Viola's vanity
Date: 2024-11-25T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: American fiction -- 19th century; Dime novels

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Title: Viola's vanity
or, A bitter expiation

Author: Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller

Release date: November 25, 2024 [eBook #74796]

Language: English

Original publication: Cleveland: The Arthur Westbrook Company

Credits: Demian Katz and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (Images courtesy of the Digital Library@Villanova University.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIOLA'S VANITY ***

VIOLA’S VANITY;

OR

A BITTER EXPIATION

By MRS. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER

HART SERIES NO. 67

COPYRIGHT 1897 BY GEORGE MUNRO’S SONS

Published by
THE ARTHUR WESTBROOK COMPANY,
Cleveland, Ohio, U. S. A.

INDEX

Chapter | | Page
I | | “Lightly Won is Lightly Lost.” | 3
II | | “Sweetheart, Name the Day for Me.” | 11
III | | The Moth and the Star | 17
IV | | “And Thou Wert Gay,— | 22
V | | The Mysterious Stranger | 27
VI | | Viola’s Repentance | 34
VII | | ’Twixt Love and Hate | 42
VIII | | Heart Struggles | 47
IX | | “A Man’s Heart is not Simply a Toy!” | 50
X | | Their Meeting | 58
XI | | Turning Over a New Leaf | 62
XII | | Hidden Grief | 67
XIII | | A Sweet Confession | 72
XIV | | Several Secrets | 75
XV | | Queen of Song and Love and Beauty | 82
XVI | | The Bridal-Eve | 90
XVII | | Viola’s Waterloo | 98
XVIII | | “I Drove Poor Viola to Her Death.” | 104
XIX | | A Coup D’État. | 112
XX | | “Was ever Maiden in This Humor Wooed?” | 117
XXI | | The Bride’s Home-Coming | 122
XXII | | “Go Back to your Haughty Bride.” | 127
XXIII | | Playing her Part | 133
XXIV | | The Letter that came too Late | 138
XXV | | “Had you Only Waited ’Till This Morning.” | 143
XXVI | | Only a Month | 153
XXVII | | Viola’s New Role | 158
XXVIII | | Viola’s Vindication | 164
XXIX | | Alienation | 170
XXX | | Rivals Still | 176
XXXI | | “Could Ye Come Back to Me, Douglas!” | 182
XXXII | | The Portrait | 187
XXXIII | | “Whom First We Love, We Seldom Wed.” | 193
XXXIV | | In Her Toils Again | 200
XXXV | | “It was Pique, not Love.” | 205
XXXVI | | Startling News | 212
XXXVII | | Bon Voyage | 215
XXXVIII | | “As Flies the Dove to seek its Mate.” | 221
XXXIX | | Hope Deferred maketh the Heart Sick | 224
XL | | “Cuba Libre” | 229
XLI | | “After Long Grief and Pain.” | 234

VIOLA’S VANITY

CHAPTER I.

“LIGHTLY WON IS LIGHTLY LOST.”

When the viols played their best,
Lamps above and laughs below,
“Love me,” sounded like a jest,
Fit for yes or fit for no.

—Mrs. Browning.

In the early spring of 1896, the morning papers of Washington, and afterwards every journal of any consequence in the United States, one day contained the following news item under the glaring headlines:

SOCIETY BELLE ELOPES.

Vagaries of a Beauty.

The Daughter of a High Government Official in Washington, Chief of an Important Bureau.—The Handsomest Girl in Society.—A Charming Coquette, Who Has Refused Scores of Eligibles, Jilts a Distinguished Member of Congress on the Very Eve of Her Bridal for the Sake of a Poor Young Journalist, Rolfe Maxwell, Whom She Secretly Preferred.

Fashionable society, which expected to get on its best togs today for the grand noon wedding of Congressman Desha and the lovely Miss Viola Van Lew, will stand aghast at learning that the marriage is off.

The young beauty, assuming the prerogative of woman to change her mind, left her prospective bridegroom in the lurch last evening, and eloped with a poor young man not in her set.

The marriage ceremony was solemnized last night at the rectory of All Souls’ Church by the genial rector, from whom these facts were gleaned by our reporter. It is understood that the jilted bridegroom is désolé, and the astonished father furious and unforgiving, but as the eloping bride inherits on her marriage the fortune of her deceased mother, she can afford to snap her jeweled fingers in papa’s irate face.

Behind this flippant announcement lay a thrilling romance of beauty, coquetry, love, and pride that may interest the amiable reader whose heart is yet young and warm enough to admire the good traits, excuse the follies, and sympathize with the dire misfortunes of a beautiful, thoughtless young girl.

If there was any excuse in the world for what Viola did, it lay in her youth and her thoughtlessness, and because she did not understand at all what a terrible force love is at its best or worst.

She had only heard of the grand passion in its lightest phases as it is pictured by merry young school-girls boasting to each other of their conquests, and it was plain to be seen that “the one with the most strings to her bow” was more envied than any other. They made “nets, not cages.”

She had the tenderest heart in the world. She would not have injured the smallest living thing, yet she had never heard that love is a flame that burns, and that one may carry its scars to the grave. They should have taught her that, those who guided her young life, for she had the fatal gift of beauty coupled with that subtle fascination that draws men’s hearts as plants turn their leaves to the sun.

Slender, lithe, and graceful as a young palm-tree, with the daintiest patrician hands and feet, piquant features, rose-leaf complexion, a cloud of scented dark hair, and a tempting mouth like a rare, red flower, her eyes alone would have made her lovely without the aid of other charms. They were large, almond-shaped, and luminous.

In the shadow they were gray as doves’ wings, in the sunlight blue as ocean’s deeps, at night they were dark like the sky, and flashing like the stars, so that it dazzled you to look at them beneath the thick fringe of the long black lashes. Then her voice, it was so sweet and low, and her laugh so musical, how could any man help but adore?

When she was presented in society there was no one to equal her in grace and charm. Women wondered and envied, men raved and adored. She could have her pick and choice of them all from the multi-millionaire, the gallant soldier, the haughty diplomat, down to the gilded youth who aimed to be the glass of fashion and the mold of form. All alike were Viola Van Lew’s slaves.

And the lovely, thoughtless creature, trained by indiscreet advisers to regard all this as simply her due, flirted demurely while immensely enjoying her conquests, as what fair maiden of eighteen would not, when launched on the glittering, effervescent sea of official life in Washington?

The first man that ever touched her heart was Florian Gay, a handsome, dashing young fellow of the cavalier type who would have become a great artist if he had not been very rich.

He had the divine afflatus, but lacked the incentive to work that poverty confers on the child of genius. Owning a handsome studio on a fashionable street, he trifled with art in a dilettante way, and devoted the most of his time to society.

He met Viola at a reception, and in due course of time, to quote an envious rival, “his scalp dangled, with dozens of others, at her belt.” In return he caught her fancy, and the flirtation became pronounced. In it she found a spice of delicious tenderness, a subtle attraction that she took for love.

He begged to paint Viola’s portrait, and accompanied by her chaperon—a good-natured old aunt—she gave him several sittings.

Before the end of the sittings they became engaged, though Florian secretly chafed at the secrecy she imposed.

“I should like to ask your father and make it public, so that those other fellows—confound them!—would quit dangling after you,” he said, betraying a spice of jealousy inherent in his nature.

But Viola put aside his entreaties.

“I like to have them dangling after me, as you call it,” she cried, laughingly. “I like to be admired, and when I am married I wish to be able to say that I had first refused a hundred suitors.”

He could not help crying:

“Heavens, what idle vanity! Have you no mercy on the men, Viola?”

“Oh, it does not hurt. They soon go away and forget,” she replied, lightly.

“I do not think that I should soon forget if you had rejected me. I fancy it would have been a very serious matter to me,” Florian Gay replied, quite gravely; but his betrothed only laughed at him.

“Nonsense! You would have been courting another girl next day, Florian.”

“It is more likely that I should have put an end to my life, for I seem to live only in you, my darling, and if I were to lose you now after you had promised yourself to me, I could not answer for myself. I should commit some desperate deed, I am sure!” he exclaimed, with such sudden fire and passion that she started with alarm and queenly displeasure.

“I don’t like stage ranting, please, Florian, and I can’t abide jealousy. You are to keep our engagement secret, and not to interfere with my flirtations, as you promised, or everything will be over between us,” Viola said, resolutely, heedless of the jealous frown that lowered upon his handsome brow, and with no comprehension of his feelings, playing with fire like a thoughtless child.

A very madness of jealousy throbbed in the young man’s heart, but it was sternly hidden out of sight as he cried, eagerly:

“I will obey your wishes, Viola; but won’t you tell me when you will be willing to marry me?”

“Oh, not for ages yet, Florian. Remember, I am not nineteen yet, and have only been out in society a year. My judgment is scarcely formed now, and perhaps,” with an arch, sidelong glance from her dazzling eyes, “I may yet see another man I could like better and throw you over for his sake.”

“Woe be unto him at that hour!” the distracted lover muttered grimly between his teeth; but Viola did not overhear. She did not, in fact, apprehend any change in her constancy to Florian. She had simply been teasing him to test her power, and now she said, with a sudden, sweet smile:

“Poor auntie will wake up presently over there in her corner and think it is time to have this sitting over, yet you have hardly begun. Please go on.”

Florian took up the brush obediently, but his hand was unsteady with the hot throbbings of his jealous heart. He longed to kiss her now that she had granted him that sweet, tender smile, but she seldom permitted a caress, she was so proudly coy.

“Ah, Viola, how hard it is to paint you! Such beauty can not be transferred to canvas!” he sighed. “I am getting out of heart with my work, and the poet’s lines, ‘In an Atelier,’ often occur to me.

“‘Ah, dearest, I am sick at heart,

It is so little I can do—

I talk my jargon—live for art—

I’d much prefer to live for you!

How dull and lifeless colors are!

You smile, and all my picture lies.

I wish that I could crush a star

To make a pigment for your eyes.’”

Viola laughed and rose.

“Well, I can not stay any longer today, because auntie and I are going to the White House reception now. Will you come with us, Florian?”

“Delighted I am sure, but an engagement prevents.”

“Can’t you break it?”

“Not with this man, much as I would like to for the sake of going with you. But I’ve been badgering him ever since he came to Congress for a few sittings, and he has at last promised to begin this day—in fact, this very hour.”

“Who is my important rival?”

“Professor Desha.”

Viola instantly made a rosy moue of disdain, and exclaimed:

“I hate that man! He is too goody-goody!”

“He is a very noble and upright man, and I am particularly anxious to paint his portrait. His fine head and face remind me somewhat of the old masters’ pictures of Christ!” exclaimed Florian Gay, warmly.

“You are partial to him because he was your professor at college,” she retorted.

“Perhaps so, but it is because that gave me an opportunity to know his value better. Philip Desha is a noble fellow, with grand principles and high ideals, and I am sorry that he yielded to ambition and let his people elect him to Congress. Politics will prove a severe test to his upright character,” he answered with more seriousness than he usually displayed.

“Come, auntie, we must be going,” cried Viola, pettishly, waking up her aunt, and taking an abrupt leave in her fear of meeting her lover’s next sitter.

But she did encounter him coming up the steps, a very dignified looking man of medium size, and about thirty years old, with as the artist had remarked, a grave, noble, serene countenance much like the ideal heads of Christ.

They bowed to each other with marked hauteur, and Viola passed on to her waiting carriage.

CHAPTER II.

“Sweetheart, name the day for me,

When we twain shall wedded be.”

Viola had a secret grudge against Professor Desha, but it was so childish, she would have been ashamed to let any one know it.

She was piqued at him because he was the only man she knew who appeared quite indifferent to her charms.

In fact, a spiteful rival had told her that he had expressed himself strongly as holding coquettes in lively detestation.

“He is a simpleton, and nothing would please me better than to break his heart!” exclaimed Viola, scornfully; but whether the young congressman ever heard of this wicked speech or not, he did not give her the chance she wished. He held himself coldly and disapprovingly aloof, and paid attention “to the homeliest girls he met,” so Viola said, “wall-flowers that no one else would look at twice.”

Consequently, she came to have a secret angry interest in the delinquent while pretending to hold him in profound contempt.

She knew that he had a noble nature, as Florian said, and that he cherished high ideals. He was good to look at, too, in his blonde type, with his fair hair and beard, and large clear blue eyes, and frank, kindly expression. But Viola would never have thought of him twice if he had fallen at her feet like the rest.

He excited her interest by his own astonishing indifference, and she had many speculations over it, always ending by the explanation that very likely he had a sweetheart in the State he had come from up North—“some goody-goody nonentity like himself.”

She was rather vexed that Florian was fond of him, and was going to paint his portrait, for she might have to meet him at the studio sometimes. Well, she would find out the days he was to come, and stay away herself at those hours.

So her bow, when they passed each other on the steps, was even more cold and uplifted than usual.

“He shall see how little I care for him,” she thought, with a pride that sent the hot blood mantling warmly to her cheek.

She stepped quickly into the carriage, and gentle old Aunt Edwina said:

“What a noble face and head Professor Desha has! Don’t you admire him, Viola?”

“No, not at all,” the young girl answered, huffily.

But in spite of her resolve not to meet her bête noire at the studio again, she encountered him there twice the next week. It was all by the merest chance, for how was she to know what hour he chose for his sittings?

On both of these occasions Viola had perforce to make herself agreeable to the young congressman, for she did not like to offend Florian by a contrary course. So she remained a short while on each call, and she pretended a simple friendliness with Professor Desha. He had to acknowledge to himself that she was fascinating, yet he could not say that he had observed the least coquetry in her manner, the least effort to win his admiration. Perhaps, he said to himself, she did not consider him worth her while. He knew that Florian Gay’s heart was at her feet, and supposed that this would afford her sufficient present amusement.

Yet he looked forward with secret pleasure to meeting her again at the studio. How beautiful she had looked in the rich artistic room, and how much more womanly and sweet she had appeared than when in social circles surrounded by the inevitable group of admirers!

But he did not meet her at the studio again.

The sittings for the portraits came to an abrupt end.

Florian Gay came unexpectedly one day to call upon his betrothed.

He was pale and agitated. She saw at once that he had received bad news.

A cablegram from his aged mother had conveyed the news that his father had suffered a stroke of paralysis at Carlsbad Springs, whither he had gone a few months previous for his health.

They had anxiously desired to have Florian accompany them, but his passion for Viola had made him refuse. He could not tear himself away from the land that held his idol. He remained, and was rewarded by Viola’s acceptance of his suit.

But now he must acquiesce in his mother’s entreaty for his presence by the couch of his dying father. He must go, and there was no telling how long he might be obliged to stay, paralysis was such an uncertain disease. The invalid might die before he reached Germany, or he might linger for months. He might even get well again.

Florian was deeply grieved, and most anxious to go to his father; but the pain of leaving Viola tore his jealous heart like a keen knife.

She was so capricious that she might forget him while he was gone. She might find some one she loved better and throw him over, as she had once gayly threatened.

The anguish of the thought almost took his breath away.

He determined on a bold step. He would entreat her to consent to a quiet marriage and go abroad with him.

“If she loves me half as well as I love her she will be willing to do as I wish, rather than face a separation of uncertain duration,” he said to himself, and plunged boldly into the subject, encouraged by the dismay and sympathy with which she received his news.

“You will miss me a little, Viola, my darling?” he cried, eagerly, when he saw the bright eyes softened with the dew of tears.

“More than a little, dear Florian!” she cried, warmly, for her really tender heart was softened by his grief. It pained her, too, to have him go away like this. There was no one else whose society was half so agreeable.

Taking quick advantage of her tender admissions, he plunged into the subject nearest his heart, begging her to marry him tonight or tomorrow and go with him abroad.

Viola was speechless at first with astonishment. When she caught her breath, she refused promptly.

“I thought you pretended to love me,” he cried, reproachfully.

“So I do, Florian, very dearly, but not enough to marry you offhand without a trousseau.”

“Bother the trousseau! You would order it from Paris, anyway, so you can get it just as easily when we go over.”

“I am not ready to be married yet, Florian, trousseau or no trousseau. I don’t want to be married so young.”

“But, darling, how long do you expect me to wait?”

“Until I choose to name the day, sir, and if you get too impatient, you are welcome to take back your freedom,” saucily.

“Oh, Viola, I should never wish to do that!” he groaned, clasping her little jeweled hand and pressing his hot lips upon it while he continued: “Viola, I may be absent for months, and I shall go mad with jealousy of the fortunate men who will be near you, who can feast their eyes on your beauty and hear your sweet voice and rippling laughter. Oh, are you sure, quite sure, that your love will last while I am gone, that you will be true to your promise?”

“If you can not trust my love, if you are beginning to doubt me already, we had better break off now!” she cried, spiritedly.

“My beautiful love, how can you torture me so when I am already so unhappy?” groaned Florian.

“Then why will you be so silly? Do you not know that I have never loved any one but you, Florian, and never shall?” cried Viola, rashly, melted to tenderness by his grief and really feeling very sad indeed over his going, so that she took a very lukewarm emotion for eternal love.

Florian was transported with joy over her fond declaration, and again renewed his entreaties for an immediate marriage, but was soon warned off by her rising vexation.

“I must go and make my preparations for leaving at once,” he said, sadly, rising. “Oh, Viola, it breaks my heart to leave you, my precious one! Will you promise to write to me often if I am detained long?” pleadingly.

“I am not fond of writing letters, dear, but I will try not to neglect you while you are gone. If they are very short, you must not mind, because I am so busy.”

“Busy!” he echoed, with slight sarcasm, and she flushed slightly, exclaiming:

“Why will you take one up so? You know the demands of a social life are very pressing. But I dare say I shall not enjoy myself at all now, I shall be missing you so much,” her voice breaking and tears actually brimming over in her eyes.

Florian caught her in his fond arms and kissed them away. Then they had such a sad leave-taking that the emotional girl allowed her betrothed to persuade her to name the wedding-day as soon as he should return from abroad.

CHAPTER III.

THE MOTH AND THE STAR.

Florian, hurrying away with sad heart and dejected mien from the parting with Viola, stopped short at meeting Professor Desha strolling leisurely toward him. He stared at him in surprise, exclaiming:

“Well met, my friend, for I was going home to send you a message.”

“A message?”

“Yes—that I can not go on with the portrait just now. I am called most unexpectedly abroad.”

“Something is wrong?” cried the congressman, who had not failed to observe the pallor of his friend’s face.

“Yes; my father is paralyzed at Carlsbad, and mother has cabled me to start to her at once. I shall go on tonight to New York, and sail on the first steamer.” After a moment’s embarrassing pause, he added: “I have been calling on Miss Van Lew—to tell her we must leave off the sittings until my return, and to—bid her farewell.”

His voice was so wrung with emotion that it sounded strange in his own ears, for an almost unconquerable impulse had come over him to confide to this loyal friend the story of his betrothal to Viola and his distress at the separation.

Had he yielded to the temptation how much of the pain and tragedy of the future might have been spared both their hearts!

But he was a man of honor, and he remembered just in time his promise to Viola to keep secret their engagement.

He crushed back the words struggling for utterance on his lips, and said instead:

“I can not tell how long I may be absent—not long, if I can help it—but of course it will depend on the duration of my father’s illness. Do not forget that I shall hope to resume the sittings for your portrait as soon as I return. Now, I must hurry away. Good-bye,” and he held out his hand.

Professor Desha grasped it heartily with many expressions of sympathy and good will, and they parted thus in the cold air of December, not to meet again for several months, and then under the lowering shadow of tragic circumstances.

Desha had seen his friend coming down the steps of the Van Lew mansion, and he had drawn his own conclusions.

It did not seem to him that even the news of his father’s seizure was sufficient to bring that despairing look to Florian Gay’s handsome face. He said to himself:

“He adored that beautiful coquette, and has long been hovering between hope and fear. Now he has put his fate to the test, and been rejected, poor fellow!”

He was on his way to call on Viola himself, though he had not mentioned the fact to Florian in the haste of their parting.

The pretext for the visit was to get Viola to join a skating-party tomorrow to consist of his cousin—a gay society dame—and some other beaus and belles, the latter of whom Professor Desha had been sent by the aforesaid cousin to interview on the subject of their willingness.

He could not have explained to himself why he decided to call on Miss Van Lew first of all. He admired her beauty, to be sure, but he detested her coquetry, and a wave of indignation passed over him as he thought of how she had trifled with Florian’s heart, only to reject him in the end.

“No doubt I shall find her as gay and smiling as if she did not realize at all that another broken heart lies at her door,” he thought, as he mounted the steps.

Viola started with surprise when his card was brought up to her room.

“Tell him I will be down immediately,” she exclaimed, hurrying to her mirror to remove the traces of the tears she had shed over Florian’s departure.

Then she made a few effective additions to her already elegant morning toilet, saying to herself:

“I must be quite gay, and not let any one suspect how my heart aches over Florian’s going. Dear fellow, how fondly he loves me, and how hard it was for him to leave me! I love him dearly, but I would not have our engagement known for the world, for then I would have to wear the willow all during his absence, and perhaps never get another offer. Dear me, I wonder who will be the next one? Suppose—only suppose—” She laughed saucily to herself, and the daring wish chased away every sad thought of Florian, so that she was quite radiant in her welcome of her visitor, and he could read no slightest sign of emotion on the sparkling, riante face.

“Oh, did you know that we shall have no more sittings now for our portraits?” she cried. “Mr. Gay has just left here—perhaps you met him going out? He came to tell me that he is summoned to Europe by the illness of his father.”

Not a break in the sweet clear voice; so well did she play her part of indifference towards the lover for whom she secretly grieved. No one must guess that, lest she lose the chance of winning new victims.

Professor Desha thought, indignantly:

“How heartless—and how beautiful!”

Aloud he answered, deliberately:

“I am very sorry for Florian. I met him going away. Until he told me about his father I believed from his woe-begone face that you had given him his congé.”

It was almost a point-blank question, so intently did his large, honest blue eyes search her face, making her blush up to the edges of her wavy dark hair, while the long fringe of her lashes swept the rich damask of her cheek as she cried, with a forced, uneasy laugh:

“You do me injustice indeed. I was very sorry to have him go away. We are great friends, Florian and I, and I’m afraid I am going to miss him very much.”

Her candor only made him more certain of his conclusions. He felt quite positive that Florian had been refused, hence his pallor and dejection, and her gay indifference. There was no pensive cast on her white brow, such as one wears for the parting from a dear friend.

But he could not pursue the subject any further, so he stated the object of his call. His cousin, Mrs. Wellford, wished to have her join a skating-party the next morning, the party to lunch with her afterward. Would she come?

Viola thought of her lovely new skating suit, rich violet velvet trimmed with Russian sable, and rejoiced in her heart at such an opportunity to display it; but she cast down her eyes demurely, and appeared to reflect until he added, encouragingly:

“I will call for you at ten o’clock if you will permit me.”

“Thank you, I shall be glad,” she replied, frankly; and then he hurried away, almost frightened at himself for having impulsively offered her his escort, and half pleased, half repentant.

CHAPTER IV.

“AND THOU WERT GAY, THOUGH I WAS NOT WITH THEE!”

Go—strive the sea wave to control;
Or, wouldst thou keep me thine,
Be thou all being to my soul,
And fill each want divine;

Play every string in Love’s sweet lyre,
Set all its music flowing;
Be air, and dew, and light, and fire,
To keep the soul-flower growing;

Be less—thou art no love of mine,
So leave my love in peace;
’Tis helpless woman’s right divine—
Her only right—caprice!

—Osgood.

Viola did not lose much sleep over Florian’s going that night, for a pleasant excitement had been mixed with her thoughts by Philip Desha’s unexpected call, and her engagement with him for tomorrow.

She thought, mischievously:

“He is putting himself in my power, and no man has resisted me yet when I chose to exercise it. What fun to lead him on a little just to pay him out for detesting flirts!”

When he called for her promptly at ten the next morning, she was quite ready to go, and he started with delight as she came down the steps, her beauty and her costume were alike so flawless, while her bright smile seemed to shed sunshine upon the cold, wintry day.

At the foot of the steps a beggar had paused with outstretched hand and a piteous whine—a poor woman with an emaciated, half-starved babe clutched to her breast.

Viola paused and gazed at the wretched mendicants, the miserable young mother with her pinched face and unkept garb, and the poor infant with its half-clothed body, and blue, half-frozen toes peeping through ragged hose.

Large pitying tears flashed into the girl’s beautiful eyes.

Philip Desha thought he had never seen such a contrast in human life as the wretched, starving beggars and the beautiful, happy heiress. He slipped his fingers into his vest pocket for money, but Viola was quicker than he, she had already drawn out her tiny, silk-netted purse and taken from it a shining gold coin, which she pressed into the baby’s skinny little claw, saying in a voice that trembled with sympathy:

“There now, tell mamma to buy it a cloak and a pair of shoes, and something to eat.”

Philip pressed his silver dollar into the woman’s eager hand, and she burst into tearful thanks and praises.

“No, no, don’t thank us; thank God for putting it into our hearts to help you,” Viola murmured, gently, as she turned away to the carriage.

Professor Desha helped her in, and closed the door. His heart thrilled with sudden admiration, not so much at the charity, for he knew she could afford it, but at the tender pity and sympathy that had gone with the gift.

To his noble heart Viola had looked more beautiful with those tender tears softening the brilliance of her eyes than when sparkling with diamonds in some gala scene she had moved the cynosure of admiring glances. He thought:

“She has a true womanly heart in spite of her coquetry.”

They drove to his cousin’s home, where they were joined directly by a gay party of a dozen or so accomplished skaters, eager for the sport. Directly they sought the beautiful Potomac, whose glassy surface glittered clear as crystal beneath the deep blue sky and fitful sunshine of a cold and perfect winter day.

Viola was an accomplished skater and dearly loved the exercise. She appeared more beautiful upon the ice than in a ball-room. Her perfect complexion glowed with enchanting color, and her luminous eyes caught a peculiar deep blue like the ocean’s waves, her soft, musical laugh disclosed little teeth like rows of pearls between perfect scarlet lips that it would have been Heaven to kiss.

Very naturally she and Desha paired off together, as he, too, was an excellent skater, and soon the bright surface of the river was the scene of exhilarating sport that drew hundreds of gazers to the banks to gaze at the merry crowd, while among them appeared reporters, with their pencils busy taking notes and sketches of the doings of gay society for their respective papers.

Viola was very happy, but now and then a regretful thought of Florian intruded on her gayety like a breath blown upon the clear surface of a sparkling mirror.

“Poor, dear Florian! I wish that he was here with me now. He would enjoy this so much. And how sad he must feel, going away today for such an uncertain absence when we were so happy in our love. Perhaps I ought not to be so gay while he is so sad. But then I dare not give way to moping, lest some one suspect our engagement,” she thought, self-excusingly, and turned a radiant face on her companion, answering a remark he was making about one of the young girls who was just learning to skate and had suffered several falls, to the amusement of her companions and her own chagrin.

“It is too bad, poor thing! And then her partner is not very skillful either. Now if she had you to teach her—” began Viola, delicately hinting for him to go and help the poor girl.

Desha was loth to leave his charming companion. Her subtle charm was beginning to enthrall him as it had done others. He regretted that he had drawn her attention to the other girl.

But she added, coaxingly:

“Do go and teach the poor thing how to keep on her feet. I feel so sorry for her forlorn plight. There now, she has tumbled down again!” laughing in spite of herself.

“Remember, I shall not stay away from you long,” he answered, as he tore himself away to do her bidding.

“Suppose you skate awhile with me, Miss Hyer,” he said, smilingly, to the young girl, who accepted with delight, for he and Viola had been the observed of all observers.

Viola, left to herself, began to do some very graceful figures on the ice that she had learned while wintering in Canada two years before.

Hundreds of admiring eyes watched her with wonder and delight. But glancing back to see how Desha was progressing with his pupil, she observed Miss Hyer’s former clumsy partner making the best speed he could in her direction.

“Oh, dear, that stupid! I’ll escape him if I have to skate across the river,” she pouted, in dismay, and struck out for the opposite shore.

Directly a cry of horror rose on the air as the gliding form rushed upon thin ice that cracked beneath its weight. There was an answering cry of deadly fear, a gleam of violet velvet and shining fur, and Viola’s form sank from view beneath the treacherous breaking ice into the deep, ingulfing waves.

CHAPTER V.

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER.

Sudden as a thunderbolt from a clear sky was the change that came over the gay party of skaters and the applauding spectators as they echoed the loud, horrified shriek of Viola crashing through the thin ice and disappearing into the depths of the river below.

The faces but a moment ago so gay and laughing, paled with grief and terror, and a terrible panic arose, all the skaters pressing forward toward the hole in the ice, the crowd on the shore also venturing out pell-mell, till the crystal sheet began to tremble with their heavy weight. Some fell down, and were trampled in the mad rush of others, and a dreadful loss of life seemed imminent, when all at once there rang out, high over every other sound, a loud, thrilling, masculine voice, crying authoritatively:

“Go back, all of you! Do you not feel the ice trembling? Directly it will break with your weight, and hundreds be drowned! Be warned, and return to the shore, leaving only such men as will assist in saving the young lady!”

The exodus for the shore began as suddenly as it had rushed the other way just now, reason being excited in the startled mass of surging people. And they were none too quick, for the ice began to crack ominously before it was cleared of all save Professor Desha and a few other men, foremost among them the tall stranger whose voice of command had driven back the terror-stricken mob.

This man had evidently been simply a spectator, for he wore no skates, but he was rapidly sliding toward the scene of the accident, and following him at some distance was Desha, whose speed had been greatly retarded by the hysterical clinging of his partner, Miss Hyer, whom he could not shake off till he thrust her into the hands of another man, crying, as he darted away:

“For God’s sake, take care of her! I must save Miss Van Lew!”

Heaven alone knew the frenzy of his thoughts as he skated swiftly toward the middle of the river, reckless of aught save that he should save Viola from drowning.

But the stranger who had routed the crowd was before him. He threw off his coat and dropped down flat on the broken ice, peering carefully down into the water.

The next minute he dived over the ragged, splintered edge, and disappeared from view, while the sight of such gallant daring evoked a swelling cry of admiration from the shore, men cheering to the echo, women and children bursting into tears, for there seemed little chance of either life being saved from the deadly current beneath the ice.

Questions ran from lip to lip.

“Who is the splendid fellow, anyway?”

But no one could answer that question.

Every one knew directly who the girl was—Miss Van Lew, the beautiful heiress, daughter of the chief of an important bureau—but no one there had ever seen the young hero before.

He was handsome as a king, fine, and soldierly looking, with a ringing voice of command; but not a soul knew his name, though many a silent prayer went up that he might be saved, together with the beautiful girl for whom he had risked his life.

Professor Desha and three others now came in for the next round of cheers as they reached the fatal spot, and cautiously prostrated themselves on the ice to gaze down into the depths.

They raised their voices then in shouts of joy, for the sight they saw filled their hearts with gladness.

The icy current had not swept away the victims, as they dreaded. There was the hero keeping himself up in the water by a terrific exercise of skill and strength, while he supported on one arm the limp form of Viola, whose pallid face and closed eyes looked like death.

“Courage! courage!” they cried to him, and reached eager arms to their aid, first taking out Viola, and then her gallant rescuer, who gasped, hoarsely:

“You were not a minute too soon. It was so freezing cold in the water I could not have sustained myself long with such a dead weight on my arm, and the current rushing so fast!”

“You are a hero, my dear fellow!” cried Desha, admiringly, as they set out across the ice, bearing Viola’s limp form, fearing that death had already claimed the beautiful creature for his own.

A physician was fortunately on the spot, and placing her in a carriage, accompanied by Mrs. Wellford and Professor Desha, he took her home.

When others turned to do a like kindness to the gallant rescuer, he had disappeared.

“What has become of him?” they cried; and several answered at once:

“He just beckoned a cab, jumped in, and was driven away, refusing to answer any questions.”

And strange to say, not one in that crowd knew his name or anything about him. He was quite strange to them all. And the reporters, in graphically describing the affair for the evening papers, could only refer to him as “the handsome and mysterious rescuer of Miss Van Lew from a watery grave, the unknown hero,” etc., while earnestly requesting him to announce himself to a curious and admiring public.

Later on Viola’s father appeared in print, thanking the unknown savior of his daughter’s life, and begging the favor of his acquaintance; but no reply came to any of these overtures—the man’s identity remained as deeply hidden as if he had sunk forever under the swirling waves of the deep river from which he had rescued Viola.

Meanwhile, our heroine being taken home and resuscitated with difficulty from her unconscious condition, was quite ill for a week, from the shock and wetting she had received.

She knew nothing of the stranger who had snatched her back to life as she was sinking a second time beneath the cold waves, for she was unconscious when he grasped her; but as she began to convalesce, and heard from Aunt Edwina the story of her rescue, she became greatly interested in her unknown savior.

“Oh, how stupid it was in everybody not to find out his name! I shall never be happy till I know him and can thank him for saving my life!” she cried, eagerly.

Wise Aunt Edwina presently began to grow uneasy over her niece’s anxiety about the handsome unknown. She said to herself:

“Come; this will not do. If she ever finds him out she will be falling in love with him, the silly, romantic child, and as like as not, he may be some handsome ne’er-do-well not fit for her to speak to, so I will disenchant her if I can.”

And the next time Viola began to dilate on her anxiety to know her rescuer, she cleared her throat, the dear, shy old lady, and observed, gently:

“My dear, I wouldn’t harp too much on my rescuer if I were you. I have a shrewd suspicion why he does not disclose himself.”

“What reason could he have, dear Aunt Edwina?”

“Well, then, every one who has described him calls him tall and dark—they always dwell particularly on the dark—so maybe—mind, I only say maybe—he was one of those handsome young mulatto men.”

Viola’s eyes flashed disapprobation, and she exclaimed:

“But that is no reason he should hide himself—he was a hero all the same. And you know papa would reward him handsomely if he would accept it.”

“Probably he does not need it, or perhaps he is married and doesn’t wish to make his wife jealous by letting her know he risked his life to save a pretty young girl,” pursued Aunt Edwina, relentlessly throwing cold water on Viola’s romance.

Viola pouted indignantly and dropped the subject, for dread of ridicule was her weak point, as her relative well knew.

At the end of a week she received a tender love letter from Florian, written during the days on ship-board and mailed at Queenstown. It was so fond, and couched in such beautiful phrases, interspersed with love poems, that it warmed Viola’s heart, that had not wandered to him often in his absence, being distracted by her illness and thoughts of the unknown savior of her life.

“Dear fellow, how much he loves me, and how distracted he will be when I write him all that has happened to me since he went away!” she thought; and not to spare him the sensation, she wrote the next day a full account of it, not forgetting the handsome stranger, of whom she said:

“I do so long to know him; but, after all, perhaps it is better not, for I am so romantic I might fall in love with him and forget all about you, you know. But that is only fun, for of course I could never care for any one else as I do for you, dear Florian.”

She actually believed this herself, and smiled as she reread it, thinking:

“How it will please him to read those words!”

They were the only words of love in the letter, for she had so much news to tell, including this item:

“You will be glad to hear that I like your goody-goody friend much better than I did when you were here. He has been very kind and attentive, sending to inquire about me every day, and yesterday sent beautiful flowers and a kind note, regretting so much it was not he who had saved my life instead of a stranger, and saying he would have been first to the rescue but for that aggravating Minnie Hyer clinging to him in hysterics and holding him back, till he actually pushed her into another man’s arms and escaped to assist me. You see, I am answering your letter right away, Florian, though I am propped up with pillows in bed; but I knew you would be anxious to hear from me and interested in—everything.”

When this entertaining letter reached Florian at Carlsbad, where he had found his father very low but still alive, the poor fellow was indeed almost distracted at hearing of his sweetheart’s narrow escape from death. He longed passionately, impatiently, to fly back to her side; but it was impossible to desert his sorrowing mother and slowly dying father.

“Oh, my darling, my darling, if only you would have come with me!” he groaned, as he read and reread the dear letter, hungering for words of tenderness of which he found so few.

It dawned on him presently that half her letter had been devoted to Professor Desha and her unknown rescuer.

“Confound them both!” he muttered, jealously, crossing out with pencil all the offending lines, and leaving only what referred to herself.

CHAPTER VI.

VIOLA’S REPENTANCE.

“Since I must love thee—since a weird, wild fate

Impels me to thy heart against my will—

Do thou this justice to the soul I yield:

Be its ideal. Let it not blush to love.

* * * Be noble, truthful, brave,

Love honor more than Love, and more than me.”

When Viola was well enough to receive callers again, Professor Desha was among the first announced.

Since the day of her accident his heart had been in a tumult of emotion.

He had realized that the interest he took in the fair coquette was deep and painful—painful because he deemed it no less than a calamity to lose his heart to one like Viola, who only played at love, and seemed to have no conception of its depth and sacredness.

Although he was in his dignified way a very attractive man, he did not have enough personal vanity to suppose that he could succeed in winning her heart where so many others had failed—even Florian Gay, so young and handsome, and much richer than himself.

So while she lay ill he began to read his own heart in dismay, and entered on a struggle with the passion that had stolen on him unawares, bursting into full flower that tragic day when she had gone down so swiftly through the broken ice into the black, flowing river to what might so quickly have been cruel death.

She filled his whole heart and thoughts, and he stood aghast at his own weakness and folly.

Time was, but a little while ago, that he had frankly despised and avoided her in his detestation of her heartlessness.

But the few unavoidable meetings with her at the studio of Florian Gay had removed the keen edge of his dislike. No one could be in Viola’s company and not yield to the magnetic charm of her presence. After all, she seemed but a simple, unaffected girl, perhaps not realizing the harm she did by her gayety and beauty.

So love had come to him against his will, and he chafed bitterly under it, feeling that the light coquette was not worthy the sacrifice of a true man’s heart.

He determined to conquer his ill-starred passion as speedily as possible, and never let Viola have the triumph of knowing she had ever touched his heart.

While she was ill he did not succeed very well in his desire, because pity and sympathy softened his feelings.

Then when she began to convalesce, it made him so glad he could not resist a kind little note and some flowers. It seemed an almost necessary courtesy, and he intended to stop right there, and never see her again if he could avoid it.

But Viola sent him a sweet little perfumed note in reply, at the end of which she said:

“I am almost well again, and indeed you must not blame yourself for having left me alone on the ice that day, because I sent you, you know, to help poor Minnie Hyer. I pitied her so much, poor thing! tumbling about on the ice till she must have been black and blue with bruises. Then, of course, you never thought of my skating out so far alone—neither did I, indeed—but I’ll tell you why I did it when I see you again.”

Much brooding over the last sentence persuaded him that he owed Viola a duty call.

Evidently she expected it, and—besides, his curiosity was aroused. What reason had she had for skating out so far indeed?

“I will go—just once. Then I must certainly put the little beauty out of my thoughts. One can not play with fire. I must give myself up to my political duties and abjure society,” he decided, grimly.

So he set out for his last call, and when ushered into her charming presence, the young statesman of thirty—cool and self-possessed enough ordinarily—trembled so that he could scarcely speak, so keen was his delight at seeing her again.

Viola had known well that he would come. She had faith in the potency of those well-chosen words, “when I see you again.”

She smiled him a cordial welcome, and it seemed to him that never before had she looked so lovely.

Illness had softened down the exuberant vitality of her beauty, stealing a little roundness and bloom from her cheek, and a little of the mischief from her luminous eyes. There was a delicate, appealing languor in her movements, aided by the trailing house-gown whose warm red tints contrasted so well with her fairness.

“You will pardon me for half reclining among my cushions. I am not strong yet,” she explained.

“Only lazy, professor,” bantered Aunt Edwina, who then went on with her fancy-work in an absent-minded way, as if she had almost forgotten his presence.

Viola set herself to be charming, and presently he overcame his seizure of timidity, that she took in some alarm for indifference.

“I am trying all I can to forget that day; but, oh! I dream of it every night, and, oh! I don’t think that I can ever be the same careless, light-hearted girl again!” she cried, shuddering. “I shall never forget my sensations as I plunged through the ice, down, down, down to the bottom of the river, believing that I was going to my death. I was wondering if I should go to Heaven, for I did not think I had been such a bad girl, only a bit vain, maybe.”

“A bit vain,” he echoed, wondering if all her coquetries lay so lightly on her conscience.

“Yes, I have been vain, and I remembered it then,” conceded Viola, demurely. “I have believed people when they told me I was pretty, and I rejoiced in exciting admiration. Only that morning I admired myself so much in my new skating suit, and thought what a sensation I should create on the ice. But oh, how I repented everything when I went crashing through into the cold water! Oh, how good God was to send some one to save me! I shall try to be a better girl the rest of my life!” she added, seriously, her eyes growing soft with the dew of threatening tears.

Aunt Edwina was listening, though she seemed so busy, for she interposed and said:

“You know, dear, Doctor Herron said you must not permit your mind to dwell on the shock of that accident. He says it will make you nervous if you don’t put it out of your mind.”

“But, auntie, it seems to me that I ought to keep it in mind always so as to be a better girl, for indeed I mean to be hereafter,” objected Viola, with the most charming humility.

“Pshaw, child, you’ve always been sweet and good with one exception—you flirt too much. But I don’t suppose you can help that any more than you can help breathing. It was born in you, and maybe it doesn’t do much harm,” returned the old lady, quite forgetting Desha’s presence.

Viola blushed up to the edges of her silky dark hair and stole a glance at him.

“I wish that you could judge me as kindly,” she murmured, almost entreatingly.

“Miss Van Lew!” deprecatingly.

“Oh, I know the things you have said about me. Other girls too good to flirt,” bitterly, “weren’t too good to repeat them to me,” defiantly.

“Miss Van Lew, I beg your pardon. You see that was before I knew you,” he hastened to explain, abjectly.

“Oh, I forgive you. I don’t bear malice,” she returned, sunnily.

“Yet I heard that you had threatened to break my heart,” teasingly.

“Oh, I did not mean it. I wouldn’t if I could—not that I ever expect to have the chance,” she returned, somewhat incoherently, her cheeks flaming under his steady gaze.

“You are very kind,” he said, lightly; but the subject chafed him. He changed it by saying, “You promised to tell me why you ventured so imprudently far on the ice that day?”

“Oh, yes,” and she began to laugh. “It was this way: I saw Minnie Hyer’s partner skating out toward me. He was almost as clumsy as Minnie, and I said to myself: ‘I will not be bothered with that great gawk if I have to skate across the Potomac to escape him!’ So I went flying, and—suddenly I heard the ice cracking with my weight and realized my danger. I started to go back, but the thin ice broke, and—oh!” cried Viola, hiding her suddenly blanched face in her tiny white hands.

“Do not think of it any more,” he said, remembering her aunt’s caution.

“Oh, but I must!” she cried, impulsively. “And I haven’t told you yet how anxious I am to know the name of the hero who saved my life. I am so anxious to thank him and to have papa reward him handsomely—if he would accept it.”

“I should imagine he would be glad of a reward—or that he needed it. He was not particularly well dressed, though as handsome as a prince, and as brave as a hero,” Professor Desha replied.

“Poor and proud,” commented Aunt Edwina.

“And you have no slightest idea as to his identity?” Viola cried, anxiously.

“Not the slightest; and I am sorry, for I would like to know such a brave man better. He told me you were sinking for the second time when he dived after you,” returned Desha, generously, though a spasm of pain contracted his heart at her interest in the handsome unknown.

But he could not blame her at all. It would have appeared most ungrateful if she had not taken any interest.

He began to think of going, but still he lingered, feasting his eyes on her lovely pale face that he was promising himself never to see again.

She began to ask him about the gayeties she had missed during her illness, and it gave him the opportunity he desired of saying that he had attended few social functions lately. His time had been occupied with congressional duties, and he had resolved to eschew the delights of society.

“That is too bad,” Viola exclaimed; and it seemed to him as if there was genuine regret in her tones and in the quick glance of her soft eyes.

He wondered, with a furious throb at his heart, if she really took an interest in him, or was it only polite pretense?

Ah, since Fate had made him love her against his will, how glorious it would have been to win her—to teach her the true beauty and sacredness of love, to be proud of her, to realize with her the great happiness of loving and being loved! It staggered him, the trembling hope, the superlative joy of the thought.

Then came a quick revulsion:

“Her tender tones and looks mean nothing. She has tried them on other men; she shall not tangle me in her toils! It is all deceit, and I hate myself for being so weak!”

He got up, fired with bitter anger at himself and her, and made abrupt adieus to her and her aunt, saying he had almost forgotten an appointment with Senator Hoar in the delight of their society. He hoped Viola would soon be well again and enjoying her re-entrance into society, etc.; then he tore himself away.

CHAPTER VII.

’TWIXT LOVE AND HATE.

When Desha was gone, Viola threw herself down among her cushions, actually sobbing aloud in her weakness.

Aunt Edwina exclaimed in alarm:

“There now, you have worked yourself into a nervous spell, talking over your accident. So I must give you some more of the drops the doctor left you.”

“Yes, please do! I feel wretchedly ill and nervous!” exclaimed the young girl; and when her aunt had left the room, she cried out aloud:

“What a cold-hearted wretch! I thought he was getting fond of me! And I—I—thought a great deal of him—more than Florian would like, perhaps, if he knew; but now I believe I hate the wretch more than I ever did before!”

And the angry tears almost blistered her fair cheeks, for the visitor’s seeming indifference had cut deep.

She was cruelly wounded, for she had cherished a private conviction that he was yielding to her fascinations, and the belief made her very happy, though she had not acknowledged to her own heart yet that she found him more attractive than any man she had ever met, Florian not excepted.

How much pique and vanity had to do with her emotion it is hard to say. If Desha had yielded weakly to her sway, she might have despised him. We ever prize the unattainable. It is

“The desire of the moth for the star,

Of the day for the morrow.”

Her capricious heart, thus repulsed by Desha’s assumed indifference, turned back awhile to Florian with renewed tenderness, finding in his devotion a balm for her wounded pride.

Feeling her enforced stay in the house until her strength returned most irksome, she welcomed with pleasure the frequent fond letters of her betrothed, though they were very despondent in tone.

Florian wrote that his father’s condition was most unsatisfactory. His partial paralysis did not yield to treatment, and he remained in a dying condition, which might terminate at any moment in his demise, or there was a remote possibility of his lingering many weeks in this unhappy state. Under the circumstances, Florian being the only son, it was quite impossible for him to leave Carlsbad. He must remain with his parents, divided between love and duty, his heart distracted with anxiety and grief.

“Ah, my darling, if you would but have come with me, how much happier I should have been!” he wrote most plaintively; adding: “Do you know that your letter was most cruel? It was filled up with my friend Desha and the handsome unknown who saved your life. Ah, my love, do not let either of these men steal you from me, for the loss of you would wreck my life! I do not care to hear about them. It is news of you, dearest, for which my lonely heart is hungry. If you could see me looking at your beautiful photograph and kissing it over and over, you would pity me and write some sweet loving words to show that you have not forgotten me in my enforced exile from your side!”

Viola’s heart was touched by the pathos of the poor fellow’s letter, and she brought out his photograph and looked at it with tender eyes, saying, as she often did:

“Poor fellow, how he loves me! He has a warm, true heart!”

And she thought bitterly of that cold, indifferent young statesman who had resisted all the allurements of her beauty, and who was doubtless wedded to his soaring ambitions.

In her bitterness at Desha, she wrote very tenderly to Florian, filling his heart with delight, and quieting his uneasiness by saying:

“You need not be jealous of Professor Desha; I seldom see him any more. He devotes himself to congressional affairs, and never goes into society now, so I suppose he has forgotten my existence. As for the young man who saved my life, he has never divulged his identity, and does not intend to, I suppose, and I should never give him another thought only that gratitude demands it. Ah, Florian, how I miss you these dull days while I must stay at home and get strong! It is so lonely that I get more time to think about my love for you. Yes, I do love you; you need never doubt that! I look at your photograph often, and kiss it, too, as you do mine! I think that whenever you come back I will let you announce our engagement and set the wedding-day. I wonder what Professor Desha will think when he hears it.”

Florian was in the seventh heaven when he received that letter.

It was the tenderest one she ever wrote him, for very soon she went out again into society, and amid her pleasures and her engagements had little time for letters, so that he found her a most unpunctual correspondent, though he entreated her to write frequently to cheer his dull days passed by the bedside of his invalid father and trying to comfort his grieving mother.

But whenever the brevity or the carelessness of her later letters grieved him, he turned to the sweet, tender one written under the impetus of her resentment against Desha, and found solace in the words:

“Yes, I do love you—you need never doubt that. I look at your photograph often, and kiss it, too, as you do mine. I think that whenever you come back I will let you announce our engagement and set the wedding-day.”

Such promises were certainly enough to pin a lover’s faith to, and Florian did not doubt her after that; he only adored her more deeply, and longed for the time of return, chafing in secret most bitterly against the fate that kept him from her side.

So months passed away until the winter was over, and in March Mr. Gay’s long illness ended in death, and his son was free.

It was a blessed release from severe pain suffered long, and the loving ones who had watched by him so fondly were resigned to the affliction, because they knew he had entered into rest at last.

Arrangements were made to convey his body to his native land for interment, and Florian’s heart leaped with joy at the thought of seeing his love again, and claiming the fulfillment of her sweet promises.

Of late Viola’s letters had been few and far between, and marked by a growing coldness that sent a chill to his warm heart, especially the last one, in which she said:

“I shall have something very important to tell you in my next letter.”

If Florian could have guessed what that important something was, it would almost have broken his true, loving heart; but before the next letter came he was on the ocean, en route for home, whither we will precede him in the gratification of our curiosity.

CHAPTER VIII.

HEART STRUGGLES.

Philip Desha had a will as firm as iron when he made up his mind, and he carried out to the letter his plan for avoiding beautiful Viola, and breaking his heart loose from her chains.

Besides, his pride had been stimulated by a caution Mrs. Wellford had given him the very day of the skating-party, and shortly before the accident:

“Don’t carry out the simile of the moth, Cousin Phil, and singe your wings in the candle’s flame.”

Her glance at Viola pointed the remark, and he flushed warmly as he answered:

“Have no fear for me.”

Mrs. Wellford, who was a very charming young woman, continued gravely:

“She is wonderfully fascinating, and I do not mind confessing that I love her dearly. To me she appears a thoughtless child, almost innocent of intentional wrong-doing, but the fact remains that she has given pain to many true, loving hearts by encouraging their suits only to reject them at the last, after leading them on with all the tactics of the most finished coquette. I have even heard it said that she intends to have a hundred rejections to boast of before she marries.”

“She will never add my name to the list,” he replied, bitterly.

“Do not be too sure. She can be irresistible when she chooses, the little siren!” she exclaimed; and just then some one joined them, and no more was said on the subject.

But Philip Desha understood that his cousin’s pride was enlisted lest Miss Van Lew should have the triumph of adding him to the list of her victims.

“It shall never be,” he said to himself, passionately, and held his course resolutely, keeping away from every place where he was likely to meet the little beauty.

“By and by I shall have conquered myself, then I can meet her again with indifference,” he promised himself.

But that by and by was slow in coming, he could not deny that to himself.

He thought one reason was that he heard so much about her, for the young men found her beauty a favorite topic.

She scarcely ever missed a social function, and he heard more than ever of her beauty and her coquetry.

“She is at her old trade of winning hearts. Apparently she has forgotten her pretty penitence that day for her petty vanities,” he thought, bitterly.

He never forgot the day when he made his first speech of any length in Congress, and lifting his eyes to the galleries, suddenly saw her sitting in the crowd with her great luminous eyes fixed on his face, apparently drinking in every word he uttered with as keen an interest as if the political questions of the day were her favorite topics.

It gave him a great start to see her there so unexpectedly, and to meet the intent gaze that was so flattering to his oratorical powers.

For a moment his voice broke with sheer surprise, and he swept his hand across his face to hide the deep flush that mantled it, only to be succeeded by deathly pallor as he went on with his speech, but not so eloquently as before, palpably unnerved by her presence and her scrutiny—the bashfulness of a true man in love.

For fight his passion as he might, Philip Desha had not yet succeeded in ousting it out from his heart.

It was six weeks since he had seen her, but he thrilled and trembled with emotion now as he bowed to the speaker of the house, and resumed his seat amid the applause of the galleries, but not daring to look up again lest he meet the gaze of her speaking eyes and be outdone by her fatally luring beauty.

It seemed to him that he could feel her eyes burning on his face, wonderingly, reproachfully, that he had ignored her so long. Strong man as he was, he trembled, feeling that he had to begin all over again the struggle with his heart.

“There must be something uncanny about the girl. She has bewitched me. I can not get free from her Lorelei spell,” he told himself, with something like fear of his enslaver, and suddenly rising, he hurried from the hall as though to escape some evil influence.

Unfortunately he was detained by some one in the lobby several minutes, and presently getting out into the corridor, started back in dismay, meeting Viola and her aunt face to face.

CHAPTER IX.

“A MAN’S HEART IS NOT SIMPLY A TOY!”

Before Viola went to the Capitol that morning she had gone through something of a scene with her father.

After breakfast he had asked her to come with him to the library for a few moments.

Fondly slipping her little hand through his arm, she had danced along by his side, exclaiming curiously:

“Papa, dear, what makes you look so grumpy this morning?”

“You will soon know,” he replied, sternly, handing her a chair.

Judge Van Lew was a fine looking man about fifty years old, whose life had been prematurely saddened by the loss of two beautiful sons in their early childhood, and afterward of his wife, when Viola was eleven years old.

Mrs. Herman, his widowed sister, had very willingly agreed to preside over his household when, several years before, he had accepted a high position in Washington and removed there from his native state, West Virginia, where he had occupied a seat on the judicial bench.

Viola had been educated at a high-class boarding-school in Baltimore, and only a year ago had graduated and made her entrée into Washington society. Her grace and beauty and sprightliness had at once made her a much-admired belle.

Judge Van Lew was a quiet, undemonstrative man, absorbed in politics since his wife’s death, and caring little for social diversions; but he was both fond and proud of Viola, and helped his sister Edwina to spoil her to the top of her bent. His daughter knew only the sunny side of his character, but the reverse of it was stern and hard, a fact she was yet to learn to her sorrow.

Leaving Viola to the social chaperonage of Mrs. Herman, Judge Van Lew seldom accompanied her himself to the brilliant functions that she graced with her dazzling beauty, so it was a long time before a shocking event opened his horrified eyes to the fact that his beautiful young daughter was at once the most admired belle and the most reckless flirt in the gay circles where she moved—and this before she had attained her nineteenth birthday. And it came upon him with a shock of surprise.

Viola could not remember that her father had ever given her a cold look or a harsh word, and she started now at the sternness of his tone, exclaiming:

“Papa, I hope you have no bad news for me! You haven’t lost all your money by the failure of some dreadful bank, have you, dear?”

How troubled she looked at the prospect, poor, pretty Viola! and her likeness to her dead mother so touched his heart, that he hastened to reassure her, saying:

“You deserve some ill-fortune; but I have not lost my money. I am not going to tell you that you can have no more new gowns or jewels, or servants to wait on you, or that you will have to move out of this luxurious home into cheap lodgings.”

“Then what is it, dear papa? I am just wild with curiosity,” she replied, uneasily.

“I am going to lecture you, Viola,” he returned, with a sternness that struck terror to her heart.

“Dear me, what have I done, papa?” she exclaimed, in such innocent wonder that he found it hard to go on, she had such an appealing air of injured innocence.

Gathering his courage for the final attack, and steeling his heart against her appealing eyes, he returned, sadly and gravely:

“Viola, I had a great shock last night, and I could scarcely sleep afterward, I was so terribly unnerved. Can you guess what I mean?”

“No, papa,” she replied truthfully.

“Then I will tell you, Viola, that I learned last night a dreadful truth about my dear little daughter whom I believed to be so good and pretty and tender-hearted. I learned that she is a heartless girl guilty of sin in the sight of God, although there is no earthly law to punish her for her folly.”

“Papa!” she gasped in horror, going deathly white with indignation, two pearly tears flashing into her great luminous gray eyes, almost black now with excitement. “Papa, who has slandered me to you? Who dares accuse me of anything wrong?”

She almost fainted when he answered, sternly and rebukingly:

“You thoughtless child, it is only the mercy of God that has saved a lost soul from being your accuser this moment at the bar of Heaven!”

Viola’s wonder and amazement only increased at this terrible charge from her father’s lips. She felt herself sinking, almost fainting, as he caught her hand, looking anxiously into her face.

In a few minutes she recovered herself, and sighed fearfully:

“I do not understand, papa.”

“You have heard nothing?” he exclaimed.

“Nothing, papa,” wildly.

“Then prepare yourself for a great shock, Viola, for surely you can not be as heartless as the world believes you.”

“Oh, no, papa!” she cried, eagerly, wondering if he had found out her secret engagement to Florian, and was going to scold her for it.

It was something like that, she discovered the next moment, for he added:

“You were at Mrs. Dean’s reception last night, and a young government clerk, George Merrington, proposed to you.”

Viola’s eyes dilated with wonder, but she answered, eagerly:

“Yes, papa, but—I refused him.”

To her amazement, he asked, angrily:

“What right had you, Viola, to refuse him?”

“Why, papa, what a question! I had a right because I did not love him!” cried Viola, gaining courage again.

“You did not love him, you say, Viola; then why did you lead him to believe that you did? Why did you flirt with the poor young fellow till he felt sure of you, and ventured to lay his honest heart at your feet?” angrily.

“Papa, no man has a right to be sure of a woman’s heart until he has asked for it and been answered,” she replied, uneasily, seeing that he was in deadly earnest.

“You are wrong,” he answered, earnestly. “A true man and woman, when truly in love, may always be sure of each other. The woman may always show her preference without brushing the bloom from her modesty. All honor to her for doing so, and everlasting shame for pretending what she does not feel for the poor triumph of rejecting him at the last.”

Judge Van Lew’s scathing words sank into his daughter’s soul, and she hid her burning face in her hands, trying to stem the torrent of his reproaches by faltering:

“Really, papa, I meant no harm. I was simply kind to him. I could not tell him to go away because I saw he was learning to love me, could I? And, besides,” hopefully, “you—you would have been furious if I had accepted him, you know you would. He is only a government clerk, you know, and I—have refused a senator, a general, some millionaires—and others,” proudly.

He knew that what she said was true. He would not have accepted George Merrington for a son-in-law. He was proud, but withal he was just, and justice ranged him on the side of the discarded suitor.

He answered reproachfully:

“Subterfuge will not help you, Viola; for a good woman can always find a way to dismiss a man before the affair reaches the point of a proposal, unless the man is a fool and can not read her face; and George Merrington was no fool, though he acted like a madman afterward. You simply coquetted with him, led him on by encouraging smiles and words, just for the amusement of the moment. Is this not true?”

“Yes, papa; but I meant no harm. I did not regard it as a serious matter at all. Plenty of girls do the same,” said Viola, frankly, trying to smile him into a good humor.

But he remained portentously grave, as he returned:

“I believe you have erred through thoughtless vanity, my daughter, and that you do not realize the sacredness of love. That is the only excuse I can find for what you have done. But from today I wish you to turn over a new leaf, and give up this despicable flirting that has so nearly ended in a terrible tragedy that must have lain heavily on your conscience forever. You must promise me today that you will never again lead any man on, to gratify your love of conquest at the expense of his happiness.”

His words and looks were so solemn that she exclaimed, almost petulantly:

“Papa, you talk of a tragedy. Do you call a harmless flirtation with George Merrington a tragedy?”

“A harmless flirtation, Viola! Wait till you hear all,” he exclaimed.

“Well, papa, I am waiting to hear all that you will tell me. Did George Merrington come to you to complain of my flirting with him?” sarcastically.

To her amazement and indignation, he replied instantly:

“Yes; he came from the reception where you had refused the offer of his warm, loving heart, with a girlish laugh and jest, straight to the club where I was sitting with some gentlemen, and he told me the truth about you—that you were the most heartless coquette in the world, and had broken his heart just as you had broken many others. Then crying, ‘Bid her remember she wrecked my life!’ he whipped out a pistol, and before any one could prevent the rash deed, fired a bullet into his breast!”

“Ah, Heaven!” shrieked Viola, remorsefully, and sank back like one dying.

He bent over her in an agony of pitying love, soothing her back to calmness, saying, gently:

“I knew it would shock you terribly, Viola, but it had to be told. Indeed, I feared you had heard it already. It must be a lesson to you hereafter never to amuse yourself at flirting again. A man’s heart is not simply a toy.”

“Dead! dead! and through my folly! Oh, what a bitter thought!” sobbed the poor girl, remorsefully.

But her father answered:

“No; thank Heaven, the wound was not a mortal one. The bullet was meant for his heart, but it was deflected from its course by a silver card-case in his breast-pocket, and imbedded itself in a less vital point. He was removed to Garfield Hospital, and will very likely recover.”

“But every one will be talking about it and blaming me. I can never hold up my head again!” moaned Viola, and strangely enough, the keenest inward pang was the instant thought: “What will Professor Desha say about it?”

To her joy and relief, her father answered, kindly:

“I have taken care of that, Viola, for your sake. There were but three men with me when young Merrington burst in upon us, and I have persuaded them to keep the truth a secret. The poor fellow himself is glad now, that he did not die, and glad that I invented a clever story to account for his accident. We told his mother, who was frantic with grief, that he was showing us a pistol supposed not to be loaded—common occurrence, you know—and it went off and wounded him. He will get well, I think; and as for you, dear, you must, as I said just now, turn over a new leaf.”

Viola clung to his neck, sobbing remorsefully:

“Oh, I will—I will, papa, if you will forgive me for the past! I hate flirting now, and will never be so thoughtless any more!”

CHAPTER X.

THEIR MEETING.

Viola sought her own apartments in a whirlwind of contending emotions, and threw herself upon a couch to sob and moan in passionate excitement.

Her father’s words and poor Merrington’s fate made her realize for the first time something of the enormity of what she had done.

She saw that her father was ashamed of her, and the pang cut deep, for she was proud of his love and his good opinion.

She remembered that Professor Desha had also expressed himself strongly against her flirtations.

Perhaps that was why he had withdrawn himself from her society, despising her for the same things that her father had so bitterly condemned.

Both of them she knew were high-minded men, and had a right to have their opinions respected.

Now that her folly and thoughtlessness had been shown her so plainly, Viola began to feel ashamed and remorseful over what had heretofore been her pride and delight.

“Oh, I am so sorry, so sorry!” she cried, remorsefully. “Indeed I did not realize that I was causing real pain to any one. But now I will never flirt again!”

While she was bathing her pink eyelids with eau-de-Cologne to remove the tell-tale trace of tears, Aunt Edwina came gliding in, and exclaimed:

“Oh, my dear, what is the matter? You have been crying!”

“Nonsense! I have taken a bad cold, that is all,” returned the young girl, unwilling for her aunt to learn what had happened.

“I am sorry for that, Viola, for I hoped you would feel like going with me to the Capitol this morning. I heard that there would be speaking in the House of Representatives today on the Cuban war, and I should like to hear it.”

Viola knew that she should spend a wretched day moping at home alone, so she answered quickly:

“I will go with you, auntie, for I would like to hear the speeches, too. I dare say it will not make my cold any worse.”

“Not if you wrap up warmly, dear, and wear a veil; so I will go and get ready,” returned the kind, unsuspecting old lady, hurrying out again.

Viola dabbled her face with the fragrant waters till all the signs of tears were gone; but she could not smile away the brooding sadness that lay beneath the dark fringe of her lashes—the sadness of trouble and remorse.

She dressed herself carefully in her warmest attire, for the midwinter days were very keen, and she and her aunt set forth for the Capitol, a little gleam of interest flashing into her eyes as she remembered that she was likely to see Philip Desha there.

It was six weeks since she had seen the young congressman. He seemed to have faded from her life, though not from her thoughts.

If Desha had wished to keep himself vividly in Viola’s memory he could not have adopted a better plan than this absence and reserve.

The angry pique that had caused her first interest in him only increased with time, and the smart of his coldness made her wish more ardently to win him, so strange are the contradictions of the human heart.

But pride forbade her seeking him, so she had let him pass passively from her life until today, when in her aunt’s company she sought the Capitol, knowing that she was almost certain to see him there, and feeling her heart leap wildly at the thought, while she said to herself:

“Oh, how clever it was in papa to get that dreadful case of George Merrington so nicely covered up, and how thankful I am that people will never know the real truth about it. I would not like for Professor Desha to find it out. How he would despise me!”

So it happened that as the young congressman was nearing the close of his brilliant speech that day, some magnetic influence made him raise his blue eyes to the crowded gallery and meet the rapt, intense gaze of Viola’s splendid, luminous gray orbs fixed on him with an eager interest that almost robbed him of the last iota of self-possession.

She saw him start and almost falter at the recognition, and wondered why it could move him so.

When he left the hall awhile later she lost all interest in the animated scene, and persuaded her aunt to leave also; but it was a great surprise to her as well as to him when they came together, face to face, in the corridor, owing to the delay caused by his spending a few moments talking in the lobby.

They were about to pass each other with slight, cold bows, in spite of the fierce throbbing of either heart, when fate, in the person of Mrs. Herman, intervened.

The old lady who had all the graceful cordiality of the Virginia gentlewoman, started forward eagerly, exclaiming:

“How do you do, my dear professor? I am so glad to have this opportunity to congratulate you on your eloquent speech which I enjoyed so much.”

He had to stop, perforce, for a short chat with them, and then he observed in Viola a subtle, indefinable change, a gentle reserve, a dignified coldness, that somehow aroused in him a distinct pique.

“She resents my pointed neglect. Perhaps, after all, I carried it too far,” he thought, with some embarrassment, almost wishing for her old cordial vivacity.

“I have not seen you in an age. Have you abjured society?” continued Mrs. Herman.

“Almost,” he replied; adding: “We congressmen are here to work for our country’s good, not to enjoy ourselves, you know, dear madame.”

She insisted that he should look in for an hour, at least, at her next reception, and it would have been churlish to refuse. He promised to come if he could spare the time, handed them to their carriage, and bowed himself away.

And he could think of nothing else all day but Viola.

How graceful she had appeared in her pose of unbending dignity, with that slight air of ennui, or hauteur, he could scarcely tell which! How rich was the bloom of her dimpled cheek against the high collar of her seal-skin wrap, how dark and serious her eyes had appeared through her thin veil, how exquisite the crimson of her full lips! Every separate charm recurred to him over and over, carrying his heart again by storm.

And with a grim smile, he said to himself:

“I think I understand her change from girlish vivacity to that quiet, graceful, natural dignity. She has given over the attempt to coquet with me, to break my heart, as she once threatened. She has found out that she cannot move me, and given over the effort. I shall be quite safe to attend her reception, since she has grown so cold and indifferent.”

CHAPTER XI.

TURNING OVER A NEW LEAF.

So when the evening of the Van Lew reception arrived, the young congressman ventured to go, deeming unwisely that security for himself lay in Viola’s indifference.

He was a very clever politician, but a mere tyro in matters of the heart.

Viola and her aunt were receiving, assisted by a bevy of handsome matrons and fair young girls. When she saw Desha bowing before her, she gave him a courteous welcome, just tinged with the delicate frostiness under which he had shivered that day at the Capitol.

It was superb acting, for her heart leaped wildly at the conventional touch of his hand.

But she said proudly to herself:

“He shall not know I am glad he came.”

And she looked quickly away from him, without observing that he stood still a minute, half dazed by her marvelous beauty, so richly set off by the silvery white gown and the fire of rubies on her neck and in her hair.

Turning away presently, he sighed, with a paling cheek:

“After all, it was not wise to come. I shall be dreaming of her all night. Heavens! how peerless she is! And, alas! how heartless!”

All at once he began to be afraid of himself, afraid to go near her, lest he should fall down at her feet and declare his passion, so intoxicated had he suddenly become with the charm of her presence. He was almost tempted to run away.

“‘But most of all would I flee from the cruel madness of love,

The honey of poison-flowers and all the measureless ill.’”

Viola had no suspicion of what was passing in his mind. She was careful to avoid him, in her humility over her father’s lecture.

She remembered with shame how she had once tried to attract him, and how he had proved his indifference to her arts by remaining away. Very well; she would show him that she was changed, that she too, was indifferent now.

The guests found a new dignity in her manner, a subtle change not easily defined. There was no lingering in alcoves with some spell-bound adorer, no arch glances, sudden, swift, and strange, bewildering masculine hearts.

Sweetly cordial to all, she yet kept strictly to her resolve to “turn over a new leaf.”

He came upon his cousin, Mrs. Wellford, presently, and the handsome young matron said, curiously:

“What has come over Viola tonight? Every one is saying there is something almost sad about her manner. Do you think she can really be grieving about young Merrington, as some are hinting?”

“Young Merrington! I know nothing of him,” he replied, with a start.

“True; you have been out of the swim for more than a month, Phil. Indeed, I was surprised to see you here tonight. Well, as I was saying, this young Merrington—a handsome boy of twenty-two, a government clerk, the protégé of Senator Costigan—was Viola’s latest flirtation.”

“Ah!”

“I never saw any one so madly, foolishly in love in my life,” said the matron. “It was tiresome to see him mooning about after the wicked little flirt. Every one was wishing he would propose and get his congé, so that we might get some new affair on the tapis to amuse us, when quite suddenly it ended almost tragically. He was fooling with a pistol the other night—unloaded, of course,” satirically, “and he put a bullet in his breast.”

“Not dead?”

“No, not yet; but at Garfield Hospital in a precarious condition. And they say Viola is secretly taking it hard. She can not bear to hear it alluded to at all, growing pale and nervous, and almost weeping. And she is certainly changed—no more flirting, no more gayety save of the most dignified kind. How strange if she had really lost her heart to him after all!”

His face paled and his heart beat violently with a keen, stinging pain. Was it jealousy of young Merrington who had wrought in her that subtle change he had wondered over?

He said, slowly:

“What if it be remorse, not love? What if he had already received his congé? What if the accident—was not an accident?”

Mrs. Wellford shuddered.

“What a terrible suggestion! Fortunately for Viola’s peace of mind, it is not true. My husband was one of the men who witnessed the accident. It shocked him so much, he does not like to go over the details even to me,” replied Mrs. Wellford, innocently.

CHAPTER XII.

HIDDEN GRIEF.

“Is it worth while to love, to waken chords
Of deepest feeling—rapture, doubt, and pain—
And for the chance of joy that love affords,
To part with peace that may not come again?

Stony the path that Love must climb, and steep,

And far below the heights a dark abyss—
Are not untroubled days and dreamless sleep
Better than this?”

Desha looked with new interest at Viola as some one led her to the piano.

So she could love, the beautiful coquette, and she had learned the lesson at last! This, then, was the secret of the change in her, the pensive shade that touched her face. Love and sorrow had come to her hand in hand.

He felt a great curiosity over the young man who had touched Viola’s heart, when the proudest and the richest had sued to her in vain.

“Yet most probably he is not worthy of the prize,” he thought, vehemently. “Some handsome, flippant youth, such as most often takes the fancy of very young girls.”

But it gave him a pang to think that his own years numbered thirty.

“Quite an old man in her eyes, very likely,” he thought, ruefully, as he moved a little nearer the piano to watch her face while she sang.

Her singing was one of the many rare gifts the good fairies had brought to Viola’s cradle at her birth. Her voice was a rare soprano, full of passion and feeling, and it thrilled every heart as she sang:

“‘There lived a lady long ago,

Her heart was sad and dark—ah, me!

Dark with a single secret woe

That none could ever see.

“‘She left her home, she lost her pride,

Forgot the jeering world—ah, me!

And followed a knight, and fought and died,

All for the love of—chivalry.

“‘She died; and when in her last cold sleep

She lay all pale and cold—ah, me!

They read of a love as wild and deep

As the deep, dark sea.’”

The song fixed itself in Desha’s memory, and the day came when he recalled it in wonder.

She would not sing again, but she played them some rare instrumental pieces—two very gay and brilliant, one exquisitely sad and sweet; and this last one stayed in Desha’s heart with the song, because of their melting pathos, so different from anything formerly associated with the lovely, volatile belle. He had not believed that her feelings were deep enough for the pathos to which she had given expression through her voice and touch.

“Love has taught her everything,” he thought, with unconscious, bitter envy of George Merrington.

“I must be going presently, because I shall look in at another reception tonight,” Mrs. Wellford said, arousing him from something like a trance of thought. “I wish you would find my husband for me, Phil. He has stolen off to some quiet corner to smoke, I expect. Tell him I am going in ten minutes.”

“Yes,” he answered, absently, moving away from her side, and wondering why Viola had so suddenly left the room just as he was thinking of bidding her good-night.

He wandered about through the crowded rooms, wondering where he should find Mr. Wellford, who was a successful patent attorney devoted to his business, and secretly bored by gay society, though his wife dragged him into it willy-nilly. Having made his bow to his hostess, he was usually to be found in some secluded spot, seeking solace in a good cigar, and all the happier if he could find some congenial soul to share his pleasure and exchange good stories with him.

He was not in the thronged drawing-room, nor library, nor supper-room, so Desha went along the wide hall, seeking all the open doors, thinking perchance to blunder on a smoking-room.

The scent of a Havana came to him suddenly, promising speedy success, so he stopped abruptly before the half-drawn portière of a small room or alcove, with tall palms and flowering azaleas standing about in a dim, soft light. They had, in fact, been removed here temporarily from the over-crowded conservatory, to make room for the promenading couples tonight.

“He is here, the vandal, with his cigar,” thought Desha, pushing back the curtain and blundering across the threshold.

Some one was there certainly, but not Wellford, and the young man started back, hoping his intrusion might not be observed.

Viola, laboring under strong excitement of mind, exaggerated by his neglect and the keen pathos of her own music, had hidden herself away here for a brief, hysterical outbreak that she could not control.

“Let me steal away awhile
From the revel to the gloom,
Let me leave that careless smile
Just outside the quiet room;
Let the tears and stifled sighs,
All day aching in my breast,
Like a tropic tempest rise,
Or volcano’s burning crest.

“Let me give one hour to tears,
Pressing heavy on my heart,
For the weary, hopeless years,
While I act my bitter part;
Smiling in the world’s cold face,
Lest it guess my hidden pain,
Weeping in this secret place,
For love’s treasure given in vain.”

When Desha saw the white-robed girl hidden there among the palms, with her face in her hands, sobbing low and bitterly, a passionate longing came to him to take her in his arms and try to comfort her in her tender sorrow, but instead he turned quickly away, praying in his heart that she would not notice his intrusion.

But through her stifled sobs Viola’s ear caught the sound of the entering footstep. She sprang forward to hide herself behind the palm from curious eyes, and at the same moment caught the sound of a heavy fall.

Peering from behind her ambush, she saw that the intruder, in his haste to retreat, had stumbled over a flower-stand and fallen just inside the door. He must have been stunned by the fall, for he lay quite motionless, with his pale, handsome face upturned to the light, and she saw with alarm that it was no other than the object of her painful thoughts—Philip Desha!

CHAPTER XIII.

A SWEET CONFESSION.

Viola darted forward with a stifled cry, and knelt by the silent, recumbent figure.

She saw that a few drops of blood had started from a small cut on his white temple, and guessed that in falling he had struck his head against the corner of the flower-stand, thus rendering him momentarily unconscious.

All the womanly tenderness in her started with grief at the sight, and dipping her lace handkerchief, already wet with tears, into a glass globe that held some beautiful gold fish, she began to bathe his face with the cold water, murmuring agitatedly to herself:

“I must try to revive him myself, for I should not like to call for help. The situation would be rather embarrassing. They would only say I was here flirting with him, and wonder why he fell down, and at the tears on my cheeks.”

And she dabbled his face and fair hair most energetically with the cold water, her soft hands touching him caressingly, freighted with the love that filled her heart.

And her fair face bent so close to his in her anxiety that the salty drops of pity fell on his brow and mixed with the cold water she was so copiously using as a restorative.

Then she began to get frightened.

“Why, how long he is in reviving! It must be more serious than I thought!” she cried, anxiously; adding: “I am afraid I must call help; but I will wait a minute longer.”

It was enough to frighten her, that deathly stillness and pallor of the handsome man, and she sobbed:

“Oh, what if this should be death? I have heard that a blow on the temple might cause death. And here is quite a keen little cut. I—I wish that I could kiss it and make it well, as mothers say to their little children.”

She mopped his face again with the water, she chafed his cold hands again in hers with a tenderness that was enough to call a dead man back to life, but still he lay there mute and pale, arousing her worst fears.

She began to pray in a low, whispering voice full of pathos:

“Oh, God, do not be so cruel as to let him die! Give him back to me! He is the only man in the world that I could love! Perhaps that is why you will let him die—to punish me for my wicked flirtations when I did not know what a pain love was—real love that aches in my heart for him, though he despises me. And no wonder, for he is a thousand times too good for me, and could never love me because I have been so vain and silly, for of course he could not know how I have repented now. Oh, God, spare him, don’t let him die—don’t let him die!”

It was enough to move angels to pity, the low, whispering voice, the tears, the clasped hands; but Heaven seemed deaf to her prayer, for the lids still lay heavily on Desha’s eyes, and she could not see his broad chest move with the faintest breath.

Her heart sank with a terrible alarm, and she murmured, wildly:

“I must summon help!”

But just as she was rising from her knees, she saw his eyelids move, then flutter languidly open.

“Oh,” she murmured, in a tremor of joy and thanksgiving, and his large blue eyes gazed languidly into her own.

“Viola!” he murmured, in a soft voice freighted with ecstasy, and she started at the sound of her name from his lips.

“Oh, you are better!” she exclaimed, gladly, her voice trembling with the joy of her heart. “May I help you to rise?” holding out her little hands.

He accepted the proffered aid most eagerly, and when he had risen to his feet, retained the little hands, and drew her suddenly to his heart.

“Viola, don’t shrink away from me!” he cried, ardently. “I love you, darling—have loved you hopelessly for months, but just now as I was coming back to consciousness, I thought I was in Heaven, for I heard low, whispered words from your dear lips—a prayer for my life, a confession that I was dear to you. Oh, Viola, is it indeed true? Am I so blest as to hold a place in your heart? Will you be kind to me? Will you be my wife?”

“I love you, Philip!” sobbed the agitated girl, hiding her face on his breast, and trembling at the ardent kiss he pressed on her quivering, crimson lips.

CHAPTER XIV.

SEVERAL SECRETS.

“Like one who trusts to summer skies
And puts his little bark to sea,
Is he who, lured by smiling eyes,
Consigns his simple heart to thee.”

“I will be your wife, dear Philip, but no one must know of our engagement just yet. You must keep it a secret until I give you leave to tell.”

Viola whispered those words against her lover’s cheek before they returned to the drawing-room, and they gave him a keen pang of disappointment.

He was so madly in love and so proud of having captured Viola’s illusive heart that he would have liked to publish his engagement at once to the whole astonished world.

Viola, now that she had foresworn flirting, would not have objected to his doing so, but in the midst of her keen happiness at having won her lover, a blasting memory had coldly shaken her heart—the thought of her engagement to Florian Gay.

She almost fainted with fear when she remembered that she was not free to accept Philip Desha, since her hand was promised to another.

She thought quickly:

“I will write to Florian and take back my promise, but Philip must never, never know the truth about it, for he has such high ideals, and might blame me for appearing so fickle.”

Her mind ran rapidly over the obstacles in her way, and she decided that her new engagement must not be announced till her old one was broken off—in other words, it was best to be off with the old love before she was on with the new.

So she bound her betrothed by the promise to keep their engagement secret, though he chafed against it, saying:

“I shall not like for people to be saying you are flirting with me as you did with others, my darling.”

The words had a sting for Viola’s heart, and tears flashed into her eyes.

She cried, hastily:

“Oh, I shall never flirt again, never! I am quite cured of that since—” She paused, bit her rosy lip, and added: “I understand how you feel. I—I will not make you keep the secret long—only until—” She paused again in dismay, finding she had almost uttered aloud her thought that she would only keep him silent until Florian granted her her freedom.

“Until—when?” asked Desha, gravely, with his large, frank blue eyes on her face.

Viola blushed, and answered, evasively:

“Oh, until two or three weeks,” adding to herself that she would write to Florian tomorrow, and tell him she could not marry him, because she had learned to love his friend, Professor Desha, better, and that she must take back her promise. Of course he would write back and say that under the circumstances he released her and wished her much happiness. Then she would be free to have her engagement announced.

But even in the midst of her little scheming came a remorseful thought.

“Poor Florian! It will make him very sad. He loved me dearly.”

And the next day she could not bring herself to write the words that should strike down his happy dream of love.

Keen remorse seized on her heart for having been so fickle in her love that the fancy had not outlived Florian’s absence.

“It seems so cruel to sadden his heart just now when he is in trouble over his sick father. I will wait till tomorrow,” she decided.

When tomorrow came she found herself too cowardly still to give Florian pain. She kept putting off her duty from day to day, and almost forgetting Florian as she basked in the smiles of her new lover.

But when three weeks had passed, and society was loudly whispering that Congressman Desha was Miss Van Lew’s latest victim, succeeding George Merrington in her good graces, the lover began to chafe under the gossip, and reminded his idol that she had promised to end his probation in three weeks.

Viola turned pale and pleaded for more time. She saw a shadow cross his face, and he asked, abruptly:

“Viola, can I trust you? Do you really love me, or are you simply trifling with my honest, manly love?”

The sternness of his voice frightened Viola, who was always in terror lest he might find out the truth about Florian or George Merrington, and hate her for her coquetry.

She faltered:

“I will give you such a proof of my love that you can not doubt me any longer. If you will keep the secret of our engagement until I give you leave to speak, you may ask papa for me at any time you wish and name the wedding-day.”

He caught her little velvety soft hands and covered them with ardent kisses.

“Oh, my dearest one, my beautiful love, how I thank you for these sweet concessions!” he cried, rapturously, and added, happily: “I shall speak to your father tomorrow, and with your permission I shall name an early date for the wedding. I am too impatient to wait long for my happiness!”

“Very well,” she answered, meekly and willingly, for with every day her reluctance to write the truth to Florian grew greater. Part of it was pity for the pain she must inflict on the true heart that loved her so, and part of it was something like fear.

She had remembered with alarm her playful threats, that during his absence she might find some one she loved better than himself, and his quick exclamation:

“Woe be unto him!”

She who had been so gay and careless before, had become a changed girl since the affair of George Merrington. And when she remembered Florian’s devotion, and the cruel wound she was going to give his heart, she recalled with dismay her father’s words:

“A man’s heart is not simply a toy!”

Viola had always thought so till then, and now she was afraid of the consequences of her coquetry.

It dawned on her that Florian might possibly be very angry at her fickleness, perhaps seek revenge.

What if he should hasten home and denounce her, like George Merrington, for her fault? What if he should betray her to Professor Desha? She trembled at the very thought.

“I should lose him forever! He would sacrifice me to his high ideal of honor! And I can not give him up, he was too hard to win!” she sighed, recalling all her pangs at Desha’s coldness.

She became afraid to write the truth to Florian, but she replied to his fond love letters in the briefest, coldest fashion, hoping he would understand that her love was dead, and himself hasten in anger to release her from her promise.

So matters stood when Desha reminded her of her promise to let him announce their engagement, his manly pride chafing against the society chatter about their flirtation.

Viola’s sweet promises set all his fears at rest, and he hastened to avail himself of her permission to speak to her father.

Judge Van Lew gave a surprised and secretly reluctant consent.

It was not a pleasant thought for the ambitious father that his charming daughter, who had refused millionaires and men of the highest rank, should descend to a simple congressman who had not won his laurels yet, and was only moderately rich.

But he knew that Desha was well-born, high-minded, and intelligent. If Viola loved him and wanted him, there was really no valid objection he could raise, so he gave his cold approval.

Then the eager lover startled Viola very much by asking her if she would set the wedding for March.

“But it is the last of January now. I should have but one month to get ready,” she cried, blushingly; but, with a little urging, she consented.

Perhaps they were mutually afraid of losing each other, Desha dreading her coquetry, she afraid he might find out the secrets she was hiding from him.

When she had given her consent, he said, seriously:

“We ought to take the public into our confidence now.”

“They do not deserve it; they have gossiped about me too much already,” Viola pouted, prettily.

He remained silent, thinking her very unreasonable, and then she smiled at his gravity, saying, coaxingly:

“Well, then, I want to give them a grand sensation. What do you say to keeping our secret until we send out our wedding-cards? Will not that give everybody a great surprise?” laughingly.

“I should think so,” he replied.

“Well, then, let us have it so. I have given up to you in everything else. Let me have my own way in this,” pleaded Viola so sweetly that he could not refuse, though he was eager to have the truth known so that people would stop referring to him as Miss Van Lew’s latest distinguished conquest.

Most especially would he have liked to tell the real truth to his cousin, Mrs. Wellford, who badgered him not a little about his attentions to Viola.

Her cousinly pride was up in arms for his sake, hating for his true heart to be played with and cast aside like others that she knew.

“It is perfectly abominable!” she complained to her husband. “I thought Philip had more sense than to run after such a wicked little coquette.”

“I thought you were fond of Viola,” he replied.

“So I am—at least I used to be, till she began to entangle my cousin in her toils. But now I almost hate her, for Phil is too good and true to break his heart for her sake. She has bewitched him so that he has lost the use of his brains!” she replied, petulantly.

“I do not see how you can help it,” he replied, thoughtfully.

“That is what makes me so angry. I have warned him, and he treats my warnings with contempt. Oh, if I had my way I should like to make him draw back, even now, and foil her in her little game of adding his name to the list of one hundred rejections she is so busily making!” she exclaimed, excitedly.

Her husband looked at her thoughtfully, replying:

“Ruby, I wonder if you could keep a secret.”

“Yes, indeed, John. Only try me and see,” she replied, eagerly.

Hesitating a moment, he continued:

“Since you are so anxious over Desha, there is something you could tell him that would no doubt disgust him with the lovely coquette, if anything in the world could do it.”

“Oh, what is it? Tell me quickly, John!”

“I will tell you; but remember, Ruby, dear, that it must never go out of the keeping of yourself and Desha!” earnestly.

CHAPTER XV.

QUEEN OF SONG AND LOVE AND BEAUTY.

Viola’s wedding-cards came out just ten days before the time appointed for the ceremony, creating an immense sensation, just as she had prophesied.

Society was so surprised that it talked of nothing else for three whole days.

On the same day she received one of Florian’s fond letters, begging her to write oftener and more kindly.

She replied at once, saying that she had been too busy to write, and knew that he would excuse her when he received her next letter, in which she would have something important to tell him.

In her dread lest Florian’s resentment of her treachery should lead him to betray her to Desha, she had finally resolved not to write to her jilted lover until the day after the wedding.

“Philip will be my own then—no one can take him from me,” she thought, feverishly; for now and then a faint foreboding of evil made her heart quake with fear lest she should lose him yet by some untoward stroke of fate.

It lacked but ten days to the wedding now, and lively preparations were going forward for a grand church ceremony, and afterward for a magnificent home reception before the happy pair started on their Southern tour.

A splendid trousseau was being prepared in New York, and arrived each day in detachments, taking up so much time in trying on that Viola scarcely had time to spare for her lover.

At breakfast that morning Judge Van Lew said to his daughter and sister:

“I have employed a young man to prepare some statistics for me from some valuable books in my library. He will come at about ten o’clock, and you will please see that he has uninterrupted use of the library, as it will take several days to do the task, and I am in a hurry for these statistics.”

“Very well,” replied Mrs. Herman; adding carelessly: “What is his name?”

“He is Rolfe Maxwell—a very interesting young man. Came to Washington recently to try to secure a pension for his mother, whom he is supporting by journalistic work. Unfortunately, he lost his position on a good New York daily, by a long spell of illness, and must now do anything that comes to hand until he can get more reporting to do. He was well recommended to me by a senator for whom he had done some work, and I was very glad to get him to do this job for me. You need not think he will be at all in the way, Edwina, as he will take his meals at home each day.”

He rose, kissed Viola good-bye as usual, and hurried away to his department, while she said regretfully to her aunt:

“I am sorry he is coming. Philip always likes to be entertained in the library.”

“Oh, well, there’s plenty of room elsewhere. It would not be well to hinder your father’s business for a mere whim; besides, the poor young man may stand in need of the money,” replied the kind old lady.

Viola agreed with her and dismissed the subject from her mind; but not so Aunt Edwina, whom a mild curiosity induced to receive Rolfe Maxwell when he made his appearance promptly at ten o’clock.

She remained a few minutes conversing with him, then returned to the dainty morning-room, where she usually sat with Viola.

The beautiful girl glanced up with languid interest, asking:

“Did you like him, auntie?”

“Oh, a very nice young man,” carelessly.

“Handsome?”

“That is always your first thought about a man, Viola. Handsome is as handsome does, you know,” returned Mrs. Herman, cautiously. She did not know that her niece had foresworn flirting, and she dreaded her propensities in that line too much to confess to her that Rolfe Maxwell, though slight and pale from recent devastating illness, was one of the most elegant-looking men she had ever beheld—tall and stately, with magnificent Oriental dark eyes and hair, and with a soldierly bearing full of quiet, impressive dignity.

In order to allay Viola’s interest, she added, sympathetically:

“I hope your papa will pay him well for his work, for he looks like he needed it, poor fellow. He is almost shabby, although perfectly neat, and so pale and thin, as if he hardly had enough to eat, although I remember now that your papa said he had been ill, which may account for his ghastly looks.”

She flattered herself that she had entirely squelched any coquettish interest Viola might have in the newcomer, deeming it her duty to do so, for though the girl was to be married in a week, her aunt had full confidence in her ability to break another heart in that brief space of time if she took it into her head to do it.

But Viola was listening carelessly, her thoughts all with Philip, who had said he would call on his way to the Capitol this morning.

He came presently, and was ushered into the morning-room, from which Aunt Edwina discreetly withdrew.

Viola met her lover with a glad smile and blush and did not refuse the kiss he pressed on her dewy red lips.

“We are banished from the library because papa has a man doing some work for him in there,” she said. “Sit down, Philip, dear, while I scold you for breaking your engagement to come last night.”

“I sent you a note explaining that my cousin, Mrs. Wellford, had sent for me,” Professor Desha answered, sitting down on the satin divan by her side and pressing the soft, jeweled hand she slipped into his so confidingly.

“Yes, I received your note. Of course I excused you, though I missed you very much!” Viola cried, with her most sweetly reproachful air. Then she gave a slight start, and added: “Dearest, how pale you are! What is wrong? Are you ill?”

Professor Desha did indeed look pale and heavy-eyed, and his voice sounded strange as he answered:

“I am sorry you noticed it; but—I am not feeling very well. I had a bad night; was restless, and scarcely slept at all.”

His grave blue eyes searched her face closely, plaintively, as if some jealous doubt haunted his mind; but the perfect tenderness and joy of her manner were enough to dissipate any fears, and presently she charmed him from the gray mood in which he had entered her presence.

Her gayety cost her an effort, too, for she was secretly frightened when she saw what a shadow lurked in his grave blue eyes. She was a coward at heart, always dreading for him to find out something she feared for him to know.

Had she guessed what was in his thoughts, as he sat so quietly by her side, she must have fallen down fainting at his feet in her remorse and shame.

Ruby Wellford had played a clever card in her longing to defeat Viola, and a thorn was planted in his manly heart that would ache there many a day.

But he had not showed his cousin the pain he had felt, he had simply answered:

“I am sorry for the poor young man. I dare say that Viola was more thoughtless than wilfully wicked. She is so young, you know, and has missed a mother’s care.”

“Philip, you do not mean that you will go on dangling after the girl after hearing this—this appalling story!” she cried, almost indignantly.

Then he took her hand and said, very gently and kindly:

“Ruby, you know I appreciate your kindness, and am sorry Viola has flirted so recklessly, but—but she will never break my heart.”

“But, Phil, every one is saying that you are her latest victim.”

“Her latest and her last,” he replied, significantly; and as she cried out that she did not understand, he added: “You have told me a secret, and I will return your confidence. I promised Viola to keep it till tomorrow, but I do not think she would care if I told you now—under the circumstances.”

“What is your secret?” she cried eagerly, and he answered, proudly:

“Only this: you will receive our wedding-cards tomorrow.”

“Yours—and Viola’s! Do you mean it really, Phil?” she demanded, in astonishment.

“Yes, it is true. We have been engaged ever since January, but Viola wished to keep it secret to spring a great sensation on her friends.”

“She will certainly succeed, for no one ever dreamed she had a heart!” exclaimed the lady; then noticing how very pale he had grown, she added, repentantly: “Dear Phil, forgive me for my blundering! If I had dreamed how matters really stood, I would rather have bitten off the extreme end of my tongue than have tattled to you about young Merrington.”

“I forgive you, Ruby. You thought you were acting for my good, and I appreciate it,” he replied in a hollow voice, and left the house to spend the restless night that sent him to Viola’s side so pale and serious-looking the next morning.

Beautiful Viola, who knew so well how to charm every heart, did not rest till she had chased the shadows from her lover’s brow.

“You are tired of my chatter. Come, I will sing to you,” she cried, going with him to the music-room that adjoined the library.

Mr. Maxwell, working diligently among her father’s books, lifted his dark, finely shaped head to listen, and the voice sounded to him like an angel’s, it was so clear and sweet.

“It is Miss Van Lew, I suppose. How rarely she is gifted—queen of song and love and beauty!” he thought; for although he was a stranger to Viola, he had seen her more than once, and the story of her coquetry had reached his ears.

He worked on diligently, but he did not lose one note of her sweet music, or one word of her songs.

“She must be singing to some favored lover,” he said to himself, marking the tenderness that freighted her voice.

By and by the music ceased, and he heard them going out of the room, but he did not know that the girl had said:

“I must stop, for perhaps I am disturbing the young man in the library. Oh, Philip, would it not be great fun to pretend to go in there for a book just to see what he looks like?”

“By no means, Viola. I am sure it would appear to him like vulgar curiosity,” he replied, almost sharply, bringing a quick blush to her brow.

He went away soon after, and Viola left the room to go upstairs to examine some new things just arrived.

Rolfe Maxwell was just going out to his midday luncheon, and they encountered each other in the wide hall.

It gave each of them a queer start; but Viola rallied quickly, saying, kindly:

“Mr. Maxwell, I am sure.”

“At your service, Miss Van Lew,” he replied, with a distant, but most courteous bow, and a swift glance quickly withdrawn as he hurried to the door and passed out.

Viola went slowly up the broad steps to her own apartments, her fair cheeks burning with the blush that had colored them at his sudden glance.

“How silly I am—blushing like a school-girl under a stranger’s glance,” she thought, vexedly. “But really—what splendid, large black eyes! They gave me a positive thrill!”

CHAPTER XVI.

THE BRIDAL-EVE.

“It is the last token of love and of thee,

Thy once faith is broken, thou false one to me!

I think on the letters with which I must part—

Too dear are the fetters that wind round my heart.

“I deemed that I knew thee as none ever knew,

That ’twas mine to subdue thee and thine to be true,

Thy mask to the many was worn not to me,

I loved thee—can any seem like unto thee?

“I worshiped in terror a comet above—

Ah, fatal the error, ah, fatal the love!

For thy sake life never can charm me again,

Its beauty forever is vanished and vain!

“What slight words will sting us that breathe of the past,

And slight things will bring us thoughts fated to last;

The fond hopes that centered in thee are all dead,

But the iron has entered the soul where they fed.

“Like others in seeming, I must walk through life’s part,

Cold, careless, and dreaming—with death in the heart,

No hope, no forgiveness—the spring of life o’er,

All died with that sentence—I love thee no more!”

Viola having made the acquaintance of Rolfe Maxwell thus accidentally, saw him several times afterward, twice when she tripped into the library for a book she wanted, begging in sweetest accents that he would not mind her coming, and several times when they simply passed each other in the hall with polite bows of recognition, undreaming yet of the part each was fated to play in the other’s life. He knew that she was going to be married directly, and that the house was in confusion with the preparations, and he worked as hard as he could to get through with his task, coming back in the evenings and writing sometimes till almost midnight.

So the days slipped quickly by till it was Viola’s wedding-eve.

Tomorrow at high noon she was to be married from a fashionable church, attended by some of the prettiest girls in her set as maids of honor. They were more than anxious to perform this service for Viola in their eagerness to see the irresistible young beauty safely married off out of their way.

Everything was in readiness; the bridal-gown—a dream of snow-white beauty, brocaded satin, with priceless point-lace veil—was perfect; the bridal-pearls—her father’s gift—exquisite. Her trunks were packed with beautiful robes, the envy of all her feminine friends.

She sat alone that evening, waiting for Philip, who had promised to make a short call, even though it was the bridal-eve, and Aunt Edwina had hinted that Viola ought to have a long beauty sleep.

Against the background of her dark-blue silk, with its creamy laces, her fair face shone like a delicate flower, smiles on her lips and joy in her eyes.

She said to herself that she was the happiest girl in the wide world.

She knew she did not quite deserve it, because she had certainly brought some unhappiness into others’ lives through her willful coquetries; but that was all past and done with now, and she was going to be a better girl.

She did not remember what one of the great masters of literature has written:

“Consequences are unpitying.”

As her wedding-day came so near, with its attendant hurry and excitement, she forgot the forebodings of evil that had tortured her a few weeks ago. Every unpleasant thought had taken wing. She forgot Florian and remembered only Philip.

Glancing around the luxurious room that seemed so lonely without him, she tapped her dainty foot impatiently, murmuring:

“I wish he would come!”

As if in answer to her aspiration, she heard a ring at the front door, and some one being ushered into the hall.

With a muffled heart-beat of joy, Viola sprang to her feet, waiting with shining eyes and parted, smiling lips for the entrance of her lover.

The heavy curtains at the door were thrust aside by an eager white hand, and he stepped quickly over the threshold toward the eager, waiting girl, catching her to his heart, pressing passionate lips to hers, then holding her off to gaze fondly into her glorious eyes while he murmured, thrillingly:

“My love—my love!”

From the girl’s white lips came a stifled moan of pain as if he had thrust a dagger into her heart.

For the voice was not Philip Desha’s, and instead of his calm, tender blue eyes she met the dark, sparkling gaze of Florian Gay.

She could never explain to herself afterward why she did not faint on the spot, for all her strength seemed to fail her, and her face grew as white as the face of a corpse. It must have been the horrible fear of Philip coming at any moment and surprising her in the midst of a terrible interview with her jilted lover. It flashed over her mind that she must get him away as soon as possible.

Florian Gay cried out in tender alarm:

“Viola, my darling, how you tremble, and how pale your sweet face has grown! I did not mean to shock you so; I only meant to give you a pleasant surprise. Sit here on the sofa, darling, and you will be better in a moment,” seating himself by her side, and gazing at her with fond eyes before whose glance she shrank in infinite misery.

“When—when—did you come?” she faltered, in a dying voice.

“I only reached Washington an hour ago. Father died at Carlsbad, and mother and I brought him home at once for burial. The funeral will be at noon to-morrow.”

Viola shuddered at his words. At noon to-morrow she was to be married! What a strange coincidence! How was she going to tell him the awful truth?

Despair made her reckless, desperate, cruel.

There was no time to break it gently, for at any moment Philip might arrive—Philip, his successful rival.

She caught her breath with a great strangling gasp of fear, and pushed him back with frantic, white hands as he leaned forward to offer a caress.

“Do not touch me—do not touch me! I—I—love—you no longer, Florian!” she cried out wildly.

“Viola!”

“It is true,” she went on cruelly. “You stayed away so long that my fancy for you died. I do not think it ever was real love, for—for—my heart soon turned to another—and—and—you must go away now, Florian, and there is no use getting angry and reproaching me—it is too late to do anything but forgive me and wish me joy! My wedding-cards are out—and—I am to be married at noon tomorrow!”

Was ever such cruel truth blurted out so rudely to a fond, trusting lover?

Florian Gay sat listening in an awful, incredulous silence like one stiffened into stone, his dark, gleaming eyes fixed on her pallid face with its strange expression, half fear, half defiance.

She waited a minute for him to speak, then added imploringly:

“Please go away now, Florian—please, please! I am very, very sorry to have caused you pain; but it can not be helped now, and I hope you will soon get over it. Oh, Florian, there is no use staying to reproach me! Oh, go, go, go!—only go!”

Desperate with anxiety, she pointed to the door, and the wronged lover slowly rose, his burning eyes still fixed on her fatally lovely face.

“Good-bye!” she cried, in a tone of relief, as she saw that he was going.

Then he spoke in a strange and hollow voice:

“So you really mean it, Viola? This is not an ill-timed jest?”

“No, oh, no, it is the fatal truth!” she answered, quickly.

“Why did you not write to me, Viola?” his voice sharp with anguish.

“I meant to—but I feared your anger—I thought I would wait till after my marriage.”

“Cruel heart!” he muttered, darkly, a soul’s despair in the burning, dark eyes he fixed on her excited face.

“Go!” she answered, eagerly, pointing to the door.

But instead of obeying, he strode forward, clutching her extended wrist in a grasp of steel.

Bending his dark head, he almost hissed in her ear:

“My rival—his name?”

“I will not tell you! Release my wrist!” defiantly.

“You will gain nothing by your silence. I will find it out, and woe be the traitor who stole you from me, beautiful, accursed coquette! My God! how false you are! Promising long ago to marry me, then binding me to silence that you might be free to ensnare other hearts! Do you remember the tender, loving words you used to write me before your fickle heart grew cold? I have them now, those letters warm against my breast! I will show them to your new conquest before I lay him dead at my feet!” hissed the outraged lover, giving way to a tempest of rage and revenge, as he threw her wrist from him so violently that she almost fell.

Steadying herself against the back of a chair, Viola cried, in terror:

“Oh, you will not dare to do this dastardly thing! You will not expose the weakness of a thoughtless girl who fancied that she loved you and found out she was mistaken. Surely that is no crime! Do you think his heart would turn against me so easily? Ah! no, no, no! Besides, why should you wish to wound him with this knowledge? He knew nothing of my engagement to you. He is not to blame for anything, unless you call his loving me a fault. You shall not betray me,” her eyes flashing luridly. “If you do I will fight you to the bitter end. I will deny your accusations!”

“But you can not deny your letters!”

“Oh, Florian, give them to me!” her defiance melting into fear.

The cruel wrong he had suffered at her hands made him merciless.

“You shall never have them! They will help me to revenge, wicked, false-hearted girl!” he almost hissed, rushing madly from her presence out into the bleak March night, a man whose heart and hopes had been blasted in an hour.

Viola sank into a chair, her eyes wild, her face death-white, her heart beating to suffocation.

Clasping her white jeweled hands prayerfully, she lifted her face, sobbing despairingly:

“God help and pity me, and save me from the retribution my sins have brought upon me! Oh, what shall I do—what shall I do? Suppose he meets Philip on the threshold coming in. He will tell him all, unknowing that Philip is his successful rival. Oh, may Heaven hinder my dear love from coming here tonight!”

“Too late! I am here!” answered a deep, stern voice; and Philip Desha advanced through a door leading from the morning-room.

CHAPTER XVII.

VIOLA’S WATERLOO.

“When I loved you, I can’t but allow
I had many an exquisite minute;
But the scorn that I feel for you now,
Has even more luxury in it.

“Thus, whether we’re on or we’re off,
Some witchery seems to await you;
To love you were pleasant enough,
But, oh, ’tis delicious to hate you!”

Viola’s beautiful eyes, black now with excitement, turned wildly on her lover’s face, and she staggered toward him with outstretched hands, faltering piteously:

“Dear Philip, I—I am ill!”

Silently he took the offered hands and led her to a large easy-chair. Then allowing the cold little fingers to drop from his chilly hold, he stepped back a pace and stood with his arms folded across his breast, regarding her with a pale, stern face, whose expression was more eloquent than words.

No need for her to wonder if he had heard her interview with Florian Gay.

His cold avoidance, his reproachful face, spoke volumes.

“Philip!” she wailed, despairingly, then buried her shamed face in her jeweled hands.

Then he spoke, in a cold, hard voice she scarcely recognized:

“I heard everything, Viola. When the servant admitted me he said you already had a caller. So I went into the little morning sitting-room to wait till he went away, not dreaming it was my friend Florian. I heard your voices—they were raised in excitement so that I could not avoid it. Every word sank like lead on my heart!”

Hot tears sprang to her eyes and streamed through her fingers as she wondered what mercy she was to expect from her proud, high-minded lover who considered flirting a deadly sin.

He was very angry, she knew from his face and his attitude. She would have to be very humble and repentant to win his forgiveness.

She stole a glance at his face through her fingers, and saw that he was waiting for her to speak.

She could think of only one word, and it came pleadingly, imploringly:

“Forgive!”

Then her lashes fell, and she waited in humble silence, hearing in the stillness her own muffled heart-beats.

Pale, stern, handsome Philip Desha stood looking at the girl like her avenging Nemesis.

He spoke, and she started at the hollow tone of his voice.

“Viola, how can you expect forgiveness for your cruelty?”

She murmured, faintly:

“I did not intend to be cruel, but my heart wandered from him to you! Oh, Philip, can that be a crime in your eyes?”

“Not that, Viola, but your deceit. When I asked you to marry me, why did you not confess your previous engagement, and tell me you would ask Florian to release you? That would have been the honest way, and my love could have forgiven that much, but this treachery never!”

“Philip!” incredulously, holding out her beautiful arms imploringly, her streaming eyes upturned in prayerful entreaty.

But her love, her penitence, and her beauty did not move the honest heart of her outraged lover to forgiveness.

He said, icily:

“Do not humble yourself to plead to me, Viola. My heart seems frozen within me—frozen by the discovery of your unworthiness.”

She began to be vaguely frightened at his harshness. How dare he scold her now, he who was to be her husband tomorrow!

A flash of pride shone through her tears, and she exclaimed, rashly:

“I will not let you scold me, Philip. Whatever I did, it was for your sake—because I loved you!”

He answered, scathingly:

“Was it for my sake, then, you drove young George Merrington to suicide?”

“Merciful Heaven! how came you by that knowledge, Philip?” she groaned.

“No matter how, Viola, so that you do not deny it. For a week that knowledge has lain heavy as a stone on my heart. I have asked myself how I could wed a woman with so cruel a nature that she drove men mad just to gratify her insatiate vanity. You must know that my ideal of true womanhood is based on angelic sweetness, tenderness, and compassion, and the knowledge of your faults was a shock I could barely endure. But our wedding-day was near, and my love for you triumphed over my reason. I made all possible excuses for you, and let things drift on until tonight.”

Viola bowed her head without a word, since he had told her that pleading was useless. She could only listen in terrified silence, wondering whither his words were tending.

He paused a moment, cleared his throat nervously, and proceeded:

“The cruelty of the treatment accorded Florian Gay transcends your coquetry with young Merrington. I can find no fitting words to describe your conduct. Besides, you have just said you would not permit me to scold you. So it only remains for me to say that I fear a girl who flirts so shamelessly before marriage could not refrain from it afterwards. I could not trust and respect her as my wife.”

No answer from Viola, crouching speechless in her chair, and he continued, sadly but firmly:

“These are bitter words, and I regret the bitter occasion for them, but—Miss Van Lew, I can never be your husband!”

The listening statue started into indignant, palpitating life.

“Oh, Heaven! you would break faith with me now, at the last hour—expose me to open shame! A jilted bride!”

“Forbid the thought,” he answered, quickly. “On my head fall all the obloquy. You can tell the world that we quarreled bitterly this evening, and that you refused to marry me. That will clear up everything. No one,” bitterly, “will discredit this new proof of Miss Van Lew’s fickleness and heartlessness and love of sensation.”

He waited a moment for the silent, statue-like figure to speak, but from the tense white lips came not a word, either of blame or of entreaty, so with a slight, cold bow, Philip Desha passed from her presence out into the cold March night, as Florian Gay had done but a little while before, his heart as crushed and heavy as Florian’s own, but true to his high ideals of noble womanhood.

Viola did not move from her chair for fifteen minutes. She sat still as a statue, the only sign of life in her gleaming, dark eyes, where pride and despair alternately struggled for expression.

It was the bitterest and most tragic hour her brilliant life had ever known.

She had lost the prize she had risked so much to win—lost the love that was more to her than Heaven.

He despised her now, had thrown her aside in scorn.

Tomorrow the whole world would find it out, and mock at her misery, pointing the gibing finger of scorn at the young bride jilted at the altar.

She rose at last, muttering four baleful words:

“How I hate him!”

Crossing to a desk, she caught up a pen and dashed off nervously a few incoherent words:

“Dear Florian,—He—the man I was to marry—was in the next room, and heard all our conversation tonight. We quarreled bitterly, and—our engagement is broken off. There will be no wedding to-morrow, unless you will forgive me and take his place. Will you, Florian, to save me the notoriety of a broken-off marriage? Besides I hate him now—and it will be easy to teach me to love you again as I used to do.

“Will you come at once and see me, dear Florian, or send a message by bearer?

“Your repentant

Viola.”

Having dispatched the message by a safe bearer, she hastened to her room to remove as well as possible all traces of her terrible agitation. Florian should not know the real truth of the broken engagement.

She would make him think that the sight of him had reawakened all the old love in her heart.

Oh, yes, she would punish false, cruel Philip in the bitterest fashion! Pride enthroned itself in her heart.

The messenger returned swiftly, but Florian did not come. He had sent a note, that she tore open with eager fingers:

“Miss Van Lew,—I decline with contempt the offer to fill a truant bridegroom’s place to-morrow. I have no doubt he has deserted you in disgust at learning your treachery to me, and I rejoice at your misfortune!

“Florian Gay.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

“I DROVE POOR VIOLA TO HER DEATH!”

“Was ever any beautiful, thoughtless young girl more cruelly punished for the fault of coquetry?” thought Viola, as she buried her hot, burning face in her hands, her heart swelling with rage against Florian and Philip.

“I hate them both!” she sobbed, miserably, in her bitter defeat, not comprehending yet the full enormity of the conduct that had roused her two lovers to resentment.

Why, at the sea-shore last summer she had known a pretty girl from Chicago that was engaged to four young men at once, and played them off against one another in the most skillful fashion, to the amusement of all her girl friends who were in the secret.

Viola caught herself wondering now how the pretty flirt had ever got out of the scrape.

Then her thoughts came back to her own pitiful plight. How was she ever going to face to-morrow?

True, she might take Philip’s advice and say they had quarreled, and she had thrown him over. But the thought of her father’s anger made her shudder with fear, and her passionate pride revolted at telling him the real truth—that she had been deserted by Philip and scorned by Florian.

No; she dare not go to her father with either story, the humiliating truth, or the clever fiction suggested by Desha.

In either case his wrath would be something terrible.

She had learned this when he upbraided her in the case of George Merrington.

She was thankful that Aunt Edwina, weary of the preparations for to-morrow, had retired early to her room. No one could know aught of the shameful humiliation that had come to her to-night—no one but those two heartless ones who had brought this irredeemable woe to her hitherto careless happy life.

Viola sat still in her chair, crushing Florian’s harsh note between her icy fingers, her eyes staring blankly before her out of her deathly white face, seeing in fancy the wreck of her life lying in ruins at her feet.

What a sensation there would be to-morrow when she had to face every one with the declaration that there would be no wedding!

How could she ever face Aunt Edwina’s gentle surprise and persistent curiosity, her father’s wrath, and the wonder and the veiled mockery of her little social world?

She had been so proud, so haughty—and now her pride was leveled in the dust.

And she was too angry for repentance, too resentful to accept her fate.

A passionate longing to punish Desha for his desertion throbbed at her heart, but alas! she was helpless. With Florian’s help she might have done it—might still have been wedded to-morrow, and turned the exchange of bridegrooms into a jest, baffling the world’s curiosity, and thwarting Desha’s intentions—but now the thought of to-morrow drove her mad. How could she face its keen humiliation and live?

She to whom life had always been so fair and beautiful suddenly found it a dark and gloomy spot from which she shrank in blind terror, madly longing for death.

“I wish I was dead!” she groaned in her tearless despair and dread of to-morrow.

She felt a terrible loneliness, a feeling that there was no one on earth to whom she could turn for help or pity in this dark, dark hour when all the joy of her life had fallen to her feet in ruins.

She rose, pacing up and down the floor with interlocked hands and blazing eyes. Half crazed with the sudden shock of trouble, Viola’s thoughts took a sudden, desperate turn, paltered with an awful temptation.

She murmured hollowly:

“I can not bear my pain and live! Death were better.”

Death would still the aching of the weary head, the throbbing of the tortured heart, save her from tomorrow.

If she could only die, the secret of her cruel humiliation would die with her—neither Philip Desha nor Florian Gay would dare stand up in the face of the pitying world and say: “I drove poor Viola to her death.”

They would be ashamed and afraid of condemnation. Remorse would seize their hearts, their old love would return and overwhelm them with grief.

If she only could get some morphine, she could soon end her sorrow. Death would come gently, painlessly.

When they called her in the morning she would not answer, her soul would have slipped away gently in the night.

They would dress her in the beautiful bridal gown, cover her coffin with flowers, and lay her in the earth, weeping for the fair young life so untimely ended.

Viola sobbed aloud at this moving picture; but it did not deter her from the grim resolve that took possession of her distraught mind.

Stealing unnoticed to her room, she slipped on a warm seal-skin jacket and donned a cap to match, drawing a close veil over her face.

Then slipping down to a rear entrance, she left the house unperceived, by a gate the servants used, intent on reaching the drug store on the corner to procure the morphine.

Her face was deathly pale, her lips writhed in pain, her eyes gleamed wildly with her desperate purpose to baffle fate that used her so cruelly.

She did not observe as she closed the gate that a gentleman had run down the steps of her home and walked briskly to the corner, waiting there for an electric car.

It was a quiet street and seemingly deserted this cold March night, so that he observed with surprise the slender, graceful figure flitting before him, noting with a start that it looked like Miss Van Lew.

She darted into the drug store, and curiosity made him draw near the door to satisfy his doubts.

He heard the sweet musical voice, to whose tender songs he had listened in rapture every day, asking in hoarse, unnatural accents for morphine, and then the answer of the clerk who said that he could not sell such a dangerous drug without a doctor’s prescription.

Viola turned silently and went out into the street, passing Rolfe Maxwell without perceiving him, in the absorption of her misery.

She stood a moment watching the electric car now bearing swiftly down toward the corner, and the young man thought as she advanced into the street, that she was about to signal it.

He said to himself in perplexity:

“What a strange freak for Miss Van Lew, boarding an electric car at ten o’clock at night to go after morphine! Yet there is no one sick at her house, as I am aware.”

Perplexed and uneasy, he moved forward after her and just then a terrible thing happened.

Viola, mad with misery, and assailed by an irresistible temptation, threw herself recklessly across the track, where the advancing wheels of the car would in another moment crush out her life.

The truth flashed on him in lightning horror. The girl intended to commit suicide.

It was dark just there, and the conductor had not perceived her frantic deed. What was to save the poor girl from instant death as the swift engine of destruction rushed down upon her prostrate form?

Rolfe Maxwell’s heart seemed to stand still with horror. Was it possible to save her now? to save her or only to meet death in the effort?

He sprang after her with outstretched hand, clutching her skirts, dragging her back, clearing the way just as the car rushed past, grazing his bowed head, and knocking him down.

Strange to say no one had witnessed the terrible tragedy so bravely avoided. Only the silent stars looked down on the cold street upon Viola and her rescuer struggling to their feet, the girl uninjured, the man slightly dazed from a blow on the head.

He clutched her arm tightly and led her to the pavement, saying sternly:

“I have saved you from yourself at the risk of my own life; but, Miss Van Lew, why did you attempt this terrible deed?”

The girl trembled, shuddered, and her great somber eyes flared up to his face.

“Mr. Maxwell!” she exclaimed, in alarm.

“Yes, Rolfe Maxwell,” he answered. “I was just leaving your father’s house and I saw you go into the drug store, and when you failed to get morphine you threw yourself in front of that advancing car. Why did you do it, Miss Van Lew, you whom we supposed to be the happiest girl in the world?”

His voice was stern, yet a thrill of such tender anxiety ran through it that she felt instinctively he was her friend. Clinging to him piteously, she sobbed:

“Oh, do not scold me! I am so unhappy!”

The piteous voice went to his heart, and as they stood there together, she trembling like a leaf as she clung to him, he could not resist pressing the little hand on his arm, and answering, gently:

“I did not wish to be harsh with you, but I do not understand, you know.”

Viola was frightened almost to death. She faltered:

“I can not explain. I can only confess that I was very unhappy, and wished to die! You will not tell papa, will you?”

“I must do so in order that you may be watched to prevent another attempt at suicide,” he replied, gravely; adding: “May I take you home now?”

“Oh, not yet, please! I am afraid—afraid!” she wailed, dreading her father’s wrath. “Oh, let us walk along the streets awhile, please.”

She thought she could persuade him to keep her secret, but he was resolute in taking her home and telling her father.

“I dare not trust you unless you promise not to make such another attempt,” he said, so firmly that she cried, petulantly:

“Who are you that dares assume authority over me?”

“I am your true friend, I hope, Miss Van Lew, and I would not willingly see your fair young life thrown away.”

She startled him by murmuring:

“My friend! Come, I like that word! All other men have been my lovers!”

She did not guess how his heart beat as he answered:

“I could be your lover, too, Miss Van Lew, but fate is against me. You seem to need a friend. Let me hold that precious place.”

They walked slowly along the street, her trembling hand drawn through his arm. In spite of all her trouble Viola could not help seeing how tall and handsome he was, with glorious dark eyes that had given her a strange, delicious thrill every time she met their earnest glance.

She had a subtle feeling that here was a true heart—one to rest on and confide in, sure of pity and sympathy.

She faltered, weakly:

“You—you would not wish to be my friend if you knew me well. There are—are”—gaspingly—“men who hate me because I—I used to flirt when I did not know it was very cruel.”

CHAPTER XIX.

A COUP D’ÉTAT.

“Poor little girl!” murmured Rolfe Maxwell, very softly; and he could not help pressing the little hand that lay upon his arm.

The tenderness sank into Viola’s heart, so hungry for pity and sympathy.

She sighed heavily, and walked along by his side in silence a few minutes, without thinking how strange her position was—walking at this time of night with Rolfe Maxwell, her father’s employe, and almost a stranger to herself.

In the distraught state of her mind nothing seemed strange or out of the way now.

The man’s gentleness and sympathy stole like balm into her aching heart and melted it, where coldness and blame would have steeled it into pride and anger.

“Do you really mean,” she murmured in a wistful voice such as no one had ever heard from her before, “that you really want to be my friend, that you would help me out of my trouble—for indeed I have a great trouble—if you could?”

“Yes, I mean it; for I am very sorry for you, Miss Van Lew. I will do anything in the world to help you, if you will only tell me how,” he returned, gently and encouragingly, with an earnestness that wooed her confidence.

Viola was so proud that she wanted to keep her humiliating secret from the whole world, and would not confide it even to her aunt and father; but, obeying the magnetic influence of the moment, she opened her whole passionate heart to this stranger.

She did not spare herself; she did not gloss over anything; she accused herself as if she had been some one else; and then she waited for his decision, after saying, piteously:

“Perhaps you will think that I fully deserve my punishment.”

She did not know herself how piteously she awaited his reply, crushed and humiliated by the experiences of the night, and longing for something to rehabilitate herself in her own esteem. Her whole heart seemed to hang tremblingly on his next words.

Would he still proclaim himself her friend when he knew what a wicked little flirt she had been, and how cruelly she had been punished?

But Rolfe Maxwell had heard of her coquetries long before, and had always made excuses for her in his heart.

It seemed to him that one so rarely gifted by nature and fortune could not be entirely to blame. Royally dowered with beauty and fascination, she commanded love without seeking it; and perhaps, in her youth and innocence, she did not indeed value the emotion at its true worth. Had she not confessed to him her dismay at her father’s lecture, and the changed life she had led afterward, save for her cowardice in confessing the truth to Florian?

So he replied, warmly:

“Your punishment was greater than the offense warranted. I should say that Professor Desha and Florian Gay were both lacking in some of the elements of true manliness, or they never could have served you so ill a turn. I should say that your father would be perfectly right to call Desha to account.”

“Oh, no, no, never! Papa must never know how I have been treated. But I am so glad you take my part, that you think they were to blame!” cried poor Viola, gratefully.

“Yes, I take your part. You have been shamefully treated; but I should say that in my opinion you are well rid of both of the poltroons. Such love as theirs was not worth having,” the young man cried, indignantly; adding: “But I have said I would be your friend. Trust me now, and tell me what I can do to help you. Perhaps if I should go and reason the case with Philip Desha, he might stoop from his haughty pedestal and return to his allegiance.”

“Do you think I would permit you? Never!” her form trembling with indignation.

“Perhaps, then, you would not mind my speaking to Florian Gay?”

“Sue to those monsters? Never! As for Florian, I did not want him anyway. It was only—only—to save myself from tomorrow’s sensation, and to punish Desha,” she half-sobbed, growing hysterical in the realization of the impending morrow. “Oh, why did I not die?” she moaned, wildly.

“My dear young lady, would you sacrifice yourself for such ignoble wretches?” he remonstrated, gravely.

“I have told you I can not face tomorrow!” she groaned.

“You shall!” He caught his breath quickly. “I have a plan—rather a desperate one—to help you out of your difficulty, if you can consider it.”

“Oh!” she cried, her heart bounding out of the gulf of black despair up into the light of hope.

“It is only a suggestion, mind. You are not obliged to take my advice. Suppose you married some other man tonight, and get a paragraph into the morning papers making it appear you eloped with a favored suitor and left Desha in the lurch.”

“Oh!” she cried, impulsively again; and he continued:

“There would be no one to contradict this story, because Desha and Gay would surely be ashamed to confess their dastardly share in driving you to desperation. Thus your pride would be saved, and no one the wiser, your reputation for coquetry making it easy for the public to accept the story.”

Viola’s laugh rang out hysterically.

“Capital! How clever you are, Mr. Maxwell!”

“Then you like the idea of my little coup d’état?”

“Immensely!” she cried, recklessly. “But a man will be necessary to our success. Where shall we find him?”

Was it a daring challenge that rang in her voice?

His heart leaped wildly against her arm, and then he asked, in a thick, agitated voice:

“How would young George Merrington suit you, Miss Van Lew?”

“Why, he is only a lovesick boy! Besides, I could not go and ask him to marry me! I have been refused by two men already tonight, and am discouraged with my luck!” Viola answered, petulantly.

There was silence between them for a few minutes; then he murmured, low and hesitatingly:

“There are others, Miss Van Lew.”

“You mean—” she said, catching her breath with a sort of gasp of surprise; and he answered, passionately:

“My heart is at your feet!”

CHAPTER XX.

“WAS EVER MAIDEN IN THIS HUMOR WOOED?”

“I have heard—or dreamed it, maybe—
What love is when true;
How to test and how to try it
Is the gift of few.
Only a true heart can find it,
True as it is true;
Only eyes so clear and tender
Look it through and through.

“I have seen a love whose patience
Never turned aside,
Full of tender, fond devices,
Constant even when tried.
Tell me, then, do you dare offer
This true love to me?
Neither you nor I can answer;
We will—wait and see.”

Viola’s heart throbbed strangely as she caught the meaning of her companion’s passionate speech, but to save her life she could not utter a word. She was overpowered by a sudden bashfulness, as if she had provoked the declaration by too eager encouragement. In the gloom of the night she felt her cheeks burn like fire.

Rolfe Maxwell remained silent too for a moment, as if startled at his own presumptuousness, then, seeing she would not speak, continued vehemently:

“Am I too bold? Believe me, I love you ardently, but I should never have dared to tell you so, only—only—to help you, if you so choose, out of the—difficulty—which troubles you so greatly. I am poor, and I have nothing to offer you but a true heart and an untarnished name. But if you will marry me, Viola—may I call you that?—I will toil as never man toiled before to win fame and fortune for my darling.”

He paused, breathless, his splendid eyes shining down upon her with mingled hope and fear, lest she should upbraid him for his boldness.

But still Viola paced slowly by his side along the gloomy street, past the long rows of frowning red-brick houses without a word, and he took heart of grace to continue gravely:

“Do not answer until you look clearly into the future. If you go home now and reconcile yourself to your trouble, it will soon blow over, and you may perhaps soon become reconciled to your lover and be happy. On the other hand, if you marry me, your father will perhaps be offended beyond forgiveness; he will disinherit you, and you will suffer the hardships of a poor man’s wife, without the sweet, wifely tenderness that would make your lot bearable, unless in time you could learn to love me.”

He heard a long, quivering sigh, but no word, and he went on gently:

“I would be very patient, and not try to force your love, dear. I have an offer to go to Cuba to the seat of war as reporter for a leading newspaper here, and I would accept it and go away at once, leaving you here in my humble home with my dear, kind mother and my sweet cousin Mae, an orphan girl who lives with us. I know they would love you for my sake, and while I was away, your heart might grow toward me by the magnetic force of my own passion, till at last we were drawn together by mutual love.”

The eloquent voice paused, and Viola said, low and very faintly:

“How good you are to me.”

He had hardly dared hope that she would accept him, perhaps he knew it was best she should not, yet her words chilled his heart.

“But you refuse me?” he asked, in a broken voice.

To his joy and surprise her small hand eagerly pressed his arm, and she answered very low:

“No, I will marry you, and I thank you for your offer, for it is the best way out of my trouble, and will help me to revenge myself on Philip and Florian.”

It was not a very flattering acceptance, he felt—not a word for himself, but only a note of rejoicing for her triumph that was to be gained by making a bridge of another man’s heart to reach her longed-for revenge.

She added in a moment, bitterly:

“I do not believe that either one of them has ceased to love me, and when they come to their senses and find out I am married to another, they will suffer all the pangs they caused my heart.”

And she laughed hollowly at her prospective revenge.

“May Heaven help me to win your heart, Viola, and show you the difference between true love and false! And now, as it is getting late, perhaps we had better seek a minister to marry us.”

She started, laughed hysterically, but answered, eagerly:

“Yes.”

“Is there any minister you prefer?”

“No,” carelessly.

“Then we will go to the rectory of All Souls’ Church; it is only about two blocks from here. Doctor Meade is a friend of mine, and will make no difficulty about performing the ceremony. Then we will write out the notice we desire for the morning papers, and he will have it sent to the offices while I take you to my home.”

They paused at the steps of the rectory, and he said, tenderly:

“It is not too late to draw back yet, Viola.”

“There is no drawing back for me!”

And the newspapers next morning gayly chronicled the elopement.

“SOCIETY BELLE ELOPES.

“Vagaries of a Beauty.

“The Daughter of a High Official in Washington, the Handsomest Girl in Society, a Charming Coquette Who has Refused Scores of Eligible Men, Jilts a Distinguished Member of Congress on the very eve of Her Bridal, and Elopes with a Poor Young Man!

“Fashionable society, which expected to get on its best togs today for the grand noon-wedding of Congressman Desha and the lovely Miss Van Lew, will stand aghast at learning that the marriage is off.

“The lovely coquette, assuming the prerogative of lovely woman to change her mind, left the prospective bridegroom in the lurch last evening, and eloped with a poor young journalist, Rolfe Maxwell, whom she secretly preferred.

“The marriage ceremony was solemnized last evening at the rectory of All Souls’ Church, by the genial rector from whom these facts were gleaned by our busy reporter. It is understood that the jilted bridegroom is désolé, and père Van Lew furious and unforgiving; but as the capricious bride inherits on her marriage the fortune of her deceased mother, she can afford to snap her fingers at the irate papa.”

CHAPTER XXI.

THE BRIDE’S HOME-COMING.

“Give me but thy love, and I
Envy none beneath the sky;
Pains and perils I defy
If thy presence cheer me.
Give me but thy love, my sweet;
Joy shall bless us when we meet;
Pleasures come and cares retreat
When thou smilest near me!”

Viola herself had written the newspaper article, smiling vindictively at the cruel stabs it held for Philip Desha’s heart.

Then she handed the sheet to her new-made husband, and he began to read it, exclaiming, admiringly:

“Capital, Viola! This will hoodwink everybody, and cover Desha with confusion.”

“That is what I most desire!” she replied, bitterly; and he saw that her complete revenge absorbed all her thoughts.

He read on, and at the last words he started in surprise, and whispered, hurriedly:

“Viola, this latter clause? I did not know about that! I—I—shall be accused of being a fortune-hunter!”

“Oh, no; for the fact of my being my mother’s sole heiress was not generally known. In fact, papa has never told me of it, but Aunt Edwina mentioned it one day,” replied Viola, rising, and standing by his side, a pale, excited bride, with a strange fire burning in her splendid eyes.

They were alone where kindly Doctor Meade had left them to do their writing, and Maxwell looked wistfully at the beautiful, pallid face, longing to repeat the kiss he had dared to press on her lips at the close of their strange marriage vows.

But he remembered how cold and unresponsive they had been, and saw no invitation in her eyes now, so he stifled the longing, and said, quietly:

“If you will excuse me a moment, I will arrange with Doctor Meade for sending off this notice to the newspapers, and see if the cab I ordered has arrived.”

He hurried out, and the pale bride stood alone amid the ruin of her hopes and in the pride of her revenge.

She could think of nothing but of how cleverly she had turned the tables on Philip Desha and Florian Gay.

“They will be mystified by the suddenness of my marriage, and perhaps believe it was premeditated, after all,” she thought, hopefully. “What a clever man Mr. Maxwell is to have thought of this way of checkmating them. I shall always be very grateful to him, both for preventing my rash attempt at suicide and for helping me to my revenge.”

And it did not occur to her half-distraught mind then that a husband had a claim to more than gratitude at her hands.

“Our cab is ready. We will go home now,” he said, returning, and leading her out.

The cab rolled lightly over the smooth streets, and Viola began to realize all at once the change that was coming into her own life; but she did not repent her rash marriage. In her bitter mood she would have sacrificed her own life rather than have foregone to-morrow’s triumph.

They were quite silent for a few minutes; then her husband said, kindly:

“Of course you realize, Viola, that the home to which you are going is very different from the luxurious one you have left? We live in a tiny cottage on Capitol Hill, and my invalid mother and my orphan cousin, little Mae Sweetland, are dependent on me for support. But my mother will soon have a pension. My father was a soldier, a captain in the Federal Army, though while we had a modest competence, mother never wished for a pension, but the failure of a bank left us penniless, and I had to leave West Point, where I was being educated, to come home and take up journalistic work to support our helpless family. But mother will receive her pension soon, with back pay, so that our home will be more comfortable then, and I can go away to Cuba with an easy mind.”

Viola had listened attentively, and now she answered:

“And I shall have my own fortune, too, so I shall not lack for the luxury to which I have been used.”

“Not a word against my going to Cuba,” thought the handsome young husband, with a heavy heart.

But he could not blame her in the least. She had not professed any regard for him; she had only accepted him in preference to the other alternative—George Merrington—“silly, lovesick boy,” as she had contemptuously termed him.

Besides, he had told her frankly that he would go to Cuba after their marriage. Perhaps that fact had turned the balance in his favor and made her accept his offer.

“Here we are!” he said, cheerfully, as the cab stopped before a little white cottage inclosed in a grassy plot. “It is eleven o’clock, yet I see a light in the parlor window. They are waiting up for me, dear mother and little Mae.”

He handed her out, drew her hand through his arm with a fond, protecting air, and they walked up the narrow graveled path together, the young man saying, encouragingly:

“It will be a great surprise to them, my bringing home a bride to-night; but they will love you for my sake!”

Slipping his latch-key into the door, he opened it, and led her into a small unlighted hall.

At the sound of their footsteps the parlor door opened quickly, and in the sudden light that streamed out, Viola saw a fair young girl standing smiling on the threshold—a petite blonde, lovely as a doll, with a glad light of welcome shining in her deep azure eyes.

“Rolfe!” she cried, joyously, before she perceived Viola.

But the next moment a startled look came over her face, and crying, “Oh!” in a voice of dismay, she darted back to a sofa where a handsome, dark-eyed woman lay resting with the weariness of an invalid.

To this lady Rolfe Maxwell led his pale bride, saying, smilingly:

“Mother, don’t get excited, please, but I have a great surprise for you and Mae. I was quietly married at Doctor Meade’s tonight, and this is my bride, Viola!”

There was a moment’s painful, embarrassing pause, and no wonder, because the shock of surprise had certainly been great, but it was broken by a startling incident.

“Married! Married! Oh, Heaven!” almost shrieked Mae Sweetland, despairingly, as she threw up her arms in the air, then sank unconscious to the floor.

CHAPTER XXII.

“GO BACK TO YOUR HAUGHTY BRIDE.”

“And will she love thee as well as I?

Will she do for thee what I have done?

See all the pomps of the world pass by,

And look only for thee—beloved one?

“Will she feel when another pronounces thy name

All the thrilling sensations that I have done?

Pride when they praise thee, regret when they blame,

And tenderness always—beloved one?

“Will she watch when a cloud passes over thy brow

And strive to chase it—as I have done?

Forgetting all but the thought that now

It is hers to console thee—beloved one?”

Mrs. Maxwell raised herself on her elbow and looked at the fallen girl with her lovely face and closed eyes upturned to the light. In her alarm she did not heed Viola’s presence.

“Oh, Rolfe, what have you done?” she groaned, wildly. “You have broken dear little Mae’s heart!”

“Mother!” in bewilderment.

“You have broken Mae’s heart!” she repeated, angrily. “She loved you dearly. She thought you loved her in return, and would marry her when your fortune mended, and I—as blind as she was—I encouraged her to think so. And now this terrible blow!”

It was a strange welcome for the young bride. She stared with dazed eyes at the prostrate girl, while her ears drank in every word of Rolfe’s mother.

As for him, he grew pale with indignation as he pressed Viola’s hand against his arm, replying:

“Mother, before Heaven I never dreamed of such fancies on your part, or Mae’s, whom I loved as a dear little sister only, and I am sorry I have unwittingly given her pain. But you have done wrong to betray my cousin’s tender secret to me and to my wife.”

The invalid turned her sorrowful dark eyes quickly on Viola, exclaiming:

“I beg your pardon for my indiscreet speech, dear, and for forgetting to welcome you in my fright over Mae. I am sure I shall love Rolfe’s wife dearly.”

And she held out her hand; but the one that Viola placed in it was cold as ice, as she answered, proudly:

“I am sorry I have disappointed your wishes for your son, madame.”

Meanwhile, Rolfe stooped over Mae, and lifting her gently in his arms, said:

“Mother, I had better carry her to her room, so that you can attend to her, I think.”

“Yes,” she answered, following him weakly, then sending him out, saying, bitterly: “Go back to your haughty bride. I can manage Mae best alone.”

He returned to Viola, most bitterly pained and chagrined by this awkward contretemps.

She had thrown herself into an easy-chair, her burning eyes fixed on the floor, and her face a marble mask in its deep pallor.

If she had loved him he would have clasped her to his heart, telling her of his deep devotion and begging her to forget what had happened just now.

But he fancied she would not have tolerated that, so he drew a chair to her side, and venturing to touch one of her cold hands caressingly, said, tenderly:

“Viola, I hope you will forget the scene of just now. It was most embarrassing for us both, but my mother, who has been an invalid several months, was overcome by surprise and excitement. She and Mae have been very silly in their fancies, for I never thought of the dear child only as a cousin or sister. I have been in love with you long before you ever saw me or heard my name, though you would never have known it but for the happenings of tonight.”

Viola started, glanced keenly at him, then dropped her eyes again without a word, and he did not dream how he had eased her heart with those simple words: “I have been in love with you long before you ever saw me or heard my name.”

“How strange! I wonder where he first saw me,” she mused, for but a moment ago her heart had been racked by the fear that he shared little Mae’s pain of hopeless love—that she had come between them by almost asking him to marry her outright to save her from tomorrow’s keen humiliation.

To have added this blunder to her other trials must have driven poor Viola nearer insanity than she was already.

Rolfe Maxwell continued in his deep, musical tone that had in it the soothing note we use to a hurt child:

“When you know mother better, you will find that she is incapable of knowingly giving pain. She will prepare our little spare room for you presently, for I am sure you are weary and would like to be alone. In the meantime, let me take your hat and jacket away, and then I will brew you some tea. Would you not like it?”

Viola assented wearily, and he waited on her with the tenderness of a lover and the skill of a woman.

The bright, warm little parlor seemed very cozy after her adventures that cold March night, and she actually swallowed the fragrant tea Rolfe put to her lips, though she had fancied she would choke in the effort.

“How comforting he is!” she thought mechanically through the haze of her wretched thoughts, that wandered hither and thither, but mostly toward home, wondering what they would say there when they found her gone in the morning.

She had locked her room-door and put the key in her pocket on leaving, lest the inquisitive ladys’-maid should find out her flitting; so she knew her absence would not be known till morning—perhaps not even until at breakfast, when her father opened his morning paper.

Suddenly she burst into a passion of grieving tears, breaking up all the stony calm she had preserved since the marriage.

With a cry of dismay, Rolfe Maxwell knelt by her side, daring to draw the dark head tenderly against his breast, and Viola did not resent it; to his great relief, she simply nestled there like a grieving child, while the tears rained down her cheeks.

“What is it, my dearest love, my darling?” he whispered, anxiously.

She moaned piteously:

“I was thinking of—of—poor papa. He will not know I am gone till he opens his paper at breakfast in the morning—and—and—it will break his heart!”

“What would you wish me to do for you, dear love? Go to him or write to him? I will do anything you wish,” he promised, earnestly.

“Do nothing yet—he will be too angry to listen. We must wait till his wrath blows over,” she panted in dread, drawing her face away and resting it against the soft cushion of her chair.

In another moment the strange, narcotic influence of grief overpowered the unhappy girl, and she slept like a child, losing for a time the memory of her sorrows.

Rolfe Maxwell gazed on her a few minutes with his passionate heart in his eyes, then pressed his lips softly on the rich waves of her perfumed dark hair ere he turned away to see that the little spare room was made comfortable for her to occupy.

In the meantime, his mother’s efforts had, after a time, restored his unhappy cousin to consciousness.

The girl lay still and dazed for some moments, then, as memory returned, she sobbed, miserably:

“Oh, Aunt Margaret, is it really true? Has Rolfe married that proud girl who looked like a queen?”

“It is true, dear, and I am very sorry; but we must make the best of it; only I wish he had not taken us by surprise!” sighed Mrs. Maxwell.

“I hate her! I wish I could part them, even now!” declared Mae, her sweet young face flushing with baleful anger.

“Dear Mae, you must not feel like that. Rolfe loves his beautiful young bride, and it is our duty to love her too,” the lady said, gently.

Mae sat up in bed, her azure eyes flashing with an anger her aunt had never suspected in her before. She sobbed, bitterly:

“I will not love her, the proud, beautiful creature who has stolen Rolfe’s heart from me so cruelly, and broken mine!”

“Dear Mae, we were mistaken in our hopes of Rolfe. He only loved you as a little sister, while we dreamed of something nearer and dearer. I am to blame for fostering such hopes in you. Will you forgive me, dear, and try to be happy without Rolfe?” pleaded Rolfe’s mother.

“I can not be happy without him. I have loved him more than a year, and all my hopes centered on him. That proud beauty can never love him as dearly as I love him!” sobbed Mae, casting pride to the winds in the shock of her grief, and refusing all pacification as she cast herself, weeping, back among her pillows, so that the perturbed aunt had perforce to excuse herself presently and go away to look after the comfort of her unwelcome guest.

CHAPTER XXIII.

PLAYING HER PART.

“Alas! if love do not reveal
His warmth to stamp the marriage seal,
Then grief and bitter woe betide
The wedded lord and hapless bride!”

Mrs. Maxwell and Rolfe soon had the tiny spare room bright and cozy for Viola, and while the young girl still slept on wearily in the parlor, he made a bungling explanation of his marriage.

“I did not mean to shock you, mother, but this was a rather sudden move on my part. The truth is, that I carried Viola off from another man that she expected to wed tomorrow, and her father will be very angry, of course; but the sensation will soon blow over. Very unfortunately, I am obliged to go to New York on business tonight, and must leave my bride in your care.”

She thought it would look very strange leaving his young bride on his wedding-night, and she said so frankly.

The hot color surged up to the roots of the clustering black curls on his brow, then receded, leaving him deathly pale again, as he answered, quickly:

“Viola will understand the necessity. Besides, I will leave a little note that will explain. I will soon be back—probably tomorrow evening.”

He took her hand, and said, earnestly:

“Dear mother, you have always been good to your boy, but I see that I have strained your love tonight. Will you try to forgive me for disappointing your wishes about Mae, and be kind to my precious Viola?”

“Of course I will, Rolfe,” she answered.

But he persevered:

“She will need more than kindness—she will need real motherly tenderness and sympathy, for she is nervous and troubled over the shock she has given her father, and is likely to be very unhappy for some time. You will know how to comfort her, will you not, dear mother?”

His voice was so eager and anxious that she answered yes, promising her heart to do her duty by Rolfe’s wife, in spite of her secret resentment for poor Mae’s sake.

When he had left the house she returned to the parlor, and found Viola still sleeping so soundly that she had not the heart to rouse her yet. She drew up a chair and waited awhile, gazing admiringly at the beautiful creature.

Presently Viola stirred restlessly, sighed, and opened her large dreamy eyes upon the unfamiliar scene, and the strange face of her mother-in-law.

“Oh!” she uttered, in a dazed voice, sitting quickly erect.

“Do not be alarmed, my dear, you have fallen asleep in your chair and been dreaming. You are here in Rolfe’s home safe with his mother,” said the lady, gently.

A gleam of comprehension flashed into Viola’s eyes, and she sighed heavily:

“I remember—everything.”

“I have a bit of sad news for you, my dear.”

“Yes?” inquiringly.

The answer was a sealed letter.

Viola took it in surprise, and opened it, reading with dilated eyes:

“My Precious Wife,—I mentioned to you tonight that I had an offer to go to Cuba as a war correspondent for a newspaper, and I find it almost necessary to go to New York tonight to make the requisite arrangements for immediate departure.

“This happens very fortunately for you under the circumstances.

“You will not be compelled to assume as yet the duties of a wifehood that would be repugnant to you now, though I hope at some future day to teach your heart the sweet lesson of love. Am I presumptuous?

“We must keep up the farce of love—no farce on my part—to blind the world, and make it believe in the honesty of the coup d’état by which you came out of the affair with Desha with flying colors. Do not lay aside for a moment the pretense that the force of love alone caused your elopement.

“Above all, spare my gentle mother any knowledge of the real truth. It will not take much acting to please her gentle heart with the fancy that I am dear to you. May the fancy some day become reality.

“I have dared kiss you good-bye as you slept. I hope you will rest easy till my return tomorrow evening. I will give orders for the morning papers to be sent you.

“Devotedly,

Rolfe.”

Viola read the short letter slowly and lingeringly, and then thrust it into her bosom.

The woman who watched her saw her lips quiver, and said, tenderly:

“I told Rolfe it was hard for him to go tonight, but he seemed to think you would not blame him, dear.”

“No, no; I understand,” the girl answered, quietly; then suddenly hid her pale face in her hands, while a burning crimson flushed up to her brow at the deceit she must practice on the kind soul who thought she was grieving because of Rolfe’s absence, while instead she was unutterably grateful to him for his chivalrous consideration.

Until this moment Viola had been so absorbed in her revenge that she had scarcely given a thought to the man she had married.

Yet he, gently and unobtrusively, had considered everything, planned everything, that her treasured vengeance need not go awry, while at the same time she need not pay too dear a price for the victory. Loving her with all the strong passion of manhood, he would not force his love on her sore heart. He would be patient and bide his time, though not concealing the tenderness of his hope.

Mrs. Maxwell, full of the thought of comforting her, exclaimed:

“Ah, my dear, how soundly you slept! It is wonderful that Rolfe did not wake you while he knelt by you, kissing your face, your hands, and your hair in good-bye. He said: ‘Mother, is she not beautiful—the most beautiful girl in the world? I can not tell you how fondly I love her. Ever since the first day I saw her she has been growing into my heart, taking such deep root there that I shall love her forever!’” She stopped, for Viola’s stony calm had suddenly broken up in a storm of sobs.

Mrs. Maxwell thought, tenderly:

“Poor dear, how she loves him, and what a grief it is that he had to leave her tonight! Well, well, I must coax her to bed, so that I can go back and reason with dear Mae, for I encouraged her in her love for my son, and now I must help her to throw off its chains!”

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE LETTER THAT CAME TOO LATE.

“Where is the heart that hath not bowed,

A slave, eternal Love, to thee?

“Look on the cold, the gay, the proud,

And is there one among them free?”

“Viola is taking a protracted beauty-sleep this morning,” observed Mrs. Herman at breakfast, next day, seeing her brother glance impatiently at his daughter’s empty chair. Judge Van Lew, who was a stickler for punctuality at meals, immediately sent a servant to call Viola, and the meal proceeded in silence.

Presently the neat maid Eliza came tripping in excitedly.

“Miss Viola’s door has been locked ever since ten o’clock last night, and she is not up yet,” she said.

“Go and knock upon the door,” said Mrs. Herman.

“Oh, ma’am, I’ve knocked time and again this morning, but she does not answer me. It’s strange for Miss Viola to sleep so late, and—and—I’m almost frightened!” the girl whimpered in alarm.

“Go and knock again very loudly, and if she does not respond, I will go myself,” Judge Van Lew said, sternly.

He pushed back his plate and began to glance over the morning papers while the placid Mrs. Herman sipped her coffee.

Suddenly she heard a strange choking sound, and glanced up in alarm to see her brother lying back in his chair, his face purple, his breath coming in excited gasps.

She jumped up and hurried to his side, gasping:

“Oh, what is it, Edmund? Are you ill?” foreboding an apoplectic seizure.

Judge Van Lew struggled for speech, then blurted out, thickly:

“Read!”

Then she saw that he still clutched the newspaper in his hand, and snatching it wildly, she saw what had shocked him so—the sensational announcement of Viola’s elopement.

Mrs. Herman dropped heavily into a chair, almost fainting with the shock, and just then Eliza returned.

“I have knocked and knocked—and rattled and pounded—but she does not hear me! I’m afraid she must be dead, sir!” she exclaimed, fearfully.

The stricken man held up his hand, and muttered, harshly:

“Go!”

She retreated in alarm, leaving the door wide open in her dismay, and the next moment her voice echoed back to them from the hall in tones of glad surprise:

“Oh, Miss Viola, so you went out for an early walk, did you? Well, that is a splendid way to brighten your color for the wedding! But why did you lock the door? You have given us all such a fright!”

Viola pushed past her without a word, and hurried into the dining-room.

When she saw the two elderly people in the shocking state caused by the news of her elopement, it made her heart ache with tenderness and pity.

She rushed to them, crying wildly, imploringly:

“Oh, papa!—oh, auntie! don’t look so wretched, please! I want you both to forgive me!”

She flung her arms about her father and covered his purple, distorted face with piteous kisses, the tears raining from her eyes.

“Papa, darling, won’t you forgive your naughty Viola?”

For answer he pushed her violently from him with all the strength he could exert in his weakened state.

She caught the back of a chair, or she must have fallen.

“Papa!” she gasped, reproachfully.

Judge Van Lew staggered up to his feet, his anger helping him to get the better of his weakness.

He thundered, angrily:

“How dare you darken my doors again, you wicked girl, after what you have done?”

Mrs. Herman clutched his arm imploringly, but he shook her off in a rage, repeating:

“How dared you return, I say?”

“To—to—beg you to forgive me, papa,” faltered the pallid bride, fearfully.

“Forgive you—never! You have broken a good man’s heart by your accursed fickleness, and disgraced me forever, and I will disown and disinherit you, leaving you nothing but an outraged father’s curse on my death-bed!” stormed Judge Van Lew, in a fury that was dangerous to his life, so purple grew his face, while the knotted veins stood out like whip-cords on his brow.

Viola’s own quick temper blazed up at his charges, her pale cheeks flamed, and the tears dried up in her eyes as she answered, spiritedly:

“I came to ask you to forgive me, papa, not to listen to abuse! But since you refuse to pardon me, and threaten me with disinheritance, I can be as proud as you are! I suppose I can live without your forgiveness and without your money, too, since my dead mother’s fortune comes to me on my marriage!”

“Ha! ha! does it indeed? So that is what made that fortune-hunting wretch so bold in stealing you from Philip Desha—the hope of handling your rich inheritance! But how chagrined he will be on learning that your mother made the condition that unless you married with my approval the money should revert to me! And I assure you that you will never receive one penny to reward you for your treachery. And as for the villain you have married—”

“Hush!” Aunt Edwina muttered, shaking his arm, rebukingly.

Viola, as white as a sheet, her eyes dim and glazing, turned toward the door; but her aunt called out, pityingly:

“Viola, my dear, see, there is a letter on your plate waiting for you. They say it came at daylight this morning, but your door was locked, and you could not be aroused.”

The girl caught up the large, square white envelope, tore it open mechanically, and ran her heavy eyes over its contents.

Then the two who watched her heard a loud shriek of dismay. Viola tottered and fell unconscious to the floor.

Her father darted forward, seized the letter, and quickly mastered its contents.

“This explains something of the mystery!” he cried, thrusting it into Mrs. Herman’s hand, and adding, furiously:

“Viola shall never return to that villain, Rolfe Maxwell—never! never! unless it be over my dead body! I will keep her locked up in this house until she consents to apply for a divorce, do you hear?”

“Oh, Edmund!” she whimpered; but she saw that it would be quite useless to plead with the enraged father.

The senseless form of Viola was borne tenderly to her room, and her aunt and maid vied with each other in their efforts to restore her to her saddened life.

CHAPTER XXV.

“HAD YOU ONLY WAITED TILL THIS MORNING.”

“Farewell! I shall not be to thee
More than a passing thought,
But every time and place will be
With thy remembrance fraught.
Fruitless as constancy may be,
No chance, no change, may turn from thee
One who has loved thee wildly, well,
But whose first love vow breathed farewell.”

Viola struggled back to consciousness again, and her first words were to ask for the letter that had affected her so terribly.

“Your father took it, dear child,” was the gentle reply.

“He must not read it, not one word of it! Go and tell him to send it to me, Eliza!” the poor girl cried, frantically.

The maid went away obediently, but failed to return, the judge himself coming instead, looking at his daughter in wonder, she was so pale, so changed from the radiant girl of yesterday.

He sat down by the side of the bed, and she cried, eagerly:

“My letter, papa, my letter!”

He answered, sternly:

“I have read every word of it, Viola.”

The color flushed her pale cheeks like a rose.

“How dared you? You had no right!”

“I took the right, and I am glad that I did, for now I have an inkling of what led to your elopement last night. Now, Viola, you must tell me the whole miserable story.”

She felt as if she was withering under his searching gaze as he demanded the truth.

Oh, how could she confess the keen humiliation she had risked so much to hide from the world? Why had that wretched letter ever come?

But Judge Van Lew, in his wrath, was merciless to the willful daughter that until today he had fairly idolized.

No criminal at the bar of justice was ever put through a more searching cross-examination by the lawyer than now fell to the portion of unhappy Viola.

And before she fairly realized what she had done, she was goaded into confessing everything to her father and her aunt.

Then she faltered:

“You can not be angry with me now, papa, since you know all the bitter truth!”

“Pooh, pooh! you made too much of a lovers’ quarrel, Viola. If you had only waited till this morning, how happy you would have been now!”

The great gray eyes flashed proudly.

“Do you think I could have forgiven him for last night—if he had sent a thousand letters?”

“Certainly you would. The poor fellow acted upon impulse last night, and you must admit he had great provocation, too; but he made amends this morning. You have been terribly punished, Viola, for your willful coquetries.”

“I must go now,” she answered, rising quickly.

“Viola, you are never going back to your unloved husband. I must save you from the consequences of your mad mistake.”

“Papa!” wildly.

“I repeat it. You shall never go back to him again. You shall remain here under my charge. I shall speedily procure a divorce for you from this presuming fellow who took advantage of your trouble to betray you into such bonds. Not a word—you have owned you did not love him—leave the rest to me. Why, Edwina, the silly girl is fainting again! I will leave you to bring her to reason, for my word is law!” and he stalked out of the room.

That evening, as he sat alone in his library, a card was brought him, and he said, curtly:

“Show Mr. Maxwell in here.”

Rolfe Maxwell entered, pale but composed, fully anticipating an ordeal of a crucial nature.

“Ah, good-evening, Mr. Maxwell. You have called, I presume, to receive payment for the work you did for me?” sneeringly.

“No, judge, not at present. I came to see my wife. She is here?” anxiously.

“My daughter Viola is here,” curtly.

“And of course you are aware that she was married to me last evening, sir? So I hope she will grant me a short interview,” Rolfe Maxwell humbly said in his great love.

But the judge replied, mercilessly:

“She declines to see you, sir, now or ever.”

“But what have I done?”

“Read that letter, and see what an accursed thing you have done in sundering two fond hearts!” thundered the irate father, thrusting a letter into his hand.

Rolfe Maxwell flushed proudly at Judge Van Lew’s overbearing manner, but he took the offered letter in silence, and perused it with eager eyes.

And the angry father, watching him closely, saw the proud lips under the dark, silken mustache whiten to a bluish pallor, and the light of the flashing eyes grow dim, while the hand that handed back the fatal letter trembled as with an ague chill.

There was a brief, chilling silence, broken at last by the judge:

“Viola came home to me this morning, Mr. Maxwell, and confessed everything that happened last night; the reception of this letter from Mr. Desha, avowing his repentance and begging that the marriage should go on today, nearly broke the poor girl’s heart.”

Rolfe Maxwell looked at the speaker, asking, abruptly:

“And she would have forgiven him—taken him back?”

“Can you doubt it? She made too much of a lovers’ quarrel in the first place, and she ought to have known he would repent before today, as he did, for his letter was sent at the first peep of dawn. Now you can realize what your officious intermeddling has done!”

The young man could not refrain from answering, bitterly:

“Then you call it officious intermeddling to have saved your daughter from the violent death she sought in her frantic despair of life?”

Judge Van Lew bit his lip, and flushed at the slight reminder, answering:

“No; we both owe you a debt of gratitude for that brave deed, and we should owe you more if you had persuaded Viola to come home and be reasonable, instead of luring her into that unsuitable marriage.”

“Did your daughter accuse me of luring her into that marriage?”

The words dropped coldly from the young man’s lips, and the judge fidgeted under his anxious scrutiny as he retorted:

“I am using my own words, not Viola’s; but still I am keeping to the letter of what she told me. Of course she is bitterly sorry now that she is bound to you, and you must realize that yourself.”

Yes, Rolfe Maxwell realized it with a sinking heart.

In his love and his sympathy he had eagerly lent himself to her frantic plans for staving off the humiliation of tomorrow, and this was the way it had all ended—in regret and despair for Viola, remorse and pain for himself.

Speech failed him. He could only stare mutely at his accuser, taking to himself all the blame of last night, shielding Viola by his silence.

He had been eager to lay his heart at her feet, he knew.

But she had just as eagerly accepted it, and thanked him for the offer.

“It is not for me to tell her father the truth. The blame be mine,” he thought, loyal to his love.

Judge Van Lew continued, harshly:

“I do not wish to censure your action too severely, for I remember, while I blame you for that marriage, that you saved her life. Yet I am obliged to tell you that those bonds must be broken.”

“You are not willing to accept me as a son-in-law?” quietly.

“No—nor Viola—as a husband!”

Crisp, and clear, and cold, with an accent of contempt, the words fell, and Rolfe Maxwell started as if the point of a sword had been pressed against his heart. Then he said, huskily:

“Viola wished you to tell me this?”

“Yes, she has left everything to me. I shall take speedy steps to have the marriage annulled and set her free.”

“To marry Desha?”

“Certainly.”

“She wishes it?”

“Of course.”

“Then I shall offer no opposition to her desires,” proudly. “Indeed, I came here this evening to tell her that unless she wished me to stay, I leave tomorrow for Cuba as a war correspondent.”

“A clever idea. It will simplify matters. I thank you in Viola’s name for giving up your slight claim so easily.”

“Slight claim, sir? She is my wife.”

“Pshaw!” angrily.

“Therefore, her happiness is dearer to me than my own; and I will make any sacrifice for her sake,” added the handsome young fellow, in a broken voice, as he rose and stood at the back of his chair, looking down from the superb height of his magnificent manly beauty on the unscrupulous man who was deceiving him so cruelly.

“It is very good of you,” the judge said stiffly, feeling ill at ease with himself at the part he was playing, but thankful that the young husband could be imposed on easily.

But the next moment Rolfe startled him by saying, pleadingly, casting pride aside in the anguish of his love:

“Will you not permit me a few moments with Viola to bid her good-bye? Remember, it is a dangerous post to which I go. A war correspondent’s life is in hourly peril if he goes to the front as I am going. Viola may be a widow before she secures her divorce.”

The deep, musical voice quivered with the weight of his broken hopes and scorned love, but the judge was pitiless.

“It is impossible for you to see her. She would not be willing,” he said.

“You are sure—quite sure?”

“If I can believe her word!”

“Then she must be heartless indeed!” Rolfe burst out, indignantly, his great eyes flashing on the proud man, as he added: “May God forgive her for denying me the only boon I prayed for—a last word, one last look!” and he rushed from the luxurious room out into the bleak March night that seemed to him no colder than the heart of her on whom he had poured out the costly libation of a true heart’s love in vain.

One bitter task remained to him, to go home to his tender mother and confess the blighting truth that Viola had repented her hasty marriage and returned to her father’s house to seek his protection while she secured the annulment of her fetters, and to prepare her for his own departure on the morrow. This accomplished, there remained nothing more in life but grim duty. His noble heart, like many others, had been sacrificed on the altar of a fair coquette’s capricious fancy.

Judge Van Lew sat long where Rolfe Maxwell had left him smoking and trying to put down an uneasy conscience.

He knew that he had carried things with a high hand against the young man who had really behaved very nobly toward Viola, and merited better than a summary dismissal.

But he believed that he was acting in the best faith toward Viola, for it did not occur to him that Rolfe had any chance of winning her love.

Her fainting spell on reading Desha’s letter of repentance had convinced him that she still loved the man who wrote it. He felt that the greatest kindness he could do his willful daughter was to help her undo the fetters she had forged in her momentary madness of despair.

So he had steeled his heart to Rolfe Maxwell and sent him away by the utterance of falsehoods, against which his own native manliness revolted, but which he justified to himself because he considered them necessary for Viola’s sake.

But in his uncertainty of the girl’s real sentiments he did not think it necessary to inform her at all of the young man’s visit. Carrying his authority with a high hand, he kept her locked in her own room till the next afternoon, when she sent him an imperative message.

He was shocked at the change in his beautiful daughter since only yesterday, and he cried out in alarm:

“Viola, are you ill?”

She answered, angrily:

“Ill of suspense and worry only. How dare you keep me locked up in my room like this? I demand to be released, that I may return to my husband!”

“Nonsense!”

“But, papa, I am in earnest. I must return to my new home. What will my husband think of my remaining away so long?”

“Nothing; because he has gone away himself to Cuba, as he told you he would do.”

“Gone—gone! Without one farewell word to me, his wife!” she almost shrieked.

“Come, Viola, no tragedies!” her father exclaimed, sternly. “You never pretended to be in love with the young fellow, you know, nor he with you. Your marriage was a mistake, and I am going to free you from it as soon as possible.”

“Papa!” wildly.

“I may as well tell you I have seen Maxwell just before he started for Cuba,” continued the judge. “I showed him Desha’s letter, and told him that you fainted when you read it. He agreed with me that he did wrong to marry you, and promised that he would throw no obstacles in the way of your getting a divorce!”

She answered, passionately:

“I tell you I do not want a divorce. I love him, and I will remain his true, faithful wife till he comes back to me!”

CHAPTER XXVI.

ONLY A MONTH

“When a woman will, she will
And when she won’t, she won’t,
And there’s an end on’t!”

Judge Van Lew, with all his threats and entreaties, found it impossible to combat Viola’s resolution.

She refused point-blank to apply for a divorce from Rolfe Maxwell.

“Papa, he was kind to me when I did not seem to have a friend left on earth, when all my lovers had turned against me!” she said, plaintively.

“You had me, Viola.”

“I was afraid of your just wrath, when you should find out how I had played fast and loose with Philip and Florian. The future looked as black as a stormy night without a star. In the desperation of my wounded love and pride, I went out to seek death rather than face the cruel morrow. Do you remember, papa, where I should be now had not Rolfe Maxwell’s hand been outstretched to save me? You would be standing over my coffin now, weeping over my mutilated beauty, crying: ‘Alas! poor Viola!’”

Her voice broke in tears at the pathetic picture, poor Viola, who had always loved life so dearly and thought it so beautiful, though for one mad moment she had been tempted to cast it away.

Judge Van Lew would not give way to weakness. He answered, gruffly:

“I am weeping over you now in my heart, Viola, over the wreck you have made of your life.”

“Do not say so,” she answered, bravely. “It is not so bad, papa. Is he not very handsome and clever? And he has shown himself most noble. Why, if I cast him off now I should be the most ungrateful girl in the world!”

“Yon can be as grateful to him as you please, but you need not give him your life as a sacrifice. I tell you, Viola, I will not have this poor and obscure young man for a son-in-law when you can have your pick of the richest and most distinguished! You shall apply for a divorce as soon as I can prepare the papers.”

“And I tell you that I will not, papa; so you had just as well let me go back to my husband’s home and wait for him there in peace!” his daughter cried, with kindling cheeks.

“You are insane, Viola. I have permitted you to have your own way till you are going mad with silly caprices. But I will no longer humor your whims. I tell you now, and I mean it, that you shall give up Rolfe Maxwell or remain a prisoner in this house until you come to your senses!” stormed the judge, now thoroughly enraged at her stubbornness.

But Viola had a will of her own, too, and it flashed into her eyes as she cried, bitterly:

“I defy your power!”

His answer was to stalk out of the room, banging the door in wrath, and not forgetting to lock it after him and deliver the key to the tearful Mrs. Herman, who did not know what to do between her brother and her niece, thus playing at cross purposes.

What the outcome of their feud might have been had Viola remained well, none could tell, for kind Aunt Edwina found the poor girl presently in a high fever, her cheeks scarlet, her eyes glaring, while delirious murmurs babbled over her parched lips.

A physician was hastily summoned, who declared that Viola was in the first stages of brain fever.

The terrible excitement of the past two days had culminated in illness of the most dangerous type.

The sensation caused in the social world by her remarkable elopement gave place to the excitement of her illness and the report that death was about to claim her for its own.

It was so sad, people said, that her young husband, who had parted from her the very night of the wedding to go to Cuba, should be far from her side now in her terrible extremity; but there were others who did not mind saying that she was getting punishment now for jilting Philip Desha, who went about with a face like a dead man’s, in his cruel humiliation, and was feared to be losing his mind.

As for Florian Gay, no one guessed what a part he had played in the tragedy of Viola’s life. He kept his own counsel and sought what diversion he could, soothing his pain with the triumph of the revenge he had taken on his false love.

Weeks came and went while Viola lay in her white-hung chamber, battling with the dread disease that threatened her life, and meanwhile stirring events took place outside.

As the bleak March days passed into the showers and sunshine of fickle April, and the people of the United States began to have their sympathies aroused for poor Cuba, bleeding in the chains of Spanish tyranny, news came from the beautiful island in the sea that blanched the cheek and crushed the loving heart of the poor mother waiting in her cottage home, while her only son risked the dangers of invading the insurgents’ lines in quest of reliable news for his paper at home.

For about three weeks he had electrified his countrymen by his thrilling accounts of the war and the true state of affairs in Cuba. His pen-pictures and illustrations were read and gazed upon with interest by millions of eager eyes. From the position of an unknown reporter he had leaped at a bound to fame. It was as if he had thrown himself heart and soul into his work, determined to find in its fascinating toil and danger a balm for the pangs of despised love.

Suddenly his newspaper ceased to print anything more from his pen, and directly it announced the reason.

By order of the notorious General Weyler, commander of the Spanish army, Rolfe Maxwell had been seized and thrown into prison for the news he had been sending to America. Accused as a spy, he had been placed in the terrible prison, Morro Castle, when each morning at day-break rang out the fatal shots that told off the lives of hapless prisoners.

Swiftly following the news of Rolfe Maxwell’s arrest his name appeared in the list of those who had suffered death in Morro Castle for his sympathy with Cuba, and his fearless recital of her cruel wrongs to a sympathizing world. The heroic young correspondent had been foully slain, and a nation mourned his loss.

It was barely five weeks since he had been sent to his doom by the relentless father of Viola, who shuddered as he read the news, muttering:

“He spoke prophetically when he said Viola might be a widow before she secured a divorce.”

CHAPTER XXVII.

VIOLA’S NEW ROLE.

“The lady whom I spake of rose again
From the red fever’s couch, to careless eyes
Perchance the same as she had ever been;
But, oh, how altered to herself! She felt
That weariness which hath but outward part

In what the world calls pleasure, and that chill

Which makes life taste the bitterness of death.”

Mrs. Maxwell would never forget to her dying day how surprised she was that bright May afternoon when the elegant Van Lew carriage, with its liveried coachman, stopped before the cottage gate, while the footman handed out a graceful figure in deep mourning, who came slowly up the walk and knocked timidly on the door.

As she gazed from the window, her heart swelled with bitterness toward the beautiful girl who had been so cruel to poor Rolfe. The memory was still fresh in her mind of that night when her handsome boy had taken her into his confidence and told her so sadly that his bride’s father had persuaded her to forsake him.

“Do not think unkindly of her, dear mother. She was so young and thoughtless, she scarcely knew her own mind, I suppose, and her haughty father probably bullied her into giving me up,” he said, touching the truth nearer than he knew in his anxiety to shield Viola from his mother’s natural resentment.

Then, despite her opposition to his plans, he had gone away to Cuba, and she had read in the papers afterward of the dangerous illness of Viola, but it did not at all soften her heart that was aching in sympathy with her son’s pain. Though she was one of the best women in the world, she could not help thinking most bitterly:

“It will be no great loss if she dies, the cruel coquette!”

Then came occasional letters from Rolfe, always full of interest for her motherly heart, and she was glad that he seemed to have forgotten in his absorbing work the painful episode of his marriage, since he never mentioned Viola’s name. She, on her part, preserved the same silence in her replies, never alluding to the fact that the young girl lay ill unto death of brain fever.

“Time enough to tell him if she dies!” was her resentful thought, while she wondered if he would grieve much, for she knew he had given the fickle girl the wealth of a wonderful love.

“We break the glass whose sacred wine
To some beloved health we drain,
Lest future pledges, less divine,
Should e’er the hallowed toy profane.
And thus I broke a heart that poured
Its tide of feelings out for thee,
In draughts by after-times deplored,
Yet dear to memory.”

Mrs. Maxwell found Mae Sweetland very quiet and apathetic in those days after Rolfe’s going away, and she was very patient and tender with the poor girl. She guessed that she was ashamed and repentant over her violent self-betrayal the night Rolfe brought his bride home, and that she was trying to tear from her heart its hopeless dream of love.

“Ah, how much better for us all if he had loved sweet Mae, instead of that proud, fickle beauty, Viola Van Lew!” she thought, with unavailing regret.

Then came the journalistic triumphs of that beloved son that made his name a household word, followed so swiftly by the tragedy that left her childless and alone in the world.

At first she could not believe that her darling was dead. “There must be some mistake!” she cried, in her terrible agony of bereavement.

Surely the newspapers would begin to deny the story soon, for news from the seat of war was often unreliable.

And she did not give up looking for a letter from Rolfe; but the postman on his daily rounds passed the gate each day without a glance at the tearful face glued to the window-pane, and the long days slipped away, and there was no official contradiction of the news of Rolfe’s death, while the newspapers daily filled columns on the atrocities of his murderer. Then the sensation yielded to another one; the bright spring days advanced joyfully, as if there were no such things as death and sorrow in the big, round world; the bare trees put on garbings of tender, green leaves; the fragrant hyacinths bloomed in the green plat before the front door, the bereaved mother gave up hope, and permitted Mae to choose for her some somber mourning gowns.

Only that morning she had had such a start when the postman opened the gate at last and came in; but it was only a letter for Mae from some of her distant relatives, inviting her for a visit down into the country.

“You must go, my dear. It will be such a pleasant change for you from this sorrowful house,” her aunt said.

“And leave you here all alone? That would be cruel!” cried Mae, generously, though her heart had secretly leaped at the thought of needed change of scene.

“You shall go, darling, because you need a change so much. Your rosy cheeks have grown pale, and your bright eyes dim, with confinement and loneliness,” insisted Mrs. Maxwell; and they were talking it over that afternoon at the window together when the carriage stopped in the street and the graceful form in heavy black came in at the gate and up the narrow walk to the door.

The poor mother caught her breath with a gasp of pain as Mae exclaimed, bitterly:

“It is poor Rolfe’s widow! How strange that she has put on mourning! Will you go to the door, aunt? Or shall I?”

She would have wondered yet more at Viola’s wearing black if she had known what opposition she had had to encounter at home.

Judge Van Lew and Aunt Edwina had both been dead set against it, but her strong will had carried the day.

They had not dared oppose her too much, for Viola had been so near the borders of the grave in her month’s illness, and she was still so weak and nervous they had delayed as long as possible the telling her of Rolfe Maxwell’s death.

Only two weeks ago they had informed her as cautiously as possible of the dreadful tragedy of his taking off.

A long swoon had resulted, and they feared at first a relapse into serious illness.

But in a day or two Viola rallied, though a new expression had come into her face that startled them with its somber, far-away look. She did not mention her dead husband’s name, but she insisted on being fitted out at once in widow’s mourning.

They entreated and expostulated, but Viola insisted all the more resolutely, and in her weak, nervous state it was dangerous to thwart her wishes, so she had her way.

“After all, it may be better so,” Mrs. Herman said, soothingly, to the perturbed judge. “Fortunately, the young man died before you had begun the action for divorce, so if Viola chooses to enact the part of a bereaved young widow, it will excite less comment than if she appeared indifferent and wore no black.”

So, because it seemed the easiest way to prevent talk, Viola was permitted to take up the role of a grieving young widow, though her father said, brusquely:

“Viola must be genuinely fond of a sensation, or she would not be willing to carry out such a farce of mourning for a man she never pretended to love.”

“It is to punish Desha, perhaps,” returned Mrs. Herman, who had been taken into the bitter secret of Viola’s wedding-eve; and she added, thoughtfully: “No one can tell just what is in Viola’s mind. She is so strange since she heard the news of Maxwell’s death. And really it would not have been hard to love such a magnificent young man if her heart had not already been engaged by Desha. I remember, when you first sent him here, I tried to prevent an interview between them, fearing a flirtation, she was so giddy.”

“I made a great mistake having him here at all,” groaned the judge. “But it is too late to repent it now. After all, he was a fine young fellow, and made himself a splendid fame before he died. One need not be ashamed of such a son-in-law.”

“No; and we must not be hard on poor Viola,” said the gentle lady.

And as Viola never did things by halves, they were not surprised when she said frankly one day:

“Papa, I think it is only right that I should make a call on my mother-in-law. She will feel as if I did not love Rolfe much if I neglect my duty to her now that he is dead.”

“How superbly she carries out the farce,” he thought; but he did not express his disapprobation of her wish. He merely said, coldly and briefly: “Of course you must do as you think best, my dear.”

“Thank you,” she faltered, sensitively, conscious of his disapproval, but ordering the carriage just the same for that afternoon.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

VIOLA’S VINDICATION.

“What lacks my heart, what makes it
So weary and full of pain?
That trembling hope forsakes it
Never to come again!
Only another heart,
Tender and all mine own,
In the still grave it lies;
I weep alone!”

“Shall you go to the door, aunt, or shall I?” repeated Mae Sweetland, with a stifled heart-pang in her musical voice, the sight of Viola had awakened so bitterly the memory of the night when she had first entered the cottage as Rolfe’s bride, bringing woe and desolation in her train.

“Oh, I do not wish to see her! I—I hate the sight of the beautiful face that drove poor Rolfe mad and sent him to his death!” groaned the bereaved mother.

“Then I will go and send her away,” Mae cried quickly, rising to her feet and moving unhindered to the door.

Another moment and the beautiful rivals stood face to face, but both changed and saddened since that night when they had so balefully crossed each other’s lives.

Viola flung back the somber folds of crape, and her face, pale and pure as carved pearl, framed in short curls of the silken hair ruthlessly shorn in the cruel fever, beamed on Mae with a plaintive smile as she asked:

“Do you remember me? I have come to see you and Mrs. Maxwell.”

“How ill and changed she looks! Did she love Rolfe after all?” thought Mae; but aloud she answered, coldly: “Yes, I remember you, but we—that is, my aunt—begs to be excused.”

“Do you mean that she will not see me?” Viola cried, apprehensively, the color flushing through her pale, transparent face like light within a crystal globe.

“She will not see you, because you were cruel to our poor Rolfe,” Mae returned, indignantly, her soft blue eyes beginning to flash and glow.

Viola recoiled as if the angry girl had struck her a blow, her face paling, great burning tears flashing into her dark, somber eyes, her voice trembling as she faltered:

“Oh, she must not refuse me! I must see her, if only once! I promised him, and I must keep my word!”

Pushing Mae aside in her pretty, imperious fashion, Viola glided into the hall and into the presence of the sobbing woman drooping so forlornly in her arm-chair.

“Mother—mother!” she cried, kneeling down impetuously by her side, winding her arms about the mourner, and laying her weary head on her breast.

And Mae, coming in presently in a dazed fashion, found them mingling their tears together.

She sat down helplessly a little apart, and began to weep, in a pitiful, noiseless way. She could not help it, her heart was so full with the thought of Rolfe, slain so cruelly in the splendor of his youth.

Viola, when she could find her voice, sobbed, plaintively:

“Why are you so angry with me still? Have you never forgiven me yet—you and Mae—because Rolfe loved me and made me his bride?”

The mother checked her sobs and sighed in answer:

“We could have forgiven you anything except that you did not love him in return, and were cruel to my noble boy!”

“Cruel—cruel!” cried Viola, in passionate agitation. “Who could be more cruel than Rolfe himself, going away from me—his wife—into exile, peril, and danger—and not even coming to bid me good-bye—never writing me one word while I lay ill on the very borders of death!”

They gazed at her in astonishment, the mature woman and the fair young girl, who exclaimed, indignantly:

“Why should Rolfe write to you when you had cast him off? When you refused to see him when he came to your father’s house to bid you farewell? When you sent him word by your father that you regretted the marriage and should sue for a divorce?”

Viola dragged herself up from her knees and sank uninvited into a chair, turning her pale, startled face upon the resentful speaker, who continued, angrily:

“Why should you come here and force yourself upon us when we hate you for your cruelty to our poor Rolfe?”

“Yes, why?” echoed Mrs. Maxwell, dully.

Viola cried out in a strained voice:

“But you accuse me falsely! I did not refuse to see Rolfe. I did not know he came that night to my father’s house. I never sent him the cruel messages you repeat, for I had no other thought than to be his true and faithful wife whenever he claimed me, so help me Heaven!”

They saw all in a minute how cruelly Rolfe had been deceived and sent away with a broken heart.

Viola had not been false and fickle, as they believed, but the victim of an angry father’s plot to separate her from her husband—a plot that had succeeded all too well.

Rolfe lay in his untimely grave, and as for her, they read on her wasted features and in her despairing eyes the story of a late remorse more bitter than death.

“I understand everything now,” she added, faintly. “We were the victims of an angry father’s despotic will. A prisoner in my own home, I never knew of my husband’s call that night, nor of the cruel falsehoods he was told. No wonder he never wrote to me. Oh, God! how bitter to think he died believing me ungrateful and untrue. Pray Heaven, he knows better now!” and she buried her face in her hands, her slight form shaking with emotion.

At that moving sight Mae’s gentle heart began to melt with pity and forgiveness. She hesitated a moment, then rushed to Viola’s side and clasped her white arms around her neck.

“We have wronged you—forgive us!” she cried, impulsively; and they clasped each other and wept together, jealous rivals no longer, but loving friends.

“Mother, I knew something must be wrong, or you would have come to see me while I lay ill so long. I suspected papa, because he had been so angry over my marriage, so I decided to come and see you. And, oh, how glad I am that I would not take Mae’s dismissal, but forced my way to your presence! Will it not be some comfort to you to know that I was true to Rolfe?” Viola said, presently, thinking—oh, so tenderly!—of Rolfe’s plaintive letter, in which he had begged her to keep up a little pretense of caring for him, just for his mother’s sake, that she might be less unhappy when he was gone.

In his humility he had not guessed that Viola would not need to pretend, since unconscious love had already taken deep root in her grateful heart.

Yes, it made Mrs. Maxwell much happier to understand that Viola had really cared for Rolfe. She did not deny it, and her heart warmed to the sorrowful young widow.

“We must always be dear friends now. Will you both come and see me sometimes?” said Viola.

But Mrs. Maxwell’s face hardened as she answered:

“We could not come under the roof of the man who wronged Rolfe and sent him away so unhappy to his untimely death, dear Viola. Why, only think, my daughter; if he had permitted your husband an interview with you that night, you two might have come to an understanding, and he might never have gone away. I hope I am a good Christian, but I am not able to forgive your father yet for his sin.”

Viola could not blame her for her bitterness, since her own heart was hot with anger against the author of her woe.

“You are right; but I shall come and see you often, and you shall tell me stories of Rolfe. I shall want to hear all about him from his very babyhood,” she said, earnestly; adding, with a sudden blush: “And I wish above all things for a good picture of him. Can you give me one?”

“Gladly,” was the answer; and an album was brought out containing pictures of Rolfe from infancy to manhood.

Amid raining tears Viola made a selection, then rose to go, begging Mae to accompany her for a short drive.

The young girl hesitated, then looked inquiringly at her aunt.

“Go, dear; it will do you good,” Mrs. Maxwell answered, encouragingly, for Viola’s fascination had already fallen over both. She was queen of hearts still, in all her woe.

Mae hurried to her chamber, and quickly returned in a dark-blue gown wondrously becoming to her delicate blonde beauty and the rich sheen of her golden hair under the nodding black plumes of her hat.

“How lovely you are, sweet cousin!” cried Viola, wondering how Rolfe’s heart had been proof against such beauty and sweetness.

Kissing Mrs. Maxwell a loving adieu, Viola returned to the carriage with lovely Mae, and gave the order:

“Drive at once to the studio of Mr. Florian Gay.”

CHAPTER XXIX.

ALIENATION.

How sad it is to see the waning of a beautiful friendship between two noble hearts—friendship that should have lasted unbroken till death—to see the cold blight of alienation creeping in between those hearts day by day, till naught is left of those old, sweet emotions but the sadness of memory more cruel than forgetfulness.

Philip Desha and Florian Gay would never be such fond friends again as they had been before the love of a beautiful coquette came so fatally between their hearts.

It was true that Desha had not been lacking in outward observances such as were demanded by Florian’s bereavement.

He had made the usual visit of condolence, attended the funeral of the elder Gay, and showed no lack of sympathy, but all the same there kept widening between them the restraint engendered by the knowledge that they had been unconscious rivals for the same lovely prize.

Not that Desha suspected Florian’s share in humiliating Viola upon her wedding-eve. He would have despised his old friend had he suspected the truth, the same as he despised himself for the folly of an hour by which he had sundered himself from Viola forever, repenting when all too late to atone, saying to himself:

“It was for my sake she forgot Florian, for love of me she sinned against my friend. It was not for me to punish her but rather to forgive.”

And through the long unhappy night, when he paced the floor of his room, restless and remorseful, the white, stricken face of Viola, as it looked when he had upbraided her so harshly, rose before him like an accusing spirit, until at length love conquered everything, and seizing a pen, he wrote to her eloquently of his forgiveness and repentance, urging her to forget last night and let the marriage go on according to arrangement.

He sent the letter at early dawn, believing and hoping that all would be well; but when a short while later he opened a damp copy of the morning paper and read her marriage notice with its glaring head-lines, it seemed to him as if he should go mad.

He shut himself into his room, raging with pain and humiliation that would have touched Viola’s heart could she have known it, bitterly as she had longed for such a result.

It was true that he had told her she might tell the world she had jilted him, but he had scarcely expected to be taken at his word so literally as this, having the keen pain of jealousy of his fortunate rival mixed with the bitter pang of loss.

For awhile he felt as if he could never open that closed door again and go out to face the gibing world, secretly laughing at his humiliation by the beautiful, saucy coquette.

Then his native manliness came to his aid, helped by sudden hot resentment against the girl who had used him so mercilessly in her desire for revenge.

He vowed that he would tear her from his heart, that no weak woman, slight and frail, with no weapon but beauty, should spoil the bright promise of his life with vain regrets gnawing at his heart like canker in a rose.

“Am I mad that I should cherish

That which leaves but bitter fruit?

I will pluck it from my bosom,

Though my heart be at the root!

“Weakness to be wroth with weakness!

Woman’s pleasure, woman’s pain—

Nature made them blinder motions,

Bounded in a shallower brain.

“Where is comfort? In division

Of the records of the mind?

Can I part her from herself

And love her, as I knew her kind?

“Can I think of her as dead,

And love her for the love she bore?

No; she never loved me truly,

Love is love for evermore!”

He fought fiercely with his sorrow and shame, and went boldly out into the world again; but it would have been easier to face the cannon of an opposing army than the curious faces of his friends and acquaintances, and even of strangers who knew him by sight, and pointed him out to others as a jilted bridegroom, the latest victim of Miss Van Lew.

It was hard, it was cruel, it was living martyrdom, and Viola’s deepest thirst for revenge might have been more than satiated could she have looked into his heart.

So the days came and went, but it was not so easy to put aside the thought of Viola. The agony of loss tugged at his heart-strings, and he grew pale and thin and graver and quieter than ever, so that people could not help seeing that his trouble preyed on his mind. His cousin, Mrs. Wellford, indeed counseled him angrily to forget Viola, reminding him how she had always advised him against the match, saying that the lovely coquette was not worthy of a good man’s love.

“I would prefer not to discuss that subject with you, Ruby,” he replied, with a sternness that insured her future silence, although he knew that had he felt free to tell her the circumstances she might have viewed everything differently.

But his desire to conceal his own blunder and keep his promise to Viola, that she might give the world any explanation she chose, held him silent.

“I can not vindicate either Viola or myself, let the world say what it will,” he concluded.

So the time flew by, and he heard of Viola’s critical illness and then her sudden widowhood. Perhaps a ray of hope for future days penetrated the sadness of his heart.

He heard with joy of her convalescence, and said to himself:

“Her twelve months of widowhood will soon pass, and when I come back to Congress next year—who knows?” not acknowledging to himself that he was glad Rolfe Maxwell was dead, yet feeling a new spring in life.

He knew that Florian Gay had returned to his studio work with renewed zest after his long play-spell, and a sudden fancy seized him one day to call and ask if he desired to have any more sittings on the portrait begun last year.

“We used to be such good friends, it seems a pity we should drift apart; though, of course, Florian had terrible provocation to hate me,” he thought; but pursuing his plan of reconciliation, he presented himself at the studio.

Florian received him coldly and with reserve, secretly resenting the visit.

He was working very busily, and he did not conceal from his caller that it was Viola’s portrait he was finishing by the efficient aid of memory.

“Love, unperceived,

A more ideal artist he than all,

Came, drew his pencil from him, made those eyes

Darker than darkest pansies, and that hair

More black than ash-buds in the front of March.”

Desha gazed long and steadily at the picture, his heart throbbing with passion; but he made no sign, saying, with pretended calmness:

“It is an ideal head and a good likeness. Memory stands you in good stead. But how about mine? Has it fared as well?”

Florian flushed up to his brow, and answered, evasively:

“No; it did not please me somehow, and I preferred not to finish it. So I painted out what I had begun.”

Desha understood, but he felt that he had no fault to find. He changed the subject by saying:

“Have you any curios to show me? Anything new from abroad?”

“Yes, there, behind that curtain. Pray examine them at your leisure, and excuse me for going on with my work. It is one of my days of inspiration.”

He seized his brush and went doggedly to work on Viola’s portrait, while Desha retired behind the curtain, somewhat discomfited by his cool reception, and thinking:

“He has forgiven her, it seems, by his going on with her portrait, but I am still in his black books. Strange, when he certainly knows I was unconsciously his rival, and ought to give me the benefit of that knowledge.”

He examined the valuable curios with but a languid interest, while Florian, with his handsome brows drawn together in a vexed frown, and an angry gleam in his dark eyes, painted away with great energy on the beautiful head of his false love, thinking:

“The impudence of the fellow intruding here after stealing Viola from me!”

Suddenly a low, musical voice came to him from just inside the curtained door leading into the hall. It said, cordially:

“How well you paint from memory!”

Florian turned with a start and saw, facing him, the beautiful original of the portrait that was absorbing all his energy.

CHAPTER XXX.

RIVALS STILL.

Philip Desha, dawdling behind the curtain, caught the sound of that musical voice, and his heart leaped violently with blended pain and pleasure as he thrust aside a slight fold and peered out into the studio to assure himself that he was not deceived, not dreaming, but possessed of his sober senses.

Yes, there she stood!

Viola herself—not the rosy, smiling Viola of the portrait, but a woman far more beautiful, now that sorrow and illness had touched her with refining fingers—Viola, pale and slender and wan, with great, somber gray eyes gazing at him out of that exquisite pale face, thrown into strong relief by the blackness of her mourning garments.

She had a companion; but Florian scarcely noticed the beautiful, golden-haired young creature as he gasped in deep agitation:

“Viola!”

“Yes, Florian,” she answered, gently, coming forward to him, and adding: “You see, I forgive you for that night, and bear you no ill-will. Indeed, I have come to ask a favor at your hands.”

“A favor?” he muttered, gazing eagerly at her pale and lovely face, his heart beginning to thump furiously against his side, then sinking with futile regret for that night when his revengeful haste had lost him her heart forever.

“Well, love and pain
Be kinsfolk twain;
Yet would, oh, would, I could love again!”

Viola was the more self-possessed of the two, calm, quiet, and gently deprecating, as she repeated:

“Yes, a favor, but first let me present you to my cousin, Miss Sweetland. Dear Mae, this is an old friend of mine, Mr. Gay.”

They bowed to each other, and Florian could not help seeing that the young girl was very lovely, even when contrasted with peerless Viola.

He hastened to place seats for them, wondering uneasily what Desha would think, but hoping devoutly he would remain hidden behind the curtain.

Viola continued, gently and frankly:

“If you can forgive my past folly, and be friends again, I wish you to paint a life-size picture for me from a photograph of my dead husband. Will you do it, Florian?”

Viola did not mean to wound him, but her words quivered like an arrow in his heart. He started, paled, then exclaimed, almost violently:

“How can you ask me? No, I will not do it!”

Suddenly she comprehended from his emotion the enormity of her offense, and flushed and faltered:

“I am very sorry—and perhaps I ought not to have asked you—but I knew you could do it better than any one else. Forgive me, and—good-bye,” her voice breaking as she moved toward the door.

But at that moment Philip Desha came quickly from behind the curtain and placed himself in her way.

“I beg your pardon for detaining you—Mrs. Maxwell,” he exclaimed, eagerly. “But—but—since our good friend Florian is so busy, will you let me recommend a very talented artist whom I know quite well?”

Viola started, paled, and trembled at the sound of his voice, and her heart smote her with remorse as she gazed into his face and saw what a change had come over it since their parting. With an effort she murmured:

“If you will be so kind, I shall indeed be most grateful.”

Pretty Mae, looking on at the agitation of all three, wondered to herself at the cause of it all.

Florian seized with sudden jealousy of Desha, thought, angrily:

“How clever he is, trying to ingratiate himself with her again! I will forestall his plans, no matter what pangs it costs my own heart!”

Hurrying forward, he exclaimed, eagerly:

“Viola, I was hasty in refusing. Indeed, I should like to oblige you in this matter, if you are not in too great a hurry over it. Could you give me three months?”

“Yes; for I am going South in a few days, to be absent several months, so that I should be quite satisfied to have it done by the time of my return,” she cried, sweetly.

“Then I will undertake it,” he replied, glad to disappoint Desha’s scheme.

Viola took out the fine cabinet photograph of Rolfe Maxwell and handed it to him in silent emotion, while both men gazed with interest at the handsome rival who had seized the prize they had let slip from their grasp.

Florian’s heart throbbed with keen jealousy of the dead man, and Desha uttered a cry of recognition and surprise.

“What is it?” cried Viola, turning eagerly to him; and he answered:

“I thought I had never seen the man you married, but I recognized him instantly as the young man who saved your life the day you skated through the ice. But of course he told you?”

Viola’s eyes flashed through starting tears.

“No; he did not tell me! Can it really be true?” she exclaimed.

Mae Sweetland clasped her hand, and answered, unexpectedly:

“Yes, Viola; it is quite true. Rolfe confessed it all to Aunt Margaret during the illness that followed his wetting and exposure that day. He was so modest that he would never permit his name to be known, though he almost died of pneumonia afterward.”

Viola put her handkerchief to her face, sobbing:

“I have all the more reason to love his memory.”

Meanwhile, Desha looked curiously at the lovely young stranger, and Florian hastened to present her as Viola’s cousin, while Mae added:

“I was Rolfe Maxwell’s cousin.”

They both wondered why Maxwell had not lost his heart to this artless beauty before he ever saw Viola, but of course they could not utter their thoughts aloud, and the embarrassing scene quickly ended by Viola dashing the tears from her eyes and wishing them a faltering good-bye as she moved to the door with Mae by her side.

The two men were left alone standing, with the portrait of the dead man upturned to their eyes in Florian’s hand.

“Deuced handsome beggar!” he growled; then, after a pause: “It was clever in him to go off and die like that, and leave her free, eh?”

“It seems heartless to the dead to say so,” Desha answered, generously; and then there fell an embarrassing silence.

Florian broke it by saying, abruptly:

“Let us be frank with each other. Viola is free again. She has served us each a bad turn, yet I believe we have both got over our rage, and love her still. Am I right?”

Philip Desha sighed as he answered:

“You are right.”

“That is what I thought,” answered Florian, sullenly; adding: “I give you fair warning that I intend to woo Viola for the second time.”

A quick flash came to Desha’s blue eyes, and he said, firmly:

“You understand that I shall be your rival?”

“I feared so. You stole her from me once, and no doubt you will do so again, if possible,” Florian replied with bitterness, his lips curling in a sneer.

Desha would have been angry with any one else but Florian, but he understood the young man’s fiery temper and pitied his sorrow, not dreaming of the slight he also had put upon Viola on her wedding-eve.

Gazing reproachfully at the young man, he exclaimed:

“Are you doing me justice, Florian?”

“Justice?”

“Yes, justice! You must surely be aware that when I became a suitor for Viola’s hand I was ignorant of any claim you had on her heart.”

“Yes, I know it, and I have made due allowance for the fact; but if you wish me to forgive you and to atone for the past, the way is clear.”

“How?”

“Give up your pretensions to her hand, and leave the field clear for me to win her again,” boldly answered Florian.

Philip Desha reflected in anguish a moment, then answered, firmly:

“I can not yield to you in this matter, Florian, because I must consider Viola’s happiness as well as my own. I believe she loves me still, and that she only married Maxwell out of pique because we quarreled on our wedding-eve and broke our engagement. Under present circumstances I hold myself loyally bound to her still if she will accept me.”

“Then you and I are henceforth rivals and enemies,” Florian cried, violently, and Desha bowed in silence, and took an abrupt leave.

CHAPTER XXXI.

“COULD YE COME BACK TO ME, DOUGLAS, DOUGLAS!”

Viola reached home after leaving Mae at the cottage in a whirl of conflicting emotions—pride in her dead husband’s heroism, anger at her father’s duplicity.

“How excited you look, Viola. I believe you were imprudent in going out this afternoon,” cried the judge, solicitously.

Viola’s somber gray eyes flashed sudden lightning as she cried:

“I would not have missed going for anything in the world, for I have found out two very important things today.”

Aunt Edwina cried out instantly with lively curiosity:

“What were they, my dear?”

“Oh, auntie, how surprised you will be when I tell you that I have found out who saved my life that day on the ice when I came so near being drowned!” proudly.

Mrs. Herman groaned to herself:

“Oh, dear, is that romance going to crop up again?” But aloud she said, placidly: “Yes, dear!”

Viola threw her arms about the old lady, and cried, sobbingly:

“Only think, it was he, my own dear, deeply injured Rolfe!”

“Not Rolfe Maxwell!” cried the judge, starting to his feet in surprise.

“Rolfe Maxwell, and no other!” Viola replied, a deep flush kindling in her cheek as she lifted her head, and added:

“Rolfe Maxwell, the noble young hero whom you so generously rewarded for twice saving the life of your daughter.”

“Rewarded!” stammered the judge, growing pale.

“Yes, rewarded by treachery and falsehood, sending him away from his bride to meet a cruel death, his heart already broken by the thought that I was ungrateful, and repudiated my marriage vows. You, my father, whom I believed so noble and high-minded, invented cruel falsehoods to drive my husband away from me forever! And your cruel schemes, alas succeeded but too well. His death lies at your door!” cried Viola, in passionate reproach, her heart burning with a sense of her wrongs.

“Viola, how did you learn these things?” groaned the judge, and she answered, frankly:

“From his poor, bereaved mother, in whom he confided before he went away to meet a cruel death at the hands of the wicked Spaniards.”

There followed a shocked silence, the judge realizing how bitterly he had erred, and how hopeless was the thought of any atonement to the man who lay in his untimely grave.

He was a proud, reserved man, and it was hard to confess himself in the wrong, and ask forgiveness of the daughter, who such a little while ago was a pretty, willful child whom he had scolded for her heartlessness.

But Viola was a woman now, hurried out of girlishness by a great trouble. She had gained a wonderful dignity that almost awed him, while her keen reproaches cut him to the heart.

In his anxiety to make her think as well as she could of him under the cruel circumstances, he put aside pride and reserve, and answered, humbly:

“Dear child, I was in the wrong, but I did it for your sake. I believed you had married Maxwell out of pique, while still loving Philip Desha, and when you fainted dead away on receiving his letter of repentance, my suspicions were confirmed. When I invented the stories that sent Rolfe Maxwell away, I did it for your sake, believing you would be glad to be free again to renew your vows with Desha. If I made a grave mistake, as your words imply, I can only crave your pardon in all humility. My judgment was at fault, but my heart was true, and my remorse since poor Maxwell’s death has been keen and bitter, though so silent.”

She saw the signs of suffering on his pale grave face, and read them in his tremulous voice, and her heart was softened.

She cried in anguish:

“Oh, papa, I would give the world to undo the wrong done my dead husband! to have him back again, and tell him I love him for his bravery and for all he has suffered for my sake! But that is forever impossible, and I can only love him dead, and hope to meet him in another world, and so for the sake of that dear hope, that I may be good enough to attain future happiness, I must forgive you all you did in your mistaken zeal for me.”

She gave him her cold little hand, and let him kiss her tear-wet face, then hurried to her own room, to kneel down and weep the passionate tears of a vain despair.

“Let me kneel beside the bed,

Let my tears fall down like rain,

While I pray with drooping head:

‘God have pity on my pain!’

When love smiles, how sweet the world!

When love changes, life grows dark;

All its hopes in ruin hurled,

Quenched in gloom, hope’s glimm’ring spark!”

The next day Judge Van Lew called his daughter into the library, and said, tenderly:

“My dear, I have a little plan to make atonement as far as possible for the wrong I did you.”

Viola gazed at him wonderingly; and he added:

“You remember, I refused in the heat of anger to permit you to have the fortune your mother willed you on your marriage, because you had not complied with the conditions set; but I am now convinced that I did wrong. Maxwell was a noble young man, after all, and if he were alive now I would welcome him as a son-in-law.”

“Thank you, papa!” she exclaimed, with a gratified smile; and he added:

“When your mother died her private fortune was a quarter of a million, and by judicious investments I have doubled the amount. Here are the necessary papers that make you mistress of a half million dollars, and if you can make this contribute to the happiness that my error so cruelly jeopardized, I shall be more than gratified.”

Viola did not feel as if the wealth of the world could add to her happiness just now, but she would not wound her father by telling him the truth. She accepted his gift in the same loving spirit in which it was conferred, thanking him with a tender caress, and saying that she should not know what to do with so much money.

Her heart cried in secret:

“Oh, if Rolfe were but alive to share it with me, how happy we might be! Alas! I can never be happy now, for I have learned too late that I loved him with a passion never dreamed of when I fancied myself in love with others!”

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE PORTRAIT.

Viola’s physician had said that she must have change of scene, and at first she had rebelled, preferring to remain at home and brood over her troubles.

But with the lapse of time she began to see that it would be wiser to go away.

As soon as she became convalescent, her social world turned out en masse to make calls of condolence on the lovely young widow.

From a few she met real sympathy, from the many that veiled curiosity that drives one frantic.

She could guess but too easily how they wondered and gossiped over her affairs, blaming her for jilting Desha, asking each other what sensational freak she would indulge in next.

It was torture to the sensitive girl, who looked back with keen regret to those thoughtless days when she had played with men’s hearts as toys, never stopping to think until brought to bay by her father’s reprimand and the terrible affair of young Merrington.

When Viola thought of that, and how narrowly she had escaped life-long remorse at his death, she always shuddered with fear and renewed her vows never to flirt again.

But the carping world could not guess at her remorse and penitence, and she knew well that hard things were whispered of her on the sly, even while the speakers smiled their sweetest, pretending friendship of which they were incapable.

Ah, how cold and hollow is the world, and how little truth is found in the human heart!—just here and there one pure, white, noble soul, disdaining every petty meanness, lonely on earth because its mates are so few.

“Ah, the bewildering masquerade of Life,

Where strangers walk as friends and friends as strangers;

Where whispers overheard betray false hearts,

And through the mazes of the crowd we chase

Some form of loveliness that smiles and beckons,

And cheats us with fair words, only to leave us,

A mockery and a jest, maddened, confused,

Not knowing friend from foe.”

Viola grew frantic with secret impatience of her life. She decided to fly from her embarrassments by seeking change of scene, as advised by the thoughtful physician.

A trip to the South was at first projected, but suddenly Viola changed her mind and decided to go abroad. She wanted to put the whole width of the ocean between herself and every haunting reminder of the past.

She asked her father if he could accompany her; but he frankly said that nothing was more impossible, although nothing would have pleased him better.

“You see, my dear, I can not desert my post,” he explained. “This year of 1896 will witness the presidential campaign, and I must be, as ever, in the thick of the political fight. My party will need me, and I must remain at the post of duty, much as I would love to accompany you. Can you not make the tour chaperoned by your aunt and a maid?”

Mrs. Herman, who was timid and nervous, cried out in alarm that she would as soon be asked to cross the river of Styx as the dangerous Atlantic. No, no; Viola must take some one else. She was getting too old to go junketing about the world, and would rather stay at home and keep her brother comfortable.

Viola was discomfited at first, then a bright thought flashed into her mind.

“Why, there is Mrs. Maxwell!” she cried. “The dear old lady is quite alone in her little cottage, because Mae went away yesterday to make a long visit to some country relations.”

Judge Van Lew answered quite affably:

“Take Mrs. Maxwell, if you choose, my dear. It would be a very proper arrangement.”

And when Viola went to see about it she did not find her hard to persuade, she had such pleasant recollections of two previous journeys across the ocean in better days.

“One was my bridal trip, dear, and the other when Rolfe was fifteen years old. Ah, how my poor boy enjoyed that summer abroad!” she sighed, wiping away the quick, starting tears.

Viola wept, too, in sympathy, and said, tenderly:

“We will visit all the places he liked best, and you shall tell me all he said and did there. It will be like getting better acquainted with my husband, whom I knew such a little while.”

It was setting a pleasant task for the bereaved mother, this rehearsing the past sayings and doings of her beloved dead. Such stories as she could tell Viola of Rolfe’s bright ways, his manliness, his tenderness, his bravery, were enough to thrill any woman’s heart, and Viola grew to know him well, now he was gone, and the aching cry of her heart grew more intense with time:

“Could ye come back to me, Douglas, Douglas!”

In the golden May-time they journeyed across the ocean, leaving the little cottage boarded up and deserted, so that weeks later, when the postman opened the gate with a letter that would have brought gladness to the mourner’s heart, there was no one to receive it, and the neighbors said Mrs. Maxwell had gone away weeks before, and they did not know her address.

The postman sent the letter to the Dead Letter Office, marked “Can not be found,” and several bulky ones that followed it shared the same fate, until by autumn they ceased to come, the writer evidently giving up in despair. It could not have been Mae Sweetland, for she knew that her aunt was in Europe, and kept up an animated correspondence with her and Viola, so it was quite a mystery who could have been sending those letters to Mrs. Maxwell.

To pretty Mae Sweetland Viola had intrusted the task of seeing now and then after the progress of Rolfe’s portrait; for, as she assured Mae, the artist was very indolent, and would never apply himself to the task unless goaded to it by pertinacious attention.

So now and then Mae came up to Washington with her cousins on little pleasure trips, and they always invaded Florian’s studio, sometimes finding him there, but oftener out, for he worked but seldom, since the prize for which he consented to paint the portrait, the hope of Viola’s occasional visits, was denied by her lengthened absence.

He had thought she would be coming every week to see how his work progressed, and that they would gradually return to the footing of the dear old days before he had been forced away from his fickle betrothed, leaving her to forget him in the fascinations of an unsuspected rival.

Florian thought he would have an easy task ousting Desha from her heart, and that they would mutually forgive each other, and marry happily after all their ups and downs; but things looked different somehow when he learned that she was sailing for Europe for an indefinite stay, and had deputed to that golden-haired fairy, Miss Sweetland, the task of watching the progress of Rolfe’s portrait.

Mae was very shy, and she dreaded the visits to the handsome artist, who at first was rather curt and indifferent in his disappointment over Viola, and made careless excuses for not having begun the portrait when Mae made her third call in the month of July.

“Too hot to work now. I’ve concluded not to begin till fall,” he said; then started as he saw quick tears sparkle in her lovely blue eyes.

“Oh, how grieved Viola will be! The disappointment will quite break her heart!” she cried; and Florian smiled cynically.

Mae continued, reproachfully:

“You promised it in three months, you know, and now you break your promise so easily. How can you be so cruel?”

“How spirited the little thing is!” he thought, looking at her with suddenly aroused interest.

“So you think me cruel, Miss Sweetland? Well, I dare say I deserve it! But would you be willing to make a personal sacrifice to induce me to give over my indolence and begin your cousin’s portrait?”

“Name it,” she replied, hopefully; and Florian said, in one of his daring moods:

“It is dull work painting from a photograph. I prefer living subjects when possible, and I have a great desire to copy your face for an ideal picture I mean to paint. Will you give me two sittings each week if I will promise to work all the intervening time on Mr. Maxwell’s portrait?”

Mae dimpled and blushed and looked inquiringly at her cousin, Mrs. Graham, who said, decisively:

“Yes, I will bring her twice a week for the sittings; and mind that you have Rolfe’s portrait commenced the next time we come.”

When Mae’s letter went across the sea, telling all this, Viola smiled roguishly to herself at the success of the design she had formed against Florian the day she first took Mae to his studio.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

“Whom first we love, you know, we seldom wed.”

The portrait of Rolfe Maxwell was finished, and awaited Viola’s return.

It hung upon Florian’s studio wall—a magnificent likeness of the handsome, dark-eyed original that would delight Viola’s tender heart.

Florian himself had written to tell her how well he had succeeded in his undertaking, and how anxious he was to hear her verdict of well done.

The young widow had written promptly, expressing her fervent gratitude, and gracefully offering the most liberal compensation.

Florian had quite as gracefully disclaimed the intention of receiving any reward for his work, save the longed for guerdon of her forgiveness for the madness of an hour that he would willingly lay down his life to recall. Could Viola find this forgiveness in her heart?

In reply came the most charming letter. Was it possible her dear friend could think she harbored malice for that fatal night?

No, no; she had deserved it all, and more, and accepted her punishment in all humility. He and Philip Desha had both taught her a lesson for which she was profoundly grateful. She was a changed girl now, and had firmly resolved never to flirt again. She hoped Florian would forget the past, just as she was trying to do.

When Florian replied, thanking her ardently for her forgiveness, and vaguely hinting at a continuance of the correspondence, she did not answer, and it carried a bitter pang to his heart; but he determined to bide his time in patience. No doubt she wished to spend the year of widowhood in proper seclusion.

But that was months and months ago, and Viola still lingered abroad, although Christmas had come and gone, and it was 1897 now, so that in a very short time she would have been widowed a year. Of course Desha would be making up to her again then, and Florian determined to get ahead of him if possible.

He was tempted to take a little run over to Europe and try his fate again, but when he hinted of such a possible trip to his mother, she opposed it so strenuously, alleging her weak health and loneliness, that he gave up the idea, and wrote instead to Viola, pouring out all his hopes and fears, and again laying heart and hand at her feet.

He waited most impatiently for the answer, and in those days of suspense stood often before her completed portrait as it stood on the easel brightening the room with its arch beauty, while close beside it hung the fancy head he had made of Mae Sweetland, a Cupid emerging from light-tinted clouds such as suited her fairy-like beauty. It was a fine likeness and a lovely piece of work, and Florian took much pride in it, often saying to himself:

“Jove! what a little angel! If I had not met Viola first, I should certainly have been a captive to Mae’s bow and spear.”

He would not admit even to himself that it was perhaps a feeling of loyalty to Viola that had made him avoid Mae after the portrait was finished, afraid of a sudden indefinable attraction that she had begun to exercise over him, lest his thoughts should stray from her who had the first claim on them.

He had not seen Mae for some time, but he knew she was back in the city this winter, because he had met Mrs. Graham accidentally on the street one day, and on asking eagerly after the young girl, had been told that she was staying at a boarding-house near the Capitol, till her aunt should return from abroad.

He had asked for her address, and said he would call on her very soon; and Mrs. Graham duly reported it to Mae, who watched eagerly, day by day, until she gave up in despair, for he never came.

“He does not care,” she thought to herself, wondering if he was not something of a flirt; for he had certainly seemed to take a flattering interest in her during the painting of the portraits. “I am almost sorry I gave him those sittings now. He is very ungrateful not even to call once. But I shall not fret, though he is very handsome; for I gave my heart unasked once, and I never shall again,” she resolved, valiantly fighting down her heart pangs.

She was very lovely and winning, and in the select boarding-house where she was staying with a very distant relative, she found many admirers who gave her little time to bewail the indifference of one cold cavalier; for her invitations were many, and she received enough attentions to turn her golden head, if she had not been quite a self-poised little creature whose one disappointment in love had been sufficient to check any budding vanity.

But one evening in January when she was sitting quietly in her room, with an interesting new novel, a card was brought her that sent a sudden, warm, sea-shell glow flushing into her fair cheeks, for it bore the name of Florian Gay.

“At last!” she thought, in a flutter of mingled delight and pique, and hastened to make herself as irresistible as she could by the aid of dress before descending to her relative’s private parlor, where she found Florian eagerly awaiting her, and looking marvelously handsome in his dark, cavalier style.

“Are you surprised?” he queried, pressing the tiny hand a trifle more warmly than was necessary, so that she blushingly drew it away.

“I was certainly not expecting you,” she replied; and his quick ear caught the tone of irrepressible pique in her voice.

“I knew you were in the city, and I have been dying to call on you; but you would never guess in a hundred years the strange reason that has kept me away,” cried Florian, eagerly.

“No,” she replied, curiously; and he hastened to explain:

“I did not come because I was afraid of falling in love with you.”

Mae started with surprise and confusion, the long lashes drooping to her crimson cheeks, while Florian continued:

“I was afraid of falling in love with you, because I found you almost irresistible, and I thought myself in honor bound to another whom I had loved before I ever met you. But now I am free from that fancied bond, and perhaps I ought to tell you all about it before I risk my fate with you. Do you care to listen, little one?” tenderly.

“Yes; oh, yes,” she smiled encouragingly, her young heart throbbing wildly with a strange, new joy.

Thereupon Florian valiantly rehearsed for her benefit the story of his eventful love affair with Viola, taking due blame to himself for his hasty revenge that had recoiled so heavily on his own heart.

“When I came to my senses and longed to make reparation for my folly, she had recklessly bound herself to another,” he said. “But when death so soon snapped that bond, I resolved to try my fate again, holding myself loyally bound to her if she cared to take me. I still loved her madly until—those days when you gave me the sittings for your portrait, when I found my allegiance wavering under the spell of your charms, until I saw that to be true to Viola I must avoid you. I did so until her year of widowhood was so nearly ended that I thought I might propose without giving offense. This was several weeks ago, and a while ago I received her answer—a very kind rejection.”

“Oh!” cried Mae.

“A rejection,” repeated Florian, frankly; and added: “But it did not hurt me so badly as might have been expected, because you had divided my thoughts with her so long that on reading her letter my heart quickly rebounded from the blow and turned with a new, sweet hope to you.”

What a strange wooing this was, thought Mae, who did not relish taking the half of a heart only; and she cried in pique:

“If she had wanted you I should never have been given another thought!”

“It would have been wrong to think of you then, but now I can think of nothing else!” cried Florian, frankly, and his handsome face took on a very pleading look as he added: “Oh, Mae, are you going to be cruel to me because I was frank and honest with you, fearing you might hear my story from some others? It is best to own that I loved Viola dearly once, but now my heart is all your own, and will never stray again if you will accept its devotion, believing that it is possible to give love twice.”

Mae did not answer, for a swift pain cleft her heart, and a red flush burned her face as her lover added:

“Young, romantic girls like you may imagine that it is not possible to love twice, but indeed it is not true. If you will let me teach you the sweet lesson of love, you shall be adored as devotedly as ever Viola was.”

“Hush!” she murmured, faintly; and the tears flashed into her soft blue eyes. She was thinking, sweet Mae, of her own broken love-dream.

“Whom first we love, you know, we seldom wed.”

She dashed away the tears, and murmured, softly:

“I am not blaming you, for—for I know you speak truly. I will be as frank as you. I, too, have loved—but he is dead.”

She bent her face in her hands, and the tears fell through her fingers, thinking of her brief, broken love-dream so pitifully ended.

Yes, it was all over now. She was not sore and angry over it any longer, realizing, as Florian had said, that it was possible to love twice.

He was startled and surprised, scarcely dreaming that so young a girl had already loved, but he did not ask her any questions, simply drew away the little hands from her face and kissed the wet fingertips, saying gently:

“Can we not fold down these sad pages in our hearts, dear Mae, and begin again with a new love and a new hope for the future? I will be as patient as you wish me, waiting for your answer as long as you desire, so that you give me a spark of hope now.”

And looking in her tender eyes, he read that he need not wait an hour, for his devotion had touched the smoldering spark of love into flame.

He kissed her tenderly, and whispered:

“God bless you, darling! I will try to make you the happiest woman in the world. And as for Viola, I suppose she is in love with Desha still, and he will get her in the end. I will hunt him up tomorrow and renew our old friendship, telling him that I am engaged to the sweetest girl on earth, and no longer his rival and enemy.”

And thus ended successfully the little plot of Viola to console Florian and Mae for their former disappointments by making them fall in love with each other.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

IN HER TOILS AGAIN.

Who was so happy as Viola when she received Florian’s frank letter explaining everything in his inimitable manner, and asking her congratulations on his engagement to Mae.

The thought that her old lover was happy at last lightened the weight of remorse on her mind, and made her smile with joy as she thought:

“I hope to hear just such good news some time of George Merrington and the others. Perhaps even Philip Desha may find consolation.”

She and Mother Maxwell exchanged congratulations, for Mae had written her aunt by the same post, telling of her happiness.

“Florian is a splendid match for sweet Mae—young, rich, talented, and good. She will be very happy, I am sure,” cried Viola; adding: “He says he wants to be married in May, so I think, mother dear, that I shall slip over to Paris, select a handsome trousseau as my wedding-gift to our dear girl, and then we will turn our faces homeward, so as to assist at the wedding.”

So, when the snow-drops and crocus began to star the greensward in early March, Viola came home again to her father and aunt, who had fretted sorely over her absence, though they had not complained, because, as Aunt Edwina naively said, they hoped she was “getting over things.”

Whether she had “got over things” or not, Viola did not say. She was even more beautiful, if that were possible, than before she went abroad; but it was not the arch beauty of the girl Viola, but the chastened loveliness of the woman who has suffered, and gained depth of feeling and nobility by her experience. In her great, luminous gray eyes lurked a haunting sadness, and her smile had a pensive expression unknown to it before.

“Since I met thee last,
O’er thy brow a change hath passed;
In the softness of thine eyes,
Deep and still a shadow lies;
From thy voice there thrills a tone
Never to thy childhood known;
Through thy soul a storm has moved—
Gentle mourner, thou hast loved.”

Her first visit was made to the portrait still waiting for her at the studio.

“You will leave me alone with it, please, Florian,” she said, with a quivering lip; and he retired with Mae to the alcove, where in sweet lovers’ talk they took no note of the time that flew while Viola remained motionless before the portrait, gazing with humid eyes at the likeness so faithfully transferred to canvas thinking:

“Oh, that those lips had language! Life has passed

With me but roughly since I heard them last.

Those lips are thine; thine own sweet smile I see,

The same that erst didst gently comfort me.

Voice only fails, else how distinct they say:

‘Grieve not, my love, chase all thy fears away!’”

When she turned away at last, and sought Florian with outstretched hand, she faltered:

“It is perfect. I can find no words strong enough for my gratitude.”

“It is enough that I have pleased you,” the artist answered, gladly; and then she and Mae took leave, promising to bring Mrs. Maxwell to the studio tomorrow, after which the portrait would be removed to her own home.

Florian was deeply puzzled over Viola’s emotion, thinking:

“It looks somehow as if she really loved the fellow after all; but I do not understand it, for she certainly married him out of pure pique after being jilted by Desha, whom she claimed to love so dearly. Well, these women, they are past finding out.”

Viola accompanied Mae to the cottage, and they spent several hours unpacking the boxes of beautiful things she had brought for the trousseau.

Mae was wild with delight and gratitude. She sobbed on Viola’s neck:

“I do not deserve your goodness. There were weeks when I hated you and almost wished you dead.”

“That is all past now, dear. Let us forget it,” Viola answered, with a smothered sigh, as she held up a pattern of pale-blue brocade against Mae’s face, adding, admiringly: “This silver hue is very becoming to your complexion, Mae.”

She had sighed at thought of her own exquisite trousseau lying unworn, even to the bridal gown, in her trunks at home. What happy hours she had spent over the costly robes fated never to be worn, she thought, stifling the unbidden sigh that heaved her breast.

When she went home she found that several friends had already called, and among the cards was that of Philip Desha. She smiled a little bitterly:

“Perhaps he thinks, like Florian, that he should be loyal to me till I give him an honorable discharge. Well, that will be easy enough.”

But Desha did not call again for some time. It was Inauguration Week, and some of his Northern friends were in the city. In showing them the proper courtesies he found no time for any one else, so that at the last he met Viola first elsewhere.

It was at a reception, one of the first given by the new President. She had unwillingly accompanied her father and aunt, lightening her somber black for the occasion by some bunches of white and purple violets.

They had paid their respects to the new Executive and were getting out of the crush when he came to her side, and their eyes met.

Viola held out her tiny black-gloved hand.

“I am glad to see you, Professor Desha, and sorry I was not at home when you called last week.”

It was the graceful aplomb of the woman of the world, mixed with cordiality that went a little deeper. His heart leaped quickly as he pressed her hand, and asked, eagerly:

“Then I may take the privilege of coming again?”

“Certainly,” she answered, with the gleam of a gracious smile; and then the crowd swept them apart, and a few people who had observed the meeting, with surprise, nudged each other, observing:

“The audacious little flirt! Not out of her mourning yet, and she has got the foolish fellow into her toils again! Has he neither sense nor pride?”

CHAPTER XXXV.

“IT WAS PIQUE, NOT LOVE.”

Days passed, and with their flight Viola took up the threads of her home life again, but with a subtle difference.

The light-hearted gayety of other days had faded from her brow, and a pensive shadow replaced it. She cared no more for society, declining all invitations on the score of her mourning. She spent many hours alone before the portrait of Rolfe Maxwell, that had been hung in her favorite room. Each day she placed fresh flowers on a stand before it.

Judge Van Lew and his sister looked on indulgently. They thought it was remorse that dictated these expressions of feeling; they could not believe that Viola had learned to love her husband of an hour. She would get over this morbid grief presently and make up with Desha.

“It is this somber black she wears that saddens her mind. The year will soon be over, and I shall persuade her to lay it aside and be her own bright self again,” said Aunt Edwina, consolingly; and that very evening she said, coaxingly:

“Dear, do you know it almost breaks your poor papa’s heart to see you always in that heavy, dismal black? Besides, he considers it quite prejudicial to your health. Now, won’t you please us, dear, by laying it aside in the evenings for something lighter in white or lavender?”

Viola knew how they doted on her, and how she had grieved their hearts by her long stay abroad. She did not refuse, and permitted her aunt to select a soft white merino gown from her wardrobe, and have the maid trim it with pale lavender ribbons and dainty white chiffon. Then with great, odorous clusters of purple violets on her breast and in her hair, she went down to her father, who started with delight, exclaiming:

“What a delightful change, my dear! Now you look more like my little girl Viola, and perhaps you will play and sing for me again?”

Viola was in an acquiescent mood. She granted his request, though she had never before touched the piano since she came home. She tried to put her heart into the work, playing all he asked for, even singing again, and he noticed her voice had lost none of its beauty or power, only gained a deeper pathos that made it irresistible.

Suddenly, in the midst of the singing, a caller was announced—Professor Desha.

Viola greeted him with no apparent embarrassment, only she wished in her heart that she had still worn her black gown, and wondered if papa and Aunt Edwina had known of his coming.

But her hasty glance at their faces showed no consciousness, only surprise, and in a little while they had slipped away, and she found herself alone with her old lover—alone for the first time since that March night almost a year ago when they had quarreled so bitterly, and he had gone away in anger, leaving her a jilted bride, mad with shame and misery.

It all rushed over them both, and they could not speak of indifferent things. Desha cried, passionately:

“Viola, you surely understand why I have come?”

She smiled strangely, thinking that, like Florian, he wanted to pay his debt and get it over.

She resolved that she would permit him to do so as soon as possible, wishing also to have it over.

Desha’s eyes glowed with excitement as he said:

“Viola—if you will permit me to call you again by that sweet name—you received my letter sent to you on the morning of the day that was to have witnessed our wedding?”

She inclined her dark head in silent assent, and the exquisite odor of the violets on her breast floated out to him entrancingly, intoxicating his senses till he longed to crush her against his heart, whispering to her of all his love and repentance and despair.

But there was no encouragement to such daring in her distant, half-weary pose as she waited for his next words, her large, brilliant eyes fixed on his pale, intellectual face, while she wondered how it had ever commanded her love.

“Then, dearest, you know how soon and how bitterly I repented the momentary madness of that night, when in my pride and anger I left you, declining to fulfill my engagement of the morrow. You know how I repented and begged you to take me back, but you can never dream of the anguish I endured when I learned that you were wedded to another—lost to me forever.”

Viola remembered repentantly how revengefully she had planned this suffering for him and gloated on the thought of it, and was silent.

“But I will not dwell on this past unhappy year, Viola. Suffice it to say that I have suffered enough to atone for the folly of that night—enough even to win your pity and forgiveness. And you are free again, and I grasp at the bare chance of going back to the past that promised such happiness for us both. Oh, Viola, I love you still, more passionately if possible than a year ago, because your loss has taught me your value! Dearest, has your heart grown cold to me, or can you give me a little hope?”

“How much in earnest he seems, yet perhaps, like Florian, he can be easily consoled for his disappointment,” thought Viola, as she nerved herself to say, gently:

“I am very sorry you have loved me all this while, because I can not give you any hope.”

“Is this resentment at my folly, Viola? Do you wish to put me on probation, to punish me as I deserve? Do so if you will, but I shall not complain if only you will try to love me again,” Philip Desha answered her, with sad patience and wistful hope.

Viola was touched by his humility—so touched that her voice trembled as she twined her white fingers nervously together, replying:

“It is best to be frank with you, is it not? Then believe me, I bear you no resentment for that eventful night, and I do not wish to punish you for anything—least of all for what you did that night, because—because—everything turned out for the best.”

“Viola!” incredulously.

“For the best,” she repeated, firmly; adding: “I am glad I did not marry you that day, for I found out that I did not love you after all.”

If the solid earth had opened at his feet, Philip Desha could not have been more astonished than at that declaration from Viola.

His thoughts ran hastily back over the past, and he remembered how easily she had been wooed, and how much she had seemed to love him. He decided that it was pride and pique that moved her now. He would have to overcome both before he could win her back.

A deep flush rose to her pale, beautiful face, and she cried, hastily:

“I know that you do not believe me—that you are looking back over the past and saying to yourself that I gave you every encouragement to love me, that I even led you on, and almost entrapped you into proposing that night when you fell and hurt yourself, and in my fright I said the most silly things—”

“The most charming things—words that kindled hope in my despairing heart and made me the happiest of men!” interrupted her lover, fervently.

Still blushing warmly, Viola continued:

“I actually believed myself very much in love with you, and when I tell you what a disposition I have, you will readily understand my mistake.”

He bowed and waited, while she went on, frankly:

“As a child I always wanted most ardently whatever was refused to me, and brought every energy to bear until I attained its possession, only to find out afterward that I cared nothing for it whatever, and had only struggled for it out of the inherent perversity of a nature that adored the unattainable. My nurse related that I often cried for the moon.”

She paused a moment, startled at his deepening pallor, then made the confession:

“I met you several times in society, Professor Desha, and I did not actually give you a second thought until a rival belle, a spiteful girl, told me frankly how very strongly you had expressed your disapprobation of me in general, deploring the fact that any true man’s heart could be wrecked by such a heartless butterfly. In my anger and resentment I marked you at once for a victim of my charms.”

“Ah!” he cried, in actual pain at her confession.

“It was wicked, and I am ashamed of it now, but I promised to be frank, and I will not spare myself,” cried Viola; adding: “Yes, I angled for your heart with all the arts of the finished coquette, but you withstood me so valiantly that you awakened that trait in my nature, that longing for whatever was denied me. It grew on me till it possessed me, fooled me, made me believe you actually necessary to my heart. Pique and vanity masqueraded in the garb of love. I won you, and believed that I was happy. Then came that night!”

He was about to speak, but she held up her hand, saying:

“Wait till I have done. Will you listen to the story of what happened that night after you left me?”

He bowed his head, and Viola began by telling him, to his great surprise, how she had tried to recall Florian and failed.

“In my bitter humiliation I felt I could not face the sensation of tomorrow. I went out and threw myself beneath the wheels of a passing trolley car to end my life.”

“Oh, my God, Viola!”

“It is the truth that I am telling you; and my life’s story would have ended then and there but that a passing stranger darted forward, and at the risk of his own noble life snatched me from a terrible death. It was Rolfe Maxwell, and with gentle sympathy he drew from me the story of my sorrows, and my futile plan for saving myself from the next day’s sensation by marrying Florian. Then he threw himself into the breach, offered marriage, owning that he loved me. Now I will tell you what I have never confessed to any living soul before: I accepted his offer, and at that moment my whole heart went out to him in a fullness of passion and devotion such as never had any part in the lukewarm emotion I felt once for Florian and for you afterward. I realized suddenly that I had never really loved you and did not now regret you, but that the fullness of love and happiness awaited me with the man who had so nobly saved my young life from shipwreck, earning my love and gratitude at one stroke. My great mistake was that I was ashamed to confess the truth to him then, and he made the chivalrous mistake of leaving me free till I could grow to care for him, going at once to Cuba, where he soon met his tragic death.”

CHAPTER XXXVI.

STARTLING NEWS.

Viola paused with quivering lips, the tears hanging heavily on the curling fringe of her long black lashes. How beautiful, how unattainable, she looked to the man who had loved and lost her in so strange a fashion, who had only himself to blame for the thorn in his heart!

A long, labored sigh heaved his breast, and smote reproachfully on her ears.

She murmured, faintly:

“Is there not some one else you can love? Florian soon found consolation.”

“I am not Florian. There will never be any one else for me to love but you, Viola. I can not change,” he answered, heavily, out of the despair in his heart.

“I am very, very sorry, but I can not give you any hope,” she repeated, gently; and he rose to go, so haggard and wan that it went to her heart, and she cried, remorsefully: “Oh, I have been most cruel to you! I led you on, or you never could have loved me, despising coquettes as you did with all the strength of your noble nature. But I have repented all my follies, and I am a new Viola now, hating myself for all I did, and most of all for wronging you so deeply I dare not ask you to forgive me,” generously taking all the blame to herself.

“We all make mistakes in the course of our lives. I forgive you everything, poor child,” he answered, generously going up to her and taking her hands in a lingering pressure, as he added, sorrowfully: “My dream is over. God bless you, and farewell!”

He turned away with an aching heart and left her weeping, with her fatally lovely face hidden in her hands—weeping for him out of the pity of her heart.

“He was so noble after all, and perhaps if I had married him I never should have realized that I was capable of a deeper emotion than the gentle affection I felt for him,” she thought; then her mind wandered to the dead, and she sobbed, miserably, yearningly:

“Oh, Rolfe, my darling, could you but return and know how I have loved you all the while!”

Meanwhile Judge Van Lew and his sister had retired to the library and were perusing the evening papers, having felt it best to leave Viola alone with her lover, feeling that a reconciliation would take place.

Suddenly Aunt Edwina started and leaned across the table, putting her shaking finger on a paragraph in her paper, while she exclaimed:

“Good heavens, Edmund, read this!”

He obeyed, and then they stared at each other with ashen faces.

“Can it be true?” she queried.

“Very likely. And I should hope so if it were for her happiness; but what a time for it to happen, just as she is making up with Desha!” half groaned the judge.

“Ought we to go and tell them now?” she asked, nervously.

“No; let us wait till he is gone, and break it as gently as possible. Poor Viola, will she be glad or sorry, I wonder?” mused the judge, and his sister answered, thoughtfully:

“To judge from the way she has carried on, I should say glad; but still I believe it was all for effect and to punish Desha. Why, there he is going now!” she added, starting up from her seat.

“Then you can take the paper and show her the paragraph, Edwina,” suggested her brother.

“Not me! You must break it to her yourself,” she insisted; and the upshot of it was that they went presently together to Viola, who dashed away the lingering tears and turned to meet them with a pensive smile.

The judge began with a sorry attempt at cheerfulness.

“I—er—so I suppose you and Professor Desha have been making it up, dear?”

To his relief she answered, frankly:

“I have passed through a very unpleasant scene, papa. He came to offer me his hand again.”

“And you—you accepted,” he began, nervously.

“No, papa, I refused him. I found out long ago that it was but a passing fancy I had for him, and that if my poor Rolfe had lived I could have loved him more than any other man I ever knew,” Viola answered, sorrowfully.

“Then you will be very glad to read this paragraph, my dear,” the judge exclaimed, gayly, pointing it out to her with a shaking finger.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

BON VOYAGE.

Viola saw that her father was deeply agitated over something, and cried out, excitedly:

“What is it, papa?”

“Read it, my dear, read it for yourself!” rejoined the judge, eagerly.

“Read it, my dear!” echoed her aunt, earnestly.

Viola’s eyes were so dim with the tears she had copiously shed out of sympathy with Philip Desha that at first she could scarcely see the lines, they wavered so before her gaze. She wiped them with her soft lace handkerchief, and made another effort to read the short paragraph that ran as follows:

“The vigorous Cuban policy of the new administration has resulted in setting free many American citizens long-imprisoned in Spanish dungeons, on false charges, and a strange story comes from one of these released men that the reported death of one of our famous war correspondents, Rolfe Maxwell by name, is untrue, and that the young man still lives a prisoner incommunicado in Morro Castle. Public opinion is greatly stirred up over this report, and Consul-General Lee, at Havana, will be asked to effect young Maxwell’s release at once.”

A loud and thrilling cry—a cry of rapture—rang through the room, and then Viola, faint from excess of joy, clung to her father’s arm.

“Quick, Edwina, she will faint!” exclaimed her father, anxiously.

“No, no, papa!” gasped Viola, eagerly; “no, no; I am too happy to faint! Oh, can this be true?”

“Do not build too strongly on it, dear, for newspaper reports are not always reliable, and I know nothing of this except the paragraph that you have just read,” replied the judge, holding her tenderly on his arm and stroking back her dark tresses that had fallen in disorder over her white brow.

“But, papa, this must be looked into at once. Can not you have an investigation made? Or—are you sorry that there is a chance of Rolfe’s living yet? You sent him away from me, you know!” the poor girl cried out, in an agony of doubt and hope commingled.

Judge Van Lew knew he deserved the reproach, and he flushed up to his hair as he answered:

“Darling, I wronged Rolfe Maxwell when I sent him from you as I did, but no one could be more anxious to undo a wrong than I am now, and I shall have this report fully investigated, and if possible your noble young husband shall be speedily restored to you with my blessing on your union. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me then, my child?”

“Oh, papa, I forgave you long ago, for you did it for my sake, believing it would insure my happiness. Now that you are reconciled to my marriage and willing to help me find my husband, all is atoned for at once. But what shall we do? Where shall we begin?” demanded Viola, with feverish eagerness, her great eyes shining like stars in her pale, excited face.

Her father was almost as much agitated as she was, and after a moment’s thought, answered, tenderly:

“I think I will go on the first train to New York to see the editor in whose paper this story appears, and get all the facts I can so as to bring the case to the attention of our Secretary of State, and enlist his kind offices to have Maxwell released at once.”

“Oh, how good you are to me, papa! I love you more than ever!” cried Viola, clinging to his neck and covering his face with kisses in the exuberance of her joy, for after the long, dark night of sorrow and despair, this little gleam of hope was like the sunshine itself.

An hour later her father was en route for New York, eagerly interested in his mission, and most anxious to do all he could to restore peace and happiness to Viola’s heart.

As for her, she could not sleep for hours. She spent the night reclining on a low couch drawn near to Rolfe’s portrait, where her eyes could rest on it every time they opened from wakeful dozing.

“Oh, is it true—is it true, my darling? Do you really live?” she cried over and over to the silent portrait, whose dark eyes seemed to rest on her in passionate love.

She knew it was almost silly, talking thus to an insensate portrait, but she could not restrain the words of tenderness, falling from her lips.

“Oh, my darling, my handsome, dark-eyed love, is it indeed true that you live? Shall I see you again, and will you love me still as you did that night when your saving love came between me and utter despair? Will you listen to my cry for forgiveness and love, and be happy that we are reunited forever?”

Then Viola would weep tender, indignant tears to think of the long months that Rolfe had lain in the Spanish prison, an innocent victim, denied all communication with the outside world, his friends believing him dead, while he suffered tortures perhaps worse than death.

Again she would kneel down and besiege Heaven with fervent prayers for Rolfe’s restoration to her yearning heart. At length she fell into a fitful repose that lasted till morning; but at the moment she finished breakfast she hastened to the cottage to carry her good news to Mrs. Maxwell and Mae.

After all, it did not amount to much, that brief little newspaper report. There might not be a word of truth in it; but what joy it brought to their fond, loving hearts, and how they rejoiced to each other, building a whole world of splendid anticipations on Rolfe’s return. It was like a rift of light in the black darkness of a great despair, and Mae could be unselfishly glad now too, since she was happy in the love of another.

Indeed, Florian came to call while Viola was there, and was speedily told the good news, whereat he unselfishly rejoiced with the rest.

Indeed, sweet, gentle Mae had so crept into his heart that he no longer envied Rolfe Maxwell the prize of Viola’s love. He wished her every happiness, but his secret sympathies went out to Philip Desha, with whom he had made friends only yesterday, and had been told frankly that he was going to try again for Viola’s heart.

It was late that night when Judge Van Lew returned from New York, but Viola was sitting up for him, too restless and agitated to retire until he came.

It went to his heart, the pale look of anxiety on the lovely face as she glided toward him, and he cried out, reassuringly:

“Cheer up, darling; I have goods news for you!”

He took her little cold hands in his, and kissed her tenderly, as he added:

“It is almost certain that Rolfe Maxwell is alive, a prisoner incommunicado in Morro Castle. The newspaper that he wrote for has very reliable news from a recently released prisoner, and steps have already been taken to secure his release. Consul-General Lee was cabled to yesterday to give immediate attention to the case.”

Viola’s head rested against his shoulder, her form shaking with sobs of joy.

“How long, papa, how long?” she faltered.

“Until his release?”

“Yes.”

“We hope it will be immediate, and if so, he ought to reach Havana in a very few days, en route for home.”

“Oh, papa, may I not go and meet him there?” eagerly.

“Dearest, it would not be prudent,” the father said, hesitatingly; adding, after a moment’s thought: “Send me in your place.”

“Papa, would you indeed be so kind?” cried Viola, astonished and delighted.

“I would do anything for your happiness, my dear child,” returned the judge, who never did anything by halves, and was in deep earnest now in his desire to help Viola.

“Oh, thank you, papa, thank you a thousand times, and please don’t think me troublesome, but—but—oh, papa, let us go together to Cuba, you and I, dear, and meet poor Rolfe and bring him home,” coaxed Viola.

Judge Van Lew would have preferred to leave his daughter at home with her aunt, but she would listen to neither argument nor persuasion; her whole heart was set on going, and as a result of her determination, he sailed for Cuba next day, taking her as his companion.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

“AS FLIES THE DOVE TO SEEK ITS MATE.”

How long the journey seemed to Viola ere they gained at last the beautiful Cuban shores, now, alas! laid waste by cruel, devastating war!

By reason of a railway accident that belated them twenty-four hours in a Floridian town, they did not reach Havana till the fifth day.

Then, weary and impatient, they took quarters at the best hotel, and the judge, leaving his daughter to rest in her rooms, went out at once in search of news of Maxwell.

Viola was too eager and impatient to rest long, now that she seemed to have attained the goal of her desires.

She could think of nothing but the longed-for reunion with the husband of an hour, from whom she had been so long and cruelly parted, believing him dead and herself widowed.

She glanced at her black gown, rejoicing that she should so soon be able to lay it aside for the bright robes of happiness.

Aunt Edwina had wished her to lay her mourning aside before leaving, but she had demurred.

“I wish my husband to see me first in the garb of woe, then he will know how truly I have mourned him,” she said, wondering if Rolfe would not be proud and glad to learn that she had loved him all the while.

“How have I thought of thee? As flies
The dove to seek its mate,
Trembling lest some rude hand has laid
Her sweet home desolate;
Thus timidly I seek in thine
The only heart that throbs with mine.

“How have I thought of thee? As turns
The flower to meet the sun,
E’en though when clouds and storms arise
It be not shone upon;
Thus, dear one, in thine eyes I see
The only light that beams for me.”

She had not waited more than an hour before her father returned with such a radiant face that she knew before he spoke he brought good news.

“Dear papa!” she cried, inquiringly, springing up to meet him.

“Viola, we are fortunate, most fortunate, in our quest. Rolfe Maxwell has been set free, and arrived in Havana this very morning!” he exclaimed, gladly.

“Dear Heaven, I thank Thee!” she cried, fervently, tears of wild joy starting to her brilliant, upraised eyes, while she trembled violently with joyful emotion.

To have loved and lost, and to find again, what rapture! Will not this be one of the supremest joys of Heaven when we “cross the moaning bar” and find waiting for us on the golden shore the dear ones who went from us through the dark portals of death to endless life?

It was joy akin to this that thrilled Viola at her father’s words.

Reading through his tenderness her yearning thought, the judge continued:

“I have prepared a pleasant surprise for your husband, Viola. I have sent a messenger to bring him here to us, simply saying that some American friends long very much to see him.”

“Then he will be coming—directly!” gasped Viola, dizzy with joy.

“Yes, dear, and I shall give directions to have him come directly to your private parlor, so that you can receive him first alone, as naturally that will be most proper,” added the judge, kindly.

Viola could not speak for emotion; she could only look her fervent gratitude as he turned to the door, saying:

“Now make yourself as lovely as possible, and I will send you word as soon as he comes.”

Viola changed her plain traveling-gown for a soft, lusterless black silk, with touches of filmy white at throat and wrists, then sat down to wait in wild impatience, her heart throbbing fiercely, her cheeks glowing, her eyes brilliant with tenderness, her beauty almost unearthly in its splendor of joy.

Suddenly a servant appeared at the door, saying:

“Mr. Maxwell is waiting in your private parlor to see you.”

Viola leaped to her feet and flew to the room, impatience urging her like wings.

In the elegant apartment she saw a tall figure standing at the window, with its face turned away, the fine head crowned with waves of soft dark hair.

“Rolfe, dear Rolfe!” she cried out, in a tempest of feeling.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

“HOPE DEFERRED MAKETH THE HEART SICK.”

The man at the window turned about with a quick start and faced Viola.

His delighted eyes fell upon the most rarely beautiful girl he had ever seen, her great eyes starry with joy, her cheeks and lips abloom with excitement that set all her lovely dimples into play with welcoming smiles as she eagerly advanced to him, crying, excitedly:

“Rolfe, dear Rolfe!”

But, oh, what a sudden and terrible change came over that lovely face in an instant, turning all its radiance to gloom, as the twilight suddenly settles over a landscape but a moment since flooded with the golden glory of sunset!

It all came in an instant as she looked up into the face above her—the face of a handsome man, pale and wan with the prison pallor, and lighted by dark eyes gleaming out of hollow orbits—yet the face of an utter stranger, whose expression was one of keen surprise mixed with irrepressible admiration.

Viola comprehended that there had been some mistake, and made an effort to pull herself together, drawing back, and exclaiming, coldly:

“I—I—really, there must be some mistake! I expected to see Rolfe Maxwell.”

The stranger answered, respectfully:

“There is no mistake, Miss——. Pardon me, I do not know your name. I was sent for to come to this hotel to meet some American friends who longed to see me.”

“I sent the message; but you are not the Rolfe Maxwell I wished to see. Can there be two of the same name?” faltered Viola, with blanching cheeks.

“Not that I am aware of, Miss——” he began; and she supplied the name:

“Mrs. Maxwell.”

“Ah, Mrs. Maxwell!” He started, and added: “Perhaps a relative of the man you are seeking!”

“His wife—or widow!” groaned Viola, staggering to a chair and sinking into it, her lovely face convulsed with despair, as she thought:

“Oh, what if there has been some terrible mistake after all, and he, my love, is indeed dead, while I have come this wretched journey all in vain!”

The greatest enemy she had in the wide world might have pitied her drooping so forlornly in her chair like a lovely flower snapped suddenly from its brittle stem.

The heart of the stranger yearned over her with manly sympathy, and he said, gently:

“I was released but a few days ago from Morro Castle, where I have been imprisoned almost a year by the Spanish on false charges, and threatened with death on my trial, which, fortunately for me, never took place, my release being peremptorily demanded by the new administration of the United States. Is this the Rolfe Maxwell you wished to find?”

“Yes, oh, yes, but I tell you there is a strange mistake—a mystery about this matter. I came here hoping to find my husband, Rolfe Maxwell, a war correspondent, who was reported shot long months ago. After mourning him as dead, a paragraph recently appeared in a newspaper stating that he still lived, a prisoner in Morro Castle. On my father investigating the rumor, he learned that the editors of this powerful paper had already interested the Government at Washington in securing his release. We came here, papa and I, to meet him and take him home with us,” explained Viola, eagerly, in the faint hope of having him throw some light on the mystery.

She was right, for after a moment’s hesitancy, the spurious Rolfe Maxwell answered:

“If I could see your father, I could tell him some facts that would throw a new light on this mystery.”

Viola rose and touched the bell, saying to the boy who answered it:

“Ask Judge Van Lew to come in here.”

In a few minutes her father appeared, his smile on entering changing to surprise at sight of a stranger.

“Papa, this gentleman is Rolfe Maxwell, but not the one we expected to find,” explained Viola, heart-brokenly.

The two men shook hands with each other, and the judge courteously offered a chair to the stranger, who said:

“I will accept it, thank you, for I have a story to tell you of some moment regarding this lady’s husband. But perhaps she had better withdraw; the conclusion may be too sad for her hearing.”

But Viola only drew her chair closer to her father, and clung to his arm, faltering:

“Let me stay, and I will try to bear the shock.”

“Yes, let her stay,” Judge Van Lew answered, with a world of tenderness and sympathy, as he turned his eyes on the wan and wasted yet noble countenance of the young man.

And his first words startled them very much:

“I shall have to confess right in the beginning that for long months I have been masquerading under a false name, having, in fact, exchanged names with the man you are seeking.”

Viola and her father both exclaimed aloud in astonishment, and the young man continued:

“Yet I beg you to believe that I have done no wrong. It was a fair exchange made by mutual agreement.”

“But where is he now—my husband?” cried Viola, anxiously.

The stranger turned a pitying gaze on the lovely, anxious face, and said, gently:

“Please be patient with me, dear madame, and I will come to that presently.”

He had suffered untold horrors in the past months in the dreadful prison where his young life had been wasting away, but he would almost rather have endured another month of imprisonment than pierce her gentle heart with the story he had to tell.

When he remembered the beauty and gladness of her face as she first entered the room, and the sad change he saw upon it now, he realized how dearly she had loved Rolfe Maxwell, and how the end of his story would blast her heart.

“God help her to bear the sorrow she has come so far to meet!” he thought, wishing that he had such a beautiful love to welcome him on his return home.

“Tell me as quickly as you can! I can not bear this cruel suspense longer!” Viola cried to him entreatingly, her lily hands, on one of which the gleaming wedding-ring shone so brightly clasped convulsively across her wildly throbbing heart.

CHAPTER XL.

“CUBA LIBRE.”

“I love thee, I love thee
Far better than wine,
But the curse is above me—
Thou’lt never be mine!

“As the blade wears the scabbard,
The billow the shore,
So sorrow doth fret me
For evermore.

“Fair beauty, I’ll leave thee
To conquer my heart;
I’ll see thee, I’ll bless thee
And then—depart.

“Let me take, ere I vanish,
One look of thine eyes,
One smile for remembrance,
For life soon flies.

“And now for the fortune
That hangeth above,
And to bury in battle
My dream of love.”

The stranger sighed as he turned his hollow eyes on Viola’s pale face, replying:

“I will hasten, for I know all the anguish of suspense myself too well to inflict it on another, so will go back to the time in April, 1896, when I first made the acquaintance of Rolfe Maxwell, whom I envied above all things for his newly achieved fame as a great war correspondent.”

“Yes, oh, yes!” breathed Viola, eagerly, her deep eyes burning on his face as he continued:

“In March a year ago I came from my home in Florida to Cuba with the intention of enlisting in the army to fight for the freedom of that fair isle of the sea, but owing to a physical defect, an organic weakness of the heart, I was not accepted. Through sheer disappointment, I was quite ill for days afterward, during which I made the acquaintance of Rolfe Maxwell, whom I admired and envied equally as a journalist who had leaped into sudden but well-deserved fame as the capable correspondent of a leading newspaper in New York.

“He was so kind to me in my illness that we became great friends, and confidential enough for me to suspect that the brilliant, versatile young man had suffered some crushing disappointment in love that had embittered his cheerful nature to the verge of despair.”

“Alas!” breathed Viola, while her father stifled a sigh of keen self-reproach for the fatal blunder he had made in parting Rolfe and Viola.

The stranger sighed in sympathy, and went on with his story:

“Finding that I could not enlist in the army, my next ambition was to become a correspondent, so as to let my pen at least be employed in defending the cause of the heroic revolutionists, whom I regarded as the noblest, most injured of men.

“But even here I was balked in my aspirations, the journalistic field being so fully covered that no opening was left for me, dooming me to inaction, while my whole soul burned with fiery ardor in Cuba’s cause.

“At this juncture Rolfe Maxwell came to my aid with a startling proposition that we should change names, he resigning to me his journalistic position and enlisting in the army, for which his education at West Point, his sympathy with the Cubans, and his reckless state of mind equally fitted him. Indeed, he confessed to me that his preference was the army, and that he should have entered it on first coming to Cuba but for the thought of his widowed mother, who would have grieved unceasingly.

“‘I will own to you, my friend, that I have a secret, intolerable sorrow that goads me to despair,’ he said to me, with a sadness that made my heart ache in sympathy. ‘I wedded the most lovely and charming girl on earth, only to find that she came to regret the bonds that fettered us, and to wish herself free. I swear to you that the dearest wish of my heart is to end my hopeless pain by a brave and honorable death on the field of battle.’”

Viola, unable to control her emotion, burst into a fit of passionate sobbing, crying:

“Oh, there was a terrible mistake that wrecked both our lives, and he went away too soon in his rash pride to find out the real truth that I loved him with the same tenderness he bore to me. But now, alas! ’tis too late! He will never know how well I loved him! You are going to tell me he is dead!”

“My story is almost ended,” he answered, evasively, as she stifled her bursting sobs, permitting him to proceed:

“Our arrangements for the harmless fraud we proposed were easily made, and I will not enter into them, thus protracting your suspense. Suffice it to say that I can not understand why you did not learn that he still lived after his reported shooting, as it was planned he should still write his mother under his own name. Perhaps his letters went astray, and were not received. Anyway, he went into the army and distinguished himself under my name, while I, within two weeks, and just as I was earning welcome laurels as a correspondent, was arrested and thrown into prison under his pseudonym. There I remained until this week, denied all communication with the world outside my dungeon door, expecting to be shot any time at day-break, with the hundreds whose death-knells each morning echoed dismally across the water, announcing the dawn of a new day, and feeling myself already as dead as if the grave had closed over me. That is all, except that on my release from prison I learned that Rolfe Maxwell, under my name of Arthur Linwood, had earned the rank of captain in the Cuban army, and covered himself with glory.”

“Linwood—Captain Linwood!” almost shrieked Viola, who had read so often of the brave young American whose deeds of daring on many a hard-fought field had won the plaudits of the admiring world.

“Yes, Captain Linwood,” repeated Arthur Linwood; adding: “The Cubans fairly worship this gallant hero, who has risked his life so often to serve their cause, and I am told that America also is proud of her gallant son. When I go home tomorrow his countrymen shall hear through their favorite newspaper the whole story of his identity and of my release. It is a story that will thrill their hearts with pride and sorrow.”

“Sorrow?” echoed Viola, with a convulsive start; and he answered, reluctantly:

“The saddest part of my story must be told now. You may have heard of the recent terrible fighting in the Province of Santa Clara. Well, the news from the battle-field yesterday reported Captain Linwood as mortally wounded.”

CHAPTER XLI.

“AFTER LONG GRIEF AND PAIN.”

“She left her home, she lost her pride,

Forgot the jeering world—ah, me!

And followed a knight who fought and bled

All for the sake of—chivalry.”

Viola did not cry out in despair and faint and fall as they foreboded—she simply bowed her face upon her father’s arm in a silence more terrible and fatal than the wildest grief—the silence of a fond heart breaking in the awful revulsion from hope to despair.

The two men looked at each other in silent sympathy; then the judge said, hopefully:

“Sometimes these reports from the battle-field are exaggerated—sometimes totally false, as in the case of your reported death. Perhaps this may prove a cannard.”

“Let us hope so,” said Arthur Linwood; adding: “I was about to suggest that we make further investigations before we give up hope, and as you will not wish to leave your daughter just now, permit me to go and find out if possible the real truth of the matter, which I will report to you as soon as I can.”

The judge was only too glad to avail himself of the kindness of the noble young man who already seemed like an old friend, his connection with Rolfe Maxwell forming a bond of union between their hearts.

Arthur Linwood bowed himself out, casting back a sympathetic glance at the beautiful bowed head of the hapless girl who knew not whether to call herself wife or widow.

He thought, enthusiastically:

“It is no wonder that Maxwell told me he had married the most beautiful and charming woman in the world. I have never seen any one to compare with her for beauty and grace, though I have traveled over half the world, and seen many beauties in my time. I am glad she told me so soon that she was married, for my head was in a whirl as soon as I saw her radiant face, and I should have been seas over in love in ten minutes if I had not found out so soon that the case would be hopeless. But now, I pray Heaven, that the news may not be true, and that Maxwell may live for the happiness awaiting him in his young bride’s love. It must have been a terrible mistake that parted them, for if ever I read devotion on a woman’s face it shone on hers in that moment when she met me, believing I was her husband.”

Meanwhile, Viola and her father remained at their hotel, waiting in the keenest suspense for news, until some hours later when he returned.

“The report is unfortunately true,” he said, sorrowfully. “Poor Rolfe is indeed badly wounded, and the impression is that he must die. But cheer up, my friends, for you know the old saying, while there’s life there’s hope. I have learned that Rolfe has been brought from the battle-field to a hospital near Havana, and I consider it a hopeful sign that he was able to bear the journey. Now I believe that with the aid of the Consul-General we may be permitted to visit the hospital.”

Viola looked up and spoke the first sentence she had uttered for hours.

“Oh, for sweet pity’s sake, let us hasten the arrangements!” she cried, feverishly.

Captain Linwood, the young American hero, or Rolfe Maxwell, as we shall henceforth know him, lay with half-closed, dark, weary eyes on his cot in the hospital ward, thinking half regretfully of what the surgeon on his afternoon round had just said to him:

“Cheer up, my lad, cheer up! You’re worth a dozen dead men yet. I’m just going out to send a report to the newspapers that the story of your being mortally wounded is all bosh. A young fellow with a splendid physique like yours is not going to die of some severe scratches and an arm broken in two places by bullets because he waved the Cuban flag so high in the enemy’s face. I’ll own that you’re disabled from fighting for many months to come. But what of that? You need a rest, and if you recuperate fast, you can go home to your friends in a few weeks, and there’s still a sound arm to embrace your best girl with, ha! ha! Come now, brighten up, I say! You don’t show as much pluck in bearing pain as you did in facing the enemy; but you’ve got to cultivate cheerfulness just to aid your recovery.”

He went away rather anxious over his patient’s settled despondency, and Rolfe lay ruminating with a feverish flush on his cheeks and a hopeless sorrow in his fine dark eyes.

“Ah, if he only knew how little I care to get well, and that both arms might as well have been broken, for they will never again embrace a woman’s form in love. Why did not the Spanish soldiers give me release in the midst of battle from this torture of life? Must I indeed recover in spite of myself when I would rather die, even though I know she would not shed one tear when she heard that my heart was still at last—the heart that loved her fatally and too well?”

Some familiar lines he had often read seemed to float mockingly through his weary brain:

“I go—and she doth miss me not!

So shall I die, and be forgot—

Forgot as is some sorrow past,

Or cloud by fleeting sickness cast.

“Death and the all-absorbing tomb

Will hide me in eternal gloom.

And she will live—as gay—alone,

As though I had been never known.”

He closed his heavy eyes as soft footsteps and the flutter of a woman’s robe came down the ward between the rows of white beds. Some one suddenly knelt beside his narrow cot.

“A kind Sister of Charity to pray for me,” he thought; but a soft hand fell on his head caressingly, and tears splashed down hotly on his wasted cheek.

“Rolfe, my darling husband!” sobbed a tender voice, and his eyes flashed open wildly.

“Viola! Is this a dream?”

“No, it is not a dream, my darling. It is your wife, Viola, your true, loving wife. Do not be excited, dear, for the good doctor said I must be careful, lest the happiness of seeing me might agitate you too much. Be quiet, dear, for I will do all the talking after you have just said you will forgive me for causing you so much sorrow. But I have so much to tell you, and the first thing is this: Papa made a great mistake, for I loved you all the while, and we shall never be parted again!” sealing the promise with a tender, lingering kiss.

THE END.

Transcriber’s Notes:

This story was originally serialized in the Fireside Companion story paper from July 24, 1897 to September 25, 1897.

The original Hart Series edition of this book included a promotional preview of Nameless Bess; or, The Triumph of Innocence (chapters I-III) at the end. This extra material, plus a rear cover advertisement for issues 1-103 of the series, have been excluded from this electronic edition.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

Some inconsistent hyphenation (e.g. “tomorrow” vs. “to-morrow”) has been retained from the original.

Unusual capitalization of some chapter titles in the table of contents has been retained from the original.

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Table of Contents

- VIOLA’S VANITY;

- INDEX

- VIOLA’S VANITY

- CHAPTER I.

- CHAPTER II.

- CHAPTER III.

- CHAPTER IV.

- CHAPTER V.

- CHAPTER VI.

- CHAPTER VII.

- CHAPTER VIII.

- CHAPTER IX.

- CHAPTER X.

- CHAPTER XI.

- CHAPTER XII.

- CHAPTER XIII.

- CHAPTER XIV.

- CHAPTER XV.

- CHAPTER XVI.

- CHAPTER XVII.

- CHAPTER XVIII.

- CHAPTER XIX.

- CHAPTER XX.

- CHAPTER XXI.

- CHAPTER XXII.

- CHAPTER XXIII.

- CHAPTER XXIV.

- CHAPTER XXV.

- CHAPTER XXVI.

- CHAPTER XXVII.

- CHAPTER XXVIII.

- CHAPTER XXIX.

- CHAPTER XXX.

- CHAPTER XXXI.

- CHAPTER XXXII.

- CHAPTER XXXIII.

- CHAPTER XXXIV.

- CHAPTER XXXV.

- CHAPTER XXXVI.

- CHAPTER XXXVII.

- CHAPTER XXXVIII.

- CHAPTER XXXIX.

- CHAPTER XL.

- CHAPTER XLI.

- Transcriber’s Notes:

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE