"It might be part of a side plan of one story," he said, "but it ain't finished. There's only one brace in, and the cross beam is lacking. If it wasn't for the left-hand upright, I should say it was part of a swing-crane, but the pulley isn't strung. I don't know what it is. Who made it?"
But Mr. Turck did not go into particulars. He left Baldison's place and studied out the problem in his own office; he went out again and asked in vain the opinion of a dozen men, and he went home that evening baffled and in a frame of mind of which the less said the better. Within twenty-four hours Angeline was packed off to the Misses Cutlet's boarding-school in distant Belleville, to be "finished," as her mother described it. The irate father used other and far less becoming words.
This shifting of the scene when, to her, so much of importance was involved, was a most serious thing to Angeline. But it might have been much worse than it proved at the school. Plump Bessey Payton, another girl from Willow Bend, was there, and it was easily so arranged that the two occupied adjoining rooms. They had been friends for years, and the renewed companionship was much for Angeline. It aided in partial distraction.
And now this story, which has been—from an ordinary point of view—little more than a comedy, develops into something very like a tragedy. It was so to a young girl, at least. The Misses Cutlet had been instructed to keep a sharp eye open, and report, as well as they might, upon the quantity of Angeline's correspondence. They had little to tell. Angeline received few letters, and none frequently from any one person, so far as could be learned from the envelopes addressed to her. The parents were content.
And Angeline really had no correspondence with Harvey Lowry. She was a young woman who would keep her word, and she did not write to him, while from him came no message save an occasional envelope containing only a slip of paper upon which appeared the mysterious symbol. But was not that enough? Did it not indicate that she was still in his heart, and that he would be always hers? Those lines must have a meaning, and though she could not translate them, she felt it was only because Harvey had forgotten that he had never given her the key. What of that? She knew instinctively that the story they told was one of faith and faithfulness. How delicate of him, and how thoughtful that such loving reminder should come at times, and how wonderful it was that he should have invented such a thing for her dear sake alone! Her love grew with the months, and so, unfortunately, despite the letters with the reassuring figure, did her unhappiness.
It is perhaps unreasonable that we should laugh at the loves of the young, at what we call "calf love" in the male, and a "schoolgirl's fancy" in the maiden, for the springs of the heart do not always deepen with the years. Well for youth is it that it owns such wonderfully recuperative forces of mind and body; sad would it be to the elders if, without such recuperative powers, their feelings were given such abandonment. Youth's hurts are sometimes serious. Angeline was growing from the subjugated girl into the suffering woman. Other young women, she reasoned, were allowed to love and to marry the men of their choice. Why should she be made so cruel an exception? She idealized the absent, as the loving, so often do. In her mind, Harvey Lowry had grown from one for whom she cared more than for others into a hero without a flaw, one thoughtful, considerate, self-denying and altogether noble. The sentimental vein in her nature broadened and deepened, and she placed a greater value on the sweet reminder of the mysterious figures in the letters. And all for her! How constant he was, and how hard the lot of both of them! She became feverish and impatient. Her studies lost all interest, her cheeks became paler, thinner, her manner more languid. It could not last.
So the months went by until the end of the scholastic year was close at hand. Angeline would soon be in Willow Bend again and with her parents. She would meet Harvey Lowry again—that was inevitable. What would the near vacation bring to her? she asked herself. She was growing stubborn now. The portentous figure of her father no longer loomed so highly in her eyes as formerly, and she was the decided woman, with a woman's heart and will, and a woman's rights. What might be the summer's history!
Accidents—as thoughtful people are much given to remark—have sometimes great effect on the affairs of human beings.
One day as Angeline, visiting her friend, stood looking at her still agreeable image in Bess' mirror, she saw, stuck in the frame, among cards, notes and photographs, a square of yellowish paper. The coloring seemed to have come from age, but of that Angeline made no note. All she saw or knew was that the paper bore this mystic sign upon it:
