Mrs. Hallam's companion; and The Spring Farm, and other tales

by Mary Jane Holmes

MILDRED’S AMBITION.

CHAPTER I.
MILDRED.

The time was a hot morning in July, the place one of those little mountain towns between Albany and Pittsfield, and the scene opens in a farm house kitchen, where Mildred Leach was seated upon the doorstep shelling peas, with her feet braced against the doorjamb to keep her baby brother, who was creeping on the floor, from tumbling out, and her little sister Bessie, who was standing outside, from coming in. On the bed in a room off the kitchen Mildred’s mother was lying with a headache, and both the kitchen and the bedroom smelled of camphor and vinegar, and the vegetables which were cooking on the stove and filling the house with the odor which made the girl faint and sick, as she leaned against the door-post and longed, as she always was longing, for some change in her monotonous life. Of the world outside the mountain town where she was born she knew very little, and that little she had learned from Hugh McGregor, the village doctor’s son, who had been away to school, and seen the President and New York and a Cunarder as it came sailing up the harbor. On his return home Hugh had narrated his adventures to Mildred, who listened with kindling eyes and flushed cheeks, exclaiming, when he finished, “Oh! if I could see all that; and I will some day. I shall not stay forever in old Rocky Point. I hate it.”

Mildred was only thirteen, and not pretty, as girls usually are at that age. She was thin and sallow, and her great brown eyes were too large for her face, and her thick curly hair too heavy for her head. A mop her brother Tom called it, when trying to tease her; and Mildred hated her hair and hated herself whenever she looked in the ten by twelve glass in her room, and never dreamed of the wonderful beauty which later on she would develop, when her face and form were rounded out, her sallow complexion cleared, and her hair subdued and softened into a mass of waves and curls. Her father, John Leach, was a poor farmer, who, although he owned the house in which he lived, together with a few acres of stony land around it, was in one sense a tenant of Mr. Giles Thornton, the proprietor of Thornton Park, for he rented land enough of him to eke out his slender income. To Mildred, Thornton Park was a Paradise, and nothing she had ever read or heard of equaled it in her estimation, and many a night when she should have been asleep she stood at her window, looking off in the distance at the turrets and towers of the beautiful place which elicited admiration from people much older than herself. To live there would be perfect bliss, she thought, even though she were as great an invalid as its mistress, and as sickly and helpless as little Alice, the only daughter of the house. Against her own humble surroundings Mildred was in hot rebellion, and was always planning for improvement and change, not only for herself, but for her family, whom she loved devotedly, and to whom she was giving all the strength of her young life. Mrs. Leach was a martyr to headaches, which frequently kept her in bed for days, during which time the care and the work fell upon Mildred, whose shoulders were too slender for the burden they bore.

“But it will be different some time,” she was thinking on that hot July morning when she sat shelling peas, sometimes kissing Charlie, whose fat hands were either making havoc with the pods or pulling her hair, and sometimes scolding Bessie for chewing her bonnet strings and soiling her clean apron.

“You must look nice when Mrs. Thornton goes by,” she said, for Mrs. Thornton was expected from New York that day, and Mildred was watching for the return of the carriage, which half an hour before had passed on its way to the station.

And very soon it came in sight,—a handsome barouche, drawn by two shining black horses, with a long-coated driver on the box, and Mr. and Mrs. Thornton and the two children inside,—Gerard, a dark, handsome boy of eleven, and Alice, a sickly little girl, with some spinal trouble which kept her from walking or playing as other children did. Leaning back upon cushions was Mrs. Thornton,—her face very pale, and her eyes closed, while opposite her, with his gold-headed cane in his hand, was Mr. Thornton,—a tall, handsome man who carried himself as grandly as if the blood of a hundred kings was flowing in his veins. He did not see the children on the doorsteps, until Gerard, in response to a nod from Mildred, lifted his cap, while Alice leaned eagerly forward and said, “Look, mamma, there’s Milly and Bessie and the baby. Hello, Milly. I’ve comed back;” then he said quickly, “Allie, be quiet; and you Gerard, why do you lift your cap to such people? It’s not necessary;” and in these few words was embodied the character of the man.

Courteous to his equals, but proud and haughty to his inferiors, with an implicit belief in the Thorntons and no belief at all in such people as the Leaches, or indeed in many of the citizens of Rocky Point, where he owned, or held mortgages on, half the smaller premises. The world was made for him, and he was Giles Thornton, of English extraction on his father’s side and Southern blood on his mother’s, and in his pride and pomposity he went on past the old red farm house, while Mildred sat for a moment looking after the carriage and envying its occupants.

“Oh, if I were rich, like Mrs. Thornton, and could wear silks and jewels; and I will, some day,” she said, with a far-off look in her eyes, as if she were seeing the future and what it held for her. “Yes, I will be rich, no matter what it costs,” she continued, “and people shall envy me, and I’ll make father and mother so happy? and you, Charlie”——

Here she stopped, and parting the curls from her baby brother’s brow, looked earnestly into his blue eyes; then went on, “you shall have a golden crown, and you, Bessie darling, shall have,—shall have,—Gerard Thornton himself, if you want him.”

“And I lame Alice?” asked a cheery voice, as there bounded into the kitchen a ten year old lad, who, with his naked feet, sunny face and torn straw hat, might have stood for Whittier’s barefoot boy.

“Oh, Tom,” Mildred cried, “I’m glad you’ve come. Won’t you pick up the pods while I get the peas into the pot? It’s almost noon, and I’ve got the table to set.”

Before Tom could reply, another voice called out, “You have given Gerard to Bessie and Alice to Tom; now what am I to have, Miss Prophetess?”

The speaker was a fair-haired youth of seventeen, with a slight Scotch accent and a frank, open, genial face, such as strangers always trust. He had stopped a moment at the corner of the house to pick a rose for Mildred, and hearing her prophecies, sauntered leisurely to the doorstep, where he sat down, and fanning himself with his big hat, asked what she had for him.

“Nothing, Hugh McGregor,” Mildred replied, with a little flush on her cheek. “Nothing but that;” and she tossed him a pea-pod she had picked from the floor.

“Thanks,” Hugh said, catching the pod in his hand. “There are two peas in it yet, a big and a little one. I am the big, you are the little, and I’m going to keep them and see which hardens first, you or I.”

“What a fool you are,” Mildred said, with increased color on her cheek, while Hugh pocketed the pod and went on: “A crown for Charlie, Gerard for Bessie, Allie for Tom, a pea-pod for me, and what for you, my darling?”

“I am not your darling,” Mildred answered quickly; “and I’m going to be,—mistress of Thornton Park,” she added, after a little hesitancy, while Hugh rejoined: “As you have given Gerard to Bessie, I don’t see how you’ll bring it about, unless Mrs. Thornton dies, a thing not unlikely, and you marry that big-feeling man, whom you say you hate because he turned you from his premises. Have you forgotten that?”

Mildred had not forgotten it, and her face was scarlet as she recalled the time the past summer when, wishing to buy a dress for Charlie, then six months old, she had gone into one of Mr. Thornton’s pastures after huckleberries, which grew there so abundantly, and which found a ready market at the groceries in town. In Rocky Point, berries were considered public property, and she had no thought that she was trespassing until a voice close to her said, “What are you doing here? Begone, before I have you arrested.”

In great alarm Mildred had seized her ten quart pail, which was nearly full, and hurried away, never venturing again upon the forbidden ground.

“Yes, I remember it,” she said, “but that wouldn’t keep me from being mistress of the Park, if I had a chance and he wasn’t there. Wouldn’t I make a good one?”

“Ye-es,” Hugh answered slowly, as he looked her over from her head to her feet. “But you’ll have to grow taller and fill out some, and do something with that snarly pate of yours, which looks this morning like an oven broom,” and with this thrust at her bushy hair Hugh disappeared from the door just in time to escape the dipper of water which went splashing after him.

“Oven broom, indeed!” Mildred said indignantly, with a pull at the broom; “I wonder if I am to blame for my hair. I hate it!”

This was Mildred’s favorite expression, and there were but few things to which she had not applied it. But most of all she hated her humble home and the boiled dinner she put upon the table just as the clock struck twelve, wondering as she did so if they knew what such a dish was at Thornton Park, and what they were having there that day.

CHAPTER II.
AT THORNTON PARK.

Meanwhile the barouche had stopped under the grand archway at the side entrance of the Park house, where a host of servants was in waiting; the butler, the housekeeper, the cook, the laundress, the maids, the gardener and groom and several more, for, aping his English ancestry and the custom of his mother’s Southern home before the war, Mr. Thornton kept about him a retinue of servants with whom he was very popular. He paid them well and fed them well, and while requiring from them the utmost deference, was kind in every way, and they came crowding around him with words of welcome and offers of assistance. Mrs. Thornton went at once to her room, while Alice was taken possession of by her nurse, who had come from the city the night before, and who soon had her charge in a little willow carriage, drawing her around the grounds. Gerard, who was a quiet, studious boy, went to the library, while Mr. Thornton, after seeing that his wife was comfortable, joined his little daughter, whose love for her country home he knew, and to whom he said, “I suppose you are quite happy now?”

“Yes, papa,” she replied, “only I want somebody to play with me. Ann is too big. I want Milly Leach. She was so nice to me last summer. Can’t I have her, papa?”

For Alice to want a thing was for her to have it, if possession were possible, and her father answered her:

“Yes, daughter, you shall have her,” without knowing at all who Milly Leach was. But Alice explained that she was the girl who lived in the little red house where Ann had often taken her the summer before to play with Tom and Bessie. And so it came about that Ann was sent that afternoon to the farm house with a request from Mr. Thornton that Mildred should come for the summer and amuse his daughter. Three dollars a week was the remuneration offered, for he always held out a golden bait when the fish was doubtful, as he thought it might be in this case. Mrs. Leach was better, and sitting up while Mildred combed and brushed the hair much like her own, except that it was softer and smoother, because it had more care and there was less of it.

“Oh, mother,” she cried, when Ann made her errand known, “can’t I go? Three dollars a week! Only think, what a lot; and I’ll give it all to you, and you can get that pretty French calico at Mr. Overton’s store. May I go?”

“Who will do the work when I’m sick?” Mrs. Leach asked, herself a good deal moved by the three dollars a week, which seemed a fortune to her.

“I guess they’ll let me come home when you have a headache,” Milly pleaded, and on this condition it was finally arranged that she should go to the Park for a time at least, and two days after we saw her shelling peas and longing for a change, the change came and she started out on her career in her best gingham dress and white apron, with her small satchel of clothes in her hand and a great lump in her throat as she kissed her mother and Bessie and Charlie, and would have kissed Tom if he had not disappeared with a don’t-care air and a watery look in his eyes, which he wiped with his checked shirt sleeve, and then, boy-like, threw a green apple after his sister, hiding behind the tree when she looked around to see whence it came.

It was a lovely morning, and Thornton Park lay fair and beautiful in the distance as she walked rapidly on until a familiar whistle stopped her and she saw Hugh hurrying across the fields and waving his hat to her.

“Hello!” he said, as he came to her side, “I nearly broke my neck to catch you. And so you are going to be a hired girl. Let me carry that satchel,” and he took it from her while she answered hotly, “I ain’t a hired girl. I’m Allie’s little friend; that’s what she said when she came with Ann last night and we made the bargain, and I’m to have three dollars a week.”

“Three dollars a week! That is big,” Hugh said, staggered a little at the price. “But, I say, don’t go so fast. Let’s sit down awhile and talk;” and seating himself upon a log, with Mildred beside him and the satchel at his feet, he went on: “Milly, I don’t want you to go to Thornton Park. Won’t you give it up? Seems as if I was losing you.”

“You never had me to lose,” was the girl’s reply, and Hugh continued:

“That’s so; but I mean that I like you better than any girl I ever knew; like you just as I should my sister if I had one.”

Here Milly elevated her eyebrows a little, while Hugh went on: “And I don’t want you to go to that fine place and learn to despise us all, and the old home by the brook.”

“I shall never do that, for I love father and mother and Tom and Bessie and Charlie better than I do myself. I’d die for them, but I do hate the old house and the poverty and work, and I mean to be a grand lady and rich, and then I’ll help them all, and you, too, if you’ll let me.”

“I don’t need your help, and I don’t want to see you a grand lady, and I don’t want you to be snubbed by that proud Thornton,” Hugh replied, and Milly answered quickly, with short, emphatic nods of her head:

“I sha’n’t be snubbed by him, for if he sasses me I shall sass him. I’ve made up my mind to that.”

“And when you do may I be there to hear; but you are a brick, any way,” was Hugh’s laughing rejoinder, and as Milly had risen to her feet, he, too, arose, and taking up the satchel walked with her to the Park gate, where he said good-bye, but called to her after a minute, “I say, Milly, I have that pea-pod yet, and you are beginning to wilt, but I am as plump as ever.”

“Pshaw!” was Mildred’s scornful reply, as she hurried on through the Park, while Hugh walked slowly down the road, wishing he had money and could give it all to Milly.

“But I shall never be rich,” he said to himself, “even if I’m a lawyer as I mean to be, for only dishonest lawyers make money, they say, and I sha’n’t be a cheat if I never make a cent.”

Meanwhile Milly had reached the house, which had always impressed her with a good deal of awe, it was so stately and grand. Going up to the front door she was about to ring, when the same voice which had ordered her from the berry pasture, said to her rather sharply:

“What are you doing here, little girl?”

“I’m Mildred Leach, and I’ve come to be Allie’s little friend,” Mildred answered, facing the speaker squarely, with her satchel in both hands.

“Oh, yes; I know, but go to the side door, and say Miss Alice instead of Allie,” Mr. Thornton replied as he began to puff at his cigar.

Here was sass at the outset, and remembering her promise to Hugh, Milly gave a vigorous pull at the bell, saying as she did so:

“I sha’n’t call her Miss, and I shall go into the front door, or I sha’n’t stay. I ain’t dirt!”

This speech was so astounding and unexpected, that instead of resenting it, Mr. Thornton laughed aloud, and as a servant just then came to the door, he sauntered away, saying to himself:

“Plucky, by Jove; but if she suits Allie, I don’t care.”

If Mr. Thornton had a redeeming trait it was his love for his wife and children, especially little Alice, for whom he would sacrifice everything, even his pride, which is saying a great deal, and when, an hour later, he found her in the Park with Mildred at her side making dandelion curls for her, he was very gracious and friendly, asking her how old she was, and giving her numerous charges with regard to his daughter. Then he went away, while Mildred looked admiringly after him, thinking how handsome he was in his city clothes, and how different he was from her father.

“It’s because he’s rich and has money. I mean to have some, too,” she thought, and with the seeds of ambition taking deeper and deeper root, she began her life at Thornton Park, where she soon became a great favorite, not only with Alice, but with Mrs. Thornton, to whom she was almost as necessary as to Alice herself.

Regularly every Saturday night her three dollars were paid to her, and as regularly every Sunday morning she took them home, where they were very acceptable, for Mr. Leach had not the least idea of thrift, and his daughter’s wages tided over many an ugly gap in the household economy. Mrs. Leach had the French calico gown, and Charlie a pair of red shoes, and Bessie a new white frock, and Tom a new straw hat, but for all that they missed Mildred everywhere, she was so helpful and willing, even when rebelling most against her condition, and when in September Mrs. Thornton proposed that she should go with them to New York, Mrs. Leach refused so decidedly that the wages were at once doubled, and six dollars a week offered in place of three. Money was nothing to Mrs. Thornton, and as what she set her mind upon she usually managed to get, she succeeded in this, and when in October the family returned to the city, Mildred went with them, very smart in the new suit Mrs. Thornton had given her, and very red about the eyes from the tears she had shed when saying good-bye to her home.

“If I’d known I should feel this way, I believe I wouldn’t have gone,” she had thought, as she went from room to room with Charlie in her arms, Bessie holding her hand, and Tom following in the rear, whistling “The girl I left behind me,” and trying to seem very brave.

On a bench by the brook which ran back of the house Mildred at last sat down with Charlie in her lap, and looking at the water running so fast at her feet, wondered if she should ever see it again, and where Hugh was that he did not come to say good-bye. She had a little package for him, and when at last he appeared, and leaping across the brook, sat down beside her, she gave it to him, and said with a forced laugh:

“A splint from the oven broom. You used to ask for one, and here ’tis.”

He knew what she meant, and opening the paper saw one of her dark curls.

“Thanks, Milly,” he said, with a lump in his throat. “I’ll keep it, and the peas, too, till you come back. When will that be?”

“I don’t know; next summer, most likely; though perhaps I shall stay away until I’m such a fine lady that you won’t know me. I’m to study with Allie’s governess and learn everything, so as to teach some time,” she said.

“Here’s the carriage,” Tom called round the corner, and kissing Charlie and Bessie and Tom, who did not resist her now, and crying on her mother’s neck, and wringing her father’s hard hand and saying good-bye to Hugh, she went out from the home where for many a long year she was not seen again.

CHAPTER III.
INCIDENTS OF FIFTEEN YEARS.

At first the inmates of the farm house missed the young girl sadly; but they gradually learned to get on very well without her, and when in the spring word came that Mrs. Thornton was going to Europe and wished to take Mildred with her, offering as an inducement a sum far beyond what they knew the girl’s services were worth, and when Mildred, too, joined her entreaties with Mrs. Thornton’s, telling of the advantage the foreign life would be to her, as she was to share in Alice’s instruction, the father and mother consented, with no thought, however, that she would not return within the year. When Hugh heard of it he went alone into the woods, and sitting down near the chestnut tree, where he and Milly had often gathered the brown nuts together, thought the matter out in his plain, practical way.

“That ends it with Milly,” he said. “Europe will turn her head, and if she ever comes home she will despise us more than ever and me most of all, with my gawky manners and big hands and feet.”

Then, taking from his pocket a little box, he opened it carefully, and removing a fold of paper looked wistfully at the contents. A curl of dark-brown hair and a gray pod with two peas inside,—one shriveled and harder than the other, and as it seemed to him harder and more shriveled than when he last looked at it.

“It’s just as I thought it would be,” he said, “She will grow away from me with her French and German and foreign ways, unless I grow with her,” and for the first time in his life Hugh felt the stirring of a genuine and laudable ambition. “I will make something of myself,” he said. “I have it in me, I know.”

The curl and the peas were put away, and from that time forward Hugh’s career was onward and upward, first to school in Pittsfield, then to college at Amherst, then to a law office in Albany, and then ten years later back to Rocky Point, where he devoted himself to his profession and won golden laurels as the most honorable and prominent lawyer in all the mountain district. Rocky Point had had a boom in the meantime, and now spread itself over the hillside and across the pasture land, almost to the red farm house which stood by the running brook, its exterior a little changed, as blinds had been added and an extra room with a bow window, which looked toward the village and the brook. And here on summer mornings fifteen years after Mildred went away a pale-faced woman sat, with her hair now white as snow, combed smoothly back from her brow, her hands folded on her lap, and her eyes turned towards the window through which she knew the sun was shining brightly, although she could not see it, for Mrs. Leach was blind. Headache and hereditary disease had done their work, and when her husband died she could not see his face, on which her tears fell so fast. For more than two years he had been lying in the cemetery up the mountain road, and beside his grave was another and a shorter one, nearly level with the ground, for it was twelve years since Charlie died and won the golden crown which Milly had promised him that day when the spirit of prophecy was upon her.

During all these years Mildred had never come back to the old home which bore so many proofs of her loving remembrance, for every dollar she could spare from her liberal allowance was sent to her people. Mrs. Thornton had died in Paris, where Alice was so far cured of her spinal trouble that only a slight limp told that she had ever been lame. At the time of Mrs. Thornton’s death there was staying in the same hotel an English lady, a widow, who had recently lost her only daughter, a girl about Mildred’s age, with something of Mildred’s look in her eyes. To this lady, whose name was Mrs. Gardner, Mildred had in her helpful way rendered many little services and made herself so agreeable that when Mrs. Thornton died the lady offered to take her as her companion and possibly adopted daughter, if the girl proved all she hoped she might. When this proposal was made to Mr. Thornton he neither assented nor objected. The girl could do as she pleased, he said, and as she pleased to go she went, sorry to leave Alice, but glad to escape from the father, whose utter indifference and apparent forgetfulness of her presence in his family, had chafed and offended her. Rude he had never been to her, but she might have been a mere machine, so far as he had any interest in or care for her. She was simply a servant, whose name he scarcely remembered, and of whose family he knew very little when Mrs. Gardner questioned him of them.

“Very poor and very common; such as would be called peasantry on the continent,” he said, and Mildred, who accidentally overheard the remark, felt the hot blood stain her face and throb through her veins as she registered a vow that this proud, cold man, who likened her to a peasant, should some day hold a different opinion of her.

She was nearly fifteen now, and older than her years with her besetting sin, ambition, intensified by her life abroad, and as she saw, in the position which Mrs. Gardner offered her an added round to the ladder she was climbing, she took it unhesitatingly, and went with her to Switzerland, from which place she wrote to her mother, asking pardon if she had done wrong, and enclosing fifty pounds which she had been saving for her.

“Taken the bits in her teeth,” was Hugh’s comment, when he heard of it, while Mr. and Mrs. Leach mourned over their wayward daughter, whose loving letters, however, and substantial gifts made some amends for her protracted absence.

She had gone with Mrs. Gardner as a companion, but grew so rapidly into favor that the lady began at last to call her daughter, and when she found that her middle name was Frances, to address her as Fanny, the name of the little girl she had lost, and to register her as Miss Gardner. To this Mildred at first objected as something not quite honorable, but when she saw how much more attention Fanny Gardner received than Mildred Leach had done, she gave up the point, and became so accustomed to her new name that the sound of the old would have seemed strange to her had she heard it spoken. Of the change, however, she never told her mother, and seldom said much of Mrs. Gardner, except that she was kind and rich and handsome, with many suitors for her hand, and when at last she wrote that the lady had married a Mr. Harwood, and spoke of her ever after as Mrs. Harwood, the name Gardner passed in time entirely from the minds of both Mr. and Mrs. Leach, who, being very human, began to feel a pride in the fact that they had a daughter abroad, who was growing into a fine lady and could speak both German and French.

From point to point Mildred traveled with the Harwoods, passing always as Mrs. Harwood’s adopted daughter, which she was to all intents and purposes. And in a way she was very happy, although at times there came over her such a longing for home that she was half resolved to give up all her grandeur and go back to the life she had so detested. They were at a villa on the Rhine, not very far from Constance, when she heard of Charlie’s death, and burying her face in the soft grass of the terrace she sobbed as if her heart were broken.

“Oh, Charlie,” she moaned, “dead, and I not there to see you. I never dreamed that you would die; and I meant to do so much for you when you were older. I wish I had never left you, Charlie, my darling.”

Could Mildred have had her way she would have gone home then, but Mrs. Harwood would not permit it, and so the years went on until in Egypt she heard of her father’s death, and that her mother was blind. It was Tom who wrote her the news, which he did not break very gently, for in a way he resented his sister’s long absence, and let her know that he did.

“Not that we really need you,” he wrote, “for Bessie sees to the house, which is fixed up a good deal, thanks to you and mother’s Uncle Silas. Did you ever hear of him? I scarcely had until he died last year and left us five thousand dollars, which makes us quite rich. We have some blinds and a new room with a bay window and a girl to do the work; so, you see, we are very fine, but mother is always fretting for you, and more since she was blind, lamenting that she can never see your face again. Should we know you, I wonder? I guess not, it is so long since you went away, thirteen years. Why, you are twenty-six! Almost an old maid, and I suppose an awful swell, with your French and German and Italian. Bessie can speak French a little. She is eighteen, and the handsomest girl you ever saw, unless it is Alice Thornton, whose back is straight as a string. She comes to Thornton Park every summer with Gerard, and when she isn’t here with Bessie, Bessie is there with her. Mr. Thornton is in town sometimes, high and mighty as ever, with a face as black as thunder when he sees Gerard talking French to Bessie, for it was of him she learned it. I have been away to the Academy several quarters, and would like to go to college, but shall have to give that up, now father is dead. Did I tell you I was reading law with Hugh? He is a big man every way, stands six feet in his slippers, and head and shoulders above every lawyer in these parts. Why, they sometimes send for him to go to Albany to try a suit. I used to think he was sweet on you, but he has not mentioned you for a long time, except when mother got blind, and then he said, ‘Milly ought to be here.’ But don’t fret; we get along well enough, and you wouldn’t be happy with us.

“Yours,

“Tom.”

When Mildred read this letter she made up her mind to go home at any cost, and would have done so, if on her return from Naples she had not been stricken down with a malarial fever, which kept her an invalid for months, and when she recovered from it there had come into her life a new excitement which absorbed every other thought, and led finally to a result without which this story would never have been written.

CHAPTER IV.
AT THE FARM HOUSE.

It was fifteen years since Milly Leach sat shelling peas on the doorstep where now two young girls were sitting, one listening to and the other reading a letter which evidently excited and agitated her greatly. It was as follows:

“Langham’s, London, May —, 18—.

“Dear Alice,—You will probably be surprised to hear that I am going to be married to a Miss Fanny Gardner, whom I first met in Florence. She is twenty-seven or twenty-eight, and the most beautiful woman I ever saw, and good as she is beautiful. You are sure to like her. The ceremony takes place at —— church in London, and after the wedding breakfast at her mother’s town house we shall go for a short time to Wales and Ireland and then sail for home.

“I suppose you and Gerard are at the Park, or will be soon, and I want you to see that everything is in order. We shall occupy the suite of rooms on the south side of the house instead of the east, and I’d like to have them refurnished throughout, and will leave everything to your good taste, only suggesting that although Miss Gardner’s hair is rather a peculiar color,—golden brown, some might call it,—she is not a blonde; neither is she a brunette; and such tints as soft French grays and pinks will suit her better than blue. The wedding day is fixed for June —. Shall telegraph as soon as we reach New York, and possibly write you before.

“Your loving father,

“Giles Thornton.”

“Oh—h,” and the girl who was listening drew a long breath. “Oh—h! Going to be married,—to Fanny Gardner. That’s a pretty name. She’s English, I suppose. I guess you’ll like her;” and Bessie put her hand, half pityingly, half caressingly upon the arm of her friend, down whose cheeks two great tears were rolling.

“Yes,” Alice replied; “but it is so sudden, and I’m thinking of mother. I wonder what Gerard will say. There he is now. Oh, Gerard,” she called, as a young man came through the gate and seating himself upon a lower step took Bessie’s hand in his and held it while the bright blush on her lovely face told what he was to her.

“What’s the matter, Allie?” he said to his sister. “You look solemn as a graveyard.”

“Papa is going to be married,” Alice replied, with a sob.

“Wha—at!” and Gerard started to his feet. “Father married! Why, he is nearly fifty years old. Let me see,”—and taking the letter from Alice he read it aloud, commenting as he read. “Twenty-seven or twenty-eight; not much older than I am, for I am twenty-five; quite too young for me to call her mother. ‘The most beautiful woman I ever saw.’ He must be hard hit. ‘Ceremony takes place——’ Why, girls, it’s to-day! It’s past. I congratulate you, Allie, on a stepmother, and here’s to her health from her son;” and stooping over Bessie he kissed her before she could remonstrate.

Just then Hugh McGregor came up the walk, and taking off his straw hat wiped the perspiration from his face, while he stood for a moment surveying the group before him with a quizzical smile upon his lips. Fifteen years had changed Hugh from the tall, awkward boy of seventeen into the taller, less awkward man of thirty-two, who, having mingled a good deal with the world, had acquired much of the ease and polish which such mingling brings. Handsome he could not be called; there was too much of the rugged Scotch in him for that, but he had something better than beauty in his frank, honest face and kindly blue eyes, which bespoke the man who could be trusted to the death and never betray the trust. He, too, had received a letter from Mr. Thornton, whose business in Rocky Point he had in charge, and after reading it had gone to Thornton Park with the news. Finding both Alice and Gerard absent, he had followed on to the farm house where he was sure they were.

“I see you know it,” he said, pointing to the letter in Gerard’s hand. “I have heard from your father and came to tell you. Did you suspect this at all?”

“No,” Alice replied; “he has never written a word of any Miss Gardner. I wonder who she is.”

“I don’t know,” Hugh answered slowly, while there swept over him the same sensation he had experienced when he first saw the name in Mr. Thornton’s letter.

It did not seem quite new, and he repeated it over and over again but did not associate it with Mildred although she was often in his mind, more as a pleasant memory now, perhaps, for the feelings of the man were not quite what the boy’s had been, and in one sense Milly had dropped out of his life. When she first went away, and he was in school, everything was done with a direct reference to making of himself something of which Milly would be proud when she came back. But Milly had not come back, and the years had crept on and he was a man honored among men, and in his busy life had but little leisure for thought beyond his business. It was seldom now that he looked at the dark brown curl, or the little pea in the pod, hard as a bullet, and shriveled almost to nothing. But when he did he always thought of the summer day years ago and the young girl on the steps and the sound of the brook gurgling over the stones as it ran under the little bridge. And it all came back to him now, with news of Mr. Thornton’s bride, though why it should he could not tell. He only knew that Milly was haunting him that morning with strange persistency, and his first question to Bessie was, “When did you hear from your sister?”

“Last night. She is in London, or was,—but wrote she was going on a journey and then was coming home. I shall believe that when I see her. Mother has the letter, and will be glad to see you,” was Bessie’s reply, and Hugh went into the pleasant, sunny room where the blind woman was sitting, with her hands folded on her lap and a listening expression on her face.

“Oh, Hugh,” she exclaimed, “I am glad you have come. I want to talk to you.”

Straightening her widow’s cap, which was a little awry, as deftly as a woman could have done, he sat down beside her, while she continued, as she drew a letter from her bosom, where she always kept Milly’s last. “I heard from Milly last night. I am afraid she is not happy, but she is coming home by and by. She says so. Read it, please.”

Taking the letter he began to read:

“London, May —, 18—.

“Darling Mother:—I am in London, but shall not stay long, for I am going on a journey, and it may be weeks, if not months, before I can write you again. But don’t worry. If anything happens to me you will know it. I am quite well and—oh, mother, I never loved you as I do now or needed your prayers so much. Pray for me. I can’t pray for myself, but I’d give half my life to put my arms around your neck and look into your dear, blind eyes, which, if they could see, would not know me, I am so changed. My hair fell out when I was so sick in Naples, and is not the same color it used to be. Everything is different. Oh, if I could see you, and I shall in the fall, if I live.

“Give my love to Tom and Bessie, and tell Hugh,——No, don’t tell him anything. God bless you, darling mother. Good-bye,

“From

“Mildred F. Leach.”

Hugh’s face was a study as he read this letter, which sounded like a cry for help from an aching heart. Was Milly unhappy, and if so, why? he asked himself as he still held the letter with his eyes fixed upon the words “Tell Hugh——No, don’t tell him anything.” Did they mean that in her trouble she had for a moment turned to him, he wondered, but quickly put that thought aside. She had been too long silent to think of him now; and he was content that it should be so. His liking for her had been but a boy’s fancy for a little girl, he reasoned, and yet, as he held the letter in his hand, it seemed to bring Milly very near to him, and he saw her plainly as she looked when entering Thornton Park that morning so long ago. “I felt I was losing her then. I am sure of it now,” he was thinking, when Mrs. Leach asked what he thought of Milly’s letter, and where he supposed she was going, and what ailed her.

Hugh was Mrs. Leach’s confidant and oracle, whom she consulted on all occasions, and Tom himself was no kinder or tenderer in his manner to her than this big-hearted Scotchman, who soothed and comforted her now just as he always did, and then, without returning to the young people by the door he went out through the long window of Mrs. Leach’s room and off across the fields to the woods on the mountain side, where he sat down upon a rocky ledge to rest, wondering why the day was so oppressive, and why the words “Tell Hugh” should affect him so strangely, and why Mildred seemed so near to him that once he put up his hand with a feeling that he should touch her little hard, brown hand, browned and hardened with the work she hated so much. It was not often that he indulged in sentiment of this kind, but the spell was on him, and he sat bound by it until the whistle from the large shop had called the workmen from their dinners. Then he arose and went down the mountain road to his office, saying to himself: “I wonder where she is to-day, when I am so impressed with a sense of her nearness that I believe she is thinking of me,” and with this comforting assurance, Hugh was very patient and kind to the old woman whose will he had changed a dozen times, and who came to have it changed again, without a thought of offering him any remuneration for his trouble.

Meantime the group by the door had been joined by Tom, who had grown into just the kind of man Whittier’s barefoot boy would have grown into if he had grown at all,—a frank, sunny-faced young man, whom every old woman and young girl liked, and whom one young girl loved with all the intensity of her nature, caring nothing that he was poor and one whom her proud father would scorn as a son-in-law. They were not exactly engaged,—for Alice said her father must be consulted first, and they were waiting for him, while Gerard, who could wait for nothing where Bessie was concerned, was drinking his fill of love in her blue eyes, with no thought or care as to whether his father would oppose him or not.

“Hello, you are all here,” Tom said, as he came round the corner and laid his hand on Allie’s shoulder; then, glancing at her face, he continued: “Why, you’ve been crying. What’s the matter, Allie?”

“Oh, Tom, papa is married to-day,—to Fanny Gardner, an English girl with golden-brown hair and only twenty-eight years old and very handsome, he says. I know I shall hate her,” Alice sobbed, while Tom burst into a merry laugh.

“Your father married to a girl with golden-brown hair, which should be gray to match his,—that is a shame, by Jove. But, I say, Allie, I’m glad of it, for with a young wife at Thornton Park, you will be de trop, don’t you see?” And just as Gerard had done to Bessie so Tom did to Alice—kissed her pale face, with his best wishes to the bride, who was discussed pretty freely, from her name to the furniture of her room, which was to harmonize with the complexion of one who was neither a blond nor a brunette, but very beautiful.

For the next few weeks there was a great deal of bustle and excitement at Thornton Park, where Bessie went every day to talk over and assist in the arrangement of the bridal rooms, which were just completed when there came a telegram from New York saying that the newly married pair had arrived and would be home the following day.

CHAPTER V.
THE BRIDE.

A Cunard steamer had landed its living freight at the wharf, where there was the usual scramble and confusion, as trunks and boxes were opened and angry, excited women confronted with their spoils by relentless custom house officers, bent upon doing their duty, unless stopped by the means so frequently employed upon such occasions. Outside the long building stood an open carriage in which a lady sat, very simply but elegantly attired, with money, and Paris, and Worth showing in every article of her dress, from her round hat to her dainty boots, which could not be called small, for the feet they covered harmonized with the lady herself, who was tall and well proportioned, with a splendidly developed figure, on which anything looked well. There was a brilliant color in her cheeks, and her brown eyes were large and bright and beautiful, but very sad as they looked upon the scenes around her without seeming to see anything. Nor did their expression change when she was joined by an elderly man, who, taking his seat beside her, said first to the driver:

“To the Windsor,” and then to her, “I was longer than I thought I should be; those rascally officers gave me a world of trouble, but we shall soon be at the hotel now. Are you very tired?”

The question was asked very tenderly, for Giles Thornton was greatly in love with his bride of a few weeks. He had first met her in Florence, where she was recovering from the long illness which had lasted for months and made her weak as a child and almost as helpless. During her sickness her hair had fallen out, and owing to some unusual freak of nature it had come in much lighter than it was before and not so curly, although it still lay in wavy masses upon her head, and here and there coiled itself into rings around her forehead. The Harwoods were staying at the same hotel with Mr. Thornton, and it was in the Boboli Gardens that he first met her as she was being wheeled in an invalid chair by her attendant.

“Will he know me?” was her first thought when he was presented to her.

But there was no fear of that, for Mildred Leach had passed as wholly out of his mind as if he had never seen her, and if she had not there was no danger of his recognizing the girl who had been his daughter’s companion in this lovely woman whose voice and manner and appearance were indicative of the refinement and cultivation to which for years she had been accustomed. To him she was Miss Gardner, an English girl, and during the half hour he walked by her chair in the gardens, he felt his heart throb as it had never throbbed since he buried his wife. He had loved her devotedly and had never thought to fill her place until now when love did its work at first sight, and when two weeks later the Harwoods left Florence for Venice and Switzerland, he was with them, to all intents and purposes Mildred’s lover, although he had not openly announced himself as such.

To Mrs. Harwood Mildred had said, “Don’t tell him who I am. I prefer to do that when the time comes. I am going to punish him for calling my father a peasant when you inquired about him. I heard him. I have not forgotten.”

And so Mr. Thornton went blindly to his fate, which came one day in Ouchy in the grounds of the Beau-Rivage, where Mildred was sitting alone, with her eyes fixed upon the lake and the mountains beyond, and her thoughts back in the old farm house, with her mother and Bessie and Tom and Hugh, of whom she had not heard a word for months.

“He has forgotten me,” she said to herself, “and why shouldn’t he? I was never much to him, and yet”——

She did not get any farther, for there was a footstep near; some one was coming, and in a moment Mr. Thornton said to her, “Alone, Miss Gardner, and dreaming? May I dispel the dream and sit beside you a moment?”

Mildred knew then what was before her, as well as she did half an hour later, during which time Giles Thornton had laid himself and his fortune at her feet, and what was harder than all to meet, had made her believe that he loved her. She knew that he admired her, but she had not counted upon his love, which moved her a little, for Mr. Thornton was not a man to whom one could listen quietly when he was in earnest and resolved to carry his point, and for an instant Mildred wavered. It was something to be Mrs. Giles Thornton, of Thornton Park, and ought to satisfy her ambition. With all her beauty and social advantages, she as yet had received no eligible offer. It was known that she had no money, and only an Italian count and the youngest son of an English earl had asked her hand in marriage. But both were poor, and one almost an imbecile, from whom she shrank in disgust. Mr. Thornton was different; he was a gentleman of wealth and position, and as his wife she would for a part of the year live near her family. But with the thought of them there came the memory of an overgrown, awkward boy, whose feet and hands were so big that he never knew what to do with them, but whose heart was so much bigger than his feet and hands, that it bore down the scale and Mr. Thornton’s chance was lost for the time being.

“Hugh may never be anything to me,” she thought, “but I must see him before I give myself to any one.”

Then turning to Mr. Thornton, she said, “I thank you for your offer, which I believe is sincere, and that makes it harder for me to tell you what I must. Do you remember a girl, Mildred Leach, who was your daughter’s little friend, as she called herself, for she was as proud as you, and would not be a maid?”

“Ye-es,” Mr. Thornton stammered, as he looked wistfully into the beautiful face confronting him so steadily. “I had forgotten her entirely, but I remember now. She left us to go with an English lady, a Mrs. Gardner. Why, that is Mrs. Harwood,—and,—and,—oh, you are not she!”

“Yes, I am,” was Mildred’s reply, and then very rapidly she told her story, not omitting her having overheard him liken her parents to peasants when speaking of them to Mrs. Gardner. “I determined then,” she said, “that if possible I would one day humble your pride, but if I have done so, it has not given me the satisfaction I thought it would, and I am sorry to cause you pain, for I believe you were in earnest when you asked me to be your wife, which I can never be.”

“No,” he answered slowly, like one who had received a blow from which he could not at once recover. “No, you can never be my wife; Mildred Leach; it does not seem possible.”

Then he arose and walked rapidly away, and when the evening boat left Ouchy for Geneva he was on it, going he cared but little where, if by going he could forget the past as connected with Mildred Leach.

“I cannot marry her family,” he said many times during the next few months, when he was wandering everywhere and vainly trying to forget her, for always before him was the face he had never admired so much as when he last saw it, flushed and pale by turns, with a wondrous light in the brown eyes where tears were gathering. “If it were not for her family, or if I could separate her from them, I would not give her up,” he had often thought when in the following May he met her again at the Grand Hotel in Paris, where the Harwoods were stopping.

He could not tell what it was which impressed him with the idea that she had changed her mind, as she came forward to meet him, saying she was glad to see him, and adding that Mr. and Mrs. Harwood had gone to the opera. She seemed very quiet and absent minded at first, and then rousing herself, said to him abruptly, “You did not stop long enough in Ouchy for me to inquire after my family. You must have seen them often since I left home.”

“Yes,—no,” he answered in some embarrassment; “I have of course been to Thornton Park, but I do not remember much about them. I believe your father rents, or did rent, some land of me, but am not sure, as my agent attends to all that.”

“My father is dead,” Mildred answered so sharply as to make him jump and color painfully, as if guilty of a misdemeanor in not knowing that her father was dead.

“I beg your pardon. I am very sorry. I,—yes,—am very sorry,” he began; but she cut him short by saying, “Do you know Hugh McGregor?”

“Oh, yes. I know him well,” and Mr. Thornton brightened perceptibly. “He is my lawyer, and attends to all my business in Rocky Point; a fine fellow,—a very fine fellow. Do you know him?”

“Yes,” Mildred replied, while her breath came heavily, “I know him, and I hear he is to marry my sister Bessie.”

“Oh, indeed,” and as if memory had suddenly come back to him, Mr. Thornton seemed immensely relieved. “I remember now,—Bessie Leach; that’s the girl I have sometimes seen with Alice. Gerard taught her French,—a very pretty girl. And Mr. McGregor is engaged to her? I am very glad. Any girl might be proud to marry him.”

Mildred made no reply to this, and Mr. Thornton never guessed the dreary emptiness of her soul as she sat with her hands clasped tightly together, thinking of the man whom any girl would be proud to marry. A few months before she would have said that he was nothing more to her than the friend of her childhood, but she had recently learned her mistake, and that the thought of seeing him again was one of the pleasantest anticipations of her home going. There had come to the hotel a Mr. and Mrs. Hayford from America, who sometimes spent their summers at Rocky Point, where Mrs. Hayford was once a teacher. As Mildred had been her pupil, she remembered her at once, after hearing the name, and would have introduced herself but for a conversation accidentally overheard between Mrs. Hayford and a friend who had also been at Rocky Point, and to whom she was retailing the news, first of New York and then of Rocky Point, where she had spent a few days in April prior to sailing.

“Do you remember that Hercules of a lawyer, Hugh McGregor, whom you admired so much?” was asked. “They say he is engaged to Bessie Leach, a girl much younger than himself, but very pretty,—beautiful, in fact, and——

Mildred heard no more, but hurried away, with an ache in her heart that she could not quite define. Tom had intimated that Gerard was interested in Bessie, and now Hugh was engaged to her. Well, it was all right, she said, and would not admit to herself how hard the blow had struck her and how she smarted under it. And it was just when the smart was at its keenest that Mr. Thornton came again across her path, more in love, if possible, than ever, and more intent upon making her his wife. He had fought a desperate battle with his pride and had conquered it, and within twenty-four hours after meeting her in Paris, she had promised to marry him, and when her pledge was given she was conscious of a feeling of quiet and content which she had scarcely hoped for. In his character as lover Mr. Thornton did not seem at all like the man she had feared in her childhood, nor if he felt it did he gave the slightest sign that he was stooping from his high position. She had been very frank with him and had made no pretension of love. “I will be true to you,” she said, “and try to please you in everything. I am tired of the aimless life I have led so many years, and I think Mrs. Harwood is a little tired of me too. She says I ought to have married long ago, but I could not marry a fool even if he had a title. I shall be so glad to go home to my friends, although I am so changed they will never know me.”

Then she added laughingly: “Wouldn’t it be great fun not to write them who I am and see if they will recognize me?”

She did not really mean what she said, or guess that it harmonized perfectly with a plan which Mr. Thornton had in mind, and was resolved to carry out, if possible. If he could have had his wish he would not have gone to Rocky Point at all, but his children were there and Mildred’s heart was set upon it, and he must meet the difficulty in some way. He could marry Mildred, but not her family, and he shrank from the intimacy which must necessarily exist between the Park and the farm house when it was known who his wife was. In his estimation the Leaches were nobodies, and he could not have them running in and out of his house and treating him with the familiarity of a son and brother, as he was sure they would do if he did not stop it. If Mildred would consent to remain incognito while at the Park the annoyance would be prevented, and this consent he tried to gain by many specious arguments. His real reason, he knew, must be kept from sight, and so he asked it as a personal favor, saying it would please him very much and be a kind of excitement for her.

“Possibly you will be recognized,” he said; “and if so, all right; if not, we will tell them just before we go to New York in the autumn and enjoy their surprise.”

He did not add that, once away from Rocky Point, it would probably be long before he took her there again. He only talked of the plan as a joke, which Mildred did not quite see. She was willing to keep the secret until she met them, but to keep it longer was absurd and foolish, she said, and involved a deception, which she abhorred.

“I accepted you partly that I might be near them and see them every day,” she said, “and am longing to throw my arms around mother’s neck and tell her I have come back.”

“And so you shall in time, but humor my whim for once. You will not be sorry,” Mr. Thornton pleaded, and Mildred consented at last, and felt in a measure repaid when she saw how happy it made Mr. Thornton, whose real motive she did not guess.

This was the last of April, and six weeks later Mildred was Mrs. Giles Thornton, traveling through Scotland and Wales and trying to believe herself happy in her husband’s love and the costly gifts he lavished upon her. She had been courted and admired as Fanny Gardner, but the deference paid her now and her independence were very sweet to her, and if she could have forgotten Hugh and been permitted to make herself known to her family, she would have been content at least on the morning when she left New York and started for Thornton Park.

CHAPTER VI.
MRS. GILES THORNTON.

She was very lovely in all the fullness of her matured beauty as she stepped from the train at Rocky Point, and with her large bright eyes swept the crowd of curious people gathered to see her, not one of whom she recognized. A handsome open carriage from Brewster’s, sent up a few days before for this occasion, was waiting for them, and with a half bow to those who ventured to salute her husband, Mildred seated herself in it and was driven through the well-remembered street, her heart beating so loudly that she could hear it distinctly as she drew near the top of the hill from which she knew she would see her old home and possibly her mother. And when the hill top was reached and she saw the house with its doors opened wide, and from the upper window of what had been hers and Bessie’s room a muslin curtain blowing in and out, she grew so white that her husband laid his hand on hers, and said, “Don’t take it so hard, darling. You are doing it to please me.”

“Yes, but it seems as if I must stop here,” she answered faintly as she leaned forward to look at the house around which there was no sign of life, or stir, except the moving of the curtain and the gambols of two kittens playing in the doorway where Mildred half expected to meet the glance of Bessie’s blue eyes and see the gleam of Charlie’s golden hair.

But Charlie was lying on the mountain side, and Bessie, although out of sight, was watching the carriage and the beautiful stranger in whom she saw no trace of her sister.

“I’ve seen her,” Bessie said, as she went into her mother’s room, “and she is very lovely, with such a bright color on her cheeks. And so young to be Mr. Thornton’s wife! I wonder if she loves him. I couldn’t.”

“No. I suppose you prefer Gerard,” Mrs. Leach replied, while Bessie answered blushingly, “Of course I do. Poor Gerard! How angry his father will be when he knows about Tom and me, too. Gerard was going to tell him at once, but I persuaded him to wait until the honeymoon was over. Just two months I’ll give him, and during that time I mean to cultivate Mrs. Thornton and get her on my side. I hope she is not proud like him. She did not look so.”

Bessie had been at the Park that morning helping Alice give the last touches to the rooms intended for the bride. These had been finished in the tints which Mr. Thornton had prescribed. Everything was new, from the carpets on the floors to the lace-canopied bedstead of brass. There were flowers everywhere in great profusion, roses mostly of every variety, and in a glass on a bracket in a corner, Bessie had put a bunch of June pinks from her own garden, explaining to Alice that her mother had sent them to the bride, as they were her favorite flowers and would make the rooms so sweet. Everything was finished at last, and after Bessie was gone Alice had nothing to do but to wait for the coming of the carriage which she soon saw entering the Park. Mildred’s face was very white and her voice trembled as she saw Alice in the distance and said, “I can’t bear it. I came near shrieking to the old home that I was Mildred. I must tell Alice. I cannot be so hypocritical. There is no reason for it.”

“No, no,” and Mr. Thornton spoke a little sternly. “It is too late now, and you have promised. I wish it and have my reason. Ah, here we are, and there are Alice and Gerard.”

They had stopped under the great archway at the side entrance where Gerard and Alice were waiting for them and scanning the bride curiously as she alighted and their father presented her to them,—not as their mother, but as “Mrs. Thornton, my wife.”

All Mildred’s color had come back and her face was glowing with excitement as she took Alice’s hand; then unable to control herself, she threw her arms around the neck of the astonished girl and burst into a flood of tears, while Mr. Thornton looked on in dismay, dreading what might follow. He was himself beginning to think it a very foolish and unnatural thing to try to keep his wife’s identity from her people, but he was not a man to give up easily, and once in a dilemma of his own making he would stay in it at any cost.

“She is very tired and must go to her room,” he said to his daughter, who was crying herself, and holding Mildred’s hands in her own.

Had Mildred tried she could have done nothing better for her cause than she had done. Alice had been very doubtful as to whether she should like her new mother or not, but something in the eyes which looked so appealingly into hers, and in the tears she felt upon her cheek, and the clasp of the arms around the neck, disarmed all prejudice and made of her a friend at once. As for Gerard, he had never meant to be anything but friendly, and when the scene between the two ladies was over he came forward with the slow, quiet manner natural to him and said, “Now it is my turn to welcome Mrs. Thornton, who does not look as if she could have for a son a great six-footer like me. But I’ll call you mother, if you say so.”

“No, don’t,” Mildred answered, flashing on him a smile which made his heart beat rapidly and brought a thought of Bessie, who sometimes smiled like that.

Leading the way to Mildred’s rooms, Alice said, as she threw open the door, “I hope you will like them.”

“Like them! They are perfect,” was Mildred’s answer, as she walked through the apartments, feeling that it must be a dream from which she would bye-and-bye awaken. “And so many roses,” she said, stopping here and there over a bowl or cluster of them until, guided by the perfume, she came upon the pinks her mother had sent to her.

Taking up the glass she held it for an instant while Alice said, “June pinks, perhaps you do not have them in England. They are old-fashioned flowers, but very sweet. A friend of mine, Bessie Leach, brought them for you from her mother, who is blind.”

There was a low cry and a crash as the finger-glass fell to the floor and Mildred sank into the nearest chair, white as ashes, with a look in her eyes which startled and frightened Alice.

“It is the heat and fatigue of the voyage. I was very sea-sick,” Mildred said, trying to smile and recover herself, while Alice went for a towel to wipe up the water trickling over the carpet, and wondering if Mrs. Thornton was given to faintings and hysterics like this.

“She don’t look like it,” she thought, as she picked up and carried out the bits of glass and the pinks which had done the mischief.

When lunch was served Mildred was too ill to go down. A severe headache had come on, and for a time Alice sat by her couch bathing her forehead and brushing her hair, which was more a mottled than golden brown, for it was darker in some places than others, especially when seen in certain lights and shadows. But this only added to its beauty, and Alice ran her fingers through the shining mass, admiring the color and the texture and admiring the woman generally and answering the many questions which were asked her. Hungry at heart to hear something of her family, Mildred said to her, “Tell me of your friends. Have you any here? Girl friends, I mean.”

“Only one with whom I am intimate,” Alice replied, and then as girls will she went off into rhapsodies over Bessie Leach, and in a burst of confidence concluded by saying, “You must not tell papa, for he is not to know it yet, but Bessie is to be my sister. She is to marry Gerard.”

“Marry Gerard!” and Mildred raised herself upon her elbow and shedding her heavy hair back from her face stared at Alice with an expression in her eyes which the girl could not understand, and which made her wonder if her stepmother, too, were as proud as her father and would resent Gerard’s choice.

This called forth another eulogy upon Bessie’s beauty and sweetness, with many injunctions that Mildred should not repeat to her husband what had been told her.

“Nobody knows it for certain but Mr. McGregor and ourselves,” she added, and then, turning her face away so that it could not be seen, Mildred said, “Mr. McGregor? That is your father’s attorney. Is he a married man?”

The question was a singular one, but Alice was not quick to suspect, and answered laughingly, “Hugh McGregor married! Why, I don’t suppose he has ever looked twice at any girl. He is a confirmed old bachelor, but very nice. Father thinks the world of him.”

“Yes, oh, yes,” Mildred moaned, as she clasped her hands over her forehead where the pain was so intense.

“You are worse. You are white as a sheet; let me call papa,” Alice cried, alarmed at the look of anguish in the dark eyes and the gray pallor of the face which seemed to have grown pinched and thin in a moment.

But her husband was the last person whom Mildred wished to see then, and detaining Alice she said, “Don’t call him, please. It will soon pass off, and don’t think me ungrateful, either, but I’d rather be alone for a while. I may sleep and that will do me good.”

And so, after darkening the room, Alice went out and left the wretched woman alone in her grief and pain.

“Mrs. Hayford was mistaken. Hugh is not engaged to Bessie, and I am Mrs. Giles Thornton,” she said, a little bitterly. “My ambition ought to be satisfied. I have made my own bed and must lie in it, and go on lying, too!”

She smiled faintly at her own joke and then continued: “If I had only resisted and come back Mildred Leach! But it is now too late, and Hugh will always despise me for the deception. Oh, Hugh!”

There was a spasmodic wringing of the hands, and then, as if ashamed of herself Mildred said, “I must not, will not be faithless to my husband, who loves me, I know, and I will be worthy of his love and make him happy, so help me Heaven!”

The vow was made and Mildred would keep it to the death. The might have been, which has broken so many hearts when the knowledge came too late, was put away and buried deep down in the inmost recesses of her soul, and when two hours later she awoke from a refreshing sleep and found her husband sitting by her, she put her hand in his just as she had never put it before, and did not shrink from him when he stooped down to caress her.

CHAPTER VII.
CALLS AT THE PARK.

It was early the next morning when Mildred arose and stepping out upon the balcony looked toward the town which had changed so much since she was there last. Across the noisy little river which went dashing along in its rocky bed at the foot of the mountain, one or two tall stacks of manufactories were belching forth their smoke, while new churches and hotels and villas dotted what had been pasture lands when she went away. Standing upon tiptoe she could see the chimney top of her old home, and just over it, up the mountain road, the evergreens in the cemetery where her father and Charlie were lying.

“I’ll go there some day alone and find their graves,” she was thinking when her husband joined her.

“I am sure you are better, you look so fresh and bright; but it is time you were getting ready for breakfast,” he said, as he gave her a little caress.

And Mildred was very bright when she at last went with her husband to the breakfast-room, a half-opened rose which he had gathered for her at her throat, and another at her belt. It was her first appearance at her own table, and Mr. Thornton led her proudly to her seat behind the coffee urn and looked at her admiringly while she assumed the rôle of mistress as naturally as if she had all her life been accustomed to her present surroundings. Alice had kissed her effusively as she came in, hoping she was quite well and thinking her more beautiful than on the previous day. Gerard, who was less demonstrative but more observant than his sister, greeted her cordially and then sat watching her, curious and puzzled by something in her face or manner or voice which seemed familiar to him.

“She is dazzlingly lovely. I wonder how Bessie will look beside her,” he thought, as after breakfast he started for the farm house as was his daily custom.

It was very warm that morning and Mildred had seated herself with a book upon the shaded balcony opening from her room, when word was brought her that her husband wished to see her on the front piazza.

“There’s a gentleman with him,—Mr. McGregor,” the servant said, and Mildred felt as if her heart had suddenly risen in her throat, making her choke and gasp for breath.

She knew he would come some time, but had not expected him so soon, and she shook like a leaf as she stood a moment before her mirror.

“He will never know me,” she said, as side by side with the reflection of herself she saw the girl of fifteen years ago; sallow and thin and slight, with eyes too big for her face, and hair too heavy for her head; the girl with the faded calico dress and high-necked apron, who seemed to walk beside her as she descended the broad staircase and went through the hall and out upon the piazza, where she heard her husband’s voice, and Hugh’s.

“I came on business, and intended calling later, but I shall be glad to see Mrs. Thornton,” she heard him say, and then the smothered, choking sensation left her, and, with a little unconscious nod to the other Mildred at her side, she whispered:

“I shall pull through.”

Hugh was standing half-way down the piazza, leaning against a column, with his straw hat in his hand, fanning himself, just as she had seen him do a hundred times when they were boy and girl together, and he was looking at the shadowy Mildred at her side just as he now looked at her, the tall, elegant, perfectly self-possessed woman, coming slowly towards him, every movement graceful, and every action that of one sure pf herself, and accustomed to the admiration she saw in his eyes,—the same kind, honest blue eyes which she remembered so well, but which had in them no sign of recognition as he came forward to meet her, and offering her his hand, welcomed her to Rocky Point, “and America,” he added, while a blood-red stain crept up from her neck to her ear as she felt the deception she was allowing. Hugh was not as polished as Mr. Thornton, nor were his clothes as faultless and fashionable, but he was every whit a gentleman, and looked it, too, as he stood for a moment talking to Mildred in the voice she knew so well and which had grown richer and deeper with the lapse of time, and moved her strangely as she listened to it again.

“I think I should have known him anywhere,” she thought, as she answered his remarks, her own voice, in which the English accent was predominant, steady and firm, but having in it occasionally a tone which made Hugh start a little, it was so like something he had heard before, but could not define.

There was nothing in this English woman, as he believed her to be, which could remind him of Mildred Leach, who was never once in his mind during the few minutes he was talking with her. And still she puzzled him, and all that morning, after his return to his office, her lovely face and especially her eyes haunted him and looked at him from every paper and book he touched, and he heard the tone, which had struck him as familiar, calling to him everywhere, and bringing at last a thought of Mildred Leach and the July morning when she had shelled her peas by the door, and given him a pod as a souvenir. Where was she now, he wondered, and would she come back in the autumn? Probably not. She had held out similar promises before only to break them. She was weaned entirely from all her old associations, and it did not matter, he said to himself, wondering, as he often did, why he had so long kept in his mind the little wayward girl, who had never done anything but tease and worry him, and tell him of the great things she meant to do.

“She has been a long time doing it, unless she calls a life of dependence a great thing,” he said, and then his thoughts drifted to Thornton Park and the bride, who was troubled with no more calls that day, and so had time to rest and go about her handsome house and grounds, much handsomer than when she first rang the front door bell and was told to go to the side entrance by the man who was her husband now, and prouder of her than of all his other surroundings.

The next day there were many visitors at the Park, mostly strangers to Mildred, although a few of them had been known to her in childhood, but like Hugh, they saw no resemblance in her to the “oldest Leach girl,” as she was called by the neighbors who remembered her. Of the bride there was but one verdict, “The most elegant and agreeable woman that has ever been in Rocky Point,” was said of her by all, for Mildred, while bearing herself like a princess, was so gracious and friendly that she took every heart by storm.

It was late in the day when Bessie started to make her call with Tom. Dinner was over and Mildred, who, with her husband and Gerard and Alice, was sitting upon the piazza, saw them as they turned an angle in the shrubbery and came up the avenue.

“Oh, there’s Bessie,” Allie cried, springing to her feet, while Mildred’s heart began to beat wildly as she glanced at Mr. Thornton, on whose brow there was a dark frown, the first she had seen since she was his wife, and this quieted her at once, for she readily guessed its cause. She knew he had not married her family, and had begun to suspect that he meant to keep her from them as much as possible.

“But he cannot do it,” she thought, and turning to him she said in a low tone, “They are mine; my own flesh and blood, and for my sake treat them politely. It is the first favor I have asked of you.”

There was something in her eyes which made him think she might be dangerous if roused, and for aught he knew she might bring the whole family there to live, or leave him for them, and swallowing his pride, he went forward to meet his visitors with so much cordiality that Tom, who had never received the slightest civility from the great man, thought, to himself, “By Jove, she’s made him over.”

“My wife, Mrs. Thornton; Miss Leach and Mr. Leach,” Mr. Thornton said, and Mildred’s hand, cold and nerveless, was taken by a hand as white and soft as her own, while Bessie’s blue eyes looked curiously at her, and Bessie was saying the commonplace things which strangers say to each other.

“How lovely she is,” Mildred thought, hardly able to restrain herself from folding the sunny, bright-faced girl in her arms and sobbing and crying over her.

But Tom was speaking to her now, and she was conscious of a feeling of pride as she looked at the tall, handsome, manly fellow, and knew he was her brother. Tom was like his mother, and Bessie like her father, while Mildred was like neither, and one could scarcely have seen any resemblance between them as they sat talking together until the moon came up over the hill and it was time to go. Bessie had devoted herself to Mildred, who fascinated her greatly, and who had adroitly led her to talk of herself and her home and her mother. Mildred spoke of the pinks, her voice trembling as she sent her thanks and love to the blind woman whom she was soon coming to see.

“Oh, I’m so glad,” Bessie exclaimed, in her impulsive way, “and mother will be glad too. She sent the pinks because they are her favorite flowers and she says they remind her of Milly, who used to love them so much; that’s my sister, who has been abroad many years. I scarcely remember her at all.”

“Oh,” came like a moan from Mildred, who felt as if a blow had struck her heart, it throbbed so painfully at the mention of her old name by the sister who did not know her, and for an instant she was tempted to scream out the truth and bring the foolish farce to an end.

Then she felt her husband’s hand on her arm and the power of his will overmastering her, and keeping her quiet. But she was glad when the interview was over and she was free to go by herself and sob out her anguish and shame and regret, that she had ever lent herself to this deception. Of the two, Bessie and Tom, she had felt more drawn toward the latter, of whom any sister might be proud, and when bidding him good-night she had held his hand with a pressure which surprised him, while her lips quivered and her eyes had in them a wistful look, as if she were longing to say, “Oh, Tom; my brother.” And Tom had felt the magnetism of her eyes and manner, and he said to Alice, who, with Gerard, walked with them to the Park gate, “I say, Allie, your stepmother is a stunner, and no mistake, and I do believe she took a fancy to me. Why, I actually thought she squeezed my hand a little, and she looked as if she’d like to kiss me. It wouldn’t hurt me much to kiss her.”

“Oh, Tom; and right before Allie,” Bessie said laughingly, and Tom replied, “Can’t a fellow fall in love with his stepmother-in-law, if he wants to?” and the arm he had thrown around Alice tightened its hold upon her.

Here they all laughed together and went on freely discussing the woman, who, on her knees in her room was praying to be forgiven for the lie she was living, and for strength to meet her mother, as that would be the hardest ordeal of all. Once she resolved to defy her husband and proclaim her identity, but gave that up with the thought that it was not very long until September, and she would wait at least until she had seen her mother.

CHAPTER VIII.
MILDRED AND HER MOTHER.

It was several days before Mildred went to the farm house, from which her husband would have kept her altogether if he could have done so. His determination to separate her as much as possible from her family had been constantly increasing since his return, and he had fully made up his mind to leave Rocky Point by the first of September and advertise the Park for sale, thus cutting off all chance for intimacy in the future when it was known who she was. She could do for her family all she pleased, he thought, but she must not be intimate with them, and on his way to the house, for he drove her there himself, he reminded her again of her promise, saying to her very kindly, as he helped her to alight:

“I can trust you, Milly, and am sorry for you, for I know it will be hard to meet your mother and keep silence.”

It was harder than Mildred herself had anticipated, for the sight of the familiar place, the walk, the garden, and the brook, where she had waded barefoot many a time in summer and drawn her sled in winter with Hugh at her side, nearly unmanned her, and every nerve was quivering as she rang the bell in the door of the little, square entry, with the steep, narrow stairs winding up to the chambers above. It was Bessie who answered the ring, blushing when she saw her visitor and apologizing for her appearance. The hired girl was gone for a day or two, leaving her maid of all work, and as this was baking day she was deep in the mysteries of pastry and bread, with her long, bib apron on and her hands covered with flour.

“Never mind me,” Mildred said, as she took in the situation. “It was thoughtless in me to come in the morning. Please keep to your work while I talk with your mother. I will call upon you some other time. Oh, Gerard, you here?” she continued, as through the door opening into the kitchen she saw the young man seated by the table pitting cherries which Bessie was to make into pies. “That’s right; help all you can,” she added with a smile, glad he was there, as it would leave her alone and freer with her mother, whom she found in the bright, sunny room, built partly with the money she had sent.

Mrs. Leach was always very neat and clean, but this morning she was particularly so, in her black cambric dress and spotless white apron, with the widow’s cap resting on her snowy hair. Her hands were folded together, and she was leaning back in her chair as if asleep, when Mildred’s voice roused her, and a moment after Bessie said:

“Here, mother, is Mrs. Thornton, and as I am so busy I will leave her with you for a little while.”

Suddenly, as if she had been shot, Mrs. Leach started forward, and rubbing her eyes, in which there was an eager, expectant look, said:

“I must have been dozing, for I dreamed that Milly had come and I heard her voice in the kitchen. Mis’ Thornton here, did you say? I am very proud to meet her;” and the hands were outstretched, groping in the helpless way habitual with the blind. And Mildred took the hands in hers and drawing a chair to her mother’s side sat down so close to her that Mrs. Leach felt her hot breath stir her hair and knew she was being looked at very closely. But how closely she did not dream, for Mildred’s soul was in her eyes, which scanned the worn face where suffering and sorrow had left their impress. And what a sad, sweet face it was, so sweet and sad that Mildred involuntarily took it between her hands and kissed it passionately; then, unable to control herself, she laid her head on her mother’s bosom and sobbed like a little child.

“What is it? Oh, Mrs. Thornton, you scare me. What makes you cry so? Who are you?” Mrs. Leach said, excitedly, for she was frightened by the strange conduct of her visitor.

“You must excuse me,” Mildred said, lifting up her head. “The sight of you unnerved me, for my,—my mother is blind?”

She did not at all mean to say what she knew would involve more deception of a certain kind, but she had said it and could not take it back, and it was a sufficient explanation of her emotion to Mrs. Leach, who said:

“Your mother blind! Dear,—dear,—how did it happen, and has she been so long? Where does she live, and how could she bear to have you leave her? Dear, dear!”

“Don’t talk of her now, please. I can’t bear it,” Mildred replied, and thinking to herself, “Homesick, poor thing,” Mrs. Leach, whose ideas of the world were narrowed to her own immediate surroundings, began to talk of herself and her family in a desultory kind of way, while Mildred listened with a feeling of half wonder, half pain.

All her associations while with Mrs. Harwood had been with highly-cultivated people, and in one sense her mother was new to her and she realized as she had never done before how different she was from Mr. Thornton and herself. “But she is my mother, and nothing can change my love for her,” she thought, as she studied her and the room, which was cozy and bright, though very plainly furnished as compared with the elegant boudoir where she had made her own toilet. There was the tall clock in the corner which had ticked away the hours and days she once thought so dreary and lonely; the desk between the windows, where her father used to keep his papers, and his old, worn pocketbook, in which there was never much money, and on the bed in another corner was a patchwork quilt, a few blocks of which Mildred had pieced herself, recognizing them now with a start and a throb of pain as she saw in two of them bits of the frock she had bought for Charlie with the berries picked in her husband’s pasture. She had been turned out then as a trespasser where she was mistress now, and there were diamonds on her white hands, which had once washed potatoes for dinner, her special abomination, and her gown had cost more than all her mother’s wardrobe. And there she sat in a kind of dream, while the other Mildred of years ago sat close beside her, confusing and bewildering her, so that she hardly heard half her mother was saying about Tom and Bessie, the dearest children in the world. But when at last her own name was mentioned she started and was herself again, and listened as her mother went on:

“I’ve another girl, Mildred by name, but I call her Milly. She’s been in Europe for years, and has been everywhere and speaks French and German, and writes such beautiful letters.”

She was evidently very proud of her absent daughter, and the lady beside her, whose pallid face she could not see, clasped her hands and held her breath as she continued:

“I never s’posed she’d stay so long when she went away, or I couldn’t let her go; but somehow or other she’s staid on and on till she’s been gone many a year; many a year has Milly been gone, fifteen years come fall, and now ‘tain’t likely I should know her, if I could see. You won’t be offended, Mis’ Thornton, if I say that something about you makes me think of Milly; something in your voice at first, and you laid your head on my neck and cried just as she used to when things went wrong and fretted her, which they mostly did, for she wasn’t meant to be poor, and was always wantin’ to be rich and grand. I guess she is grand now she’s been in foreign places so much, but she’s comin’ home in the fall; she wrote me so in her last letter. You’ll call on her, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Mildred stammered, scarcely able to keep herself from crying out: “Oh, mother, I have come. I am Milly,” but a thought of her husband restrained her, and thinking how she would make amends in the future, when freed from her promise of secrecy, she listened again, while her mother talked of her father and Charlie, and lastly of Hugh McGregor, who was a great favorite with the old lady.

“Jest like my own boy,” Mrs. Leach said, “and so kind to Tom. He lent him money to go to school, and helps him a sight in his law books, and helps on the farm, too, when he gets time, which is not often, for Hugh is a first-rate lawyer and pleads at the bar like a judge. I believe he’s comin’. Yes, I hear his step,” and her face lighted up as Hugh appeared in the open door.

“Good-morning, Mrs. Leach,” he called cheerily. “I beg your pardon, good morning, Mrs. Thornton,” and he bowed deferentially to the lady as he came in with a cluster of lovely roses, which he laid in Mrs. Leach’s lap, saying, “Here are some of Milly’s roses. They opened this morning and I brought them to you. Shall I give one to Mrs. Thornton?”

“Yes, do; the fairest and best. I think she must be like them, though I can’t see her,” Mrs. Leach replied, and selecting one of the finest, Hugh offered it to Mildred, whose cheeks rivaled it in color, as she held it near them to inhale its perfume.

It was of the variety known as “Souvenir d’un Ami,” and the original stock had been bought by Mrs. Leach two or three years before with some money sent her by Mildred, whose name she had given to the rose. This she explained to Mildred, adding that Mr. McGregor was so fond of the rose that he had taken a slip from her garden and planted it under his office window.

“He calls it Milly’s rose,” she added, “for he and Milly were great friends, as children. Hugh, ain’t there something about Mis’ Thornton that makes you think of Milly?”

Mildred’s face was scarlet, but she tried to hide it by bending her head very low as she fastened the rose to the bosom of her dress, while Hugh answered laughingly, “Why, no. Milly was small and thin, and a child when we saw her, while Mrs. Thornton is——” here he stopped, confused and uncertain as to what he ought to say next. But when Mildred’s eyes flashed upon him expectantly, he added very gallantly, “Mrs. Thornton is more like Milly’s roses.”

“Thank you for the compliment, Mr. McGregor. I will remember it and keep Milly’s rose, too,” Mildred said, with a little dash of coquetry, and a ring in her voice which made Hugh think of the Milly who, he supposed, was thousands of miles away.

Just then there was the sound of wheels stopping before the house, and Gerard, with his apron still tied around his neck, for he was not yet through with his culinary duties, came to the door, saying, “Mrs. Thornton, father is waiting for you.”

“Yes, I’ll be there directly,” Mildred replied, rising hurriedly to say good-bye, and giving her hand to her mother, who fondled it a moment and then said to her, “Your hands are soft as a baby’s, and there are many rings on your fingers. I think I know how they look, and I have felt your hair, but not your face. Tom and Bessie say it is handsome. Would you mind my feeling it? That’s my way of seeing.”

Mildred was glad that Hugh had stepped in to the next room and could not see her agitation, as she knelt beside the blind woman, whose hands moved slowly over her face and then up to her hair, where they rested a moment as if in benediction, while she said, “You are lovely, I am sure, and good, too, and your poor blind mother must miss you so much. Didn’t she hate to part with you?”

“Yes, oh, yes, and my heart is aching for her. Please bless me as if you were my mother and I your daughter Milly,” was Mildred’s sobbing reply, her tears falling like rain as the shaking hands pressed heavily upon her bowed head, while the plaintive voice said slowly, “God bless you, child, and make you happy with your husband, and comfort your poor mother while you are away from her. Amen.”

“Will you tell Mrs. Thornton I am in a hurry?” Mr. Thornton said to Bessie, loudly enough for Mildred to hear, and wiping her tears away, she went out through the side door where her husband was standing, with a frown upon his face, caused not so much by her delay as by the glimpse he was sure he had caught of his son, in the kitchen, with a checked apron tied round his neck and a big cherry stain on his forehead.

Nor did the sight of his wife’s flushed cheeks and red eyes help to restore his equanimity, and although he said nothing then, Mildred felt that he was displeased, as he helped her into the phaeton and took his seat beside her.

CHAPTER IX.
GERARD AND HIS FATHER.

Gathering up the reins and driving very slowly, he began:

“Was that Gerard whom I saw tricked out as a kitchen cook?”

“Gerard was there. Yes,” Mildred answered, and he continued in that cool, determined tone which means more than words themselves, “Is he often there? Is he interested in your sister? If he is, it must stop. I tell you it must stop,” he added more emphatically as his wife made no reply. “I married you because——” he paused a moment and looked at the woman sitting at his side in all her glowing beauty, and then went on in a softer tone,—“because I loved you more than I loved my pride, which, however, is so great, that it will not quietly submit to my son’s marrying your sister.”

“Does he intend to?” Mildred asked so coolly that it exasperated him, and he replied, “He will not with my consent, and he will hardly dare do so without it. Why, he has scarcely a dollar of his own, and no business either. More’s the pity, or he wouldn’t be capering round a kitchen in an old woman’s apron.”

“I think it was Bessie’s,” Mildred said quietly, and angrier than ever, her husband continued. “You told me in Paris that your sister was engaged to Mr. McGregor.”

“It was a mistake,” Mildred said, her heart beating heavily as she thought of all the mistake had done for her.

“Yes,” Mr. Thornton repeated, “I ventured to rally Hugh a little this morning, and he denied the story while something in his manner aroused a suspicion which the sight of Gerard confirmed. What was he doing there?”

“Pitting cherries for Bessie,” Mildred said with provoking calmness, and he continued, “I tell you it shall not be. Gerard Thornton must look——” here he stopped, not quite willing to finish the sentence, which Milly, however, finished for him—“must look higher than Bessie Leach?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean, although I might not have said it, for I do not wish to wound you unnecessarily; but I tell you again it must not be, and you are not to encourage it, or encourage so much visiting between my children and the Leach’s. Why, that girl,—Bessie, I think is her name,—is at the Park half the time. Heavens! What would it be if they knew who you were! I was wise to do as I did, but I am sorry I came here at all, and I mean to return to New York earlier than I intended, and if necessary, sell the place. That will break up the whole business.”

To this Mildred made no reply, but sat thinking, with a growing conviction that she now knew her husband’s real reason for wishing to keep her identity a secret during their stay at the Park. It was to prevent the intimacy which he knew would ensue between her and her family, if they knew who she was, and with all the strength of her will she rebelled against it. “I will not encourage the young people, but he shall not keep me from my mother,” she thought, and the face at which her husband looked a little curiously as he helped her from the phaeton, had in it an expression he did not understand.

“I believe she’s got a good deal of the old Harry in her after all, but I shall be firm,” he thought, as he drove to the stable and gave his horse to the groom.

Lunch was nearly over when Gerard appeared, the cherry stains washed from his face, but showing conspicuously on his nails and the tips of his fingers, from which he had tried in vain to remove them.

“Why, Gerard, what have you been doing to your hands?” Alice asked, and with an amused look at Mildred, he replied, “Stoning cherries with them,” while his father hastily left the table.

“Gerard,” he said, pausing a moment in the doorway, “Come to the library after lunch. I want to see you.”

“Yes, sir,” Gerard answered, feeling as certain then of what was coming as he did twenty minutes later when his father asked abruptly, “How old are you?”

“Twenty-five last May.”

“Twenty-five,—yes; and been graduated three years, and no business yet. Nothing to do but wear a kitchen apron and stone cherries for Bessie Leach. I saw you. I don’t like it, and as soon as we are in New York I shall find something for you to do.”

At the mention of Bessie, Gerard had stiffened, for his father’s tone was offensive. But his answer was respectful: “I shall be glad of something to do, sir, although I do not think myself altogether to blame for having been an idler so long. When I left college you know I was in so bad health that you and the doctor both, fearing I had inherited my mother’s malady, prescribed perfect rest and quiet for a long time. But I am strong now and will do anything you think best. I prefer law, and would like to go into Mr. McGregor’s office. I can get on faster there than in New York.”

“Yes, and see Bessie Leach oftener,” Mr. Thornton began angrily. “I tell you I will not have it. The girl is well enough and pretty enough, but I won’t have it, and if you are getting too much interested in her, quit her at once.”

“Quit Bessie!” Gerard said. “Quit Bessie! Never! She has promised to be my wife!”

“Your wife!” Mr. Thornton repeated, aghast with anger and surprise, for he never dreamed matters had gone so far.

“Yes, my wife. I was only waiting for you to know her better to tell you of our engagement,” Gerard replied, and then for half an hour, Mildred, who was in her room over the library, heard the sound of excited voices,—Gerard’s low and determined, and his father’s louder and quite as decided.

And when the interview was over, and her husband came up to her, he said:

“I am very sorry, my darling, because, in a way, the trouble touches you through your sister; but you must see that it is not a suitable match for my son. She is not you, and has not had your advantages. She is a plain country girl, and if Gerard persists in marrying her he will have no help from me, either before or after my death.”

“You mean you will disinherit him?” Mildred asked, and he replied:

“Yes, just that; and I have told him so, and given him the summer in which to make up his mind. He has some Quixotic idea of studying law with McGregor, which will of course keep him here after we have gone. I don’t intend to live in a quarrel, and shall say no more to him on the subject, or try to control his actions in any way. If he goes with us to New York, all right; and if he chooses to stay here, I shall know what to do.”

A slight inclination of Mildred’s head was her only reply, until her husband said:

“Do you think Bessie would marry him if she knew he was penniless?”

And then she answered proudly: “I do,” and left the room, saying to herself as she went out into the beautiful grounds, whose beauty she did not see: “What will he do when he hears of Alice and Tom? Three Leaches instead of one. Poor Tom! Poor Bessie! And I am powerless to help them.”

CHAPTER X.
IN THE CEMETERY.

As Mr. Thornton had said, he did not like to live in a quarrel, and after his interview with his son, he tried to appear just as he had done before, and when Bessie came to the Park, as she often did, he treated her civilly, and insensibly found himself admiring her beauty and grace, and thinking to himself, “If she had money she might do.”

Upon Mildred he laid no restrictions with regard to her intercourse with her family, feeling intuitively that they would not be heeded. And thus she was free to see her mother as often as she liked, and it was remarked by the villagers that the proud mistress of Thornton Park went more frequently to the farm house than anywhere else. Many a morning she spent in the pleasant room, listening while her mother talked, mostly of Mildred, whose long silence was beginning to trouble her.

“It is weeks since I heard from her. She said in her last letter it might be some time before she wrote again, but I am getting anxious,” she would say, while Mildred comforted her with the assurance that no news was good news, and that perhaps her daughter was intending to surprise her by coming upon her unexpectedly some day.

“I am certain of it; I am something of a prophet, and I know Milly will come,” she would say, as she smoothed her mother’s snowy hair, or caressed her worn face, which always lighted up with gladness when she came, and grew sadder when she went away.

By some strange coincidence, it frequently happened that Hugh called upon Mrs. Leach when Mildred was there, and always stopped to talk with her. But Mildred was never quite at ease with him. Her eyes never met his squarely, while her brilliant color came and went as rapidly as if she were a shy school-girl confronted with her master instead of the elegant Mrs. Thornton, whose beauty was the theme of every tongue, stirring even him a little, but bringing no thought of Mildred, of whom he sometimes spoke to her mother. As yet Milly had found no chance to visit her father’s and Charlie’s graves, which she knew she could find without difficulty, as her mother had told her of the headstones which Tom had put there in the spring. But she was only biding her time, and one afternoon in August, when she had been in Rocky Point six weeks or more, she drove up the mountain road to call upon some New Yorkers who were stopping at the new hotel. It was late when she left the hotel, and the full moon was just rising as she reached the entrance to the cemetery on her return home. Calling to the driver to let her alight, she bade him go on and leave her, saying she preferred to walk, as the evening was so fine. Mildred had already won the reputation among her servants of being rather eccentric, and thinking this one of her cranks, the man drove on, while she went into the grounds, where the dead were lying, the headstones gleaming white through the clump of firs and evergreens which grew so thickly as to conceal many of them from view, and to hide completely the figure of a man seated in the shadow of one of them not very far from the graves to which she was making her way. Hugh had also been up the mountain road on foot, and coming back had struck into the cemetery as a shorter route home. As he was tired and the night very warm, he sat down in an armchair under a thick pine, whose shadow screened him from observation, but did not prevent his outlook upon the scene around him. He had heard the sound of wheels stopping near the gate, but he thought no more of it until he saw Mildred coming slowly across the yard diagonally from the gate, holding up her skirts, for the dew was beginning to fall, and making, as it seemed to him, for the very spot where he was sitting. At first he did not recognize her, but when removing her hat as if its weight oppressed her she suddenly raised her head so that the moonlight fell upon her face, he started in surprise, and wondered why she was there. Whose grave had she come to find? Some one’s, evidently, for she was looking carefully about her, and afraid to startle her, Hugh sat still and watched, a feeling like nightmare stealing over him as she entered the little enclosure where the Leaches were buried. He could see the two stones distinctly, and he could see and hear her, too, as leaning upon the taller and bending low so that her eyes were on a level with the lettering, she said, as if reading. “John Leach, and Charlie; these are the graves. Oh, father! Oh, Charlie! do you know I have come back after so many years only to find you dead? And I loved you so much. Oh, Charlie, my baby brother!”

Here her voice was choked with sobs, and Hugh could hear no more, but he felt as if the weight of many tons was holding him down and making him powerless to speak or move, had he wished to do so. And so he sat riveted to the spot, looking at the woman with a feeling half akin to terror and doubt, as to whether it were her ghost, or Mildred herself weeping over her dead. As her smothered sobs met his ear and he thought he heard his own name, he softly whispered, “Milly,” and stretched his arms towards her, but let them drop again at his side and watched the strange scene to its close. Once Mildred seemed to be praying, for she knelt upon the grass, with her face on her father’s grave, and he heard the word “Forgive.”

Then she arose and walked slowly back to the road, where she was lost to view. As long as he could see the flutter of her white dress Hugh looked after her, and when it disappeared from sight he felt for a few moments as if losing his consciousness, so great was the shock upon his nervous system. Mrs. Thornton was Mildred Leach,—the girl he knew now he had never given up, and whose coming in the autumn he had been looking forward to with so much pleasure. She had come, and she was another man’s wife, and what was worse than all she was keeping her identity from her friends and daily living a lie. Did her husband know it, or was he, too, deceived?

“Probably,” Hugh said, with a feeling for an instant as if he hated her for the deception. But that soon passed away, and he tried to make himself believe that it was a hallucination of his brain and he had not seen her by those two graves. He would examine them and see, for if a form of flesh and blood had been there the long, damp grass would be trampled down in places. It was trampled down, and in the hollow between the graves a small, white object was lying.

“Her handkerchief. She has been here,” he whispered, as he stooped to pick it up. “If her name is on it I shall know for sure.”

There was a name upon it, but so faintly traced that he could not read it in the moonlight, which was now obscured by clouds. A storm was rising, and hastening his steps towards home he was soon in his own room and alone to think it out. Taking the handkerchief from his pocket, he held it to the light and read “M. F. Thornton.” There could be no mistake. It was Mrs. Thornton he had seen in the cemetery, but was it Mildred? “M. F.,” he repeated aloud, remembering suddenly that Mildred’s name was Mildred Frances, which would correspond with the initials.

“It is Milly,” he continued, “but why this deception? Is she ashamed to have her family claim her? Ashamed to have her husband know who she was; and did she pass for Fanny Gardner in Europe?”

Again a feeling of resentment and hatred came over him, but passed quickly, for although he might despise and condemn, he could not hate her. She had been too much to him in his boyhood, and thoughts of her had influenced every action of his life thus far. Just what he had expected, if he had expected anything, he did not know, but whatever it was, it was cruelly swept away. He had lost her absolutely, for when his respect for her was gone, she was gone forever, and laying his head upon the table he wrestled for a few moments with his grief and loss, as strong men sometimes wrestle with a great and bitter pain.

“If she were dead,” he said, “it would not be so hard to bear. But to see her the beautiful woman she is,—to know she is Mildred and makes no sign even to her poor, blind mother, is terrible.”

He was walking the floor now, with Milly’s handkerchief held tightly in his hands, wondering what he should do with it.

“I’ll keep it,” he said. “It is all I have left of her except the lock of hair and the peas she gave to me. What a fool I was in those days,” and he laughed as he recalled the morning when Milly threw him the pod which he had not seen in a year.

But he brought it out now, and laughed again when he saw how hard and shriveled were both the peas.

“Stony and hard like her. I believe I’ll throw them away and end the tomfoolery,” he said.

But he put them back in the box, which he called a little grave, and took up next the curl of tangled hair, comparing its color in his mind with Mrs. Thornton’s hair, which, from its peculiar, mottled appearance, had attracted his notice. How had she changed it, he wondered, and then remembering to have heard of dyes, to which silly, fashionable women sometimes resorted, he was sure that he hated her, and putting the box away went to bed with that thought uppermost in his mind, but with Milly’s handkerchief folded under his pillow.

CHAPTER XI.
WHAT FOLLOWED.

When Hugh awoke the next morning it was with a confused idea that something had gone out of his life and left it a blank, and he asked himself what it was and why he was feeling so badly. But memory soon brought back a recollection of the secret he held and would hold to the end, for he had no intention of betraying Mildred or charging her with deception, if, indeed, he ever spoke to her again. He had no desire to do so, he thought, and then it came to him suddenly that there was to be a grand party at Thornton Park that night, and that he had ordered a dress suit for the occasion.

“But I shall not go,” he said to himself, as he made his hurried toilet. “I could not bear to see Milly tricked out in the gewgaws and jewels for which she sold herself.”

And firm in this resolution, he went about his usual duties in his office, clinching his fist and setting his teeth when several times during the day he heard Tom Leach talking eagerly of the party, which he expected to enjoy so much. Tom did not ask if Hugh was going, expecting it as a matter of course, and Hugh kept his own counsel, and was silent and moody and even cross for him, and at about four o’clock sat down to write his regret. Then, greatly to his surprise, he found how much he really wanted to see Mildred once more and study her in the new character she had assumed.

“I shall not talk with her and I don’t know that I shall touch her hand, but I am half inclined to go,” he thought, and tearing up his regret, he decided to wait awhile and see; and as a result of waiting and seeing, nine o’clock found him walking up the broad avenue to the house, which was ablaze with light from attic to basement, and filled with guests, who crowded the parlors and halls and stairways, so that it was some little time before he could fight his way to the dressing-room, which was full of young men and old men in high collars, low vests and swallow-tails, many of them very red in the face and out of breath with their frantic efforts to fit gloves a size too small to hands unused to them, for fashionable parties like this were very rare in Rocky Point.

Mildred had not wished it, as she shrank from society rather than courted it, but Gerard and Alice were anxious for it, and Mr. Thornton willing, and under the supervision of his children cards were sent to so many that the proud man grew hot and cold by turns as he thought of having his sacred precincts invaded by Tom, Dick and Harry, and the rest of them, as he designated the class of people whom he neither knew, nor cared to know. But Alice and Gerard knew them, and they were all there, Tom and Bessie with the rest, Tom by far the handsomest young man of all the young men, and the one most at his ease, while Bessie, in her pretty muslin dress, with only flowers for ornament, would have been the belle of the evening, but for the hostess, whose brilliant beauty, heightened by the appliances of dress, which so well became her fine figure, dazzled every one as she stood by her husband’s side in her gown of creamy satin and lace, with diamonds flashing on her white neck and arms and gleaming in her hair. How queenly she was, with no trace of the storm which had swept over her the previous night, and Hugh, when he descended the stairs and first caught sight of her, stopped a few moments, and leaning against the railing, watched her receiving her guests with a smile on her lips and a look in her eyes which he remembered now so well, and wondered he had not recognized before. And as he looked there came up before him another Milly than this one with the jewels and satin and lace, a Milly with tangled hair and calico frock and gingham apron, shelling her peas in the doorway and predicting that she would some day be the mistress of Thornton Park. She was there now, and no grand duchess born to the purple could have filled the position better.

“Thornton chose well, if he only knew it,” Hugh thought, and, mustering all his courage he at last went forward to greet the lady. And when she offered her hand to him he took it in spite of his determination not to do so, and looked into her eyes, which kindled at first with a strange light, while in his there was an answering gleam, so that neither would have been surprised to have heard the names Milly and Hugh simultaneously spoken. But no such catastrophe occurred, and after a few commonplaces Hugh passed on and did not go near her again until, at a comparatively early hour, when he came to say good-night.

Mildred had removed her glove to change the position of a ring which cut her finger, and was about putting it on again when Hugh came up, thinking that at the risk of seeming rude he would not again take the hand which had sent such a thrill through him when earlier in the evening he held it for an instant. But the sight of it, bare and white and soft as a piece of satin, unnerved him and he grasped it tightly, while he made his adieus, noting as he did so the troubled expression of her face as she looked curiously at him.

“Does she suspect I know her?” he thought as he went from the house, but not to his home.

It was a beautiful August night, and finding a seat in the shrubbery where he could not be seen, he sat there in the moonlight while one after another carriages and people on foot went past him, and finally, as the lights were being put out, Tom Leach came airily down the walk, singing softly. “Oh, don’t you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt? Sweet Alice, with hair so brown.”

“Tom’s done for,” Hugh thought, little dreaming how thoroughly he was done for in more respects than one.

CHAPTER XII.
LOVE VERSUS MONEY.

Tom had been the last to leave the house, for he had lingered awhile to talk to Alice, with whom he was standing in the conservatory, partially concealed by some tall vases and shrubs, when Mr. Thornton chanced that way. Thinking his guests all gone and hearing the murmur of voices, he stopped just in time to see Tom’s arm around his daughter’s waist and to hear a sound the meaning of which he could not mistake, as the young man’s face came in close proximity to that of his daughter. To say that he was astonished is saying very little. He was horrified and disgusted, and so indignant that his first impulse was to collar the audacious Tom and hurl him through the window. But not wishing a scene before the servants, he restrained himself, and went quietly away, with much the same feeling which prompted Cæsar to say, “Et tu, Brute!” Since his interview with his son he had never mentioned Bessie’s name to him, or raised any objection to her coming to his house as often as she liked. But he had watched her closely, and had been insensibly softened by her girlish beauty and quiet grace of manner. There was nothing of the plebeian in her appearance, and he was beginning to think that if Gerard’s heart were set upon her, rather than have a bitter quarrel he might possibly consent to the marriage, although it was not at all what he desired. The young couple could live at the Park house, and in the spring he would go abroad for an indefinite length of time, and thus separate himself and wife entirely from her family. In Europe, with her refinement and money, Alice would make a grand match and possibly marry an earl, for titles, he knew, could be bought, and he had the means to buy them. With a daughter who was My Lady, and a son-in-law who was My Lord, he could afford to have a Leach for his daughter-in-law, and Gerard’s star was rising when he came so unexpectedly upon a scene which at once changed him from a relenting father into a hard, determined man, whom nothing could move.

Mildred was asleep when he went to his room, but had she been awake he would have said nothing to her. His wrath was reserved for his daughter, who poured his coffee for him next morning, as Mildred had a headache, and was not out of her bed. Gerard, too, was absent, and the meal was a very silent, cheerless one, for Alice felt that something was the matter and trembled when, after it was over, her father asked her to step into the library, as he wished to speak with her alone.

“Alice,” he began, “I want to know the meaning of what I saw last night?”

“What did you see?” she asked, her heart beating rapidly but bravely as she resolved to stand by Tom.

“I am no spy on other people’s actions, but I was passing the conservatory and saw Tom Leach kiss you, and I think, yes, I’m very sure you kissed him back; at all events you laid your head on his shoulder in a very disreputable way, and I want to know what it means.”

Alice, who had some of her father’s nature, was calm and defiant in a moment. The word disreputable had roused her, and her answer rang out clear and distinct, “It means that Tom and I are engaged.”

“Engaged! You engaged to Tom Leach!” Mr. Thornton exclaimed, putting as much contempt into his voice as it was possible to do. “Engaged to Tom Leach! Then you are no daughter of mine.”

Mr. Thornton had never liked Tom, whose frank, assured manner towards him was more like that of an equal than an inferior, and for a moment he felt that he would rather see Alice dead than married to him. Just then Gerard came to the door, but was about to withdraw when his father called him in and said inquiringly, “Your sister tells me she is engaged to Tom Leach. Did you know it?”

“Yes, I imagined something of the kind,” was Gerard’s reply, as he crossed over to his sister and stood protectingly by her side, while his father, forgetting his softened feelings towards Bessie, went on: “And you? I gave you time to consider your choice. Have you done so?”

“I have.”

“And it is——?”

“To marry Bessie,” was Gerard’s answer, while Alice’s came with it: “And I shall marry Tom.”

Such opposition from both his children roused Mr. Thornton to fury, and his look was the look of a madman, as he said, “That is your decision. Then hear mine. I shall disinherit you both! I can’t take away from you the few thousands your mother left you, but I can do as I like with my own. Now, what will you do?”

“Marry Bessie.”

“Marry Tom,” came simultaneously from the young rebels, and with the words, “So be it,” their father left the room, and a few minutes later they saw him galloping rapidly down the avenue in the direction of the town.

He did not return to lunch, and when he came in to dinner he seemed very absent-minded and only volunteered the remark that he was going to New York the next day to see that their house was made ready for them within a week. As Mildred’s headache was unusually severe she had kept her bed the entire day and knew nothing of the trouble until just at twilight, when Alice, who felt that she must talk to some one, crept up to her, and laying her head on the pillow beside her, told of her father’s anger and threat and asked if she thought he would carry it out.

“No,” Mildred answered. “He will think better of it, I am sure,” and Alice continued, “Not that I care for myself, but I wanted to help Tom.”

“Do you love him so much that you cannot give him up?” Mildred asked.

“Love him! Why, I would rather be poor and work for my living with Tom, than have all the world without him,” Alice replied, while the hand on her head pressed a little heavily as she went on: “Papa is so proud. You don’t know how contemptuously he says those Leaches, as if they were too low for anything, and all because they happen to be poor, and because——Did I ever tell you that Bessie’s sister Mildred, who has been so long in Europe, was once,—not exactly a servant in our family, for she took care of me,—my little friend, I called her, and was very fond of her. But I suppose father does not wish Gerard and me to marry into her family. Are you crying?” Alice asked suddenly, as she heard what sounded like a sob.

“Yes,—no,—I don’t know. I wish I could help you, but I can’t,” Mildred answered, while the tears rolled down her cheeks like rain.

Every word concerning her family and herself had been like a stab to her, and she felt how bitterly she was being punished for her deception. Once she decided to tell Alice the truth, and might have done so if she had not heard her husband’s step outside the door. That broke up the conference between herself and Alice, who immediately left the room.

The next morning Mr. Thornton started for New York, where he was absent for three or four days, and when he returned he complained of a headache and pain in all parts of his body. He had taken a severe cold, he said, and went at once to his bed, which he never left again, for the cold proved to be a fever, which assumed the typhoid form, with its attendant delirium, and for two weeks Mildred watched over and cared for him with all the devotion of a true and loving wife. True she had always been, and but for one memory might have been loving, too, for Mr. Thornton had been kind and indulgent to her, and she repaid him with every possible care and attention. He always knew her in his wildest fits of delirium, and would smile when she laid her cool hand on his hot head, and sometimes whisper her name. Gerard and Alice he never knew, although he often talked of them, asking where they were, and once, during a partially lucid interval, when alone with Mildred, he said to her, “Tell the children I was very angry, but I am sorry, and I mean to make it right.”

“I am sure you do,” Mildred replied, little guessing what he meant, as his mind began to wander again, and he only said, “Yes,—all right, and you will see to it. All right,—all right.”

And these were the last words he ever spoke, for on the fourteenth day after his return from New York, he died, with Mildred bending over him and Mildred’s hand in his.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE WILL.

When Mr. Thornton left Gerard and Alice after his threat of disinheritance, he went straight to the office of Hugh McGregor, and asking to see him alone, announced his intention of making his will.

“It’s time I did it,” he said with a little laugh, and then as Hugh seated himself at his table, he dictated as follows:

To a few charitable institutions in New York he gave a certain sum; to his children, Gerard and Alice, a thousand dollars each, and the rest of his property he gave unconditionally to his beloved wife, Mildred F. Thornton.

“Excuse me, Mr. Thornton,” Hugh said, looking up curiously from the paper on which he was writing, “isn’t this a strange thing you are doing, giving everything to your wife, and nothing to your children. Does she know,—does she desire it?”

“She knows nothing, but I do. I know my own business. Please go on. Write what I tell you,” Mr. Thornton answered impatiently, and without further protest Hugh wrote the will, which was to make Mildred the richest woman in the county, his hand trembling a little as he wrote Mildred F., and thought to himself, “That is Milly’s name. She did not deceive him there. Does he know the rest?”

“You must have three witnesses,” he said, when the legal instrument was drawn up.

“Tom Leach is in the next room. I saw him. He will do for one,” Mr. Thornton said, with a grim smile, as he thought what a ghastly joke it would be for Tom to witness a will which cut Alice off with a mere pittance. “Have him in.”

So Tom was called, together with another man who had just entered the office. A stiff bow was Mr. Thornton’s only greeting to Tom, who listened while the usual formula was gone through with, and then signing his name, Thomas J. Leach, went back to his books, with no suspicion as to what the will contained or how it would affect him.

“I will keep the paper myself,” Mr. Thornton said, taking it from Hugh, with some shadowy idea in his brain that it might be well to have it handy in case he changed his mind and wished to destroy it.

But death came too soon for that, and when he died his will was lying among his papers in his private drawer, where it was found by Gerard, who without opening it, carried it to Mildred. There had been a funeral befitting Mr. Thornton’s position and wealth, and he had been taken to Greenwood and laid beside his first wife, and after a few days spent in New York the family came back to their country home, which they preferred to the city. Bessie, Tom and Hugh met them at the station, the heart of the latter beating rapidly when he saw Mildred in her widow’s weeds, and helping her alight from the train, he went with her to her carriage, and telling her he should call in a few days on business, bowed a little stiffly and walked away.

Since drawing the will he had been growing very hard towards Mildred, whose identity he did not believe her husband knew, else he had not married her, and as he went back to his office after meeting her at the station he wondered what Gerard would think of the will, half hoping he would contest it, and wondering how long before something would be said of it to him. It was not long, for the second day after his return from New York, Gerard found it and took it to Mildred.

“Father’s will,” he said, with a sinking sensation, as if he already saw the shadow on his life.

Mildred took the paper rather indifferently, but her face blanched as she read it, and her words came slowly and thick as she said, “Oh, Gerard, I am so sorry, but he did not mean it to stand, and it shall not. Read it.”

Taking it from her, Gerard read with a face almost as white as hers, but with a different expression upon it. She was sorry and astonished, while he was resentful and angry at the man whose dead hand was striking him so hard. But he was too proud to show what he really felt, and said composedly, “I am not surprised. He threatened to disinherit us unless we gave up Bessie and Tom, and he has done so. It’s all right. I have something from mother and I shall be as glad to work for Bessie as Tom will be to work for Alice. It’s not the money I care for so much as the feeling which prompted the act, and, by George,” he continued, as he glanced for the first time at the signatures, Henry Boyd, Thomas J. Leach, Hugh McGregor, “if he didn’t get Tom to sign Alice’s death warrant. That is the meanest of all.”

What more he would have said was cut short by the violent fit of hysterics into which Mildred went for the first time in her life. And she did not come out of it easily either, but sobbed and cried convulsively all the morning, and in the afternoon kept her room, seeing no one but Alice, who clung to her as fondly as if she had been her own mother. Alice had heard of the will with a good deal of composure, for she was just the age and temperament to think that a life of poverty, if shared with the man she loved, was not so very hard, and besides she had in her own right seven hundred dollars a year, which was something, she reasoned, and she took her loss quite philosophically, and tried to comfort Mildred, whose distress she could not understand. Mildred knew by the handwriting that Hugh had drawn the will, and after passing a sleepless night she arose early the next morning, weak in body but strong in her resolve to right the wrong which had been done to Gerard and Alice.

“I am going to see Mr. McGregor,” she said to them when breakfast was over, and an hour or two later her carriage was brought out, and the coachman ordered to drive her to Hugh’s office and leave her there.

CHAPTER XIV.
MILDRED AND HUGH.

Tom was at work that morning on the farm, and as the other clerk was taking a holiday, Hugh was alone when he received his visitor, whose appearance there surprised him, and at whom he looked curiously, her face was so white and her eyes, swollen with weeping, so unnaturally large and bright. But she was very calm, and taking the seat he offered, and throwing back the heavy veil whose length swept the floor as she sat, she began at once by saying:

“You drew my husband’s will?”

“Yes, I drew it,” he answered curtly, and not at all prepared for her next question, which seemed to arraign him as a culprit.

“Why did you do it?” and there was a ring in her voice he could not understand.

“Why did I do it?” he repeated. “Don’t you know that lawyers usually follow their client’s wishes in making their wills?”

“Yes, but you might have dissuaded him from it. You knew it was wrong.”

“You don’t like it then?” he asked, but repented the question when he saw the effect upon her.

Rising to her feet and tugging at her bonnet strings as if they choked her, she looked steadily at him and said:

“Don’t like it? What do you take me for? No, I don’t like it, and if I had found it first, I think,—I am sure I should have torn it to pieces.”

She had her bonnet off, and was tossing it toward the table as if its weight oppressed her. But it fell upon the floor, where it might have lain if Hugh had not picked it up, carefully and gingerly, as if half afraid of this mass of crape. But it was Milly’s bonnet, and he brushed a bit of dust from the veil, and held it in his hand, while she pushed back her hair from her forehead, and wiping away the drops of perspiration standing there went on:

“Do you know why he made such a will?”

“I confess I do not. I expressed my surprise at the time, but he was not a man to be turned from his purpose when once his mind was made up. May I ask why he did it?” Hugh said, and Mildred replied:

“Yes;—he was angry with Gerard and Alice, because of—of—Tom and Bessie Leach. The young people are engaged and he accidentally found it out.”

“Yes, I see;—he thought a Thornton too good to marry a Leach. Do you share his opinion?” Hugh asked, while the blood came surging back to Mildred’s white face in a great red wave, but left it again, except in two round spots which burned on either cheek.

Hugh was torturing her cruelly, and she wrung her hands, but did not answer his question directly. She only said, as she took the will from her pocket and held it towards him, “It is all right? It is legally executed?”

“Yes, it is all right.”

“And it gives everything to me to do with as I please?”

“Yes, it gives everything to you to do with as you please. You are a very rich woman, Mrs. Thornton, and I congratulate you.”

His tone was sarcastic in the extreme, and stung Mildred so deeply that she forgot herself, and going a step nearer to him cried out, “Oh, Hugh, why are you so hard upon me? Why do you hate me so? Don’t you know who I am?”

Hugh had not expected this, for he had no idea that Mildred would ever tell who she was, and the sound of his name, spoken as she used to speak it when excited, moved him strangely. He was still holding her black bonnet, the long veil of which had become twisted around his boot, and without answering her at once he stooped to unwind it and then put the bonnet from him upon the table as if it had been a barrier between him and the woman, whose eyes were upon him.

“Yes,” he said at last, very slowly, for he was afraid his voice might tremble, “You are Mrs. Thornton now; but you were Mildred Leach.”

“Oh, Hugh, I am so glad!” Mildred cried, as she sank into her chair, and covering her face with her hands, sobbed like a child, while Hugh stood looking at her, wondering what he ought to do, or say, and wishing she would speak first. But she did not, and at last he said:

“Mrs. Thornton, you have often puzzled me with a likeness to somebody seen before I met you. But I had no suspicion of the truth until I saw you in the cemetery at your father’s grave. I am no eavesdropper, but was so placed that I had to see and hear, and I knew then that you were Mildred, come back to us, not as we hoped you would come, but——”

His voice was getting shaky, and he stopped a moment to recover himself. Then, taking from his side pocket the handkerchief he had carried with him since the night he found it, he passed it to her, saying:

“I picked it up after you left the yard. Have you missed it?”

“Yes,—no. I don’t remember,” she replied, taking the handkerchief, and drying her eyes with it. Then, looking up at Hugh, while the first smile she had known since her husband died broke over her face, she continued: “I am glad you know me; I have wanted to tell you and mother and everybody. The deception was terrible to me, but I had promised and must keep my word.”

“Then Mr. Thornton knew? You did not deceive him?” Hugh asked, conscious of a great revulsion of feeling towards the woman he had believed so steeped in hypocrisy.

“Deceive him?” Mildred said, in some surprise. “Never,—in any single thing. I am innocent there. Let me explain how it happened, and you will tell the others, for I can never do it but once. I am so tired. You don’t know how tired,” and she put her hands to her face, which was white as marble, as she commenced the story which the reader already knows, telling it rapidly, blaming herself more than she deserved and softening as much as possible her husband’s share in the matter.

“He was very proud, you know,” she said, “and the Leaches were like the ground beneath his feet. But he loved me. I am sure of that, and he was always kind and good, and tried to make up for the burden he had imposed upon me. Yes, my husband loved me, knowing I was a Leach.”

“And you loved him?” Hugh asked, regretting the words the moment they had passed his lips, and regretting them more when he saw their effect upon Mildred.

Drawing herself up, she replied:

“Whether I loved him or not does not matter to you, or any one else. He was my husband, and I did my duty by him, and he was satisfied. If I could have forgotten I should have been happy, and I tell you truly I am sorry he is dead, and if I could I’d bring him back to-day.”

She was now putting on the bonnet which made her a widow again, and made her face so deathly white that Hugh was frightened and said to her:

“Forgive me, Mrs. Thornton. It was rude in me to ask that question. Forget it, I beg of you. You are very pale. Can I do anything for you?”

“No,” she answered, faintly. “I am only tired, that’s all, and I must get this business settled before I can rest. I have come to give the money back to Gerard and Alice, and you must help me do it.”

“I don’t quite understand you,” Hugh said. “Do you mean to give away the fortune your husband left you?”

“Yes, every farthing of it. I can never use it. It would not be right for me to keep it. He was angry when he made that will. He did not mean it, and had he lived he would have changed it. That was what troubled him when he was ill and he tried to tell me about it,” and very briefly she repeated what her husband had said to her of his children.

“I did not understand him then, but I do now. He knew I would do right; he trusted me,” she continued, her tears falling so fast as almost to choke her utterance.

“But,” said Hugh, “why give it all? If Mr. Thornton had made his will under different conditions, he would have remembered you. Why not divide equally? Why leave yourself penniless?”

“I shall not be penniless,” Mildred replied. “When I was married Mr. Thornton gave me fifteen thousand dollars for my own. This I shall keep. It will support mother and me, for I am going back to her as soon as all is known. And you will help me? You will tell mother and Bessie and Tom, and everybody, and you will be my friend, just for a little while, for the sake of the days when we played together?”

Her lips were quivering and her eyes were full of tears as she made this appeal, which no man could have withstood, much less Hugh, who would have faced the cannon’s mouth for her then, so great was his sympathy for her.

“Yes, I will do all you wish, but not to-day. The will must be proved first, and you are too tired. I will see to it at once, and then if you still are of the same mind as now I am at your service. Perhaps it will be better to say nothing for a few days.”

“Yes, better so,—you—know—best—stand—by—me,—Hugh,” Mildred said, very slowly, as she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes in the weary way of a child going to sleep.

Hugh thought she was going to faint, her face was so pinched and gray, and he said, excitedly:

“Mildred, Mildred, rouse yourself. You must not faint here. I don’t know what to do with people who faint. You must go home at once. Your carriage is gone but I see a cab coming. I will call it for you.”

Darting to the door, he signaled the cab, to which he half led, half carried Mildred, who seemed very weak and was shaking with cold. Rallying a little, she said to him:

“Thank you, Hugh. I’d better go home. I am getting worse very fast and everything is black. Is it growing dark?”

This was alarming. He could not let her go alone, and springing in beside her, Hugh bade the cabman drive with all possible speed to the Park and then go for a physician.

CHAPTER XV.
THE DENOUEMENT.

Nothing could have happened better for Mildred and her cause than the long and dangerous illness which followed that visit to Hugh’s office. It was early September then, but the cold November rain was beating against the windows of her room when at last she was able to sit up and carry out her purpose. She had been very ill, first with the fever taken from her husband, and then with nervous prostration, harder to bear than the fever, for then she had known nothing of what was passing around her, or whose were the voices speaking so lovingly to her, or whose the hands ministering to her so tenderly, Bessie, who called her sister, and Alice, who was scarcely less anxious and attentive than Bessie herself. She did not even know the white-haired woman who sat by her day after day, with her blind eyes turned toward the tossing, moaning, babbling figure on the bed, whose talk was always of the past, when she was a girl and lived at home, and bathed her mother’s head and cooked the dinner and scolded Tom and Bessie and kissed and petted Charlie. Of Hugh she seldom spoke, and when she did it was in the old, teasing way, calling him a red-haired Scotchman and laughing at his big hands and feet. To all intents and purposes she was the Mildred whom we first saw shelling peas in the doorway, and the names of her husband and Gerard and Alice never passed her lips. Every morning and evening Hugh walked up the avenue, and ringing the bell asked, “How is Mrs. Thornton?” Then he would walk back again with an abstracted look upon his face, which to a close observer would have told of the fear tugging at his heart. The possibility that Mildred could ever be anything to him, if she lived, did not once enter his mind, but he did not want her to die, and the man who had seldom prayed before, now learned to pray earnestly for Mildred’s life, as many others were doing.

Hugh had done his work well, and told Mildred’s story, first to her mother, Bessie and Tom, then to Gerard and Alice, and then to everybody, giving it, however, a different coloring from what Mildred had done. She had softened her husband’s part in the matter and magnified her own, while he passed very lightly over hers, and dwelt at length upon the pride and arrogance of the man who, to keep her family aloof, wrung from her a promise, given unguardedly and repented of so bitterly. Thus the sympathy of the people was all with Mildred, who, as the lady of Thornton Park, had won their good opinion by her kindness and gentleness, and gracious, familiar manner. That she was Mrs. Giles Thornton did not harm her at all, for money and position are a mighty power, and the interest in, and sympathy for her were quite as great, if not greater, than would have been the case if it were plain Mildred Leach for whom each Sunday prayers were said in the churches and for whom inquiries were made each day until the glad news went through the town that the crisis was past and she would live. Hugh was alone in his office when the little boy who brought him the morning paper said, as he threw it in, “Mis’ Thornton’s better. She knows her marm, and the doctor says she’ll git well.” Then he passed on, leaving Hugh alone with the good news.

“Thank God,—thank God,” he said. “I couldn’t let Milly die,” and when a few minutes later one of his clerks came into the front office, he heard his chief in the next room whistling Annie Laurie, and said to himself, with a little nod, “I guess she’s better.”

It had been a very difficult task to tell Mildred’s story to Mrs. Leach and Tom and Bessie, but Hugh had done it so well that the shock was not as great as he had feared it might be. As was natural, Mrs. Leach was the most affected of the three, and within an hour was at Mildred’s bedside, calling her Milly and daughter and kissing the hot lips which gave back no answering sign, for Mildred never knew her, nor any one, until a morning in October, when, waking suddenly from a long, refreshing sleep, she looked curiously about her, and saw the blind woman sitting just where she had sat for days and days and would have sat for nights had she been permitted to do so. Now she was partially asleep, but the words “Mother, are you here?” roused her, and in an instant Mildred was in her mother’s arms, begging for the pardon which was not long withheld.

“Oh, Milly, my child, how could you see me blind and not tell me who you were?” were the only words of reproof the mother ever uttered; then all was joy and peace, and Mildred’s face shone with the light of a great gladness, when Tom and Bessie came in to see her, both very kind and both a little constrained in their manner towards her, for neither could make it quite seem as if she were their sister.

Gerard and Alice took it more naturally, and after a few days matters adjusted themselves, and as no word was said of the past Mildred began to recover her strength, which, however, came back slowly, so that it was November before she was able to see Hugh in her boudoir, where Tom carried her in his arms, saying, as he put her down in her easy-chair, “Are you sure you are strong enough for it?”

“Yes,” she answered, eagerly. “I can’t put it off any longer. I shall never rest until it is done. Tell Hugh I am ready.”

Tom had only a vague idea of what she wished to do, but knew that it had some connection with her husband’s will, the nature of which he had been told by Gerard.

“She’ll never let that stand a minute after she gets well,” Tom had said, but he never guessed that she meant to give up the whole.

Hugh, who had been sent for that morning, came at once, and found himself trembling in every nerve as he followed Tom to the room where Mildred was waiting for him. He had not seen her during her sickness, and he was not prepared to find her so white and thin and still so exquisitely lovely as she looked with her eyes so large and bright, and the smile of welcome on her face as she gave him her hand and said, “We must finish that business now, and then I can get well. Suppose I had died, and the money had gone from Gerard and Alice.”

“I think it would have come back to them all the same,” Hugh replied, sitting down beside her, and wondering why the sight of her affected him so strangely.

But she did not give him much time to think, and plunging at once into business, told him that she wished to give everything to Gerard and Alice, dividing it equally between them.

“You know exactly what my husband had and where it was invested,” she said, “and you must divide it to the best of your ability, giving to each an equal share in the Park, for I think they will both live here. I wish them to do it, for then we shall all be near each other. I shall live with mother and try to atone for the wrong I have done. I have enough to keep us in comfort, and shall not take a cent of what was left me in the will.”

This was her decision, from which nothing could move her, and when at last Hugh left her she had signed away over a million of dollars and felt the richer for it, nor could Gerard and Alice induce her to take back any part of it after they were told what she had done.

“Don’t worry me,” she said to them. “It seemed to me a kind of atonement to do it, and I am so happy, and I am sure your father would approve of it if he could know about it.”

After that Mildred’s recovery was rapid, and on the first day of the new year she went back to the farm house to live, notwithstanding the earnest entreaties of Gerard and Alice that she should stay with them until Tom and Bessie came, for it was decided that the four should, for a time at least, live together at the Park. But Mildred was firm.

“Mother needs me,” she said, “and is happier when I am with her. I can see that she is failing. I shall not have her long, and while she lives I shall try to make up to her for all the selfish years when I was away, seeking my own pleasure and forgetting hers.”

And Mildred kept her word and was everything to her mother, who lived to see, or rather hear, the double wedding, which took place at St. Jude’s one morning in September, little more than a year after Mr. Thornton’s death. The church was full and there was scarcely a dry eye in it as Mildred led her blind mother up the aisle, and laid her hand upon Bessie’s arm in response to the question, “Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?” It was Mildred who gave Alice away, and who three weeks later received the young people when they came home from their wedding journey, seeming and looking much like her old self as she did the honors of the house where she had once been mistress, and joining heartily in their happiness, laughingly returned Tom’s badinage when he called her his stepmother-in-law. Then, when the festivities were over, she went back to her mother, whom she cared for so tenderly that her life was prolonged for more than a year, and the chimes in the old church belfry were ringing for a Saviour born, when she at last died in Mildred’s arms, with Mildred’s name upon her lips and a blessing for the beloved daughter who had been so much to her. The night before she died Mildred was alone with her for several hours, and bending over her she said, “I want to hear you say again that you forgive me for the waywardness which kept me from you so long, and my deception when I came back. I am so sorry, mother.”

“Forgive you?” her mother said, her blind eyes trying to pierce the darkness and look into the face so close to hers. “I have nothing to forgive. I understand it all, and since you came back to me you have been the dearest child a mother ever had. Don’t cry so, Milly,” and the shaky hand wiped away the tears which fell so fast, as Mildred went on:

“I don’t know whether the saints at rest ever think of those they have left behind; but if they do, and father asks for me, tell him how sorry I am, and tell Charlie how I loved him, and how much I meant to do for him when I went away.”

“I’ll tell them. Don’t cry,” came faintly from the dying woman, who said but little more until the dawn was breaking, and she heard in the distance the sound of the chimes ringing in the Christmas morn. Then, lifting her head from Mildred’s arm, she cried joyfully:

“The bells,—the bells,—the Christmas bells. I am glad to go on his birthday. Good-bye, Milly. God bless you; don’t cry.”

They buried her by her husband and Charlie, and then Mildred was all alone, except for the one servant she kept. Bessie and Alice would gladly have had her at the Park, but she resisted all their entreaties and gave no sign of the terrible loneliness which oppressed her as day after day she lived her solitary life, which, for the first week or two, was seldom enlivened by the presence of any one except Gerard and Tom, who each day plowed their way through the heavy drifts of snow which were piled high above the fence tops. A terrible storm was raging on the mountains, and Rocky Point felt it in all its fury. The trains were stopped,—the roads were blocked,—communication between neighbor and neighbor was cut off, and though many would gladly have done so, few could visit the lonely woman, who sat all day where she could look out toward the graves on which she knew the snow was drifting, and who at night sat motionless by the fire, living over the past and shrinking from the future which lay so drearily before her.

CHAPTER XVI.
SUNSHINE AFTER THE STORM.

It was the last day, or rather the last night of the storm. The wind had subsided, and when the sun went down there was in the west a tinge of red as a promise of a fair to-morrow. But to Mildred there seemed no to-morrow better than to-day had been, and when after her early tea she sat down in her little sitting-room, there came over her such a sense of dreariness and pain as she had never before experienced. Once she thought of her husband, who had been so kind to her, and whispered sadly:

“I might have learned to love him, but he is dead and gone; everybody is gone who cared for me. Even Hugh has disappointed me,” and although she did not realize it this thought was perhaps the saddest of all. Hugh had disappointed her. During the two years since her return to the farm house, she had seen but little of him, for it was seldom that he called, and when he did it was upon her mother, not herself.

But he had not forgotten her, and there was scarcely a waking hour of his life that she was not in his mind, and often when he was busiest with his clients, who were increasing rapidly, he saw in the papers he was drawing up for them, her face as it had looked at him when she said:

“Oh, Hugh, don’t you know me?” He was angry with her then, and his heart was full of bitterness towards her for her deception. But that was gone long ago, and he was only biding his time to speak.

“While her mother lives she will not leave her,” he said; but her mother was dead, and he could wait no longer. “I must be decent, and not go the very first day after the funeral,” he thought, a little glad of the storm which kept every one indoors.

But it was over now, and wrapping his overcoat around him, and pulling his fur cap over his ears he went striding through the snow to the farm house, which he reached just as Mildred was so absorbed in her thoughts that she did not hear the door opened by her maid, or know that he was there until he came into the room and was standing upon the hearth rug before her. Then, with the cry, “Oh, Hugh, is it you? I am glad you have come. It is so lonesome,” she sprang up and offered him her hand, while he looked at her with a feeling of regret that he had not come before. He did not sit down beside her, but opposite, where he could see her as they talked on indifferent subjects,—the storm,—the trains delayed,—the wires down,—the damage done in town,—and the prospect of a fair day to-morrow. Then there was silence between them and Mildred got up and raked the fire in the grate and brushed the hearth with a little broom in the corner, while Hugh watched her, and when she was through took the poker himself and attacked the fire, which was doing very well.

“I like to poke the fire,” he said, while Mildred replied, “So do I;” and then there was silence again, until Hugh burst out:

“I say, Milly, how much longer am I to wait?”

“Wha—at?” Mildred replied, a faint flush tinging her face.

“How much longer am I to wait?” he repeated; and she answered, “Wait for what?”

“For you,” and Hugh arose and went and stood over her as he continued: “Do you know how old I am?”

Her face was scarlet now, but she answered laughingly, “I am thirty. You used to be four years older than myself, which makes you thirty-four.”

“Yes,” he said. “As time goes I am thirty-four, but measured by my feelings it is a hundred years since that morning when I saw you going through the Park gate and felt that I had lost you, as I knew I had afterwards, and never more so than when I saw you in the cemetery and knew who you were.”

“Why are you reminding me of all this? Don’t you know how it hurts? I know you despised me then, and must despise me now,” Mildred said, with anguish in her tones as she, too, rose from her chair and stood apart from him.

“I did despise you then, it’s true,” Hugh replied, “and tried to think I hated you, not so much for deceiving us as for deceiving your husband, as I believed you must have done; but I know better now. Your record has not been stainless, Milly, and I would rather have you as you were seventeen years ago on the summer morning when you were a little girl of thirteen shelling peas and prophesying that you would one day be the mistress of Thornton Park. You have been its mistress, and I am sorry for that, but nothing can kill my love, which commenced in my boyhood, when you made fun of my hands and feet and brogue and called me freckled and awkward, and then atoned for it all by some look in your bright eyes which said you did not mean it. I am awkward still, but the frecks and the brogue are gone, and I have come to ask you to be my wife,—not to-morrow, but some time next spring, when everything is beginning new. Will you, Milly? I will try and make you happy, even if I have but little money.

“Oh, Hugh! What do I care for money. I hate it!”

It was the old Mildred who spoke in the old familiar words, which Hugh remembered so well, but it was the new Mildred who, when he held his arms towards her, saying “Come,” went gladly into them, as a tired child goes to its mother.

It was late that night when Hugh left his promised bride, for there was much to talk about, and all the incidents of their childhood to be lived over again, Hugh telling of the lock of hair and the pea-pod he had kept with the peas, hard as bullets now, especially the smaller one, which he called Mildred.

“But, do you know, I really think it has recently begun to change,” Hugh said, “and I shall not be surprised to find it soft again——”

“Just as I am to let you see how much I love you,” Mildred said, as she laid her beautiful head upon his arm, and told him of the rumor of his engagement to Bessie, which had been the means of making her Mrs. Thornton.

“That was the only secret I had from my husband,” she said. “I told him everything else, and he took me knowing it all, and I believe he loved me, too. He was very kind to me,—and——”

She meant to be loyal to her husband, and would have said more, if Hugh had not stopped her mouth in a most effective way. No man cares to hear the woman who has just promised to marry him talk about her dead husband, and Hugh was not an exception.

“Yes, darling, I know,” he said. “But let’s bury the past. You are mine now; all mine.”

Hugh might be awkward and shy in many things, but he was not at all shy or awkward in love-making when once the ice was broken. He had waited for Mildred seventeen years, and he meant to make the most of her now, and he stayed so long that she at last bade him go, and pointed to the clock just striking the hour of midnight.

No one seemed surprised when told of the engagement. It was what everybody expected, and what should have been long ago, and what would have been, if Mildred had staid at home, instead of going off to Europe. Congratulations came from every quarter and none were more sincere than those from the young people at the Park, who wanted to make a grand wedding. To this Hugh did not object, for in his heart was the shadow of a wish to see Mildred again as he saw her that night at the party in jewels and satins and lace. But she vetoed it at once. A widow had no business with orange blossoms, she said, and besides that she was too old, and Hugh was old, too, and she should be married quietly in church, in a plain gray traveling dress and bonnet. And she was married thus on a lovely morning in June, when the roses were in full bloom, and the church was full of flowers, and people, too,—for everybody was there to see the bride, who went in Mildred Thornton and came out Mildred McGregor.

And now there is little more to tell. It is three years since that wedding day, and Hugh and Mildred live in the red farm house, which is scarcely a farm house now, it has been so enlarged and changed, with its pointed roofs and bow windows and balconies. Brook Cottage they call it, and across the brook in the rear there is a rustic bridge leading to the meadow, where Mr. Leach’s cows used to feed, but which now is a garden, or pleasure ground, not so large, but quite as pretty as the Park, and every fine afternoon at the hour when Hugh is expected from his office, Mildred walks through the grounds, leading by the hand a little golden-haired boy, whom she calls Charlie for the baby brother who died and whom he greatly resembles. And when at last Hugh comes, the three go back together, Hugh’s arm around Milly’s waist and his boy upon his shoulder. They are not rich and never will be, but they are very happy in each other’s love, and no shadow, however small, ever rests on Milly’s still lovely face, save when she recalls the mad ambition and discontent which came so near wrecking her life.

In the Park three children play, Giles and Fanny, who belong to the Thorntons, and a second Mildred Leach, who belongs to Tom and Alice.

One picture more, and then we leave them forever near the spot where we first saw them. Gerard and Bessie,—Alice and Tom,—have come to the cottage at the close of a warm July afternoon, and are grouped around the door, where Mildred sits, with the sunlight falling on her hair, a bunch of sweet peas pinned upon her bosom, and the light of a great joy in her eyes as she watches Hugh swinging the four children in a hammock, and says to Bessie “I never thought I could be as happy as I am now. God has been very good to me.”

THE END.

---

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Idwymon—By Fred’k A. Randle	1 50
The Disagreeable Man—A. S. M.	75
Our Artist in Spain, etc.—Carleton	1 00
Dawn to Noon—By Violet Fanc.	1 50
Constance’s Fate. Do.	1 50
Missing Chord—Lucy Dillingham	1 25
Ronbar—By R. S. Dement	1 50
A Manless World—Yourell	75
Journey to Mars—Pope	1 50
The Dissolution—Dandelyon	1 00
Lion Jack—By P. T. Barnum	1 50
Jack in the Jungle. Do.	1 50
Dick Broadhead. Do.	1 50
Red Birds Christmas Story, Holmes	1 00
Flashes from “Ouida”	1 25
Private Letters of a French Woman	75
Passion’s Dream—W. Boyd Sample	75
The Arrows of Love—L. Daintrey	75
Eighty-Seven Kisses—By?	75
Treasury of Knowledge	1 00
Mrs. Spriggins—Widow Bedott	25
Phemie Frost—Ann S. Stephens	1 50
Disagreeable Woman—Starr	75
The Story of a Day in London	25
Lone Ranch—By Mayne Reid	1 50
The Train Boy—Horatio Alger	1 25
Dan, The Detective—Alger	1 25
Death Blow to Spiritualism	50
The Sale of Mrs. Adral—Costello	50
The New Adam and Eve—Todd	50
Bottom Facts in Spiritualism	1 50
The Mystery of Central Park—Bly	50
Debatable Land—R. Dale Owen	1 00
Threading My Way. Do.	1 50
Princess Noarmahal—Geo. Sand	1 50
Galgano’s Wooing—Stebbins	1 25
Stories about Doctors—Jeffreson	1 50
Stories about Lawyers. Do.	1 50
Doctor Antonio—By Ruffini	1 50
Beatrice Cenci—From the Italian	1 50
The Story of Mary	1 50
Madame—By Frank Lee Benedict	1 50
A Late Remorse. Do.	1 50
Hammer and Anvil. Do.	2 50
Her Friend Laurence. Do.	2 50
L’Assommoir—Zola’s great novel	1 00
Mignonnette—By Sangrée	1 00
Jessica—By Mrs. W. H. White	1 50
Women of To-day. Do.	1 50
The Baroness—Joaquin Miller	1 50
One Fair Woman. Do.	1 50
The Burnhams—Mrs. G. E. Stewart	2 00
Eugene Ridgewood—Paul James	1 50
Braxton’s Bar—R. M. Daggett	1 50
Miss Beck—By Tilbury Holt	1 50
A Wayward Life	1 00
Winning Winds—Emerson	1 50
The Fallen Pillar Saint—Best	1 25
An Errald Girl—Johnson	1 50
Ask Her, Man! Ask Her!	1 50
Hidden Power—T. H. Tibbles	1 50
Parson Thorne—E. M. Buckingham	2 50
Errors—By Ruth Carter	1 50
The Abbess of Jouarre—Renan	1 00
Bulwer’s Letters to His Wife	2 00
Sense—A serious book. Pomeroy	1 50
Gold Dust Do.	1 50
Our Saturday Nights Do.	1 50
Nonsense—A comic book Do.	1 50
Brick Dust. Do. Do.	1 50
Home Harmonies. Do.	1 50
Vesta Vane—By L. King, R.	1 50
Kimball’s Novels—6 vols. Per Vol.	1 00
Warwick—M. T. Walworth	1 50
Hotspur. Do.	1 50
Lulu. Do.	1 50
Stormchif. Do.	1 50
Delaplaine. Do.	1 50
Beverly. Do.	1 50
Zahara. Do.	1 50
The Darling of an Empire	1 50
Clip Her Wing, or Let Her Soar	1 50
Nina’s Peril—By Mrs. Miller	1 50
Marguerite’s Journal—For Girls	1 50
Orpheus C. Kerr—Four vols. in one	2 00
Perfect Gentleman—Lockwood	1 25
Purple and Fine Linen—Fawcett	1 50
Pauline’s Trial—L. D. Courtney	1 50
Tancredi—Dr. E. A. Wood	1 50
Measure for Measure—Stanley	1 50
A Marvelous Coincidence	50
Two Men of the World—Bates	50
A God of Gotham—Bascom	50
Congressman John—MacCarthy	50
So Runs the World Away	50
Birds of a Feather—Sothern	1 50
Every Man His Own Doctor	2 00
Professional Criminals—Byrnes	5 00
Heart Hungry. Mrs. Westmoreland	1 50
Clifford Troupe. Do.	50
Price of a Life—R. F. Sturgis	1 50
Marston Hall—L. Ella Byrd	1 50
Conquered—By a New Author	1 50
Tales from the Popular Operas	1 50
The Fall of Kilman Kon	1 50
San Miniato—Mrs. C. V. Hamilton	50
All for Her—A Tale of New York	1 50

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.