Magdalen’s Vow

XXXVI

CHAPTER I

MAGDALEN

The month was October, very near its close; the time, late in the evening of a wet and dismal day; the place, a cottage kitchen, its only occupants an old woman and a baby, not twenty-four hours old. The soft patter of the ceaseless rain on the glass, the sobbing cry of the wind around the gables, the moaning surge of the pine woods near–these made their own tumult without.

Within a bright fire blazed in the shining cook stove; a big brass clock ticked loudly in a corner, a maltese cat purred on a mat, and the tea-kettle sung its pleasant song.

The little old woman, who swayed in her Boston rocker before the stove, was the trimmest little old woman ever firelight shone on.

The baby lay in her lap, a bundle of yellow flannel; and, as she rocked, she cried, miserable, silent tears.

To think that this should be her welcome home! she kept moaning drearily to herself. Only one short year and all gone–father, sister, brother, home! My poor dear–my poor dear!

The loud-voiced clock struck six, with a clatter. The last vibration was drowned in the shrill scream of a locomotive, rushing in. The shrill shriek rent the stormy twilight like the cry of a demon, and woke the sleeping child.

Hush, baby, hush! the old woman said, crooning a dismal lullaby. There she is–there is Magdalen! Poor dear! poor dear! She’ll be here in ten minutes now.

But the ten passed–twenty–half an hour–before the knock for which she listened came to the door.

There she is!

She plumped the baby into the rocker, made for thedoor with a rush, and flung it wide. On the threshold, all wet and dripping and worn-looking, a young girl stood. The rainy evening light was just strong enough to show a pale young face, a slender, girlish figure, and a pair of great, luminous dark eyes.

My darling! the old woman cried, catching her in her arms. My own darling girl! And you are wet through and through! You must have walked all the way from the station in the rain.

The girl slowly disengaged herself, entered the hall and stood looking at her.

Rachel, she said, am I in time?

The old woman broke suddenly out crying–loud, anguished sobs, that shook her from head to foot.

It was the girl’s most eloquent answer, and she leaned against the wall with a face of blank despair.

Too late! she said, slowly; too late! Laura is dead!

The old woman’s sobs grew louder and her pitiful attempts to stifle them were vain.

I oughtn’t to, I know, she cried, hysterically; that you should come home like this, and only last year–

She broke down, weeping wildly. But the girl stood, tearless and white, staring blankly at the opposite wall.

Father and Laura dead–and Willie! Oh, my God! how can I bear it?

The old woman hushed her sobs and looked up.

The despair of that orphaned cry smote her, with its unutterable pathos, to the heart.

Magdalen! Magdalen! she cried. My darling, don’t look like that! Come in–you are worn and wet–come in to the fire. My child, don’t wear that sorrowful face; it breaks your poor old nurse’s heart! Come!

She led the way; the girl followed. The old Scripture name–full of its own pathos always–seemed strangely appropriate here. Mary Magdalene herself might have worn those amber-dropping tresses–might have owned that white, young face, so indescribably sad.

You poor child! the old nurse said, you are as white as a spirit! You must have a cup of tea and some dry clothes right away. Where is your trunk?

Even in the midst of death and despair, these commonplace questions rise.

Magdalen looked at her with great, haggard eyes.

I left it at the station. Rachel, when did Laura die?

Yesterday, old Rachel answered, crying again; an hour after her baby was born.

Her baby? Oh, Rachel! with a wild start, I did not know–I did not know–

The old woman undid the bundle of flannel. The babe lay soundly asleep.

The girl covered her colorless face for a moment, her tears coming at last, falling like rain.

Laura! Laura! My sister!

Her tears were noiseless, burning, bitter. She looked up presently, to bend over the sleeping child and kiss its velvet cheek.

Laura’s baby! Poor little motherless thing! Oh, Rachel, it is very, very hard!

Very hard, my dearest and terrible to bear; but it must be borne, for all that. My pet, go up to your room and change these dripping clothes. I don’t want to lose you, too.

Better so, the girl said, wearily. Better end it all, and lie down and die with them. Others would die of half this misery, but I only suffer and live on!

Slowly and spiritlessly she ascended the stairs to her own familiar room. She changed her wet garments, bathed her aching head, brushed out the rippling, yellow ringlets–all in a weary, aimless sort of way–and then returned to the apartment below. It was a very simple toilet she had made, and her black dress was frayed and faded, and scant and ill-made; but for all that she was well worth looking at.

She was very pretty, in spite of her pallor–so brightly pretty, that it was a pleasure only to look at her.

My own darling! the old nurse said, fondly kissing her, you are more beautiful than ever, and almost a woman at sixteen. It’s a sad pity, but oh dear, dear! how can I help it? To think you can go to school no more.

I must only study at home, Magdalen said, and practise my music as well as I can. I suppose no one would be willing to engage a governess only sixteen years old. Have we enough to live on for a year, Rachel?

More than enough, surely. Your poor papa’s lawyer, Mr. Hammond, will tell you. It is very hard, my poordear, you should have to go out into the big, wicked, cruel world, to earn your own living at all. You are a great deal too pretty.

Rachel, said Magdalen, abruptly, where is Laura? I want to see her.

She’s laid out in the parlor, poor darling! Widow Morgan sat up with me the last night, and she helped me afterward to lay her out. She makes a lovely corpse–sweet, pale lamb–and peaceful as an angel. Don’t go now. Take some tea first. You look fagged out and I shall have you sick on my hands, too.

You don’t know how strong I am, said Magdalen. I have grown of late tired of my life, of the world, of myself, of everything; but nothing hurts me. I suffer and live on. Others, more fortunate, would suffer and die.

She drank the tea, strove to eat, and failed.

It’s of no use, Rachel–I can’t. I feel as though it were choking me. Let me go and see my sister; then you shall tell me all.

Rachel arose and led the way down the hall, bearing a light. In dead silence she opened the parlor door and Magdalen followed her in.

The cottage parlor was very like any other cottage parlor, plainly and prettily furnished. Carpet and furniture and pictures were all very simple and bright and nice: but one ghastly object was there to chill the quiet beauty of the picture.

In the center of the floor stood a long table, draped in ghostly white. Awfully stiff and rigid, under a white sheet, could be seen the outline of what lay stark and dead thereon.

Magdalen paused on the threshold and laid her hand on Rachel’s arm, her eyes fixed, large and dilated, on that ghastly sight. The dim lamplight showed her face, with its stare of white horror.

Leave me alone, Rachel! she said, in a hoarse whisper. Go!

There was that in her nursling’s face the old woman dared not disobey. She turned reluctantly away and left the room.

The girl advanced and stood beside the bed. Only the soft sobbing of the October rain, the shuddering wail ofthe night wind and the solemn surging of the pine trees, broke the silence of the room.

With a face like snow, like marble, she drew the sheet down, and gazed upon the sister she had loved so well. It was a face wonderfully beautiful in its last dreamless sleep–more beautiful, perhaps, than it had ever been in life. The straight, delicate features were like her own; so was the mass of burnished hair, combed away from the icy brow. The hands were folded together across the bosom; the sweet, beautiful lips were closed with an ineffable expression of rest. Too solemn for words to tell was the unutterable peace of that death sleep.

And it all ends here! Magdalen thought. Youth and hope and innocence! Sweetness and beauty and tenderest love, could not save her one poor hour from ruin and the grave! Oh, my sister–my sister!

She dropped on her knees and laid her face on the marble breast. No tear fell, no sob shook her slender frame. She seemed to have passed beyond all that. The steady drip, drip, of the ceaseless rain, the mournful sighing of the wind, sounded like a dirge for the dead. So long she knelt there that old Rachel, growing alarmed, opened the door and came in.

My child! my child! in an awe-struck whisper, come away. This will never do!

The girl got up at once, pale as the dead sister lying before her, and almost as rigid. One last look and she followed the old nurse out into the kitchen. She sat down before the fire, that icy calm still over all.

And now, Rachel, she said, tell me the whole story.

The dead girl’s sleeping child lay cozily in Rachel’s lap, as she rocked to and fro in her nurse chair.

It’s a short enough story, she said, with a heavy sigh, to contain so much misery. Let me see. It was last September, twelve months, you went away to New Haven, to school?

Yes.

Well, one week after, the trouble began. Willie, you know, was not going to New York, to continue his medical studies, until December, and he spent a good deal of his time in the woods, fishing and shooting, and in the Village loitering about the hotel. It was there he met thevillain who brought all our misery–a wretch for whom hanging would be a great deal too good!

Magdalen’s teeth clenched and her eyes suddenly blazed up.

Go on, she said; tell me his name.

"His name was Maurice Langley, and he was very handsome. Tall and fair, you know, with dark, curling hair, and a black mustache. He had come to the country for a month’s fishing and Willie and he grew as intimate as brothers. Willie brought him home and your poor papa and Laura were taken with him at once. He had such winning ways, such a pleasant laugh and such a charming, offhand manner, that he took people’s fancy at first sight. He could play the piano better than Laura and sing most beautiful, and he could talk to your papa like a book. He fascinated all of us the very first visit and I don’t know who sang his praises loudest when he went away. It was not Laura; she said nothing; but there was a look in her sweet face that told far more than words.

"After that Mr. Langley was every day and nearly all of every day, at the house. He and Laura were always together, playing and singing, and drawing and reading. And the more we saw of him, the better we liked him, and we never tried to check this intimacy. And that month passed, and the next came, and Mr. Langley began to talk of going home. I don’t know rightly where his home was, but I think in New York, where he was studying law, he told us. The middle of October he did go, shaking hands with the whole of us, the villain, and saying he would never forget the pleasant days he had spent amongst our New Hampshire hills.

I was afraid Laura would droop and fret after him, but she didn’t. She sang as blithely about the house as ever, and how was I to know she was only waiting a letter from him to follow him? That they had it all arranged beforehand? Before the month closed the letter came. Laura bade us good-night the evening that brought it, and next morning, when I went to call her to breakfast, she was gone.

There was a pause. Rachel’s tears were falling fast, but Magdalen sat staring straight at the fire, with dry, glittering eyes.

"There was a note for your papa, hurried and brief,telling him she loved Mr. Langley, and was gone to be married. It was necessary, for family reasons, Mr. Langley told her, that the marriage should be strictly private. His family wished him to marry his cousin, and he dared not oppose them openly. She begged her father not to search for her; she would be well and happy and would write again as soon as she was Mr. Langley’s wife.

"She never wrote again. It was a terrible suspense. Nobody would believe the story of the marriage in the village and she was disgraced forever. Willie was furious at first. He would seek out Langley and shoot him like a dog, if Laura was not his wife. But you know Willie; his rage flew over. December came; he went to New York and he had not even tried to find them.

The next we heard he and Langley were as thick as ever. He met Langley in New York and he was Laura’s husband; but Laura was only the wretched shadow of herself. They were poor and lived in a shabby boarding-house, and she was miserably dressed. Langley was no law student–nothing but a professional gambler–and in a few months he had made a professional gambler of our poor, weak boy. He wrote and wrote perpetually for money, until there was no more to write for; he was deeply in debt to Langley and others; he grew desperate; he forged Doctor Wentworth’s name for two thousand dollars, was detected, arrested, tried and sentenced for six years.

Rachel’s voice sank in a hoarse whisper. Magdalen’s face had dropped in her hand; she never lifted it during the remainder of the story.

"That blow finished what Laura had begun. Your father dropped down in a fit when he heard it, and never left his bed after; and in September–just one year after that matchless villain came amongst us–he was laid beside your mamma in the churchyard.

"I cannot tell you how desolate I felt here alone, Magdalen. They all wanted me to send for you right away, but I hadn’t the heart. I seemed to know poor Laura would come back and I waited for that.

"Early in October, one stormy night, when the wind blew a gale, and the rain fell in torrents, she came. She walked, in all the downpour, from the station, and I think that helped to give her her death blow. But she wouldhave died anyway. She wanted nothing but to get back to the old home and die. Oh, that changed face!–so haggard, so heart-broken! My poor nursling! And so wretched and miserably dressed! She gave one scream when I told her that her father was dead and dropped down in a dead faint.

"Ah, what a wretched, wretched time it was! I never saw despair before, and I pray God I never may again. I wanted to send for you, but she cried out, in a wild, frenzied sort of way:

"‘No! no! no! not for ten thousand worlds! I am not fit to breathe the same air she does! Magdalen is my name, not hers! Send for her when I am dead!’

"Once, and once only, I spoke of Langley. She had been quiet for hours, sitting crouching over the fire. At the sound of his name she started up and tossed the hair back from her face like a mad woman.

"‘Don’t speak of him!’ she cried out; ‘he is the blackest and basest villain on the face of the earth! My curse on him wherever he goes!’

"My poor Magdalen, it is terrible to have to tell you of such things. After that I never mentioned Langley’s name, nor your father’s, nor Willie’s. I left her to herself. The few days before her last illness she spent in writing a letter. It took her a long time, she was so very weak; but she finished it at last, and told me to give it to you when she was dead and buried.

"‘I have told my sister all,’ she said; ‘it may keep her from quite hating my memory when I am gone!’

From that hour I could see death approaching. The doctor and the clergyman knew as well as I did she would never rise from her bed again. I wrote for you, but you came too late. Laura’s earthly troubles are over.

With fast-falling tears, Rachel’s story of sin and suffering closed. The rain and wind, that had made a dismal accompaniment to her dismal words, the light fall of red cinders, the ticking of the old clock, had the silence to themselves; and Magdalen cowered before the fire, her face hidden, hearing all, and never moving or looking up.

CHAPTER II

THE DEAD SISTER’S LETTER

Through the gray gloom of another dull October day the scant funeral procession left the cottage, and took their way to the village churchyard. The coffin plate told the dead girl’s mournful but too common history:

Laura Allward. Aged 18.

Laura Allward! And her baby wailed in old Rachel’s faithful arms. That was why only one or two elderly matrons came near the cottage, and why such a handful of men followed the hearse, gloomily, to the grave!

It was not customary in that little New England village for women to attend funerals, but Magdalen Allward, with a thick veil over her face, and a heavy shawl drawn around her slender form, followed her sister to the grave. Curious eyes peeped from closed windows to scan that black-draped, girlish figure, and heads shook ominously, and croaking voices hoped she might come to a good end. But they doubted it–these good people; the taint of her sister’s shame, her brother’s disgrace, would cling to her like a garment of fire, through life.

The sods rattled down on the coffin lid, the men stood by with bare heads. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and then the sexton, blue and cold, in the bleak October weather, filled up the grave in a hurry, and slapped briskly on the sods. And all the time the veiled figure of the lonely girl stood apart, forlorn and shivering in the raw blasts. One by one the men straggled away and left her there, as desolate and forsaken a creature as the whole world held.

The new-made grave was under a clump of melancholy fir trees, worried by the high wind, and writhing like things in human agony. Side by side lay two others, sacred to the memory of John Allward and his wife Helen, but forever and ever that new-made grave must lie nameless.

Magdalen Allward looked up with a shiver at the low-lying sky, gray and desolate as her young life, and slowly, slowly turned away at last. Heaven knows what her thoughts had been while she stood there, alone among the dead, alone among the living, and felt that one man had wrought all this misery, and disgrace, and death. Her veiled face kept her secret well, as she walked wearily homeward through the windy twilight.

Rachel sat before the fire, holding the baby, and crooning softly as she rocked it asleep. Magdalen threw back her veil, stooped and kissed it.

Then you are not going to dislike it, the nurse said, looking relieved. I was afraid you would.

Dislike it! Dislike a little babe!

You know what I mean, dear–for that villain’s sake.

Magdalen rose up suddenly, her face darkening vindictively.

You are right; I ought to hate it–spawn of a viper–as I hate him! But, no; it is Laura’s baby; I will try and like it, for Laura’s sake. I am going to my room now, Rachel. I am worn out. No, I want nothing but rest. Good night.

She quitted the room, ascended to her own, with slow, weary steps, undressed, and then threw herself upon the bed. Worn out she surely was, and scarcely had her head touched the pillow than she was asleep–the sound, blessed sleep of youth and health.

It was almost noon next day when she came down-stairs. Breakfast awaited her and in dark silence and moody she ate it. As she arose from the table she said:

Rachel, where is the letter Laura left for me?

Rachel produced it at once. A thick letter, in a buff envelope, sealed and addressed:

To My Sister Magdalen. To be read when I am buried.

Magdalen stood silently gazing at the familiar handwriting for a few moments, then, silently still, she turned and walked out of the kitchen. Rachel looked after her uneasily.

She is going to read it in her own room. Poor child! I hope it may not distress her much. Her troubles are too heavy for her sixteen years.

Rachel was mistaken; she was not going to read it inher own room. She came down presently dressed for a walk, holding the letter in her hand.

Where are you going with that letter, Magdalen? the old woman asked, in alarm.

The girl paused on the threshold to answer her.

I am going to read Laura’s letter beside Laura’s grave. It will seem like her voice speaking to me from the dead.

Magdalen could not have chosen a more secluded or lonely spot. Shut in by firs and hemlock, a place where no one ever came, save on a sunny Sunday afternoon, she was not likely to be disturbed. On a rustic bench, under the gloomy firs, she sat down, threw back her veil and reverently opened the letter. It was long and closely written, and there, by the writer’s grave, seemed indeed a voice from the dead. Magdalen read:

My Dearest Sister:

When you read this the grave will have closed over me, and–and when you know the whole truth you may learn at least to think pityingly of the dead sister who has blighted your young life, but who has been more sinned against than sinning. It is a little more than a year ago, and yet what a century of sin and misery it seems. My little Magdalen! my pretty, gentle, golden-haired sister! How little I thought when I kissed you good-by, that sunny September morning, it would be good-by forever and ever.

Rachel will tell you how I left home–she can tell you no more. Not how I loved Maurice Langley; not how I believed in him; not how I trusted him. He was the veriest hero of romance–the prince of my silly girlish dreams–and I loved him madly, after the fashion of foolish, novel-reading girls, and thought the sunshine of heaven not half so bright as his smile. And he–oh, Magdalen; it was easy for him–false to the core of his deceitful heart–to take me in his arms, and make me think I was all the world to him. I listened and I trusted, and was wrapt in ecstasy–delirious with love and delight–and like plastic wax in the hands of a molder, I heard his plausible story, and I believed it as I believed the Scriptures. It must be a secret marriage, or a total separation. His parents would never consent to an open marriage, and my father would never consent to a clandestine one. SoI must fly. Separation to me was worse than death. I consented to anything–everything–rather than that.

He arranged it all that night, with the ready facility, I know now, of one well used to such deception. In two days he would start for New York–make all necessary arrangements–I was to follow, and join him there. A clergyman, a college friend of his, would perform the ceremony within an hour of my arrival, and then no more partings from his darling Laura in this lower world. Oh, never did Satan, in tempting Eve, paint the forbidden fruit in more dazzling colors than did my tempter in alluring me.

Magdalen, I consented. I left my home–my father–all that was dear to me in this world, for my lover.

I reached New York. He was there as I left the cars, impatiently awaiting me, for he loved me then, with a fierce, impetuous love–too burning to last. And he kept his promise–within the hour a marriage ceremony took place. A clergyman, white-haired and venerable, married us at the hotel, without witnesses, and immediately departed. I had no doubts of its validity–no thought of any horrible fraud. I was his wife, or death by torture would not have kept me by his side one moment, dearly as I loved him.

We lived in the hotel, quiet and retired, and I was unutterably happy, unutterably blessed. There was but one drawback to my perfect joy–he would not let me write home. And that refusal was the forerunner–the first of the misery that was to come. It came soon–very soon–bitter and heavy. Indifference began–coldness, neglect, cruelty. He left me alone, day after day, night after night. When he did return it was always brutally drunk, and in drunkenness the truth came out. The man I had married was a professed gambler.

After that bitter blow the others followed fast. Coldness and cruelty turned to loathing and hate. I was a nuisance and a burden to him. He wished he had never seen me; he was a fool for encumbering himself with a white-faced, pitiful, whimpering cry-baby. He took me from the hotel and placed me in a shabby boarding-house, reeking with foul smells and loathing sights; he swore at me when he came home reeling, beastly drunk, and often, often Magdalen, maddened with liquor and losses, he struck me. It was after that Willie came. They met and Maurice obtained his old ascendency over Willie’s weak mind. He could be so agreeable, so delightful, so fascinating, when he chose. He brought Willie home, apologizing in his laughing way for our Bohemian lodgings, and, knowing well I would never betray him. God knows I tried to save Willie. I warned him. I did what I could, but it was all in vain. In a few months he was in a felon’s cell, for forgery. It was through an anonymous letter the news reached me first, written in a man’s hand, very brief, but full of appalling facts. Maurice Langley was the most worthless of all worthless scoundrels, false and corrupt to the core of his heart. His name was not Langley; that name was as false as the dyed hair and mustache he wore to disguise himself. I was not his wife–that ceremony in the hotel was the most contemptible of shams; he had a bona-fide wife living before he ever saw me, and living still–deserted. I had been fooled from the first to last. If I doubted the charges, let me show the letter to Langley, and let him disprove them if he dare.

I did not doubt. Conviction, strong as death, seized upon me from the first. I was so stunned by repeated blows that I sat in a sort of numb despair, hardly conscious that I suffered. A horrible stupor held me–I sat without a tear or groan, waiting for my betrayer to come.

He came some time before midnight, drunk as usual, reeling into the room, singing a vulgar song. I rose up and put the letter in his hand, without saying a word. He read it through and burst out with an oath: That scoundrel, Burns, I always knew he would peach! Well, my girl, it’s all true, and now what are you going to do about it?

I stood there before him and looked him straight in the face until he quailed. I never spoke a word. I went over to the bed where my shawl and bonnet lay and put them on.

Where are you going? he said.

I am going home.

I don’t know what there was in my face that awed and sobered him. I dare say he thought me mad. He kept aloof, very pale, watching me.

It’s the middle of the night, Laura, he said, don’t go. Wait until morning.

I heard him, as we hear people talking in a dream. Inever heeded–I opened the door and walked out into a blind, black night, as wretched a creature as ever trod the pave.

I wandered about until morning. I think I was light-headed. There was a mad, reckless longing in my half-crazed brain to go home–to fall at my father’s feet, to sob out my sin and die. How I got to the station, how I knew enough to take my ticket and start on my journey, I cannot tell. It is all confused and bewildering. The first distinct impression I had was of being face to face with Rachel, and hearing her say my father was dead.

I have no more to tell–my story and my life are done.

You will think as pityingly and as forgivingly of me as you can, and if my child lives you will take its dead mother’s place. Never let its father look on it if you can prevent it–he is my murderer–your father’s–Willie’s. I cannot forgive him–I cannot! I am dying and I cannot.

Farewell, my sister; may your life be as happy as mine has been miserable. I leave this record in justice to myself. Don’t hate poor Laura’s memory when she is gone.

There the letter ended. Magdalen looked up, whiter than snow–whiter than death. The twilight had fallen, the stars swung silver-white, the young moon shimmered on the edge of an opal-tinted sky, and the evening wind sighed forlornly among the melancholy firs. The girl dropped the letter, fell on her knees by her sister’s grave, and, clasping her hands, held up her pale face to the starry sky.

Hear me, oh God! she cried, hear the vow of a desolate orphan–of a blighted and ruined life! From this hour I swear to devote myself to the discovery of my sister’s murderer–to the avenging of my sister’s wrongs. Thou who hast said, ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a life,’ hear me, and help me to keep my vow!

She dropped down, her colorless, rigid face, lying on Laura’s grave as if waiting some response to her wild appeal. But no sound responded–only the dreary wailing of the cold October wind over the lonely graves.

CHAPTER III

MR. GEORGE BARSTONE

The cloudless sunshine of a June morning, streaming through the hotel windows, made squares of luminous glory on the gaudy Brussels carpet, and shone and scintillated on the china and silver of a freshly laid breakfast table. A white-aproned waiter had just borne in the steaming coffee and steak and rolls, and now stood anxiously awaiting the arrival of the gentleman who was to demolish these edibles before they grew cold. The early mail had just arrived, and, piled beside the hot plates, were about twenty letters in white envelopes, and in dainty–more or less–female hands. The Herald, all damp, and smelling very strong of printer’s ink, lay beside them.

Good morning, William, said Mr. Barstone. Nice sort of day, isn’t it? Hey! The mail got in, and half a bushel of notes for me! All from ladies, William–every one from ladies, bless their precious little hearts! Pour out the coffee like a good fellow, and then go.

William obeyed, whipped the silver covers off the steak and eggs, and took his departure, leaving Mr. Barstone to eat and read at his leisure.

Mr. Barstone seated himself at the table, tumbling over the pile of letters, shook his head reflectively as he counted twenty, buttered his first roll and unfolded the moist newspaper.

He was a big man–this Mr. George Barstone–six feet, if an inch, with broad shoulders, fair hair, blue eyes and a good-looking, good-humored face.

Very leisurely he ate and read, swallowing the horrid murders, and robberies, and awful accidents, with his coffee and underdone steak. By and by he turned to the advertisements and glanced down the long columns of wants. At one he suddenly paused.

WANTED–A Governess. Must be under twenty-five, of attractive appearance, willing to reside in the country,and proficient in music, drawing and French. Terms liberal. Address G. B., Herald Office.

Mr. Barstone perused this advertisement with extraordinary relish, considering how often he had read it before. Then he flung down the papers and turned to the letters with a look of commiseration.

Poor little things! he said, tossing them over; twenty to-day, and eighteen yesterday; all under twenty-five–all attractive and all proficient in music, French and drawing. Poor little souls! I wish I could engage the whole of them, and take them to Connecticut with me, and settle them in a colony of pretty white cottages, and pension them off with husbands and dowries. But I can’t, I can only give thirty-seven my deepest compassion, and bring the thirty-eighth home with me to Golden Willows.

Mr. Barstone plunged at once into business and began tearing open the white missives. They were all more or less alike; the writers were all twenty or thereabouts, prepossessing to look at, possessed of the requisite arts and all perfectly willing to reside in the country.

The gravity of Mr. Barstone’s face, as he read these piteous appeals, was a sight to see.

Poor little soul! poor little thing! he interjected, compassionately, after each, as it fluttered down among the white drifts on the carpet. "‘How happy could I be with either were t’other dear charmer away!’ Any one