The Crime of Henry Vane: A Study with a Moral
Date: 2022-01-14T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Single men -- Fiction

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Title: The Crime of Henry Vane: A Study with a Moral

Author: Frederic Jesup Stimson

Release date: January 14, 2022 [eBook #67164]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1884

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67164

Credits: D A Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by University of California libraries)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRIME OF HENRY VANE: A STUDY WITH A MORAL ***

THE CRIME OF

HENRY VANE

A STUDY WITH A MORAL

By J. S. of Dale

Author of “Guerndale”

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

1884

Copyright, 1884,

By CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS.

Press of J. J. Little & Co.,

Nos. 10 to 20 Astor Place, New York.

THE
Crime of Henry Vane.

“——Make a fool of yourself, like Vane.”

“I am not so sure that is fair to Vane,” said John; “no one can go through what he did, and keep perfectly sound.”

“I’ll leave it to the crowd,” said the Major; “what say you, boys?”

All were unanimous. There was no excuse for a crime like Vane’s. Evidently they all knew Vane. He was damned without one dissenting voice.

“Who was Vane?” said I, “and what did he do? Which commandment did he break? He must have made merry with them all—or, rather, have kept them all to get such a judgment in this club.”

A babel of voices arose. All these men were intimate friends; and they were sitting in one of the small smoking-rooms of the Columbian Club in New York. John had just engaged himself to be married, and we had given him a dinner; or, as Pel Schuyler put it, we were “recording his mortgage.” Schuyler was a real-estate broker.

“Now, look here,” said John, “how many of you fellows know Vane personally?”

No one, apparently. There was a moment’s silence. Then the Major spoke up. “Bah!” said he, “I have heard the story these ten years.” “So have I!” chimed in several others. “My brother knew Vane in Paris,” said Pel. “I had it from Mrs. Malgam herself,” simpered Daisy Blake, fatuously.

“Well, at least, I know nothing of it,” I said; “tell it for my benefit, John.”

“Yes, yes,” cried they, “let’s hear the correct and only version according to John.”

It was that critical moment in a dinner, when the fireworks of champagne have sputtered out, and the burgundy invites to somnolence. All had lit their cigars, and felt more like listening than talking. John did not smoke.

“I will,” said he. “At that time, I was his best—I may say, his only friend.”

“And I say, still,” said the Major, “he acted like a fool and criminally. There can be no excuse for such conduct.”

John shrugged his shoulders and began. Of course, I do not mean that he told the whole story just as I have written it. He related the bare facts, with little comment and without conversations. Whether you condemned the man or excused him, John thought, his story might be understood, even if his folly were not forgiven. The crowd at the club did neither; and, perhaps, their judgment is the judgment of the world; and the world is probably right. But we may learn from folly; it is sometimes more suggestive than common sense. There is the ordinary success and there is the exceptional failure; that is pleasanter, but this is more instructive. Extreme cases fix the law.

The world is probably right; and, to those of us who are healthily adapted to our environment, the world is enough. Blessed are they who are fitted, for they shall survive. The world is enough; but the poet sang, love is enough. Shall we say, love is surplusage? The world is always right; and how virtuously the healthy world reproves what is morbid! How all the world unites in condemning him who is not fully content with itself! For such an one it cannot even spare its pity. There is a kind of personal animus in its contempt.

Let us hasten to join our little voices to swell the universal song. So John told the story—plainly and coldly, the more adversely for the lingering doubt; so we tell the story, and the doubt lessens as we state the facts, and quite vanishes as we reach the end. It is the story of a common crime, and the criminal is no friend of ours, as he was of John’s. Moreover, Schuyler called the criminal a fool.

I.

IN April, 1873, Henry Vane was sitting on the perron of a small summer house in Brittany, poking the pebbles in the driveway with his cane. He had been there for half an hour, and there was nothing in his appearance and attitude to indicate that he would not be there for half an hour more. There was one red pebble, in particular, which he had an especial desire to prod out from among the others, which were gray. But it was round and slippery, and slid about the ferruled end of his cane. After poking it some time, he desisted and held the cane in his hands in front of his knees, which, as the next step of the porch was not much lower, were as high as his chin. “C’en est fait de moi,” he muttered.

Henry Vane, though a New Yorker, had been brought up in France, and in the French language his thoughts came most readily. He had just seen, for the last time, an old friend of his—a girl, whom he had known in infancy, in childhood, in maidenhood; and whom it seemed incredible, impossible, intolerable, that he should know no more. It was upon the piazza of her uncle’s house that he was sitting; and she was to leave the next day for Switzerland.

He was of age that day, and was “his own man now.” “And hers,” he thought, bitterly. She did not love him, however; and, at his request, had just told him so.

“Décidément, c’en est fait de moi,” he muttered again, and gave the pebble a vicious dig, which sent it flying into an acacia bush that stood in a green tub by the side of the driveway.

He was twenty-one that day, and had come into his fortune. His fortune was not much—four thousand a year, left him by his grandmother and invested in government bonds. Still, twenty thousand francs made him distinctly a rentier; and twenty thousand francs seemed a good deal, shared with the girl he loved. But it seemed very little for him alone; genteel poverty in fact. He certainly could neither yacht nor race. Travelling—except en étudiant—was equally out of the question.

Vane was a flippant young fellow, with a French education; fond of the world, of which, as he then thought, he knew much. Yet the Figaro and the Bois de Boulogne and the Palais-Royal, or even the Français, did not seem to satisfy him, that day. And all for a little “Mees Anglaise!” How his friends would laugh at him! He was very young—they would say; very young for a grande passion. And then they would laugh again. But Vane felt sure that he should never get over it.

What the deuce did fellows do in his position? He felt a wild desire for adventure and excitement; but excitement and adventure were expensive; unless there happened to be a war, and you went officially. But he had not many illusions of romance in war. He knew men who had been at Woerth and Gravelotte. Then there was travel. But this, also, was expensive. Old Prunier, the Professor, had made an expedition through Soudan the year before, and it had cost him eight hundred thousand francs. Moreover, you had to be up on rocks and beetles and things, to make your trip of any use to the world. And Vane had not yet given up all idea of being of use in the world. Besides, even Prunier’s expedition had not ended in much, except a row with the Portuguese missionaries on the subject of the slave trade. These Christian slavers had met Prunier’s remonstrances with the plausible argument that it was better for the negroes to be slaves in a Christian country, and save their souls, than free on earth and damned when they died. Prunier had consequently reported a crying need for a better article of missionary in Central Africa. But Vane could not go as a missionary. He felt that his confidence in Providence, at that moment, was not hardy enough to bear transplanting into the native South African mind, through the medium of a Turanian dialect.

He might seek the land of his nativity, and make his four thousand a year, eight thousand. His father’s business, for the moment, lay in Bellefontaine. He did not in the least know where Bellefontaine was, but the name had a civilized sound. And she was going to Switzerland.

Vane must have clenched his hands at this point; for he felt a decided pricking in his left forefinger. And he observed several thorns on the stem of the rose she had given him. For she had given him a rose. That much favor had been shown him. He got into his mother’s little phaeton and drove home—with his rose. So far, his investments in life had not been successful. The account with fortune might read somewhat like this—Debtor, an English girl: to ten years’ love and an indefinite amount of devotion and sentiment. Creditor, by the English girl: one rose (with thorns). That is, if he had put the Dr. and Cr. sides right. He never could remember which was which. At all events, the returns on his investment were not large. And he, with his uncertainty about debtor and creditor, to think of competing with the practical Yankee of Bellefontaine! No; he would leave his four thousand a year where it was—a somewhat insignificant part of the national debt. Meantime, what would become of him? What should he do? He felt an idle outsider’s curiosity to know what the deuce he would do.

Of one thing he felt certain, his orbit in life would be highly eccentric. He had no raison d’être; and it is difficult to predict the direction taken by a body without raison d’être. The curve of such a comet has no equation. He could no longer view life with gravity; and it is quite impossible to calculate the orbit of a body without gravity. He might bring up anywhere from Orion to the Great Bear. Only one thing was certain—he could not, for the present, bring up in Switzerland; and yet, oddly enough, that seemed to be the only part of any possible terrestrial orbit that had an attraction. But attraction decreases as the square of the distance. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that he was now two miles from her, and loved her with his whole heart; if he were twelve thousand miles away, he would love her only one divided by the square of six thousand—only one thirty-six-millionth part as much. In other words, he would have thirty-five million nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine thirty-six millionths of his heart left—left to bestow upon the dusky beauties of the Pacific. Damn the dusky beauties of the Pacific. He would see his sister Mary. After all, she was dearer to him than the dusky beauties of the Pacific could possibly be.

When the boy arrived home, he drove to the stable, and alighting, threw the reins to a groom. He was perfectly sure that his life was broken; but a groom is a necessary adjunct of any life at all. He rolled a cigarette and strolled toward the house, still holding the rose, by the stem, between the first and second fingers of his left hand. Momentarily his thoughts had wandered from the English girl; he was still entirely busied in constructing a proper dénouement for himself. The romance of his life, he felt, was gone; but he desired that his career should be consistent with his tragic part in life. She had left him enough self-esteem for that.

So he entered the house.

II.

THE next few weeks seemed long enough to Vane; but, fortunately, we may make them short. They must be told; they were part of his life; how large a part, no one—possibly not even himself—ever knew.

When Vane entered the main door, which François, the old butler, did not open for him as usual, he saw nothing of his mother. One or two of her shawls were lying, as if hastily thrown off, on the carved oak chair in the hall. The day was cool, and the embers of the morning fire were still red in the chimneyplace. The cigarette did not satisfy him; so he pulled out a cigar, and looking for a lighter, noticed a yellow envelope near him, back downward on the floor; close by it was a thin sheet of paper. Taking this, he was about to twist it up, when he saw that it was a telegram. He opened it and read his name, and the message, “Mary is dead. Tell your mother for us. Pray, come directly. Gresham.”

When the servants came in, they found him standing by the fireplace. “Yes,” they said to him, “Madame had left for Dieppe that morning. She said nothing, but that Mr. Henry should follow her to England. François had accompanied her. Mr. Henry would have the carriage immediately. But surely Mr. Henry would dine before departing.”

No; he would go directly. Thomas must pack his portmanteau. “And, Thomas, lay out a black suit—all in black, you understand?” He would take a glass of wine and a biscuit. “And, Thomas, all letters for any one were to be forwarded to him at Sir Thomas Gresham’s, The Eyotts, Rushey, Lincolnshire. Stop; he would write the address on a card.“ So he caught the evening mail from Rennes, and the night tidal steamer from Dieppe. And the gray English fog at sunrise the next morning found him off Newhaven, still pacing the deck.

Into the cloud of London at nine; out at ten, and flying through Essex cornfields and Cambridgeshire fens. There had been heavy rains the night before, and the country was soggy and saturated, with white gleams of water over the land. The hay was swashing in the fields like seaweed. Then the great church of Ely broke the horizon, and he changed the train, finding an hour to wait. The little town was deserted; the great towers seemed to weigh it down, to compel a solemn stillness. He passed his time in the cathedral. At the end of the nave, just in front of the eastern windows, is a beautiful reredos, a marvellous assemblage of angels, saints and pinnacles. There is a central figure of Christ among the apostles which had a strange attraction for him. He must have been quite rapt in this; for the din of the noon-day bells reminded him that his train left at twelve-fourteen.

At Rushey Station the carriage met him from the Eyotts, with Sir Henry’s footmen in mourning. The Greshams were all very fond of Mary. He saw his mother as soon as he got to the house; but nothing was said between them for a long time. “Mary is to be buried here,” she began, finally. “I think it better; better than any place out of America.” Then, after a pause: “I have not dared to telegraph your father. I could not bear to have him know, all alone. He has not been well lately, I know; and is anxious about his business. I wrote him that Mary was ill, and begged him to come to France.”

The Greshams were very kind, and all was done that could be done. Clara Gresham seemed overcome with grief; she had loved Mary so dearly, and her visit was to have been such a happy one. She was a quiet, rather plain girl, but Vane found he could talk more easily with her than with any one else. His mother and he said very little when they were together.

One morning, at the breakfast table, Vane got a letter from America. Some presentiment made him conceal it from his mother, and not open it until he was alone. It was written in a tremulous hand, unlike his father’s, and told him they had lost everything. His father’s property, though large, was all involved in railways; and some panic had intervened at a critical moment and all had been swept away. “My poor boy,” the letter went on, “even your own little fortune is gone. Will you forgive me? You can bear it, I know, for you are young, and can make your own way; and your mother has loved me long enough to live with me these few last years in poverty; but when I think of Mary’s future, so different from what I had hoped, it breaks my heart. You must give up the lease of Monrepos and come to America directly.”

His mother divined bad news, immediately, and followed him, when he left the room; but she seemed almost happy to hear it was only their fortune they had lost, and not her husband. Her one idea was to get back to him in America; but, to do that they must first return to France. Their departure from the Greshams was hasty, and in the afternoon they were on their way to Brittany. His mother seemed very much broken; and he even feared for her mind at times. It was necessary to interrupt the journey at London and Dover; and it was with a feeling of relief that he found himself finally within the gates of home.

But Vane’s life was to begin with a crushing succession of sorrows. Mrs. Vane was impatient and nervous; and went hastily into the house while he turned to give some directions about the luggage. As he stood talking to the coachman, he heard a faint cry in the hall. He went quickly in, and found his mother fainting, another fatal yellow envelope beside her. It was a telegram from one of his father’s friends in New York, announcing his sudden death in that city.

It was with great difficulty that Mrs. Vane was brought back to consciousness at all; and when she revived, she was delirious. Vane knew nothing whatever about illness; but he carried her up-stairs himself and then drove to Rennes for another doctor, leaving the local practitioners in charge. It seemed so strange to be all alone, to have charge of the family affairs, to have no one to consult with or rely upon. But Mary, too, was dead.

So he drove into Rennes and brought a respectable old doctor, who talked gracefully about nothings, and looked at him curiously and not unkindly over his spectacles. He heard in a few words the story of his mother’s illness, but seemed more interested in Vane himself. “Ce beau jeune homme,” he said, tapping him playfully on the arm; “il ne faut pas gâter tout ça!” The young man somewhat impatiently shook him off and assured him that he was well. Arriving at the château, Dr. Kérouec went at once to the sick-room, but stayed there barely five minutes.

Yes, one could save her life; he had seen that directly. But, for the rest, he must get her at once to some place of security where she might have treatment—it was her only chance. But Vane said No to this; not until they were sure.

The next day she had recovered her strength, but was violently insane. They lived in the château a month and there was no change. Then the servants talked of going, and letters came from America telling Vane how complete his father’s ruin had been. He had been buried by his friends in New York, as Vane had directed by telegraph. Vane could no longer keep the château or even pay the household expenses. He must go to America to see what he could save of his father’s estate.

At the end of the month several physicians, most skilled in mental disorders, had a consultation on his mother’s case. The decision was unanimous—she was incurable. Could she live? Yes, with proper care, for years. Dr. Kérouec had a personal friend who made a specialty of these cases and took charge of only two or three patients at a time. Was this her only chance of getting well? Yes: if no chance could be called a chance. It was not an ordinary maison de santé, and here she would have the best of treatment, but it was expensive—fifteen hundred francs a month. Could she bear the journey to America? Never. Vane thanked the doctors and dismissed them all, except Dr. Kérouec.

That night, for many hours, the young man paced the courtyard under his mother’s window. At ten in the morning he asked to see the doctor and found him breakfasting.

“I have decided,” he said briefly. Dr. Kérouec extended his hand: “Ce brave jeune homme!” The next evening his mother was safely installed in the pretty little house near Rennes, where already Dr. Kérouec and his friend had privately made preparations. “And, my boy,” said Dr. Kérouec (who was rich and knew all the circumstances by this time), “it is customary to pay in advance only when my friend does not know ses gens. I have told him that you will pay at the end of the year.” Vane’s voice faltered as he thanked the doctor, but he produced a bank note for five thousand francs and insisted upon leaving it then.

That night Dr. Kérouec saw Vane safely on board the St. Malo packet. “I will care for her, my son,” he said, with a parting pressure of the hand. “Ce brave jeune homme,” he muttered, as he walked ashore and up the little Norman street, mopping his bald head (for it was a hot June evening) with a large red silk handkerchief.

III.

VANE had six hundred francs left; and, taking the Holyhead mail, the next evening he was on board the City of Richmond at Queenstown as a steerage passenger. He had been troubled with no further thoughts of adventure in the Soudan; and was quite indifferent as to his own dénouement. He spent a great deal of the time at sea walking on the deck; as a steerage passenger he was allowed to walk aft as far as the foremast. The other steerage passengers looked upon him as an intellectual young gentleman; probably a scholar in reduced circumstances.

Eighteen thousand francs a year, Vane was thinking; this, at least, he must have, for his mother could not be sent elsewhere. Gold was then at a premium, and this sum meant four thousand a year in America. Just the insignificant fortune he had lost; but could his labor be worth so much? This problem had filled his mind, and kept his temper sane. One who has to earn his bread has little time to sigh for things less possible of attainment. The natural animal motive atones for any want of others; no one is a pessimist who has to work for his living. The young man smiled a little at the thought that he, too, was going to America to seek his fortune—not to improve his future, but to amend what remained of the past. This one obvious, clear duty was before him then. Afterwards, he might see what the world had left for him.

One day about sunset he was sitting on the deck, reading a favorite book of his—an old Florentine edition of Petrarca. As he turned the leaves, a broken rose fell from them. It was a book which they—the English girl and he—had often read together; and, having no Bible (for, like all Frenchmen and many young men, he was rather a skeptic in matters of religion), he had thrown her rose hastily between the leaves. He was surprised a little, now, at his own want of sentiment. But those times already seemed so far off! He looked at the flower a moment; then picked it up, and dropped it in the sea. The leaves scattered as it fell, and were soon lost in the broad wake of the steamer.

Vane landed in New York among five hundred other steerage passengers. Of course the papers did not take the trouble to report the coming of so insignificant a person; nor did he call upon any of his social acquaintances. His first visit was to his father’s grave; then he went to see, at their down-town offices, such of his father’s business friends and correspondents as he knew by name. He had written Mr. Peyton—the one from whom the news had come—to suspend all decisive steps until he came. Mr. Peyton—as indeed were all who had known his father—was very kind; and told him the first thing to do was to get appointed administrator of his father’s estate. This being done, he called a meeting of his father’s creditors. Mr. Peyton had advised him to offer a settlement of sixty cents on the dollar; but he did not accept this suggestion. He told the creditors of Mr. Peyton’s advice, and added that he could probably pay at least seventy cents. But, he continued, his desire was to pay in full. His only hope of so doing was to be allowed to hold his father’s investments for a time, manage them judiciously, and avoid forced sales. Would they give him three years?

They were few in number, all capitalists, and co-operators with his father; and they were pleased with something in the young man’s manner. All except one could easily spare the money; and to him Vane, with the consent of the other creditors, gave his dividend of seventy per cent., and received his acquittances in full. And that night the other creditors, at a directors’ dinner, agreed that, while they had done a very foolish thing, they were anxious to see what young Vane would make of it.

Young Vane took two small rooms in the oldest house of a down-town street, for which he paid two dollars a week. And that autumn, Vane, who a few months before had barely admitted that the name Bellefontaine had a civilized sound, might have been seen riding on the cow-catcher of a locomotive in Northern Wisconsin, and estimating the probable earnings from freight when the forests about him were cut. When he got his father’s affairs into such shape that they could be managed from New York, he procured a clerkship in a banking-house in that city at six hundred dollars salary. And then for a year, his life was monotonous routine without a day’s rest. He rose at seven, prepared his own breakfast of bread and fruit, and was at the bank before nine. He lunched on a sandwich; left the bank at five, and walked to the Park and back. At seven he dined on a steak and a pint of ale. And such of his evenings as were not occupied with the care of his father’s estate, this practical young man of business gave, not to newspapers and stock reports, but to mediæval history and Italian poetry. It was his safety valve. He sometimes thought of writing a book on the social and political history of the Florentine republic. He steadily refused all invitations of his capitalist friends to dinner or other entertainments. He could now live with two suits of clothes, and, to accept their invitations, he would need three; moreover, he secretly feared that he could not bear his present mode of life if he had even a glimpse of any other. Only while alone could he forget that he was alone in the world. John, who was in the same banking-house, was the only man he knew; and many an evening John left a dinner, or was late at a party, that he might sit for an hour in the little back room in Washington Place.

At the end of the first year Vane took a week’s vacation, walking in the Catskills. Every week he had a letter from Rennes; and frequently one from Dr. Kérouec, telling him of no change in his mother’s condition. When he returned from his vacation, he was called into the counting-room of the senior partner, and given a check for four hundred dollars in addition to his first year’s salary of six hundred; and, moreover, was promoted to a position of three thousand a year salary. That first year, Vane had spent three hundred and eighty dollars in board and lodging, and eighty more in pocket money. He had bought no clothing, having brought all he needed from France. His travelling expenses had been large, but these he had charged to the account of his father’s estate. This left him five hundred and forty dollars to the good.

Vane then went to Mr. Peyton and borrowed three thousand dollars on his own security. This three thousand he sent to Dr. Kérouec; and five hundred dollars of his earnings he invested in a life-assurance policy payable to Dr. Kérouec as trustee for his mother. He thus had forty dollars in his pocket at the beginning of his second year.

By this time some of his father’s railways were beginning to get out of shallow water. Vane watched them carefully; and by judicious management and successful sales, he was able, on the first of August, eighteen hundred and seventy-six, the end of the three years allowed him, to pay his father’s creditors their claims in full—four hundred and forty-seven thousand dollars, with interest for three years at six per cent. And over and above this, after paying Mr. Peyton, he had sixteen thousand dollars, which he might call his own. Early in August he sailed for Brittany, and spent a week with Dr. Kérouec at Rennes.

His mother’s hair was now white; she was quiet, but still hopelessly insane, nor did she even recognize him.

Vane was back again on the first of September. When he presented himself at the bank, he was offered a responsible position, and a salary of six thousand dollars a year, with a hint of partnership in the near future. He now removed to lodgings in Eighteenth Street; and on going home that night, for the first time in two years he burst into a fit of crying. This turn of hysterics was the prelude to a low fever, of which he lay five weeks ill.

IV.

JOHN HAVILAND was with him a great deal of this time, and, on his recovery, took him severely to task for the life he had been leading. For three years he had been a mere machine—a blind, passionless, purposeful energy. A man, and a young man, could not live like that. What pleasure had he taken in all that time? And a young man, unless he has attained happiness, cannot live entirely without pleasure, even if it be true that he should not seek for it. And Haviland knew enough of Vane’s life to feel assured that there had not hitherto been much happiness. Moreover, Vane was a man of the world, and had been out of it for three years. It was unnatural. He should see something of the people of his own country. His mother was well; and would probably be the same for years. And he had been nearly three years in mourning. “Now,” John concluded, “I wish you to come to a dinner at our house on Friday.”

Vane smiled, and looked at his threadbare black suit—one of the original black suits—which had seen much service since he brought it over from France. But he pleasantly accepted John’s invitation, and forthwith visited his tailor. That afternoon, in the park, as he turned to come home from his walk, and saw the walls and spires of his own city harshly outlined before the sunset, he realized for the first time that he was a stranger in a strange land. For the first time, as he walked down Fifth Avenue, between the level, high wall of house fronts, with their regular squares of lighted windows, he caught himself wondering what was behind these windows. Now and then he saw a feminine silhouette on the white window-shades; in some houses, even, he could see into a lower room; there were usually pictures on the walls and often books, or bindings, on the shelves; there was frequently an old gentleman by the fireside, and always a young girl or two. It was piquant to catch these glimpses of the domestic hearth from the street; he remembered how impossible such visions were in the Faubourg, among the old hotels between court and garden.

As he thought of the newly discovered country he was soon to enter, so strange to him, he felt that he, also, was strange to himself. He tried to bring back his old nature of the boulevards, Longchamp and Trouville; but it seemed to him childish and obsolete; showy and senseless, like a pasteboard suit of stage armor. He did not regret it. He was a man and an American; men were earnest, life in America was earnest. He knew little of his own city; but he had read the current novels; and he thought that he had seen enough to know that the every-day life in America was tangible, material, and the life of society what it should be, a gay leisure, a surface of pleasure and rest. Now, in Paris it was the every-day life that was trivial; the theatres were filled with vaudevilles; but the tragedies were everywhere, off the stage. It was well, the young man felt, that he was an American; his life had begun too sternly for a more artificial state of society; he lacked more than other people, and he demanded more from the world.

So the Friday night in question found him arrayed in the normal evening costume of modern times. It wore somewhat awkwardly and strangely at first; and one or two little minutiæ of dress he did not know at all; as, whether gentlemen in America would wear gold studs, and how they tied their cravats. A waiter met him in the hall holding a plate, on which were several little envelopes, one of which bore his name. I suppose, thought he, in a country where there is no precedence, but much formality, this indicates whom we are to take in to dinner. He opened his envelope and found within a card, and written in a feminine hand Miss Baby Thomas. What an intolerable name!

Coming above into the reception room, his first impressions were decidedly favorable. John’s mother was a comely woman of that comfortable domestic sort known as motherly; she raised one’s opinion of human nature even by the way in which she sat down. The prevailing tone seemed refined, Vane thought. No more bad taste was visible than is unavoidable in a country where the head of a family dies in a finer house than the one he was born in. The women were charming in dress, and face and figure; but their voices were disagreeable, and they seemed to him a little brusque. In fact, the men, though rather awkward, seemed to have more social importance, if not better breeding.

So far had he progressed in his studies, when a voice over his shoulder said, “Miss Thomas—Mr. Vane.” Inferring that he was being presented, he turned quickly about, bowing as he did so. The young lady did not wait for him to begin, but at once rattled off a number of questions about himself and his foreign life. As the most of these she answered herself with an “I suppose,” or a “but of course,” Vane had leisure to observe her while she talked. She was pretty; admirably, sweetly pretty; there was no doubt of that; as pretty as masses of dead-black hair and eyes of intense gentian blue could make her. She had a lovely neck and hands; and a smile which seemed placed there with a divine foreknowledge of kisses. It was at once infantine, arch and gentle; and then there was a pretty little toss of the head and a shrug of the white, young shoulders. Vane looked at her curiously, a little condescendingly perhaps, as the first specimen of the natives he had seen. She did not seem to mind his looking at her. If a French girl had so calmly borne his glance, there would have been a little of the coquette in hers. But, after all, thought Vane,—this was charming; more ideal, more intelligent, sweeter than Paris—but it was not unlike Paris. The dress was certainly Parisian. She was better dressed than young ladies are in Paris. Her people must be very rich. Yet, he was disappointed. She was not American enough. She would have been quite in his mood of five years gone by. She was not like English girls; and he had hoped American girls were like them.

Vane had just finished this process of mentally ticketing her off, when she grew silent. The first quick rush of her conversation was gone. She seemed to be getting her breath and waiting for him. He did not quite know how to begin. This young lady reminded him of a glass of champagne. When you first pour it out, there is a froth and sparkle; then a stillness comes; if you wish a fresh volume of sparkles, you must drop something into it. A piece of sugar is best. Vane’s French breeding stood him in good stead: he began with a compliment.

After the dinner, the nine ladies disappeared from the room; and the nine men grouped themselves at one end of the table and smoked cigars over the sweetmeats. When the room was well filled with tobacco-smoke, they threw open the doors, and returned to the drawing-room. The ladies were grouped about, picturesquely, drinking tea; and the air was delicate with their presence. As the body of men moved in, it seemed a little like an incursion of the Huns into Italy.

The party kept together but a few moments more. Most of the men were sleepy; little was said by the women. It was as if there were nothing to talk about, or as if the men had eaten too much; but they had eaten very little. Vane was relieved when they got out of doors.

John walked back to his lodgings with him. The two young men found no lack of things to talk about. Haviland took still another cigar. “What did you think of the dinner?” said he finally. “I mean, the people?”

“I thought it was very pleasant,” said Vane, eluding the second form of the question. But Haviland recurred to it.

“I mean the people. Miss Thomas, for instance.”

“Miss Thomas, for instance,” said the stranger. “I think,” he continued, recalling to mind his mental label, “she is sweet-tempered, innocent, ambitious, and shallow.” Vane had formerly prided himself on some acquaintance with women of the world.

John laughed. “Perhaps you are right,” he said. “But she will amuse you, and wake you up.” It seemed as if he were remembering something; then he laughed again. “You do not do her justice yet. She is one of the most entertaining and, in an innocent little way, exciting girls I know. I put her next you for that purpose.”

“Who is her father?”

“Oh, a stockbroker down-town. No one in particular. The family would not interest you.”

“None of the mammas were here to-night?”

“Dear me, no,” answered John. “Why do you ask?”

“I should like to see some of them; that is all.”

V.

AT this time Vane was not in the habit of thinking about women. He had found life particularly serious, and girls were not serious. Somewhat fatuously, perhaps, he fancied no woman under thirty could either understand him, or arouse his own interest. And most of the women over thirty were married. He understood that in America any intimacy with married women was out of the question; married women were quite given up to domestic duties, and kept out of society.

But Vane had certain theories of his own as to social observances, and he thought it his duty, after taking Miss Thomas in to dinner, to call upon her. He performed this duty (which afterwards became a pleasure) upon the following afternoon. He found her in a somewhat dingy house on East Fifteenth Street, but, though the setting was dull and commonplace, herself was even prettier than he remembered her, and simply and charmingly dressed. Vane was no amateur of bric-à-brac; he had no auctioneer’s eye, and, if a room was in perfect taste, did not commonly notice it at all; but glaring faults would force themselves upon him, and he could not help observing that, with the exception of the daughter’s dress, the household showed no evidence of knowledge of what is good in literature, art, or taste.

Except Miss Thomas. Always except Miss Thomas herself. She received him with much grace of manner, but seemed to have very little to say. Vane found that he had to talk largely against time; and this rather disappointed him at first. At first, but afterwards he decided that he liked this still mood best. There was no dimple and sparkle, but it was quiet and companionable. She is not like “a young lady,” Vane thought; still less like a French young lady. She is neither ingénue nor formée; she is young, bright, a good fellow. One might play Paul to her Francesca without a dénouement. How could he have thought her ill-trained? Though she had evidently thought little, read less, and been taught nothing at all, she had a sweet natural elegance of her own. Vane found time to observe all this between his sentences. They were not very well connected.

Was he going to Mrs. Roster’s ball? she had asked.—No, he thought not. He did not know her.—He had better go. Every one would be there.

“Then I fear I am no one,” said Vane. “I am not even invited.” He was sorry to fancy that her interest in him flagged a little after this. She had met him at a good house, but, after all, he might be a mere protégé of John Haviland’s. Mr. Haviland was always picking up queer people. A moment after this Vane took his leave.

Why should he not go to Mrs. Roster’s? he said to himself. He could not always be brooding on the addled eggs of the past. After all, the world was all that was left him, and in the world the dance still went on merrily, and maidens’ eyes were bright; leaves still were green, and the foam of the sea as white as ever, and wine still sparkled in the glass. He said this to himself with a somewhat sceptical grin, for, like most Frenchmen with whom he had lived, he took little pleasure in drinking. A Frenchman drinks to go to the devil: he rarely goes to the devil because he drinks. Yet he was, or at all events he had been, fond of society. He had liked light and gay faces, and bright conversation, and heartlessness—if there must be heartlessness—masked under suave manners and intellectual sympathy. Out of society the heartlessness was just as real, he had used to think, only ruder; there is at least as much snobbishness, and it is more offensively vulgar. He could not stay always out from all society. He must find something to pull him back into the world; he must get some grip of life. Hitherto his only foothold had been his clear necessity of making eighteen thousand francs a year to send to his mother.

He could probably have persuaded himself with much less reasoning if he had not had a secret inclination to go; but, as it was, he reasoned himself into it, and thought that he thought it was a bore. So he went to Mrs. Roster’s ball. Of course he admired the beauty of American women; the beauty of American women is like the Hudson River; one is bound to prefer it to the Rhine. He thought the party was very pretty and the dancing beautifully done, and, moreover, he made the acquaintance of several young ladies of quite a different type than Miss Thomas’s. They had plenty of breeding and intelligence, and talked the latest slang of culture to perfection, and were evidently of the great world, if they had not quite so much charm as she. Still none of these, as yet, were essentially American, or even very deeply English, though they dabbled in it.

Miss Thomas herself, for some reason unknown to Vane, did not receive quite so much attention as he had fancied that she would. It was not her fault, for she was charmingly dressed and never looked prettier.

As he was ready to leave he met her, for the first time, coming down the stairs in wraps and wanting her carriage.

“You have not spoken to me the whole evening,” said she softly, as she took his arm.

“I was afraid to, mademoiselle,” said Vane, half jocosely.

“Come to-morrow,” she whispered seriously. “It is my day for receiving, and I shall be so glad to see you.” Vane bowed his thanks, and the next moments were occupied in conveying herself and skirts safely into the coupé. As he was about to shut the door she extended her hand frankly: “You will come, won’t you?” Vane was a little puzzled; he took her hand awkwardly, and muttered something about being only too delighted. He had no experience whatever of American women, much less American girls. Why should she so particularly wish to see him? He called the next day, expecting to learn, but in that he was doomed to disappointment. Apparently Miss Thomas, if she had any reason, had forgotten it; she had very little to say, and the call was quite conventional and commonplace. “Bah!” he thought, as he walked home. “Here I have wasted half an afternoon over this girl simply because she asked me. Doubtless she herself had nothing better to do than waste it over me.” And perhaps he added secretly that his life was something more serious than hers, and, at all events, he had no mind for light flirtation.

VI.

NEVERTHELESS, some curious chance made him see a good deal of Miss Thomas. He was very apt to sit next her at dinner, even if he did not take her in. And whatever she might be, she certainly was not silly. She said very little, it is true; but it occurred to Vane one day that what she did say never placed her in a false or foolish position. Nor had he ever made a remark which she did not fully understand, in its full bearing and implication. Sometimes she affected—particularly if its nature was complimentary—to be wholly unconscious of its meaning; sometimes she would even ask an explanation. But a moment after, she was very apt to say or do some little thing which showed that she had understood it perfectly. Vane, who, in his flippant moods, was rather an adept at conversational fencing, and had flattered himself that very careful ground was quite unnecessary with Miss Thomas, gradually put more attention into his guard and more care in his attack. And when he saw, to continue his own metaphor, that his simple thrusts in quarte and tierce were easily parried and sometimes returned, he began to honor his adversary with a more elaborate attack. But, as he one day acknowledged to himself, though she had rarely touched him, yet he was not sure that he had ever got fairly under her own guard. Altogether, the more he saw of Miss Thomas, the more she interested him; and after the serious struggles of the day, he quite enjoyed his little playful evening encounters with so charming a feminine adversary. For he began to admit to himself that she was charming—there was no doubt of that. And meantime (so he fancied) the intercourse with her happy, simple nature was having a beneficial influence on his own.

For the past three years his attitude had been one of stern courage, of self-renunciation. But, after all, why should even he be always shut out from the spring? Flowers still bloomed in the world, summer followed winter, and this pretty little butterfly that fluttered near him might, after all, bring him healthier thoughts from her own air than he found in his morbid life. What a sharp inquisitor is one’s own self! What a cross-examiner of hidden motive! And what a still sharper witness is that self under inquisition! Vane never took his young friend seriously; and felt a need of excusing himself for trifling, as he thought.

John suddenly asked him, one day, what he thought of Miss Thomas now, and whether he had changed his views at all. “I was very much struck with your first diagnosis,” he said. “At a moment’s study, you gave the popular opinion of her; that she was gay, shallow, good-humored, and ambitious—and you might have added clever, rather than innocent.”

Vane was a little displeased.

“I think that I and the world were wrong,” said he. “She is not shallow, but she is humble rather than vain; as for ambition, she is perhaps too much without it; and I should not be surprised if somewhere about her pretty little self she had a true woman’s heart, which she is not yet conscious of.”

John laughed. “Look out, old man,” said he; “only a poet is allowed to fall in love with his own creation. Never say I have not given you fair warning. Ten Eyck was very attentive to her at one time; and the world believed that she wanted to marry him. But he was appointed chargé d’affaires at London; and left her without bringing matters to an issue. Since then, when he has been back in New York once or twice, he has entirely dropped her.”

“And do you mean to say that she still cares for him after that?”

“So the world thinks; and the world is apt to be right in such matters.”

“Bah!” said Vane. “No woman could care for a man who had once led her to believe he loved her, and left her.”

“Humph!” answered John. “That may be true of woman in the abstract; but I am not sure of its truth in this longitude. It is easier to judge woman in general than a New York girl in particular.”

“At all events,” said Vane, “I give her full leave to try her skill on me, skilful as you say she is. Indeed, if you think she is fair game for what you call a flirtation, you have removed my only scruples.”

“Very well, old boy—go in. But Miss Thomas once told another girl that she could understand any man in two days’ acquaintance. Don’t go in too deep.”

“Nonsense!” thought Vane when John had left. “I flatter myself I am beyond her hurting. It is pleasant enough to have her as a friend. I wish I could wish to marry her.” And he called to his mind Brittany and that last rose. “But I am sorry if she really can still care for that man. Ten Eyck was his name? I should be sorry to like her less. How strange these American women are! Now, in France—Bah!” he broke off, “it can’t be true; and, after all, what do I care if it is?”

Vane liked her very much, and thought her very much underrated by the world; and the same afternoon, by way of vindication, he went to her house and made a long call, tête-à-tête. He had fallen into an easy companionship with her, which made her society a delightful rest and respite from the earnest stress and strain of his life, of any man’s life. They were beginning to have numerous little confidences as to people and things; views shared by them only, which gave them little private topics of conversation, nooks of thought, where they met. Thus Vane could quite shut out a third party from the conversation, and keep Miss Thomas to himself. Her cultivation and taste surprised him more and more as he knew her. This pretty little New York girl, naturally half-spoiled and petted, brought up in a particularly bourgeois household, never having been out of it and New York, had yet a range of mind and appreciation quite equal to anything he could bring her in books or in conversation. The people about her seemed totally different—different in views, in taste, in appearance, in manner. Yet she never seemed discontented at home—a common fault of children in a country where they improve upon their parents. She moved among them modestly and lovingly, like a princess unconscious of her royalty. All this thought Vane, and marvelled.

He found that even his peculiar tastes were shared. It has been mentioned that this successful young business man had a secret taste for Italian poetry. This he had been used to indulge alone; but on his mentioning it, she spoke with enthusiasm of the sweet old mediæval terza rima. Having little opinion of women’s power of purely ideal enjoyment, he had at first doubted the sincerity of this taste. Still, he brought around some old verses one day; and soon it became his habit, instead of reading alone, to pass an evening or two in a week reading with her. And so during the winter, with double the pleasure he had ever known before, they went through the familiar pages of Ariosto, Tasso and Dante. The fifth canto of the Inferno remained, however, her favorite; and with the light of her eyes upon the text Vane made a much better translation than Byron or Cary ever dreamed. She was never tired of hearing the passage beginning “Siede la terra dove nata fui.” And much practice in translation makes perfect.

Thus, thanks to Miss Thomas and a little sight of the lighter rim of life, Vane passed a winter which, if not happy, was at least less bitter than he had known for years. In the natural course of events, society pronounced him attentive to Miss Thomas; but Vane cared little for that. His character was not of the mould which cares what the world says. He did not believe that her life was very happy, either; and he thought they were both the better for their friendship. The more he saw of her, the less he doubted that she had at one time cared for some one, Ten Eyck or another; though, of course, for him she would never care again. After all, she was his superior; she had kept her sweet self above her sorrow, he had not. How he had misinterpreted her that first evening! Now he saw she was a woman, in all the glory of her womanhood, strong, gentle, and true.

Vane went back to Brittany in the June of the summer following. One of his last calls was upon Miss Thomas, and she chided him with not making it the very last. However, the call lasted three hours. Twenty times Vane rose to go, and each time was detained by some pretext or another of Miss Thomas. There is a sweet pleading manner of urging a wish, even a selfish one, that makes you feel as if you were doing yourself a favor in gratifying it. Miss Thomas had this manner, which few men, particularly strong men, can resist. Vane always yielded. He would as soon have thought of putting a pet canary through the manual of arms as of resisting it. In this way Vane’s visit was prolonged, and when he went home he admitted to himself that it had been a very charming one. He thought she was a lovely woman, and wished some nice fellow would marry her. What a gentle, sunny nature she had! And what a lovely type of the best American women, so different both from the French and English, so natural, so pure, and yet so bright and charming. “At least,” thought Vane, “if I ever go back to France to live I shall have seen some things wholly worthy of admiration in my own country.” He was sorry if she really cared (as she had seemed to) that he had called upon her two days before his departure. She had been very kind to him that winter, and it certainly would have been more empressé to have called upon her last. Vane stopped on his way to Jersey City the morning of the steamer’s sailing, and procured a superb mass of roses. These he sent to Miss Thomas with his card: “From her sincere friend.” It was the last thing he did in America.

VII.

VANE stayed with old Dr. Kérouec in Rennes, and found the good physician kinder than ever. He always called Vane “my son” now, and he had to submit to numerous embraces, a proceeding he did not like, for in his manners Vane had that clumsiness in expressing anything emotional, that Gothic phlegm, about which Saxons grow vainglorious, and for which Celts detest them.

Every day Vane walked in the garden with his mother—a painful duty, for she never remembered him. Her dementia was quite harmless now, and she sometimes spoke to Vane of himself, not knowing him, but never mentioned his father. Curiously enough her talk was much of Mary, and of the English girl who had been the object of his boyish affections. Vane heard casually of her marriage that summer, and was more surprised than pleased to find how little the news affected him.

Once in a while, however, he caught himself wondering what Miss Thomas was doing; and a week after his arrival he received a note from her to thank him for the flowers he had sent. She also said that they were at some place in Pennsylvania for the summer, far from the madding crowd, but she found the place very stupid and the people inane. There was nothing to do there. The men were all young Philadelphians, she wrote, and generally uninteresting. Vane was glad to get the note, and of course never thought of replying.

At this time Vane was a handsome, erect fellow, with a large aquiline nose, and heavy eyebrows shading quiet eyes. Most of the people knew him well as the doctor’s protégé. One day the good old doctor came to him with an air of much mysterious importance. He passed Vane’s arm through his, and led him to his favorite walk up and down the garden. “My son,” he began, tapping him on the shoulder, and beginning in a way he evidently thought to be diplomatic, “you are growing older, and it is not good for you to be alone. Listen! it is time you should marry.”

Vane looked up quickly, and then struggled to repress a smile.

“Listen, my child,” continued the doctor, much pleased, “I have to propose a parti of the most charming—but of the most charming! My wife’s own cousin and two hundred thousand livres of dot! What say you?”

Vane was touched, and found it hard to answer.

“My child,” the old man went on, “I love you like my own son—my own son, see you? You are not noble de naissance—mais, le cœur—d’ailleurs, neither are you rôturier, non plus. I have spoken of you to Madame la Comtesse de la Roche-aigue, and Madame la Comtesse veut bien. Her daughter is charming—but a child adorable! You will let me present you comme futur—what say you?”

Vane bent over and took the hand of his old friend. “My father,” he said, “I would do more for you than for any one living. You have been more than a father to me. God bless you for it! But this I cannot do. I shall never marry.” Vane spoke seriously and with some tragic effect, like a Manfred or a Werther.

The old man sighed deeply. He knew Vane too well to press the matter. “Ah!” said he, “you say you will never marry. I know better. You have seen some American—quelque petite Américaine rusée. Hélas! and we might all have been so happy.” The doctor said no more on the subject, but was sad and quiet during the rest of Vane’s visit.

He said nothing afterwards, except on Vane’s departure. Then he pressed his hand: “Ah, consider, my child. A young girl of the most charming—of the most charming—and two hundred thousand livres of dot!” Vane could only press his hand in return. And the last he saw of the doctor, he was standing still upon the Dieppe pier, rubbing his nose with an immense silk pocket-handkerchief.

This was Vane’s fifth trip across the Atlantic; and for the first time, he felt glad when the vessel’s prow turned westward. Brittany, for him, represented the past; America the future. He was an American, after all. A day after his arrival he would be immersed in Wall Street—up in all the mysteries of exchange and rates, the stock-list his breviary and the ribbon of telegraph paper his oracle. Meanwhile, however, he dozed on the deck and essayed metrical translations of Boccaccio. He was reading the tale of the pot of basil one day, and thought for about half a morning of Miss Thomas. What she had to do with his reading, he could not see. But she was quite the most interesting figure in his mental gallery. A curious jumble was this modern state of society. Bare flowers sprang up in strange parterres; exotics grew outside of hot-houses, and common whiteweed inside. There ought to be some method of social transplanting; some way of grafting new blossoms on an old stock. But all American stock was good; American society was like a world of rounded pebbles grating on a beach; the buried pebbles were quite as fine as those on top; only these were more stirred and polished, so their colors came out best. And yet what common, poor stuff most of them were, after all! A pleasant trade, that of social lapidary! And Vane, perhaps for the first time, took note of the women around him. There was a Philadelphia girl, pretty and voluble; there was a young lady from Michigan, who had been to “college” in Massachusetts and finished herself abroad, alone, or in company with a dear friend from Connecticut. There was a girl from Cleveland, wealthy, marvellous, indescribable; and a young lady from New Orleans, with all the fire drawn from her cheeks into her eyes. There was a girl—a young woman, a young lady—a being feminine, from Boston, weighing and analyzing all things within her somewhat narrow mental horizon; and a social entity from New York, also of the feminine variety, but of orbit predicable and conventional eccentricities, her life a function of two variables, money and fashion. All these women were fair, and strange to him; and this, perhaps, was the only day of his life that he had definitely considered women from a contemporary point of view. His assured income was now eight thousand a year. Four of this went to his mother, three he spent; the rest he saved.

Coming back to New York, he plunged into a mass of accumulated duties; it was a week before he found time to see anything of John; and two weeks before he called on Miss Thomas. He found her in a rather different mood than usual; a little sadder, a shade more self-conscious. “It is two weeks before you come to see me, and you did not answer my letter,” she said.

Vane could only bow. “If I had only known you wished me to,” he said.

“Ah, well! And what have you seen abroad?”

“Nothing of interest to me now.”

“And what are you going to do this winter?”

“I do not know. Stick to my trade,” Vane added laughingly.

“And shall we not go on with our reading?”

“I should be only too happy.”

“What a conventional expression of willingness—what an enthusiastic acceptance!”

“Conventions are the safest expressions of the truth.”

“What do you mean by ‘safest’?”

“The safest to me.”

She gave a little laugh, in which Vane joined. “I do not understand you.”

“You mean you are too skilful a fencer to admit it.”

“What do you mean by ‘fencing’?”

“The manner of our conversations.”

“You mean that it is not sincere—that it is badinage? Why do you do it, then?”

“I am only too ready to change our ground.”

“I do not know what you mean.”

Vane bowed his disbelief in this remark and rose to go.

“Ah! do not go yet. I am so lonely to-day, and it is just the hour of the day when there is nothing to do. I have no work and my poor eyes are too weak to read. They are not even useful!”

“Why do you imply they are not ornamental? Why do you say what you do not mean?”

“But I do mean it.”

“You know you have lovely eyes.”

“I thought you never made compliments,” she said with a little pleased laugh.

“You see your weak eyes are strong enough to keep me here.” And rising to go, he extended his hand.

“Ah! do not go yet.” And taking his hand, she almost detained it gently. “I am so glad to see you once more.”

Vane laughed again. “Have you read De Musset’s ‘Il faut qu’une porte soit ouverte ou fermée’?”

“No; but I will read it. Why?”

“Because my calls resemble that one. I am continually opening the door to go. Now if my call could have the same ending!” he added gallantly.

She colored. “She has read it,” thought Vane. “Halte-là!” And this time, perhaps rather precipitately, he took his leave for good. Miss Thomas gave another of her little pleased laughs, after he had closed the door. Vane had been thoroughly amused, and walked in a very contented frame of mind to John’s. Coming into his smoking-room, he took a cigar and threw himself at full length upon the lounge. He could afford occasionally to smoke and take life easily now; it was different with him from the times, three years back, when he used to get his own breakfast in the little rooms on Washington Place.

“Well, old man, how goes it?” said John, looking up with a light of friendship in his gray eyes which Vane’s coming always brought to them.

“Capitally! I have been passing the afternoon with Miss Thomas.”

“And how was she? Fascinating as ever?”

“Fascinating is not the word I like to use of her. It implies conscious effort.”

Vane was evidently off on a thesis, and Haviland settled himself on the sofa with a pipe. “I have seen many women whom the world calls fascinating, and they never attracted me at all. We look, admire and pass on. Now, Miss Thomas has all the brightness of a woman of the world, with the simplicity of a country maiden. If she has any charm, it is because she is just herself, as Nature made her.” Vane spoke with the air of a knight defending abandoned beauty.

“By the way (if you have finished your essay on an inamorata), I saw Ten Eyck to-day. He has come back from London, with a chance of being ambassador to Madrid, and is a better match than ever.”

“Ten Eyck? Who is Ten Eyck? Oh! I remember. Well, and what of it?” Vane added, after a pause.

“Oh! nothing, nothing at all. He is the son of one of our New York Senators, you know; and has a brilliant future before him.”

“Bah! The most brilliant future a woman can have is a future with a man who loves her.”

“And where did you pick up that aphorism? Not from your French education, surely? I believe Miss Thomas loves him.”

“I may not be up in American ideas, John, owing to the French education you sneer at; but I certainly was brought up to resent a remark like that, made of a young girl I like.”

“I don’t see what there is insulting in saying that a woman—for she is a woman, as you yourself admit—loves a man. I think it rather a compliment. American women rarely do, I can assure you. Their natures are like a New England spring—the sun must do a devilish deal of wooing before even so much as a green tendril is visible.” And Haviland, who was just then devoted to the young lady of Puritan descent whom he has since married, fetched a deep sigh.

Vane began to laugh again.

“Well, well. In time, I, too, shall become a New Yorker. And by the way, John, speaking of that—is it customary here to invite a young lady to go to walk with you?”

“Why, certainly, if you like. Miss Thomas has gone many a time, I fancy.”

“I was not thinking of Miss Thomas,” said Vane, pettishly.

VIII.

VANE had not intended to go to Mrs. Roster’s ball the next night; but he went, nevertheless. Vane was always a rather cynical spectator at large parties in New York. Somehow, it was so different from all that he had hoped; it was so like Paris, with more frivolity and fewer social gifts. A cynic is commonly a snubbed sentimentalist, who takes it out in growling. Vane had sought the world because he was lonely; but it seemed to him more than ever that he was much less lonely when alone. It is isolation, not loneliness, that saddens a man of sense; for his sense tells him that it is the world which is likely to be right, and proves him a solitary fool.

This evening Vane did devote himself to Miss Thomas; and a charming conversation they had. “You are quite different from what I thought you were,” she said. “I used to think you were serious and queer.”

“Really,” said Vane; “and what do you think me now?”

“At least, I do not think you serious and queer. Certainly, not serious.”

“But I am.”

“Can that be?” There was a heightened color in her cheek.

“As you see me. Will you go to walk with me next Sunday afternoon?”

Miss Thomas looked up suddenly with her soft eyes; then as suddenly cast them down again. Vane must have seen that she blushed a little.

“Yes.” And then, “if you do not leave Fifth Avenue,” she added.

“After that I shall certainly ask you to go into the Park,” he said.

“You had better not—at least not before the Sunday afternoon—or I will not go with you at all,” laughed Miss Baby, roguishly.

Vane bent and took her hand for a moment; as it hung among the orange leaves in the conservatory. Then he bowed and left her without an apology. She did not draw her hand away; and as Vane looked back at her from the door she was, this time, blushing violently. Vane himself walked home in a somewhat agitated frame of mind, and went to sleep; and when he woke up in the morning, he discovered that he was very much in love with Baby Thomas. This discovery caused him more surprise than disapproval; and yet he felt bound to confess himself a good deal of a fool.

He thought of it several times during the day, in the intervals of business, and not without considerable mental invective. However, as he walked home in the afternoon, he became less out of humor with himself. She certainly was a very charming girl, and well worth winning. At all events it was pleasant to be in love with her. He expected to see her that evening, and the prospect gave him a great deal of happiness, not without a slight seasoning of excitement, that made quite a novel enjoyment in his life. Certainly, he reflected, he was very much in love. It was surprising how it had grown in the night—like Jack and his bean-stalk. However, he saw no particular reason why he should try to cut it down. Perhaps he secretly doubted whether he could do so if he chose; and the doubt was agreeable.

Miss Thomas was not at the party that evening; and Vane found himself a little uneasy in consequence. He left early, and went to see John Haviland.

“John,” said he, “I am in love with Miss Thomas.”

“Many of us have been through that,” said John, calmly; “it is not fatal.”

“But,” said Vane, “my constitution may be more delicate. I am not a hide-bound rhinoceros.”

“Neither,” said John, “am I.” And he defended the aspersion upon his epidermis with a quadrupedal sigh.

“But I want to marry her.”

“That is also a symptom. You need not do it, however.”

“What do you know against her?”

“Nothing; but Ten Eyck has rather too heavy a prior mortgage.”

“I don’t care for Ten Eyck.”

“The question is, whether she does.”

“I know very well that she can’t.”

“She would hardly wish you to know the opposite, if the opposite were true.”

“Bah! I know something about women——”

“The devil himself can’t know a woman who doesn’t know herself.”

“Anyhow, it is a free field——”

“And plenty of favor.”

“She hasn’t seen Ten Eyck for years——”

“The last time was this afternoon.”

“What?”

“I saw them walking on Fourth Avenue, as I came up-town in a horse-car.”

“Humph!” said Vane, and he dropped the conversation.

For some weeks he said nothing more to John about Miss Thomas; and during that time he was trying, with more or less success, to persuade himself of his own folly. But he found it more easy to bend his energies to the subjugation of Miss Thomas’s heart than of his own. And John noticed that he left his business rather earlier in the afternoon than usual, and always took the Fourth Avenue car up-town. In his evenings he exhausted a large part of the most cynical French literature in convincing himself that he was a fool. But in spite of Balzac and Scribe, he found that he looked forward anxiously to the evenings when he was to meet her; and it was more easy for him to laugh at his own infatuation—no, interest was the name he gave it—than to go for a couple of days without seeing its object.

The first Sunday that he let pass without a visit, he was very nervous all the evening, and going to bed early made a vain effort to sleep. What a—qualified—fool he was, and yet how he did love that girl! He got up and read Heine by way of disillusion, and opened the book at the quatrain,

“Wer zum ersten Male liebt
Sei’s auch glücklos, ist ein Gott;
Aber wer zum zweiten Male
Glücklos liebt, Der ist ein Narr.”

How good! How very good! And Vane laid the book down with much applause.

Decidedly the best way to win Miss Thomas was to give her her own way. He could leave her to her own devices for a time. If she loved Ten Eyck, there was nothing to be done by seeing her; if she did not, a little delay would do no harm. If she loved nobody, his chance was assured.

This settled, Vane went to bed with the easy mind of a general who has planned the morning’s march.

IX.

VANE’S strategy was doubtless perfect; but in the morning he found a note sealed and superscribed in a charmingly pretty feminine hand. “Dear Mr. Vane,” it began, “Miss Roster’s skating party has been given up. She begged me to tell you; but, as I have not seen you, I feel obliged to send you this note. If you have nothing better to do, why will not you come that evening? It is so long since we have read together.—Winifred Thomas.”

“Now,” thought Vane, “why should Miss Roster send word to him by Miss Thomas?” He felt that he could not be positively rude, so at eight in the evening he presented himself. Miss Thomas was apparently alone in the house. She was sitting in the parlor, with no light but that of the fire, into which she was looking with her deep blue eyes; her face was pale, except that one cheek was rosy with the heat, imperfectly screened from the flame with her fan. She received Vane coldly; he drew up a chair, noticing, as he did so, her foot, which was covered only with a slipper and a thin web of open-work black stocking, and was very pretty.

Miss Thomas seemed distraite and depressed; he had never seen her in that mood before, and sought in vain to draw her into conversation. She answered only in monosyllables and still looked dreamily into the fire. Vane felt as if he had unwittingly offended her. Finally, just as he rose to go—

“Why are you so strange to-night?”

“I—I?” stammered Vane.

“Yes.” She lifted her small head and looked full at him. It seemed as if there was a tear lost somewhere in the depth of her eyes. Vane became conscious that he was a brute, and thought for the first time, odd as it may seem, of the walk which he had asked her to take the Sunday before. He had forgotten the walk entirely.

“I had suddenly to go to Pittsburg.” This was true; but he had returned on the Saturday. And yet he felt that he must say something, if only to suppress his growing inclination to take her hand in his.

“What do you mean?” said she wonderingly. They were both sitting; Vane staring at her helplessly.

“Why, when I broke our engagement to go to walk——” Truly he was floundering more than ever.

“Oh! were we engaged to go to walk?”

A pretty mess he had made of it indeed.

“I am only too glad you have forgotten,” he said; and then rising, with an awkward bow, he got himself and his shattered reputation for savoir faire out of the room. After putting on his overcoat, he turned back to the threshold of the parlor. “Will you go to walk next Sunday?” he asked bluntly.

“I must go to church that afternoon. I am so sorry.”

Vane bowed again, and took his departure more piqued than he was willing to acknowledge. As he went down the steps he heard a few chords upon the piano. It was the beginning of the love-song from Francesca da Rimini. After all, he thought, why should he be offended? She had behaved just as he should have wished her to. He could hardly expect her to acknowledge that she had waited for him in vain. How pretty she had looked in the firelight!

The next Sunday, about sunset, as he and John were returning from a long walk in the country, two figures came out of a small church on Sixth Avenue, well known for the excellence of its music. Miss Thomas was one, the other John recognized as Ten Eyck. She did not seem to see them, but the two walked rapidly ahead of them the length of the block, and then turned down a side street. Vane pretended to be wholly unconscious of the scene. John alone gave a grunt of surprise. And for two weeks or more Vane treated Miss Thomas with alternate neglect and familiarity when he met her in society; the former when he found it possible to avoid her, the latter when he was necessarily thrown with her. One night at a german she gave him a favor. Vane, after dancing with her, felt obliged, in common politeness, to talk with her for a few moments. He sought refuge in that sort of clumsy pleasantry which our English models have taught us to call chaff; she said nothing, but looked at him wonderingly, with large troubled eyes. She seemed as if grieved at his manner and too proud to reproach him with it. Could she really love the man? thought Vane. How could she? He felt as if the suspicion did her an injury. Vane’s heart melted to her as he came home that night. He had mentally judged her as he would have judged a woman in one of his cynical French comedies. He had treated her like a character in a seventeenth century memoir. And how much above such judgment was this sweet American girl! She was fond of her friends, and true to them, and frank to him, so that he saw that she cared for him. What did she know of the world, or of older societies, or the women in his wicked French memoirs? She lived in new, pure, honest America; not in the chronicles of the Œil-de-bœuf. And Vane felt that the best amends he could make was to ask her to become his wife. When he hinted this intention to Haviland that philosopher, for the first and only time in his life, improvised a couplet:

“Jamais la femme ne varie,
Bien fol est toujours qui s’y fie.”

Having got off this gâtha, John retired to his pipe, and became, like a Hindoo god, impassive, ugly, and impenetrable.

X.

FOR some weeks Vane rested satisfied with the conclusions arrived at in the last chapter. It was so satisfactory to have made such a resolve; and besides, there was no cause for hastening the event. There was singularly little impulse in his inclination. Most certainly, he meant to put his fate to the test; but not at point-blank range. Vane was cool enough to proceed warily; and he still clung sufficiently to the precepts of his French authorities in matters feminine to know better than that. For a repulse always puts the garrison on its guard, and doubles the difficulty of investment; and a woman’s heart should be taken by siege, not assault. Other supplies should be cut off; and then the citadel be undermined and sapped in a quiet way. The attacker should imply boundless admiration, without actually committing himself to a more particular sentiment—flirtation from behind earthworks—and so, without being exposed to rebuff, gradually surround her with such an atmosphere of incense that at last it becomes indispensable to her; and, after one or two futile sallies, she falls before his arms. This is the wisdom of the serpent; but Vane knew that it was never wasted on a woman, however sweet and dovelike; if you wish her to take your attentions seriously, you should make her think they are not serious. And if Vane was willing to marry, he had no mind to be refused. When Vane expounded these theories to John, the latter seemed relieved.

A lover in New York is at no loss for opportunities to win, if he has leisure to woo; but Vane suffered many chances to pass by without improving them. Perhaps he was dissatisfied with his love, with himself, with his life as he found it; he remembered, like all boys, trying to live as if he were the hero of a novel; now it was altogether too difficult not to live like the hero of a comedy. Vane abhorred the eighteenth century, and all its belongings; but it seemed to him that the world around him, and himself as part of it, were subjects apter to a Congreve than a Homer.

All the more, he sought to wind his affections around their object; he would not admit to himself that there was something wanting even in her. But the winter was nearly over before he resolved to take any decisive step; and Miss Thomas had been growing prettier every day. Mrs. Levison Gower was to give a sleigh-ride. They were to drive in a procession of single sleighs, and stop at some one’s country house for an hour’s skating. This opportunity would be most propitious; and Vane decided that Miss Baby Thomas should be his companion.

Miss Thomas seemed really very sorry. Vane admitted this afterwards, when he sought to reason himself out of his consequent ill-humor. But she was already engaged to ride that day in Mr. Wemyss’s sleigh. It was so unfortunate, and she was so much disappointed! Vane, however, decided to postpone his proposal of marriage to some other occasion; so he drove out sedately with the young and beautiful chaperone. With her he made no sufficient effort at flirtation, and Mrs. Gower never forgave him the omission.

The ice was very good; and Vane was disporting himself meditatively in one corner of the pond when Miss Thomas whirled by him on the “outer edge.” Miss Thomas was a beautiful skater; and, as she passed, she stretched out a crooked cane as if inviting him to join her. Vane had no desire to refuse; and in a minute the two were rolling along in strong, sweeping curves, the girl’s blue eyes gleaming with excitement beneath their long black lashes. Her eyes had the still, violet blue of a cleft in a glacier; Vane could not help looking into them once or twice. The ice was broken.

Neither of them had much to say; but for an hour or more they skated together. The crooked stick, proving too long, was soon discarded; and they skated hand in hand. On the shore, Wemyss was devoting himself to the matron. He could not skate.

Finally, the signal of recall was given. Miss Thomas made no movement in the direction of the return, and Vane was naturally too polite to make the first. They could see Mrs. Gower at the other end of the pond, skurrying about, like a young hen after her chickens. Suddenly Miss Thomas discovered that they ought to go back; but when they returned to the shore they were the last of the party, and had the log, which served the purpose of a seat, to themselves. Vane stooped to take off his companion’s skates, and in shaking them free Miss Thomas brought the blade of one across his hand with some force, causing a slight scratch on the back of his finger. She gave a little cry of horror, and then, as the finger bled profusely, pulled out her own handkerchief, and, before Vane could prevent her, bound it around the wound.

“It was my fault,” said she. “You can give the handkerchief to me when we next meet.”

As they walked back, Vane, dropping behind, unwound the handkerchief and put it in an inside pocket, then drew his glove hastily over the scratch, which had already stopped bleeding.

Going home, Mrs. Gower found Vane much more interesting. The heat of the noon had melted the snow, so that the sleighing was not good, and it was dusk before they got into the city. But when Vane left Mrs. Gower’s house for his own dinner, the sleigh which contained Miss Thomas had not returned, though Wemyss was there, having driven back with Miss Bellamy. Coming to his rooms, Vane unfolded the little handkerchief and kissed it; and that night, when he went to sleep, it was in his hand beneath the pillow. In the morning, he looked at it. It was a cheap little thing enough, made of pieces of linen or muslin stuff, looking like dolls’ clothes sewed together, but giving the effect of lace at a distance.

Vane went to a store on Broadway and purchased a handkerchief of the same size, of old point lace, and the same afternoon called upon Miss Thomas. “I have brought you your handkerchief,” said he, giving her the one he had bought, folded up. “I am very much obliged to you for lending to me.”

Miss Thomas took it, looked at it for a moment, then at him and thanked him. “It was of no consequence,” said she. “It was an old one.” Vane went home, much excited, perhaps a trifle disturbed in mind. Such a rapid victory had hardly been foreseen by him. She had taken from him, as a present, a valuable bit of lace; which must certainly mean that she would take him, if he offered himself. And he was not quite sure, now that the prospect was so near, that he really wished to marry Miss Baby Thomas. He liked her immensely, and she certainly amused him more than any other girl he knew; but he was not quite sure that he wished to marry—at all. Now that the prize was within his reach, he shrank back a little from plucking it. Four years ago, in Brittany, Vane had felt himself an old man; but now it seemed that he was “ower young to marry yet.” These thoughts gave him much trouble; and in the meantime he abstained from further complication by not calling on Miss Thomas, and, at the same time, subjected himself to much self-analysis. Could he honestly be content to go through life with this girl by his side? He knew enough of life to know that it mattered very little how often a man made a fool of himself, if he did not do so on the day when he got married. Now Miss Thomas was certainly a very nice, sweet girl—but did he love her enough to marry her? The outcome of his deliberation was in the affirmative; but—another but.

Ten days had elapsed since he gave her the handkerchief, when finally, one Sunday afternoon, he called to see her. He half expected that he should ask her to marry him. But he did not do so. When the call was nearly over, she excused herself for a moment, and, going up-stairs, returned with the handkerchief in her hand. “You have brought back the wrong handkerchief,” said she. Vane started with a shock of surprise he could not repress.

“I—I brought the wrong one?” he said awkwardly.

“Yes.”

“It was the one you gave me.”

“Oh, no! it was not. This one is real lace.”

“The—the washerwoman must have made a mistake.”

Miss Thomas said nothing.

“You must keep it all the same, Miss Thomas.”

“I cannot keep what belongs to other people,” said she unappreciatively.

Vane bit his lips. “I—I will make it right with the washerwoman,” said he clumsily.

Miss Thomas’s look was more hopelessly unsympathetic than ever; and, folding the bit of lace, she laid it on the table by his elbow.

“The fact is,” Vane went on, with a pretended burst of confidence, “the one you lent me was ruined: so I did get this one instead. Please take it.”

“It is much more valuable than mine,” said she coldly.

“Please take it,” said Vane again, with the iteration of a school-boy.

Miss Thomas began to take offence.

“How can you expect me to do such a thing?” said she, rising as if to dismiss him. Evidently a bold push was necessary. He took the bit of lace and threw it quickly into the open fire, counting on the feminine instinct which would not suffer her to see old lace destroyed. With a little cry, Miss Thomas bent down and pulled it from the coals.

“Let it burn,” said he, rising and putting on his gloves. “If you do not want it, I am sure I do not.” And he silently refused to take the handkerchief, pretending to busy his hands with his hat and cane. “Good-by,” said he.

“Good-by,” replied Miss Thomas, coldly, laying the handkerchief back on the centre-table.

When Vane got to the hall he looked at her a moment in turning to open the front door. She was standing before the fire with a heightened color in her face, whether of a blush or anger he could not tell.

XI.

VANE went home much discontented with himself. He had not only behaved like an ass, but he had made a blunder. He had gone much further than he meant to in seeking not to go so far. And he found that he loved her more than he thought, now that he had displeased her. He wanted diversion that night, and did not know what to do. Miss Thomas was his usual diversion. John was away. Finally, after dinner, he happened into Wallack’s theatre—it was the interval between the first and second acts. The first person that he saw was Miss Thomas, and a young man in evening dress was seated next her. Vane paid little attention to the play, and at the end of the second act he went out without speaking to her.

This was simply incredible! Vane could not conceive of it. It was a pitch of innocence beyond the range of imagination of a man educated in France. This was America with a vengeance. It must be that she did not care what people said. Could she know that bets were made at the club upon the state of her own affections and the sincerity of her admirers? Vane was much offended. He was angry with her for her own sake. At first he thought he would go and tell her so; then he reflected that the affair of the handkerchief would put him in rather a false position, and, after all, she was not worth the trouble. For the present, at least, he would not go near her.

The next night Vane went to a “german” at Mrs. Haviland’s. Miss Thomas was there dancing with Mr. Wemyss. She received him very pleasantly. He danced with her once or twice, and then sat down beside her, Wemyss not coming back. Miss Thomas was dressed in a white, cloudy dress, with sprays of violet and smilax. A wreath of the green vine was in her black hair, and she had a large bouquet of the violets in her hand, nearly the color of her eyes. The dress was cut low to a point in front and behind, showing the superb poise of her small head upon her neck. Whoever had sent her flowers must have known what her dress was to be, or he could not have sent her the violets to match.

When Vane left, he had made an appointment for a walk the next fine afternoon. She had said nothing about the handkerchief. Vane feared, every morning, to find the parcel containing it at his rooms, but it was not sent back. He was encouraged by this, and began to make excuses to himself for her being at the theatre. This still gave him much anxiety, and he half decided that he would speak to her about it.

At last there came a fine day for the walk, and Vane called at her house at four. He had also called one day before, but she had complained that it was too cloudy and looked like rain. This day he found her ready. They went up Fifth Avenue to Fifty-ninth Street; then he persuaded her to go into the park. She fascinated him that afternoon. There was something peculiarly feminine about Miss Thomas. Although her hair was black, it was not coarse and lustrous, but very fine and soft, dead black in color. A soft, creamy dress hung lovingly about her figure. She talked much about herself in a sisterly sort of way. Vane felt a desire to protect her. She had a gentle way of yielding, of trusting to him, of allowing him to persuade her to continue the walk. They sat down a moment on a wooden bench among some seringa-bushes; above them were the branches of an oak just leafing out, swaying in the wind and casting changing flecks of light and shade upon the gravel path and the folds of her gown. There were soft lights in her face, and her eyes were like two blue gentians.

“Miss Thomas, I have a question to ask you,” began Vane, suddenly. “You will promise not to be offended?”

“Yes,” said she innocently, opening her eyes wider.

“Are you engaged to be married?”

“No,” said she almost instantly, as if without reflecting. Then she blushed violently, and silently rose to go home.

XII.

VANE wished himself at the bottom of the lake, if that ornamental piece of water were deep enough to drown. It seemed like one of those foolish things one does in a nightmare, without being able to prevent it. Now first he saw how impossible it was to go on and talk to her—to preach a sermon to her—as he had thought he intended. It would mortally offend her if she were not mortally offended already. What right had he to criticise her conduct, particularly when criticism would certainly imply disapproval? With all his reproach came a glow of satisfaction. She was certainly not in love with any one, she had answered so instantly. Then with this thought came the sting again that he had wounded her.

“I—I saw you at the theatre the other night.”

Miss Thomas remained silent.

“Were you not at the theatre with Mr. Ten Eyck?” persisted Vane.

“I was at the theatre with my brother,” replied Miss Thomas, icily. “Mr. Ten Eyck sat in his seat for a few moments, I believe. Will you stop that car, if you please, it is getting so late.”

Vane did so with an ill grace. He had counted on the walk home to alter her impressions, and now this opportunity was lost. They took seats and sat for several blocks in silence. Vane looked at her covertly, and saw that the flush of indignation had given place to pallor, and that she looked grieved. He could have wrung his own neck.

Coming finally to her door, he felt that he must say something. He stood a moment on the stoop. Then, “Miss Thomas, please forgive me,” he said gravely. She hesitated a moment.

“Are you offended?” he added, for the sake of something to say. “Pray forgive me. I had a reason for asking, and an excuse.”

“I might forgive you,” she said, with her hand on the door, “but it would have been better for you not to have said it.” She opened the door and went into the house, leaving Vane on the threshold with a distinct impression that she was going to cry.

He walked along, mechanically, in the direction of his rooms, feeling his cheeks burn. That he had bungled—that he had committed a social gaucherie, he knew well enough; but what troubled him more than this was that he had given her real cause for offence, he had hurt her. If she could only know what pain this thought brought to him! Fool that he was, he had worn his clumsy, jejune mask of cynicism, and had not once shown to her his truer self. He was more at fault than the world was; and she was not of the world, and he had blamed her for it.

He stopped on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-third Street, half-way down the hill, and looked at his watch. It was nearly six. He did not wish to go back to his rooms; he had no engagement that evening. As he stood irresolute, he took off his hat to Mrs. Gower, who passed by in her carriage. Then he resolved to go down to his office and work that evening, as was his habit when he wished to banish from his mind a too persistent thought. He walked back through the cross-street, to get the railway on Sixth Avenue, and still thinking how Miss Thomas was probably crying over his rudeness, locked in her own room. How could he have done it! As he approached her house, he felt almost tempted to go in again; but the front door opened slowly, and, after a momentary pause, he saw Ten Eyck come out, walk down the steps and rapidly away. Vane grew very angry with himself and her; until he reflected that she could not possibly have known that Ten Eyck was coming that afternoon. And, indeed, he probably had not been let in.

None the less did Vane work savagely through the evening, taking a lonely dinner at the “down-town” Delmonico’s. At about midnight he left his office and walked all the way up to his room, smoking, and thinking what he could do to win Miss Thomas’s forgiveness. The gas was burning low in his study, and he saw a square white packet among the letters lying on his table. He felt that shuddering weakness in the loins, as if all within were turned to water, which he had learned to recognize as the work of that first apprehension of a serious misfortune which comes a moment before the mind has fully grasped it. He sank upon the sofa with a long breath, and looked at the letter silently for several minutes. It was a neat note, beautifully sealed and delicately addressed; like all her notes, bearing no evidence of a servant’s dirty pocket. He opened it, fearing to find in it the lace handkerchief without a word; but no, there was a note with it:

“My dear Mr. Vane—

“I send you back your handkerchief. It is still a little burned; but perhaps you can make some use of it. I ought to have returned it sooner, but was having it mended.

“Sincerely yours,

“Winifred Thomas.”

So! thought Vane; it was all over now. He had bungled it shamefully.

XIII.

HE went to sleep as soon as he could—which was not very soon; and woke up, with a sob, from a dream in which they were both very miserable. It was an hour earlier than his usual time for rising, and, as he went into the park, the birds were singing quite as they might have sung in the country.

On considering her note critically, he did not think it so hopeless as it had seemed in the night. And again he repaired to his office. Business was very good at this time, and Vane was rapidly becoming rich.

He waited many days for a chance to speak to her; and finally the chance arrived, at an evening party. Curiously enough, he was more afraid of her in a simple morning frock, worn in her own house, with the little edging of white lace around the throat, than in evening dress, in all the splendor of her woman’s beauty. He did not like her so well with bare neck, and bare arms, and a sweeping cloud of white about her, and white satin slippers. She was more like the other women one could meet in the world. She looked at him coldly; but none the less did he determine to speak to her. Her partner left her at once; and Vane led her into the embrasure of a window.

“I want you to forgive me my question of the other afternoon.”

Miss Thomas made no answer.

“You would, if you knew my excuse.”

“I don’t see what possible excuse there can be,” she said, gravely.

“There is one—and the best of all excuses,” he added, in a lower tone.

“I do not understand you.”

“Are you sure?” said Vane, with a low laugh.

She met his eyes, calmly, for an appreciable duration of time. “I wish you would tell me what it is,” she went on seriously.

“Some time, perhaps, I will.”

“Why not now?”

Vane shook his head. “I will tell you when you take back the handkerchief.”

“I shall never take back the handkerchief.”

“You do not know how persistent I am. I shall ask you every week until you do.”

Miss Thomas slightly moved her shoulders. He could have fallen at her feet then and there. It was dark behind the curtain, all except her eyes, and she looked at him almost tenderly, and made no effort to end the conversation. Vane felt that he was very deeply in love with her.

“Do you really wish to know the reason why I asked you that question?” he said, hastily. “Do you ask me now?”

“Perhaps I shall ask you some time,” she said, dropping her eyes.

Vane bit his lip, and clenched his fingers, which had been dangerously near hers. At first he did not know what to reply.

“As for the handkerchief, you shall surely take it some time. I will give it to you when you are married.“

She blushed deeply. “Thank you,“ she said, “I would rather have a new one, then. But it is time for me to go home—or—I think I should like an ice first. Will you get me one?”

When Vane returned, two or three men were about her. She took the ice, but, after tasting it, put it aside indifferently. “I really think I must be going now,“ she said, giving her arm to one of her companions.

Vane was determined not to be outdone, so he went to find her carriage, and had the pleasure of shutting the door himself; the two other men standing by. “Good night,” said he, in a low tone. She made no reply until he had got back to the sidewalk; then, “Good night, every one!” she called out as the horses sprang away, restive with the cold. Vane went back to the supper-room to get a glass of champagne, and then walked home.

After this, he decided to leave the course of events with her. He had surely told her, as plainly as a man could tell a woman, that he loved her. He had also told her that he would ask her to marry him whenever she wished—whenever she would forgive him a rude question for which his love was the best possible excuse. So two months passed without his speaking to her seriously. But he felt well assured that he loved her.

XIV.

ONE day in June, Vane sat in his office with two notes open on the desk before him. One was from Mrs. Levison Gower, inviting him to make one of a moonlight picnic party. They were to be conveyed up the Hudson in Mr. Gower’s steam-launch, land just above Yonkers, take possession of a grove, and have dinner there for no other reason than that they might dine with much more convenience and propriety on the deck of the yacht. The other note before Vane was from Dr. Kérouec, in Brittany, announcing a serious change in the condition of his mother.

He had already decided to take the next steamer for Havre. He had been making his preparations all the day; but for some reason had postponed answering Mrs. Gower’s note. And now he was face to face with a strong desire to see Miss Thomas once more before he went away. And, after all, why should he not go? His mother had been ill for so many years, and he felt that she would still be ill for so many years more; and Mrs. Gower’s party was to be the day before the departure of his steamer. He knew that Miss Thomas would be there. He had quite decided not to call at her house again; he had not called there for the last two months; but he longed for a glimpse of her face to take away with him. It might be so long before he came back, and so many things might happen while he was gone.

Miss Thomas was the first person Vane saw, standing by the entrance, as he went on board the yacht. She was evidently looking for some one; but when she saw Vane, she turned away. Vane kept up a rapid conversation with his hostess until a lady arrived whom he knew, when he walked with her to the other side of the yacht. Meantime he could see that Miss Thomas was covertly watching his movements, and talking with no one. Her eyes seemed to follow him wherever he went; but he was careful not to get within speaking distance.

After many delays, caused by languid guests, late hampers, and the vacillations of Mrs. Gower herself, the little steamer cast off and proceeded up the river. Mrs. Gower took command in the yacht, extending her jurisdiction, as Vane observed, quite to the limit of the pilot’s politeness. At first, owing to the smells of the manufacturing establishments which lined the river, and divers distasteful sights about the wharves, but little attention was paid to the scenery; but when the city was left behind, and the western shore grew bolder, Nature was rewarded with all the adjectives of feminine enthusiasm. Vane heard less of this, however, as conversation grew more general. When due appreciation of the Hudson’s beauties had been shown, the company broke up into groups of two or three camp-stools, and every little clump fell to discussing its neighbors. Here and there was a group of two—a male and female—oblivious of neighbors and discussing each other. The Palisades looked on in silence. It seemed to Vane that the occasion was only saved from insignificance by the presence of Miss Thomas.

When they touched shore at the grove appointed for the picnic, most of the ladies and gentlemen, eager to land as if it had been an ocean voyage, crowded to the gangway. Mrs. Gower felt it her duty to show the way, and skilfully forced a passage through her guests, Vane, who was at that moment busied with the duty of protecting her, following in her wake. Her rapid motion caused a sort of eddy in which Vane moved behind her without much effort; so that, looking about him, he saw Miss Thomas beside him. Her companion was a young man with an eye-glass, looking like a student in college, the consciousness of his own merits continually at war with the world’s estimate of them; so that the unceasing struggle of a proper self-assertion left him little breath for words. In one of the pauses of his conversation, Miss Thomas turned rapidly to Vane.

“Are you never going to speak to me again?”

“Have you forgiven me yet?”

This little interchange of questions was so quick that it hardly could have been noticed by any one. Miss Thomas turned back to her companion before he had even time to miss her attention; and indeed his mind was fully occupied in grappling for his next remark; while Vane was incontinently swept over the gang-plank in the vortex of Mrs. Gower.

She certainly looked very pretty that day, thought Vane, as he walked up the hill with the latter lady; but he was sure now that he had no mind to be refused by her. Better even the present than that. She had on another soft, clinging dress, of ivory white, which only lent an added charm to her skin of whiter ivory, the dead black hair, and those wonderful violet—“Ah—oh, yes,” said Vane to Mrs. Gower; and then, seeing this lady laugh, “Yes, very funny—hah!”

“I was telling you of Mrs. Grayling’s sad experience in Rome,” said Mrs. Gower, demurely; “but I fear you were not thinking of her.”

Vane vowed to keep a tighter rein on his thoughts thereafter; and they came to a little glade in the wood, where the servants were laying table-cloths on the turf. The dinner was very gay. Some ladies screamed when a daddy-longlegs ran into the lobster salad, but an occasional pine-needle, falling into a glass of champagne, seemed but to add to its flavor. It was considered de rigueur to sit upon the grass; but most of the men found it very awkward to assume attitudes of any decorative value, and the college student in particular was heard to wonder audibly how the deuce the Romans did it. After the feast, the company divided itself into couples and scattered in the woods. Miss Thomas did not leave the table; and Mrs. Gower felt obliged to wait for the last. Wemyss stayed with her. As Vane passed behind Miss Thomas, she called him to her.

“I have something to tell you to-day.”

“Will not some other time do?” said Vane, “I am getting a glass of wine for Mrs. Gower.” The girl looked at him, but did not seem to take offence.

“I may never tell you, if I do not tell you to-day,” she answered, seriously, in a low voice. Vane looked at her surprised; she bore his gaze for half a second, and then let her own eyes drop. The student was looking on with parted lips. “Oh, Mr. Bronson,” said she, immediately, “I wish you would get me a glass of champagne—and seltzer, too!” She said the “too” with an inflection that made it sound like do.

The youth departed on his errand; and Vane also left, saying that he would be back in a moment; but he was saved a double journey by observing that some one else had brought Mrs. Gower her wine and had taken his seat beside her. Vane returned to Miss Thomas, passing rapidly over in his mind what had happened in the four months since he had asked her that fatal question, and trying to decide upon a course of action for himself. She had made no effort to have him speak to her before to-day. But by her presence the picnic was quite saved from insignificance.

“I have come back, Miss Thomas,” he said, seriously. “What can you have to tell me?”

Miss Thomas looked at the tent, before which Bronson was standing—waiting for her seltzer. Most of the guests had left the place, and the servants were clearing away the dinner. The moon was just rising.

“Will you not come for a walk?” said Vane. Miss Thomas gave him her hand, and he helped her to her feet. “I am forgetting your wine,” he said, afterwards. He was ill at ease and nervous.

“You know that I never drink wine at parties,” she answered; and just as Bronson came back to the place where she had been sitting, they disappeared in the forest. Bronson had a long neck supported by a very stiff standing collar, and when his dignity was compromised he had a way of throwing back his head and resting his chin upon the points of his collar. He did this now, and the Adam’s apple in his throat worked prominently. Then, after looking gravely a moment at the seat which had been Miss Thomas’s, as if to be satisfied that she had really gone, he drank the champagne himself and went back to the tent, where he found a male acquaintance, to whom he proposed a smoke. “It is such a relief to get away for a minute from the women,” he murmured, as he threw himself on the grass and rolled a cigarette. “By the way, did you see that little girl I was with? Nice dress, you know—quiet little thing. Well, by gad, sir, I believe there’s something up between her and that fellow Vane.”

XV.

AFTER they left the place of the dinner, Miss Thomas walked on for some time in silence, and Vane had inwardly resolved not to be the first to break their peace of mind. The woods, being part of a private estate, had received some care. There was no underbrush, and they were walking in a well-kept path. The moon was now high enough to make a play of light among the leafage and to outline with a silver tracery the smooth twigs and trunks of the trees before them.

Vane was silently wondering what Miss Thomas could mean. He became strangely self-possessed and cautious, and it occurred to him that this was the sort of clear-sightedness a man would have who was gambling and playing for a very large amount. He thought to himself that this was just the way fellows usually got married. Vane had been brought up to suppose that the proper way to reach a young lady’s heart, or at least her hand, was through the judgment of her parents; but, somehow, this did not seem to be necessary in New York, certainly not with Miss Thomas; and he felt that there was a danger of his asking Miss Thomas, to-night, to become Mrs. Vane. And, after all, he felt to-night that it was by no means certain that he wished Mrs. Vane to have been Miss Baby Thomas.

The long silence became embarrassing, but Vane did not quite know what to say, and Miss Thomas had apparently no desire to say anything. The path they were in led up to a low stone wall in a sort of clearing on the side of the hill, with a distant view of the Hudson. Vane assisted Miss Thomas over the wall, and then, getting over it himself, sat down upon it. The girl sat down beside him. Both looked at the river.

“What did you have to say to me?” said Vane, at last.

“I wished to tell you that I had forgiven your question,” Miss Thomas answered in a low, quiet voice, looking away from him across the water.

“Entirely?”

“Entirely, from the heart.”

Vane certainly did have a thrill of pleasurable excitement at this speech. It was the sort of glow, the tingling feeling about the waist he had felt when about to mount a strange horse whose temper he had not tested. He looked at the girl. She was half sitting, half leaning, against the wall. Her flowing dress had caught the sheen of the moon, and the white figure shone brightly against the dark leaves. She might have been a naiad or a wood-nymph, and yet there was a subtle feminine presence about her. With some girls you can associate on terms of fellowship, make companions of them, perhaps even sit on the fence in the moonlight and talk to them amicably, as to another man. But you could never forget that Miss Thomas was a woman.

“I was really very much hurt,” she said, “and I think you ought to have begged my pardon.”

“I did,” said Vane, “and I told you I had the best possible excuse.”

“But you never told me what the excuse was.” The young man sat on a lower stone than hers, and, as he looked up to her, the radiance fell full upon her face, and he saw the moon reflected in her eyes.

Why should he doubt this girl? Had he not been deeply in love with her? And, after all, had she not borne herself, in all their relations, as he would have wished her to, as he would have wished her to be, supposing that she cared for him? She had often been right in being offended with him, but she was too gentle to be long angry—she was lovely in forgiving. Had he not plainly let her know what should be the signal for him to declare his love? Was not this as much encouragement as any woman would give? Strangely enough, now that he was sure of her he almost doubted of himself.

“Do you really ask me to tell you of my excuse?” said Vane, and he felt a little ashamed of himself for the prevaricating question. “Do you not know?”

Miss Thomas said nothing, but made a slight motion of her dress. Vane bit his lip, and felt that this was cowardly. The moon had gone into a cloud, but he fancied, from the position of her head, that she was looking at him with her large eyes. Her dress seemed to have a light of its own, which made her form still visible in the darkness. Suddenly he pictured to himself the way his conduct would look to her if she really cared for him, and he felt sure that she did, and he knew that she attracted him more than any woman he had ever met.

“Because I love you, Winifred,” said Vane, and he laid his hand on hers.

“Oh—h,” sighed the girl with a sort of shudder, as if he had given her pain, “I am so sorry.” Vane caught his breath. “Oh, I am so sorry!” Vane pressed her little hand convulsively. “Oh, I never thought it was this. Why did you tell me? Why did you not leave it unsaid? Now I shall lose you for always.” Her voice broke in a sob.

“Do you mean that you will not marry me? Do you mean that you do not love me? You must know how I have loved you.” Vane covered her hand with kisses. Miss Thomas seemed to be unconscious of this, but went on in a sort of cry, asking him to forgive her. “Do you mean that there is no hope?” said he, gravely.

“Oh, no! none. You know how much I like you, but I can never marry you. You will forget all this, will you not?” There was a long silence between them, but her hand still lay in his. Meantime the sky had grown black in front of them. Vane was straining his eyes to see her face. There was a flash of lightning, and he saw that her cheek was wet with tears. Some large drops of rain came pattering down among the leaves.

“We must hurry back,” said Vane suddenly, dropping her hand. She rose silently and followed him along the path. In a few moments they got back to the place of supper. They were the first to arrive, but in a moment they heard voices in the shrubbery.

“You will try and forget this evening, will you not?” said Miss Thomas, hurriedly. “Try and be as if it had never happened. And oh, tell me, are you very unhappy?”

“I am very sorry,” said he, “but I am going to-morrow to France.” Miss Thomas made a movement of surprise, but there was no time for more to be said, as the thunderstorm was really upon them, and every one was hastening to the river. On the boat Vane found Miss Thomas a seat, and then went alone to the bow. He was very unhappy. He had not fancied that he would be so unhappy. He was very much disappointed, and, perhaps, a little angry. Coming up from the wharf in New York he was, as a matter of course, put in the same carriage with Miss Thomas. There were two other people with them, and Vane endeavored to act light comedy, but was not well seconded by the girl herself, who was silent and very pale. They went to Mrs. Gower’s house for supper, but all the women were wet, and most of the men ill-tempered, and the party broke up early. Vane took his leave at once, and went back to his lodgings to finish his packing for the voyage. As soon as he had done he went immediately to bed and fell asleep late in the night, having as a latest waking thought the consciousness that he had for many months been making a fool of himself.

XVI.

THIS was still the most marked flavor in his self-consciousness the next morning, and when he rode to the wharf, when he entered the cabin decked with flowers as if for a funeral, even when they steamed out to sea, the bitter aftertaste of folly did not leave him. He was in the mid-Atlantic before his self-communings began to be mitigated by his sense of humor. Truly there had been no need to consider quite so nicely his duties to Miss Thomas. He had thought himself too far involved to retreat gracefully without a proposal. He had felt compelled to precipitate matters. He had feared to wound her deeply otherwise, though conscious, at the time, that his offer was rather magnanimous than passionate. He had had a continual fear of compromising her, too old-fashioned a reverence for woman, too European a sense of honor. He had done her too much honor. Apparently she had not considered him in so serious a light, this American.

That he had been a most unconscionable ass Vane knew very well. This conviction, however, is a sentiment we can easily bear while it is unshared by others, and, fortunately, none of Vane’s friends were so clearly convinced of it. None of his friends knew much about this affair.

After all, he had almost given a sigh of relief when the welcome words of freedom came to her lips. He was well out of it. It had been a very sharp little skirmish, and he was not sorry that he had escaped in good order, heart and honor whole. At this point Vane again appeared to himself as an ass, but he only smiled at the apparition. Fortunate affairs those, which vanish with a laugh! So he dismissed the matter from his mind.

When Vane landed at Havre the whole thing seemed like a dream. There was the familiar chalk cliff and the wide estuary, and the people seated on little, iron, painted chairs, in the cafés, reading Figaro, just as he had left them, with nothing changed but the date in the newspaper. A certain flippancy lurks in the sky of France, or was the flippancy là-bas in America? Vane was not quite sure.

He had had no letter from the doctor since that first one received in New York. Indeed there had been no way for one to have reached him before his arrival in Havre, and he was not sure that the doctor knew in which steamer he was crossing. But Vane was anxious to get to Rennes. Instead of going up one side of the river and down the other by rail, he decided to make a cut across the country, so he took the ferry for Trouville. The place was full of people—people such as you find anywhere, people such as you might see in Newport or New York—and Vane hastened to leave it. He found a diligence driven by an old man in a blue blouse, that took the country people and their eggs and chickens to and from the market at Trouville, and retained a seat on the outside. They left the watering-place at sunset, and, after driving a few miles along the beach—the fashionable drive—by the painted pavilions and villas, they struck inland through the grass uplands still fragrant with the hay.

I do not want to make anything tragic of Vane’s arrival at Rennes. It was hardly that to him. He had taken the midnight mail from Caen after a six hours’ journey in the sweet July evening; and when he arrived in Rennes in the morning his mother was dead and had been buried, and the priests in the great cathedral, even then, were saying masses for her soul. The old physician, like few physicians, but like all old Bretons, was an ardent Catholic, and had sought to secure to his patient one surreptitious chance of salvation before his heretic friend arrived. “Yes, my son,” said he, “at the last she died, tout doucement, it is now three weeks. She never recovered herself, though I had the abbé with her and the Presence by her side. She never knew you or me, thou dost remember, and at the end she died silently, and spoke not at all. Ah! mon pauvre ami, quelle sainte femme!” cried the doctor, forgetting that he had never known Mrs. Vane in her right mind.

The masses, thought Vane, would do no harm, and he stayed two or three weeks with Dr. Kérouec in his old house near Rennes.

The doctor, though growing old, was very busy. He had numberless charitable meetings in the afternoons, and his practice took up the mornings. His evenings were usually passed with Vane and the abbé over tric-trac and boston. The doctor was the head of many benevolent clubs, “Sociétés de Consommation,” and such like. He knew to a unit how many poor people had consumed the society’s soup, for each of the past forty years, in Rennes, and seemed to derive much satisfaction from these figures and their annual increase. He never spoke again to Vane of the young lady with the dot, and it turned out that she had married M. le Vicomte’s son.

Meantime Vane wandered through the rosy lanes, and the country came to him with a sense of rest. Life’s silent woods are so near its highways, after all! And Vane had been a boy in this country, and it had a glamour for him; and, truly, it is a sweet corner in the world. He had gone out of it into all that was great and new, and now he came back to it, like a foot-worn pilgrim, with nothing but his staff and scrip. And as he thought this, he was passing a great army of the peasantry, not all peasantry, for many a lady, too, was walking amid the wooden shoes. Before the long procession, among the crucifixes, was carried the ermine banner of Queen Anne. It was the annual pilgrimage to Lourdes. He looked after them curiously, so earnestly they marched, chanting their simple aves and their litanies to St. Anne of Auray. But they did not walk to Gascony, but only to the railway, whence they went by special train.

Vane did not feel deeply his mother’s death. Indeed it hardly seemed that she could have died so lately; it was rather as if she had been dead many years. All the old seemed to have faded away out of his life, and everything new was rather unreal. As for Baby Thomas, she was either forgotten completely or dismissed with a slighting half-memory. The older love was as much in his mind and its ghost was as real a figure as this memory of yesterday. He walked over to Monrepos one afternoon when the doctor had a meeting at his house. The place was rented by an English family, and some stout girls were playing lawn tennis, while a comely youth, lying lazily on the grass, looked on critically over a short pipe. Vane sat on the walk and began to poke pebbles with his stick again. He had succeeded; and the result was emptiness. Why could not this poor sordid success have come sooner,—and his father, and so his mother, might have been alive to-day.

XVII.

WHEN he got home (Dr. Kérouec’s house he called home) he found two American letters. One was a business letter, but on the other he recognized the familiar delicate angles of Miss Thomas’s writing. He was displeased at this. The note was like some petty daily duty busying one in an hour of insight—like the call of the prompter in some stupid play. It changed all, even to the language of his thought. What the deuce can she have to say in a letter? he said to himself. He thought he had done with her.

It was characteristic of the man that he opened the business letter first. It was from his partner, who was growing old and more and more reliant on Vane’s judgment, and it contained an offer of a quarter of a million from Welsh for their interest in the Bellefontaine and Pacific Railway. Nearly every village in the Western States has a Pacific railway, but comparatively few have reached the Pacific. Most of them run vaguely in a westerly direction for a hundred miles or so, and are managed by an agent of the bondholders. But the Bellefontaine P. R. was parallel to another Pacific road, which had at last been put on a successful basis by Welsh, the railroad king; and Welsh, who had sold all his own stock in the successful road, of which he was president, and who had further agreed to sell considerably more stock than he owned, was now desirous of finishing the Bellefontaine and Pacific, and running it in competition with his own road. Vane wrote a telegram advising his partner to demand half a million for their interest in the Bellefontaine Pacific; and then he opened Miss Thomas’s letter. Cinerea Lake, June 25, 187-, it was dated. Now, where and what, thought Vane, is Cinerea?

“My dear Mr. Vane,” it ran on, “I think of you all the day, and often cannot sleep at night. What can you think of me? If I could only see you, and feel that you would understand me; how unhappy you have made me by what you told me the other evening! I wish now that I had not told you of my forgiveness, although I had fully forgiven you in my heart. I wish I had not spoken it, and then our friendship would not have been broken. I feel now that you cannot think of me as your friend; that you believe I have been intentionally cruel and unkind to you. Why did you tell me?

“I may be doing wrong, wrong again, in writing to you. I want so much to ask you to come to see me—you will come, won’t you? when you come back?

“W. T. Sunday night.”

“Pish!” said Vane, and he crumpled up the letter in his pocket and went to walk, in the late afternoon. Returning, the doctor passed him in a carriage with footmen, and he met him on the threshold of his house with an invitation to visit at Monrepos. The people who had taken the place were friends of the Greshams, and had known Mrs. Vane. Of course, Vane could not go; but the question gave the needed fillip to his action. He must do something; he must go somewhere. It is the nature of man to go somewhere.

So Vane went to many places that summer. It is customary in romances for men thus wandering to be haunted by the thought of something. Vane was haunted by the thought of nothing. He did not even think of Miss Thomas, or, if he thought of her, it was to think that he thought nothing of her; it is nearly the same thing. He began by going to Biarritz and Lourdes, in the path of the pilgrims. At Lourdes there is a modern, ugly church upon a hill, with modern, manufactured glass within; the grotto is underneath, surrounded always by hundreds of pilgrims—many bedridden, some dying. The figure of the Virgin is robed in a white gown, with a blue silk wrapper and a golden crown. You may buy small replicas of it in the shops. Vane was duly shocked, as becomes a Protestant. But one thing he liked in Lourdes—an expression he heard used by an old priest in defending the miracle. It was, he said, an example of the divine foolishness of the ways of God—the Virgin’s appearance to a simple child. Vane fancied that there might be follies that had something in them of divine and much good sense that smacked only of the world and the flesh. One got plenty of good sense in New York.

When he left Lourdes he went eastward, through Gascony and Languedoc. The sweet contentment of the harvest was over the country, the healthy happiness of nature’s reproduction, of fruitage and of growing seed. All earth and nature is happy where it is not conscious. There was a mighty harvest that year, and all the people of the country were busied with it, getting themselves their daily bread, delivered, for the time, from evil.

In the south of France there are wide plains and cornfields, and in them is more than one great dead city, sleeping like some old warrior in the peaceful afternoon of his days. The huge armor of cyclopean walls has served its time, but still stands out, frowning, from the sea of yellow grain; the city inside has shrunk within the walls, and no longer fills them. Such a place is Aigues Mortes or Carcassonne; nestling in the arms of fortresses, quiet and still, as if protected by them and lulled to sleep. Stern in semblance as these walls may be, they are pasteboard, like Don Quixote’s helmet; they date from less noisy days than ours; the mortarless masonry would rattle to the ground at the sound of cannon. However, they have been of use in older days, and it is pleasant, even now, to wander in the summer by the shadow of the walls and look out upon the farms and the green things growing.

When a New Yorker enters these places, though, their atmosphere is something deathlike to him. This merely vegetable growth, this life of the market-day and harvest, is deathly dull; and the place itself, as the phrase is, dead and alive. Possibly, our fabulous New Yorker visiting these places (if he visits them we must make him fabulous)—possibly, he may find things to admire in them; and the first day, he smokes his cigar on the battlements and gets along well enough. But towards the afternoon of the second—when he has had his morning drive, and his daughter has brought home her water-color—a terrible pall of silence, a stealthy, dread ennui comes over him. Ten to one but he flies by the night express to the nearest city with an evening paper—Marseilles, let us say, or Nice. And there, the daughter finds a band in the Promenade des Anglais, and her water-color remains unfinished.

Vane was conscious of some of this; he had been long enough in New York for that. There was little here to interest an American. But still, it was pleasant; and life was made so simple an affair! and its outside was so sweet. How much more life promised to one in America! He did not distrust the promise; but a question is the first shade of doubt. And it really seemed, sometimes, as if, in ceasing to oppress one another, men had forgotten how to make each other happy.

There is much beauty to be found in the South of France; with a something grander, more venerable, in these old moulds of life than one can expect among discordant sects and syncretisms. Vane enjoyed his summer to the full, and drank in the sunlight like a wine, forgetting that he was alone. And the people seemed so full and sound; with qualities of their own, and self-supporting lives; not characters that they assumed, or tried to make other people give them; nor with natures colorless, flavorless, save for some spirit of a poor ambition.

I do not know what Vane had in his mind when this last thought so struggled for expression. He was not ill-natured, nor yet excessively captious. I suppose he was a little disappointed with his own country. At all events, he soon forgot America that summer. And, after all, he had seen but one unit, and there are more than fifty millions of them. Nor, perhaps, did he yet know Miss Thomas—the unit whom he had known best.

XVIII.

IN his life, Henry Vane had hitherto been prospecting. He had sunk several shafts deep into it, and had worked them honestly, but he had not had very much success. He had struck gold; but he had not struck much of anything else; and gold had now ceased to be of the first importance. The prime solution of the difficulty had only been postponed, in Brittany, that day five years before; it had not been met. The demands of a human life had never been liquidated; they had been funded, temporarily; and now the note was falling due. He, also, had been getting his daily bread, and had been delivered from evil.

But now the old question kept recurring, and the sphinx would have an answer. The premature harvest was over (he was in Spain), forced into sooner ripeness by those passionate skies; all the country was burned, the herbage gone, the hot earth cracked and ravined. Only the yellow oranges were yet to come, that ripened for the winter; and the orange groves still gave some verdure to the hills, contrasting with the sober skies. Along the ridge by the Mediterranean was a file of graceful palm trees, swinging their languid arms above the sea.

Vane had come along the coast as far as Tarragona; and he was lying in the shadow of the lovely hill of Monserrat, thinking. He had been reading his letters again; and was seeking to come to some resolve. Nobody in the world had any claim upon his action now, save only the old doctor at Rennes. Vane had promised him a visit every summer.

He had now no great duty in America; but still, he felt that he must soon be going back. For good or evil, his path lay there. And after all, this island in an eddy of the world, this shore of the Mediterranean, facing backward to the East—it was idle staying here. He smiled to himself as he thought of his own older thoughts, when he had melodramatically planned for a war or some forlorn hope in African discovery. There is something half shameful, half sad, in seeing one’s own older folly, one’s boyish vanity and egotism. He had the necessary money now, but there was no longer anything attractive to him in the life of Paris; even dreams of adventure in the Soudan did not now fire his imagination. Vane had learned that no American could do without America, least of all an American with nothing but his country left. What was he doing on this shelvage of a bounded sea? this stage setting for past dramas, where the play was over and the lights turned out. And Vane thought to himself of Bellefontaine, Ohio, and the great future of the West, and eager Wall Street. The phrases rolled off glibly, like a well-taught lesson. Still, their being trite did not prevent their being true. Surely there was something real, something actual, progressive in America, to make one’s life worth living there. His own country aroused his interest, was worth his study. As for the trivial girl with whom he had flirted—by whom he had been corrupted—he had wasted his time over her. When he went back he would go farther abroad.

And return he must. He was wanted in America. The—the affairs of his bank required his presence. His old partner, by this time, was probably wild with irritation and amazement at his prolonged absence; and there would be heaps of letters awaiting him at Seville; a crescendo of increasing urgency, ending with daily telegrams. Then there was the sale of the railway. If successful, it meant an assured fortune, to him and his heirs, if he had any. And an assured fortune is like a license, a ticket-of-leave to mould your future as you will. Vane spent much time in endeavoring to make this motive sufficient unto himself.

He took steamer at Valencia and sailed out, westward, between the Pillars of Hercules. After all, this was more than Ulysses had ever dared do, and Ulysses was a hero of epic. Moreover, like any Irish emigrant, Ulysses had believed in the blessed Western isles. But then Ulysses had been in search of a home; he, Vane, was only in search of a fortune.

The steamer touched at Cadiz for several days; and there Vane went ashore and ran up to Seville, by rail, to get his letters. There was no other letter from Miss Thomas. Then he went to Granada, and wandered for an evening through the Alhambra.

He had got his New York papers at Seville, and he spent half an hour or more looking over the stock quotations, on a hill near the Generalife. Stocks seemed to be higher than ever; he had made still more money. While he was doing this he heard the tinkling of a zither or guitar, and, looking down, he saw that the sound proceeded from the courtyard of what was, apparently, a little inn or venta.

The broad Vega lay smiling beneath him, stretching green and fertile to the last low hill from which the banished Moor had looked back upon Granada; while around him, in every street and alley, was the tinkle of the waters, still rushing from their source in the snows through the Moor’s aqueducts, which kept his memory green with the verdure of the one green spot in Spain. Far above, to the left of Vane as he sat, were the pale snows of the Sierra Nevada, amber or ashen in the brown air of evening. The short work of the Spanish day was over; the strumming of guitars was multiplied in the stillness; and, looking down again, Vane even saw a girl dancing in the little inn yard.

There was no other spectator but a swarthy man in black—her lover, probably—with a gray hat, and a black scarf about his waist. He was playing on the zither, and the girl began to sing some strange Spanish air with long, chromatic cadences, and a wild, unusual rhythm.

They did not know that he was looking on; and the girl went on with her dance, which no one else seemed to notice but the lover, who struck his hands together, now and then, in applause or to mark the rhythm. Vane watched with interest. It was curious to think that she was really dancing, dancing and singing, and neither of them was paid for it.

Vane landed in New York about the first of September.

XIX.

HE went to the bank, and found that nothing more had been heard from Welsh. There was nothing doing; even his partner was out of town. The city was empty. Vane’s first act was to send to Doctor Kérouec a sum sufficient to endow liberally and for all time all the sociétés de consommation that there were in Rennes. It did not cost much; and the money was thriftily invested by the doctor, with a most gratifying increase in the annual statistics of soup. This he quarterly reported to his young friend with as much satisfaction as if the statistics were of souls saved for heaven; but there was a note of sadness now in the old doctor’s letters which had not been noticeable before.

The city was a mass of undistinguished humanity. Vane rather liked this; and found much satisfaction in going to Coney Island and similar places where the people asserted themselves with frankness and sincerity. One’s fellow-man is always interesting, when not factitious.

But after a very few weeks of New York, he wearied of it. He could not bring himself to take so much interest in his business, now that it was so very successful. The labor did not seem to him so healthy, so satisfying as of old; it could hardly be termed his daily bread, even by a stretch of metaphor. Moreover, one’s daily bread is got for one by wholesale in America; machine-raised, by the thousand bushels, in Minnesota, and brought ready to hand for the million, like the other raw materials of life.

Vane was tired of the raw material of life—he felt a want for something that was not ground out by the wholesale. But the only finished product he had yet seen was Miss Winifred Thomas. She was a product of the city—perhaps he ought to go further afield. Wemyss had once said that people only got the means of living in New York. They went elsewhere to live.

And the young man was anxious, above all things, to live, to find in life what was earnest and genuine: not the mere means, like money, nor the makeshifts, like fashion. Vane wanted happiness, not pleasure; like most young men, he felt injured if he did not get it.

It may have been this craving for humanity that made the city unendurable to him, or it may have been the heat, which, late in September, was most intense. Whatever it was, he felt restless and uneasy in the city, and cast about him where he could best go for seclusion and fresh air. Some acquaintance suggested Cinerea Lake. It was at that time crowded with people, which would make seclusion easy; and it was a “popular summer resort,” which, he thought, would be a novelty to him, coming from Carcassonne and the monasteries of Monserrat. Moreover, Cinerea was one of the places in America which people visited solely in search of happiness.

Cinerea Lake was formerly known as Butternut Pond; it belonged to a Mr. Sabin; and the village was Sabin’s simply. But the pond is really a lake, and it lies near a spur of the Appalachian Mountains. The place had originally been marked by a farmhouse only, to which some popular preacher had betaken himself for the summer months. In an evil moment he had come back, one autumn, and written a book about the delights of the hills; the delights that he found in the hills. In the next year seven-eighths of the ladies in his parish, and their friends, had settled upon the country, in search, they too, of the delights of the hills; they occupied the farmhouses within a radius of several miles, and crocheted. The year after that had witnessed, at only a few weeks’ interval, the foundation and the completion of the Butternut Grand Hotel. And now the place was beginning to be known to that world which calls itself society, and which the rest of society calls fashionable. Little of all this was known to Vane, however. He understood that it was cool and crowded, and thither he accordingly went.

Vane had his days of self-gratulation, like another; and it was in one of them that he left town for his vacation. He felt that soon a fortune, and a large one, would be assured him. He was an independent and successful citizen of America, with all his country before him, and the chances in his favor. He had lately seen something of a friend or two also in town for the summer; and had had an occasional little dinner with John or some other man, in the club, or by the sea; Vane was sociable enough, though not gregarious, and he felt rich in acquaintances with half a dozen or so. They were most of them still in the city; and Vane felt a sense of freedom, of adventure, as he left it, which became stronger every moment as the train flew northward. But the journey was one of many hours, and it was late in the twilight of the next afternoon before he alighted at Cinerea Lake—called Cinerea by the ladies who had looked in the lexicon to christen it anew.

XX.

THE Butternut Grand Hotel was large and white; with a hundred windows, all of the same size, equidistant, and in four parallel rows. Had any one of them been unfinished, like the window in Aladdin’s tower, it need not have so remained; with a few hours’ work any joiner could have evened it up with the rest. A huge verandah surrounded the structure, roofed above the second story; and up and down the painted floor of this verandah a score of pairs of young ladies promenaded. Young ladies they were called in the society columns of the summer Sunday papers; speaking colloquially, one might have called them girls. Vane’s black suit was dusty, and in his travel-stained condition it was embarrassing to be the object of young feminine eyes; but as most of them stopped their walk to observe his entrance, there was nothing for it but to cast his own eyes down, and walk modestly through the line. It was a worse gantlet than the Calais pier. Vane went to the office to ask for his room; but it was some minutes before the clerk, who was talking with another gentleman, could give him his attention. When he did so he scanned Vane rudely before replying, and at last, as he opened his lips to answer, two of the young ladies from the piazza rushed in to ask for their mail, and, pushing Vane slightly aside, engaged the clerk’s attention. “Now, Mr. Hitchcock, you don’t mean to tell me you have no letters for me?” said one. The other looked at Vane while she spoke, as, indeed, did the speaker.

When the clerk began sorting the heap of letters which had just come in the coach, Vane acquired the flattering conviction that the mail was but a pretext, and himself the cause.

“There are none, indeed, Miss Morse,” said the clerk; and the girls fluttered gaily out. “I’ll write you one myself, if you’ll wait,” added the clerk jocosely. But the only reply to this was a Parthian glance from Miss Morse, which embraced Vane in its orbit. The clerk looked after them with a smile, and then, after meditating a moment, turned to Vane.

“Now, what can I do for you, sir?”

“I believe I engaged a room.”

“What name?”

“Vane.”

“Three twelve,” said the clerk, and turned back to his first interlocutor, who had been standing silent in the meantime, chewing a toothpick and regarding the opposite wall.

Vane’s chamber was a long and narrow room shaped like a pigeon-hole in a desk. A ventilating window was above the door, and a single window opposite, uncurtained, looking out upon a long, monotonous slope of mountain, which was clothed shabbily in a wood of short firs. The sides and roof of the room were of coarse plaster; a red carpet was upon the floor. Some delay was caused by Vane’s ringing for a bath, and still further delay by the waitress in obtaining the information that he could not have one unless he gave notice the day before. While Vane was waiting for all this he heard the door of the next room open, and the distinctness of the feminine voices bore testimony to the thinness of the walls. There were seemingly two young ladies there, but their conversation was interrupted by a gong, which, as one of the voices informed him, was the gong for supper. A consequent scuffle took place, and this was only ended by the final bang of the door that announced the departure of his neighbors.

Vane followed their example, and entered a long dining-hall in which two rows of tables, eighteen in each row, were disposed transversely; there were eighteen seats at every table, many of which were already occupied. After waiting a minute at the door he was shown to a seat next a Jewish family and several young men—evidently a sort of omnibus table, to which the negro waiters, with a nice social discrimination, ushered solitary males. Possibly for this reason, they were not well served. The table was covered with little oval dishes of coarse stoneware containing dip-toast, fried potatoes, and slices of cold meat. Steaks and omelets were announced in a printed bill of fare, and tea and coffee. Vane was unable to interest himself in his companions, and watched the people coming in. Most of the elderly ladies and some of the young girls wore large solitaire diamonds, and bore down, as if under full sail, through the broad aisle, with elaborate assumption of indifference and social dignity. It was evident that, to many of them, the people who were seated at these tables represented the World. The men looked more respectable, but even more out of place; and the girls, of whom many were pretty, came tripping in by twos, with infinite variety of gait and action. Vane noticed that Miss Morse and her friend had changed their dresses. They did not look at him. Miss Morse’s friend had a novel in her hand which she read during the meal.

After supper Vane walked up and down the verandah. Most of the girls did the same, still in couples. Despite the cool mountain air, many of them wore low-throated muslin dresses. Vane’s quasi-acquaintance, Miss Morse, was not among them; but about nine in the evening a figure came out of a side-door in front of him, in a sort of summer evening ball dress, and stood a moment by the piazza railing, pensively looking at the stars. As Vane passed by he saw that it was Miss Morse, and he could not help wondering whether she expected him to speak to her. As he passed the windows of the large dining-hall brilliantly lighted with gas, he saw that they were dancing inside. A few instruments were in one corner, and perhaps half a dozen couples waltzing on the floor. Some young men were there in evening dress, but not enough to go round, and many of the girls were dancing with each other. Vane had to admit that most of them danced very gracefully and well. After a moment, Miss Morse came in. She had apparently some pretensions, for she sank into an arm-chair in one corner of the room, and refused to dance. There was a sort of master of ceremonies in the person of a sallow and thin but dapper young gentleman who had all the affable address of a popular lady’s salesman, and Vane saw him present several young men to Miss Morse. All this became at last somewhat tiresome, and, feeling lonely, Vane went to bed.

He had almost got to sleep when he was aroused by the voices of his feminine neighbors. “Well, I think he’s perfectly horrid,” said one. “No,” said another, “he ain’t much of an addition. I told father I must have two new ball dresses, because I was coming here for the society. I had to tease him for them for a month, and now, I declare, I might just as well have stayed in the city all summer. Come and undo this, will you, please?”

“Sh!” said the other voice, “how do you know there isn’t some one next door?” A silence followed, interrupted by bursts of stifled laughter.

“Well, I don’t care,” said the first voice. “There wasn’t any one there yesterday, anyhow. Did you see how he was dressed? Nothing but a common, rough suit.”

“Oh, don’t you like that? Why, I call that real distinguished.”

“Well, anyhow, I don’t see why he couldn’t get introduced. I call it simply rude, Englishman or no Englishman.” At this point the unfortunate stranger seemed finally disposed of, and Vane went to sleep.

XXI.

THERE is one long road at Cinerea Lake, always dusty, with a sidewalk of planks. The hotel, with the appendant cottages, is on the one side, and a few old farmhouses, now boarding-houses, with a dozen little wooden shops, are on the other. Most of the shops sell novels, sweetmeats, embroidery work, and newspapers. There were not many men at Cinerea. It is not customary in America for men to join their wives and children on pleasure excursions. What few men there were seemed oppressed by the novelty of the position, and sat in chairs upon the piazza, with their feet upon the railing. They seldom ventured farther during the day. There was a stock telegraph instrument in the hall of the hotel, and an enterprising New York broker had an office in an ante-room. Vane noticed that every one of these gentlemen left their foot-rests on the verandah shortly after breakfast, and, following them to the nearest store, he learned that this activity was caused by a desire to purchase the evening papers of the day before, which arrived, as a written placard informed him, at 9.45 A.M. Vane himself asked for a paper, but got no answer from the young woman behind the counter, while a friend who was sitting with her, working, and eating pieces of chocolate from a paper bag upon her lap, stopped her embroidery a moment to stare at him rudely. Suddenly it dawned upon Vane that he had seen the faces of these two ladies at his hotel. They were sitting on a little piazza in front of the shop, behind a small counter, but the shop itself seemed to be a sort of club-room for the ladies of the place, and these were evidently guests. Vane apologized for his error with some inward amusement, but his speech was rewarded with a still blanker stare from the young woman with the chocolate.

So far, this “popular summer resort” promised more errors than entertainment. Vane had certainly never felt so lonely before as among this gay company. Work gives its own companionship, but idleness is gregarious. The place was full of girls of all styles of behavior and prettiness. Some were playing tennis, others making up companies for drives, others starting off for long walks. Vane had pictured the type of American girlhood as something fragile and delicate, but these had healthy faces and lithe young figures robed in flannel and untrammelled by the dressmakers’ art. They were bright, quick with their eyes, but far from ethereal. Vane himself went to walk, and, after following the road for a mile or so, entered a woody path, which, as a finger-post assured him, led to Diana’s baths.

He felt much in the mood for a meeting with a heathen goddess, and entered the forest accordingly. But he found nothing nearer Diana than Miss Morse and her friend, who were sitting reading with two young men. The path seemed to vanish where they sat, and Vane made hold to stop and ask one of the young men the way. They were slow of speech, and Miss Morse herself replied. She assured him that he was at his destination, and Vane found himself, in a moment, in conversation with her.

Diana’s Baths were formed by a small brook trickling over some mossy rocks and making a few pools in which Diana might possibly have wet her feet. Vane made this suggestion, which was received with much laughter, at the end of which he found himself on such a footing of intimacy that he was being introduced to Miss Morse’s companions: “Miss Westerhouse, may I introduce Mr.—— Mr.——” “Vane,” suggested he. “Mr. Vane, of New York, Miss Morse. Miss Westerhouse, Mr. Vane. Mr. Vane, Mr. Thomson and Mr. Dibble.” The young men nodded rather awkwardly. Miss Westerhouse made a place on the rock beside her, and Vane sat down wondering how the situation would be explained, and who had told her that he came from New York.

“I met you yesterday on your arrival, did I not?” Miss Morse went on.

Vane admitted that she had, and remembered the scene with the hotel clerk.

“Coming from New York, I fear you will find Cinerea Lake rather dull. We are after the season, you know.”

He hastened to assure her that he had found the place most attractive.

“It is getting to be rather too well known now, but it is pretty, though not so nice as it was. You meet all sorts of people here already.”

Vane felt duly instructed as to the social position of his companions, and assented, with much honesty, to her last statement.

“It is not very gay here, now. We have a hop twice a week.”

“That will be delightful,” said Vane with enthusiasm.

“Do you reside in New York?” Miss Westerhouse broke in.

“As much as I do anywhere,” said Vane. “I have to travel a great deal.” Vane noticed a sudden lack of interest in him after this remark, and fancied that they set him down for a commercial traveler. “I have only lived in New York of late years, and then only when I am not——on the road,” he added, as the humorous view of the situation struck him. A silence followed this remark, and a certain coldness; but Vane, who had a particularly comfortable place, leaning back on a mossy rock, made no motion to go. Finally Miss Westerhouse made an effort.

“Then you are not much acquainted in New York.”

“I have a good many business acquaintances.”

“Oh, I mean your lady friends.”

“I have none,” said Vane.

“Some very pleasant New Yorkers have been here,” said Miss Morse, “but they only stayed a few days. Mrs. Haviland and Miss Thomas——” Vane could not repress a slight movement. “Do you know them?” said the young lady with some interest.

“Miss Winifred Thomas?”

“This was Miss Baby——”

“It is the same person,” said Vane, with decision.

“Is she not just too lovely?” broke in again Miss Westerhouse, with enthusiasm. Vane could not but concur in this sentiment. Miss Morse’s interest in him seemed revived.

“I suppose we must go back to dinner now,” said she. “By the way, we are going to have a straw-ride this afternoon. Would you not like to come, Mr. Vane? The gentlemen are getting it up. Mr. Dibble, here, is chief manager——”

Vane said he should be delighted, and they rose to go. Picking up two books and a bonbonnière which lay upon the grass, he followed Miss Morse. He looked at the books as he went, and uttered a slight ejaculation. One, to be sure, was Lucile, but the other was a volume of Prosper Mérimée’s Lettres à une Inconnue.

On the way back Vane was presented to several other young ladies, and when he finally entered the hotel piazza, it was in company with a Miss Parsons, of Brooklyn, who in turn presented him to a Miss Storrs, of Cleveland, and left them, as she unnecessarily explained, to dress for dinner.

Vane was rather ashamed to own to himself that he was displeased at the acquaintance that seemed to have existed between Miss Thomas and his late companions. Little as he cared for Miss Thomas, there was certainly a world-wide difference between her and Miss Morse, Mr. Thomson and Mr. Dibble; and yet he could not bring himself to admit that he was snobbish or prejudiced. It was simply that the wealth and education of these young ladies had outstripped their breeding, while the young men were still seeking for the first. He pictured to himself Miss Thomas sitting in flannels at Diana’s Baths, and going on straw-rides with Mr. Dibble, and the idea was distasteful to him.

It was surely an odd chance that he should travel upon her wake in this way. Throughout the afternoon he occasionally caught himself wondering how she would appear in these surroundings. This thing was a mixture of Arcady and an American female college, with a touch of Vauxhall thrown in. And it was only six weeks since he had wandered in the moonlight of the Alhambra; and the harvest was hardly all gathered that had been ripening about the walls of Carcassonne. Vane wished that he could meet these people at home—that he could see their life really as it was. Was this, then, all? It could not be. There must be something more real behind it.

Vane could fancy, in the days when he had been in love, himself and her living in that out-of-the-way corner in France, in that forgotten nook sheltered on the backward shores of Spain, eddied in the flood of modern life and civilization, where he had wandered in the pine woods upon Monserrat. But this place, this painted wooden hotel, this company, seemed more foreign to him than anything in the Old World. What was it? What was it that gave the strange character to it all? Was he, then, such a foreigner that he could not understand it? Was even his love exotic, that it seemed impossible here?

The young man gave himself much mental trouble in getting at the secret of this American life. And, in the last analysis, it seemed unreal—unreal because it was temporary; because the old was going and the new had not yet come; because it was like the wooden houses and the temporary bridges, and the provisional social conventions, and the thin fashionable veneer of neo-conservatism—it was suffered to remain until the people found time and resolution to make a change.

XXII.

VANE, however, did not carry his analysis quite so far as this. He found that it was unreal; there he stopped; the why was too heavy a burden for him. He was ready and anxious enough to make it real; but still, all through his life, the substance of life itself had kept eluding him, and left the shadow in his hand.

Many of the girls (at Cinerea every woman under thirty is a girl)—many of the girls were reading novels, American summer stories, written by girls about other girls, and revelling in the summer life of girls. Vane borrowed some of these and read them. They were so prettily written, so charming, so awfully true, he was told; and he liked not to confess that they gave him but a little passing amusement, which was followed by much mental depression. It was all true and real, then? Was Vane himself something of a prig? John Haviland did not think so. But these stories seemed to him more immoral, or at all events, more corrupting, than many a French romance ending in adultery. There was in them an ignorance of all that is highest in life, a calm, self-satisfied acceptance of a petty standard. The strength of crime implies the strength of virtue, but the negation of both is hopelessness. In defence of Vane, it might be said that he was really not in the mood for pleasure at this time.

The straw-ride was unanimously declared to be a great success. Miss Morse brought her volume of Mérimée along and read it to her young man in the woods. Her young man for the afternoon, that is; she had no special young man. The chaperone was the beautiful Mrs. Miles Breeze, of Baltimore; she arrived suddenly, in the nick of time to go; and Vane could see that Miss Morse was much elated at being under the wing of so real a social personage. Ned Eddy was with her. When the company paired off and scattered in the woods, Vane fell to the lot of a Miss Gibbs, of Philadelphia, a still newer acquaintance to whom Miss Storrs had introduced him. Miss Gibbs had a volume of Rossetti’s poems with her, and Vane read to her the “Last Confession” under the pine trees. For many a foreigner, it would have been his first. But the hearts of American young men are (very properly) bound in triple brass. Miss Gibbs also knew Miss Thomas. She seemed relieved when she gathered from Vane that Miss Storrs was an acquaintance of a few hours, and Misses Morse and Westerhouse of the morning only. Evidently, thought Vane, there were distinctions if not differences. Miss Gibbs combined much good-breeding with her fascinations; and a dangerous savoir faire.

The next day he went to walk with a dark-haired girl in the morning, and to drive with a yellow-haired widow in the afternoon. In the evening he found himself drifting on the lake in a boat with Miss Gibbs. Any one of these beauties would have been termed, by a Frenchman, adorable; and probably he would have ventured to adore. Other boats with similar couples were scattered over the lake, no one too near another. As far as Vane could judge, it seemed to be considered the proper thing for every young man to simulate the deepest love for his companion of the hour. It was a sort of private theatrical, with the out-door night for a stage; a midsummer night’s dream, of which the theme was let’s pretend we’re lovers. He was here alone with Miss Gibbs under circumstances which in France would have compelled him to marry her; and it was doubtful whether she would even remember him as an acquaintance, in the city, a few weeks later.

He was glad to admit that there was something very creditable in the fact that the thing was possible. Still this trifling, this mild but continuous drugging of the affections, must have its demoralizing effect. It was part result and part cause of that same unreality. The only real thing about the hotel was the stock-ticker; and even there, the stock that it registered was water. It was all very amusing. Yet the fancy continually recurred of Miss Thomas, in this situation, though he, of all men, would have had no right to be displeased; for had she not definitely told him he had none? Still, it was hard to divest himself of a certain sense of property in her; he had mentally appropriated her for so long.

He was plashing carelessly with his oars, and watching the sheen of moonlight on the outline of his companion’s fair face, suffering himself for a moment to wonder how the same light would have fallen in Winifred’s blue eyes, when Miss Gibbs again spoke of her.

“I had a letter from your friend Miss Thomas, to-day,” said she. The deuce she had! thought Vane; so she corresponds with Miss Gibbs, does she? Vane was disgusted with himself for thinking so much about the girl, and here he was caught thinking of her again.

He pulled a few nervous strokes. How could he see the letter without exciting Miss Gibbs’ curiosity? He managed it, finally, and read the letter. He was secretly relieved to find that the note was quite formal and was simply to tell Miss Gibbs that she need not forward a piece of embroidery which had been left behind. More surprising was the news that Miss Thomas was coming back. Vane made himself doubly attentive to Miss Gibbs; and as each man walked back with his lady, and said to her a long good night on the hotel piazza, implying all the sorrow of a Romeo in parting from a Juliet, Vane was secretly wondering what the deuce he was to do. “What the deuce!” was again the phrase he mentally used. He did not wish to see the girl again—that was certain enough; but it was decidedly undignified to run away. There was really a sort of fatality in their meeting.

But the best way to treat a fatality is to make nothing of it. Thus treated, it is seldom fatal. Then he was rather curious to see how Miss Thomas would behave among these Dibbles and these Westerhouses. After all, she too was an American; a little more sophisticated, a little better endowed by nature; but she, too, made a toy of love, and actors in private theatricals of her more “exciting” friends. “Exciting” was a word that Vane had heard Miss Westerhouse apply to Mr. Dibble. Vane had caught a little of the Parisian’s contempt for flirting with young girls. In a flirtation with married women, he thought, there were at least possibilities; and the flirtations were not so utterly silly. But marriage was far too serious an affair to be made fun of. At this period Vane affected to himself an extreme cynicism. Intercourse with Cinerea girls had corrupted him. They had given him their own levity. At another time, he would have deplored the vulgarization of a lofty sentiment; but since the past June he had been in a flippant mood himself. The American cue was to make game of everything in fun, and to make a hazard of life in earnest. He felt that he was becoming Americanized.

Feminine companionship was certainly corrupting to earnestness, if not to morals. By the end of this week he felt cloyed with too much trifle. He sighed for a man and a cigar, for a seat in a club, for a glass of brandy, for anything else masculine, for a little of man’s plain language and strong thinking. Yet these girls were no fools: they read Prosper Mérimée’s Letters, for example. They were emancipated enough. But they also read Lucile. He understood why women were not let into ancient religions, Freemasonry and the Egyptian mysteries. They belittled the imagination. Per contra, they were essential to the Eleusinian. Their only truly great rôle was the Mœnad. And yet, he thought, these sentiments of his would have shocked these girls.

Vane’s thoughts came and went nervously. He was driving in a buggy alone, or, at least, only Miss Morse was with him. He was ashamed of himself; he was ashamed of his thinking; he was ashamed, thinking as he did, of his inconsistency in driving with Miss Morse in a buggy. Postiche, postiche, it was all postiche, or was it frankness? Was it the troubled dream, the low beginning of the new conditions? Was his disapproval a bit of feudal prejudice? Vane was troubled, excited, disgusted, confused. Miss Morse noticed all this, but thought he was in love with her.

The only green spots in the man’s memory were Rennes, and Monserrat, and Carcassonne; yes, and the littered desk in the down-town office in New York—the scene of his only labors and his one success. And that success was no longer necessary; it no longer profited any one but himself. Vane had never formulated his position with such precision before. The last person of his own family was dead; he had claims upon no one, no one had any claim upon him; he had no further ambitions upon Mammon. Given this problem, what solution could the world offer—the New York world, that is? Somebody says life is made up of labor, art, love, and worship. New York had given him labor, which he had performed. And of the others? Had it given him love, even? Was he a barbarian, better fitted for a struggle with crude nature than New York, not up to the refinements of modern civilization? Should he leave these places? Now, that day Miss Thomas was to come, and he must decide. He thirsted for happiness; how was he best to find it? These thoughts, perhaps, seemed selfish, cold-blooded, practical, but there was a sadness in them for Vane.

So thinking, as he drove his buggy along the road, they passed Miss Thomas, walking gracefully, and the rich, slow color burned through her face and fell away at her temples as she bowed. Vane drove on the faster, flicking his horse with the whip, and considered what he would do now that she had returned.

He would treat her like Miss Westerhouse and Miss Gibbs of Philadelphia. He would not have his own movements disturbed by her coming and going. He would stay his intended fortnight out and then go.

XXIII.

THERE was a mountain party that afternoon, organized by Mr. Dibble. Vane supposed that Miss Thomas would be of the number, and himself stayed away, not caring to meet her. But when he came back, after a long walk, she was sitting on the piazza with Mrs. Haviland. Vane passed by, raising his hat. She looked at him almost wistfully, not blushing this time, but very pale. When he came down from his room, before tea, he went up and spoke to her.

“You have not gone to the picnic, Miss Thomas!”

She looked up for a moment at him earnestly; then, dropping her eyes, spoke gravely and rather coldly.

“I do not go on mountain parties, Mr. Vane.”

“At Cinerea Lake?”

“At Cinerea Lake or elsewhere.”

“Really, I had flattered myself that I had been enjoying your own diversions.”

Miss Thomas made no answer whatever to this. Then, after some minutes—“Why did you not answer my letter?”

“I did not know it required an answer.”

“I value your friendship very highly. It made me very unhappy.”

“Apparently you were successful in concealing your unhappiness from your friend Miss Gibbs. I did not know it was my friendship you cared for.”

“I am in the habit of concealing most things from Miss Gibbs. Have I ever given you reason to suppose I cared for anything else than your friendship?”

“You have lost little of your old skill,” said Vane, grimly. “I cannot conceive, clever as you still are, that you should have been, for a year, so slow of comprehension. You would rather I should think you a flirt than maladroit.”

“You think me so?” Miss Thomas spoke as if she were going to cry. Vane looked at her.

“I beg your pardon,” said he, simply, and walked away. Miss Thomas went on with her sewing, bending her head over the work. Truly, thought Vane, it was not a very manly thing in him taunting her that he had failed to make her love him. But had he honestly tried? he questioned himself, as he walked up and down the piazza that evening. Had he not rather put the thing on a basis of flirtation from the beginning?

Bah! he was going back to his old innocence. He had definitely given her to understand that he had loved her, and she had forced him to the utmost boundary of the explicit, and in his foolish magnanimity had made a fool of him. He had failed to make her love him; no one could make her love until she chose, for worldly reasons of her own, to try. He stopped his walk when next he passed by the place where she was sitting. “You do not seem to have your old attention,” he said, brutally. He had a way of saying petty things when with her, and was conscious of it.

“Why do you think I care for attention?” said she, simply.

“You cared for mine——”

“You admit it?”

——“Like that of any masculine unit.”

“I used to respect you, Mr. Vane. Pray do not console me for the loss of your friendship by showing me how worthless it is.”

“You seem to have made that friendship of mine for you a matter of common knowledge among the people in this place.”

“I have never spoken of you to any one since you left, last June.”

There was a ring of truth in her words, but Vane thought of Miss Gibbs and her trivial talk. He sat down in the chair in front of her.

There was nothing said between them for a long time.

“You told me then that you had forgiven me. I thought it was so noble in you! for I had acted very wrongly.” Miss Thomas was rocking nervously in her chair; she had a handkerchief in her hand; occasionally in the dark, she touched it to her eyes. Vane took hold of the end of the handkerchief, as it drooped from her hand. “I told you then that I would forgive you—and it was true,” he said.

“Then give me your friendship back. I am so lonely—without it,” she added in low tones. Vane still held the handkerchief, and moved it slowly with the rocking, alternately drawing it forward and letting it back; a subtle feminine influence seemed to be in the soft cambric, and thrilled warm in his hand.

Vane felt very kindly toward her as he went to sleep that night. After all, she was true, or meant to be, at least. It was not her fault, but his, that she had not cared to be his wife. And it seemed to him that he cared more for his opinion of her than for hers of him. He valued his faith in her more than his hope of winning her.

Again, he doubted if he was in love with her; he doubted if he ever had been; but he still felt for her a sort of tender pity. Poor, lonely, little maiden; with all her beauty she was but a child as yet; and he had expected from her the knowledge and discretion of a woman of the world. Yes, surely, she was different from the other girls in this place. He was glad that his momentary love had calmed and sweetened into friendship.

Vane himself asked her to walk with him the next evening, and they went at sunset through the grave mountain gorges. They were both very quiet; the man had almost nothing to say. They knew one another too well for ordinary conversation.

“Why are you so silent?” said she. “You never used to be so.”

“Am I silent? I do not know why. I suppose I make up for having nothing to say when I am with you by thinking of you so much when I am away. There is so much to be thought, and so little to be said.”

“I am glad that you still think of me.”

Vane looked at her dense black hair, and the soft shine of moisture in her upturned eyes. “The thoughts that I cannot say are so much stronger than the things I can, that they overpower the others, and I can say nothing,” he said.

“Do you know, I often have imaginary conversations with you?”

“Tell me some of them.”

“I cannot. I should say too much if I said anything.”

“Remember our compact, to be only friends,” said Vane, gravely. “Do not speak as if you were more than a friend, or I shall think you less.”

“I do remember our compact. That is why I do not say them.”

The words sounded strangely, but Vane knew she was sincere when she uttered them. When she pressed his hand that night at parting, she still managed to let Vane know that he was to put no false interpretation on her friendliness. She was a woman, and she did not know herself, he thought; but she was not a girl, and she knew him.

A day or two after this they were drifting under the moonlight on the lake. Her beauty had never seemed so marvellous to Vane as on that evening; the soft darkness of her hair, and shadowed light of her blue eyes, like the light of the night sky with the moon at the zenith. Her head was drooping slightly, and one round white arm, bared to the elbow, was trailing with a tender ripple in the water.

“Are you never going to marry, friend of mine?” said Vane, dropping his oars to look at her.

“Yes,” said she, “I shall marry when one man asks me.”

“Who is he?”

“I have never met him,” she muttered, dreamily. “I have never met but one man like him.”

Vane took his oar again. “She meant me to think she meant me,” he thought, and rowed vigorously. She seemed unconscious of the change of motion, and her hand, still trailing in the water, wet her white sleeve. Vane stopped rowing and seated himself beside her. “You are wetting your arm,” said he, lifting her hand from the water. She shall love me, he thought to himself, as he looked at her. A moment later he had taken her hand in his, and pushing the sleeve back from the arm kissed it passionately. The woman made no sign for a moment or two; then, as the man still held her hand, she came to herself with a little shudder. “O don’t, Mr. Vane, pray don’t—oh, I ought not to have let you do it—oh, pray go back——.” Vane left her hand and looked at her steadfastly. “Oh, I ought not to have spoken so,” she went on, with a little moan, “but I pitied you so——. O Mr. Vane, I was so sorry for you, that I forgot; and you were looking at me, and you seemed to care so much——”

“You told me of imaginary conversations you sometimes had with me,” said Vane. “Cannot you tell me what they were?”

“Oh, I ought not to tell you,” said she, breathlessly. “Can we not go home? Will you not row me back?”

Vane slowly resumed his seat. “We each now owe the other forgiveness,” said he. “If you would try to love me, I think I would wait.” The girl in front of him shuddered again, and bent her head away, till he saw where her hair was pencilled into the ivory neck; then she spoke, slowly and simply. “I have sometimes fancied that I could learn to care for you, Mr. Vane—not now, not now—after a great many years, perhaps.”

Vane was silent for some minutes. Then, as they neared the shore, he spoke in a clear undertone. “Will you promise to tell me, if you ever care for any one else—if I wait, Miss Thomas?”

She bowed her head still lower, and Vane took her hand again and held it for a moment. He left in it the old lace handkerchief, still burned at the edges. “When you send it back to me, I shall know what it means,” he said, and kissed it. “But while you still keep it, I shall hope.”

“Oh, I am wrong in saying this,” she sighed. “I may never care for you. And yet in certain ways I care for you so much. It seems sometimes to me that I have no heart. I don’t think I am worthy of you.” She took the handkerchief and put it in her pocket.

XXIV.

THEY walked back together. Vane felt a year removed from the happenings of the last week, from Miss Morse, from all the others. It seemed as if the painted hotel were to vanish, like a stage-setting, and he were back in Carcassonne or Monserrat, back with her. All the genuine life that he had missed so long was his: the earnestness, the simplicity of olden times. Now no longer he asked himself what there was in America for him to do.

In all this there was nothing sentimental; it was natural, real, radical. That he ever could have doubted that he was in love!

What he felt for Winifred was passion, not sentiment, and he gloried in it; it was because she was a woman, after all, and he a man, and he knew now that he should win her.

There was a certain splendid excitement about Vane’s life that autumn. It was all so real to him now. The solution had come of itself. He was not yet her lover, formally accepted, but he felt that he was her lover in fact and truth. He was continually with her; following her to Newport when she went there for a month, late in October. She not only suffered him to be with her; she suffered him (as a woman may, impalpably) to love her; even, now and then, to show his love for her, as when he took her hand, or walked with her in autumn evenings by the sea. Now and then she would repulse him, telling him that he must not be confident of her; that it was only to be after many years; but her repulses grew fainter and less frequent. It did not, even then, seem to Vane as if he were teaching her to love; she was too sympathetic; she felt too quickly and too closely every impulse of his own; his passion was too readily reflected in the flush or paleness of her face. Rather was she herself the mistress, Vane the scholar. Nothing he said or sighed seemed to take her by surprise, to be unappreciated by her. He augured well from this.

When a woman admits that she may come to like a man in time, she means that she already loves him, but is not quite ready for marriage. It was a more dangerous footing, their intimacy on these terms, than if their troth had been fairly plighted. The man sought persistently to win new concessions, to force further confessions; the woman, having made the one admission, could but half resist. It brought about a new declaration of his passion every day; pale, she listened to the torrent of his words, now faintly chiding, now looking vacantly out to sea. The worn voices of the ocean gave might and earnestness to his pleading, and filled, with its own grave majesty, his broken pauses. Her hand would grow cold as it lay between his own, and she sat silent; until, with a start of self-reproach, she would regain her knowledge of the present and make him lead her back among the streets and houses.

Vane went occasionally, for a few days, to the city, to look after the affairs of his bank. The closing of his contract with Welsh, who finally paid to the firm nearly a million, and the reinvestment of this money, took much time. Vane had never been a better man of business than when he decided on these matters, thinking, with a thrill in his strong body, of the meeting, next day, and the long afternoon to be passed on the shore with the woman that he loved. Some days Vane would not go near her; he was still careful not to incur comment; he could control himself. But hardly any one was left in Newport now, and their walks far out upon the cliffs had generally escaped the notice of the world.

XXV.

SHE came back to the city in November, but in the last of the month again Vane persuaded her to go to Newport and spend a week when he could be there all the time. She had an old aunt there at whose house she visited; Vane had his permanent lodgings; and this was before the time when many people stayed there through the winter. Vane had urged her to let him meet her at the southern extremity of the island, where the long ledges of rock run out to the reef; but sometimes she would bid him walk thither with her, and would even seem to like to have the notice of the town. They had given up their reading by this time, and their small talk had long since ceased. Early in the autumn they had begun with the Vita Nuova; but even Dante’s words had seemed weak to him, and after a few days the books had been thrown aside. She had not urged him to go on with them. Every day, rain or storm, this late week in autumn, they would skirt the cliffs, by the gardens with a few geraniums or pansies still drooping in the trim parterres, and go far out along the southern coves and beaches, where the full pulse of the Atlantic rolled in from the Indies. Vane had tried every day to win the final word; but all his passion had not done more than force her to seek refuge in silence. This last day she had opened her lips once or twice to speak, after a long pause, and then pressed them again together. Vane always walked a yard or two from her side, and looked at her fairly when he spoke. She would not sit down with him that day; so they went on, mile after mile, along a still, gray sea. The sky was cloudy, the waters had an oily look; and the waves were convex and smooth until they broke, creaming about the sharp rocks. Vane made another trial, just before they left the ocean to turn inland. She seemed to feel that she ought to speak, then, but yet could only look at him with her large blue eyes, the pupils slightly dilated. At last, just as she was leaving him, “Come to see me, in a month, in New York,” she said.

Vane went back that night and kept himself very busy. He heard little from Miss Thomas during the time except that she had not returned from Newport. She would never write to him since the June last past, though he had often begged her to do so. On the afternoon before Christmas Eve, at five o’clock, he called at her house. The room was just as he remembered it the year before—if anything, a little more shabby. She was standing alone as if she expected him. She was dressed in a gown that he remembered, and looked younger and more like her old self than she had seemed at Newport. She was smiling as he entered, but though the smile did not enter her eyes, they were not deep. She held something in her hand, which, as Vane approached, she extended to him. “I want to give you back your handkerchief,” she said. “I have felt that I ought to for a long time. I wanted to do so at Newport, but I could not bring myself to do it then.”

Vane stopped in his walk to look at her. “You mean that you love some one else?”

Miss Thomas bent her head a hair’s breadth.

“Yes,” said she, simply.

“Who is it?”

“Mr. Ten Eyck.”

“Are you engaged to him?”

“No.”

“Have you told him?”

“No.”

“When are you going to tell him?”

“In a day or two.”

Vane gave a heavy sigh. Miss Thomas sank in a chair, looking at the fire, the handkerchief still in her hand.

“I thank you for telling me first,” said Vane. He turned to go.

“You have forgotten your handkerchief,” said she. Vane went back to get it, avoiding the touch of her hand. Then he turned again, and the outer door closed behind him, Miss Thomas still looking at the fire. It was a rainy night and there had been snow previously. As Vane crossed Fifth Avenue he threw the handkerchief into a pool of mire.

He went to his lodgings to shave and dress for dinner. His hand trembled, and it seemed to him that he was very angry. He took dinner at his club, and smoked a cigar afterward with a friend, and drank a bottle of Burgundy.

“What has become of Ten Eyck this last month?” asked Vane, carelessly, in the course of the evening.

“He’s been at Newport lately,” said the other. “He’s just got back.”

Vane went to bed rather early and slept heavily. It was unusual for him to take so much wine. But he did not dream of Miss Thomas. In the morning he felt that he had got over it, and he walked down-town to his office. It was a clear winter’s day, sharp and bright. They were closing up the banking accounts for the year, and he worked hard all the morning. He might now call himself very rich. He was an infinitely better match than Ten Eyck. She must have loved him all along—from the very beginning, thought he. He was very indignant with her. But in the afternoon, even this feeling seemed to grow less strong. She was a woman, after all. He could not blame her. He had been angry last night, but now he felt that he could understand her. He almost liked her the better for it. She had been true to herself and her first love. He might have wished the same thing himself. Vane almost felt a pride in his discovery of her nature. He had called her a woman from the beginning. It was the fashion to decry American girls. She was different from a girl. She was a true woman—a woman like Cleopatra or like Helen. Had he first won her, she would have been true to him. He argued savagely with himself, defending her.

He worked rapidly, and by noon the accounts were done. It was Christmas Eve. Toward evening the sky became gray, with flakes of snow in the air. Vane walked up to Central Park, and returned to dress for dinner. Where was he to dine? The club was the best place to meet people. His lodgings were dark, and he had some difficulty in finding a match; then he dropped one of his shirt studs on the floor and had to grope for it. Another one broke, and he threw open the drawer of his shaving-stand, impatiently, to find one to replace it. Lying in the drawer was an old revolver he had brought back from Minnesota two years before. He took it out, placed the muzzle at his chest, and drew the trigger. As he fell on the floor, he turned once over upon his side, holding up his hands before his eyes.

So John ended his story. Of course he told it much less elaborately, that evening in the club, than I have written it here. I suppose I have told it more as if I were a novelist, trying to write a story. John gave the facts briefly; but he described Vane’s character pretty carefully, even to his thoughts, as he had known the man so intimately. Most of these descriptions I have tried to reproduce. And he ended the story as I have ended it, even to the very words. It was a story six years old when he told it to us; the man was forgotten, and the girl was married. His suicide was at first ascribed to financial difficulties, and the excitement soon subsided when his banking accounts were shown to be correct.

I do not remember that there was very much said when John got through. It was very late at night; most of the men were sleepy and we all had to be down-town early in the morning. There was, indeed, a silence for some time.

Finally the Major drew a long breath. “Well,” said he, “my opinion remains the same.”

“And mine.” “And mine,” chimed in voices.

“The man was a fool,” said Schuyler, simply.

“It was cowardly to shoot himself,” said Daisy Blake.

“And to shoot himself for a girl!” cried Schuyler. “Just think what a fellow may do with fifty thousand a year!”

“She was a woman,” said John.

“Was she a woman? that is just the question,” said the Major.

“The question,” said another man, who had not yet spoken, “is whether he really loved Baby Thomas—or the English girl, after all.” This was a new view of the case; and a moment’s silence followed.

“No man, to see Mrs. Malgam now, would think a fellow had shot himself for her,” said another.

“How does she come to be Mrs. Malgam?”

“Oh, Malgam is her second husband,” said Blake. “She has grown tremendously fat.”

“Well, good-night,” said the Major, rising.

“Speaking of fifty thousand a year, how much did Vane really leave?” said Schuyler to John.

“A million and a half, I believe.”

“Whew!” said Schuyler; “I had no idea of that.”

“The granger roads dropped half a point, when his death was known,” said the Major, putting on his coat.

THE END.

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Transcriber’s Notes:

“Haviand”, on page 67, has been changed to “Haviland”, the correct name of the character.

“Up town”, on page 75, has been changed to “up-town”, to match other occurrences in the book.

“Upstairs”, on page 91, has been changed to “up-stairs”, to match other occurrences in the book.

“Dead black”, on page 97, has been changed to “dead-black”, to match other occurrences in the book.

“Pic-nic”, on page 117, has been changed to “picnic”, to match other occurrences in the book.

“Court-yard”, on page 164, has been changed to “courtyard”, to match other occurrences in the book.

“Good-night”, on pages 177 and 201, have been changed to “good night”, to match other occurrences in the book.

“Savoir-faire”, on page 174, has been changed to “savoir faire”, to match other occurrences in the book.

“Down town”, on pages 201 and 204, have been changed to “down-town”, to match other occurrences in the book.

Non-English words and spellings have been transcribed as typeset.

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Table of Contents

- THE Crime of Henry Vane.

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- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE