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CONTENTS
| MRS. HALLAM’S COMPANION | ||
| Chapter | Page | |
|---|---|---|
| I. | The Hallams | [9] |
| II. | The Homestead | [24] |
| III. | Mrs. Hallam’s Applicants | [36] |
| IV. | Mrs. Fred Thurston | [40] |
| V. | The Companion | [49] |
| VI. | On the Teutonic | [58] |
| VII. | Reginald and Phineas Jones | [67] |
| VIII. | Rex at the Homestead | [79] |
| IX. | Rex Makes Discoveries | [90] |
| X. | At Aix-les-Bains | [95] |
| XI. | Grace Haynes | [108] |
| XII. | The Night of the Opera | [114] |
| XIII. | After the Opera | [122] |
| XIV. | At the Beau-Rivage | [131] |
| XV. | The Unwelcome Guest | [139] |
| XVI. | Tangled Threads | [144] |
| XVII. | On the Sea | [149] |
| XVIII. | On Sea and Land | [158] |
| XIX. | “I, Rex, Take Thee, Bertha | [163] |
| THE SPRING FARM. | ||
| I. | At the Farm House | [169] |
| II. | Where Archie Was | [174] |
| III. | Going West | [180] |
| IV. | On the Road | [184] |
| V. | Miss Raynor | [194] |
| VI. | The School Mistress | [199] |
| VII. | At the Cedars | [205] |
| VIII. | Max at the Cedars | [209] |
| IX. | “Good-Bye, Max; Good-Bye.” | [218] |
| X. | At Last | [225] |
| THE HEPBURN LINE. | ||
| I. | My Aunts | [235] |
| II. | Doris | [246] |
| III. | Grantley Montague and Dorothea | [254] |
| IV. | Aleck and Thea | [268] |
| V. | Doris and the Glory Hole | [278] |
| VI. | Morton Park | [280] |
| VII. | A Soliloquy | [291] |
| VIII. | My Cousin Grantley | [293] |
| IX. | Grantley and Doris | [298] |
| X. | Thea at Morton Park | [307] |
| XI. | The Crisis | [317] |
| XII. | The Missing Link | [322] |
| XIII. | The Three Brides | [332] |
| XIV. | Two Years Later | [336] |
| MILDRED’S AMBITION. | ||
| I. | Mildred | [339] |
| II. | At Thornton Park | [345] |
| III. | Incidents of Fifteen Years | [352] |
| IV. | At the Farm House | [358] |
| V. | The Bride | [365] |
| VI. | Mrs. Giles Thornton | [374] |
| VII. | Calls at the Park | [380] |
| VIII. | Mildred and her Mother | [387] |
| IX. | Gerard and his Father | [395] |
| X. | In the Cemetery | [399] |
| XI. | What Followed | [405] |
| XII. | Love versus Money | [409] |
| XIII. | The Will | [414] |
| XIV. | Mildred and Hugh | [418] |
| XV. | The Denouement | [424] |
| XVI. | Sunshine After the Storm | [431] |
MRS. HALLAM’S COMPANION.
CHAPTER I.
THE HALLAMS.
Mrs. Carter Hallam was going to Europe,—going to Aix-les Bains,—partly for the baths, which she hoped “would lessen her fast-increasing avoirdupois, and partly to join her intimate friend, Mrs. Walker Haynes, who had urged her coming and had promised to introduce her to some of the best people, both English and American. This attracted Mrs. Hallam more than the baths. She was anxious to know the best people, and she did know a good many, although her name was not in the list of the four hundred. But she meant it should be there in the near future, nor did it seem unlikely that it might be. There was not so great a distance between the four hundred and herself, as she was now, as there had been between Mrs. Carter Hallam and little Lucy Brown, who used to live with her grandmother in an old yellow house in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, and pick berries to buy herself a pair of morocco boots. Later on, when the grandmother was dead and the yellow house sold, Lucy had worked first in a shoe-shop and then in a dry-goods store in Worcester, where, attracted by her handsome face, Carter Hallam, a thriving grocer, had made her his wife and mistress of a pretty little house on the west side of the city. As a clerk she had often waited upon the West Side ladies, whom she admired greatly, fancying she could readily distinguish them from the ladies of the East Side. To marry a Hallam was a great honor, but to be a West-Sider was a greater, and when both came to her she nearly lost her balance, although her home was far removed from the aristocratic quarters where the old families, the real West-Siders, lived. In a way she was one of them, she thought, or at least she was no longer a clerk, and she began to cut her old acquaintances, while her husband laughed at and ridiculed her, wondering what difference it made whether one lived on the east or west side of a town. He did not care whether people took him for a nabob, or a fresh importation from the wild and woolly West; he was just Carter Hallam, a jolly, easy-going fellow whom everybody knew and everybody liked. He was born on a farm in Leicester, where the Hallams, although comparatively poor, were held in high esteem as one of the best and oldest families. At twenty-one he came into the possession of a few thousand dollars left him by an uncle for whom he was named, and then he went to the Far West, roughing it with cowboys and ranchmen, and investing his money in a gold-mine in Montana and in lands still farther west. Then he returned to Worcester, bought a small grocery, married Lucy Brown, and lived quietly for a few years, when suddenly one day there flashed across the wires the news that his mine had proved one of the richest in Montana, and his lands were worth many times what he gave for them. He was a millionaire, with property constantly rising in value, and Worcester could no longer hold his ambitious wife.
It was too small a place for her, she said, for everybody knew everybody else’s business and history, and, no matter how much she was worth, somebody was sure to taunt her with having worked in a shoe-shop, if, indeed, she did not hear that she had once picked berries to buy herself some shoes. They must go away from the old life, if they wanted to be anybody. They must travel and see the world, and get cultivated, and know what to talk about with their equals.
So they sold the house and the grocery and traveled east and west, north and south, and finally went to Europe, where they stayed two or three years, seeing nearly everything there was to be seen, and learning a great deal about ruins and statuary and pictures, in which Mrs. Hallam thought herself a connoisseur, although she occasionally got the Sistine Chapel and the Sistine Madonna badly mixed, and talked of the Paul Belvedere, a copy of which she bought at an enormous price. When they returned to America Mr. Hallam was a three times millionaire, for all his speculations had been successful and his mine was still yielding its annual harvest of gold. A handsome house on Fifth Avenue in New York was bought and furnished in the most approved style, and then Mrs. Hallam began to consider the best means of getting into society. She already knew a good many New York people whom she had met abroad, and whose acquaintance it was desirable to continue. But she soon found that acquaintances made in Paris or Rome or on the Nile were not as cordial when met at home, and she was beginning to feel discouraged, when chance threw in her way Mrs. Walker Haynes, who, with the bluest of blood and the smallest of purses, knew nearly every one worth knowing, and, it was hinted, would for a quid pro quo open many fashionable doors to aspiring applicants who, without her aid, would probably stay outside forever.
The daughter and grand-daughter and cousin of governors and senators and judges, with a quiet assumption of superiority which was seldom offensive to those whom she wished to conciliate, she was a power in society, and more quoted and courted than any woman in her set. To be noticed by Mrs. Walker Haynes was usually a guarantee of success, and Mrs. Hallam was greatly surprised when one morning a handsome coupé stopped before her door and a moment after her maid brought her Mrs. Walker Haynes’s card. She knew all about Mrs. Walker Haynes and what she was capable of doing, and in a flutter of excitement she went down to meet her. Mrs. Walker Haynes, who never took people up if there was anything doubtful in their antecedents, knew all about Mrs. Hallam, even to the shoe-shop and the clerkship. But she knew, too, that she was perfectly respectable, with no taint whatever upon her character, and that she was anxious to get into society. As it chanced, Mrs. Haynes’s funds were low, for business was dull, as there were fewer human moths than usual hovering around the social candle, and when the ladies of the church which both she and Mrs. Hallam attended met to devise ways and means for raising money for some new charity, she spoke of Mrs. Hallam and offered to call upon her for a subscription, if the ladies wished it. They did wish it, and the next day found Mrs. Haynes waiting in Mrs. Hallam’s drawing-room for the appearance of its mistress, her quick-seeing eyes taking in every detail in its furnishing, and deciding on the whole that it was very good.
“Some one has taste,—the upholsterer and decorator, probably,” she thought, as Mrs. Hallam came in, nervous and flurried, but at once put at ease by her visitor’s gracious and friendly manner.