

Daniel, leaning back in his chair as she had left him, passed his hand over his eyes. He was breathing with difficulty, like a man in pain, although he never suffered now from his injury. The physical pain was long past, and only the lameness remained; but for a moment he breathed like a man in anguish. Then, as his hand fell heavily on the arm of his chair, he raised his head and looked at her with haggard eyes.

“Don’t do that again, Virginia,” he said in a low voice. “I can’t bear it!”

That was all he said, but Virginia, meeting his eyes, turned pale. She seemed to see suddenly, as if she looked into a mirror, all those days when she and William had been so happy and so foolish together, and Daniel—suffering from his hurt then—had looked on.

She knew now what he had suffered; and she had never once thought of him! It filled her with generous shame. What could she do? What could she say to him?

Then she heard his voice.

“Virginia, please play that last tune over again. I love it. It’s so tranquil,” he said gently.

She lifted her eyes to his in gratitude. He had known what to do, how to make it easy for her. He had not misjudged her; had not thought her a mere flirt.

She turned to the piano with an effort, winking back her tears; but she began to play, softly at first, with one little discord, then firmly, with a sure touch, as her heart grew more calm and she seemed to feel the reassurance of his friendship and understanding.

She was still playing when the telephone-bell rang sharply, its strident alarm shattering the last sweet cadences. Startled in spite of herself, Virginia rose hastily and went to the cabinet where the instrument stood.

“It’s some one inquiring if you are here, Dan,” she said in surprise. “Some one—your father, I think it is—wants to speak to you.”

Daniel rose slowly—with unusual effort, she thought—and took the receiver from her hand. Virginia returned to the piano, busying herself there, turning over the leaves of her music, and trying not to listen; but she heard him ask a quick question. Then he uttered a sharp exclamation, and involuntarily she looked up.

Daniel hung up the receiver and turned.

“Oh, Dan, what is it? What has happened?” she cried.

His white lips moved soundlessly at first.

“It’s my young brother,” he said at last. “Leigh has shot and killed that man—Corwin, Caraffi’s manager.”

XVIII

It was after dark, and the lights at the station-house were shining across a street still crowded with the curious and the idle, when Daniel finally reached the little cell where Leigh had been lodged since the shooting. He found the boy lying face downward on the bare cot in the corner, his head on his arms. Daniel had to touch his shoulder before he roused himself and looked up. His white, drawn face and his disheveled hair shocked his brother. He looked as if he had aged two years in five hours.

“I’ve come to help you, Leigh,” said Daniel simply.

Leigh raised himself to a sitting posture, dropping his feet heavily to the floor. Daniel saw the traces of tears on his blurred face, but he pulled himself together, though his lips shook.

“Are they going to keep me here all night?” he asked sullenly.

Daniel sat down beside him on the cot.

“I’m afraid so, Leigh. Father offered bail, and so did Judge Jessup, but I don’t think you’ll get out to-night.” He laid his hand kindly on his brother’s shoulder. “Tell me about it.”

Leigh’s face worked convulsively, and he set his teeth hard on his lower lip. Daniel waited, his hand still on the boy’s shoulder, his eyes immeasurably kind. He did not blame Leigh, and he was shocked at the change in him. It was a subtle thing, but it was there—that shot had killed Leigh’s boyhood. Daniel saw it.

It seemed a long time before Leigh could speak.

“I—I never saw any one die before, Dan!” he said at last, swallowing hard.

“It’s a mighty tragic thing, Leigh,” agreed Daniel. “I never saw any one die like that myself.”

“Oh, Lord—he looked so terrible!” cried Leigh, covering his face with his slender, shaking, boyish hands. “I’ll—I’ll never forget it!”

He fell to shuddering, in a state of collapse. Daniel patted his shoulder kindly and waited. The boy would have to tell it his own way. It seemed a long time, though, and the dim light in the cell flared up and down.

Daniel looked about the narrow chamber; it was barren and dirty and exceedingly oppressive. He thought of his mother. This was her baby, her darling boy, the one she believed to be the coming genius of the family. It moved Daniel with infinite compassion and indignation.

Leigh lifted his haggard face from his hands and looked at his brother.

“Will they hang me, Dan?” he asked hoarsely.

“Not while I can lift a voice in your defense, Leigh; not while there’s any power on earth that your brother can move to save you!” cried Daniel his own voice deepening with emotion. “I’m your lawyer now, dear boy. Tell me about it. I’ve got to know. They say you went up to Corwin’s room; that he was half drunk and unarmed, and you shot him in cold blood.”

“I didn’t know he was unarmed!” cried Leigh passionately. “You know I didn’t, Dan. I had to shoot him. He was belying Fanchon; he dared to talk ill of Fanchon——”

“Leave Fanchon out!” cried Daniel. “Forget her for five minutes. Think of yourself, Leigh, of your own defense. Tell me about that shot.”

“I tell you I had to shoot him!” Leigh’s young face was distorted; a man’s fury looked out of his young eyes. “I’d shoot him again this minute if he stood there”—he pointed a shaking finger at the wall opposite—“and said such things of Fanchon!”

“For Heaven’s sake, leave Fanchon out! How did you do it, Leigh! I’m going to save you, I will save you, but you must tell me. Forget that I’m your brother, remember that I’m your lawyer. Tell me the whole story, Leigh.”

Leigh, still choking with wrath, tried to command himself.

“I was going home this afternoon,” he began hoarsely, “and Bernstein—you know, the movie man—he met me and told me to tell father about this—this man, Corwin.”

Daniel suppressed an exclamation.

“He had no right to tell a boy like you.”

“I had a right to hear, Dan,” Leigh cried with passionate emphasis. “I’m the only one who cares for Fanchon——”

“Nonsense!” said Daniel roughly. “Where’s William? You forget William.”

Leigh set his face hard.

“Not even William! Didn’t he sit and wait for her to come home that night? Do you think I’d do such a thing? Do you think any man would do such a thing if he loved a woman?”

Leigh was aflame now, and Daniel was silent. Like a flash arose the picture of William and Virginia. He had felt sure for a long time that William had repented in dust and ashes. The boy was right; no man who loved a woman would have sat there and waited that night.

“Corwin was insulting my sister-in-law,” Leigh went on. “He was lying about her and blackening her. I wouldn’t stand for it. I didn’t wait to tell father. Father has never been just to her. I went home and got his pistol. I was going to hold it to Corwin’s head and make him write a retraction—that’s what I went there to do!”

Daniel shook his head mournfully. He recognized the familiar methods of the heroes of light fiction and the movies. Leigh had been acting a story, or, rather, he had started to act a story, and had failed. How in the world could he get this side of it—before a jury?

“What did Corwin say? What did he do when you got there, Leigh? What made you shoot an unarmed man?”

Leigh winced. His brother’s tone, and the bald statement of an ugly fact, drove the truth home, but he set his teeth hard, scowling into space for a moment. The change in him moved Daniel again. Leigh had been a boy in the morning; to-night he had killed a man!

“I’ve told you,” he said hoarsely. “I shot him for his lies about Fanchon. I—I had to shoot him, Dan. He wasn’t fit to live!”

As Leigh spoke, he flung his arm out with a gesture of passionate fury. Daniel caught the arm and held it.

“Leigh, tell me the whole of it. I’m your lawyer—do you hear?”

Something in Daniel, his strength and his will, conquered, and the younger brother yielded to it. He drew a quick breath and straightened himself, feeling the clasp of Daniel’s hand on his arm. Then he told his story—told it from the beginning to the end, his voice only breaking a little.

“I suppose he died right away,” he said as he finished. “He didn’t move any more. He deserved it—but, oh Lord, Dan! I don’t want to see another man die because I shot him! Maybe I’m a coward, but I don’t!”

“You’re no coward,” replied Daniel quietly. “It’s a trying thing to see even a brute like that die, I reckon.” He glanced at the boy’s face and hesitated. “We’re going to put up a big fight, Leigh.”

Leigh’s mouth twisted oddly; he was trying to keep his lips from shaking.

“I reckon I can stand for it, Dan. Mother——” He looked at his brother.

“You’ll see her soon. You know how she loves you. We’re all behind you, boy!”

Dan rose as he spoke. He hated to leave Leigh, but it was inevitable. He stood looking down at him, aware that Leigh winked back fresh tears at the thought of his mother. But the prisoner’s thoughts shifted elsewhere. He looked up shyly, reluctantly.

“And Fanchon?”

Daniel’s face hardened.

“She’s locked in her room, Leigh, and won’t see any of us. She treats us like enemies now. She hasn’t even asked where you are.”

Leigh’s face went from red to white.

“She’d see me, though!” he cried with conviction. “You don’t understand—you don’t know her!”

Daniel said nothing to this, and there was a little pause, while his intolerable opinion of Fanchon seemed to thicken the very atmosphere the angry boy was breathing. Leigh’s eyes flashed, and he hit his lip hard, but his elder brother held out his hand.

“I’ve got to go now.”

There was a break in Daniel’s voice. His other arm went around the prisoner’s shoulders. Leigh broke down at the touch, and the brothers clung together.

Then Daniel tore himself away.

“We’ll get you out of this, Leigh—God bless you!”

A moment more and Daniel got out into the corridor, where he stumbled blindly, dashing tears from his eyes.

The turnkey, locking the door of the cell, was startled.

“Anything the matter, sir?”

“Nothing!” said Daniel, swallowing the lump in his throat. “Nothing!”

He made his way hastily out of the station-house.

He did not stop even to confer with Judge Jessup. They had already covered most of the case in their previous talks; the morning would do for Judge Jessup. It was late, and Daniel wanted to reassure Mrs. Carter. He was horribly sorry for his mother. There seemed no way to comfort her. She was fairly stunned by the blow, and she could only keep on crying out that Leigh was a child, nothing but a child!

Daniel walked slowly at first. He did not want people to think that he was slinking home because his brother was in the station-house, charged with murder. The main street of the town was quiet enough at that hour, but it was evident that there was suppressed excitement. Little groups were gathered here and there along his way from the station-house, and men stopped talking to observe him covertly as he passed.

The story of Fanchon and Corwin had been magnified by this time until it bore no resemblance to its original form. Scandal is an ugly thing, fed usually by falsehood and growing like a dirty snowball rolled up in a coal-yard. Daniel perceived the curious faces, and was aware of the hush as he approached. Here and there a man took pains to speak to him in sign of open sympathy, but not often.

The long, pleasant street was rather dim under the arching trees, except where a lance of light shot across it from a street-lantern, or the headlight of a passing motor illuminated it broadly for a moment. The inn opposite his father’s office was still brilliant for some belated diners, and he was aware that two or three of the waiters came to the door to stare at him as he went by. In the room over their heads Corwin had been shot to death by his brother—only a few hours before. But he noticed that a Victrola was grinding out a rag-time record in the dining-room in spite of it.

He was glad that the next turn took him through the church lane into the old street that led to his father’s house. Here only an occasional light shone in the houses, standing far apart and surrounded by their old-fashioned gardens, and there were few passers-by.

Daniel slackened his pace, partly because his lameness always troubled him when he was weary, and partly because he wanted to order his thoughts. He found it hard, for he was visited by a vision of Virginia standing in the open door of her home, holding his hand, her eyes full of sympathy—for Leigh!

At his own gate Daniel paused and looked up at the sky. The moon was just rising with an extraordinary beauty. The upper sky looked like a silver sea, pierced here and there by a brilliant star, and against it the dark hills rose in sharpened outlines, silhouetted against the ineffable sky. It had been so yesterday; it would be so to-morrow.

The unchangeable forces of nature seemed to reach Daniel with a new and bitter truth. Things would continue in spite of their little tragedy, even life would go on just the same—except for the coarse man lying dead with Leigh’s bullet in his heart!

He was a long time finding his latch-key, he felt so reluctant to open the door. But, as the lock clicked, his mother appeared at the threshold of the drawing-room, and he saw that she was shaking all over.

“Oh, Danny!” In emotion she always reverted to the baby names of her children. “Oh, Danny, didn’t you bring him home. Where is he?”

“I couldn’t bring him to-night, mother.” Daniel laid his hand kindly on her arm. “He’s all right—I’ve just been with him.”

She looked at him in horror, tears welling up in her eyes.

“He—he isn’t in jail?” she whispered in a faint voice, clutching at Daniel’s sleeve.

He put his arm around her.

“No, mother—he’s in the station-house, that’s all.”

She uttered a cry, burying her face on his shoulder. Emily appeared behind her, in a state of dishevelment, her nose and eyes hopelessly red.

“Hush!” she warned them. “William hasn’t stopped tramping up and down the back piazza. I think he’s going crazy, and it’s got into his legs first. Honest, I do, Dan!”

Daniel made no reply to this, partly because his father had just emerged from the library. Mr. Carter had been busy all the afternoon trying to get his son out on bail. He was worn out, and looked it. His iron-gray hair was standing up in a frill on the top of his head, and his cheeks looked flabby. He had taken off his coat and his boots, and stood there in his shirt-sleeves and stockinged feet.

“Did they take bail?” he asked grimly, looking at Dan over the top of the reading-glasses, which he had forgotten to take off.

Daniel shook his head, and, without another word, Mr. Carter turned and went back into the library.

“She’s up there—locked in her room,” Mrs. Carter whispered between sobs on her son’s shoulder. “She won’t even see William, and she’s had her supper sent up. I don’t see how she could eat it, after what she’s done!” And she wept again, clinging to Daniel.

“She hasn’t,” said Emily, sniffing hard. “The tray’s outside in the hall. She never unlocked her door.”

“I wish it would choke her!” said Mrs. Carter, shaken with wrath. Then she drew back from her son’s arm, wiping her eyes. “Oh, Dan, what’s the good of your being a lawyer if you can’t get that boy right out?”

Daniel sighed.

“Give us a little time, mother,” he said gently. “You take her up to bed, Emily. She’s worn out, and she’ll only be ill.”

“I don’t care if I am ill!”

Mrs. Carter was desperate; she had eaten nothing, and her head ached from weeping. “I don’t care for anything but my boy—my Leigh! To think of it—while I was making him a cherry pie, too!” she climaxed with more tears.

Emily caught hold of her, sobbing, too. She had eaten most of the pie, and it touched her to the quick to think of Leigh, pieless and in jail.

“Oh, mama, come up-stairs; it’s going on eleven o’clock!”

Between them, Daniel and Emily got the weeping woman up-stairs. Daniel closed the door on the scene as Emily made her sit down on the side of the bed and snuff lavender salts.

“Your nose is awfully red, mama,” she said feelingly. “It’ll make your head ache worse. Mine aches dreadfully!”

Daniel went softly down to the library, aware of William’s ceaseless march on the back porch. He found his father sitting quietly in the oldest cane-bottom chair, his stockinged feet thrust out in front of him and his hands in his pockets. He had never known his father to sit upright in a hard chair before.

Daniel went wearily over to his mother’s rocker and sank into it, passing his hand over his eyes. He rather dreaded a long talk, now that the tension had snapped; but his father was not inclined to talk, and only asked a question.

“Think they’ll take bail to-morrow?”

Daniel shook his head.

“I’m not sure. Judge Jessup thinks not. Corwin was unarmed and half tipsy. I’ve got to make the coroner see Leigh’s part of it. Leigh has just told me. He didn’t mean to shoot; he meant to make the man retract his slander of Fanchon.”

Mr. Carter made an inarticulate sound under his breath, and Daniel went on.

“Then it seems that Corwin treated him like a kid—laughed at him, naturally enough. It wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been that the brute was drunk and slapped Leigh’s face. Then the boy snatched out his pistol and fired. He was amazed when he found he had killed the man—that’s all. It’s plain enough. Manslaughter in the second degree, it ought to be, but I’ve got to prove it. You can’t tell which way the coroner’s jury will go. It depends on the witnesses to Corwin’s state and—and character.”

Mr. Carter wagged his head slowly and thoughtfully; his face was haggard and his eyes dim. There was a painful pause, and the clock chimed eleven.

“Mama’s all broken up,” he remarked at last, rising. “I reckon I’d better go up and quiet her.” He moved slowly toward the door, carrying his boots. At the door he paused and looked back. “I haven’t said anything to William,” he remarked grimly; “not a word; but I reckon he’ll have it out now with that—that little hussy up-stairs!”

Daniel made no reply to this, and Mr. Carter padded softly away. Presently a door shut heavily, and then Daniel heard Emily going to her room. She was crying audibly. It seemed to the listener that she sobbed loudest just outside Fanchon’s door.

Daniel sat quite still. A great weariness had come over him. He had eaten nothing since breakfast, and the fast and the nervous strain had told. He sank back in his chair and almost ceased thinking, his eyes closed.

He was falling asleep from sheer exhaustion when he was startled by a new arrival. The door from the kitchen opened, and Miranda appeared, bearing a tray laden with viands and a smoking cup of tea. She set it down on the corner of the table.

“Yo’ ain’t had noffin’, Mist’ Dan,” she said tearfully. “I knows! Plato, he been down heah to ask fo’ you-all, an’ he tole me yo’ left without yo’ dinner.”

Daniel looked up into the sympathetic dark face and smiled.

“You’re very kind, Miranda. I am hungry; I believe that’s why I nearly fell asleep.”

“Yessuh, I allus eats when I feels bad. Ain’t noffin’ like it, Mist’ Dan. When my pa died I ate piece ob bacon an’ two cabbages, I sho’ did. I reckon dat’s all dat kep’ me from dyin’ of grief. I sho’ did feel po’erful bad!”

Daniel drew up a chair.

“I’ll take your prescription, Miranda,” he said gratefully.

Miranda beamed tearfully.

“Dat’s right, Mist’ Dan! Dere ain’t any cabbage dere, but dere’s sparrowgrass—an’ dat’s mos’ as good!”

XIX

Daniel was up the next morning at six o’clock and had breakfasted before the other members of the distracted family appeared. The only one he saw was his brother. William had stopped his weary tramp on the piazza at daybreak, and, coming into the library, had thrown himself on the lounge. He lay there when Daniel came down, sleeping the heavy sleep of physical exhaustion. One arm trailed limply toward the floor, the other was thrown across his haggard face, hiding it from view.

Daniel stopped a moment and stood looking at him, touched with pity. He remembered him as he had brought his bride up from the station-gates that first night, so confident in his happiness. It seemed so long ago! The brothers had been very sympathetic as boys, though Daniel’s accident and his subsequent illness, delaying his college course and putting everything out of joint, had rather separated them.

He felt drawn toward the sufferer now. If William had sinned against the finer ethics of society, if he had slighted a noble girl to marry a showy flirt, he was paying the price; and Daniel felt it. He turned away from the stricken figure on the lounge with a poignant feeling of commiseration. Things like this could never be forgotten. No patching-up would hide the scar in William’s heart, or make him regard his wife in the same light again.

Daniel did not rouse him. He went out silently, bent on doing his utmost for Leigh. Leigh was Fanchon’s victim as surely as William had been.

And Corwin? Daniel, who had scarcely seen the man until he saw him lying dead at the coroner’s, wondered in what measure Fanchon was responsible for his death, too. There were women like that, he reflected, and there were others like—Virginia!

The very thought of her brought him a feeling of happiness, of reassurance. The world could not be such a bad place, after all, when there were women like Virginia in it. Even in the darkness of his present perplexity, Daniel smiled tenderly. No matter what else happened, Virginia would not fail him. He felt the touch of her hand on his and heard her voice again, her sympathy for Leigh. And she had said nothing against Fanchon. Not by a word or a glance had she accused Fanchon.

But he heard it elsewhere. Judge Jessup could not control himself, and Mr. Payson, coming into Jessup’s office to express sympathy for Leigh and the Carters, did not restrain himself at all. He thought that William should have made his wife behave before this. This, in his opinion, was the natural sequence to that shocking fandango at the church musicale.

Daniel, meanwhile, labored for Leigh. In spite of his best efforts, his brother was held for the grand jury without bail. The fact that Leigh had gone to Corwin’s room, carrying a pistol with him, and had there shot an unarmed man, went against him, despite his youth and his family connections. Daniel had only a few moments’ talk with him before he was removed to the county jail.

Judge Jessup, coming out from the inquest, and mopping his head, used strong language.

“Can’t be for anything but manslaughter, anyway,” he growled fiercely.

Seeing Mr. Carter sitting in a crumpled heap in the corner of his office, the judge got a flat, black bottle from under his desk, poured something into a glass, and made Johnson Carter swallow it.

“That’ll get you on your feet, Johnson,” he said gruffly. “We give it to racehorses down in Kentucky. You can call it arnica, if you’re afraid of taking to drink.”

Then, while Mr. Carter tried to rally his scattered forces, he moved over to Daniel, who was standing by the window observing the motor that was carrying Leigh down to the jail.

“Dan,” said he, lowering his deep bass, “where’s that woman?”

Daniel started.

“Up at the house, I reckon,” he said. “She was locked in her room this morning.”

“Who’s going to get her story out of her?” asked the judge. “William?”

Daniel stared out of the window in silence.

“That indictment has got to be either murder or manslaughter. It depends on the story. Who’s going to get it? I reckon William can.”

“I’ll see,” said Daniel quietly. “I’m going up home now. Can you”—he hesitated—“can you keep father here?”

The judge nodded. They both glanced at the man sitting in the judge’s big swivel chair. Mr. Carter was leaning back dejectedly, with both hands clenched on the arms of the chair, and his head bent forward. He was staring fixedly at the blotting-paper on the judge’s desk, his mouth hanging open. Daniel picked up his hat and quietly left the room.

He did not walk home. He was worn out and he hailed a taxi. He had already telephoned the verdict of the coroner’s jury to his mother, and he knew they were, in a measure, prepared for the worst; but his heart sank as he ascended the familiar old steps. Even the rose-bush beside the door seemed to bewail the thought of the youngest boy, the mother’s pet, being in jail.

Emily opened the door for him. Her nose was still red, and she was trying vainly to wink back her tears.

“Mama’s gone to bed,” she announced chokingly. “She’s cried herself sick. And William’s gone out—I don’t know where he’s gone. Mama’s afraid he’ll—he’ll drown himself!”

“He came down to Judge Jessup’s office to hear about Leigh, and he’s gone over to the Payson Building,” said Daniel dryly. “You go and tell mother he’s all right. And—listen, Emily—I’ve got to see Fanchon. Will you please ask her to come down-stairs?”

“Ask Fanchon to come down-stairs? Me?” Emily crumpled. “I guess I won’t!”

“I’ve got to see her,” repeated Daniel. He drew a pad from his pocket, wrote a line on it, and folded it. “You take that up, Emmy.”

Emily backed.

“No!”

“Don’t you want to save Leigh?” asked Daniel sharply. “Yes? Then you take that up and stick it under her door and knock. She’ll read it.”

“She won’t. She hasn’t eaten anything. I think she’s going to starve herself to death.”

“Nonsense! You do as I say.”

Emily still backed. Then, catching his eye, she wavered, took the paper, and ran, sobbing, up-stairs.

Daniel waited impatiently, walking up and down the hall. He had never been able to form a clear idea of Fanchon. He could not even conjecture what she would do. He had never believed in her, he did not believe in her now, and he felt the deepest resentment toward her for having brought his young brother to this.

He was still walking up and down the hall when Emily called to him from the staircase in a watery stage whisper:

“She says, come up to her room.”

Reluctantly Daniel went up-stairs. Emily was hanging over the banisters at the top.

“She’s in the little front room over the door,” she whispered, sniffing. “I think she’s going away; I saw her trunks open.”

Daniel nodded and made his way to the small room over the front door, which his mother had hastily converted into a boudoir for the bride. He remembered the night when Leigh had helped her put a fresh polish on the floor before they laid the new rug. These little things seemed to crowd into his mind, bringing back Leigh’s boyish face in the dim cell, his terror of the dead Corwin.

He knocked gently at the closed door.

“Come in,” said Fanchon’s voice.

Daniel entered and stood still.

The little room, finished in pink and white, was in wild disorder. A small hat-box trunk stood open, a traveling-bag gaped, half-packed, and innumerable articles, large and small, were scattered on the chairs and on the floor. Stretched on a lounge, in front of the window, lay Fanchon. Her head was on her arms, and her soft hair, falling loose over her shoulders, hid her face. She wore some loose black robe which made her small figure look even smaller and more childish than usual. There was something in her very attitude broken and forlorn, and Daniel felt his first touch of actual pity for her as she rose on her elbow and lifted her haggard face from her arm. Her eyes were hollow, and even her lips were white. No touch of rouge concealed the havoc of a sleepless night and a day of anguish.

Her expression so amazed Daniel that he stood still, just inside the door, looking at her. Fanchon straightened up, dropping her feet to the floor, and holding herself erect in her place by gripping the edge of the lounge with nervous, shaking fingers.

“Is—is Leigh in jail?” she asked faintly, her dark eyes fixed on Daniel’s face.

He nodded.

“Held for the grand jury. Haven’t they told you?”

“No one tells me anything; no one speaks to me! I’m going away; I’m packing up. But Leigh? Mon Dieu! I’m human, I want to know about Leigh!”

“I came here to ask you to help me save Leigh,” said Daniel quietly. “It’s got to be either murder or manslaughter. It depends on you, Fanchon.”

“On me?” She drew a long breath, her eyes darkening with emotion. “Que voulez vous? What can I do?”

“Tell us the whole story, Fanchon. Tell us about Corwin. I’ve no doubt at all that he deserved to be shot—but not by Leigh.”

Fanchon drew in her breath, setting her small, white teeth hard on her under lip. She did not look toward Daniel, but away into a corner of the room, as if she saw things unseen and terrible. A deep blush mounted suddenly and painfully to her forehead. Daniel waited patiently, leaning against the door. At last she turned and raised her eyes pitifully to his.

“Why must I tell?” she asked brokenly, twisting her handkerchief about with feverish fingers, tears coming suddenly and running down her cheeks.

“Leigh shot an unarmed man in his own room,” replied Daniel dryly. “We’ve got to show cause why the man should have been shot. Corwin has blackened you—yes, but that was William’s business, and there’s nothing—forgive me, Fanchon, but there’s nothing to show that Corwin didn’t speak the truth, except what you yourself can tell us.”

“William believes what he said, then!” she cried hoarsely. “That’s why he hasn’t spoken to me or looked at me since—since Corwin was shot! He believes it—you all believe it!”

Daniel’s face hardened. He saw a storm coming and he despised the way she ranted.

“I’m asking you to tell us the truth.”

She half rose, panting.

“You ask it because—because you believe what he said!”

“I ask it—to save Leigh.”

She sank back, weak and shaken. Then she dashed the tears from her eyes.

“I’ll do anything for Leigh! He’s the only one who believed in me.”

“He believed in you enough to put his life in jeopardy,” Daniel replied grimly. “If you want to help him, you’ll have to tell me the whole story, Fanchon.”

She worked at her handkerchief again, winking back her tears, and he had a chance to see how her face had hollowed and how weak she looked. He remembered that Emily had said she had refused food, and it occurred to him that they were cruel to her; that she resented their cruelty. But, all the while, he saw that boyish face in the dingy light of the cell, and his heart grew hot within him. He wouldn’t spare her.

“You want to know about Corwin?”

Her voice was very low. Daniel assented, and she seemed to struggle with herself.

“Dieu!” she cried softly.

“As soon as you can, please,” said Daniel, watching her, wondering if now, under this stress and pain, she would tell the truth. He doubted it.

“Do you remember what I told you in the library that day?” she asked abruptly. “About my father and my mother and the convent?”

“Yes.”

“It was a lie,” said Fanchon. “It was the same lie that I told William.”

Daniel looked at her grimly, unsparingly.

“I hope you’re going to tell me the truth now,” he said sternly.

She dragged some soft pillows toward her and leaned her elbows on them, half hiding her face in her hands, not looking at him at all.

“Sit down,” she said in a low voice. “I’ll tell you the whole story from the beginning. It was true that my father was French, and that he was a vine-grower and wine-maker on a ranch in California, and that my mother, the Irish girl, died there. My father did take me to Paris, but he didn’t put me in a convent school. He left me with his sister, a milliner in one of the little back streets. They were alike, those two, of an ugliness inside and out. For a while he paid for me, and then he didn’t. I think he drank himself to death. My aunt brought me up. She wasn’t a good woman and she was greedy for money. I was pretty, and she had me taught to dance and sing. I was dancing when Aristide Corwin saw me. He was managing a vaudeville company in London then. He took a fancy to me.”

Fanchon stopped a moment, pressing her handkerchief against her lips. Then she went on, speaking rapidly and recklessly.

“You think it was the old story? Mais non, it wasn’t! I was only fifteen and I hated him. I hated his good looks and his showy dress and his coarse voice—but I was a beggar and I was a child, enfant de Bohème. My aunt told him he could have me for a price. He must marry me—marry in Paris, too. You know French law? And he was to pay her—about three thousand dollars in your money. She sold me. I was her niece, and she made him marry me. She made me his slave good and fast, for she made me his wife!”

“You mean that you were Corwin’s wife, and you never told my brother?” Daniel exclaimed harshly, leaning forward to look at her.

She turned, her white, small face shadowed by her wild hair, her eyes smoldering.

“I didn’t tell your brother? Non! I didn’t tell. Now, listen—I’ll tell you all, and you can tell your brother,” she added bitterly. “I was fifteen, and I was small for my years. Corwin trained me. He saw what I could do, and he trained me like a spaniel. For what? To support him, mon ami! I danced and I sang for four years to support a man who never worked. He lived on me. Sometimes I was ill, sometimes I was broken with grief and shame, but it made no difference—he lived on what I made. I was worth more than the money he had paid—a hundred times over! When he was drunk he beat me. I’ve had black welts on my shoulders that I had to hide when I danced. I was sixteen then, and afraid, deadly afraid of him. I was even afraid to run away. Then I grew older, and I tried to get a divorce in Paris, but I couldn’t. I tried in London, and failed again. He saw to that. Then I knew I must wait. I was American; I was born here. I waited. By and by Aristide brought me to New York and put me in a company to tour the Western States. That was luck—great luck—for he was ill. He was strong as an ox, but he had appendicitis, and had to go to a hospital in New York. I went to California. I was just twenty-one. I told William I was eighteen, but I’m twenty-four. In California I got a divorce for cruelty. I got my freedom. From a child I had been in the hands of a brute; suddenly I was free!” She looked up again, pressing her hands against her breast. “Mon Dieu, I can’t tell you what I felt!”

She ceased speaking and sank down again on her elbows. This time she tore at the cushions with her restless fingers.

“Go on,” said Daniel ruthlessly. “This doesn’t bring us to Leigh.”

She looked around at him, her face twisting oddly to keep back her tears.

“I’ll tell you. I was divorced—it was legal in California, though Aristide swore it wasn’t. He came at me like a wild beast. He tried to get the decree set aside. He threatened; he swore vengeance. Then I told him that I’d die before I went back to him. I meant it, and he knew it. I remember when we were first married, and I was only fifteen, I used to go about looking for places to throw myself into the Seine; but I never could, it was so dirty!” She shuddered. “He vowed he’d never let me go, and he never has. He followed me about and published false stories about me. Once he got me arrested for theft. I was innocent. He couldn’t prove it, and they let me go. He tried and tried to get me back, to take away my work and starve me into coming back. Then, when he saw that I wouldn’t come back, he was terrible. I married William. No, not in Paris! We were married in New York when the ship docked. You didn’t know that, n’est-ce-pas? But what would you? I couldn’t be married in Paris. I couldn’t tell my story; I wouldn’t tell it.” She raised tortured eyes to Daniel’s face. “I loved William; I couldn’t risk it. We were married, and Corwin heard of it. He wrote me a letter then. He said he’d ruin me; he’d see to it that my husband got a divorce; he’d fix me—and he’s done it!”

“Have you got that letter?” Daniel asked quickly, a flash in his dark eyes. “Where is it?”

“I’ll give it to you,” she said brokenly. “It’s all true, Dan, this time—all true! You can have his letter. That night—the ride—your father thinks I disgraced you all. I went alone. Corwin rode after me, and I did go back with him. I ate dinner with him. I begged him not to ruin me; not to publish lies about me. I begged and begged. I had no money. He had always taken every cent I earned, and the little I got after the divorce I’d paid out for clothes—all but a trifle. I offered that, and he laughed at me. He boasted that he had me; that no other man would keep me. He said I’d be turned out of a respectable family when he got done with me—and then I would come back to him.” She turned with a pitiful gesture. “I could do nothing to stop his mouth. Who would speak for me? Whoever speaks for a woman when a man like that blackmails her? You—you all hated me!”

Daniel, who had risen, stood looking at her, his face brooding.

“On my soul, Fanchon, I pity you!” he said simply. “But why—why, in Heaven’s name, didn’t you tell William the truth?”

She shivered, cowering away from him.

“I—I’ve always been a liar,” she replied with white lips. “I was brought up to lie. And”—she rose and faced him—“I couldn’t give him up. He was good, he loved me—mon Dieu!” She covered her face with her shaking hands. “And I’ve ruined his brother, the boy who liked me so well!”

Daniel pitied her, pitied her profoundly. Her story had appealed to the lawyer in him, he had been watching and listening for some word that he could use to save Leigh; but now something in her cry of pain, in her small, black-clad figure, her wildly lovely face, touched him.

“Fanchon,” he said gently, “please give me that letter.”

She lifted her head. Her tear-stained eyes met his, searched his, read a touch of friendliness in them, and her lips shook.

“I’ll get it,” she said.

She took a step forward, she seemed about to go into her bedroom, but suddenly she swayed, her head fell forward, and she stretched out both her hands helplessly, gropingly.

“It’s all black!” she gasped. “I can’t see!”

Daniel caught her barely in time, for she had fainted in his arms.

XX

Fanchon was very ill that night. Her stormy nature had plunged into an eclipse, and she lay white and shivering, staring at the ceiling, her half-packed trunks around her. She would not let even Emily come near her—only Miranda and the doctor, whom Daniel had summoned hastily. She had not tasted food since Leigh’s shot, and she was worn out.

Dr. Barbour, prescribing food and quiet, made some gruff remarks to Mr. Carter.

“No use killing her,” he said dryly. “Might as well keep her alive, as long as Corwin’s dead.”

William did not come home at all, but spent the night in his office. Daniel went down there on his way to court in the morning. The elevator-boy, a young mulatto, showed the whites of his eyes as he took him up.

“He ain’t been down fo’ noffin’ to eat,” he remarked. “Sen’ me fo’ bottle of whisky, but ain’t eat noffin’.”

Daniel frowned. He had had his suspicions of the whisky before, though his father had never told him of his own surmises. He limped quickly over to William’s door, found it unlocked, and walked in.

The shades were still drawn and the electric lights switched on. William lay stretched on an old couch in the corner, his arms under his head. At first Daniel thought he was drunk, but as their eyes met he saw that William was terribly sober. He had a look in his eyes that gave his brother a shock. It was the look of a man who coveted death.

The couch was one of those high-backed affairs with a low arm at each end. Daniel sat down on the arm at William’s feet.

“Fanchon’s ill,” he said quietly. “You’d better go home and see her, William.”

William looked at him intently for a moment, then spoke in a voice so changed that it was startling.

“I don’t want to see her,” he said coolly. “I don’t care if I never see her again.”

“She’s your wife, all the same,” Daniel remarked dryly, “and she’s going to help me save Leigh.”

“I’m done with her,” William retorted.

“You can’t say that—you won’t say it—if she sacrifices herself for us,” returned Daniel, watching him.

“I’m done with her,” William repeated, and closed his eyes, evidently considering that he had closed the subject.

Daniel observed him a moment in silence. He was perfectly aware that argument was useless, and he was not altogether prepared to argue for Fanchon. His brother—who looked ill and wretched—was apparently falling asleep, so Daniel went to the table, confiscated a half-empty bottle of whisky, and switched off the lights. He drew up the shades and opened all the windows, and the dead atmosphere of the room was revivified with sunshine and air.

Daniel looked at William again, but there was no movement or sound from him, so the lame brother left the room, closing the door softly behind him. He had a strange feeling as if he had closed it upon a corpse, as if the brother he had known had passed away, and into this shell that was left behind some other spirit had entered. The thought reminded Daniel of the seven devils of the Bible. Certainly the change in William was for the worse.

But he had no time to think of William. His business took him to Judge Jessup’s office, and from there to the court-house, where a panel of the grand jury had been summoned. As he made his way toward Jessup’s office he encountered a crowd on the main street, and saw a hearse proceeding toward the station, carrying a plain pinewood box. The inquest being over, Corwin’s body was to be shipped to New York.

Daniel had to wait for the hearse to pass, aware of the curious glances that came his way. A picture rose before his mind of a little girl of fifteen being married to a coarse brute more than twice her age, who wanted her to earn his living for him. If he could only get that picture clean-cut before a jury!

Daniel had that delicate keenness of perception that makes great orators feel their audiences. He knew intuitively the thing that touched the heart, he had latent in him a gift for playing on the feelings of the masses, as some musicians have in them a singular power to draw more music from the chords of their instruments than other men. He had perceived it, too, in Fanchon, if he could only mold her to her rôle. He was trying to marshal his thoughts, to see a way to bring Fanchon before the jury without losing the effect of her evidence, when he reached Jessup’s office.

The judge, who was waiting to go before the grand jury, was sitting in his swivel chair in his shirt-sleeves, with his hat on. He scarcely glanced up when Daniel entered, for he was listening to a visitor. Samuel Bernstein sat in the prisoner’s dock—as Daniel called the stiff chair by the window where the judge seated his doubtful clients and penalized them with a savage, unwavering observation. He was observing Bernstein now over the tops of his glasses, exactly as he would have observed a gipsy-moth. To his mind, Bernstein had been nearly as disastrous.

The motion-picture producer seemed to be suffering extremely from the heat. He had his hat off, and was mopping beads of perspiration from his forehead.

“Say, judge, I never thought about a kid like that usin’ shootin’-irons,” he said mournfully. “But I told him the truth—every bit of it! I’ll go on the stand an’ swear to it. You see, it was this way—I couldn’t get the thing to ’em, an’ I thought they oughter know.”

The judge glared at him in silence, then swung his swivel chair around a little and looked over the papers on his desk.

“Meddling, Mr. Bernstein; nothing at all but meddling in other people’s business,” he retorted shortly. “If I had my way there’d be a new law in this State. I’d send nosey people to the work-house, sir. I’d give ’em something to do. Here’s your deposition. Read it over. You’ll be called again, some time this afternoon.”

“Now, looka here, judge, I ain’t a meddler,” objected Bernstein plaintively. “That man Corwin was blackmailin’ the lady and I wanted to stop him. I’m conferring a favor now, sir, goin’ on the stand. Anybody who knows Sam Bernstein knows he ain’t goin’ to lie. I’ve got a reputation. This trial, sir, with me on the stand——” He paused regretfully. “Say, it would make just about three thousand feet of great stuff—and they won’t let me bring in my camera-men!”

“Confound your camera-men!” said the judge, and rose, slamming down the top of his desk. “Dan, you here? We’ve got to go over to the court-house now. You come over in half an hour, Bernstein. I reckon it isn’t more than one thousand feet of film to the square,” he added with a sudden, irresistible twinkle.

Even Bernstein laughed.

The judge, linking his arm in Daniel’s, kept pace with the younger man as they walked up the main street toward the old court-house. It was a little past ten o’clock now, and the street was full. Daniel noticed that the tide was flowing toward the court-house. His cheeks reddened angrily under the curious glances of men and women in the crowds.

There had been a strong element of sympathy for Corwin. He had been freehanded, and had made himself at home in local sporting circles. Daniel, with his fine perception of the trend of human feeling, knew that the sympathy was not all on their side. Fanchon’s famous dance at the church musicale, and her frequent appearances with the man himself, had all worked against her. It did not seem quite fair to lay all the blame on Corwin.

If William had shot him, the thing would have been understood. Leigh’s act was subject to terrible misinterpretations. It seemed as if the Carter family had employed a boy to do the shooting in the hope of getting off scot-free. To half the men on the street it looked like a case of sheer cowardice on the husband’s part, and Daniel knew it. He had that kind of sensitiveness—wrought up by much solitary suffering and introspective thought—that made this consciousness of the possible charge of cowardice against them all a kind of torture. He was very white, and his eyes sparkled dangerously.

“He looks as if he might kill a man, lame as he is,” one of the bystanders whispered, and Daniel heard it.

“I don’t know that we can get an indictment for manslaughter, Dan,” said the judge, in his ear. “Seems to me it’ll be murder, but there’s no telling with that jury.”

Daniel, thinking of Leigh’s boyish face and girlish eyes, set his teeth very hard. At that moment he had no feeling of pity for Fanchon.

“When a man gets married the way William did,” remarked the judge, “it’s mighty like putting your hand into a grab-bag at a church fair. You’re not going to get anything useful out of it.”

Daniel said nothing.

They crossed the square and ascended the court-house steps half an hour before the time set for the grand jury.

Meanwhile, Mr. Carter came down to Judge Jessup’s office and collapsed there. He had intended to go on to the court-house, but he could not. He sat down limply in the judge’s chair with one hand on the telephone, waiting to be called.

He had passed a terrible night. Mrs. Carter had indulged in the only fit of hysterics she had ever had in her life, and her husband had thought, at first, that it was apoplexy. He had summoned Dr. Barbour, rousing the good man from his bed, and had caught a lecture for it.

“Never seen a woman in hysterics before?” the doctor asked fiercely. “Put her feet in hot mustard water. I reckon that when you see a real fit you’ll turn in the fire-alarm!”

But he was unable to eradicate Mr. Carter’s first impressions. Thinking it over now, he shook his head.

“Never saw her like that in her life before,” he reflected. “Had seven children and lost three—and never threw a fit before! If Leigh——”

He stopped at that; he couldn’t go any further. He rose and pulled off his coat and unbuttoned his collar. He felt that the heat—it was only an ordinary summer day—was intolerably oppressive. Then he took down the telephone receiver absently, and had to assure central that he didn’t want anything.

“Knocked it off by accident,” he explained mendaciously.

But the incident embarrassed him, and he collapsed into the chair again and fanned himself with his hat. Then the telephone-bell rang sharply in his ear, and he seized the receiver. A tremulous young voice called:

“Is Judge Jessup there?”

“No, the judge has gone over to the court-house. This is Mr. Carter—Johnson Carter.”

“Oh, papa!” It was Emily, and he could almost feel her tears through the instrument. “Mama thought you might be at the judge’s office. Got any news about Leigh?”

“Not yet!” Mr. Carter was hoarse, but he cleared his throat. “How’s mama?”

“She’s all right; she’s just taken peppermint tea. Papa, I’ve got something to tell you.”

Her voice seemed to die away, but he heard her blowing her nose.

“What is it, Emmy?”

“F-Fanchon’s going—she’s got the expressman here for her trunks.”

“Glad of it!” said Mr. Carter dryly. “If she wants a taxi, I’ll send it.”

“Oh, papa!”

“Yes?”

“Mama says she’ll die if she doesn’t know about Leigh soon!”

“I can’t help it, I—say, I see the judge and Dan coming—I’ll call you up again in a minute!”

He hung up the receiver and rushed to the door. Judge Jessup and his son came in soberly. The judge threw his hat down on the table and said nothing.

“Indicted for murder—second degree, father,” said Daniel, averting his eyes.

Mr. Carter tottered to a chair and covered his face with his hands. In the silence of the little office they heard the first shrill cry of a newsboy.

“Extry! Extry! Leigh Carter indicted for murder! Extry!”

Mr. Carter groaned aloud. Then he remembered.

“Dan, Emmy ’phoned me a few minutes ago. That—that woman’s leaving the house—bag and baggage. If you want to ask her anything——”

Judge Jessup interrupted with a roar.

“Get a taxi, Dan! Catch her, don’t let her go! I’ll subpœna her, if necessary. Stop her!”

Daniel, who had turned a startled face on his father, nodded at the judge.

“’Phone mother, father,” he said quietly. “It isn’t fair to keep her waiting even ten minutes. I’ll go out there at once.”

As he spoke, he whistled for a passing taxi. He heard his father’s shaking voice at the phone as he went out.

The cab went off at top speed, and Daniel sank back in the corner, resting his head against the stiff old cushion. He felt a great weariness, a sensation of defeat and despair. He had fought hard for an indictment for manslaughter, but had succeeded in getting a second degree of murder only by the most strenuous effort and the appeal of Leigh’s obvious youth. Daniel knew that they had a hard fight before them, and he doubted the boy’s nerve. The whole thing was hideous to him.

He looked out with dull eyes, aware of the swift passing of the street corners. The taxi swung into the church lane with a shriek of its warning horn, and Daniel looked around at the church door, thinking of Virginia.

The next moment he saw her. The old wagonette and the two fat horses appeared, progressing slowly toward town. Colonel Denbigh and his granddaughter were sitting in the vehicle, facing each other on the two long seats.

Virginia saw Daniel and waved to him. He knew that they had the news, for the colonel was reading an extra, and Virginia’s face was full of it. She seemed to fling him a message of sympathy and courage and faith. Daniel felt it. It roused him. He felt suddenly the impulse of the fighter, and he shut his teeth on it. He must win, he would win!

He was still feeling it when the taxi stopped abruptly at the Carter gate and the chauffeur got down to collect his fare. Daniel paid it absently, aware that the man was staring at the figure that he saw on the piazza.

In the midst of a pile of luggage stood Fanchon. She was dressed for the street, and wore a hat and a fashionable veil that made a singular figure on the side of her pale cheek, like the tail of a black dragon. She was leaning against a trunk that stood on end, her dark eyes fixed gloomily on her approaching brother-in-law.

“What’s this, Fanchon?” he asked quickly. “You’re not going to fail me?”

She shook her head.

“I couldn’t stay here! You can tell William that he can come home. I’m going over to a boarding house on the turnpike. I found it once——”

She blushed suddenly and pitifully, and Daniel knew she referred to her ride. He drew a breath of relief.

“I’m sorry,” he began, half ashamed that she felt driven from the house, and painfully remembering William.

She caught his sleeve, her hand shaking.

“Daniel, tell me—the indictment?”

“Murder in the second degree.”

She reeled back, clutching at the trunk, her face deathly and her fawn-like eyes fixed on his.

“What—what’s the penalty?”

“In this State, imprisonment—five to eighteen years.”

“Five to eighteen years—in prison—for—for Leigh!” she repeated slowly, gasping.

She sank down, leaning on the trunk, and trembling, her eyes still fixed on Daniel’s white, set, unpitying face.

“Mon Dieu!” she cried at last, and burst into passionate tears.

XXI

Colonel Denbigh was reading the morning paper. He had breakfasted lightly, and he sat on the rear veranda smoking a long cigar. His face was troubled. He had a sincere friendship for the Carters, and he fairly twinged as he read the flaring headlines. There were three columns devoted to the Corwin murder, with a snap-shot of Leigh being led from the court-house to the police van. Half-way down the first column there was an extra large caption to one paragraph:

MRS. WILLIAM CARTER, THE CAUSE OF
THE TROUBLE, ONCE A BEAUTIFUL
VAUDEVILLE DANCER

The colonel slapped his paper down on his knee with a groan.

“By gum!” he ejaculated softly.

Plato thrust his head out of the door.

“Miss Jinny done say she don’ want dat speckled hen killed fo’ dinner to-morrer, suh.”

The colonel’s mouth twisted under his white mustache.

“Why not?”

“Miss Jinny, she’s been makin’ a pet ob her, yessuh. She say dat speckled hen ain’t gwine ter be killed, an’ I kin take de rooster. Miss Jinny, she say she’s fo’ woman’s rights, col’nel.”

The colonel grinned sardonically.

“You get a steak, Plato. We’ve got to stand up for our own sex. I’m going to keep that rooster.”

“Yessuh, dat we has!” Plato edged back toward the door as he heard Virginia coming. “Mis’ Wilyum Carter done run away from her husband yes’day,” he added in a stage whisper. “Mirandy, de girl dat works dere, done tole me so, yessuh!”

The colonel scowled.

“You tell Miranda to stop gossiping,” he said sharply.

Plato grinned.

“Dat’s woman’s rights, yessuh. Mirandy says so!”

The colonel caught the old negro’s eye and shook with silent laughter.

“Mind your own business, you old rogue!” he said shortly, resuming his paper.

He heard Plato’s discreet retirement and then a frou-frou of skirts. Virginia, in the freshest of white gowns, came out. She was very pale, and there was a little line of worry between her brows.

“Anything new, grandpa?” she asked eagerly, looking at his newspaper. “Can they get Leigh out on bail?”

The colonel shook his head sadly.

“Think of a boy like that held for murder! Bless my soul, it seems as if it was only last year when I saw him in rompers and eating a lollypop. I remember perfectly—the stick was in his mouth and the lollypop all over his face. Good Lord! And he’s shot a man!”

“He’s such a nice boy,” said Virginia. “He has such a sweet, dreamy face, and his eyes are beautiful. Haven’t you noticed how he’s grown up?”

“Yep!” the colonel snapped, frowning at space. “I did notice he was getting to be quite a young lady.”

Virginia laughed musically.

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” Then her face sobered. “I’ve just telephoned to Mrs. Carter—I mean Mrs. Johnson Carter,” she explained, blushing suddenly; “and there doesn’t seem to be anything that we can do.”

The colonel nodded thoughtfully.

“I saw Dr. Barbour last night. He says there’s nothing we can do.”

Virginia looked thoughtfully across the green lawn toward the street. It was screened from view here by the colonel’s horse-chestnut, but she glimpsed a strip of the street below the side gate. The sunlight, shining through the honeysuckle on the veranda, flashed on her white gown with glorification, as if it shouted halleluiah, and it shone, too, in her clear eyes. The colonel, who was watching her, thought her the loveliest thing on earth.

“I’m afraid there’s a terrible time down there,” she remarked regretfully. “I mean at the Carters.”

The colonel assented. He was thinking. He dreaded to tell her.

“Jinny, Plato says that——”

He got no farther; she had uttered a soft exclamation and gone down the steps.

“There’s Dan, grandpa!” she said in evident surprise.

The colonel watched her go on to meet Daniel Carter and he saw the change in the young man’s face as they met on the lawn. Daniel was very pale, and he limped badly toward her.

“By gum!” said the colonel below his breath. “I wonder if she knows! Women don’t like weakness, I’m afraid. Nothing that’s been injured appeals—not really. Girls like to imagine demigods. And that poor boy’s breaking his heart for her, by gum!”

Meanwhile, Virginia turned with Daniel, and they came toward the veranda. The colonel rose and descended the steps.

“Dan,” he said in a hoarse voice, holding out his hand, “if there’s anything I can do——”

Daniel shook his head, the muscles of his white face twitching a little from weariness and pain.

“Nothing at all, Colonel, except—to feel for us!”

“Come and sit with us on the piazza,” suggested Virginia. “Can’t you, Dan?”

He shook his head.

“I’ve got to go on to the office, and then over—to the jail. I was passing—I had to stop to say ‘howdy,’ as Plato would express it. Mother’s been ill in bed since yesterday. She wanted me to thank you both for the flowers and for your messages.”

“Flowers and messages are mighty poor substitutes for deeds,” rejoined the colonel bluntly. “You know I’ll go bail for Leigh, if you wish it.”

“Mr. Payson did that at once, thank you. We had Leigh out to see mother, but we couldn’t keep reporters away from him, and we thought it best for him to go back to jail for the present. You see, he wants to go to Fanchon, to express his championship and all that. It’s a hard situation, colonel, any way we can fix it. Leigh’s been in a state of collapse, too—lost his nerve at first.”

“He’s nothing but a kid,” said the colonel with indignation. “I—by gum, Dan, I don’t like to say what I think!”

Virginia clapped her soft hand over his mouth.

“Not another word, grandpa!”

Daniel smiled.

“Never mind, Virginia, the newspapers are blatant. My father read the paper this morning and broke the cream-pitcher—the Wedgewood one, too.”

The colonel caught Virginia’s restraining hand and held it.

“Dan, how’s William?”

Daniel, who was looking at Virginia, became very grave.

“I don’t know how to answer that, colonel. He’s heartbroken over Leigh, I think. He and his wife”—Daniel hesitated, his eyes on Virginia—“have separated,” he concluded in a low voice.

The colonel, who knew it, only wagged his head soberly, but Virginia started. A deep blush rose from her throat to her white forehead. Her eyes fell before Daniel’s, and he saw her hands tremble.

“She loves him still!” he thought bitterly.

He turned, looking paler than ever.

“I must go on. I only stopped to thank you both for your sympathy. We”—he hesitated again—“we appreciate it.”

The colonel laid his hand on the younger man’s shoulder, and his eyes misted.

“I’ll walk to the street with you, Dan,” he said, swallowing a lump in his throat. “I reckon there isn’t much we can do—any of us—but to stand by you-all.”

Daniel looked back at Virginia, raising his hat again, and the two men walked away across the long lawn to the group of cedars that grew by the side gate.

Virginia, left alone, turned and entered the house. She was very pale now, and her lips trembled. She went into the drawing-room and stood looking at the little old picture of William as a boy. She had looked at it a thousand times before, and she remembered that once she had kissed it. They had always been fond of each other and then—or was it a dream?—he had asked her to marry him. They had planned their happiness gaily, with youthful laughter at sorrow and doubt. She had loved him, and he had married—this woman!

Virginia would have been less than human if she had not thrilled at the thought that he must regret it. She felt that he did. He had already almost said so. He had been caught; she knew it! What woman, placed as Virginia was, would not have felt that! In the rush of sympathy for him she blamed only Fanchon.

She remembered the night at the Sunday-school hall and Fanchon’s blanched face at the sight of Corwin. Corwin had made Virginia shudder; but such men as this had been Fanchon’s associates, such men as Corwin had been part of her life, and William Carter had unwittingly married her! In the storm of her resentment, Virginia felt only that William needed her sympathy, he even needed—it was on the tip of her tongue to say—her love!

Then the thing suddenly stood out before her; she saw it in all its horrible nakedness and cruelty. The poor little wayward dancer caught in the snare of her past—whatever that past might be—and in the midst of her fancied security assailed and ruined, snatched from her new happiness, talked about, shamed, and at last cast out!

Yet—poor William! Tears rushed to Virginia’s eyes. Her heart yearned over him. At that moment, when William was breaking with the wife that he had preferred to her, when he was crushed by the scandal that the woman had made of his life, Virginia forgave him.

She sank down on the piano-stool under his childish picture, and, covering her face with her hands, she wept—not for herself, as Fanchon had done, but for William. She had fought hard to crush out her love for him, but at that moment she felt that she had not succeeded, that it was too strong for her, and she trembled.

She trembled at the thought of the look on his face when she had seen him last. She knew that he had come back to her. Virginia, who could not see into the future, still felt a thrill of terror at her heart. It was as if an invisible power walked with her, an invisible hand thrust her toward unforeseen perils, and into ways that she knew not.

Strangely enough, too, in the midst of her emotion, the thought came to her, keenly and vividly—what would Dan think of it? And of her—Virginia? In some way, intuitively, for he had said nothing about it, she knew that Daniel’s attitude toward Fanchon had changed. Something in the very intonation of his voice had told her that; yet he had announced the separation without comment, and had even appeared to assent to Colonel Denbigh’s suppressed recognition of Fanchon’s culpability.

Virginia, weeping for William, trembling at the thought that William’s heart must have turned remorsefully to the memories of their innocent affection, nevertheless flushed at the thought that Daniel would be a witness, a bystander, at any drama that unrolled now in their lives. She had never thought of Daniel before as having any part between William and her, but now it was Daniel’s judgment that mattered. Yet she loved William. She no longer attempted to deny that to herself, she could not—it was William who was suffering and shamed by the woman who had left him.

Virginia was softly wiping the tears from her eyes when she heard her grandfather coming back. She rose, looked hastily into the mirror, and, reassured by the face she saw there, went out into the hall and met him.

“I thought you were going to walk all the way into town with Dan,” she remarked casually.

The colonel shook his head.

“I only went to the corner. Jinny, the trial’s to be next week. Judge Jessup has managed to rush it before the court adjourns this session. It seems Mrs. Carter can’t bear the suspense, and I reckon the boy can’t, either. I never did think Leigh had much grit—not even when he ate lollypops,” he added grimly, eying Virginia.

“I know his poor mother has gone to pieces,” she replied gently. “Emily told me as much. Poor Emily, she’s cried so hard that paint won’t help her white eyelashes now.”

The colonel, who had discovered that Virginia had been crying herself, looked thoughtful. They turned and walked through the hall together to the staircase. Virginia started to ascend—she wanted to escape—but her grandfather had more news for her.

“Dan’s a kind of clam,” he observed after a moment’s pause, “but I got something out of him. Fanchon has told him her story. He believes that it will help save Leigh. He’s going to put her on the stand.”

Virginia, leaning on the banister, blushed again.

“I thought she’d left William,” she said in a low voice.

“So she has—so she has; but Dan says she’ll do anything to save Leigh. She seems to be fond of that fool kid. Got him under her thumb, I suppose, and then made him do her bidding. I reckon she’d better go on the stand. It’s the only thing she can do. But, by gum, I’m sorry for Johnson Carter and his wife, and Emily and Dan.”

“And William,” suggested Virginia softly.

“No!” thundered the colonel. “No! I’m not a mite sorry for that lummox—he went and married her! He——”

The old man stopped with his mouth open. Lucas, the negro driver, had just appeared at the back door, his arms full of green ears of corn.

“Been up de hill, suh,” he explained genially, “an’ Col’nel Colfax’s son, he don’ send yo’ all dis yere corn. Golden Bantam—dat’s what he call it, same as dey calls dem lil no-account chickens.”

“It looks small,” said the colonel. “How about that horse? Did you like it, Lucas?”

“Yessuh, I like ’im, but he don’ like me. He’s very good horse, Pole Star’s grandson, but I reckon I scared ob ridin’ him. Sam Bun, he Mist’ Colfax’s man—he say dat horse bit four men las’ Saturday week.”

“I don’t want him,” said Virginia laughing. “Hear any news up there, Lucas? How’s Miss Sally?”

“Gone to de springs, Miss Jinny. I did heah on de road back ’bout young Mis’ Carter—de one dat done got Mist’ Corwin shot.” He looked over his green corn at the colonel. “She’s stayin’ up to Quantah’s place now.”

“Eh!” The colonel stared. “Pretty poor place isn’t it, Lucas?”

“Sho is, suh. Ain’t noffin’ dere now but de woman, Mis’ Quantah, an’ dat bug-house boy ob hers. Dey sold de cow las’ week to de butcher. Ain’t no place fo’ quality nohow. Yessuh, Mis’ Wilyum Carter up dere now. She lef’ Mist’ Wilyum or Mist’ Wilyum lef’ her, I don’t know—”

“Lucas, you take that corn to the kitchen. I want some for dinner.”

“Yessuh,” said Lucas, and went.

The colonel turned to Virginia.

“That Quantah place is pretty forlorn. Can that girl be as poor as that? I thought Mrs. Quantah was about down and out.”

“Why, grandpa, the place is a wreck! There can’t be a decent room up-stairs!” Virginia’s face was still flushed, she clung to the banister. “I can’t understand.”

The colonel looked grave.

“She’s going on the stand for Leigh. The Carters oughtn’t to allow this.” He turned and laid his hand on his granddaughter’s shoulder. “Jinny,” he said quietly. “I reckon we mustn’t judge it too hard, but—well, I’m beginning to pity that girl.”

Virginia said nothing. She was afraid that her grandfather felt her trembling under his hand.

XXII

William Carter spent the days after the shooting entirely alone in his office at the Payson Building. He slept there on the old couch, and for the most part ate there, Moses, the elevator-boy, running errands for him to the delicatessen store and then devouring the viands after he had brought them. For William ate practically nothing, though he drank a good deal.

Mr. Payson, who had found him once or twice in a state of stupor, called up Mr. Carter on the telephone the day before the trial.

“You’d better come over and see William,” he advised. “He’s in no condition to do business.”

Mr. Carter, who had just returned to his office after a long talk with Leigh, was shaken; but he picked up his hat, clapped it down again on his gray head, and started determinedly for the Payson Building. He felt that his cup was full. He even experienced a sensation of ire at Payson for having acquired wealth to build this huge edifice of mottled brick and sandstone.

“Looks like a huge loaf of ginger-bread,” Mr. Carter grumbled to himself.

But he was glad that it happened to be in full blast, as he would have expressed it, and the throng of shoppers had no time to notice him. Moses took him up in an elevator that was designated as “for employees only.” He made some ado, too, about moving aside a basketful of empty bottles to make room for his passenger. Mr. Carter shoved the basket with his foot.

“What’s that?” he asked sharply.

Moses looked plaintive.

“Ain’t had no time to pitch ’em outen heah, suh. Dey’s from Mist’ Wilyum’s room.”

Mr. Carter restrained an impulse to count the bottles, and said nothing. At the eighth floor he got out and walked reluctantly across the hall to his son’s door. He opened it without knocking and looked in.

William was seated at his desk, his arms hanging down at his sides and his eyes fixed on the wall opposite. There was no indication of intemperance unless it lay in the deathly pallor and the disheveled hair. Mr. Carter strode over to the table and struck it loudly with his fist to call attention to his presence.

“We’d be honored if you’d come home,” he said dryly. “You’ve nothing to fear there—she’s cleared out.”

William raised his haggard eyes.

“How about Leigh? I haven’t seen Dan for days.”

“Dan’s trying to save his brother from”—Mr. Carter’s voice grew suddenly hoarse—“from eighteen years’ imprisonment.”

“Good Lord!” cried William aghast. “They couldn’t do that—he’s nothing but a kid!”

Mr. Carter walked over to the windows and shut and fastened them; then he picked up his son’s hat and handed it to him.

“You come home with me,” was all he said.

William went.

His adoring mother received him like the returned prodigal, and Emily waited on him with eyes red from weeping. No one mentioned Fanchon; the family seemed to have resolved to let her drop out of sight forever. With Daniel’s aid, William managed to see Leigh that night for the first time since the shooting.

It was a moment of horrible embarrassment and humiliation for William. He was shocked, too, at the sight of the boy’s white face and the dark rings under his girlish eyes. Leigh had gone through deep waters on his account, yet it was one of those things that cannot be talked about.

“My job, Leigh,” he said laconically. “You had no business to take it away from me.”

Leigh blushed like a girl.

“I couldn’t hear Fanchon slandered like that,” he cried. “I had to do it!”

William bowed his head, looking down at the floor of the cell. He hadn’t the heart to tell the boy that he believed the slanders. Curiously enough, under Leigh’s clear eyes, he felt ashamed of believing in them; but his inveterate rage against his wife remained undiminished. She had deceived him, he no longer believed in her, and he was furious against her for the ruin she had wrought. The very fact that he had been head over ears in love with her embittered him the more. It was an intolerable humiliation.

He left Leigh in a passion of sorrow and self-accusation, and went home to spend a sleepless night. Toward morning, from sheer exhaustion, he dozed off into troubled dreams. He thought he had been cast into a fiery furnace along with Shadrach, Meshech and Abednego; he could see three shadowy figures moving like giants through fields of flame. Presently an angel touched him on the shoulder and called to him—in French. The angel had the face of Fanchon.

He awoke with a groan and found his mother standing at the foot of his bed. She had recovered sufficiently to move about the house now in a striped calico wrapper that made her look twenty years older.

“It’s the day of the trial, Willie,” she said brokenly. “Papa and Dan went an hour ago. Are—are you going to testify? Dan said he wouldn’t call you.”

“The State will,” replied William apathetically, getting out of bed.

His mother looked at him anxiously.

“I’m afraid they’re going to call Fanchon,” she faltered.

He started. For some reason he had never thought of this, and he felt a pang of horrid dismay. It couldn’t be that Judge Jessup and Dan meant to do that. But the State? William experienced a new and rending sensation. He felt like a helpless beetle pinned to the board of a naturalist; he couldn’t escape public dissection.

“Perhaps you’d better not go, Willie,” suggested his mother fondly. “Emily and I are going to stay here at the telephone to-day. Papa promised to ’phone us everything, and we shall be terribly nervous and frightened. Stay with us, dear.”

William realized that he was still a boy to her, and that now, when his unacceptable wife had left him, he was nearer than ever. Nevertheless, he began to look for his clothes.

“I shall go straight there, of course,” he said sharply. “Please tell Miranda I want only a cup of hot coffee.”

“Oh, Willie, you must eat something!” she cried tearfully. “You’ll ruin your health—there are corn muffins, too.”

He had always had a weakness for corn muffins, and, acting on the advice of Miranda, his mother had ordered them to console him. But William would have none of them. He was dressing rapidly, in a fever of impatience, when Emily arrived outside his door and put her lips close to the key-hole to shout to him:

“Papa says you needn’t hurry down there. He doesn’t think they’ll get a jury until next week. Dan’s used up one panel already.”

William had not thought of this, and he slackened his efforts a little only to hear his sister’s return.

“Mama says stay and have some muffins. They’re lovely and brown—I ate five.”

The fact that murder in the second degree did not carry the death sentence had reassured Emily’s hitherto impaired appetite. Like Miranda, she ate to keep up her spirits.

William swallowed a cup of coffee, and left with the consciousness that his mother, Emily, and Miranda considered him on the verge of suicide. He made his way to the court-house by the church lane and the rear alleys. Public curiosity had become intolerable to him, and he had a horror of meeting an acquaintance.

It seemed only last week that he had brought Fanchon up the train platform to meet his father. He had been proud of her beauty then; he had thought her unique and fascinating, and he had even liked the sensation she made in the old humdrum town. Now, he could not think of her without a shudder. He felt as if she had pilloried him in the public square. He would never be able to endure the place again, nor the people in it. It was too small. Each man knew all about his neighbor’s business. He remembered hearing Judge Jessup say that he found it hard to live in such a “nosey” community. It even filled William with intolerant wrath when a group of little pickaninnies stopped playing to gaze, and he heard the loud stage whisper:

“Dat’s him!”

The husband of the woman for whom Corwin had been shot!

He plunged desperately into the basement of the court-house, and ascended the marble steps to a pair of swinging baize doors labeled in huge letters:

CRIMINAL COURT No. 1.

The room, a large one at the northeast corner of the old building, was crowded to suffocation. The windows were all open, and from them one could see the sunshine on the broad leaves of the mulberry-tree in the quadrangle. Judge Barbour, a cousin of the doctor’s, was on the bench, and William recognized a group of reporters below him, on one side. On the other side Daniel was challenging a juror, his face tense and one long forefinger pointing at the man.

William had not seen his brother in court for a long time, and he had a curious feeling that this white-faced, tense lawyer wasn’t his brother at all. It seemed to him that there had been a metamorphosis, that some magic had been at work, that this wasn’t lame Dan, the brother whom he had rather discounted. Here was a face so pre-eminently a face of power that William gaped at it, as the pickaninnies outside the court-house had gaped at him. He could feel, too, that Daniel was holding the crowded room, and that the men and boys on the window-sills, and out roosting in the mulberry branches that overlooked the court-room, were all drawn by the magic of his tongue.

Slowly, deliberately, using all his privilege of challenge, Daniel was picking his jury, while Judge Jessup, senior counsel for the defense, sat between Mr. Carter and the prisoner at the dock. Reluctantly, with a feeling of personal shame, William turned his eyes slowly toward his young brother—the boy who was suffering vicariously for him.

Leigh’s youth seemed appalling in that place. The boy, with his white face and his dark-ringed eyes, looked fifteen. He had a long lock of light brown hair that was usually tossed back from his white forehead—a Byronic effect that Leigh secretly cherished. It was hanging down now, limp and disheveled, and he kept clutching at his necktie with nervous fingers; but there was a light in his eyes, a singular light, as if he saw something inspiring and beautiful.

William tried to follow his glance, to discover what had inspired that rapt look, but the crowd was so great that he could not even get through it to sit beside his father. He found standing-room near the door, where he seemed to be unnoticed, and watched the proceedings with a growing feeling of shame that he was not in Leigh’s place.

Daniel was engaged now in a tilt with the commonwealth attorney, Major Haskins, a man who William knew had once quarreled with his father, and who was known to be vindictive. Haskins was flushed and excited, declaiming loudly, while Daniel, keeping his temper admirably, scored again and again. It was the case of a skilled toreador baiting a bull. Major Haskins, like the finest bulls in the arena, charged in a straight line, never swerving, and, like the toreador, Daniel dodged lightly on first one side and then the other, parrying the attack but goading the enemy.

Something in the extreme dexterity of the goading surprised William again.

“I didn’t know Dan had it in him,” he thought with an accession of unexpected pride in this taciturn brother, who had suffered so long and so silently. Then he heard an excited whisper from a woman in front of him.

“There she is—the dancer! Look—over to the right—they say she’s going on the stand!”

William shrank as if from a physical blow, and his sensitive egotism shivered. This, then, was to be his crowning humiliation, this crowd gathered to stare at his wife!

Of course Leigh had been looking at her; he might have known it. The boy was a fool about her, as he himself had been a fool. William felt an unbearable sensation of suffocation; the air of the crowded room was unfit to breathe. People had found him out, too. The companion of the woman who had whispered so loudly had spotted him. They were looking back covertly over their shoulders and talking in audible undertones.

“What d’you suppose he was doing?”

“That’s her husband—back there.”

“Not really! Oh, my——”

“Say! Pull Jenny’s dress——”

“She’ll want to see him.”

William turned, pushed past the men in the doorway, and almost staggered into the corridor. It was absolutely empty. Every living soul who could squeeze into the court-room had done so. A short flight of marble steps descended to a door which opened on the quadrangle and he could see the sunshine on the lowest step. He started down, bent on escape, and came face to face with Colonel Denbigh.

The old man, attired in a light gray summer suit with a white waistcoat and a broad straw hat, looked like the personification of an untroubled conscience. He held out a friendly hand.

“How are you, William? I came down to”—he hesitated and smiled gravely—“to give your father and Leigh my moral support. Can’t seem to do anything else, can I? Anything for you?” he added, after a moment’s farther hesitation.

William shook his head, turning a deep red.

“I ought to be in Leigh’s place,” he said chokingly, “but I’m worse off.”

The colonel gave him a keen look. It was impossible not to see that the young man’s position was heartrending, and he pitied him. At the same time he still felt a righteous indignation against Fanchon’s husband.

“By gum, it serves him right,” he thought.

Then he was so ashamed of himself that he shook hands with William again. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do.

“I’ll go and sit by your father—if I can get there,” he said kindly. “I hope your mother’s better. Bearing up, eh?”

“She’s better,” said William thickly, averting his eyes. “It’s intolerable to me, Colonel Denbigh, that she should have to suffer so about Leigh on my account. If the boy had only come straight to me!” he added with suppressed passion, his lip quivering suddenly like a woman’s on the verge of tears.

The colonel nodded his head thoughtfully.

“I know—but it’s spilt milk, William. We’ll hope for the best. They tell me Dan’s a smart fellow. Going to be the best lawyer in this town, Judge Jessup says. He’ll get his brother off.”

“That won’t save my face,” William replied bitterly, plunging abruptly down the steps and out into the quadrangle.

The colonel, left alone, stood a moment looking after him, considering him. Come to look at it, he thought, it was a pretty bad place—even for a lummox. He had always thought well of William, he had once imagined him as the possible husband of Virginia, but now——

The colonel tugged at his white mustache with a grim face. He was thinking of Virginia’s face on the stairs, the soft sadness of that profile.

“It can’t be that Jinny cares!” he cried indignantly under his breath.

Then, unable to endure the idea, he swung open the baize doors and worked his way into the crowded court-room. There was a little stir in it now, an air of relief. The twelfth juror had just been accepted.

XXIII

The trial dragged its way through the rest of the afternoon and all the next day, the colonel sitting dutifully beside his good friend, Johnson Carter. The old man leaned forward on his cane, an interested spectator, hoping in his heart that he was thus killing off any gossip about that old attachment between William Carter and his granddaughter. It was from him that Virginia got her news of the proceedings, and an account of Daniel as a lawyer.

“Say, Jinny, that boy’s as smart as a steel trap,” said the colonel delightedly. “If William had had half his gumption, he wouldn’t be in the fix he’s in now. You ought to see Dan get a jury. By gum, I had to laugh at the way he got Haskins on the hip every time. Got the indictment in the second degree, too, Jessup says.”

“It would have been terrible to try that boy for murder in the first degree,” said Virginia. “Why, grandpa, I don’t believe Major Haskins would do it.”

“Jinny, Haskins would indict his own grandmother for grand larceny if he thought it would get him a seat in the Legislature,” retorted the colonel with asperity. “I reckon I know Jim Haskins!”

At which Virginia had to laugh; but she felt very little like laughing as the trial dragged on. She went over twice to carry flowers, and what comfort she could to Mrs. Carter and Emily. The last time she regretted it, for Mrs. Carter lost her head and sobbed on the young comforter’s shoulder.

“Oh, Jinny, if William had only married you!” she gasped.

Virginia went away with a red face. It seemed to her that the thing pursued her, whichever way she turned. The rest of that day she devoted to close attention to the household affairs.

“I shan’t be home until late, Jinny,” her grandfather ’phoned her during the afternoon. “I reckon it’ll go to the jury to-day. Say, Jinny!”

“Yes, grandpa, I’m listening.”

“Mrs. William Carter’s going on the stand. Jinny, the court-room’s packed, just like sardines in a box. They’re sitting on the window-sills this minute. Don’t you wait dinner if I’m late.”

Virginia hung up the receiver with a pale face. She had heard an account of William in the corridor from her grandfather, and she had divined how William felt.

The old man’s robust anger against “that lummox” for spoiling his own life did not reach Virginia. She remembered William’s boyish figure trudging home from school with her books, William reading the “Iliad” with her, and William, when he told her that he loved her. It had all been a youthful affair. She knew that, so she told herself; but she could never quite forget it when she thought of him. She thought of it now, and tried in vain to picture him sitting there, helplessly, and hearing all the whispers and gossiping when his wife went on the stand to try to save his brother—for such a cause!

Virginia, who had been standing by the telephone, walked slowly across the room to a window that overlooked the town. It was a spot that showed the old place in its most homelike and friendly aspect, with its wreath of foliage—now, in midsummer, at the full height of its beauty—and its background of lovely hills. She could see from here the long gable of Dr. Barbour’s roof, and over there the chimneys of the Paysons’ more pretentious mansion. Behind the tall poplars was the Carter house, and yonder the cross-tipped spire of the church. Beyond these she caught a glimpse of a distant cupola, and knew it to be the apex of the court-house. A pleasant, warm haze hung in the summer atmosphere, and she could hear the tinkling bell on a passing peddler’s cart.

Virginia tried not to think. She did not want to think of William watching his wife go on the stand for such a cause; but as she leaned forward her hands gripped the window-sill until the delicate knuckles whitened.

She was still there when Lucas came driving back from town. He had taken the colonel to court in an antiquated rockaway that belonged in the family. He was returning alone now, with a number of bundles in the rockaway, topped by a large ripe watermelon. Virginia watched him drive in the gate and on to the stables.

Presently he came along on foot, with his watermelon on his shoulder. Virginia called to him.

“Where did you get your melon, Lucas?”

“Presen’ fo’ de col’nel, Miss Jinny.” Lucas turned his shoulder around for her to look at the melon. “Ain’t he a beauty! Sho’ he is! Mist’ Payson, he give him to me. He say: ‘Luke, yo’ take him to de col’nel fo’ a presen’.’”

Virginia admired the melon.

“Grandfather isn’t coming back until late,” she said. “Did he tell you when to come for him, Lucas?”

“No, Miss Jinny, he ain’t a comin’ till it’s over, I reckon. Yo’ oughter see dat court-house! Ain’t no gettin’ inter it. Mis’ Wilyum Carter, she testifyin’. Seems like it mus’ be motion-picture show, Miss Jinny. I saw Mist’ Wilyum Carter myse’f. He was goin’ in ayonnah, an’ he look—Miss Jinny, he look like one ob dese yere white-spine cucumbers—he ain’t got no more colluh ’cept green.”

“That’s all right, Lucas. Take that watermelon down to the kitchen and get Lucy to put it on ice. The colonel may want it when he comes home.”

“Yes, Miss Jinny, I sho’ will. I’s— Say, Miss Jinny, Mirandy, Miz Carter’s help, she say Mist’ Wilyum gwine to get divorcement.”

“Never mind about Miranda,” said Virginia hastily. “You get that melon out of the sun.”

“He ain’t gwine to get hurt in de sun, Miss Jinny. He’s jus’ ripe—yo’ heah him?” Lucas gave the melon a scientific tap. “Yo’ heah him? He’s all right, he sho’ is, Miss Jinny. Mirandy, she say Mist’ Carter—de ole man—he raise ruction ’bout it when Mist’ Leigh shoot dat man——”

“Lucas,” said Virginia, “I never listen to gossip. You take that melon to the kitchen!”

“Yes, Miss Jinny, yes, miss, I’s goin’, but Mirandy——”

Virginia thrust her fingers into her ears and retreated. Half laughing, half crying, she threw herself into a chair beside the piano. Her heart was beating stormily, and she hated herself for it. Then she lifted her eyes slowly, reluctantly, to the little picture of William as a child. It still hung beside her piano. The sight of it filled her mind with a strange tumult of thoughts; yet, strangely enough, the vision she saw most clearly was Daniel’s face of pain as she stood beside him, her hand on his shoulder. She blushed at the thought of it now.

At that very moment, when Virginia sat with her eyes hidden in her hands, trying to shut out the little tormenting imps that thrust that picture before her, a stranger scene was being staged in the old court-house. The court-room was so densely crowded that even the sweet summer air which came in through the open windows grew close and stifling. The window-sills were full, and the trees outside bore human fruit upon the branches that commanded the upper panes of those windows.

The crowd dimmed the light like a flock of locusts darkening the sun in the east, and some one had lit a green-shaded lamp on the recorder’s desk. The light from it flared up on the face of the prisoner—a pale, boyish face with girlish eyes. Near him sat his family. Mrs. Carter had summoned all her courage to be with her boy at the supreme moment, and Emily was there, too, with tearful eyes and a red nose, looking very unlike the Emily who had painted her lashes. Beside her sat William Carter, then his father and Colonel Denbigh.

William sat with his eyes down and his hands clenched on the arms of his chair. He never looked up, not even when Daniel and Judge Jessup scored a victory and got Mrs. William Carter’s testimony admitted as being relevant to the defense. Bernstein had already told his story—a story of the scandal, and of Corwin’s slanders.

Poor Mrs. Carter hardly dared to look up. She had a terrible sensation of sinking and falling through space, common to nightmare. William’s wife talked about like that! She put out a groping hand, caught Emily’s hot, moist fingers, and held them. They didn’t dare even to look at each other, and Emily sniffed hard to keep back the tears. It was the first time she had heard the details.

The prisoner went white; he realized suddenly that his reckless act had given the scandal huge publicity, that it was ruinous to the woman whom he had tried to defend. Humiliation swept over him, and he sank down in his chair, staring straight in front of him. Like William, he did not look up when Fanchon was called.

There was an expectant stir, followed by a hush. A small figure in black, with a huge hat and a floating veil, came slowly forward and took the oath. Judge Jessup stepped gallantly aside, and Daniel Carter, very pale, very relentless, took the witness.

For the first time William looked up. He looked persistently at his brother, and seemed to be trying to avoid looking at his wife; but he was aware of her, even before she began to answer Daniel’s terrible questions that seemed to drive straight into her past, to lay it open and set it, throbbing and pitiful and full of pain, before the jury, before the packed court-room, before the little world in which the Carters had always lived quiet and sober and respected.

At first William did not listen. He was filled with a blind fury that Daniel should do it, that his own brother should drag him out into public view as a young man who had made a fool of himself and married a dancer. Then her sweet, vibrating, captivating voice, with a French note in it and the spell of sex, reached him, and he had to listen.

First came the story of their marriage—he knew that; then the story of her birth and childhood—he knew that in part, and it was sad. The stillness in the room affected him. He began to feel the wave of sympathy rising. They liked her; she was winning them. Something stirred in his heart. His old passion for her was not yet cold, and that voice—that delightful, hurrying voice—he couldn’t shut it out. Reluctantly he raised his eyes.

Row upon row of faces! He had never seen so many faces. He knew many of them. His old friends and his acquaintances were there, and strangers. Then he heard Daniel’s voice, and it cut like a knife-thrust:

“And your first meeting with this man Corwin?”

William turned and looked at her then. The light from the little lamp on the recorder’s desk was playing strange tricks. It caught Fanchon’s face now and illuminated it—a face small and pale and piquant, with the eyes of a wild fawn, the adorable face that William had seen first in Paris—only a few months ago!

He gazed fixedly at it, breathing hard. The old spell laid hold of him, for she had turned and was looking at him. There was an appeal in that look, almost a cry for help, and it held him.

Then he heard her voice again, and he began to listen, in a dull way at first, and then with growing amazement, with rising fury. She was telling her story—her pitiful, sordid story. Women wept; but there was nothing touching in it to her husband. It was a revelation, a cruel, sordid revelation of a lie. She had lied to him and deceived him.

Pity died in his heart, the spell broke, he leaned back in his chair with folded arms and regarded her coldly and scornfully and bitterly. His look worked upon her like something alien and fierce and inimical; and she broke under it. At the very moment when it seemed as if she had planned it to work upon the jury, Fanchon broke down—broke down into pitiful, passionate tears.

An hour later—after Major Haskins had tried in vain to destroy her story—Daniel rose in his place, and simply, eloquently, without gesture or oratory, he made the plea that won him fame—a brother’s plea for a brother. So eloquent was it that Judge Jessup never spoke at all. There seemed nothing else to say.

Major Haskins summed up for the prosecution. He did it with acrimony, in the old way, tearing Fanchon’s past to pieces and fairly pinning the Carter family, like a lot of butterflies stuck on the board of the cruelest of naturalists, and leaving Mr. Carter gasping with mute fury. Then, at a late hour, Judge Barbour charged the jury, and William Carter rose, white as a sheet, and left the court-house.

Virginia, having eaten her dinner in solitary state, sat on the piazza waiting for her grandfather. It was late in August, and the sweet darkness fell early. She watched the earth grow darker and darker until the hilltops stood out, etched in black against a pale sky. Behind her the old house was dark except for the light in the hall, and silent except for the occasional sound of mellow laughter from the kitchen, where the negroes awaited their share of Mr. Payson’s prize watermelon.

Virginia sat very still as the night deepened. The air was full of delicate fragrance from the flower-beds below her feet. Far off at first, and then nearer at hand, the insects began their incessant clamor, which seemed only to make the stillness more complete by contrast. Above, the pale sky began to darken, and one by one the stars came out, softly obscured by clouds and shining through them, as the candles at an altar sometimes shine through a fog of incense.

Time passed; the old clock in the hall chimed. Virginia counted the strokes—ten. How late the colonel was! Then she heard the sound of wheels on the gravel outside the main gate, and Lucas drove the rockaway up to the front door. Her grandfather’s tall head appeared at the steps. He stopped to say a word to Lucas and then came slowly up. Not until then did Virginia rise from her corner.

“Grandpa—is it over?”

He was startled; then he smiled, taking off his hat.

“How cool it is out here—we were baked down-town! I reckon I’ll sit with you, Jinny.”

“Have you dined? Mr. Payson sent a watermelon; it’s on ice for you.”

“I dined with Payson down-town. No, let the watermelon wait. What did you say, Jinny? No, it isn’t over. We waited, but they’ve locked up the jury for the night, so I came home.”

Virginia, who had dropped into her seat again, was trying to be calm.

“There’s a disagreement, then?”

The colonel nodded thoughtfully.

“I reckon there is. Haskins made a big fight, Jinny, but”—the old man drew a long breath—“by gum, I’ve heard that girl’s story—Fanchon’s. She told it on the stand!”

He stopped, drawing a deep breath. He seemed to be contemplating something amazing. Virginia said nothing. She clasped her hands tightly in her lap, looking not at him but at the constellation in front of her. It happened to be the Scorpion, and she began to count the stars silently.

“By gum!” said the colonel again.

Plato came to the door.

“Col’nel, have a julep, suh, or dat watermelon?”

“Nothing at all; I’m not hungry.”

The colonel waved him away; then he turned to Virginia and told her Fanchon’s story. He told it better than she could have hoped to have him tell it.

“She hasn’t been a bad girl, Jinny. That was a relief to me. Haskins tried to slur her, but Daniel brought it out point by point. Married at fifteen, and her old aunt swore that she was eighteen to get money out of it, by gum!”

Virginia, who had listened with emotion, shivered.

“I think it was cruel, grandfather, to make her tell it.”

The old man nodded.

“Not to save Leigh, though. Lordy, Jinny, I never saw Leigh look younger, except that day I caught him with the lollypop. It ought to save him.” He added reluctantly, with a fine sense of justice: “Jinny, I can’t blame William. He got up and left the court. Mr. Carter told me about it. He never knew a darned thing about his wife being a divorced woman, nor about Corwin, nor anything. She lied to him, Jinny.” The colonel leaned back and thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat. “I’m kind of sorry for him. He’s going to get a divorce, so they say; but the girl—Fanchon, I mean—she’s tried to save Leigh, and she’s about ruined herself. Jinny, I felt as if it was heroic. I—by gum, come inside, I can’t stand those crickets to-night! They’re on my nerves—shouting ‘Here again, here again!’ Jinny, I’m sorry for them all, but I’m a darned sight sorrier for the girl!”

XXIV

“Leigh’s acquitted!” Judge Jessup, with a flushed face, bent over to whisper it to Mrs. Carter.

In the crowd and confusion of the court-room she seemed too dazed to hear the foreman of the jury as he answered the judge’s interrogation. She looked up at the old lawyer, her lip quivering like a child.

“Oh, judge! Really and truly?”

He nodded, swallowing a lump in his throat, for Mrs. Carter collapsed, crying like a baby on Emily’s shoulder, and Judge Jessup found it a moving spectacle. He had once had a devoted mother himself.

There was a crowd around Leigh, old friends and sympathizers, and—to Mr. Carter’s horror—newspaper reporters. It made the perspiration stand out in beads on his forehead.

“Heavens, I should think we’d had enough without that,” he groaned inwardly, and then he caught sight of his eldest son’s face.

William was standing behind Leigh, his arms folded and his eyes down. It seemed to his father that he had never seen such wreckage in a young man’s face before. It was as hard as flint. The square jaws were set and the brows bent. William had been drinking the cup of humiliation to the dregs.

“Serves him right,” his father thought hotly, and then: “She’s saved Leigh!”

That sent a thrill of remorse through him, and his eyes followed the line of reporters, which led, like a trail of ants after a dead beetle, straight to the small figure in black on the other side of the court-room. Mr. Carter, perspiring freely and with a sinking heart, beheld his daughter-in-law.

Fanchon was as white as William, but those lovely, fawn-like eyes were soft, appealing, almost childlike. She scarcely heeded the reporters. She seemed unwilling to speak to any one, and, as Mr. Carter looked at her, she began to make her way toward Leigh.

There was a little hum of excited comment as she moved, and the light grace and beauty of the small, black-clad figure had never been more marked. She wore the same big, black hat, and her veil, floating from the wide brim, formed a shadowy background for the small, pointed face—the face that had never shown more fully than it did at that moment its subtle, tantalizing, inimitable charm. Mr. Carter saw it reluctantly, and Leigh saw it with boyish devotion as she came up. They said little. She gave both her small hands to the boy.

“Dear, dear Leigh!” she whispered, a sob in her throat.

“Oh, Fanchon!”

That was all he could gasp out, his eyes too misted to see the beauty of hers. Their hands clung together.

“Dear boy!” Fanchon murmured. “I can’t thank you—you believed in me! I shall remember—toujours, toujours!”

He wrung her hands. Then some one else came up to speak to him, and she passed on.

Turning from Leigh, she came face to face with her husband. For a moment she seemed to hold her breath. In the crowd no one saw them but Daniel, who had just come back to sit by his mother and Emily. Fanchon stood still, and her hand went to her side with an involuntary gesture of pain. For an instant she looked at William, but he never raised his eyes. He stood motionless, looking down. There was no sign that he was even aware of her, except a perceptible hardening of the mouth. She turned away blindly, dropping her veil over her face, and started toward the door.

Daniel pressed his mother’s arm.

“Mother, you ought to thank Fanchon. She saved Leigh. It’s been terrible for her.”

“Me? Oh, I can’t!” Mrs. Carter’s lip trembled worse than ever. “It—it wouldn’t do any good.”

“Mother! Don’t you understand? She saved Leigh.”

Mrs. Carter started to her feet.

“Oh, Dan, I’ll—I’ll try!” she stammered.

Daniel seized her arm and led her toward her daughter-in-law. They had to push through the crowd to a side door behind the witness-stand, for Fanchon had already reached it. Her veil was down, and, as Daniel spoke her name, she stood motionless, waiting. There was a difficult moment, and then Mrs. Carter’s tremulous, frightened voice:

“Dan says you saved my boy——”

She stopped. Fanchon had lifted her veil with a tragic gesture and looked at Mrs. Carter, passionate scorn in her beautiful eyes. For a moment she said nothing. Her whole form seemed to quiver from head to foot; then her pale lips moved at first without words.

“I didn’t do it for you,” she said bitterly at last, “nor for your son, nor for any of you—only for Leigh! Adieu, madame!”

She turned with a gesture at once tragic and beautiful, the gesture of an actress, made passionate by the bitterness of a woman.

A bailiff held the door open for her, looking after her admiringly and curiously, but without deference. Daniel and his mother, watching her, saw the small black figure disappear down the long corridor, saw it silhouetted a moment against the daylight at some distant door, and then it was gone.

“Oh, Dan, take me home!” gasped Mrs. Carter. “I haven’t done anything wrong, but I—I feel like a pickpocket. She makes me feel that way!”

Daniel made no reply. He was aware, at the moment, that his father, bent on getting Leigh home, was fighting his way out with the boy. Judge Jessup had ’phoned for two taxis, as one would not hold the reunited Carters.

“The jury couldn’t agree at first,” the judge explained joyfully; “but Fanchon’s story did it. When they talked it over, they agreed on acquittal. Good thing, eh?”

He tried to be jovial, for he saw the strain, and he was glad when the two loaded taxis disappeared in the dust of the highroad. It seemed to him that, as a family, they were not joyful.

“Willie looks like a death’s head at the feast,” the old man thought, and turned to shake hands with Colonel Denbigh. “I didn’t do it. No, sir, Daniel Carter did. He’s the coming man. You watch him, Colonel.”

Colonel Denbigh nodded thoughtfully.

“I’ll back Dan,” he said. “But how about that poor girl, Jessup?”

The judge pursed his lips.

“William’s going to get a divorce. Do you reckon he realizes that she gave up everything to save his brother? He’s turning her out for it, eh? Looks that way, far as I can see.”

“By gum!” said the colonel softly, and he averted his eyes.

There was a pause, and then the two old friends went silently over to the club for luncheon.

Meanwhile the Carters had taken Leigh home. Distributed in two taxicabs they arrived in a state of suppressed emotion difficult to describe; but, once in the house, the ice thawed. For the second time Mrs. Carter became hysterical, Emily wept on his neck, and Miranda started in on a wild effort to make preserved cherry tarts in time for luncheon.

Awaiting this event, all the members of the family gathered in the library, sitting around Leigh in a semicircle and looking at him, much as they might have gazed at a wanderer rescued from the perils of some distant and unknown clime. Leigh, who had been thoroughly lectured by his father on the way home, looked limp and white. He sat in Mr. Carter’s large chair and clung to the arms with his thin, white hands, the lock falling low on his forehead and the rims of his eyes suspiciously red. Mr. Carter, trembling with joy at his son’s release, had nevertheless exploded with long-suppressed wrath.

“You’ve had a lesson now, young man,” he had said hoarsely. “Mind you profit by it. If I catch you with shooting-irons again, I’ll lam you for it if you’re as big as the house!”

Leigh, who had indeed had a bitter experience, had made no reply. He was aware of Daniel’s significant silence on the other side. It was a painful moment, only alleviated by his mother’s fond ecstasy and Emily’s sobs. Those two, at least, were glad to get him back on any terms.

Now, in the library, he sat looking about at the family circle with a feeling of pitiful embarrassment. It was almost worse than sitting in the dock. He lifted his eyes reluctantly and found his father still explosive between relief and long-bottled anger. His mother and Emily were still sniffing, while Daniel was engaged at the table, making some notes.

In the corner, alone and morose, sat William. Leigh turned his eyes that way only once. He found his brother’s haggard face unpleasant to look at. He sat again with his eyes down, moving one foot occasionally, or gripping nervously at the arms of his chair.

Miranda came to the door, her brown face wreathed in smiles.

“Lunch is ready, Mis’ Carter, an’ dem tarts came out right smart, yes’m!”

Mrs. Carter rose and laid her hand on Leigh’s shoulder.

“Come, darling,” she said fondly. “We’ve got a nice lunch and some cherry tarts for you.”

The boy rose awkwardly, and his mother led him along, clinging to him, doting upon him, while the rest of the family trailed in the rear. As they entered the dining-room, Leigh counted the places.

“Sit right down here beside mamma,” cooed his mother, patting the chair on her right. “I’ve got lamb chops and green peas—just for you, dear!”

Leigh stood with his hand on the back of his chair, and glanced questioningly up and down the table.

“Where’s Fanchon?” he asked in a low voice.

There was that kind of silence that seems to be audible. It was Mr. Carter who answered him, frowning heavily.

“She left us some time ago,” he said shortly. “I wish you to know, Leigh, that—this family’s done with her. Understand?”

Leigh caught his breath, and his mouth fell open. He stared at William, but William was looking down at his plate. The only sign he gave of having heard his father’s remark was the deep red flush that went up to his hair. Leigh remained standing, though his mother clutched at his sleeve.

“Sit down, dear,” she whispered.

“Father,” he said in his high, boyish voice, his lips shaking, “she saved me. Where is she?”

“Sit down,” said Mr. Carter with an impatient gesture. “We’ll talk of that another time.”

He fixed an irate eye on his son, and the boy collapsed into his chair; but he scarcely tasted his food, nor did William eat more than a few mouthfuls. The two played with their forks and avoided looking at each other.

Leigh was panting with anger against William. He understood now what had happened. William was deserting Fanchon because of Leigh’s act. Instead of protecting her, he had ruined her. The boy could not eat. His food strangled him. Mrs. Carter hurried on the cherry tarts, and Miranda bore them in on a tray, her face beaming.

“Look, Leigh!” cried his mother. “Miranda made these for you.”

The boy raised his shy eyes to the cook’s face.

“You’re very good to me, Miranda,” he managed to say.

Miranda, with her quick racial sympathy, nearly dropped the tray.

“I declar’ to goodness if he ain’t gwine to cry in those tarts fo’ sho’!” she said to herself and cast an anxious look at Mrs. Carter’s troubled face.

At this juncture, William, who felt himself to be a death’s head at the feast, rose abruptly and left the room. A moment later the startled family heard the front door close behind him. Emily slipped out of her seat and ran to the window, coming back just as Miranda returned to the kitchen.

“He’s gone to the Denbighs,” Emily announced in a stage whisper in her mother’s ear. “I just knew he would.”

“Oh, Emmy, hush!” Mrs. Carter said, looking shocked.

“He’s gone there—I watched him,” said Emily, helping herself to more cherry tarts.

More might have followed but for the fortunate return of Miranda. As she came back, Daniel, having finished his meal, rose slowly and started for the door.

“Dan,” said his father, looking around at him for the first time. “Jessup says you won the case. He thinks you’re a great lawyer. I’m proud of you, my son!”

Daniel’s face flushed; he understood the break in the older man’s voice.

“Thank you,” he said simply. “I’m sorry I had to do what I did.”

His father nodded his head gravely.

“You finished her. It was a bit cruel, but it had to be done.”

Daniel’s flush deepened. He seemed about to speak, then hesitated and said nothing. They heard him slowly ascending the stairs to his room.

“He’s going to be a great lawyer, papa,” said Mrs. Carter with a flash of pleasure.

Mr. Carter nodded his head gravely, assenting, his eyes on Leigh.

Daniel went heavily up-stairs to his room. He tried not to think of what Emily had said, but he couldn’t shut it out of his mind. His thoughts kept hovering back to it, like wretched singed moths making their last fascinated plunge for the flame of the candle; the plunge that was sure to take their remaining wings off.

He shut the door of his room and walked slowly across to the window opposite. He had had this room from his boyhood. At first he had shared it with William, but the elder brother had been promoted to a better apartment when he began to succeed at Payson’s. Through long months of illness, after the fall that lamed him, Daniel had remained in the small upper room where the slant of the gable made a queer triangle that couldn’t be decorated. The furniture was simple enough and rather sparse, but he had put up some bookshelves for himself, and they were well filled now with books on common law. Still hanging beside the bed was the picture of Virginia that he had taken from the library; but he did not look at it now.

He went to the window and opened the shutters wide, disclosing a square of sky where the white clouds floated; but he did not look up. In spite of himself he looked down. His window commanded a view of Denbigh Crossing, and involuntarily his eyes turned in that direction. He saw nothing but the thick foliage of a group of chestnuts, and the winding road disappearing under the arches of their wide branches.

He stood for some time looking gloomily at the prospect. He knew intuitively how his brother felt. William wanted to grovel in the dirt at Virginia’s feet and beg her pardon; but would he dare to do it? Daniel remembered Virginia sitting at the piano with the childish face of William in its frame above her head. Daniel had never doubted that she loved his brother.

Then the scene in the court-room came back to him, and Fanchon’s small, quivering face. It had wrung his heart to drag her story from her, even to save Leigh; but he had done it—without mercy, too. And now——

His thoughts broke off suddenly, for the door opened, and Leigh came in and shut it behind him. The boy was white and shaken. He put out an unsteady hand and clutched at the back of a chair.

“Dan,” he said hoarsely, “what have they done to her? Where’s Fanchon?”

Daniel laid his hand on his shoulder.

“Sit down, Leigh,” he said kindly.

The boy obeyed him awkwardly. He sat there staring at his own feet, unwilling to look at his brother.

“Leigh,” said Daniel, “it’s none of our business—it’s William’s.”

“They’ve quarreled, and it’s not her fault. You know it, Dan. We’ve all been dreadful to her!”

Daniel, who was still standing, looking down at him, was silent a moment; then he spoke slowly.

“I think you’re right, Leigh, we have been; but there’s another side to this. She wouldn’t tell me where she was staying. She came to court for your sake, but she’s done with the rest of us, Leigh.”

Leigh flared up.

“Emmy says William’s going to divorce her and marry Virginia Denbigh!”

Daniel went white.

“Emily has no right to say that.” Involuntarily his hands clenched at his sides, but he gripped himself. “You’ve had a lesson, Leigh. You keep your hands off!”

The boy rose sullenly, his face still flushed.

“I owe her everything,” he said.

“Not quite,” Daniel retorted dryly. “You owe something to Judge Jessup and the jury.”

Leigh seemed to be deaf to this. He went sulkily to the door and opened it.

“I think William’s a brute,” he remarked in a low voice. “She loves him—I know she loves him, and she’s his wife!”

He went out and slammed the door.

XXV

Virginia hung up the telephone receiver with an expression of keen relief. She had just heard of Leigh’s acquittal.

“Dan got him off!” the colonel told her jubilantly. “I knew he would! Say, Jinny, I shan’t be home for lunch; going over to the club with Payson and Jessup.”

Virginia smiled to herself. She knew how the old man would enjoy it, and she did not care for any luncheon herself. She told Plato so, half an hour later. The old man retired grumbling.

“’Deed, Miss Jinny, yo’ be sick. I’m gwine to tell de col’nel!” But she only laughed at him. She was, in fact, too nervous to eat. It seemed as if food would choke her.

She knew everything that had taken place in that court-house almost as well as if she had been there. The colonel had been very vivid in his talk, and she had spoken once over the ’phone with Mrs. Carter and once with Emily. On all these occasions she had heard the amazing fact that Fanchon’s story on the stand had been a surprise to her husband. In other words, poor William had been deceived, Mrs. Carter declared, by a designing little minx, and his life ruined! This cry of maternal anguish went to the listener’s heart, for Virginia had known William from childhood, and she understood, even more keenly than his mother, the humiliation he had suffered in court.

She moved restlessly about the house, trying not to think of it. She had gathered flowers in the morning, and could not make the garden another means of diverting her mind, so she tried to answer some long-neglected letters.

This failed her, too, after a while, and she went into the old drawing-room, which at this hour was carefully shaded from the sun. Opening a shutter, she let in a flood of golden light. It shot across the room like the fiery lance of a crusader, its radiant tip striking on the ivory keys of her old piano. Virginia walked in it, watching the light catch on the white folds of her skirt. She sat down dreamily at the piano and began to play. She played without her notes, and unconsciously her fingers strayed into old, half-forgotten tunes.

She began to be quite happy. She had not played these tunes for years, and they brought back pictures, fragmentary bits of things, and voices and laughter. She had played that one for a dance when her grandfather had given her a birthday party at seventeen, and this one for old Judge Jessup because his wife used to like it. This was the one that William liked. She played it affectionately and lingeringly. She liked it herself, for it was old-fashioned and sweet and mellow, without being great music. She smiled a little over it. She knew that Judge Jessup, who liked good music, would call it “a finger-and-thumb exercise.”

She was still playing it when it seemed to her that her bit of sunshine had grown dim, or was being obscured by some shadow, and she looked up. William Carter was standing beside her. The wide front doors were open in the warm summer day. He had entered unheralded, and he was standing there quietly, looking down at Virginia, mute as a graven image, and nearly as pale.

She was taken unawares, terribly unawares, and her slender fingers made a little discord before they fell from the keys. She turned a startled face toward him, paling and then flushing, her lips tremulous.

“William!” she exclaimed softly, almost below her breath. “How you startled me!”

“I’ve no right to be here,” he exclaimed bitterly. “I’ve felt that ever since I crossed the threshold and saw you sitting here—as you used to sit here with me, Virginia.”

Her lips were still trembling, but she was recovering from the surprise. She rose from the piano and went to a more distant chair, which stood a little in the shadow. She did not want him to see her face too plainly.

“Sit down, William,” she said pleasantly, suppressing the quiver in her voice. “I’ve just heard the news over the ’phone. I’m so happy about Leigh!”

He did not sit down. He began, instead, to march up and down the room, his hands behind him and his head bowed gloomily.

“I’m glad about Leigh, too,” he replied grimly. “He’s my brother—and I ought to have been in his place! I’m glad, but——”

He broke off, and continued his pacing. Virginia was startled again, this time painfully. Her heart sank; she began to dread what he might say next. She saw that he was almost beside himself. Old memories rushed back, too—old, touching, tender, and intimate things. This was the man she had once promised to marry, the man who had professed to love her so much. It seemed to her that she had a moment of clairvoyance. She knew the thoughts that must be thronging into his mind, too. She was human, she was aware that he had repented, that he had had bitter cause to repent; but she tried not to think of that.

At last he stopped short and stood looking at her, his face as deeply flushed as it had been pale. She made an effort to speak, but it seemed impossible, and she averted her eyes. It was true, she knew now that it was true—Fanchon had deceived him. The whole miserable tragedy that had crossed her own life, as well as his, was laid bare before her. She could not look at him; she felt a tightening in her throat.

“Listen”—he was still standing in front of her, a grim figure of anger and despair—“I want to tell you the truth. I must tell you, Virginia——”

She stopped him with an involuntary gesture of protest.

“Oh, William, how can you?” she cried softly, reproachfully.

She had lifted her clear eyes to his, unshadowed and beautiful. He flinched from the look, and suddenly he was dumb. He turned with a poignant gesture of pain, averting his face.

Virginia rose from her chair and walked to the window. She was no longer flushed; she was very pale. Her breath was coming short, but her eyes were clear and luminous as she looked out on the old familiar garden, with its box-bordered flower-beds and the wicker table under the old horse-chestnut. She could almost see the tall, white head of her grandfather.

She thought, at the moment, that she saw more than that. There was also a vision of her father—a good man, too, and her mother. They had been noble-minded—as noble-minded as her grandfather was to-day. In his simple, kindly old-fashioned way, Colonel Denbigh was a gentleman, and Virginia knew it.

She clung to the window-sill, her hands trembling. She had a woman’s heart, she was very human—William had come back! How some women would have triumphed in a rival’s misfortune!

Then she heard his voice.

“I’ve done wrong—everything has been tragic and terrible. It’s almost too much to ask, but—Virginia, can you forgive me?”

For a moment Virginia could not speak. She did not even look at him. She was looking far across the lawn toward the white road that led to the town; but she saw nothing. Her eyes misted. The break in his voice touched her; it hurt her to hear it. She pitied him, yet there was a change in her. She had not known it until this moment, but now she knew it. It was as if she had seen through a glass darkly, and now the veil was withdrawn, and she looked into a clear mirror and beheld her own image as it really was. Nothing could ever be the same again, nothing could be as it had been before, because her eyes were open.

“Did you hear me, Virginia!” he said hoarsely. “Will you forgive me?”

She lifted her eyes reluctantly to his again, turning from white to red, but her lips no longer trembled.

“I forgive you, William,” she replied gently, and she held out her hand.

He took it and held it a moment while he searched her eyes. Then he turned and made his way blindly out of the room and out of the house.

He walked heavily down the driveway to the old gates. An impulse had brought him—an impulse that he had been too broken to resist. Now, in its reaction, he despised his own weakness. What right had he to worry Virginia? But his mind was still in conflict; he could no longer think concisely or even clearly. Like a man in a dream he walked out of the gates and turned into the road toward town.

The look in Virginia’s eyes, the look that had roused him, came back to him only dimly. It was obscured by the scene that haunted him—the scene in the court-room. He could see the crowd of staring faces again, the judge on the bench, judicial and disinterested, the flushed, scowling countenance of the prosecuting attorney, the jury—and Daniel! How coolly his brother had stood in that heated, tense atmosphere! How his eyes had kindled and his voice pleaded for the boy’s life! For jail would have been a living death to one so young.

Leigh rose before him, too. He could see the boy’s beautiful face and his girlish eyes, and the change in him, the terrible change. The look of a man—a man who has killed—was in those young eyes!

William drew his breath hard. Her work, he thought bitterly! And yet how she haunted him! He could see more plainly than anything else her small, white face with its pointed chin and its fawn-like eyes. He could hear her voice, sweet and hurrying and light, with the spell of sex in it—how it haunted him, too! But he was done with her. He set his teeth hard and clenched his hand, walking on.

He walked blindly. A taxi passed, but he was unaware of it. He never looked up, he looked down into the dust of the road, for his heart was heavy and bitter. He was done with her!

Fanchon, who had hidden in the corner of the taxi that he might not see her, leaned forward now and looked out. She was on her way to the refuge she had found in the country—a poor, desolate place, but all that she could pay for—more than she could pay for, if the truth be told. She felt ill and weak, and she must go somewhere—anywhere, away from the Carters. There was fever in her blood and her lips were dry, but her brilliant, restless eyes looked out after the figure in the road.

She had seen him come out of the Denbigh gates!

She had thought of this, she had pictured it. If he got a divorce, he would marry Virginia—she never doubted that Virginia would take him. And now, now when it seemed to her that it was already on its way to accomplishment, she sank back into her corner aghast.

She lifted a shaking hand and pushed back the soft hair from her forehead. It was a helpless, thoughtless gesture, but she had pulled off her gloves, and the light caught the rings on her fingers. Suddenly she saw her wedding-ring—William’s ring. She held out her small hand and stared at it, choking back the sob in her throat. She remembered the look in his eyes when he had put that ring on her finger. How he had loved her then!

A passion of tears and rage swept over her, and she cowered back in the taxi, weeping and beating the air with her small hands clenched. They had taken him away from her, they had made him hate her, and this girl—this girl with the superior look and the calm, sweet face—she would have him! That was the bitterest drop in Fanchon’s cup of gall. It was that which set her to shaking and choking with rage and grief. William had passed her, he had not even looked at her. He had been to see Virginia!

Fanchon stared at the ring on her finger. It seemed to fascinate her.

Then she became aware of the laboring sound of the taxi. They were traveling along a rough road. Here it was ascending, and the motor-engine puffed and bellowed, and wheezed like a whale in a trough of the sea. She leaned forward and looked out again. The road led through a wood. She could discern the slender stems of young trees in ever increasing ranks. Ahead of them a stream ran down to a bridge.

The sight of the water dashing over the stones brought a new purpose to mind. She called to the chauffeur.

“Stop! I want to get out here.”

He slowed down and stopped the machine, looking surprised. Fanchon opened the door and sprang lightly to the ground.

“Wait,” she said quickly, authoritatively. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

The man stared, but he waited obediently. He had an idea that the lady was a little eccentric; but she was a beauty, and she was famous. He had been delighted to drive off with her in his cab. He leaned out now and watched her surreptitiously; but she had turned into the brush, and he lost sight of her small figure. She was so small that she was easily lost in the low growth of sumac.

Fanchon knew that he was watching her. She checked an impulse to go straight down to the brook in plain sight of the road. She turned, instead, and followed a path that led her to a still pool. The water was clear, and she could see the pebbles in the sandy bottom. It was scarcely a foot deep, but the place was hidden, and it would serve her purpose well.

She stepped out on a stone at the edge of the pool, and stood a moment staring down into it, panting a little, her lips moving. Her small, black-clad figure, her white face, and her wild, beautiful eyes had a startling effect. There was something sylvan about her, and the sylvan landscape framed her well; but she had, too, the look of a sorceress weaving a spell.

Slowly, deliberately, as if she performed a rite, she drew the wedding-ring off her finger, held it aloft a moment, and then, with a gesture more eloquent than words, she flung it into the pool.

“C’est fini!” she cried, choking and sobbing.

It sank to the bottom, but it was not hidden. It lay there sideways, glittering. A fugitive ray of sunlight, striking the surface of the still water, found it and made merry with it. It sent a glint out of the gold like a flash of laughter in a dark place; it danced upon it and rippled over it—and then a tadpole disturbed the pool.

Fanchon, still shaking, still filled with jealousy and misery, stared at the ring. It seemed to her that it mocked her, that it called her an outcast, that it laughed her to scorn. Her wedding-ring, the tangible sign of the link that bound her to William—how it flashed and glittered! Not even water hid it.

Her lips twitched painfully, not with mirth but with anguish, and she covered her eyes with her hands. Shutting the sight of it out thus, she stumbled back to the path.

She had scarcely tasted food that day, and she felt suddenly faint and dizzy; but she set her small white teeth on her lip, and her great eyes smoldered dangerously. She was wildly angry again now. She ran along the path and had almost reached the end of it when she wavered, then stopped short and stared at her hands.

That third finger felt unnatural. It seemed to grin at her—white and bare as a bone. She felt for her gloves, and could not find them. She leaned against a tree and clasped her finger with her small, bare hands. In her agony of mind she clutched and tore at the bark until the blood came. The cut in the flesh roused her; she drew a deep breath and looked back.

“Mon Dieu!” she murmured softly, and then: “Non, non, I cannot—I cannot!”

So she went back slowly, reluctantly, as if she was drawn against her will. She went all the way to the edge of the pool and looked into it. Yes, it was there—her ring! How it gleamed at her! So might the eye of the serpent have gleamed in triumph at Eve in the Garden of Eden.

She couldn’t resist it. She stooped and picked up a stick. Creeping out on the stone again, she tried to fish up her ring with the stick; but it went deeper; it seemed to wink at her and dodge her, burrowing into the sand. With a cry of anguish, Fanchon dropped to her knees, half in the water, and plunged her arm into the pool, digging into the sand with her fingers. Joy and relief shot through her heart when she felt the hard metal loop again. She had it!

She staggered to her feet, holding it tight, but she wouldn’t put it back on her finger. She knotted it into her wet handkerchief and thrust it into her bosom. Then, blindly, weeping and shaken and dripping, she made her way back to the waiting taxi.

XXVI

Colonel Denbigh was pleasantly detained at the club luncheon. He went home in a taxi late in the afternoon, only about half an hour before his own dinner-time. Plato met him in the hall.

“Miss Jinny ain’t eaten no lunch, no suh, an’ now she’s up in her room. She say she’s got headache, an’ not to wait dinner.”

The colonel deposited his broad-brimmed hat on the table.

“Anybody been here to see me to-day, Plato?”

The old negro shook his head.

“No, suh. Mist’ Wilyum Carter, he came in to see Miss Jinny, but he’s gone ’bout two hours ago.”

A strange expression flitted across the colonel’s face, but he did not show it to his faithful factotum.

“Serve dinner on time, Plato,” he said gravely. “I don’t expect company—lunched in town with Judge Jessup and Mr. Payson.”

“Yessuh, so Miss Jinny tole me. Great trial, suh! Mirandy, Miz Carter’s collud girl, she ’phoned me ’bout it. She say she got so excited she went out in de yard an’ killed the wrong hen fo’ dinner. She killed de bes’ layer dey got, an’ Mist’ Carter he mos’ throw a fit. She say he’s gwine to make Mist’ Wilyum git a divorcement——”

“Plato,” bellowed the colonel, “how often have I got to tell you to stop gossiping? You quit it and get my dinner ready, or I’ll kill you instead of Mrs. Carter’s hen! Hear me?”

Plato giggled disgracefully, but he retired toward the dining-room door.

“Colonel Colfax he used to say——”

“Shut up!” shouted Colonel Denbigh, making for the stairs.

Plato withdrew slowly, still mumbling, and the colonel went up to Virginia’s room. He hesitated an instant, and then he knocked at the door.

“Got a bad headache, Jinny?”

She answered without opening the door.

“Very bad, grandpa. Don’t wait dinner—I don’t want any.”

“I’ll ’phone for Dr. Barbour,” he suggested anxiously. “How about it, Jinny?”

“No, no! It’s just a little headache from the sun. Any news, grandpa?”

The colonel, outside the closed door, stood with his hand at his chin, thinking.

“Not much, Jinny. I ’phoned everything I could, didn’t I? Dan made a great figure at the trial, and Leigh’s home now—I reckon Mrs. Carter’s got him packed in cotton-batting by this time. There’s one thing—I saw myself——” He hesitated, listening, but there was no interrogation from the other side of the door. “I saw William Carter ignore his wife in open court—after the verdict. It—well, Jinny, it stuck in my throat.”

There was a significant silence. He heard the slight stir of some one in the room; he thought that Virginia had been lying down and had suddenly sat up.

“I don’t think it was just right,” she said at last, in a faint voice. “He was here this afternoon, and he told me—he says she’s left him for good.”

The colonel, outside the door, gritted his teeth a moment in silence, very red in the face.

“The lummox!” he muttered under his breath at last.

“What did you say, grandpa?”

“I didn’t say anything, Jinny. I only thought something. I thought something not quite polite.”

“Oh!”

Again he heard the faint stir of her movements on the other side of the door.

“The girl looked like death,” he said bluntly. “She’d been through a terrible ordeal. It—I tell you what, Jinny, it looked darned cowardly!”

There was no reply to this, not even the rustle of Virginia’s garments. The colonel waited, rubbing his chin. At last he thought it better to leave something to her imagination.

“Have a bottle of ginger ale, Jinny? It’ll do your head good.”

She laughed hysterically. He could hear it. It was a musical laugh, but it was full of tears. His hand clenched.

“You get better!” he called to her. “I want you to drive up the mountain to-morrow and look at Colonel Russell’s mare. He wants to sell her for a lady’s saddle-horse. I reckon you’d like her, Jinny. It’ll take you about half the day. You can lunch with Mrs. Barbour. The doctor met me in town to-day, and he said his wife wanted you out to luncheon at the farm to-morrow.”

There was a rustle this time.

“I think I’ll go. Thank you, grandpa. You’re an angel—I mean about the horse.”

The old man cackled.

“Not in any other way, eh, Jinny?”

“You go to your dinner! You’ll get no compliments here,” she called back gaily.

But it was a tremulous gaiety. The old man knew it, and he suspected the headache. He went slowly and thoughtfully down-stairs. Dinner was already served in the quaint dining-room, Plato standing erect and black as ebony behind the colonel’s chair. The old man glanced contentedly at the white damask and the old-fashioned service.

“What have you got for dinner, Plato?” he asked as he sat down.

Plato went over a modest menu.

“Got some deviled crabs, col’nel. Yessuh, got ’em dis mornin’ when yo’ was in court—bigges’ crabs I’s seen dis season.”

The colonel considered.

“Plato, you take a deviled crab up to Miss Jinny’s room. If she doesn’t eat it, I’ll ’phone for Dr. Barbour.”

Unconsciously, the colonel was applying Miranda’s panacea for all human ills. Inwardly he was exceeding wroth with William Carter. His wrath and his fears continued well into the next morning, until he saw Virginia, pale but smiling, seated in the old wagonette, and Lucas driving sedately down the roadway to the gate. The colonel observed their departure with an anxious eye.

He was not sure now that Virginia cared. She was pale, but she was holding her own. The idea that William Carter had dared to come straight back—after that trial and all!

“The lummox!” the colonel growled under his breath. “The cowardly lummox—he knew I was out.”

Meanwhile, Lucas was driving slowly along the turnpike down which Fanchon had galloped, followed by Corwin—on his way, as it turned out, to his death; for that ride had led straight to the climax in the upper room of the inn. As it transpired later on, both Virginia and Lucas were thinking of it as the colonel’s slow old horses trotted along under the spreading branches of the great trees which stood like sentinels on either side of the wide road.

At this late season the foliage was dense and a little dusty, while here and there a sumac waved the first red flag of autumn, or a gum-tree stood like a flame in the midst of a grove of cedars. Virginia was watching a cardinal-bird winging its crimson flight from branch to branch when she heard Lucas accost a passing friend and then fall to chuckling—the succulent, suggestively happy chuckle of the negro. Lucas had never acquired the silent elegance of Mrs. Payson’s coachman. He was an old family servant, and he had known Virginia from her childhood. He chuckled now, touching the off horse with the mildly provoking tip of his whip.

“See dat nigger, Miss Jinny? He works at Miz Quantah’s place. He’s gwine courtin’, sho’s yo’re born!”

Virginia, who had lost sight of the red bird, glanced down the road after the retreating form of a middle-aged negro attired in clean blue overalls and a big straw hat.

“How do you know he’s going courting, Lucas? He’s not very young, is he?”

“No, ma’am, Miss Jinny, he ain’t, but his wife died a while ago. He’s gwine courtin’—yes, miss, he sho’ is. How’d I know? He done wash his face, Miss Jinny. When a man wash his face an’ shave, he’s gwine courtin’—yes, miss.”

Virginia laughed, and Lucas, thus encouraged, proceeded. He touched the nigh horse this time.

“Yo’ g’long, Tommy Becket. Yes, Miss Jinny, he’s gwine courtin’—he works ober at Miz Quantah’s, ayonnah”—Lucas pointed his whip—“righ’ over dere in dem trees. Dat’s where Miz Wilyum Carter am now, Miss Jinny.”

Virginia blushed. Involuntarily her eyes followed the flourish of his whip. They had come to the foot-hills, and, in a clearing, she saw a bleak farmhouse, a mere shack it seemed to her. She remembered that the Quantah place was miserable and the woman herself gaunt and poor—a forlorn, forbidding creature.

Then Lucas broke into his monologue again.

“Miz Carter, she’s sick, Miss Jinny—took sick jest after de trial. I did heah she ain’t got any money, an’ Miz Quantah, she’s gwine to turn her out, sick or no sick, she say.”

Virginia sat up suddenly.

“What did you say, Lucas?”

Lucas turned half-way round, driving with one hand, and flourishing the other as he answered.

“I say Miz Wilyum Carter took sick, an’ she ain’t got any money.” Lucas stopped the horses and pointed.

“I reckon she’s sick in dat room ayonnah—see de blinds open? Ain’t nebber open ’less Miz Quantah got a lodger. Ain’t got noffin to eat at Miz Quantah’s ’cept corn-dodgers an’ rabbits—no, Miss Jinny, dey ain’t.”

“Lucas,” said Virginia earnestly, “do you really mean that Mrs. William Carter is over there now, ill, and without money?”

“Sho, Miss Jinny, she is. I got dat from Miz Quantah’s collud man—yes, miss, I sho did. She’s sick an’ she ain’t got no money.”

Virginia was silent. Her eyes fixed themselves on that distant house, that repulsive, sordid-looking house, and she thought of Fanchon—a small, dainty, bewitching creature—dancing that amazing dance at the church musicale.

Lucas started the horses. The road turned, and before them a low bridge spanned an exquisite stream. The water purled and dashed over stones and slipped, still clamoring, into a lovely pool where lily-pads floated and low willows dipped their swinging boughs.

“Lucas, stop!” cried Virginia.

Lucas pulled the horses up so suddenly that one old fellow looked back over his shoulder.

“Yes, Miss Jinny?”

“Drive back to Quantah’s place, Lucas.”

The fat old horses turned obediently. Lucas said nothing. For once he restrained that racial quality which makes the faithful colored servant the intimate adviser and guardian of “his family.” He had a very clear understanding of Miss Jinny’s motives, he knew Miss Jinny. For all that, he felt that this time she could be trusted to go her own way—as long as he was in attendance, to exercise, at the crucial moment, his worldly wisdom.

The old wagonette, turning clumsily because of its length, was moving along the broken bit of road which led around the elbow of the wood into the Quantah clearing. The wood was an exquisite place, delicately fringed along its edges with yellow patches of goldenrod and the purplish white mist of asters. Through slender tree-stems Virginia began to see the house more plainly.

The side door stood open, and a tall, slatternly woman was feeding chickens, holding an old tin saucepan in the hollow of her arm. As the wagonette appeared she raised her eyes from the fowls long enough to stare, but went on throwing scraps out by the fistful, her hard mouth drawn into forbidding lines.

Lucas drew rein and Virginia descended.

“Is Mrs. William Carter here?” she asked quietly.

Mrs. Quantah emptied the pan and looked around her.

“Yes, she is—she’s sick, too.”

Virginia’s quick blush mounted. She felt peculiarly helpless. She was not even sure that Fanchon would see her, but she held out her card.

“Please ask her to see me—if she can,” she said, in a propitiating tone.

Mrs. Quantah wiped her fingers on her apron and took the card.

“Come in,” she said harshly, holding open the door.

Virginia followed her in. Involuntarily she gathered her white dress about her, the place seemed so dingy and repulsive. They passed through a forlorn hall and entered the kitchen. Sitting in a chair in the middle of the old room, with his back to the stove, was Mr. Samuel Bernstein. Virginia stopped involuntarily, and the woman, pulling out a chair for her, left them abruptly, carrying Virginia’s card in the empty saucepan.

Mr. Bernstein rose and bowed.

“Miss Denbigh, I think?” he said with elaborate politeness.

Virginia smiled.

“Mr. Bernstein, I know,” she replied quietly.

He offered his chair.

“It’s better than the one she’s given you,” he said graciously, “which ain’t sayin’ much. Sit down, Miss Denbigh. I guess you’ve come out here same as I have. I’m trying to see Mrs. Carter—Miss Fanchon la Fare, I guess it is now. This party”—he waved his thumb over his shoulder—“Mrs. Quantah, she says Mrs. Carter’s sick.”

“So I hear.” Virginia turned her eyes discreetly away. She could not look at Mr. Bernstein without thinking of his effort to engage her grandfather, and she wanted to laugh in spite of her errand. “I’m very sorry; I hope she’ll see me.”

“I hope so.” Mr. Bernstein leaned forward confidentially. “Say, I’ll tell you what I’ve done. You see, I felt kinder guilty. You know about that Carter boy? Well, I came out here on purpose to make good. I’m offering Miss Fanchon one thousand dollars a week for one big seven-reel feature for the Unlimited Film Company, and, after that, say, five hundred a week steady as ingenoo in the company.”

Virginia lifted her eyes with difficulty to the kindly red face opposite.

“That seems magnificent, Mr. Bernstein,” she said softly, and then in spite of herself she giggled.

Mr. Bernstein beamed.

“It’s a good offer, if I do say it! But, see here, Miss Denbigh, it ain’t often we get a subject like that. She’s just ideal for dances—see? Now, there’s another thing—coming out here, I made a find!” Mr. Bernstein raised one fat hand and spoke behind it, watching the door. “Notice that party—Mrs. Quantah?”

Virginia nodded, her eyes dancing. Mr. Bernstein edged his chair closer.

“Say! We’re going to do some Dickens pictures. No copyright on Dickens, you know, an’ it’s easy to get ’em. We’re going to do ‘Nicholas Nickleby.’ Now I ask you, did you ever see a better Miss Squeers? Look at her—take her all around—them angles an’ that mouth! Say, I’d give her something neat, believe me I would. I said so to her, an’ what d’you suppose she said to me? That woman, poor as Job’s turkey—what d’you suppose she said?”

Virginia was unable to imagine it and said so—with some difficulty, her lips tremulous.

“I asked her.” Mr. Bernstein leaned back in his chair and shook his head sadly. “I told her what I wanted an’ what I’d pay, an’ she said, ‘Nothing doin’!’ Now, what d’you know about that?”

He was about to say more, to enlarge on his grievance and on Mrs. Quantah’s resemblance to Miss Squeers, but there was a sharp sound. A door opened and shut, and the ideal Miss Squeers entered. She did not look at Mr. Bernstein, but turned a stony gaze upon Virginia’s flushed and smiling face.

“She’ll see you,” she said laconically.

Mr. Bernstein leaned farther back in his chair with the air of a martyr determined to await his turn, if it took all night. Virginia rose hastily and followed Mrs. Quantah.

A moment before she had had to laugh at Bernstein; now her heart sank. She felt that Fanchon had never liked her, and now—wasn’t this an intrusion? Her courage suddenly wavered, and her knees felt weak under her when the gaunt woman opened a door at the end of the hall and almost thrust her into the room beyond.

XXVII

The room was small and dim, although the shutters were open, as Lucas had remarked. There was a frayed and scanty look to everything, but a big four-poster stood in the corner. Lying across that, looking as small and helpless as a child, was Fanchon. She was half dressed, and she lay with her head on her arm, her soft dark hair tumbled about her shoulders and framing her white profile.

Virginia, who had stopped just inside the door, stood waiting, hesitating, uncertain what to do. Fanchon did not move, and she looked so white and limp as she lay there that Virginia thought she had fainted. She went quickly across the room and stood beside the bed, looking down at the motionless figure.

Fanchon’s eyes were closed, and the long, thick lashes made shadows on her white cheeks. There was no sign of makeup now except a touch of the lips that made her mouth look scarlet, in fearful contrast to the whiteness of cheeks and brow and throat. One arm was thrown across the bed and the small hand clasped the crumpled coverlet convulsively, the blue veins showing through its delicate whiteness. Half-clad as she was, Virginia saw how thin were Fanchon’s arms and how slender her neck, delicate and round as the stem of a flower. How changed she was!

A memory of the daring little figure in white flashed back, and a flood of pity submerged Virginia’s heart. William’s cry, “I’m done with her!”—how incredibly cruel it would have seemed here!

Still she did not move or speak, and Virginia touched her gently.

“Fanchon!” she said softly.

Very slowly Fanchon rose on her elbow and looked at the visitor. The fawn-like eyes were no longer soft; there was a smoldering fire in them, and the delicate brows came down above them. The small white face was distorted with an emotion that seemed to shake her from head to foot.

“Why do you come here?” she asked sharply. “What do you want of me?”

Virginia’s blush deepened painfully.

“I came because I heard you were ill and in trouble,” she replied kindly, her voice trembling a little.

Fanchon drew herself up farther into a sitting attitude, her knees under her chin and her hands clasping them. Her eyes still lowered at Virginia, and the whiteness of her face against her loose, dark hair had an almost weird effect.

“Why do you care for that?” she asked slowly. “Why do you want to see how far I’m down?”

Her tone and her glance alike conveyed almost an insult, and certainly a defiance; yet she was so weak that the other girl saw her tremble from head to foot, as if she had an ague. Again Virginia blushed, but this time she raised her head proudly.

“You don’t know me,” she replied gravely. “You wouldn’t say that to me if you did. I’m—I’m not like that.”

Fanchon still looked at her steadily, an untamed passion leaping up in her brown eyes like a flame.

“Ma foi, I know you well enough, I think!” she retorted bitterly. “You’re the woman my husband loved—and you’ve taken him from me! Oh, I know—you can look indignant! You righteous people—oh, mon Dieu, how good you are! But you’ve taken him away, for all that.”

Virginia, who had never had such things said to her before, recoiled. She drew away, looking at the wild little creature on the bed with a kind of horror. For a moment all her impulses were beaten down, and in the rebound she was ready to turn her back, to abandon the wretched girl to her fate. She felt as if physical blows had been rained upon her, as if she was no longer the Virginia Denbigh who had entered that wretched room on an errand of mercy.

“If you say things like that I can’t stay to hear them,” she said hurriedly, speaking with an effort, hot tears in her eyes. “I came to help you, if I could—and you insult me.”

Fanchon laughed the shrill laughter of hysterics.

“You don’t like it!” she cried wildly. “Que voulez vous? You want only nice things said to you—and I can have all the horrid things and all the insults. That’s all I’ve had since I came here!”

Virginia, who was half-way to the door, stood still. Her quick ear had caught the wildness of the laughter, and the poor little huddled figure was sinking weakly forward. She came back.

“Fanchon, I came to help you. I’m telling you the truth—can’t you believe me? I should like to help you, if I could.”

Fanchon’s face twisted convulsively, and she snatched at the coverlet and drew it up over her shoulders. To Virginia she looked like a wild child playing at “tents” under the counterpane.

“Tiens!” she cried fretfully. “I don’t know what you mean. I’ve always told stories myself, until—until Leigh killed that man. Now, I’m not telling stories. I suppose I can believe that you meant to do something—something queer. That’s what they’ve all done to me since I came. I don’t know why you’re here—I don’t care! C’est fini—I’m done with you all!”

Virginia started. She remembered William’s words.

“I came because you’re ill. I want to help you, to make you more comfortable. That’s really all I came for, Fanchon. I’m sorry you feel so toward us—toward me.”

Fanchon shook back her hair and looked at the other girl curiously, her eyes darkening and changing wonderfully.

“How pretty she is,” Virginia thought, “and how wretched.”

But Fanchon did not speak. For a while she only studied Virginia. At last she spoke slowly, twisting the coverlet.

“Were you in court?” she asked.

Virginia shook her head. Fanchon’s eyes held hers, with that fierce, dark, challenging look.

“But you know my story?”

“Yes, I’ve heard it,” Virginia reluctantly answered.

“My husband told you!” Fanchon sprang out of bed and ran across the room, seizing Virginia’s arm and looking at her wildly. “William told you!”

Virginia, who was fatally honest sometimes, said nothing; but her face confessed that William had told her much. She was horrified. How could she make this furious little creature understand how William had told her, and how she had replied? She ought never to have come here.

For an instant panic seized her and she longed to get away; and then her inherited and noble fearlessness steadied her. She met Fanchon’s feverish look calmly and frankly.

“I wish you’d believe me,” she said simply. “I’m not that sort of a woman, Fanchon. It’s true that William and I were engaged once, but he broke it off when he married you. And now”—Virginia’s pride flashed in her eyes—“if he were free to-morrow, Fanchon, it would make no difference—no difference in the world to me.”

They looked at each other. Fanchon, still holding the other girl’s arm in her shaking hands, searched Virginia’s face with that wild look of hers, her lips quivering. Virginia met the look at first proudly and angrily, and then with such compassion, such tenderness and honesty, that Fanchon’s lips twisted convulsively again. Suddenly she dropped Virginia’s arm and turned away. She took an unsteady step and almost reeled as she flung herself into a chair, hiding her face in her hands.

“Do you believe me now, Fanchon?” Virginia asked, more gently.

There was no answer for a moment, then she heard the other girl’s convulsive weeping. Fanchon, who had never controlled an impulse in her life, was weeping wildly, twisting about in her chair and beating the air for breath. It startled Virginia; she forgot herself and went to her. Seizing the frantic little hands, she held them in her cool, firm ones, as a mother might hold a frantic child’s.

“Hush!” she whispered. “You’re ill, you mustn’t! Don’t cry like this.”

But Fanchon wept on until she lay there almost fainting, white and limp and broken. Virginia began to suspect what had happened before she came into the room.

“Dieu, they all hated me!” Fanchon gasped at last. “All but Leigh and that silly child, Emily.” She laughed wildly, still gasping. “She tried to paint her face like mine, and they made her wash it off. Quelle drôle de chose que la vie! And they hated me for that.” She gasped again, dragging her hands away from Virginia and beating the air with them. “They made him hate me, too.”

“Oh, no, no!” cried Virginia. “Fanchon, you’re wild—you don’t understand!”

“Oh, I understand!” she retorted bitterly. “You’re one of them. I don’t know why you came here—you’re one of them!”

“I came because you’re ill. You’ll be very ill if you don’t stop.”

“You think I’ll die, n’est-ce-pas?” Her red mouth twisted oddly. “They’d like me to die, so he’d be free. They’re so good—they don’t like divorces!”

“Hush!” said Virginia steadily. “I wouldn’t stay here if you were not so ill, Fanchon, you’re trembling and shaking. Let me get a doctor for you; let me take you out of this wretched place.”

Fanchon laughed again hysterically.

“It’s a fine place, isn’t it? Tiens! The place for Mrs. William Carter. You see I have no money. Mon Dieu, I wouldn’t take a cent of his—I’d starve first!”

“I understand.” Virginia laid her hand gently on her shoulder. “I should feel like that myself. But I’m a woman, Fanchon—let me help you while you’re so ill.”

Something in her touch, her voice, reached the girl. She stopped shivering and looked up into Virginia’s face. She looked up steadily, her own face changing and quivering. Then, suddenly, she sank back in her chair very pale and quiet, her large eyes fixed not on Virginia now, but on space.

“He was the only good man who ever loved me,” she said in a low voice. “I’m not bad—I’ve never been bad—but they thought I was, and I lied to him. I was afraid that if he knew I was divorced he wouldn’t care for me—not in that way—and it would have killed me then.” Her voice broke pitifully. “I—I loved him.”

Her head sank mournfully, she began to tear at the elaborate lace petticoat she wore.

“You mean William?” said Virginia gently.

She nodded. Then, with a convulsive effort, she went on, more to herself than to Virginia.

“He was good, and he loved me. He asked me to marry him, and I lied. I said I’d never been married before. I needn’t have said it, but I was afraid. I lied. And he hates me.” Her voice wavered again. “He hates me. I shall never see him again!”

“But you love him still, Fanchon,” Virginia said softly; “and if you love him you’ll forgive him.”

Fanchon’s face flamed suddenly.

“Never! I don’t want to see him again.” She rose unsteadily. “I’m going to dress and go out there.” She pointed toward the door, laughing again and trembling at the same time. “That fat man is out there. I’m going into his pictures. He’s not afraid to engage me for his show.”

“You can’t go, Fanchon,” said Virginia quickly. “You’re too ill. I must help you.” She stopped, and her eyes filled with tears. “Fanchon, I’m so sorry for you, I hope you understand. Let me help you.”

Fanchon turned, caught at a chair-back, and clung to it, laughing wildly.

“You’re so sorry for me—and he loves you!”

“No,” said Virginia, “he shan’t! If he did, it would make no difference. Fanchon, I want you to leave this place and come with me. Let me take care of you. You’re too ill to stand up.”

“To stand up? Why, I’m going to dance for the pictures. You call me ill? I can dance. Attendez!”

She let go of the chair to which she had been clinging, and seemed to listen, her head bent and her brown eyes brilliant, her whole small figure quivering and tense.

“Mon Dieu—I hear it—the music!”

She swayed slightly, and then softly, easily, she began to dance. She danced wonderfully, keeping time to the music that she seemed to hear, swaying with it, stepping back and forth, weaving a dance so strange, so weird, so silent, that Virginia could not move. She stood rooted to the spot, watching, fascinated—watching the white face and the wild hair, the half-bare shoulders and the slender lifted arms.

Fanchon clasped her hands behind her head, twisting her slender body this way and that. Her small bare feet flashed back and forth, soft and silent and incredibly swift. She danced across the room, back and forth, to and fro, and Virginia watched her. Never in her life had she seen such dancing, never in her life had she seen such a wretched, quivering, tear-stained face. She thought it would have touched a heart of stone.

At last she could endure it no longer; it seemed to her like the dance of death.

“Stop!” she cried. “Oh, Fanchon, stop!”

Virginia’s voice, the sharp sound of her own name, broke the spell. Fanchon turned her head and looked at her. Something seemed to snap in her brain; her eyes clouded, she reeled, and, stretching out groping hands, she staggered blindly and would have fallen had not the other girl caught her. Virginia held her by main force, almost lifting her in her strong young arms, for suddenly all the life and motion had left the small wasted figure, and Fanchon lay white and senseless against her breast.

Ten minutes later Virginia came out of Fanchon’s room and closed the door behind her. She was very pale, but her eyes shone. She ignored the patient Bernstein and spoke directly to the woman.

“Mrs. Quantah, I’m going to take Mrs. Carter home with me. Have you a telephone?”

Mrs. Quantah stood rigidly.

“I ain’t got no phone, an’ she ain’t a goin’ to take her trunk until she pays. She owes me two weeks’ board now, and extries.”

“I was just telling the lady,” Mr. Bernstein began, “I’d pay in advance if—”

“I’ll pay,” said Virginia superbly, sweeping past them, her head up. “Make out your bill in full, Mrs. Quantah.”

She opened the hall door and called Lucas.

“Drive over for Dr. Barbour, Lucas. Bring him here at once, if you can. While you’re over there, phone to Plato to get the west room ready for an invalid—yes, and phone to the colonel that I want him out here—in a taxi.”

“Yes’m, Miss Jinny.”

Lucas turned the fat horses around with their heads toward the highroad. Then he looked back at the tall white-clad figure in the door.

“Hurry!” she called after him.

Lucas whipped up.

“G’long, Billy! Ain’t dat jus’ Miss Jinny? I knowed it, I knowed it—if she ain’t gwine t’ bring Miz Wilyum Carter home! Ain’t dat Miss Jinny cl’ar down to de groun’? I declare to goodness if it don’ beat all.”

XXVIII

Sunday morning fell on the first day of September, and it was very hot—so hot that Mr. Carter refused to go to church. He was sitting in the shade of his library, in his shirt-sleeves and his stocking feet, when his wife and Emily returned from service. Emily went up to her room at once, but Mrs. Carter came into the library, took off her hat, and sat down to get cool. She was a little flushed and thoughtful.

“The Denbighs were not in church,” she remarked after a moment. “I don’t know that I ever knew Colonel Denbigh to miss a Sunday, except when his son died. Do you remember, Johnson?”

Mr. Carter nodded. He had stopped reading the Sunday paper and was slowly fanning himself with it.

“Sensible man to stay at home,” he grunted.

“People stare so at us!” Mrs. Carter complained. “Emily and I felt like a circus. I’m so glad we’ve got Leigh off to college at last!”

Mr. Carter made no reply to this, but after an interval he muttered something about a young donkey. Mrs. Carter sighed.

“Where’s William?” she asked in a whisper.

Mr. Carter, who had become nervous under continued misfortune, started violently.

“I don’t know. Do you happen to think he’s drowned himself?”

“Johnson!”

“I’m expecting anything,” said Mr. Carter desperately. “There’s only one sensible person in this family, and that’s Dan.”

“Dan’s out at the Denbighs’—I don’t know what for. He’s been out there twice since Friday, and he’s worried. I can see it.”

“Of course! He’s in love with that girl now, I reckon, and she won’t have a cripple.”

“He isn’t a cripple!” cried his mother warmly. “He’s only lame; but it’s not that; papa—I think it’s something about—” She looked around a little flushed and added, in a whisper, “about Fanchon.”

Mr. Carter said something short and cryptic and relapsed into silence.

“I don’t feel that it’s right,” his wife continued bravely. “It’s worrying me, Johnson. William hasn’t—well, he hasn’t shown any feeling at all.”

“He’s going to get a divorce.”

William’s mother sighed.

“I hate divorces,” she said at last. “We never had one in the family.”

“That’s because you’re from South Carolina,” retorted her husband unfeelingly. “Can’t get one there, anyway.”

Mrs. Carter disregarded this.

“I don’t feel right about it. She—she saved Leigh.”

Mr. Carter pursed his lips, moving his feet comfortably about on the rug. He and his wife had been over this ground before, and it irked him. He watched his toes moving inside of his coarse white stockings. There was a silence.

The door-bell rang sharply. Mrs. Carter jumped.

“Oh, Johnson, put on your coat and your shoes,” she cried. “Miranda’s let some one in.”

Mr. Carter began to jam his hot feet into his shoes, which seemed incredibly too small to receive them.

“Drat it!” he said.

He had not got to the coat when Miranda’s amiable chocolate face appeared at the door.

“Col’nel Denbigh, Mist’ Carter,” she said, and withdrew.

The colonel, carrying his wide hat in his hand, came in. He looked very tall, very thin, and very grave.

“Oh, colonel, is there anything the matter?” Mrs. Carter cried impulsively, seeing his face.

The colonel stood still, his white head erect and his fine old face flushing a little.

“I came to see William,” he said. “Is he here?”

Mrs. Carter ran to the door.

“Miranda,” she called after the girl, “go up and tell Mr. William to come down.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Carter had offered a chair. He was a little startled and perplexed, but he looked keenly at the colonel.

“Do you want us to go, colonel?” he asked bluntly.

Colonel Denbigh lifted a protesting hand.

“No! I want you all to hear what I have to say, especially William. It concerns William.”

Mrs. Carter, who had returned to her seat, looked frightened. There was an awkward pause, the colonel sitting quietly in the high-backed chair, looking into the crown of his hat.

“It’s—it’s very hot,” ventured Mrs. Carter faintly.

The colonel glanced kindly from one to the other.

“It’s the heat that has made it so bad for—her,” he observed enigmatically.

Mr. Carter’s mouth tightened and he glanced angrily toward the door. He heard his son coming down-stairs. William entered, looking pale and haggard, and Colonel Denbigh rose. The old man was so tall that he seemed to tower.

“William,” he said grimly, “I came to see you. Virginia sent me. We wanted Dan to tell you, but Dan doesn’t wish to interfere. Your wife is at my house—very ill.”

William turned from white to red. For a moment he seemed nonplused, then he rallied.

“I have no wife, Colonel Denbigh,” he said slowly. “Fanchon left me weeks ago. I expect to sue her for divorce.”

Colonel Denbigh held up his hand.

“Sit down, please,” he said, “and listen.” He sat down himself, glancing from one to the other, and finally fixing his eyes on William’s downcast face. “I hate to butt into other people’s affairs,” he said simply. “Mr. Carter, I think you know I’m not a meddler?”

Mr. Carter nodded grimly. He, too, was looking at William.

“We all respect and love you, colonel,” cried Mrs. Carter tremulously; “but—you know William’s had a terrible time.”

“I know it, madam. Far be it from me to belittle it. But the other day Virginia found Fanchon out at Quantah’s. Do you know the place?” He glanced again at Mr. Carter. “It’s wretched. William’s wife was there, ill and penniless. My granddaughter went in to see her, and while she was there Fanchon went out of her head and fainted in Jinny’s arms. I think you all know Jinny. She paid the poor girl’s bills—”

“I offered her money, I’ve tried to send her money,” William broke in hoarsely. “I didn’t know where she was.”

The colonel nodded.

“I understand that. She told Jinny she wouldn’t take your money. She told her story—in a way—to Jinny. She admitted that she loved you still, that she had always loved you. You were the only good man who had ever loved her, she said. Then she fainted. Jinny sent for Dr. Barbour. It happened that your brother Dan was over there. He came back with Lucas. I was out, and he and Jinny brought Fanchon to our house. He had been looking for Fanchon. He had guessed that she hadn’t any money, and he wanted to pay Jinny back for the expenses. He’s shared our watch over Fanchon, but”—the colonel smiled—“he wouldn’t interfere. That’s what he said. So Jinny sent me. Fanchon has been out of her head, and all night, sometimes all day, she’s calling you, William. Her pride, her poor little hurt pride, took her away, but now she calls and calls.”

The colonel rose quietly and took up his hat. “I think that’s all. I came to tell you. She’s suffered, and she saved Leigh; but if you feel you can’t forgive her—”

Mrs. Carter was crying.

“Oh, Johnson, I think we ought to go,” she said.

Mr. Carter said nothing, but glanced silently at William. So did Colonel Denbigh.

“William,” said the latter gravely, “Jinny said, ‘Tell William that Fanchon loves him as few women love, and she’s calling him!’ She lies there, quite out of her head still, William, calling and calling to her husband.”

Mrs. Carter got up and put on her hat.

“I’m coming with you, colonel,” she sobbed. “I’ve felt it was all wrong. We were hard on her, poor girl!”

“No, mother, I’ll go,” said William. “It’s my business. I’m going with you, colonel.”

The colonel straightened himself.

“Thank God!” he said simply.

He was aware that Mr. Carter, red and out of breath, was being urged into his coat and hat by his wife. He was to take them all, then. It was lucky he had brought the wagonette instead of the old rockaway.

The wagonette was waiting outside under the shadow of a tree, the horses carefully netted, and Lucas wearing a brown linen coat and a big straw hat. Colonel Denbigh helped Mrs. Carter up the high steps and they started, the colonel and Mr. Carter on one side and Mrs. Carter and William on the other.

Facing each other thus, an awkward silence fell, broken only by the heavy tread of the horses’ hoofs. They were almost half-way out there before the colonel thought of anything to say.

“The oats came on well this year, Carter,” he remarked at last, with forced cheerfulness. “Fine crop!”

Mr. Carter, whose feet still felt several sizes too large for his shoes, let his misery loose.

“I wouldn’t give a cent for the oat-crop,” he said bluntly. “I’m not a horse.”

The colonel, startled for a moment, exploded into laughter, but Mrs. Carter was shocked.

“Oh, Johnson!” she gasped, and then, anxious to propitiate the colonel, she plunged in desperately. “It’s been such a beautiful year,” she said anxiously. “I don’t think I ever remember a season when things held so well. Nothing looks rusty yet.”

The colonel rubbed his chin.

“Except old men, madam,” he remarked with a twinkle.

She laughed tremulously, winking back her tears.

“I feel like an old woman, colonel.”

He shook his head, but his eyes were not on her. They had passed on to her son.

William, flushed and silent, sat with his eyes down. The colonel, sharply aware of the tension in the air, wondered. Could Jinny make this lummox see? At the thought of Jinny the old man’s eyes lighted, and he looked ahead toward his own gates. They stood open, and he could see the old ginkgo-tree beside the door, already turning yellow as gold in the sun. The horses turned placidly, the wheel grated slightly on the stone curb, and they were going up the drive to the house.

“She’s in the west room,” said the colonel, glancing toward two windows where the shutters were half-closed. “We got a nurse the second night. I wasn’t willing to have Jinny wear herself out. She was up with her for twenty-four hours on a stretch.”

Mrs. Carter made an inarticulate sound, glancing at William in a frightened way, but no one spoke until the wagonette stopped at the door. Daniel Carter came down the piazza steps to meet them.

“She’s better,” he said soberly. “Virginia thinks she knows her.”

His mother clung to his hand as he helped her out.

“Oh, Dan, why didn’t you tell us?” she whispered.

He glanced grimly at William.

“I thought it was no use, mother.”

She knew what he meant, and she, too, glanced at William. He was following Colonel Denbigh up the steps, but his face was set and hard.

“What is it, Dan? How is she, really?” his mother asked anxiously. “I felt so ashamed when the colonel told us. We’ve been very unkind to her, Dan.”

He nodded. They were behind the others, but he saw Virginia on the stairs.

“Fanchon has been delirious and very ill,” he answered in a low voice; “but Dr. Barbour says she’ll get well. The Denbighs have been most noble, most kind to her.”

“You mean Jinny,” his mother murmured.

“I mean both.” His eyes softened. “Virginia is an angel!”

Mrs. Carter, looking at him suddenly, winked back her tears. She knew now—he loved Virginia! She patted his arm, but she was looking at the stairs.

Virginia, in a pink morning gown, the short sleeves falling away from her white arms, came down, bearing a tray. She saw them at the door, and she blushed, but she put down the tray before she spoke.

“Daniel, please take your mother into the drawing-room and tell her about Fanchon.” She took a step forward and held out her hand. “William, I hope you’re coming with me?” she said.

He took her hand, aware that his father and Colonel Denbigh, his mother and Daniel, were all watching. His blush was deeper than hers.

“I came because you sent for me, Virginia,” he replied in a hard, level tone.

Virginia’s hand fell at her side. For a moment she looked at him in silence; then she turned.

“Come,” she said in a low voice.

William followed her up the wide old stairs, moving slowly, only aware of the humiliation he felt. After ascending the last flight Virginia stood before an open door and beckoned. He came to her side.

“Listen!” she whispered.

“William!”

He started. He knew the voice—it was Fanchon’s.

“William!” she called again, and the light, hurrying voice went on—sometimes in French, sometimes in English, but always repeating the cry, “William!”

“It’s like that all day,” said Virginia. “She calls and calls you. It’s pitiful, William, and it’s beautiful—she loves you so!”

He raised his dull eyes slowly from the floor to Fanchon’s face. What he saw there made him draw a deep breath of pain.

He stepped into the room. The light was dim, but he saw the face on the pillow and the soft, dark, wildly disheveled hair. Fanchon lay there, tossing, moving her hands restlessly, her fawn-like eyes brilliant and vacant, her small white face tear-stained, and her lips moving, whether words came or not.

While her husband stood there, his head bowed, just inside the door, she began to speak again in rambling and broken sentences.

“William! I’m not bad—I’ve never been bad—non, non! You can’t threaten me—I won’t stand it, I’ll call my husband—William, William!”

She sat up in bed, and tears ran down her cheeks. She seemed to be looking at Virginia, who still stood in the door.

“I didn’t do wrong—I loved him. You shan’t take him away—I love him—William!”

William listened, and it seemed to him as if his own heart stopped beating. The soft, appealing voice, and the white, pitiful face! He felt a sudden sensation of suffocation.

“Guillaume de mon cœur! He’ll come,” cried Fanchon softly.

William took a quick step forward, hesitated, and then went across the room. He knelt beside the bed and caught the trembling, groping little hands in his and held them.

Virginia turned away.

She went quietly out of the room and shut the door behind her.

XXIX

When Virginia came down-stairs she heard the pleasant jingle of ice in the drawing-room. Plato was serving iced tea, there being no occasion in life, not even a funeral, when refreshments were not served; but Mr. Carter and her grandfather were the only tea-drinkers. Mrs. Carter was sitting in the corner, surreptitiously wiping her eyes, and Daniel was walking up and down on the rear piazza. Virginia heard his restless tramp as she crossed the hall and stood for a moment in the drawing-room door. They all looked up at her, and Plato discreetly withdrew, bearing his tray.

“How is she, Jinny?” the colonel asked quietly, setting aside his slender glass of tea.

“I think she knew him,” Virginia answered simply, and then, ignoring the two men, she went over to Mrs. Carter. “You were good to come,” she said softly.

“Oh, Virginia!” Mrs. Carter dabbed at her eyes, “I feel as if I’d been guilty.” She lowered her voice and added in a whisper: “What did William say?”

Virginia smiled, a beautiful light in her eyes.

“I think he’s forgiven her already,” she replied sweetly. “I’ve been with her for hours and hours, and I’m fond of her. I can’t help it. She’s like a child, Mrs. Carter, and she loves William. Besides, she’s suffered terribly, and don’t you think suffering expiates everything?”

Mrs. Carter pressed her handkerchief against her lips. For a moment she was silent, aware of her husband’s eyes and Colonel Denbigh’s. Involuntarily they looked at her. She wavered a little, and then she spoke, faint-heartedly but sincerely.

“Johnson, I think we ought to go up-stairs, too. We ought to tell William how we feel—at least, I should. I’m ready to do anything that’s right.”

Mr. Carter nodded his head slowly.

“I’ve just told the colonel that we’re not really monsters,” he replied bluntly; “but we’ve had rather a rough experience, take it all in all. There’s Leigh, nothing but a boy, and he’s killed a man. It’s not a nice thing to think about. He told me one night how he felt. It haunts him. Besides, I’ve seen William falling down on his work. The whole racket got on our nerves. I reckon we were hard on her. William used to call her a wild fawn. Maybe, if we’d met her from the first in the right way, she’d have tamed down.”

Colonel Denbigh pulled hard at his mustache.

“Give her a little love, Carter, and trust in the Lord,” he advised gently.

It was Virginia, however, who solved the problem.

“William must take her away,” she said decidedly. “She’s used to big cities, to life and light and change, and she couldn’t endure us here. It will be a long time before she can. If he takes her away they’ll understand each other, Mrs. Carter, and then the rest of it will solve itself.”

Mrs. Carter assented to this. It came to her in the nature of manna from heaven. To mend William’s marriage and to escape the responsibility of Fanchon would be almost too good to be true.

“I reckon that’s just it, Jinny,” she said weakly. “It’s all wrong for two young people to start in together with another family. We’re right set in our ways, too. I think you’re right. Don’t you, papa?”

Mr. Carter nodded again. There was a little pause, broken only by the distant sound of Daniel’s march on the piazza.

“Isn’t that boy coming in here to sit down and drink some tea?” Mr. Carter demanded suddenly and sharply, addressing space.

“I’ll call him,” said Virginia.

But as she spoke they heard a step on the stairs and William’s voice.

“Mother, will you come up and see—my wife?”

Mrs. Carter rose, with a gasp, glancing at her husband. She met assent in his eyes, and she hurried out into the hall. William stood there, his face changed and softened, but still very pale. His eyes met his mother’s, and he held out his hand.

“She’s come out of her delirium. She knows me—and she wants to ask your forgiveness,” he said in a low voice, swallowing a lump in his throat.

Mrs. Carter clung to his arm, lifting her face to his.

“Oh, Willie!” she sobbed, and kissed him.

The colonel and Mr. Carter saw the mother and son going up-stairs together.

“It’s all right,” said the colonel with manifest relief. “I’m mighty glad of it!”

Mr. Carter made no reply, but lifted his glass of iced tea slowly to his lips and drank it. He felt choked. He was registering a silent vow that, whatever happened, Emily shouldn’t paint her eyelashes!

Virginia, smiling at her grandfather, slipped quietly out of the room. She stood for a moment in the wide, cool hall, listening. She could hear the faint murmur of voices above her, and the tramp of Daniel’s nervous feet. Outside the door the warm sunshine seemed to pulsate, and a thousand little gnats danced in a circle in mid air. Virginia crossed the hall softly and stood in the door.

Daniel, very pale and quiet, stopped his marching up and down. His eyes met hers with a silent interrogation.

“It’s all right, Dan,” she said gently. “William just called your mother. It’s made up.”

Daniel drew a deep breath, his eyes on her face. He thought he had never seen her look so beautiful.

“It’s your doing, Virginia,” he said softly.

She shook her head, coming out and standing beside him in the sunshine.

“It’s God’s doing, Dan,” she replied gravely.

He said nothing. He was still gazing at her. She looked so beautiful and so happy that he wondered if, after all, she cared for William. Then he reflected that angels must always look beautiful in acts of love and renunciation.

She turned and smiled at him again.

“Let’s walk down to the end of the garden,” she said gently. “It’s cool there under the old mulberry.”

They walked slowly, not because of his lameness, for he was limping very little to-day, but because the walk through the old garden-paths was sweet.

“My roses are still blooming,” remarked Virginia. “I’m going to set out some more of these late ones this autumn. How sweet the air is to-day!”

He looked up at the clear sky. Only a few white clouds floated in the deep, ineffable blue.

“It’s a heavenly day,” he said.

They were silent after that, walking between the hedgerows, until they came to a grassy slope that was left to go wild, because Virginia loved wild flowers. Here, in the spring, were pink anemones and blood-root, and now there were little yellow flowers on the green blades of grass.

They sat down together on a fallen tree, which had been left lying there for a seat. Daniel looked down at the little yellow stars in the grass.

“Aren’t they pretty things?” he said musingly. “At first I thought this was only common turf, but it’s full of yellow stars.”

Virginia, following his eyes, smiled.

“They call that star-grass, Dan.”

“Star-grass?” he repeated thoughtfully, “it’s a pretty name, Virginia. Do you know why I was looking at it? Those little stars are everywhere like tiny points of flame—and they are all around your feet, little flames of incense.”

“There’s a legend,” she replied, “that those little stars were fastened on the blades of grass so that the humble things of earth, which couldn’t look so high as heaven, could see the stars in the grass. Isn’t it a quaint idea?”

Daniel nodded, leaning his chin on the hands that clasped the top of his walking-stick, and looking at them, something grim and sad coming into his face.

“I saw a white-breasted nuthatch yesterday in that tree,” said Virginia dreamily.

He did not reply, and there was such a long silence that she turned and looked at him. She saw how pale he had grown, how the delicate hollows had fallen in his cheeks, and the shadows under his eyes. Daniel’s eyes were beautiful, she thought—like a woman’s in their clear kindness. Perhaps it was the pain he had borne for so many years after his hurt.

“Virginia, if you look at me like that I shall say something,” he cried suddenly. “I can’t bear it! Turn your eyes away, Virginia.”

She laughed a little tremulously, blushing, too.

“But why, Dan? A cat may look at a king, you know.”

He did not answer for a while. He was digging little holes in the soft turf with his stick.

“A cripple can’t speak,” he said at last. “A cripple can’t tell a woman what he feels, even when that woman is an angel of compassion.”

“But you’re not a cripple, Dan. You’re only a little lame. It grows less, too, every day.”

“I overheard father once,” Daniel replied bitterly. “He called me a cripple. ‘No girl wants a cripple,’ he said.”

“Oh, how cruel,” Virginia cried. “And it’s not true, Dan; it’s not true at all!”

Daniel started, looking around at her, but her face was averted. He only saw her charming profile against the beauty of the foliage behind her. Something in it—something tender and sympathetic—reached him. He drew a long breath.

“Virginia, you can’t mean——”

She said nothing, but she lifted her eyes a little shyly to his face, and this time Daniel could not resist the look.

“You can’t mean that you’d marry me!” he cried, and then softly, with infinite tenderness: “Will you, Virginia?”

“Yes, Dan,” she answered, smiling.

Her smile seemed to change his whole world for him, and to fill it with an ineffable tenderness and light. It was no longer the sweet whistling of a robin that he heard, but the music of the spheres. The very ground was carpeted with stars—with tiny stars that ran like little flames all the way to Virginia’s feet, for—like the humble things of earth—Daniel had found his bit of heaven there.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

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Table of Contents

- THE WILD FAWN
- I
- II
- III
- IV
- V
- VI
- VII
- VIII
- IX
- X
- XI
- XII
- XIII
- XIV
- XV
- XVI
- XVII
- XVIII
- XIX
- XX
- XXI
- XXII
- XXIII
- XXIV
- XXV
- XXVI
- XXVII
- XXVIII
- XXIX
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE