Transcriber’s Note:

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

GLORIA
A Novel

By MRS. E. D. E. N. SOUTHWORTH

Author of

“The Unloved Wife,” “Lilith,” “Em,” “Em’s Husband,”

“For Whose Sake,” “Why Did He Wed Her?”

“The Bride’s Ordeal,” “Her Love or Her Life,” Etc.

A. L. BURT COMPANY

PUBLISHERS :: :: NEW YORK

Popular Books

By MRS. E. D. E. N. SOUTHWORTH

In Handsome Cloth Binding

Price 60 Cents per Volume

CAPITOLA’S PERIL

CRUEL AS THE GRAVE

“EM”

EM’S HUSBAND

FOR WHOSE SAKE

ISHMAEL

LILITH

THE BRIDE’S FATE

THE CHANGED BRIDES

THE HIDDEN HAND

THE UNLOVED WIFE

TRIED FOR HER LIFE

SELF-RAISED

WHY DID HE WED HER

GLORIA

DAVID LINDSAY

For Sale by all Booksellers or will be sent postpaid on receipt of price

A. L. BURT COMPANY PUBLISHERS

52 Duane Street New York

Copyright, 1877 and 1891

By ROBERT BONNER’S SONS

Renewal granted to Mrs. Charlotte Southworth Lawrence, 1905

“GLORIA”

Printed by special arrangement with

STREET & SMITH

GLORIA

CHAPTER I
A SPOILED BEAUTY

Her eyes flashed fire! Convulsive rage possessed

Her trembling limbs and heaved her laboring breast;

Blind to the future, by this rage misled,

She pulled down ruin on her reckless head.

Dryden.

“David Lindsay, will you marry me?”

The speaker was a girl scarcely past childhood, young, beautiful, good, wealthy, and yet—desperate, as not only her words, but her every look, tone, and gesture proved.

Her voice was low, her tone steadied by a powerful self-control. She stood there with a pale horror, yet fixed resolution, on her face; as one might stand on the deck of a burning ship, wrought up to choose death between fire and water, ready to escape the flames by plunging into the sea.

He to whom she spoke was a poor fisherman on the estate, young, strong, healthy and handsome, with the good looks that youth and health give, but bronzed by exposure, roughened by toil and rudely clothed.

The scene of this strange interview was a small, sandy island on the coast of Maryland. The time, an overclouded and blustering morning near the end of January.

He had been hard at work mending his boat, which lay bottom upwards on the beach, when she came suddenly upon him.

Then he stood up, took off his old tarpaulin hat, and respectfully waited her orders.

What a contrast they formed, as they stood there facing each other—she, the delicate, patrician beauty, wrapped in richest furs and finest velvets, yet with that look of pale horror and fixed resolution on her beautiful face—he, the hardy son of the soil, bronzed and rugged, clothed in a rough pea-jacket and loose corduroy trowsers, with their legs tucked into high, coarse, bull-hide boots; robust, erect, cordial, yet with a look of unbounded astonishment in his fine dark eyes.

They might have been the last young man and maiden left in the world, for all sign of human life or habitation near them, as they stood on that little sterile isle—around them the dark-gray sea roughened by a high wind—behind them the mainland in its wintry aspect of skeleton forests, rising from snow-clad hills.

“David Lindsay, will you marry me?” repeated the girl, seeing that he had not answered her question, but stood before her dumfounded with amazement.

“Miss de la Vera!” was all that he could utter, even now.

“I know that you love me,” she continued, speaking now with more vehemence, and looking over her shoulder, from moment to moment, as if, even in that remote, sea-girt isle, she dreaded espionage, eavesdroppers, discovery, pursuit, arrest. “I know that you love me, David! It is that which gives me courage to come to you for refuge in my dreadful desperation. I know that you love me, for I heard you say so once—when you saved my life that time at the imminent risk of your own.”

“And, oh, is it possible that you can love me?” breathed the young man, in deep tones vibrating with his heart’s profound emotions; for with his whole heart he had loved her, deeply, ardently, hopelessly—with his whole soul he had worshiped her, afar off, as some exalted and forever unattainable good. “Is it possible that you can love me?”

“No!” she answered, hurriedly. “I do not love you! That is, I mean I love everybody, and you more than others; but oh, David, feeling sure that you love me, for you told me so once——”

“I was mad in my presumptuous folly——” began the youth.

“Feeling sure that you love me, because you told me so once, although I do not love you yet more than others, I will be your wife and try to love you more, if only you will take me far away from this place at once and forever, David! If you ever cared for me, stop to ask no questions; but do as I ask you, and you shall have my hand and all that I possess!” she breathed hardly, looking over her shoulder at intervals, with a nervous, expectant, terrified manner.

“Miss de la Vera, it is you who are mad now!” he replied, in a tone of ineffable sadness and longing, as he gazed on her with something like consternation.

And well he might! The situation was astounding!

Here was this young girl, Gloria de la Vera, the daintiest beauty, the wealthiest heiress in the country, proposing to marry HIM, the poor young fisherman attached to the estate! It was wonderful, unprecedented, incredible!

Why, half the young men in the community were mad to get her. A smile of hers would have brought the best of them to her feet.

And yet she came to give her hand and her fortune to this poor, unlearned young fisherman!

“Nothing, nothing but temporary insanity could have betrayed her into such a reckless proposal,” said the young fisherman to himself.

Yet the girl who stood there before him, calm, pale, and steadfast as a marble statue, was not insane—no, nor immodest, nor unmaidenly, however appearances might tell against her.

Neither had she done any wrong, or even suffered any wrong; for she had scarcely a fault in her nature to lead her into any evil, and never an enemy in the world to do her any injury.

Nor had she quarreled with a betrothed lover and sought to revenge herself upon him by rushing into this low marriage; but she had never been in love and never been engaged.

Neither did she hurry towards matrimony as a refuge from domestic despotism, for she was the petted darling of a widowed and childless uncle, who had been a father to her orphanage; and she had had her own right royal will and way all her little life.

If there were any despotic tyrant at old Promontory Hall, that tyrant was the dainty little beauty, Gloria de la Vera herself, and if there were any “down-trodden” slave, that victim was the renowned military hero, Colonel Marcellus de Crespigney!

Why, then, since no reasonable, nor even unreasonable motive could be found for the mad act, should Gloria de la Vera wish to hurl herself head-long down into the deep perdition of a low and loveless marriage?

To elucidate the mystery we must narrate the incidents of her short life.

On the coast of Maryland there is a bleak head of land thrown out into the sea, and united to the main only by a long and narrow neck of rocks.

If this weird headland had been a little loftier it would have been a promontory—or if the neck of rocks had been a little lower it would have been an island.

As it happened, it was neither, or it was both; for, at low tide, when the neck was bare, the head was a promontory, and at high tide, when the waves rolled over the rocks, it was an island entirely surrounded by the sea.

The ground arose gradually from the shore to the centre, upon the highest and safest part of which stood a large, square, heavy, gray stone building, in a yard inclosed by a high stone wall.

Lower down on the shore was another wall, called the sea-wall.

Beyond this, on the sand, were a few scattered fishing huts and boat-sheds.

There was but little vegetation on the place, and the nearer the shore the sparser the growth. On the hill near the house, indeed, there were a few old oaks, said to have been planted more than two centuries before by the first owners of the soil and builders of the house. There were also a few gigantic horse-chestnuts and other fine forest trees; but all these had been transplanted from the mainland ages before. There was nothing of native growth on the promontory.

Behind the house was an old garden, where “made soil” was so rich that the place had grown into a perfect thicket of shrubs, vines, creepers, bushes, and all sorts of hardy old plants, flowers, and fruit-trees.

Behind this was a kitchen garden, where a few vegetables were with difficulty raised for the use of the family, and beyond were fields of thinly growing grass and grain, that barely afforded sustenance for the cattle and sheep on the premises.

Altogether this half sterile promontory, with its square, massive gray stone mansion, its high stone yard-wall, its strong stone sea-wall, its iron gates, and its grim aspect, looked more like a fortress or a prison than the hereditary home of a private family.

The locality had also a bad reputation, and a worse tradition, besides as many aliases as any professional burglar.

It was called Pirates’ Point, Buccaneers’ Bridge, and La Compte’s Landing.

The story, or the history, was that this place had been the frequent resort of the notorious freebooter, La Compte, whose nom-de-guerre of “Blackbeard” had been, in the old colonial days, the terror of the Chesapeake and its tributaries.

Vast treasure, it was said, had once been buried here, and might still be waiting its resurrection at the hands of some fortunate finder.

However that might have been, whatever wealth of gold, silver, or precious stones might have lain hidden for ages in the depths of that sterile ground, it is certain that the last proprietor of the promontory was poor enough.

He was Marcellus de Crespigney, a retired officer of the army, an impoverished gentleman.

At the time our story opens, Colonel Crespigney was a young widower, without children and without family, if we except his maiden aunt, Miss Agrippina de Crespigney, and his youthful ward, Gloria de la Vera.

His history may be very briefly summed up. He was the second son of a wealthy Louisiana planter, whose estate being entailed upon the eldest male child, left little or nothing to younger brothers or sisters.

Marcellus, when required to select a profession, being of a grave and studious disposition, would have preferred divinity or medicine, but finally yielded to the wish of his father, and entered West Point Military Academy to be educated for the army.

At the age of twenty-one he graduated with honors, and then went to spend a short leave with his parents previous to joining his regiment.

He met them by appointment at Saratoga, which was at that time the headquarters and great summer resort of Southern families, flying from the fierce heat and fatal fevers of their native districts to the cool breezes and healing waters of the North.

And here, Marcellus, or, as he was most frequently called, Marcel de Crespigney, met the great misfortune of his life, for here he first saw the lady who was destined to be his wife.

Marcel de Crespigney was one of the handsomest men of his time. At the age of twenty-one he was as beautiful as Apollo. His form was of medium size and fair proportions, his head stately and well set, his features Romanesque in their regularity and delicacy of outline; his hair and beard were dark brown, and closely curled; his eyes dark hazel, with a steady, thoughtful, sympathetic gaze that had the effect of mesmerizing any one upon whom it fell.

Such beauty is too often an evil and a cause of weakness in man. It frequently inspires and nourishes vanity, and saps and blights true manliness.

Such, however, was not its effect upon Marcel de Crespigney.

He had his fatal weakness, as you will presently discover; but that weakness did not take its root in self-love—quite the contrary.

If he had possessed vanity, however, he would have found a surfeit of food for it.

Wherever he appeared, he was noticed as the handsomest man in the company, and many were the light-headed and soft-hearted girls who fell more or less in love with him.

At Saratoga, in the immediate circle of his mother and sisters, he met a party of West Indians—the Count Antonia de la Vera, an aged Portuguese grandee, his young wife, the Countess Eleanor, her sister, Eusebie La Compte, and their three-year-old daughter, named after the good Queen of Portugal, Maria da Gloria; but for the radiant beauty of her fair complexion, golden hair, and sapphire eyes, which she inherited from her mother, they called her Gloria only.

Of all the people present, this child took suddenly and solely to the young lieutenant. She would leave father, mother, auntie or nurse, to leap into the arms of her “Own Marcel,” as she soon learned to call him. It was wonderful; and superficial people said it was his gay uniform that attracted the child—but then the child looked only at his eyes!

But there was another of the West Indian party who found great pleasure in the presence of Marcel de Crespigney. This was Miss Eusebie La Compte, the sister of the Señora Eleanor.

They, the sisters, were not West Indians, but Marylanders, orphan daughters and co-heiresses of old George La Compte, of La Compte’s Landing and Pirates’ Promontory.

In the division of the estate after the death of their parents, the most valuable portion, La Compte’s Landing, had been given to the eldest daughter, Eleanor, and the least desirable, Promontory Hall, to the youngest, Eusebie.

It was while the sisters were residing at the house of their guardian, an eminent lawyer of Washington city, that they made the acquaintance of the Count de la Vera, then ambassador from Portugal. He was a bachelor, and attracted by the radiant blonde beauty of the elder sister, he had proposed for her hand.

Eleanor, whose heart was free, and whose fancy was fascinated by the prospect of rank, wealth and position, promptly accepted the offer, and in due time became Madame de la Vera.

A brilliant season in Washington followed their marriage, then a tour of the fashionable watering-places.

Finally, when the ambassador was recalled, he went to Lisbon to resign his portfolio, and then he came back and settled down on his West Indian estates.

But not for long.

Troubles broke out. Possessions were insecure.

Count de la Vera sold off his property and came to Maryland, the native State of his beautiful wife, where he invested largely in land.

By this time the Señora Eleanor’s health began to fail. Then her doting husband sent for her sister to travel with her, and to help to relieve her of the care of their infant daughter, Gloria.

They all went to Saratoga together, and thus it happened that we found them in the company of Madame de Crespigney and her daughters.

Eusebie La Compte, the heiress of the bleak promontory, had not the radiant beauty of her sister, whose brilliant complexion, shining golden hair and sparkling blue eyes had been inherited by her daughter; no, the pale face, sandy locks and gray eyes of Eusebie formed but a tame copy of the brighter picture.

Yet Eusebie could not be called “plain,” and far less “ugly.” Her form seemed cast in the same mold as that of her beautiful elder sister, only it was thinner. Her profile had the same classic facial angle, but it was sharper. Her complexion was quite as fair, only it was paler. Her hair was of the same color, only it was duller. Her eyes were of the same hue, but they were dimmer.

If Eusebie had been healthy and happy, she would have been as beautiful and brilliant as her sister; or if she had been smitten, as Eleanor had, by hectic fever only, which gives color to the cheeks and light to the eye. But to be afflicted with malaria, which dulls the complexion and dims the eyes, is quite another thing.

Nevertheless, there were times when Eusebie was almost beautiful. It was when any strong emotion flushed her cheeks and fired her eyes.

The West Indian party did not go much into society. The health of Señora Eleanor forbade their doing so. The only company they saw was our party from Louisiana.

The illness of the mother and the negligence of the nurse, threw the little Gloria very much upon the care of Eusebie, who was almost always to be found in Madame de Crespigney’s circle.

Thus it happened that Eusebie and Marcel were brought daily together, and united by their common interest in the beautiful child, Gloria.

So Eusebie, the pale, agueish girl, fell in love with the handsome young Marcel—fell in love with him, not after the manner of the soft-hearted girl, who sighed in secret and slipped out of sight, but after the manner of the woman who says to herself, “Love or death,” and thinks towards her victim, “Your love or your life!”

Marcel de Crespigney being of a tender, affectionate, sympathetic nature, had been more or less in love all the days of his youth. In earliest infancy he was ardently in love with his nurse. At five years old he was passionately enamored of his nursery governess, a bright young Yankee girl. And when she married the Methodist minister, Marcel wept tears of agony. His Sunday-school teacher, an amiable old maid, was his next flame. When she died of yellow fever he put crape on his little cap and flowers on her grave.

Then followed, as queens of his soul—his sisters’ music mistress, his mother’s seamstress, and the overseer’s sister-in-law. At the age of fifteen he actually offered marriage to the doctor’s widow, a genial, soft-eyed, warm-hearted matron of thirty-five, who, in her wisdom and goodness, refrained from wounding his affection by contempt, but gravely and kindly assured him that, though she declined to be engaged then, yet she would wait for him, and if he should be in the same mind five years from that time, she would listen to him.

The boy left her, in ecstasies of hope and happiness, after vows of unchanging, eternal fidelity.

But he did not remain in the same mind, which was fortunate, as the doctor’s widow also died, and—of yellow fever.

At the age of seventeen, when the young man entered West Point, as we have said, he would have speedily contracted a pure, platonic love for the colonel’s wife, a handsome and intellectual lady of middle age, only a high sense of honor warned him of the danger of such moral quicksands.

After this the boy devoted himself to his military studies, and the sentiment of spoonyism soon gave place to the sentiment of heroism.

Yes, Marcel de Crespigney had been in love nearly all his life; but he was neither vain enough nor observant enough to perceive the preference bestowed on him by his young lady friends; nor would he ever have known the infatuation of Eusebie La Compte, had not his mother discovered and revealed it to him.

In the eyes of Madame de Crespigney, the pale Eusebie seemed a very eligible match for her portionless son. Report had exaggerated the riches of the co-heiresses. The elder sister had married a Portuguese grandee. Altogether the connection seemed a good one in a social and financial point of view.

Of course, Madame de Crespigney did not set the matter before her son in that light. She knew Marcel too well. She adroitly directed his attention to the delicate girl, and enlisted his sympathies for her, so that he soon perceived how the pale cheeks would flush, and the dim eyes fire, and the whole plain face grow radiant and beautiful in the love-light of his presence. His heart was free, and so he became interested in her. He thought she was the first who had ever loved him, and so he grew to believe that he loved her.

At least he proposed to her and was accepted.

As the young officer had but a month’s leave before joining his regiment, that was under orders to march for Mexico to join General Scott’s army on the first of September, and as the bride-elect decided to accompany her intended husband, “even to the battlefield,” the engagement was a short one. The wedding was hurried.

On the morning of the twenty-fifth of August the young couple were quietly married in the nearest church, and immediately after the ceremony they set out for Washington, where Lieutenant de Crespigney joined his regiment, which was on the eve of departure for the seat of war.

I do not mean here to tell over again, even the least part, the oft-repeated story of the Mexican War, but only to allude in the briefest manner to Marcel de Crespigney’s share in it. He went to Mexico, accompanied by his bride, who was with him wherever duty called.

She spent the first three years of her married life in camps, on battle-fields, and in hospitals, and so did her woman’s share of the work.

He behaved gallantly from first to last, as is best shown by his military record. For, having entered the service at the beginning of the war with the rank of second lieutenant of cavalry, he left it at the close with that of colonel and brevet brigadier-general.

At the earliest solicitation of his wife, he then resigned his commission and retired with her to private life, on her estate at Pirates’ Promontory, the principal wealth of which consisted in its great fisheries.

No children had come to them to crown their union, and this want had been a source of disappointment to the husband and humiliation to the wife, that even threatened in the course of time to estrange them from each other.

They must have continued to live a very lonely life on their remote estate—“the world forgetting, by the world forgot”—but for circumstances that occurred in the first year of their residence at the Promontory.

These were the deaths of the aged Count de la Vera and his fragile young wife, who passed away within a few days of each other, leaving their orphan child, Maria de Gloria, to the care of her maternal aunt and uncle, who gladly received her.

CHAPTER II
MARIA GLORIA DE LA VERA

A willful elf, an uncle’s child,

And half a pet and half a pest,

By turns angelic, wicked, wild,

Made chaos of the household nest.

Anon.

Gloria was seven years old when she came to live with her uncle and aunt. She was too young and too bright to realize the loss she had sustained in the death of her parents, or to grieve long after them. And besides—was it a new affection, or was it a reminiscence of the old one? She soon became devotedly attached to her uncle.

It was a grim home to which the radiant child had been brought; but nothing could dim the brightness of her spirit or depress the gladness of her heart—not old Promontory Hall with its gray, massive, prison-like structure, its high stone walls, and its dreary sea view, drearier than usual in the dull December days in which Gloria looked upon it—not even the deadening coldness that was creeping like a blighting frost between the husband and the wife—a coldness that the warm-hearted child felt rather than understood.

This condition, it must be confessed, was the fault of Eusebie rather than Marcel. It grew out of the jealousy and suspicion that had their root in her inordinate and exacting affection for him.

Her self-tormenting spirit whispered that he had never really loved her, but had married her out of compassion, or, worse still, that he had never even cared for her in any manner, but had taken her for her little fortune alone. She saw that, as the years passed away, and hope of a family died out, he was disappointed in the continued absence of children, and she persuaded herself that he secretly hated and despised her for not giving them to him.

All this wore out her health and spirits.

And so she grew more and more irritable and petulant, often repelling his best-meant efforts to comfort and cheer her—telling him she wanted none of his capricious sympathy, his hypocritical tenderness; she could live without either.

All this he bore with the greater patience because he knew it could not last long—because he saw the fiery soul was burning out the fragile body, and because he felt that there was a grain of truth in the stack of falsehood. It was this—that he had married her for pity, or for such love as pity inspires.

The coming of Gloria into this house of discord had been as the advent of an angel in purgatory. Her very presence had a mediating, reconciling power.

Yet it must not be supposed that Gloria was a real angel, or that her coming brought perfect peace to the household. Far from this. Gloria had a fiery little spirit of her own that sometimes flamed out at very inconvenient times and seasons, and the most she did towards restoring harmony was to restrain by her bright presence the expression of harsh feelings, and to prevent the estrangement breaking out into open warfare.

While they would be sitting silent and sullen, at the same fireside, in the long back parlor that looked out upon the leaden sky and sea of these dull December days, he would be apparently absorbed in the perusal of some favorite old classic author, she would be engaged in knitting, the glittering, fine, long needles glancing in and out between her delicate white fingers, in round after round of stitches—for she was a great knitter of lamb’s-wool hose—the child would be sitting on the carpet somewhere near, earnestly employed in dressing her doll, drawing on her slate, or cutting figures out of paper—but always singing some little song to herself, filling the room with harmony.

How could the sullen couple break into open warfare in her presence?

Yet sometimes they did so. A dispute would arise out of that dull silence, as a breeze would spring over the gray sea, and blow into storm in one case as in the other.

The gust always arose from Eusebie’s quarter. And Marcel always got the worst of it.

Often little Gloria would see him grieved, humiliated, yet silent and patient, under his wife’s false accusations and bitter reproaches.

Then her soul would be filled with sympathy, her song would cease, her playthings drop, and she would get up and take her little stool and go and sit down by his side and slip her small hand into his and lay her bright head on his knee.

This always quelled the rising storm. It prevented Marcel from retorting, however much exasperated he might be, and it eventually silenced Eusebie, for no one can keep up a quarrel alone.

Gloria’s interference did not always stop at sympathy for Marcel. It sometimes, indeed, broke out into righteous indignation against Eusebie.

On one occasion, she had heard her unhappy aunt taunt him with his want of fortune and charge him with mercenary motives in marrying her. She had seen her uncle’s dark cheek flame, and had noticed how hard it was for him to keep his temper; and she had left her play and gone and sat down by his side, and put her little arms around his knee and laid her shining head upon it.

That had soothed and silenced him. He could not give way to his evil spirit in the presence of the child.

But, mind, when at length he arose and left the parlor, and Gloria found herself alone with her aunt, she rebuked that passionate woman fearlessly.

“You treat my uncle worse than you would dare to treat any negro slave on the promontory,” she exclaimed, in angry tears.

“He is not your uncle,” was all the lady said in reply.

“He is your husband, then! And you treat him worse than you would dare to treat any one else in the world, just because he is a gentleman and cannot retort upon you. You just dare to talk to old ’Phia as you talk to him, and she would give you such a tongue-lashing as you would not get over in a month.”

“If you do not cease your impertinence at once, Miss, I will give you such a whip-lashing as you won’t get over in six!” exclaimed the angry woman.

“No you will not, auntie! If you were to lay a whip upon me, only once, you would repent it all your life, and you would never have a chance to do it again. You are my auntie; but my uncle is my guardian, and he would lead me out of this house and we would never return to it. You know that!”

“Oh, Heaven! It is too true, for he loves me not at all!” breathed the poor woman, losing all self-command, and utterly breaking down in humiliation.

In a moment the child was at her side—at her feet.

“Oh, auntie, poor auntie, don’t cry! I have been naughty, very naughty! And I am sorry, very sorry! Indeed you may strike me now, if you want to, for I do deserve it now!” she said, trying with all her heart to soothe the weeping woman.

But Eusebie clasped the child to her bosom and burst into a passion of sobs and tears.

“I love you, auntie, dear. I do love you, and I am so sorry I was so naughty,” said the child, clasping the unhappy creature around the neck and lavishing caresses on her.

But Eusebie only sobbed the harder for all this.

“And uncle loves you, auntie, dear, indeed he does, although you do always tell him that he doesn’t care for you. I know he does, for when you are”—the child was about to say “cross,” but checked herself in time, and continued—“when you are unhappy he looks at you so pitifully.”

“Oh, Gloria, you don’t know anything about it, and I don’t want his pity. I am not a dog or a beggar,” exclaimed Eusebie, bitterly, as she put her niece from her lap and hurried from the parlor to her own room, to give unrestrained way to her grief.

This heart-sick and brain-sick poor woman was the plague and curse of the household, and such scenes as these were of frequent occurrence.

Little Gloria acted always as a peacemaker, and always successfully; only once in a long time did her sense of justice rouse her indignation to the height of upbraiding her “auntie,” and then her quick bursts of temper were followed by as quick repentance and reparation. She was very impulsive—

“A being of sudden smiles and tears.”

This swift impulsiveness, with its sudden action and reaction, was the keynote to her whole character, the “kismet” of her life.

As yet she was the peacemaker of the house, and all within it felt that this had been her mission to the household. Even the old family servants put their heads together confidentially, or shook them wisely, while they whispered:

“Whatever de trouble is atween de two, marster and mist’ess done been parted long a merry ago if it hadn’t been for little Glo’.”

Indeed, this Promontory Hall, with its high, enclosing walls, and the gray sea rolling around it, and the estranged, unhappy pair within it, must have been a very dull, dreary and depressing home for any child who had not, like Gloria, an ever springing fountain of gladness in her own soul.

As soon as the long winter was over, and the sun shone warm and bright, and the earth grew green and the sea blue, Gloria was out and abroad, with the earliest birds and flowers, as bright as the brightest, and as glad as the gladdest.

With the revival of all nature there was a great revival of business also in the fisheries appertaining to the Promontory and its neighboring isles. The place that was so solitary all the winter was now all alive with fishermen, whose huts and tents and sheds dotted all the little islands within sight from the promontory. No fishermen except those in the service of the family were allowed to haul the seines, or even cast a net from the home beach.

Among the fishermen attached to the service of the family was a young lad of about twelve years old. His parents had passed away, leaving him in the care of his grandmother, who lived in a tiny, sandy islet that stood alone, half a mile east of the promontory.

Who had been the original owner of the little sandhill no one ever knew; for the property was not of sufficient value to stimulate inquiries; and, besides, it had been for ages past occupied by a family of squatters, the present representatives of whom were David Lindsay and his grandmother.

It was on a brilliant May morning that the little Gloria, in her wanderings about the promontory, came to a broken part of the old sea-wall, and, instigated by curiosity, clambered over the stones and looked out upon a long stretch of sands upon which sheds, huts, and stranded boats were scattered among nets, seines, sea-weed and driftwood.

The child, standing in the breach of the wall, paused to gaze with interest on the rude scene that was so entirely new to her.

Then she saw a boy seated amid a drift of nets and seines, with a reel of coarse twine and a large wooden needle in his hand, busy with some work that quite absorbed his attention; for he neither saw nor heard the approach of the little girl.

She, on her part, stood still and watched him with surprise and delight.

The solitary child had not seen another child of any sort, white or black, girl or boy, for more than a year. She had lived only with grown-up people, and very “scroobious” and depressing grown-up people at that. Now her heart leaped for joy at the sight of an angel from her own heaven—another child!

What if he was a poor little lad, with a torn straw hat set on his tangled black curls, a sunburned face, a patched coat, trowsers rolled up to his knees, and below them naked legs and feet? He was another child—an angel from her own heaven! He had come with the sun and the spring, with the birds and the flowers. Here was the crowning joy of the season indeed.

He would be her playmate. He would not rail and weep like Eusebie, nor sigh and groan like Marcel. He would be glad like herself.

Without an instant’s hesitation she ran down to him.

Children, when left to their own intuition, are the most simple and natural democrats and republicans. They care nothing and know nothing of caste. When misled by others, they may become the most repulsive little aristocrats alive.

She stood before him breathless, smiling.

As for the boy, he looked up at her in pleased surprise at the brightest vision that had ever gladdened his eyes.

“Little boy!” she exclaimed, in a tone of kindly greeting.

“Yes, little girl,” he answered, as he arose, dropping his nets and taking off his torn hat.

“I’m so glad to see you!” she exclaimed, smiling.

“So am I, you. Will you sit down on the boat? It is quite dry,” he said, as he pointed to the upturned skiff upon which he himself had been seated.

“Oh, yes, I thank you. I would like to sit down because I have been walking all over the promontory and I am so tired,” she said, as she seated herself.

“Put your feet on this stone, the sands are damp,” said the lad, as he placed a flat piece of rock near her.

“Yes; I thank you. And you sit down, too. Don’t you stand,” she continued. He obeyed the little lady, and seated himself beside her.

“Oh, I am so glad I found you!” she exclaimed, with dancing eyes.

“So am I you; very glad,” he answered, quietly.

“Have you got anybody to play with?” was her next question.

“No,” he replied.

“No more have I. What is your name, little boy?”

“Dave.”

“Dave? That means David, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, David; but everybody calls me Dave.”

“Well, what else is your name besides David?”

“Lindsay—David Lindsay.”

“Oh! Uncle reads to us about one—

“‘Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount,

Lord Lion, King at Arms.’

Was he any kin to you?”

“No, there ain’t no kings nor lions about here,” replied the lad, laughing.

“I don’t know. I didn’t think there was any children or playmates about here; but after finding you I should not wonder if I found kings and lions and—and dwarfs and fairies.”

“I never saw any about here,” said the lad, decidedly.

“David Lindsay, don’t you want to know what my name is?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, then, why don’t you ask me?”

“Because—I don’t know—I didn’t like to.”

“Well, my name is Maria da Gloria de la Vera!”

“Oh! what a long name!”

“Yes, but it is a beautiful name, with a beautiful meaning.”

“What does it mean?”

“I believe, but I don’t quite know, that it means the Glory of the Truth, or something like that.”

“It is too long.”

“Yes, it is long as it is spelt and written; but not as it is pronounced, for it is pronounced Davero—Gloria Davero—and the colored folks have got it down to little Glo’.”

“Oh, I like that! Little Glo’!” said the lad, with animation.

“Do you? I am so glad! What does your name mean, David Lindsay?”

“I’m blest if I know what it means, if it means anything at all.”

“But it must mean something, David Lindsay. All names do.”

“Well, then, I will ask my grandmother.”

“Yes, do. Do you like me, David Lindsay?”

“Oh! yes, indeed I do.”

“So do I you, ever so much. What is that you are doing with that long wooden needle and big ball of cord, David Lindsay?”

“I am mending nets.”

“Oh, how curious it is. Will you show me how to do it, David Lindsay? Is it hard to do?”

“No, it is easy. I will be glad to show you,” said the boy, who then instructed her in the simple stitch by which the nets were made.

“What fun!” exclaimed the child, as her slender little fingers plied the wooden needle in and out among the meshes. “Who taught you to do this, David Lindsay?”

“I——” The boy hesitated and looked puzzled, and then said: “I don’t know. I netted nets ever since I could remember, and before, too, I reckon, but not so large nets as these. I netted minnow nets first, I remember that. I s’pose father must ha’ taught me.”

“Have you got a father and mother, David Lindsay?”

“Yes, in Heaven,” replied the lad, lifting his broken hat and bending his head.

“So have I—in Heaven. Have you got any brothers and sisters, David Lindsay?”

“No, not one.”

“No more have I. Have you got any playmates?”

“No; never had any.”

“No more have I. But now I have you, and you have me, and we will be playmates, won’t we?”

“Yes, indeed!”

“How old are you, David Lindsay?”

“I am almost twelve; I shall be twelve next Fourth of July.”

“Oh, what a splendid birthday! I shall be eight the first of June!”

“June is a nice month, too. The roses are all out,” said the boy.

The little girl fell into thought for a few minutes, and then she said:

“What made you lift your hat and bend your head when you said ‘Heaven,’ David Lindsay?”

“Grandmother taught me.”

“‘Grandmother!’ Yes, you said grandmother before.”

“She is father’s mother. Father was drowned in a squall while out fishing when I was seven years old. That was in the spring; mother died of pleurisy the next winter; a bitter, bitter winter, when the snow lay two or three feet deep on the ground and drifted around our little house, and there was no one to bring us wood from the main but grandmother and me, and we had to go for it in the boat and couldn’t bring but a little at a time; and we had no doctor and that was the way poor mother died.”

Gloria’s bright eyes were full of tears. She slipped her hand in that of the boy and said:

“But maybe she would have died all the same. My mother had everything in the world, and she died. But you know neither of them really died; they went to heaven.”

“Yes,” said the boy, in a low tone.

“Now, ain’t grown people queer, David Lindsay?”

“How?”

“The way they talk. They will say one minute a man has died and gone to heaven, and the next minute they will say he is buried in such a church-yard. Now, how can he be in heaven and in the ground at the same time?”

“I don’t know. It is a great mystery,” said the boy, gravely.

“I don’t like mysteries. I don’t. They always make me feel as if I was in a cellar, or some dark place and in danger. And what is more, I don’t believe in them. I don’t believe my father and mother are buried in the ground. I believe they both went out to heaven before that which they used to live in was put in the ground. And, somehow, inside of myself I know it is so. Do you like to read, David Lindsay?” she asked, abruptly.

“Yes; I learned to read and write at St. Inigoes parish school; but I have no books except Webster’s Spelling Book, and I know every word of that by heart, even the fables.”

“Oh, then I can bring you ever so many books. I have a bookcase full, all of my own, in my room, and uncle has a great room full, from the floor up to the ceiling, all around the walls, you know.”

“That is very good of you. I do thank you. You are the little girl that lives up in the house, then—Colonel de Crespigney’s niece?”

“Yes—no. I mean I am Madame de Crespigney’s niece; though, do you know, it seems so strange, I always feel as if he was more kin to me than she is!”

“I suppose you love him best; that must be the reason. Well, everybody loves Colonel de Crespigney. I know I do. He took me on to work here out of kindness, I am sure, for he couldn’t really want me, you see, so many colored people as he has!”

“He is very, very good, and very unhappy. Where do you live, David Lindsay?” she inquired, with the sudden transition of a child’s thoughts.

“Do you see that little, tiny bit of an island out there by itself?” he said, rising and pointing eastward.

“What!—that little sandbank?” she exclaimed in surprise.

“Yes, there is a house on it.”

“A mere shed.”

“We live in it, grandmother and I. And we have chickens and ducks, and a little bit of a garden, with a made soil, where we raise radishes and lettuce and cabbage and potatoes.”

“No flowers?”

“Oh, yes; a red rose-bush, and a white rose-bush, and pinks, and pansies and larkspurs.”

“Oh, that is pretty! Is your grandmother nice?”

“Oh! I tell you!” heartily answered the boy.

“Would she let me come to see her?”

“Why, of course she would, and glad!”

“Well, then, will you take me over there to see your grandmother, David Lindsay?”

“Yes, indeed, that I will, if your uncle will let you go.”