Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THE CURSE OF GOLD.

BY

MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS.

AUTHOR OF “WIVES AND WIDOWS,” “FASHION AND FAMINE,” “THE SOLDIER’S ORPHANS,” “THE REJECTED WIFE,” “THE OLD HOMESTEAD,” “THE WIFE’S SECRET,” “MABEL’S MISTAKE,” “THE GOLD BRICK,” “SILENT STRUGGLES,” “MARY DERWENT,” “DOUBLY FALSE,” “THE HEIRESS.”

Earth teems with good and evil: from her breast

The rooted corn springs vigorous to the sun;

While summer breezes toss its bearded crest

Until a glorious ripening work is done.

Thus men are amply fed and doubly blessed.

Deep from the caverns of her stony heart,

Toil drags the yellow gold, which, burning there,

Is innocent of harm,—but once apart

From its dark motherhood, fell hate, and care,

Curse half its uses in life’s stormy mart.

PHILADELPHIA:

T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS;

306 CHESTNUT STREET.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by

T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS,

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

ANN S. STEPHENS’ WORKS.

Each Work complete in one vol., 12mo.

THE CURSE OF GOLD.

WIVES AND WIDOWS.

THE HEIRESS.

THE REJECTED WIFE.

FASHION AND FAMINE.

THE GOLD BRICK.

SILENT STRUGGLES.

THE OLD HOMESTEAD.

MARY DERWENT.

THE SOLDIER’S ORPHANS.

THE WIFE’S SECRET.

MABEL’S MISTAKE.

DOUBLY FALSE.

Price of each, $1.75 in Cloth; or $1.50 in Paper Cover.

Above books are for sale by all Booksellers. Copies of any or all of the above books will be sent to any one, to any place, postage prepaid, on receipt of their price by the Publishers,

T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS,

306 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa.

TO

MRS. DUDLEY S. GREGORY,

OF JERSEY CITY,

THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED,

WITH

THE SINCERE FRIENDSHIP

AND RESPECT OF THE AUTHOR,

ANN S. STEPHENS.

PREFACE.

It has happened of late that several of my books have been more or less criticised for improbabilities attached either to a character, or some event selected from the rest of the book as too extravagant for belief or for the harmonies of true art. Now, singular enough, in every instance, the events or characters selected for these criticisms have been facts in themselves, or portraits drawn from persons well known to myself and others. If such criticism should fall on the character of Madame De Marke, I may perhaps be permitted to state that this woman has lived within the last fifteen years, and was well known in a certain neighborhood in the city of New York for her wealth, her eccentricity, and her avaricious habits. Her person, her manner of life, and her extreme parsimony, are in no respect overdrawn. The room in which she lived and died is described exactly as she inhabited it in 1849. Of course, the events of the story which runs through this volume are not absolute facts, but the character of the woman, improbable as it may seem, is the vraisemblance of a real individual.

CONTENTS.

THE

CURSE OF GOLD.

CHAPTER I.
A WARD IN BELLEVUE.

The sick ward of a hospital, mockingly, it would seem, called Bellevue. The room was long, low in the ceiling, and lighted by a range of windows sunk deep in the wall, which overlooked the East River and an expanse of Long Island that curved along the opposite shore.

A few poverty-stricken women, and some worse than that, because bowed down by shame as well as poverty, had sought this ward as the only place in which their anguish and sorrow could find shelter.

Narrow, pauper cots, furnished with straw beds and covered with coarse, checkered cotton, were ranged down each side, of the room, with just space enough between to allow a sort of foot-path in which the nurses could pass from one bed to another.

Every cot was occupied. Here a young face, so pale and mournful that your heart ached while gazing on it, was turned sadly toward you on the straw pillow, or a feeble hand would make an effort to draw up the coverlet, that you might not mark the flush of shame that stole over her forehead, or discover the cause of that shame which lay nestled in her bosom.

Other faces met your view, coarse and shameless, or haggard with long suffering; and some turned upon you eyes so full of gentle submission, that you wondered why human beings so opposite in their nature should be crowded together in one room, even by the terrible leveller Poverty.

Sounds, in painful harmony with the scene, greeted your entrance. Murmurs of sharp impatience, imprecations suppressed only by fear, and open complaints from the coarser and ruder inmates, drowned the sighs and timid whispers of maternal love that gave a breath of heaven even to that miserable place.

Two cots in the room, both standing in a remote corner, were occupied like the rest, but gave forth no signs of life. They stood close together, and of the occupants it seemed impossible to say which was living, or which was actually dead, so coldly pale were the two faces that gleamed upon you from the pillows. Both were young, and one was wondrously beautiful even in that deathly state, when forehead, hands and lips were blanched to the whiteness of a corpse.

The other was less beautiful, but very young, and so fragile that you wondered why death had waited to find her in that miserable place, for she was dying. The gray shadows, settling like a mist upon her face, the locked whiteness of her features, the imperceptible stiffening of her white hand upon the coverlet, all proclaimed this truth with terrible distinctness. But there was yet a breath of life close to her heart, a faint flutter as if a wounded bird had folded its wings forever, and then all was quiet as if sleep were there, or death had come twice.

The gray shadows of a winter’s morning crept through the checkered curtains of a neighboring window, and hung coldly around that pauper couch; and amid the muttering of patients restless with fever, or clamorous for nourishment, the wail of sickly infants, and the outcries of healthy ones, this poor young creature died and grew cold, unwatched and unwept.

The other, she who lay so like an exquisite statue on the neighboring couch, would no life ever return to her? There was a faint motion of the bed-clothes, as if breath still lingered there; but did it exist in that fair young mother or in the child, for she, poor thing, was a mother, and even in the chill of insensibility she held the little being into which her own seemed to have merged, clasped to her bosom.

Just as the day dawned, a nurse came into the ward, not with her usual dauntless step, but stealthily, and casting sidelong glances from cot to cot, like a panther fearing to arouse his prey. She stopped once or twice and arranged the pillows of her patients, with a sort of cajoling attention, always leaving their faces turned from the corner where those two young creatures suffered. Then she stole softly between the two cots, and bending down her face till her soiled curl-papers almost touched the dead, listened, felt the cold hand on the coverlet, and cautiously turned down the clothes.

At the head of each cot a square wooden label was hung against the wall, on which was painted the name and number of the occupant. The nurse took down these labels when quite sure that one of these young women was dead, and replaced them again, looking furtively around as she did so.

After making herself busy with the labels a while, the nurse stood over the cot of the dead woman and took a rapid survey of the ward.

All was quiet, save the murmurs of a child, far down the room, who was struggling to keep its place in the arms of a drowsy mother.

The nurse was relieved by this sound. It gave her time for breath. The rustle of her own dress seemed less startling. She turned to the other bed, stooped over it still more cautiously, and laid her hand down upon the heart of the senseless woman.

She half rose, gave a sharp glance over her shoulder, and taking each of the fair hands, clasped so fondly around a sleeping infant, forced them gently apart, and lifted the child from its mother’s bosom.

A shudder passed through the frame of that young mother, as if the last gleam of life had been torn from her heart. Her eyelids quivered, and her lips were, for an instant, faintly convulsed.

The nurse turned suddenly to the other couch, and back again, while this life-struggle was going on. Without unclosing her eyes, the poor creature reached forth her arms, clasped them fondly again with a sigh of ineffable delight, and sunk away motionless, without a perceptible breath.

But it was not for joy. As the child, a moment before, had seemed to keep the vitality in her heart with its own warmth, so now some outward chill drove back the blood to its centre. With a moan, and a struggle, she came to life, opened her great blue eyes, and fixed them wildly on the nurse.

“I am cold, oh! so cold,” she said, shivering, and cowering down into the bed; “what have you done to me?”

“Done to you?” said the nurse, faintly, “done to you? Nothing, but try my best to bring you to. Why, it’s almost dead you’ve been, I don’t know how long.”

The invalid did not hear this. A momentary impulse of strength seized upon her. She flung back the bed-clothes, and bending her face downward, fixed those wild eyes upon the child. One glance, and she lifted them with a sharp, questioning look to the woman, and passing her hand over the little face, whispered hoarsely,—

“What is this?”

The nurse put her hands down and touched the infant. The poor mother felt those coarse hands shaking against her own, and shrunk away with a faint cry: it seemed as if they had inflicted a wound upon her.

It was some moments before the woman spoke. When she did, it was with a sort of unnatural quickness, accompanied with hurried glances down the room.

“Where’s the doctor? It might have been expected. Fainting fits all night—overlaid and smothered it. Half on your face when I came in—arms grasped around it like a vice. No wonder it’s cold.”

“Cold. Is that all—only cold?” cried the mother, trembling all over,—“only cold?”

“Cold as a stone, and dead as a door-nail, that’s what it is?” answered the nurse, sharply, for that moment the physician of the ward came in sight, and the nurse judged well of the effect her brutal speech would have on the young creature.

With a cry, that in her feebleness scarcely arose above a wail, she fell back perfectly senseless again.

“What is the trouble here?” inquired the doctor, coming forward. “Oh, I expected this!” he added, glancing at the dead; “scarcely a breath of life in her from the first. The baby too, I suppose.”

“No!” answered the nurse, quickly; “that poor creature has lost her baby. Hers is just alive yet; I wish they wouldn’t send such delicate creatures here. It’s enough to destroy one’s character to have them die off so.”

“But she is not dead,” replied the doctor, passing between the two cots, and taking the little hand that had fallen away from the child; “almost as bad though; a hard chill—we shall have fever next! Take the child away. No wonder she feels cold! How long has it been dead?”

“It was cold when I came in.”

“Well, well, have it removed. She will never come to with that freezing her to the heart.”

“And the other baby?” questioned the nurse, anxiously.

“Give it to one of these women to nurse, till something can be done; and order two coffins. They mustn’t lie here, or we shall have a panic among the patients.”

The nurse made an effort to take the child once more from its mother’s arms; but, for the first time, she seemed nervous and reluctant to touch the dead. The doctor startled her, saying impatiently,—

“There, be quick, or the woman will die! That will do—now let me see if anything can put life into her? Poor thing, poor thing! It’s a pity the baby is dead—but then what chance has an orphan in this world?—better dead, if she could only be brought to think so!”

While he was talking, the nurse bent suddenly to the floor and snatched up a small, silken bag, which, suspended by a braid chain, had been torn from the invalid’s neck when the babe was first removed from her arms. The doctor turned his eyes that way.

“I am always dropping this pin-cushion from my side!” she said, hurriedly, gathering up the chain in her hand; “there is no keeping any thing in its place.”

“Don’t stop for such nonsense,” cried the physician, impatiently, “or the woman will die under our hands.”

The nurse thrust the silken chain and its appendage into her bosom, and began in earnest to render assistance.

CHAPTER II.
MARY MARGARET DILLON.

The poor young creature was aroused at length from the chill torpor that had seized upon her; but she awoke to a hot flush of fever, raving with pathetic wildness of a thousand things which no one comprehended—of a husband that had left her in the depths of trouble, of the child that she fancied herself clasping, and of the nurse who seemed forever and ever over her bed, as she persisted in thinking, like a great, black statue that had chilled her heart to death beneath its shadow. Thus she raved and muttered, while the fever kindled wilder and hotter within her veins, and her eyes grew star-like in their glittering brightness.

Hour after hour she kept up these mental wanderings, and then sunk away again.

Meantime the nurse had been very restless under the doctor’s eye, and negligent beyond anything known of her before when he was away. But for the kindly interposition of a convalescent patient in the ward, the poor invalid must have perished from inattention, if not from positive violations of all medical rules.

The woman of whom we speak was a plump, wholesome, little Irish dame, with the freshest face and warmest heart that ever looked poverty in the face.

She had entered the hospital quietly, and grateful for the asylum thus provided for her in time of need. In the depths of winter, with three little children “to the fore,” as she said, and the husband without a hand’s turn of work, what had she to do eating up the bread that was but half enough to keep the hunger from so many clamorous mouths. Why shouldn’t she take herself to the hospital thankfully, while the good man—for want of better work—minded the childer at home?

Mary Margaret Dillon had no pride in the matter, not she. Bellevue, in her estimation, belonged to the people. John possesses a right to vote among the sovereigns and had paid taxes, for which his landlord took the credit, in the shape of exorbitant rents for the last ten years. Thus he had secured, as she considered it, a lien upon at least one humble straw bed in the hospital, and of that she took possession with as little feeling of humiliation as beset Victoria when she mounted the throne of England.

When the scene we have just described happened, Mary Margaret, who had neither lost her roses nor her cheerfulness, was sitting upon the side of her cot, striving with her active little hands to remedy the fit of a scant calico dress in which her fourth born was arrayed. As she sat thus, smiling fondly upon the infant, and finding a world of beauty in its plump face and tiny red hands, the buxom mother would have made a capital model for one of Rubens’s Madonnas.

“Isn’t it a darlint?” she murmured, touching each velvet cheek daintily with the tip of her finger, pursing up her lips and emitting a succession of audible kisses upon the air, the sound of which almost brought the first smiles to her baby’s mouth.

“Isn’t it a wonder and a beauty, with its diamond black eyes and ilegant hair, like his father before him?” she continued, stretching the little fellow across her lap, and striving to cover the tiny feet that would peep out from beneath the coarse dress, by two or three vigorous pulls at the skirt. “Won’t the children be dancing with joy when they get us home again; and John, faix! but he’ll never grumble that there’s another mouth to fill—barring the year when it’s in arms, poor crathur—for the blessed Virgin that sent the baby’ll find work for us long before it’ll have teeth for the praties, sure.”

Thus the good woman and unconscious philosopher muttered to herself, as she sought to redeem her babe from the unbecoming effects of his pauper dress—smoothing its silken hair with the tips of her fingers; and coaxing it to smile with kisses and gentle touches of the cheek between whiles, she continued her murmurs of gentle fondness, happy as a mother bird upon her nest.

She had tied the awkward sleeves back from its shoulders with knots of faded pink ribbon, taken from her own cap, and was holding it at arm’s length with a broad smile of triumph, when the nurse passed the cot with her checkered apron folded over some object that she held to her bosom.

“What have ye there, Misses Kelly, saving yer prisence?” inquired Mary Margaret, holding her baby poised in mid-air, and turning her kindly eyes upon the nurse. “It isn’t dead, sure?”

“She is,” answered the nurse, nodding her head toward the cot.

Mary Margaret held her breath, and tears stole to her eyes as she stood up, trembling beneath the weight of her infant—for she was still very feeble—and looked toward the pale face of the dead.

“And the poor, young crathur in the cot alongside, what has happened to her?” inquired Mary Margaret.

“She’s as good as dead, don’t you hear how she raves? Mutter—mutter, she hasn’t strength for more: all the doctors on earth couldn’t save her.”

“And her baby?” asked Mary Margaret, filled with compassion, and hugging her own child fondly to her bosom.

“Oh? that’s yonder by the dead woman, cold as she is!”

Mary Margaret held her child closer, and the tears streamed down her face.

“Give me a look at the motherless crathur,” she said, laying her child upon the cot, and reaching forth her arms.

The nurse hesitated an instant, and then flung back her apron from the face of the infant.

“Poor thing, poor thing, how deathly it looks! what great, wild eyes! How it stares at one!” exclaimed Mary Margaret, half sobbing.

“It’s half starved,” answered the nurse, looking down upon her burden with a callous smile; “it won’t feed. To-night will see the end on’t.”

Mary Margaret glanced at her own sleeping child, and then turned her brimming eyes upon the other.

“Give it here,” she said, “there’s enough for both—give him here.”

The nurse frowned and drew up her apron.

“The doctor must settle that. It’s not my business, Mrs. Dillon,” she said, harshly.

“The doctor! Well, where is he? Be quick and ask him, or let me.”

“When he comes in the morning will be time enough,” answered the nurse, preparing to move on.

“The morning! Why, the poor crathur’ll be gone afore that,” persisted the kind woman, stepping a pace forward, and supporting herself with difficulty. “Let me have it, I say!”

The nurse jerked her arm from the feeble grasp laid upon it, and harshly bade the woman return to her bed and mind her own business.

Mary Margaret tottered back and sat down upon the foot of her couch.

“It’ll die, it’ll die afore the blessed day is over,” she muttered, sadly, for her maternal heart ached over the orphan. “Arrah, if the doctor was only to the fore!”

She ended this piteous exclamation with a joyful outburst.

“The saints be praised, here he is, welcome as cowslips in spring!” and regardless of her feeble state, she arose and stood ready to address the doctor, as he came down the ward.

The nurse uttered a sharp exclamation, in which an oath was but half smothered, and advancing fiercely toward the cot, flung the famished child down by the sleeping babe of Mary Margaret.

“There, take the brat!” she said, with an unnatural laugh. “I meant that you should nurse it all the time, if you hadn’t teased one’s life out about it.”

Mary Margaret did not answer; her limbs were trembling like aspens, and she sunk upon the cot overpowered with fatigue. Drawing the little stranger softly to her bosom, she pressed it gently there, felt the thrill of its eager lips, and drawing a deep breath of satisfaction, watched its great eyes turned upon her own, till, as if struck by the same mesmeric influence, the woman and the infant slumbered together.

It was a sweet picture of helplessness and charity, a noble proof that no human being can find a place so humble upon this earth, that some good to others may not be wrought out of it.

As the woman and children lay thus, buried in that gentle sleep which sometimes falls like dew after a good action, the lifeless young creature was lifted from her pauper death-bed, and carried forth to be stretched in the still more poverty-stricken pine coffin. Then the marble form of the infant was carelessly carried after, and that bereaved mother followed it with her wild, bright eyes, and laughed as the door closed.

CHAPTER III.
THE HOSPITAL NURSE.

Late in the evening, the hospital nurse, who had been an evil actor in the scene we have just described, stood, with a smoking lamp in her hand, in a closet or store-room where the patient’s garments were kept. From one of the shelves she took a bundle tied up in a coarse woollen shawl, and drew forth a long merino cloak that had evidently found its origin in old Ireland. She folded the cloak cautiously around her, and selecting a bonnet from a score or two that filled a side press, she tied a green veil closely over it. Then she extinguished her lamp, finding her way out by the glow of its smouldering wick, and leaving a cloud of offensive smoke to deepen the already unpleasant atmosphere of the room.

The woman had evidently intended to disguise herself, and she stole like a thief down the dark passages of the building, avoiding the officers and keeping close to the shadow whenever she came within the range of a light, like one who feared to be seen.

At last she came out into the grounds in front of the hospital. The moon was up, but hidden occasionally by masses of clouds that cumbered the sky with a darkness that threatened snow. The woman waited under the shadow of the steps till a heap of these clouds had completely obscured the moon, and then darted out, taking a central walk that led from the principal entrance to Bellevue down to the water.

A grape-arbor, at the time of our story, ran half-way down this walk, covering it, even in winter, with a thousand gnarled and twisted vines, that kept, the light away and afforded the obscurity of which she seemed so desirous.

Here she paused, and heaving a deep breath, walked more leisurely forward, drawing her veil closer, and folding the cloak over her garments more resolutely as she approached the open grounds again.

As she came forth, the moon had waded half through the bank of clouds, that had overwhelmed it for a moment, and began to pour its faint silver along their edges, a sight beautiful to look upon, but very repulsive to the woman, who wanted no radiance and could expect no beauty on the dark path she had begun to tread.

Resolved to be in advance of the threatened illumination, she darted in a slanting direction across a range of garden beds, that lay, a mass of trodden mud and decaying vegetable stumps, between her and the southern wall.

Again she was in safety, though the moon had rolled forth into the clear of the sky once more, and all around was dimly illuminated. She stood in the shadow cast by a low, stone building, half buried behind heaps of coal, empty barrels, and all sorts of refuse lumber that had been allowed to accumulate in that portion of the grounds.

Another might have trembled and shrunk back appalled from the position in which this woman found herself. It was late at night, and she stood in the very presence of death. The atmosphere was heavy and so oppressive, that even in the clear cold of the night, a faintness crept over her, not from fear, not from any over-excitement of the nerves, but purely from the unwholesome air that she breathed.

She knew that the low stone building was heaped with the dead, prepared for burial with such scant care as the pauper receives. She knew, also, that there was an epidemic in the hospital, and that this store-house of mortality was unusually crowded; but this gave her no uneasiness, and she shook off the sickness that oppressed her, with a sort of scorn, as if she and death had become too familiar for him to take such liberties with her.

The effect which habit produces upon a coarse nature, was repulsively visible here. The woman stood within a narrow path, over which the dead-house flung its repulsive shadow. On the other side the moonbeams fell, grim and ghastly, revealing double rows of rough pine coffins, lifted endwise, and arranged in hideous proximity, so far as the dim light would permit her to see.

Thus between these hollow receptacles prepared for the dead, and death itself, the woman walked, the moonlight revealing the suggestive horror on one hand, while a dense shadow and a thick wall of stone shut out the real horror close by.

But what cared the hospital nurse for this? The coffins on her right, so glistening and ghastly, were nothing but a heap of pine boards fashioned in a fantastic shape to her. The building simply a grim pile of stone, which cast a convenient shadow for her to walk in. She rather resented the closeness of the atmosphere, but scorned to walk faster, and cast it off with a sort of defiant toss of the head, muttering that “she could stand anything, and wasn’t to be frightened by shadows, not she!”

Thus picking her steps leisurely, she went down this valley of death; and secure of not being discovered from the hospital windows, passed through a gate, in the wall near the water, which had most conveniently been left unlocked by the porter.

Once free of the hospital walls, Jane Kelly moved on with more resolution. An omnibus stood at its station on one of the avenues. She entered it, and seating herself in an extreme corner, subsided, to all appearances, into a state of passive indifference.

The omnibus heaved and rumbled on its way, receiving here and there a woman of the lower classes, or a half intoxicated man passing home to his family after a primary meeting or a reunion in some corner grocery.

The hospital nurse got out where Nassau Street verges from Chatham, and disappeared after walking half a dozen blocks down one of the cross streets. We find her again threading her way up through the darkness of a large building, divided into offices and rooms of various sizes, mostly untenanted at that hour of the night. The passages were profoundly dark; the staircase narrow, winding in and out with no regard to architectural rules; in some places considerably out of repair, while in others bits of coal and peanut husks crunched underfoot, and gave evidence of a general state of untidiness perceptible even in the dark.

At last the woman came to a wooden door, at which she paused. A gleam of light stole through a crevice over the threshold, and struggled around an iron key half turned in the lock. With this came a faint noise as of some person moving within.

Jane Kelly knocked at this door, rather timidly, as if she were a little uncertain about the place she sought.

There was no answer. But the noise of a moving chair, and a shuffle of feet as if approaching the door, kept Jane Kelly stationary. After some delay the door was partially opened and a face looked through.

“Who are you? What do you want here with a veil on that nobody can see through? Go away,” said a sharp, angry voice.

“You told me to come!” said the woman, lifting her veil and bending forward that her features might be seen.

“Not at this time of night,” cried the voice, which now exhibited a slightly foreign accent; and, without having really seen the face presented for her inspection, the woman who owned it was about to close the door entirely.

“You don’t know me. I came from Bellevue,” said the nurse; “you told me to come, and I’m here.”

“Bellevue, Bellevue. Oh! and in the night. Come in; has anything happened? anybody dead, eh?”

The door was flung open more generously, and the visitor half pulled, half invited through.

CHAPTER IV.
MADAME DE MARKE.

The room in which Jane Kelly found herself was almost in darkness. Some smouldering embers sent faint red gleams from an open fireplace, over which a strip of coarse bagging had been nailed to keep in the smoke, and by this she could only discover that a poverty-stricken look pervaded everything around her. A small weird-like woman stood but half revealed by the light, gazing sharply upon her. Spite of the darkness, she felt that two keen black eyes were piercing her through and through.

All at once the woman stooped, and taking a handful of shavings from an old candle-box that stood on the hearth, flung them upon the embers.

A burst of light revealed a smoke-begrimed room, a tattered old bed, some broken chairs tied together with coarse twine, and a rickety table. The sudden light was greeted by a hoarse croaking which came from the direction of the bed; but the flash was so transient that these things left little impression on the girl’s mind, which fastened entirely on the woman herself. Lean, spare, pinched in all her features, grim, unwashed, witch-like, the owner of that room stood in its midst, with the sudden radiance full upon her one minute, and the next she was lost in shadows—all but the eyes, which were still peering into Jane Kelly’s face.

“Holy mother! I shall have to light the candle, after all. Waste, waste, nothing but waste. Stand still while I get at a coal of fire. Don’t move, or you might tread on the cat, and she won’t like it.”

Here the woman went rattling among some loose articles of crockery on the table, and falling upon her knees before the fireplace, ignited a tallow candle with much puffing and blowing. Then she stood up, held the candle over her head, and searched her visitor from head to foot.

“There, there, sit down,” cried the woman, sweeping a lean, gray cat from the rush-bottom of an old chair with one broken arm, and presenting it to her guest in a quick, eager way.

“Any news?—anything to tell? Why should you come so late? Why don’t you speak?”

“Yes, I’ve got news. It’s all over——”

“What? Dead? Really dead? But which of ’em? Not both? That would be too good luck! Not both, eh?”

“No, madame, that isn’t just true yet. But to-morrow will tell the story. If it hadn’t been for a woman in the ward, who would give the medicine after I’d forgot it agin and agin, you might have saved the expense of two graves. Something interesting, you know, in burying a baby on its mother’s bosom.

“‘We laid you down to sleep, Mary,

With your baby on your breast.’

“Sweet song, isn’t it, ma’am? that is what I call touching.”

“What are you talking about touching? Poetry! froth and nonsense! I thought you came here on business—to tell me something.”

“So I did; haven’t I told you that the baby was dead?”

“But she! how about her?”

“She was just agoing, when the doctor——” Jane Kelly broke off suddenly, for Madame De Marke sprang to her feet and caught her by the dress. Jane understood this sort of thing and flung her off rudely enough.

“Then she isn’t dead?” cried the woman, working the long, sharp nails of her right hand fiercely against the palm. “But the child? Is that dead and buried?”

“Oh! I saw that nicely stowed away among a heap of little coffins, on a wheelbarrow, and ready to be bundled off to the dead-house. All right with the baby!”

“You’re sure there’s no mistake?”

“Sure? Didn’t I put on its cotton shroud myself,—a mighty scant thing, only just wide enough to wrap around its little limbs without a fold? I marked the coffin, too, with my own hands, letter L, with chalk. If you want to be satisfied, it’s easily found, and can be kept till the mother is ready. It’ll save expense, besides being so interesting.”

“Expense!” cried the occupant of the room, with a look of sharp anxiety. “Expense! I thought the city bore that. Do they charge for putting a miserable baby into Potter’s Field?”

“No, but then most people like a single grave, you know; it only costs a dollar.”

“Only costs a dollar! as if dollars were made to fling into Potter’s Field. Why, woman, do you know how much a dollar is worth? How much interest it will bring, how many years it will take a dollar to double? A dollar for a dead baby! If I’d spent dollars so extravagantly, do you think I should ‘a’ been rolling in gold now, rolling, rolling in it—do you hear?”

Jane Kelly cast a rather scornful glance around the miserable chamber, with its naked floor, single bed, and coarse wooden chairs. This did not look much like rolling in gold.

“You don’t believe me? you think I lie. Very well, very well. You fear that I cannot pay up; very well again; we shall see to that!”

“It’s no joke,” said Jane Kelly, who really did begin to fear for the safety of her bribe, after discovering the nakedness of the land. “It’s no joke to do what I’ve done; and a poor body like me might be a trifle anxious about the pay, without blame, let me tell you, ma’am.”

“Did you kill the baby?” inquired Madame De Marke, in a low, cunning whisper. “Because if you did, of course that makes a difference. Did you kill it?”

Jane sat silent, tempted to assent; for the woman’s words seemed to promise a heavier reward, if crime had really been committed; and her rapacity overcame her prudence.

“Did you kill it?” eagerly repeated the woman.

“Don’t ask me!” answered the nurse, drawing down her veil as with a spasm of remorse, “I don’t want to think about it.”

“Then you did kill it!” cried the woman, and her little, black eyes twinkled with mingled cupidity and malice.

“The price ought to be doubled, ma’am. One’s conscience is worth something.”

“Double! oh, ho! Double, is it?” cried Madame De Marke, rubbing her long, thin hands together with malicious glee. “Why, woman, it’s you that should give me money for keeping your wicked secret, Mary Mother forgive me.”

Madame reached forth her hands, and took a golden crucifix, with a piece of twine attached, from a ridge over the fireplace which marked the line where a mantelpiece had been, and kissed it reverently.

The sight of this crucifix, which was of pure gold and exquisitely wrought, gave Jane Kelly renewed confidence in the ability of her employer to reward the service she had rendered. Though a poor match for the shrewd and singular woman with whom she had to deal, Jane was quick-witted enough to see her mistake. But she allowed Madame De Marke to go on, while her own thoughts were taking form.

“You see,” whispered madame, fixing her sharp eyes on the nurse, “you see it is dangerous keeping a secret of this kind for any one. Then your coming here to-night, people might suspect me of having some interest in the matter, and that would never do. Still, for a trifle, say two or three months’ wages, I will keep silent about it.”

“Two or three months’ wages from me to you!” cried the nurse, astounded, “from me to you!”

“Why, murder! you know, my dear, murder! you don’t seem to appreciate the nature of a secret like that.”

“But I have committed no murder. The baby died naturally. Who talks of murder? I only let it alone. Where is the law agin that, I’d like to know.”

“You didn’t kill it!” cried madame, with a grim smile, and still rubbing her hands; “didn’t kill it?”

“‘Masterly inactivity,’ as the papers say, nothing more,” answered the nurse, gathering self-possession as she remarked the rather crestfallen looks of her companion.

“Well, then, if the creature died naturally, what more can be said about it? Of course, you don’t want money for a baby that died of its own accord.”

“But I do want money, all you promised, and I will have it, too.”

“All I promised? how much was that?”

“Two hundred dollars for the baby; four, if both went together,” answered Jane, resolutely.

“Two hundred dollars!” cried madame, lifting up both hands, with the long, claw-like nails, like a bird ready to pounce on his prey. “Two hundred dollars! Is the woman crazy? Why, it was two dollars; a handsome little fee to the nurse, for kindness and care of a poor girl that once lived with me. Two hundred dollars!”

“The poor young mother isn’t dead; and good nursing may save her. I am a good nurse, when I fancy the patient, Madame De Marke.”

CHAPTER V.
THE MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE.

Madame De Marke was evidently startled by the threat which Jane Kelly insinuated, rather than spoke; her eyes fell and were lifted again with a sidelong glance. Jane read the glance, and her own eyes filled with the low cunning always uppermost in her nature.

“I have two ways of nursing. That ‘masterly inactivity,’ which worked so well for the baby—regular attention to the doctor’s directions when he happens to be an experimentalizing student, or inattention to his orders when he is honest and knows what he is about. Any one of ’em is pretty sure to create a demand for two breadths of cotton muslin and a pine coffin.”

“And which of these will you take?” asked madame, anxiously.

“None of them, madame. You don’t choose to settle up, and I don’t choose to work for nothing. Can’t afford it; nurses’ pay is next to being a beggar; it’s only two months since they gave me so much as would keep me.”

“Why, I thought you had been in Bellevue for years?”

“Oh, yes! off and on I have. But then I was only a nurse with five dollars a month. Not much chance to make money, except once in a while, when somebody outside wants a thing hushed up, like this, for instance, or a patient happens to hide a few dollars under her pillow, which gives a few lean pickings and stealings to the nurses.”

Madame De Marke’s eyes brightened, and a crafty smile stole over her lips. “Perhaps she’ll have some money hid away. I shouldn’t wonder; enough to pay for your trouble all round; she always was hoarding up. Oh, I have no doubt you may trust to finding heaps of money between her beds, but she’ll take care of it while there is a breath of life in her, never fear that.”

The nurse laughed a low, sly laugh, that rather discomposed her hostess.

“I’ve searched,” she said; “the poor thing lay insensible two whole hours.”

“Then you found nothing?” inquired the Frenchwoman, with a look of keen anxiety.

“Nothing but a little silk bag, with some papers in it.”

“Papers! What were they? I have missed papers. What were they? Or perhaps you can’t read. Let me look at the papers.”

“Oh! yes,” answered the nurse, demurely, “I can read. There was a paper with some poetry on it.”

“Poetry!” cried Madame De Marke, in a tone of ineffable contempt, but which gave forth a burst of relief also. “Poetry! is that all?”

“No,” replied Jane Kelly, with quiet deliberation. “There was some marriage lines between George De Marke and Catharine Lacy.”

Though her face was repulsive and dull from want of washing, Madame De Marke turned pale, and her eyes began to gleam with fierce desire when Jane told what the papers were of which she had become possessed. She stretched forth her hand, and commenced eagerly working the fingers, as a hungry parrot gropes for his food.

“Give me the lines. They belong to me. My name was Catharine, and De Marke’s name was George. Give me the lines. She stole them.”

“Haven’t got them with me,” said Jane, folding the cloak more closely around her, with real fear that the witch-like woman would tear them from her bosom, if she knew that they were about her person.

“But you will bring them?—say to-morrow night.”

Jane Kelly laughed, and looking into the eyes of the eager woman, muttered,—

“Nothing for nothing.”

“I—I will give you the—that is, a hundred dollars for the paper,” urged the woman, still working her fingers eagerly.

“To-night?”

“Well, yes, if you give up the paper; but then for cash down there’ll be a discount,—say fifty dollars. Times are very hard.”

“Not a cent less than the full hundred,” answered the nurse resolutely.

Madame De Marke sat restlessly in her chair. The idea of parting with so much money was absolute torture. A hundred dollars! Why, she did not spend more than half that sum on herself during a whole year; and for that insolent wretch to ask so much for a single scrap of paper! the very thought enraged her.

“Say seventy-five now,” she pleaded, in a wheedling tone, weaving her fingers softly together.

“I don’t want to sell the paper. If the girl gets well, as I mean she shall, it’ll be worth more than a hundred dollars to her.”

“But she has no money.”

“Well, I can afford to do without money when a kind act is to be done. The city government always gives me a home and work when I want them.”

“Take seventy-five.”

“Well, say seventy-five for the paper, and a hundred for the baby.”

“The baby again!” snarled Madame De Marke, “it’s dead of its own accord. I won’t pay a sous for it—not a sous!”

Jane Kelly hesitated a moment, looked around the room as if afraid of being overheard, and then leaning forward, whispered a few words in Madame De Marke’s ear.

“I—I’ll give you the money. Seventy-five dollars down, one hundred when—when it’s all set right.”

“It’s all set right now.”

“Very well, very well, you are a noble girl, Jane. Jane, what is the name?”

“Kelly—Jane Kelly.”

“You’re a noble girl, Jane Kelly. I’d trust you with untold gold. No, not gold, there is something very tempting in gold, too tempting for human nature; but I’d trust you with silver untold, silver or bank-notes, if I only had them about me. But the times are so hard. Say fifty dollars down, all in solid silver; it’ll make your heart jump to hear the dollars fall upon each other. I tell you it’s enough to break one’s heart when such music goes the other way. Now you will take the fifty, that’s a dear good soul.”

Jane shook her head stubbornly.

“Now consider how much money is worth just now; fifty dollars is worth a hundred at any other time.”

Jane Kelly arose and prepared to go. Bad as she was, this woman’s clinging avarice disgusted her.

“Well, well, if you will be so hard-hearted, I must try and raise the money, though how it is to be done I can’t begin to tell. Wait a minute. Just step out into the passage, that’s a nice girl.”

CHAPTER VI.
THE DIAMOND EAR-RINGS.

Jane stepped into the passage, and Madame De Marke closed the door after her. In the upper portion of the door was a narrow sash window, covered inside with a faded, red valance, through which the light came with a dull, lurid glow. It will be remembered that Madame De Marke had kindled the end of a tallow candle after the entrance of her visitor, and thus the meagre room was in some sort illuminated.

Jane naturally kept her eyes on this curtain, for all without was profoundly dark. All at once she discovered a corner of the faded maroon folded back, leaving a small, triangular corner of the glass uncovered. To this corner the nurse bent her eye, and saw Madame De Marke half-way under the bed, where she looked more like a bundle of old clothes crowded away from sight, than a human being.

By her side, upon the soiled floor, stood an ink-bottle with its neck choked up by the swaling stump of her candle. For a moment, the body of Madame De Marke almost disappeared under the bed, then she crept slowly backward, upon her hands and knees, dragging what had once been a small soap-box, after her.

When once free from the bed, Madame De Marke arose softly to her feet, crept toward the door, and tried the lock to be certain that it was secure. Then she gave the valance a pull, which, fortunately for Jane, rather increased the scope of vision, which, for the moment, she was admonished not to enjoy.

After satisfying herself that all was right, Madame De Marke seated herself on the floor, and drawing the ink-bottle close to her side, unlocked one of the iron bands that had been fastened around the box, and cautiously lifted the lid, raising the light in her left hand as she proceeded. Again she looked over her shoulder, holding her breath and half closing the lid. But perfect silence gave her confidence, and with a slow movement, as if each motion were a pang, she began to count out some gold pieces, which she laid in her lap with great caution, lest the gold should clink, and thus reach the ears which she knew must be listening outside the door.

All at once she stopped, held a half-eagle between her fingers, where it began to quiver and gleam from the unsteady motion of her hand, while a look of indescribable craft stole over her face. With both her eager hands, she huddled the gold back into its repository, and in its place drew forth a tattered morocco jewel-case that once had been purple, but had now a most shabby appearance, till she unclosed the lid and revealed a treasure that made Jane Kelly’s heart leap in her bosom.

The concentrated light of the candle fell within the casket, and she knew by the rainbow gleams and sparkles flashing out, that jewels of price were almost within her grasp.

Now Jane had a great passion for trinkets of all kinds, and it is doubtful if the whole of the bribe for which she waited, would not have taken the form of some paltry ornament within twenty-four hours, had it been paid down in gold. As it was, she pressed her eye close to the glass, and peered gloatingly down upon the burning stones, conscious of their brightness, and with a dazed sense of their value.

Directly Madame De Marke closed the casket, and thrust it into the depths of a soiled pocket, that hung between her ragged calico dress and a repulsive under-shirt made from the fragments of an old patch-work bed-quilt. Then she clasped the iron bars over her box, and going down upon her hands and knees again, thrust it away out of sight, reappearing feet foremost, while her face, as it looked out from under her arm, had the aspect of a laughing hyena, so visible were the workings of some new-born diabolical craft upon it.

“Now what is she about? what is it makes her smile so?” thought Jane Kelly, recoiling from the window-pane with a shudder, for as the woman arose her sharp eyes were turned that way. “Is she a witch? Does she know that I am peeping? Is that gold? Is the case——”

She broke off suddenly, and shrunk backward into the darkest corner of the passage, cowering down as if she had been seated on the floor and was but just aroused.

Madame De Marke opened the door, and her little, sharp face peered out.

“Come, come—hist, have ye gone?” she whispered.

“No, I am here; the darkness makes me drowsy, that’s all!” answered Jane, coming forward, “especially after watching so many nights without a wink of sleep.”

“Step in quick—why there’s heat enough gone through the door already to warm a barn. Heat costs money, don’t you know that? It’s enough to ruin one to have company in this way, wasting everything.”

Jane entered the room.

“You haven’t thought better of it? You are resolute to strip me of more money than I can save in a year? You won’t relent, eh?”

“I want the money, ma’am, nothing more. It’s my just right. I’ve earned it, if anybody on earth ever did.”

“And you won’t take anything but money, not money’s worth, now?” cried madame, peering eagerly into the face of her visitor.

“Why? Haven’t you got the change handy?” asked Jane, with her thoughts fixed longingly on the jewels she had seen.

“The change! She calls seventy-five dollars change. As if a lone woman, like me, ever had so much money by her at once.”

Jane thought of the gold she had seen, but still her wishes turned to the diamonds in preference, and she said quickly,

“Well, money or money’s worth. I don’t much care which, so long as it’s the genuine article.”

“Well,” said the old woman, drawing the casket slowly from her pocket, and opening it; “here’s something now worth five times the money, and just the thing for you, with your plump neck and rosy cheeks. What say? Will ye have ’em instead of the money, especially as the money can’t be had just yet?”

“Let me look at them?” cried Jane, eagerly seizing upon the case. “How they do flash! Ear-rings, breast-pin. Oh! but they burn like fire. What are they?”

“Diamonds; every one worth heaps of money,” answered madame;—“took ’em as security for a debt, you know.”

“And will you really let me have ’em?” asked Jane, almost gasping for breath.

“Well, now you can’t expect ’em all, till there’s been more work done. Diamonds ain’t picked up from the gutters, I can tell you.”

“But how many? The ear-rings now. May I have them?”

She lifted up a long, old-fashioned ear-ring, as she spoke, glittering with innumerable pendants, that made her eyes sparkle as she held it up to the light. “These now?”

“Not all at once,” answered madame, softly, and purring about her victim like a cat. “Say one ear-ring or the breast-pin for the papers, and the other ring when that girl is—is asleep, you know.”

Jane shook her head, and grasped the ear-rings closer in her hand, gazing upon them with hungry eyes.

“No, no, I’d rather leave the breast-pin, and take both ear-rings.”

Madame took the casket from her visitor’s hand, and half-closed it.

“If I give both rings for the papers, there is no depending on the rest. No, no; take one, and come back for the mate when the whole job is finished.”

“But what good will one ring do me?” cried Jane, almost with tears in her eyes. “I can’t wear it!”

“But you will soon be after the mate,” answered madame, holding up the ring in her claw-like fingers, and making the pendants tinkle before the longing eyes of her guest. “In three days they will both be yours.”

“Yes! but what if it can’t be done? Some people never will die without a tussle for it. What good will this be to me then?”

“You can sell it for three hundred dollars, or pawn it.”

“Three hundred dollars!” cried Jane, incredulously.