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POPULAR NOVELS.

BY MAY AGNES FLEMING.

"Mrs. Fleming's stories are growing more and more popular every day. Their delineations of character, life-like conversations, flashes of wit, constantly varying scenes, and deeply interesting plots, combine to place their author in the very first rank of Modern Novelists."

All published uniform with this volume. Price, $1.50 each, and sent free by mail on receipt of price.

BY G. W. CARLETON & CO., Publishers,
New York.

NORINE'S REVENGE,

AND

SIR NOEL'S HEIR.

BY

MAY AGNES FLEMING,

AUTHOR OF

"GUY EARLSCOURT'S WIFE," "A WONDERFUL WOMAN,"
"A TERRIBLE SECRET," "A MAD
MARRIAGE," ETC.

NEW YORK:

G. W. Carleton & Co., Publishers,

LONDON: S. LOW, SON & CO.,

MDCCCLXXXVI.

Copyright,
C. W. CARLETON & CO.
1875.

Trow's
Printing and Bookbinding Company,
205-213 East 12th St.,
NEW YORK.

CONTENTS.

NORINE'S REVENGE.

NORINE'S REVENGE.

CHAPTER I.

TWO BLACK EYES AND THEIR WORK.

he early express train from Montreal to Portland, Maine, was crowded.

Mr. Richard Gilbert, lawyer, of New York, entering five minutes before starting time, found just one seat unoccupied near the door. A crusty old farmer held the upper half, and moved grumpily toward the window, under protest, as Mr. Gilbert took the place.

The month was March, the morning snowy and blowy, slushy and sleety, as it is in the nature of Canadian March mornings to be. The sharp sleet lashed the glass, people shivered in multitudinous wraps, lifted purple noses, over-twisted woolen clouds and looked forlorn and miserable. And Mr. Gilbert, congratulating himself inwardly on having secured a seat by the stove, opened the damp Montreal True Witness, and settled himself comfortably to read. He turned to the leading article, read three lines, and never finished it from that day to this. For the door opened, a howl of March wind, a rush of March rain whirled in, and lifting his eyes, Mr. Richard Gilbert saw in the doorway a new passenger.

The new passenger was a young lady, and the young lady was the prettiest young lady, Mr. Gilbert thought, in that first moment, he had ever seen.

She was tall, she was slim, she was dark, she had long loose, curly black hair, falling to her waist, and two big, bright, black, Canadian eyes, as lovely eyes as the wide earth holds. She stood there in the doorway, faltering, frightened, irresolute, a very picture—the color coming and going in the youthful, sensitive face, the luminous brown eyes glancing like the eyes of a startled bird. She stood there, laden with bundles, bandboxes, and reticules, and holding a little blinking spaniel by a string.

Every seat was filled, no one seemed disposed to dispossess themselves, even for the accommodation of youth and beauty. Only for six seconds, though; then Richard Gilbert, rose up, and quietly, and, as a matter of course, offered his seat to the young lady. She smiled—what a smile it was, what a bright little row of teeth it showed, dimpled, blushed—the loveliest rose-pink blush in the world, hesitated, and spoke:

"But, monsieur!" in excellent English, set to a delicious French accent. "But, monsieur will have no place."

"Monsieur will do very well. Oblige me, mademoiselle, by taking this seat."

"Monsieur is very good. Thanks."

She fluttered down into the seat, and Mr. Gilbert disposed of the many bundles and boxes and bags on the rack overhead. He was smiling a little to himself as he did so; the role of lady's man was quite a new one in this gentleman's cast in the great play of Life. The grumpy old farmer, with a grunt of disapprobation, edged still further up to the window.

"Monsieur can sit on the arm of the seat," suggests the young lady, glancing up with a pretty girl's glance—half shy, half coquettish; "it is so very fatiguing to stand."

Monsieur avails himself of the offer immediately, and finds he is in an excellent position to examine that very charming face. But he does not examine it: he is not one of your light-minded, mustache-growing, frivolous-headed youths of three-or-four-and-twenty, to whom the smiling face of a pretty girl is the most fascinating object under heaven.

Mr. Gilbert casts one look, only one, then draws forth the True Witness and buries himself in the leading article. The last bell rings, the whistle shrieks, a plunge, a snort, and they are rushing madly off into the wild March morning. The young lady looks about her, the grumpy farmer is between her and the window, the window is all blurred and blotted; Mr. Gilbert is fathoms deep in his paper. She gives a little sigh, then lifts her small dog up in her lap, and begins an animated conversation with him in French. Frollo understands Canadian French, certainly not a word of English, and he blinks his watery eyes, and listens sagaciously to it all. The farmer looks askance, and grunts like one of his own pigs; the lawyer, from behind his printed sheet, finds the words dancing fantastically before his eyes, and his brain taking in nothing but the sweet-spoken, foolish little prattle of mademoiselle to Frollo.

He is thirty-five years of age, he is a hard-headed, hard-working lawyer, he has a species of contempt for all women, as bundles of nerves and nonsense, fashions and foolery. He is thirty-five; he has never asked any woman to marry him in his life; he looks upon that foolish boy-and-girl idiocy, called love, as your worldly-wise cynics do look upon it, with a sneer and a scoff. Pretty girls he has met and known by the score—handsome women and clever women, but not the prettiest, the handsomest, the cleverest of them all has ever made his well-regulated legal pulses beat one throb the quicker in all his five-and-thirty years of life. Why is it then that he looks at this little French Canadienne with an interest he has never felt in looking at any of the bright New York beauties he has known so long? Simple curiosity, no doubt—nothing more.

"She looks like a picture I once saw of Joanna of Naples," he thought, "only Joanna had golden hair. I hope the similarity to that very improper person ends with the outward resemblance."

He returned to his newspaper, but somehow politics and cable dispatches, and Our Foreign Relations, had lost their interest. Again and again, under cover of the friendly sheet, his eyes wandered back to that fair drooping face, that piquant profile, those long eyelashes, and the rippling black tresses falling from beneath the little hat. The hat was trimmed with crape, and the graceful figure wore dingy black.

"Who is she?" Mr. Gilbert found himself wondering "where is she going? and for whom is she in mourning?" And then, conscious of his own folly and levity, he pulled himself up, and went back for the dozenth time to the True Witness.

But—his hour had come, and it would not do. The low French babble to the dog rang in his ears, the dark mignonne face came between him and the printed page, and blotted it out.

"She is much too young, and—yes, too pretty to be travelling alone. I wonder where is she going; and if her friends will meet her? Very imprudent to allow a child like this to travel alone. She hardly looks sixteen."

His interest—fatherly, brotherly of course, in this handsome child was increasing every moment. It was something not to be explained or comprehended. He had heard of such imbecility as "love at first sight," but was it likely that he, a man of five-and-thirty, a lawyer, without an ounce of sentimentality in his composition should make an idiot of himself over a French Canadienne, a total stranger, a bread-and-butter-eating school-girl at his time of life. Not likely. She interested him as a pretty picture or marble Venus, or other work of art might—just that.

He did not address her. Lawyers are not bashful as a body. Mr. Gilbert was not bashful individually, but something, for which he knew no name, held him silent now. If that grumpy, overgrown farmer were only out of the way, he thought, instead of sitting sulkily there staring at the falling rain, he could no doubt find something to say.

Fate favored him, his evil angel "cursed him with the curse of an accomplished prayer." At the very next station the surly husbandman got up and left; and the mistress of Frollo, moving close to the window, lifted those two orbs of wondrous brown light to the lawyer's grave, thoughtful face, and the sweet voice spoke:

"Will monsieur resume his place now?"

Monsieur needed no second bidding. He resumed it, threw aside his paper, and opened conversation in the usual brilliant and original way:

"The storm seems to increase—don't you think so? Abominable weather it has been since March came in, and no hope of its holding up to day."

"Oh, yes, monsieur," mademoiselle answered, with animation; "and it is such a pity, isn't it? It makes one low-spirited, one can see nothing, and one does like so to see the country as one goes along."

"Was she going far?" the lawyer inquired.

"Oh, very far!" Mademoiselle makes a little Gallic gesture, with shoulders and eyebrows and hands all together to express the immensity of the distance.

"A great way. To Portland," with a strong accent on the name of that city. "Monsieur knows where Portland is?"

"Yes, very well—he was going there himself en route to New York. You, mademoiselle," he adds, inquiringly, "are going on a visit, probably?"

Mademoiselle shakes her pretty head, and purses her pretty lips.

"Monsieur, no—I am going home."

"Home? But you are French."

"But yes, monsieur, certainly French, still my home is there. Papa and mamma have become dead," the brown eyes fill, "and Uncle Louis and Aunt Mathilde have seven of their own, and are poor. I am going to mamma's relatives, mamma was not French."

"No?" Mr. Gilbert says in sympathetic inquiry.

"No, monsieur. Mamma was Yan-kee, a New England lady, papa French Canadian. Mamma's friends did not wish her to marry papa, and she ran away. It is five years ago since she died, and papa—papa could not live without her, and two years after the good God took him too."

The tearful brown eyes look down at her shabby black dress. "Monsieur beholds I wear mourning still. Then Uncle Louis took me, and sent me to school, but Uncle Louis has so many, so I wrote to mamma's brothers in Portland, and they sent a letter back and money, and told me to come. And I am going—Frollo and me."

She bends over the little dog, her lips quivering like the lips of a grieved child, and the lawyer's middle-aged heart goes out to her in a great compassion.

"Poor little lonely child!" he thinks, watching the sweet overcast face: "I hope they will be good to her, those Yankee friends." Then aloud. "But you are very young, are you not, to travel this distance alone?"

"I am seventeen, and I had to travel alone, there was no one to come with me. My Uncle Kent will meet me at Portland."

"You are Mademoiselle Kent?" he says with a smile.

"No, monsieur, my name is Bourdon—Norine Kent Bourdon."

"Have you ever seen those relatives to whom you are going?"

"Once. They came to see mamma when she was dead. There are three—two uncles and an aunt. They were very kind. I liked them very much."

"I trust you will be happy in your new home, Miss Bourdon," the lawyer says gravely. "Permit me to offer you my card. If you ever visit New York I may meet you again—who knows?"

The young lady smiles as she reads the name.

"Ah—who knows? I am going out as governess by-and-by. Perhaps I shall write to you to help get me a situation."

"What a frank, innocent child it is!" thought Mr. Gilbert, looking down at the smiling, trustful face: "other girls of her age would be bashful, coquettish, or afraid of a masculine stranger. But this pretty child smiles up in my face, and tells me her little history as though I were her brother. I wish I were her brother, and had power to shield her from the hardships of life." "Any service in my power I shall always be happy to render you, my dear young lady," he said; "if at any time you apply to me, believe me I shall do my utmost to serve you."

Mademoiselle Norine Kent Bourdon looked up into the grave, genial face, with soft, trustful eyes that thanked him. She could not have defined it, but she felt he was a man to be trusted—a good man, a faithful friend and an honorable gentleman.

The train flew on.

As the afternoon wore away the storm increased. The trees rocked in the high wind, and the ceaseless sleet beat against the windows. Miss Bourdon had a novel in her satchel, an English novel, and she perused a few pages of this work at intervals, and watched the storm-blotted landscape flitting by. She made small French remarks to Frollo, and she refreshed herself with apples, ginger-bread and dyspeptic confectionery. But, all these recreations palling after a time, and as the darkness of the stormy March day closed, drowsiness came, and leaning her head against the window, the young lady fell asleep.

Mr. Gilbert could watch her now to his heart's content, and he did watch her with an interest all-absorbing, and utterly beyond his comprehension. He laid his railway rug lightly over her, and shielded her from all other male eyes, with jealous care. What was it that charmed him about this French girl?

He could no more have told you then than he could ever have told you afterward. It was written, it was Kismet; his fate had come to him as it comes to all, in unlooked-for form. She looked, the poetic simile came to the unpoetical mind of the lawyer—like a folded rose, the sweetness and bloom yet unbrushed from the leaves.

Mademoiselle did not awake until the train stopped; then she opened her eyes bewildered. But Mr. Gilbert gathered up the boxes and bundles, drew her hand under his arm, and led her out of the cars, and up to the big noisy hotel, where they were to stop for the night. Miss Bourdon took her supper seated beside her friend, at the long crowded table, and was dazzled, and delighted. It was all so new to her; and at seventeen, novelty is delight. After supper her protector gave her into the hands of a chambermaid, told her at what hour they started next morning, bade her good-night, and dismissed her.

Were Richard Gilbert's dreams that night haunted by the vision of a dark, soft face, two dark tender eyes, and the smile of an angel? Richard Gilbert only knows. But this is certain: when Mademoiselle Bourdon descended the stairs next morning he was standing at the dining-room door awaiting her, and his calm eyes lit up, as few had ever seen them light in his life. He led her into breakfast, and watched her hearty, school-girl morning appetite with pleasure. Then, there being half-an-hour to spare before the train started, he proposed a little stroll in the crisp, cool sunshine that had followed yesterday's storm. It was very fair, there in that lovely valley in Vermont, with the tall mountains piercing the heavens, and the silvery lakes flashing like mirrors below.

It was past noon when they reached Portland. The usual rush followed, but Norine, safe under the protecting wing of Mr. Gilbert, made her way unscathed. She looked eagerly among the crowd in the long depot, and cried out at last at sight of a familiar face.

"There, monsieur—there! Uncle Reuben is standing yonder with the blue coat and fur cap. He is looking for me. Oh! take me to him at once, please."

Mr. Gilbert led Miss Bourdon up to where a bluff-looking, middle-aged countryman stood—"Down East" from top to toe.

"Uncle," cried Norine, holding out both hands, eagerly, "I have come."

And then, heedless of the crowd, of Mr. Gilbert, mademoiselle flung both arms around Uncle Reuben's neck with very French effusion, and kissed him, smick—smack, on both cheeks.

"Hey! bless my soul! it is you, is it?" Uncle Reuben exclaimed, extricating himself. "It is, I swow, and growed out of all knowin'. You're welcome, my dear, and I'm right glad to have you with us, for your poor mother's sake. You ain't a look of her, though—no, not one—Gustave Bourdon all over. And how did you manage on your journey? I tell you, we was all considerable uneasy about you."

He looked at her tall companion as he ceased, half suspiciously, half inquiringly, and Miss Bourdon hastened to introduce them.

"This gentleman is Mr. Gilbert, uncle. He has been very kind to me all the way. I don't know what I should have done but for him. He has taken care of me ever since we left Montreal."

"Thanky, sir—much obliged to you for looking after this little girl. Come along and spend the day with us at my place, Kent Farm."

"Thanks, very much," the lawyer answered; "I regret more than I can say that circumstances render that pleasure impossible. I must be in New York to-morrow, but the very next time I am in Portland I shall certainly avail myself of your kind invitation. Miss Bourdon, until that time comes, good-by."

He shook hands with her, and saw her led away by her uncle, with a feeling of strange, yearning regret. A two-seated country sleigh stood near. Uncle Reuben helped her in, took his seat beside her, tucked her up, said "Ga'lang," and they were off. Once she looked back, to smile, to wave her hand to him in adieu. One more glimpse of that brunette face, of that rare smile, of those black Canadian eyes, and the clumsy sleigh turned an acute angle, and she was gone.

Gone. A blank seemed to fall, the whole place turned desolate and empty. With a wistful look in his face he turned slowly away.

"Poor little girl!" the lawyer thought. "I hope she will be happy. She is so pretty—so pretty!"

CHAPTER II.

A WISE MAN'S FOLLY.

r. Richard Gilbert went to New York, and the girl with the black Canadian eyes and floating hair went with him—in spirit, that is to say. That dark, piquant face; that uplifted, gentle glance; that dimpling smile haunted him all through the upward journey; haunted and lit up his dingy office, and came between him and Blackstone, and Coke upon Littleton, and other legal lights.

Her bright, seventeen-year old face formed itself into a picture upon every page of those mouldering, dry-as-dust tomes, looked at him in the purple twilight, in the sunny mornings, in the dead waste and middle of the night. He had become "A Haunted Man," in short, Mr. Gilbert was in love.

And so, "how it came let doctors tell," all of a sudden Mr. Gilbert found that business required his presence Down East early in July. It was trifling business, too, understrappers in the office thought, that could very well have done without his personal supervision; but Mr. Gilbert reasoned otherwise; and, with a very unwonted glow about the region of the heart, packed his portmanteau, and started for Portland, Me.

The hot July sun was blazing in the afternoon sky and the streets of Portland were blistering in the heat, as the New York lawyer walked from the cars to his hotel. That important business which had brought him so many miles was transacted in a couple of hours, and then he returned to his hotel to dress and dine. Dress!—when had Richard Gilbert in his plain business pepper-and-salt suit and round-topped straw hat, ever taken so much pains with his toilet before, ever sported such faultless broadcloth in July, ever wore a diamond pin in his snowy linen, ever stood so long before the glass, ever felt so little satisfied with the result? When had the crow's feet around mouth and eyes ever shown so plainly, when had his tall, bald forehead ever appeared so patriarchal, when had he ever looked so dreadfully middle-aged, and plodding and priggish in his own legal eyes? Ah, when indeed?

He hired a light wagon and a bony horse at the nearest livery stable, and inquired the way to Kent Farm. Kent Farm was three miles distant, he found, and the white, dusty road lay like a strip of silver between the golden, green fields. The haymakers were at work, the summer air was sweet with perfume, the fields of buckwheat waved, the birds sang in the branches of the elms, the grasshoppers chirped until the drowsy air was alive, and far beyond all, more beautiful than all, the silver sea lay asleep under the sparkling sun. Pretty houses, all white and green, were everywhere; and more than one Maud Müller leaned on her rake, and looked up under her broad-brimmed hat as this thoughtful Judge rode by. He rode very slowly, so slowly that it was nearly an hour before he reached his destination and drew up at the gate of Kent Farm.

Had he been wise to come? What was this young girl, this child of seventeen, to him? What could she ever be? Youth turns to youth, as flowers to the sun. What if he found her the plighted wife of some stalwart young farmer, some elegant dry-goods clerk of the town? What? His heart contracted with a sharp, sudden spasm, and told him what?

Kent Farm at last. Half a mile from any other house, on the summit of a green, sloping eminence, an old red, weather-beaten farm-house its once glaring color toned and mellowed down by the sober hand of Time. A charming old place, its garden sloping down to the roadside, its lilac trees in full bloom. A wide-spreading old-fashioned garden, with rose bushes, and gooseberry bushes, currant bushes, sunflowers, and hollyhocks, and big gnarled old apple trees, mixed up in picturesque confusion.

Seated in a chair of twisted branches, under one of these crooked, blossoming apple trees, the sunlight tangled in her shining hair, and the mignonne face, sat Norine Kent Bourdon, reading a novel.

He opened the gate. Her book was interesting—she did not hear. He walked up the gravelled path, and drew near. Then she looked up, then half rose, in doubt for a moment, and then—to the day of his death, until all things earthly, will Richard Gilbert remember the flush of joy, the flash of recognition, the glad cry of welcome, with which she flung aside her book and sprang towards him, both hands outstretched.

"Monsieur! monsieur!" the sweet voice cried. "Ah, monsieur! how glad I am to see you."

She gave him her hands. The lovely, laughing face the eyes of fathomless light, looked up into his. Yes, she was glad to see him, glad with the impulsive gladness of a little younger sister to see an indulgent brother, old and grave, yet beloved. But Mr. Gilbert, holding those hands, looking into that eager, sparkling face, drew no such nice distinctions.

"Thank you, mademoiselle. You have not quite forgotten me, then, after all?"

"Forgotten you, monsieur? Oh, my memory is better than that. You have come to pay us that promised visit, have you not? Uncle Reuben has been looking for you ever since the first of June, and Aunt Hester is never so happy as when she has company. You have come to stay, I know."

"Well, I'm not sure about that, Miss Bourdon. I may remain a week or two, certainly. New York is not habitable after the first week of July, but I am stopping at the Preble House. I am too much of a stranger to trespass on your good uncle's hospitality."

"You have been kind to me, monsieur, and you are a stranger no more. Besides, it is dull here—pleasant but dull, and it will be a second kindness to enliven us with a little New York society."

She laughed and drew away her hands. The golden light of the July afternoon gilded the girlish face, upon which the New York gentleman gazed with an admiration he did not try to hide.

"Dull," he repeated; "you don't find it dull, I should think. Your face tells a very different story."

Mademoiselle shook back her rippling satin hair, and made a little French moue mutine.

"Ah, but it is. Only the fields and the flowers, the trees and the birds, the eating and sleeping, and reading. Now, flowers and fields and birds are very nice and pleasant things, but I like people, new faces, new friends, pleasure, excitement, change. I ride the horse, I milk the cows, I pick the strawberries, I darn the stockings, I play the piano, I make the beds, I read the novels. But I see nobody—nobody—nobody, and it is dull."

"Then you prefer the old life and Montreal?"

"Montreal!" Miss Bourdon's black eyes flashed out, as your black eyes can. "Monsieur," solemnly, "I adore Montreal. It was always new and always nice there; bright and gay and French. French! it is all Yankee here, not but that I like Yankees too. Aunt Hester thinks," a merry laugh, "there never was anybody born like me, and Uncle Reuben thinks I would be an angel if I didn't read so many novels and eat so many custard pies. And, monsieur," with the saucy uplifted coquettish glance he remembered so well, "if you find out I'm not an angel don't tell him, please. I wouldn't have him undeceived for the world."

"I don't think I shall find it out, mademoiselle. I quite agree with your uncle. Here he comes now."

Reuben Kent came out of the open front door, smoking a pipe. He paused at sight of his niece in friendly colloquy with a strange gentleman. The next moment he recognized him, and came forward at once in hearty welcome.

"Wal, squire," Mr. Kent said, "you hev come, when I had e'enamost gi'n you up. How dye deow? 'Tarnal hot, ain't it? Must be a powerful sight hotter, though, up to York. How air you. You're lookin' pretty considerably spry. Norry's glad to see you, I know. That gal's bin a talkin' o' ye continual. Come in, squire—come in. My sister Hester will be right glad to see ye."

What a cordial welcome it was; what a charming agricultural person Mr. Reuben Kent, one of nature's Down East noblemen, indeed. In a glow of pleasure, feeling ten years younger and ten times better looking than when he had started, the New York lawyer walked up to the house, into the wide, cool hall, into the "keepin' room," and took a seat. A pleasant room; but was not everything about Kent Farm pleasant, with two large western windows, through which the rose and golden light of the low dropping sun streamed over the store carpet, the cane-seated chairs, the flowers in the cracked tumblers, and white, delf pitchers. Traces of Norine were everywhere; the piano in a corner, the centre-table littered with books, papers, magazines and scraps of needle-work, the two canaries singing in the sunny windows, all spoke of taste, and girlhood. There were white muslin curtains, crocheted tidies on every chair in the room, a lounge, covered with cretonne in a high state of glaze and gaudy coloring, and the scent of the hay fields and the lilacs over all. No fifth-avenue drawing-room, no satin-hung silver-gilt reception-room, had ever looked one half so exquisite in this metropolitan gentleman's professional eyes. For there, amid the singing birds and the scented roses, stood a tall, slim girl, in a pink muslin dress—and where were the ormolu or brocatelle could embellish any room as she did?

Uncle Reuben went in search of Aunt Hester, and returned with that lady presently; and Mr. Gilbert saw a bony little woman with bright eyes and a saffron complexion. Miss Kent welcomed him as an old friend, and pressed him to "stay to tea."

"It's jest ready," she remarked,—a maiden lady was Aunt Hester,—"we've ben waitin' for brother Joe, and he's jest come. There ain't nothing more refreshing, I think myself, than a nice cup o' hot tea on a warm day."

Uncle Reuben seconded the motion at once.

"We can't offer you anything very grand—silver spoons and sech—as you get at them air hotels, but sech as it is, and Hester's a master hand at crawlers and hot biscuit, you're most mightly welcome. Norry, you fetch him along, while I go and wash up."

Miss Bourdon obeyed. Mr. Gilbert did not require all that pressing, if they had but known it. There was no need to apologize for that "high tea." No silver teaspoons, it is true, but the plated-ware glistened as the real Simon Pure never could have done; and no hotel in Maine, or out of it, could have shown a snowier table-cloth, hotter, whiter, more dyspeptic biscuits, blacker tea, redder strawberries, richer cream, yellower ginger-bread, or pinker cold-sliced ham. Mr. Gilbert ate ham and jelly, strawberries and tea, hot biscuit and cold ginger-bread—in a way that fairly warmed Aunt Hester's heart.

"And we calk'late on keeping you while you're down here, Mr. Gilbert," Uncle Reuben's hearty voice said. "It's a pleasant place, though I say it as hadn't ought to—a heap pleasanter than the city. Our house ain't none too fine, and our ways may be homespun and old-fashioned, but I reckon Norry and Hester kin make you pretty tol'bel comfortable ef you stay."

"Comfortable!"

He looked across at that face opposite; comfortable in the same house with her! But still he murmured some faint objection.

"Don't mention trouble, sir," said Uncle Joe, who was the counterpart of Uncle Reuben; "you've ben kind to our little Norry, and that's enough for us. Norry, hain't you got nothin' to say?"

"I say stay!" and the bewildering black eyes flashed their laughing light across at the victimized lawyer. "Stay, and I'll teach you to milk and make butter, and feed poultry, and pick strawberries, and improve your mind in a thousand rural ways. You shall swing me when Uncle Joe is too busy, and help me make short-cake, and escort me to 'quiltin' bees,' and learn to rake hay. And I—I'll sing for you wet days, and drive you all over the neighborhood, and let you tell me all about New York and the fashions, and the stores, and the theatres, and the belles of Broadway. Of course you stay."

Of course he stayed. It is so easy to let rosy lips persuade us into doing what we are dying to do. He stayed, and his fate was fixed—for good or for evil—fixed. That very night his portmanteau came from Portland, and the "spare room" was his.

Supper over, Uncles Reuben and Joe lit their pipes, and went away to their fields and their cattle—Aunt Hester "cleared up," and Miss Bourdon took possession of Mr. Gilbert. She wasn't the least in awe of him, she was only a bright, frank, fearless, grown-up child. He was grave, staid, old—is not thirty-five a fossil age in the eyes of seventeen?—but venerable though he was, she was not the least afraid of him.

She led her captive—oh, too willing, forth in triumph to see her treasures—sleek, well-fed cows, skittish ponies, big horses, hissing geese, gobling turkeys, hens and chicks innumerable. He took a pleased interest in them all—calves and colts, chickens and ducklings, ganders and gobblers, listened to the history of each, as though he had never listened to such absorbing biographies in all his life before.

How rosy were the lips that spoke, how eager the sunny face uplifted to his, and when was there a time that Wisdom did not fall down and worship Beauty? He liked to think of her pure and sweet, absorbed in these innocent things, to find neither coquetry nor sentimentalism in this healthy young mind, to know her ignorant as the goslings themselves of all the badness and hardness and cruelty of the big, cruel world.

They went into the garden, and lingered under the lilacs, until the last pink flush of the July day died, and the stars came out, and the moon sailed up serene. They found plenty to say; and, as a rule, Richard Gilbert rarely found much to say to girls. But Miss Bourdon could talk, and the lawyer listened to the silvery, silly prattle with a grave smile on his face.

It was easy to answer all her eager questions, to tell her of life in New York, of the opera and the theatres, and the men and women who wrote the books and the poems she loved. And as she drank it in, her face glowed and her great eyes shone.

"Oh, how beautiful it all must be!" she cried, "to hear such music, to see such plays, to know such people! If one's life could only be like the lives of the heroines of books—romantic, and beautiful, and full of change. If one could only be rich and a lady, Mr. Gilbert!"

She clasped her hands with the hopelessness of that thought. He smiled as he listened.

"A lady, Miss Bourdon? Are you not that now?" Miss Bourdon shook her head mournfully.

"Of course not, only a little stupid country girl, a farmer's niece. Oh! to be a lady—beautiful and haughty and admired, to go to balls in diamonds and laces, to go to the opera like a queen, to lead the fashion, and to be worshipped by every one one met! But what is the use of wishing, it never, never, never, can be."

"Can it not? I don't quite see that, although the ladies you are thinking of exist in novels only, never in this prosy, work-a-day world. Wealth is not happiness—a worn-out aphorism, but true now as the first day it was uttered. Great wealth, perhaps, may never come to you but what may seem wealth in your eyes may be nearer than you think—who knows?"

He looked at her, a sudden flush rising over his face, but Norine shook her black ringlets soberly.

"No, I will never be rich. Uncle Reuben won't hear of my going out as governess, so there is nothing left but to go on with the chicken-feeding and butter-making and novel-reading forever. Perhaps it is ungrateful, though, to desire any change, for I am happy too."

He drew a little nearer her; a light in his grave eyes, a glow on his sober face, warm words on his lips. What was Richard Gilbert about to say? The young, sweet, wistful face was fair enough in that tender light, to turn the head of even a thirty-five year-old-lawyer. But those impulsive words were not spoken, for "Norry, Norry!" piped Aunt Hester's shrill treble. "Where's that child gone? Doesn't she know she'll get her death out there in the evening air."

Norine laughed.

"From romance to reality! Aunt Hester doesn't believe in moonlight and star-gazing and foolish longings for the impossible. Perhaps she is right; but I wonder if she didn't stop to look at the moon sometimes, too, when she was seventeen?"

It was a very fair opening, given in all innocence. But Mr. Gilbert did not avail himself of it. He was not a "lady's man" in any sense of the word. Up to the present he had never given the fairest, the cleverest among them a second glance, a second thought. The language of compliment and flirtation was as Chaldaic and Sanscrit to him, and he walked by her side up to the house and into the keeping-room in ignoble silence.

The little old maid and the big old bachelors were assembled here, the lamp was lit, the curtains down and the silvery shimmer of that lovely moon-rise jealously shut out. Norine went to the piano, and entertained her audience with music. She played very well, indeed. She had had plenty of piano-forte-drudgery at the Convent school of the Grey Nuns in her beloved Montreal. She sung for them in the voice that suited her mignonne face, a full, rich contralto.

She sang gayly, with eyes that sparkled, the national song of Lower Canada: "Vive la Canadienne," and the New York lawyer went up to bed that first night with its ringing refrain in his ears:

"Vive la Canadienne et ses beaux yeux,
Et ses beaux yeux tous doux,
Et ses beaux yeux."

"Ah!" Richard Gilbert thought, "well may the habitàns sing and extol the beaux yeux of their fair countrywomen, if those bright eyes are one-half as lovely as Norine Bourdon's."

He stayed his fortnight out at the old red farm-house; and he who ran might read the foolish record. He, a sober, practical man of thirty-five, who up to the present had escaped unscarred, had fallen a victim at last to a juvenile disease in its most malignant form. And juvenile disorders are very apt to be fatal when caught in mature years. He was in love with a tall child of seventeen, a foolish little French girl, who looked upon him with precisely the same affection she felt for Uncle Reuben.

"What a fool I am," the lawyer thought, moodily, "to dream a child like that can ever be my wife? A sensible, practical young woman of seven-and-twenty is nearer your mark, Richard Gilbert. What do I know of this girl, except that she has silken ringlets and shining black eyes, and all sorts of charming, childish, bewitching ways. I will not make an idiot of myself at my age. I will go away and forget her and my folly. I was a simpleton ever to come."

He kept his word. He went away with his story untold. He bade them all good-bye, with a pang of regret more keen than any he had ever felt before in his life. Perhaps the little brown hand of mademoiselle lingered a thought longer than the others in his; perhaps his parting look into those beaux yeux was a shade more wistful. He was going for good now—to become a wise man once more, and he might never look into those wonderful, dark eyes more.

Norine was sorry, very sorry, and said so with a frank regret her middle-aged lover did not half like. He might be unskilled in the mysteries of the tender passion, but he had an inward conviction that love would never speak such candid words, never look back at him with such crystal clear eyes. She walked with him to the gate; her ebon curls a stream in the July breeze.

"Will you not write to me sometimes?" Mr. Gilbert could not help asking. "You don't know how glad I shall be to hear of—of you all."

Mademoiselle Bourdon promised readily.

"Though I don't write very good letters," she remarked deprecatingly. "I get the spelling wrong, and the grammar dreadfully mixed when I write in English, but I want to improve. If you'll promise to tell me of all my mistakes, I'll write with pleasure."

So what were to be the most precious love letters on earth to the gentleman, were to be regarded as "English composition," by the lady. Truly, the French proverb saith: "There is always one who loves, and one who is loved."

Mr. Gilbert returned to New York, and found that populous city a blank and howling wilderness. The exercises in English composition began, and though both grammar and spelling might get themselves into hopeless snarls, to him they were the most eloquent and precious epistles ever woman penned. He had read the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, but what were those vapid epistles to Miss Bourdon's? He watched for the coming of the Eastern mail; he tore open the little white envelope; he read and re-read, and smiled over the contents.

And time went on. August, September, October passed. The letters from Miss Norine Bourdon came like clock work, and were the bright spots in Richard Gilbert's hard-working, drab-colored life. He wrote her back; he sent her books and music, and pictures and albums, and pretty things without end, and was happy. And then the Ides of dark November came, and all this pastoral bliss was ended and over.

The letters with the Down-east post mark ceased abruptly, and without any reason; his last two remained unanswered. He wrote a third, and fell into a fever while he waited. Was she sick, was she dead, was she——. No, not faithless, surely, he turned cold at the bare thought. But what was it? The last week of November brought him his answer. Very short, very unsatisfactory.

"Kent Farm, Nov. 28, 1860.

"Dear Mr. Gilbert—You must pardon me for not replying to your last letters. I have been so busy. A gentleman met with an accident nearly three weeks ago, close by our house, broke his left arm, and sprained his right ankle. I have had to take care of him. Aunt Hetty has so much to do all the time that she could not. We are all very well, and send you our best wishes. I am very much obliged for the pretty work-box, and the magazines, etc. And I am, dear Mr. Gilbert, with the most affectionate sentiments,

"Norine K. Bourdon.

"P. S.—The gentleman is greatly better. He is with us still. He is very nice. He is from your city.

"N."

In the solitude of his legal sanctum, Richard Gilbert, with frowning brow and gloomy eyes, read this blighting epistle. His worst fears were realized, more than realized.

There was a gentleman in the case. A gentleman who absorbed so much of Miss Norine Bourdon's time that she could not answer his letters. And he was "greatly better" and he was from your city. Confound the puppy! He was young and good-looking, no doubt; and he must meet with his accident, at her very door; precisely as though he were enacting a chapter out of a novel. Of course, too, it was his arm and his ankle that were smashed, not his villainous face. And Norine sat by his bedside, and bathed his forehead, and held cooling draughts to his parched lips, and listened to his romantic, imbecile delirium, etc., etc., etc. She sat up with him nights; she read to him; she talked to him; she sang for him. He could see it all.

Mr. Gilbert was a Christian gentleman, so he did not swear. But I am bound to say he felt like swearing. He jumped up; he crushed that poor little letter into a ball; he strode up and down his office like a caged (legal) tiger. The green-eyed monster put forth its obnoxious claws, and never left him for many a dreary year. It was that atrocious postscript, so innocently written, so diabolical to read. "He is greatly better. He is with us still. He is very nice." Oh, confound him! what a pity it had not been his neck.

Suddenly he paused in his walk, his brows knit, his eyes flashing, his mouth set. Yes, that was it, he would do it, his resolution was taken. He would go straight to Kent Farm, and see for himself. And next morning at 8 o'clock the express train for Boston bore among its passengers Mr. R. Gilbert, of New York.

The train whirled him away, and as the chill, murky December landscape flew by, he awoke all at once to a sense of what he was about. Why was he going? what did he mean? to ask Norine Bourdon to be his wife? certainly not. To play dog in the manger, and keep some more fortunate man from loving and marrying her? most certainly not. Then why had he come? At this juncture he set his teeth, took up the Herald and scowled moodily at its printed pages all day long.

He slept that night in Boston, and next morning resumed his journey. He reached Portland before noon, dined at his usual hotel, and then, as the afternoon sun began to drop low in the wintry sky, set out on foot for Kent Farm.

How familiar it all was; how often, when the fields were green, the trees waving, and the birds singing, he had walked this road beside Norine. But the fields were white with snow to-day, the trees black, gaunt skeletons, and the July birds dead or gone. All things had changed in four months—why not Norine as well?

It was four by the lawyer's watch as he raised the latch of the garden gate, and walked up the snow-shrouded path. There stood the gnarled old apple tree, with its rustic chair, but the tree was leafless, and the chair empty. Doors and windows had stood wide when he saw them last, with sunshine and summer floating in; now all were closed, and the December blasts howled around the gables. There was no one to be seen, but the red light of a fire streamed brightly out through the curtains of the keeping-room.

He went slowly up the steps, opened the front door, and entered the hall. The door of that best apartment stood half open, light and warmth, voices and laughter came through. Mr. Gilbert paused on the threshold an instant, and looked at the picture within.

A very pretty picture.

The room was lit by the leaping fire alone. Seated on a low stool, before the fire and beside the sofa, he saw Norine. She was reading aloud the lovely story of Lalla Rookh. He had sent her the green and gilt volume himself. She wore a crimson merino dress, over which her black hair fell, and in the fantastic firelight how fair the dark, piquant face looked, the dark eyes were bent upon her book, and the soft voice was the only sound in the room.

On the sofa, perilously near, lay the "gentleman" of her letter—the hero of the broken arm and sprained ankle, who was "very nice." And Richard Gilbert looking, gave a great start.

He knew him.

His worst fears were realized. He saw a man both young and good-looking—something more, indeed, than good-looking. The face was thin and pale, but when was that a fault in the eyes of a girl!—a tall figure in a dark suit, brown hair, and silken blonde mustache artistically curled. Surely a charming picture of youth and beauty on both sides, and yet if Mr. Gilbert had seen a cobra di capella coiled up beside the girl he loved, he could hardly have turned sicker with jealous fear.

"Laurence Thorndyke," he thought blankly "of all the men in the wide world, what evil fortune has sent Laurence Thorndyke here!"

CHAPTER III.

MR. LAURENCE THORNDYKE.

he little dog Frollo, curled up beside his mistress, was the first to see and greet the newcomer. He rushed forward, barking a friendly greeting, and the young lady looked up from the book she was reading, the young gentleman from the face he was reading at the same moment, and beheld the dark figure in the doorway.

Norine Bourdon sprang to her feet, blushing violently, and came forward with outstretched hand. It was the first time he had ever seen her blush—like that—the first time her eyes had fallen, the first time her voice had faltered. She might be glad to see him, as she said, but all the old, frank, childish gladness was gone.

"I have taken you by surprise," he said, gazing into her flushed face and shrinking eyes, "as I did once before. I get tired of New York and business very suddenly sometimes, and you know I have a standing invitation here."

"We are very glad—I am very glad to see you, Mr. Gilbert," Norine answered, but with an embarrassment, a restraint altogether new in his experience of her. "We missed you very much after you went away."

The young man on the sofa, who all this time had been calmly looking and listening, now took an easier position, and spoke:

"Six-and-twenty-years experience of this wicked world has taught me the folly of being surprised at anything under the sun. But if I had not outlived the power of wondering, centuries ago, I should wonder at seeing Mr. Richard Gilbert out of the classic precincts of Wall street the first week of December. I suppose now you wouldn't have looked to see me here?"

He held out a shapely, languid hand, with a diamond ablaze on it. The lawyer touched it about as cordially as though it had been an extended toad.

"I certainly would not, Mr. Thorndyke. I imagined, and so did Mr. Darcy, when I saw him last, that you were in Boston, practicing your profession."

"Ah! no doubt! So I was until a month ago. I suppose it never entered your—I mean his venerable noddle, to conceive the possibility of my growing tired practicing my profession. Such is the fact, however. Even the hub of the universe may pall on the frivolous mind of youth, and I've 'thrown physic to the dogs, I'll none of it,' for the present at least. My patients—few and far between, I'm happy to say, will get on much more comfortably, and stand a much better chance of recovery without me."

"Indeed! I don't doubt it at all. But your uncle?"

"My uncle can't hope to escape the crosses of life any more than poorer and better men. All work and no play makes, what's his name, a dull boy. There will be a row very likely, the sooner my venerated relative is convinced that my talents don't lie in the bleeding and blistering, the senna and salts line, the better. They don't."

"Don't they? It would be difficult to say, from what I know of Mr. Laurence Thorndyke, in what line they do lie. May I ask what you mean to do?"

"I shall go in for sculpture," responded Mr. Laurence Thorndyke, with the calm consciousness of superior genius. "Other men have made fame and fortune by art, and why not I? If my hypocondriacal adopted uncle would only shell out, send me to Rome, and enable me to study the old masters, I have the strongest internal conviction that—"

"That you would set the world on fire with your genius. That you would eclipse the Greek Slave. No doubt—I have known others to think so before, and I know the sort of 'fame and fortune' they made. How do you come to be here?" Very curtly and abruptly, this.

"Ah!—thereby hangs a tale," with a long tender glance at Norine. "I am the debtor of a most happy accident. My horse threw me, and Miss Bourdon, happening along at the moment, turned Good Samaritan and took me in."

"I don't mean that," Mr. Gilbert said, stiffly; "how do you come to be in Maine at all?"

"I beg your pardon. Tom Lydyard—the Portland Lydyards, you know—no I suppose you don't know, by the by. Tom Lydyard was to be married, and invited me over on the auspicious occasion. Tom's a Harvard man like myself, sworn chums, brothers-in-arms, Damon and Pythias, and all that bosh; and when he asked me down to his wedding, could I—I put it to yourself, now, Gilbert, could I refuse? I cut the shop. I turned my back on blue pills and chloral, I came I saw, I—mademoiselle, may I trouble you for a glass of lemonade? You have no idea, Mr. Gilbert, what a nuisance I am, not being able to do anything for myself yet."

"Perhaps I have" was Mr. Gilbert's frigid response. The sight of Norine bending over that recumbent figure gave him a sensation of actual physical pain. He knew what this languid, graceful, slow speaking young Sybarite's life had been, if she did not.

Just at that moment—and it was a relief, Aunt Hester entered, followed by Uncles Reuben and Joe. No restraint here, no doubt about his welcome from them, no change in the place he held in their esteem and affection. Tea was ready, would everybody please to come.

Mr. Thorndyke's fractured limb was by no means equal to locomotion, so Uncle Reuben wheeled him, sofa and all, into the next room, and Aunt Hester and Norine vied with each other in waiting on him. It comes natural to all women to pet sick men—if the man be young and handsome, why it comes all the more naturally.

Mr. Thorndyke wasn't sick by any means—that was all over and done with. He took his tea from Aunt Hester's hand and drank it, his toast and chicken from Norine and ate them. He talked to them both in that lazy, pleasant voice of his, or lay silent and stroked his mustache with his diamond-ringed hand, and looked handsome, and whether the talk or the silence were most dangerous, it would have puzzled a cleverer man than Richard Gilbert to tell. To sit there listening to Aunt Hester chirping and Uncle Reuben prosing, and see the blue eyes making love, in eloquent silence, to the black ones, was almost too much for human nature to endure. She sat there silent, shy, all unlike the bright, chattering Norine of the summer gone, but with, oh! such an infinitely happy face! She sat beside Laurence Thorndyke—she ministered to that convalescent appetite of his, and that was enough. What need of speech when silence is so sweet?

Supper ended, Mr. Thorndyke was wheeled back to his post in the front room beside the fire. Norine never came near him all the rest of the evening, she sat at the little piano, and poured out her whole heart in song. Richard Gilbert, full of miserable, knawing jealousy, understood those songs; perhaps Laurence Thorndyke, lying with half-closed eyes, half-smiling lips, did too. They were old-fashioned songs that the lawyer had sent her, favorites of his own: "Twere vain to tell thee all I feel," and "Drink to me only with thine eyes." Yes, the meaning of those tender old ballads was not for him. It was maddening to see Laurence Thorndyke lying there, with that conscious smile on his lips; he could endure no more—he arose with the last note, abruptly enough, and bade them good-night.

"What! so early, Gilbert?" Thorndyke said, looking at his watch. "What a dickens of a hurry you're in. You've got no clients in Portland, have you? and Miss Bourdon, is going to sing us half-a-dozen more songs yet."

Mr. Gilbert paid no attention whatever to this flippant young man. He turned his back upon him indeed, and explained elaborately to Uncle Reuben that it was impossible for him to remain longer to-night, but that he would call early on the morrow.

"He is very much changed," remarked Aunt Hester, thoughtfully; "don't you think so, Norry? He's nothing like so pleasant and free, as he used to be."

"Particularly grumpy, I should say," interposed Mr. Thorndyke. "'Pleasant and free' are the last terms I should think of applying to Richard Gilbert. Not half a bad fellow either, old Gilbert, but an awful prig—don't you think so, Miss Bourdon?"

"I like Mr. Gilbert very much," Miss Bourdon answered, strumming idly on the keys; "and I think him pleasant. He seemed out of spirits to-night, though, I fancy."

It was bright, frosty starlight as the lawyer walked back to town. He walked rapidly, his head well up, a dark frown clouding his face.

"Any one but Thorndyke—any one but Thorndyke!" he was thinking bitterly. Alas! Mr. Gilbert, would you not have been jealous of the Archbishop of Canterbury had that dignitary been "keeping company" with Miss Bourdon? "And she loves him already—already. A very old story to Laurence Thorndyke. Six-and-twenty years, a well-shaped nose, two blue eyes, a mustache, and the easy insolence of the 'golden youth' of New York. What else has he but that? What else is needed to win any woman's heart? And hers is his, for good or for evil, for ever and ever. He is the Prince Charming of her fairy tale, and she has caught his wandering, artist fancy, as scores have caught it before. And when I tell her the truth, that his plighted wife awaits him, what then? Little Norine! to think that you should fall into the power of Laurence Thorndyke."

Yes, she was in his power—for she loved him. Had it all not been so delightfully romantic, so like a chapter out of one of her pet novels, that first meeting, when Fate itself had flung him wounded and bleeding at her feet? Was it not all photographed forever on her mind, a picture whose vividness time never could dim! It had befallen in this way:

On the afternoon of the third of November Miss Bourdon had driven over in the light wagon from the farm to the city, to receive her usual, eagerly-looked-for package from Mr. Gilbert. It had been dark and windy from early morning. As the afternoon wore on, the sky grew darker, the wind higher. She got her bundle of books, visited one or two stores, one or two friends, and night had fallen before she turned old Kitty's head towards Kent Farm. A faint and watery moon made its way up through the drifts of jagged cloud, and the gale howled through the street as though it had gone mad. It was a lonely and unpleasant ride; but old Kitty could have made her way asleep, and Norine sang to herself as she drove slowly along. They were within a quarter of a mile of the house, when Kitty pricked up her red ears, gave a neigh of alarm, and shied from some long, dark object lying motionless across her path. Norine bent over and looked down. There, she saw, lying on his face, the prostrate form of a man.

Was he drunk, or was he dead? She was out in a twinkling, and bending above him. There was blood on his clothes, and on the dusty road. She turned his face over until the pallid moon shone upon it. Dead, to all seeming, the eyes closed, life and consciousness gone.

Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Laurence Thorndyke was lying in the best bedroom of Kent Farm, with Aunt Hester and Norine bending over him, and Uncle Joe scudding along on horseback for a doctor. All their efforts to bring him out of that fainting fit were vain. White and cold he lay; and so Norine Bourdon, with a great pity in her heart, looked first upon the face of Laurence Thorndyke.

CHAPTER IV.

THE LAWYER'S WARNING.

r. Gilbert appeared in no hurry to revisit his friends at Kent Farm. It was late in the afternoon of the next day before he came slowly along the quiet country road. He had passed the morning idly enough, staring from the hotel window, down at the peaceful street and the few straggling passers by. After his three o'clock dinner he had put on hat and overcoat, and leisurely taken his way over the familiar ground.

It was a gray December afternoon, with a threatening of coming storm in the overcast sky. A few feathery flakes whirled already through the leaden air, an icy blast blew up from the sea, the road was deserted, the dreary fields snow-shrouded and forsaken. And only yesterday it seemed he had walked here by her side, the golden grain breast high, and the scarlet poppies aflame in the gardens. His youth had come back to him with that sunlit holiday. If he had spoken then, who knew what her answer might have been. But he had let the hour and the day go by, and now it was too late.

The snow flakes were whirling faster and faster as Mr. Gilbert opened the gate and approached the house. He could see the rose light of the fire through the curtained windows, and a slight, graceful figure seated at one, sewing. The brown rattling stems of hop vines twining around it, like sere serpents, made a framework for the girlish head and fair young face. All the floss silk curls were bound back with scarlet ribbon, and the luminous black eyes were fixed on her work. They saw the tardy visitor, however, and with a bright, welcoming smile she sprang up, and ran to open the door.

"How late you are. We thought you were not coming at all. I have been looking for you all day." She held out her hand, far more like Norine of old than last night, and led the way back into the parlor. There on his comfortable sofa, by his comfortable fire, reposed of course the five feet, eleven inches of Mr. Laurence Thorndyke. Mr. Gilbert gave that invalid a nod several degrees icier than the elements out doors.

"Ah, you have come! I told Norine you would."—Norine! it had come to that then—"I know you to be one of those uncompromising sort of characters, Gilbert, who never break their word. Have you your cigar case about you? I should like a smoke."

"Miss Bourdon is present, Mr. Thorndyke."

"So she is—for which Allah be praised. But Miss Bourdon is the most sensible, as she is most charming of young ladies. She gave me carte blanche ages ago to smoke as much as I please. Didn't you Norry? She fills my pipe, she even lights it when this confounded shoulder twitches more than usual."

Richard Gilbert set his teeth with inward fury. To sit here, and listen to Laurence Thorndyke's insolent familiarity, his lover like—"Norry," drove him half wild.

"I have not my cigar case," he answered, more and more frigidly; "and if I had, I don't know that I should countenance such a trespass on common decency as to let you smoke one here. How long before your doctor thinks you fit to be removed?"

"Oh, not for weeks yet; it was a deuce of a fracture, I can tell you. Why, pray? My insignificant movements, as a rule, are all unworthy Mr. Gilbert's attention."

"Your uncle is my friend, sir," the lawyer replied, "and I prefer not to see him hoodwinked. I recommend you strongly to write and explain your position, or I shall take an early opportunity of doing so myself."

"Will you? How very kind you are. But isn't it a pity to give yourself so much unnecessary trouble? I believe Mr. Hugh Darcy did invest you with a species of authority over my actions, but at six-and-twenty, don't you think a fellow ought to be let loose from the leading strings? And what would you have? I couldn't help accepting Tom Lydyard's invitation. I couldn't help my horse taking fright and throwing me. I couldn't help breaking my arm, and spraining my ankle, and I can't help being in the seventh heaven of happiness and comfort with two such nurses as Miss Kent and Miss Bourdon. Don't be unreasonable, Gilbert. Norine—ma belle, I am utterly exhausted with all this talking. What are you laughing at? Do pray favor me with my meerschaum and a light."

The pleasant lazy voice stopped, the pleasant smile turned upon Norine.

Miss Bourdon laughing at this passage of arms arose with alacrity to obey, and the lawyer, looking unspeakably grim got up, too.

"Permit me to say good-by, Miss Bourdon. I start for New York to-night. Can I see your uncle a moment before I go?" The door opened as he asked the question and Aunt Hester came into the room.

"I heard your voice as I passed through the hall," she said. "Surely you ain't going so soon?"

"I regret I must, my business requires my immediate return. I have only time to say good-by and speak a word to your brother. Where shall I find him?"

"In the stable, most likely. I'll go with you."

"Thanks. Farewell, Miss Bourdon."

Again their hands met, she looked perplexed and wistful, but she did not urge him to stay. With a second stiff nod to Mr. Thorndyke, the lawyer strode out of the room after Aunt Hetty.

"A word to her brother," muttered Mr. Thorndyke to himself looking after them. "I think I know what that means. 'That fellow, Thorndyke, is a spendthrift, a gambler, a flirt, an engaged man. Don't let him have anything to say to Norine.' That will be about the sum and substance of it. To think of his falling in love at his time of life, when he's old enough and big enough to know better. But then middle-aged fools are the worst of all fools. And you come a day after the fair, Mr. Richard Gilbert. Your word of warning is just two weeks too late. I owe you two or three little grudges for your espionage of the past, and for two or three little games blocked, and I think I see my way clearly to wiping them out at last. A thousand thanks my charming little nurse." Aloud to Norine, entering with pipe and pipe-light:

"What should I ever do without you?"

Mr. Gilbert, escorted by Aunt Hester, reached the stable, where Uncle Reuben stood busily curry-combing Kitty.

"I want to speak half-a-dozen words in private to you, Kent," the lawyer began, abruptly enough. "You will tell your good sister here at your convenience, if you see fit. You must excuse my seeming rudeness, Miss Kent, and say good-by, now."

He shook hands with her cordially, and watched her out of sight. Then he turned to her brother.

"We are quite alone?" he asked.

"Quite, squire. Take a seat."

He brought forward a stool, but Mr. Gilbert waved it away.

"No, no, what I have to say will take but a minute, and then I shall be going. I want to speak to you of that young man who is your guest—Laurence Thorndyke."

"Wal, squire."

"You have not known me very long, Mr. Kent, but I think, I hope, you have known me long enough to trust me, to believe what I say, to understand I have no selfish motive. It is for"—he paused a moment—"it is for your niece's sake I speak, you can hardly take a deeper interest in her welfare than I do."

Was there ever so slight a tremor in the grave, steady voice, or did Reuben Kent only fancy it? He paused in Kitty's toilet and looked at him keenly.

"Wal, squire?" he said again.

"Laurence Thorndyke is no fit, no safe companion for your niece. He is not a good man, he is as false as he is fascinating. She is only seventeen, she knows nothing of the world, nothing of such men as he, and believe me, Kent, it won't do."

Reuben Kent looked up, a sudden flash in his eye, a sudden redness in his face.

"Go on," he said, curtly.

"I am afraid Miss Bourdon cares more for him already than—" He paused again and averted his face. "You know what I mean. He is handsome, and she is only a girl. She will grow to love him, and he could not marry her if he would, he is already engaged, and unless I mistake him greatly, would not if he could. Mr. Kent, this young man will go away, and Norine will be neither the better nor the happier for his coming."

His voice was husky. Something of the pain he felt was in his face. The farmer stretched forth and caught the lawyer's hand in a hard grip.

"Thanky, squire," he said; "I ain't a man to jaw much, but I believe you, and am obliged to you for this. If that young jacknapes from York tries to come any of his city games down here, by the Lord Jehosaphat! I'll lay him up with something worse than a broken arm!"

"Can you not avert the danger?" suggested Mr. Gilbert. "It may not be too late. Send the fellow away."

"Wal, squire, you see that mightn't be doing the square thing by him. It would look unpleasantly like turning him out. No, I can't send him away until the doctor says he's fit to go, but, by ginger, I'll send her!"

"Will she go?"

Uncle Reuben chuckled.

"We won't ask her. I'll fix it off. We've some cousins thirty miles up country, and they've invited her time and again, but, somehow, we've never felt—Joe and me—as though we could spare her afore. It's powerful lonesome, I tell ye, squire, when Norry ain't around. But now—I'll take her to-morrow morning."

"The best thing you can do. And now, before it gets any later and stormier, I will be off. Good-by, Mr. Kent, for the present."

"Good-by, and thanky, squire, thanky. You'll be along again soon, hey?"

"Well, perhaps so," replied the lawyer, coloring slightly. "Take care of your niece, Kent, and good-by to you."

They parted at the gate. Reuben Kent watched the stalwart form of the lawyer out of sight, then walked slowly and thoughtfully back to the house and the sitting-room. Mr. Thorndyke, in a deep, melodious tenor, was reading aloud "Lucille," and Miss Bourdon, with flushed cheeks and glistening eyes of light, was listening.

The reading ceased at the farmer's entrance; the spell was broken, and Norine looked up.

"Has Mr. Gilbert gone, Uncle Reuben?"

"Yes."

He said it with unusual gravity, regarding young Thorndyke. The girl saw the change in his usually good humored, red-and-tan face, and went over and threw an arm around his neck.

"What is it, uncle? Something gone wrong?"

"No—yes. Nothing that can't be set right, I hope. Where's your aunt?"

"In the kitchen baking cake. Shall I run and call her?"

"No, I'll go myself."

He left the room. Mr. Thorndyke watched him.

"It is as I thought," he said to himself. "My label is up, 'dangerous.' What has Gilbert been saying? Has he given Uncle Reuben my whole interesting biography? Has he told him I drink, I gamble, I make love to pretty girls wherever I meet them? All right, my legal duffer; you have set your forty-years-old heart on pretty, black-eyed, belle Norine, and so have I. Now, let's see who'll win."

Mr. Kent found his sister in the kitchen, baking, as Norine had said, cakes for tea, their fragrant sweetness perfuming the hot air. In very few words he repeated to her the lawyer's warning.

"We might a seen it ourselves, Hetty, if we hadn't been blinder than bats. I'll take her up to Abel Merryweather's to-morrow, and just leave her thar till this ere chap goes."

"Will you tell her, Reuben?" Aunt Hetty asked.

"No; I kinder don't like to, somehow. She'll guess without any telling, I reckon. If I told her, she might tell him, there ain't never no countin' on gals, and then he'd be after her hot foot. Least said's soonest mended. Jest call her down to help you, Hetty, and keep her here as long as you can. What with his poetry reading, his singing, his fine talk, and good-lookin' face, he's enough to turn any gal's head."