Kitabı oku: «Clever Betsy», sayfa 5

CHAPTER X
ON THE RIVERSIDE

Pools of heavenly tints; living emerald, and beryl; boiling springs, the scalding water bubbling with intense force; Nature’s wonders ever varied, entertained the party on their way to the Old Faithful Inn, – the luxurious log-cabin of the Yellowstone.

Arrived there, each one took a long breath as if it were a Mecca reached. The examination of the curious and fascinating structure, with the woodsy green furnishings of the log bedrooms, which carried out the sylvan idea in all possible particulars, entertained the tourists until they were admitted to the dining-room.

Betsy looked with rather sad eyes upon the waitresses, and suddenly her heart gave a little jump, for unless those eyes deceived her, Rosalie Vincent was tripping busily about at the other end of the room.

Mr. Derwent did not espy her evidently, for he led his party to another table, and the Bruces stopped halfway down the room. Not a word said Betsy, but her slow color rose. The crowd was great at this favorite place. Rosalie had evidently been sent on by the earliest stage, and Betsy shrewdly suspected that she would be kept here. She began planning at once an evening’s visit with the girl.

Mrs. Bruce was delighted with the novelty of the Inn and so far had not suggested any improvements.

“We must drive right after dinner to some of these wonderful places,” she said. “Isn’t it restful to think we haven’t to rush about and freeze to see Old Faithful, because it’s so regular! It’s a pity, though, that it doesn’t play exactly every hour. There’s five minutes or ten minutes over that you always have to remember.”

Irving shook his head. “These careless authorities,” he said.

Mrs. Bruce shrugged her shoulders. “I’m sure that was a very innocent remark,” she retorted.

“Innocent to simplicity, Madama; but remember what you lose in convenience by the present schedule, you gain in mathematical exercise.”

“I didn’t come out here for mathematical exercise,” began Mrs. Bruce; and went on to comment on some of the beauties of the morning drive; but Irving lost the thread of her remarks, for he happened to catch sight of Rosalie Vincent, and looked again more closely.

Not to interrupt Mrs. Bruce’s eulogies, he touched Betsy’s hand and motioned with his head toward the blonde waitress.

“Isn’t that the loved and lost?” he asked softly.

Betsy looked nonchalantly in the direction he indicated. “Why, so ’tis,” she said quietly.

Mrs. Bruce turned her eyeglasses upon them. “Of course if you and Betsy want to talk, don’t mind interrupting me.”

“Thanks, Madama. I’ve been drying Betsy’s tears all the morning shed for the loss of her blonde heaver; and I just discovered her, that’s all. You’ll excuse me, won’t you?”

Mrs. Bruce peered near-sightedly down the hall, but saw nothing nearly so interesting as her soup, so returned to it.

Betsy waited for Irving’s next words, expecting they might be of recognition; but he went on eating, as he added: —

“You’d better make it a point to see her, this trip, and tell her to try her hand at a pathetic tale for the Maiden’s Home Companion!”

Betsy gave a one-sided smile of relief. “Mrs. Bruce, you indulged this young man too much a spell back. He’d ought to been disciplined ’fore ’twas too late.”

“That from you!” returned Mrs. Bruce complacently. “You never wanted me even to contradict him.”

After dinner the men of the party put the four women into a wagon, whose driver was warranted to let Mrs. Bruce lose nothing which could be seen and heard in one afternoon, and started off for a tramp.

Their first pause was at the exquisite liquid flower known as the Morning Glory Pool. The wondrous color and shape of this spring held them long. Some one, either with a wish to test its depth, or desiring to furnish the blue morning glory with a pistil, had dropped a stick into its centre.

Irving smiled at his own thoughts. “The driver is lucky if Madama doesn’t make him get out and fish for that stick,” he thought.

After their ramble of an hour the friends halted near the Riverside Geyser, where the gathering crowd indicated that it would soon spout.

In moving about for desirable points of vantage, Mr. Derwent and Robert Nixon became separated from Irving, who from his greater height was satisfied with his position behind a knot of persons on the river bank. Among them was a young girl with her back to him. She was bareheaded and wore a white gown. Irving looked twice idly at her because her hair was pretty, and then noticed that a couple of soldiers, off duty, spoke to her and that she tried to repel them.

“Come now, Goldilocks,” said one of them ingratiatingly, in his hoarse voice, “wasn’t I introduced to you all right at Norris? Don’t be stuck up.”

He came closer, with open admiration. The girl made some soft reply, then turned, and there was no mistaking the look, half of annoyance and half of fear, in her childlike face.

Irving stepped forward instinctively, and recognized Betsy’s friend. He had noticed in the dining-room that the girl bore a resemblance to some one he had seen, but he had not been able to locate it.

“O Mr. Bruce!” she ejaculated involuntarily, coming nearer as if for protection.

The soldiers saw him lift his hat, and fell back.

“Rosalie – Miss Vincent – is it you?” said Irving, all Betsy’s interest and concern explained in a flash.

She shrank away. “I – I didn’t mean to speak to you,” she said naïvely; and she cast down her eyes with an expression which sent a thrill of compassion across the man’s heart-strings. He remembered Mrs. Pogram’s lachrymose tale, and Betsy’s romance of the morning. “I was afraid Mrs. Bruce would be offended to find me here, after all she has done for me,” went on Rosalie, her heart beating fast; “but – but I couldn’t help it.”

The artless words and the graceful, culprit attitude were appealing.

“I saw you in the dining-room, but didn’t remember you at first,” answered Irving. “I dare say you wouldn’t have chosen this work, but I hope you are getting some pleasure out of it.”

Rosalie shook her head. “It is very beautiful, and – and it wouldn’t be lonely if there weren’t any – any people about; but I don’t know how to get on very well with – with the others.”

Irving glanced over toward the young soldiers who were alive to Rosalie’s tête-à-tête. He could imagine that this golden head, on which the mountain sun was glinting, would be a shining mark for local admiration. Betsy’s disturbed feeling was becoming better understood with every moment.

“I had an hour to myself and I wanted so much to see this geyser play. I didn’t wait for my hat or anything. I just ran.” Rosalie put her hand to her bare head, apologetically.

“I’ve great curiosity to see this one, too,” replied Irving. “Why don’t we sit down till the show begins?” He indicated a spot on the greensward where a tree cast its shadow, for the afternoon sun was ardent.

“Please don’t think you must stay with me,” responded the girl, with a timid, grateful smile which made her prettier than ever. “I’m not really at all afraid of those soldiers. Perhaps I did meet them with a waitress at Norris who knows them all; and they don’t mean any harm.”

“I dare say not; but sit down, Miss Rosalie. It’s as good a place to wait as any.”

So she obeyed, quite frightened and happy. Frightened because she did not know what moment her powerful benefactress might appear on the scene, and happy because – because – well, she had during two whole seasons admired Irving Bruce from afar and looked very wistfully at the girls who shared his summer fun; and now he was disposing his large person near her on the grass as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“You and Betsy Foster had a long séance yesterday in the stage, didn’t you?” he said, leaning on his elbow and looking up into the blue eyes that he could see were not quite at ease.

“Yes, indeed. Oh, what it was to get hold of Betsy’s hand and sit beside her all the morning!”

“Why didn’t she tell Mrs. Bruce and me that one of our old neighbors was in our party?”

“She knew,” Rosalie flushed, “that I dreaded to have Mrs. Bruce know it.”

“Why? I can’t imagine why.”

“Because Mrs. Bruce helped me so much, and meant me to do something so different. She gave me a course in English in the fine school at Lambeth, and she had a right to expect I would be teaching, and doing her kindness credit.”

“Time enough for that in the fall, I should think.”

“But I haven’t any position. I had no way to – to live until – I could get one.” The speaker averted her face, not so quickly but that Irving saw the blue eyes were swimming.

Had Rosalie been the most artful of girls she could not have planned words and actions more effective to win the championship of Mrs. Bruce’s son, knowing as he did the history of her flight.

“I met Mrs. Pogram a few weeks ago in Fairport,” he replied. “She told me of her loss of you.”

Rosalie did not speak. She furtively wiped her eyes.

“Does Mrs. Pogram know where you are?”

“No. It seems unkind, for I know she is fond of me; but I promised her that if I were in any trouble I would write her; and if she knew where I was, her brother would know, and I – I can’t endure him!” The girl finished with a flash of energy.

“You show faultless taste,” returned Irving. “Don’t be afraid of Mrs. Bruce. She won’t expect you to be teaching English in the Yellowstone.”

“They have an English of their own,” returned Rosalie. “Probably if you knew what I am, you wouldn’t be talking to me as if I were a summer girl.”

Her faint smile suddenly shone upon him, for she felt he meant to placate Mrs. Bruce.

Irving laughed. “I do know something of the Park lingo. You’re taking another course in English, that’s all.”

“Yes, I am.”

Rosalie suddenly thought of Miss Hickey and wondered what that young person would say if clairvoyance could show her this picture on the river bank.

“What are your plans, if it’s a fair question?” Irving asked.

“I haven’t any, Mr. Bruce.” Again the anxious look in the blue eyes. “Of course, I finish the season in the Park. If I don’t, I forfeit my expenses being paid to return.”

“Did they bring you ’way from Portland?”

“No, from Chicago.”

“Ah!” Irving raised his eyebrows, but asked no question. “You mustn’t let us lose sight of you,” he added.

“That’s very kind. What I have felt was that I mustn’t let you catch sight of me,” returned the girl naïvely. “I wasn’t afraid of you, Mr. Bruce, for I didn’t think you’d remember me at all; and – I do so appreciate your kindness.”

Irving looked at her with considering eyes. Her half-timid, half-respectful manner was novel, and the little burst of gratitude with which she finished was most agreeable. He recalled that Betsy had said that this girl, apparently so alone in the world, had been born and reared in luxury. With the eye of a connoisseur he regarded her now, and pictured what a triumphant march her girlhood would have been had she remained in the class of Fortune’s favorites.

Meanwhile Mr. Derwent and Robert Nixon, threading their way among the waiting knots of sightseers, approached the spot where the above conversation was taking place.

Mr. Derwent was first to perceive the pair.

“See there, Robert,” he said, with his crisp, short manner of speech. “I think we’ve seen only one head that matches the Yellowstone?”

His nephew followed the direction of the other’s fixed gaze.

“Well, I’ll – be – ” he began, “if there isn’t Brute, fussing our heaver.”

Mr. Derwent laid a restraining hand on the arm of his companion, who made an instant move in his friend’s direction.

“Not a bit of it,” replied Robert, close to his uncle’s ear. “It’s up to us to rescue her. She isn’t his heaver.”

“She doesn’t look as if she wished to be rescued,” remarked Mr. Derwent; and the concern in his face moved his irreverent nephew to merriment.

“You see Hebe isn’t a goddess, after all,” he remarked into the rubber device which hung about his uncle’s neck. “Just a nice, every-day heaver; and her hair’s caught Brute. Let’s go and see.”

Mr. Derwent’s face was impassive as he followed. The childlike eyes and the modest demeanor of the pretty waitress had greatly attracted him. He was sorry to find her like this.

Bruce sprang to his feet as they approached. He read mischief in Robert’s eyes, and his own were unresponsive.

Robert nodded and grinned cheerfully at Rosalie before Irving could get possession of what Robert termed his uncle’s rubber ear. Then he said with a distinctness intended to awe and repress Nixie, “I have found an old friend, Mr. Derwent. A young lady whose home is where we go in summer. Let me present you to Miss Vincent.”

Robert reconstructed his countenance as well as he could, and Mr. Derwent’s face cleared as he raised his hat. “Mr. Nixon, Miss Vincent,” went on Irving severely.

“I have waited on these gentlemen,” said the girl, looking at Mr. Derwent.

“You deserted our stage this morning,” he answered, and deliberately dropped upon the grass beside Rosalie, while she explained, blushing, how she had been hurried on early because of the crowds.

“Pooh!” said Robert aside to Irving. “Old friend of yours?” He snapped his fingers. “Piffle! Likewise gammon. She’s fed us for two days.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” responded Irving stiffly. “Otherwise I couldn’t quite understand your greeting of her as you came up.”

Robert laughed unrestrainedly. “Just got off with my skin, eh?”

“She’s all alone out here,” said Irving, flushing under the sincerity of his friend’s merriment, but continuing to scowl.

“She is, eh?” returned Nixie. “Then all I have to say is she must be the author of that spooky declaration, ‘I’m never less alone than when alone.’ See there,” motioning with his head toward an advancing group of women, “there come the rest of us. We can’t lose ’em.”

CHAPTER XI
FACE TO FACE

The ladies had left their wagon, to move about and break the long drive by the view of the Riverside Geyser in action. As they approached their friends, Mrs. Nixon put up her lorgnette.

“Isn’t that my brother sitting there on the grass?” she asked.

“Certainly it is, and there are the boys,” rejoined Mrs. Bruce with satisfaction, hastening her steps.

Behind them followed Betsy Foster and Miss Maynard.

“To whom is Henry talking?” asked Mrs. Nixon. “Why, – why, Mrs. Bruce! I never knew him to do anything so strange! It’s that waitress – that waitress that came on with us in the stage.”

“I didn’t notice her,” returned Mrs. Bruce. “I was always sitting in front.”

“She has waited on us at the hotels,” said Mrs. Nixon, and her tone grew colder. “Men are so thoughtless. I liked the girl so much. I was seriously thinking of making an arrangement with her for the fall – ”

Here, as they had come within speaking distance, Mrs. Nixon’s lips closed. Mr. Derwent’s necessarily devoted attitude as he now tried to catch something Rosalie was saying settled the matter with Mrs. Nixon, and lost the girl her chance of an assured winter home.

Mrs. Bruce stared curiously at the bare golden head; and Miss Maynard and Betsy, following, descried Mr. Derwent and the waitress at the same moment.

“Rosalie!” said Helen Maynard, under her breath.

“Do you know her?” asked Betsy, in surprise.

“Yes. We were at school together.”

Betsy’s footsteps quickened, for she felt vaguely that Rosalie might indeed need protection now.

Mrs. Bruce began speaking with her usual energy.

“I’m so glad we’re in time, Irving. I told that driver if he didn’t get us back at the right moment to see this geyser play, he’d never be forgiven. We’ve been to the oddest place called Biscuit Basin; a great pool just covered with nicely browned biscuit. It made one hungry to look at them. But the hot water we splashed through to get there! I shall be boiled yet in this place.”

The moment Rosalie caught sight of Mrs. Bruce, she sprang to her feet with supple swiftness. Mr. Derwent deliberately arose and met his sister’s disapproving eyes imperturbably. He put on the hat which for coolness he had been holding on his knee.

Rosalie flushed and paled and met Betsy’s eyes so entreatingly that the latter stepped forward by her employer’s side.

At that moment Mrs. Bruce for the first time gave her attention to the young girl.

“Why!” she said, and hesitated.

Irving knew that she was trying to place the memory of an individual who had once interested her.

“It is Miss Rosalie Vincent, Madama,” he said quietly. “She surprised me a few minutes ago.”

“It is Rosalie,” said Mrs. Bruce; and approaching, she shook hands with the girl she had befriended. In the same moment her alert mind recalled all that Mrs. Nixon had just said.

A waitress. The waitress who had traveled in their stage. The waitress with whom Betsy had talked yesterday.

Her manner cooled. The pupils of her eyes narrowed.

“I am surprised to see you here,” she said.

“I knew you would be,” was all the girl could answer, and her face burned.

Betsy spoke. “You wondered where her wings would carry her, Mrs. Bruce, and now you see. Good strong wings, you’ll agree, to go ’way across the continent.”

Rosalie lifted her eyes to her friend.

Mr. Derwent could not hear what was being said, but he gathered from the attitude of his sister and Mrs. Bruce and the painful crimson of Rosalie’s face, that some arraignment was taking place.

“I suppose even the best of women are cats at heart,” he reflected; then he spoke aloud. “Miss Vincent and I have been making discoveries. Her father was a connection of our family, and on the Glee Club with me at college.”

“Henry!” Mrs. Nixon seized the rubber disk that hung at his vest and spoke across it firmly. “I have just heard a man say that the geyser is beginning to play. Let us go closer to the bank.”

She took her brother’s arm and led him away. Mrs. Bruce did the same with Irving, who exchanged one glance with Betsy over her head as he yielded.

Robert followed with Miss Maynard, and Betsy put her arm around Rosalie.

“Now then, that’s over,” she said.

The girl’s eyes were still dilated and she did not speak.

Betsy gave her a gentle shake. “Brace up, Rosalie. Don’t be such a trembling little bird. Your soul’s your own. – Oh, my! Isn’t that wonderful!” For the geyser now burst forth with a rushing volume of water which rose and arched across the river at a height of eighty feet.

Betsy and Rosalie hastened down the bank beyond the crowd, where they had a full view of the aerial waterfall sparkling in the sunshine as it plunged foaming into the river.

When the exhilarating show was over, Betsy turned to her companion.

“There! Ain’t that worth a good bit o’ sacrifice to see?”

The girl’s hands were clasped on her breast, and her eyes shining.

“You look as admirin’ as a chipmunk,” said Betsy; and they both laughed.

“Oh, supposing we were alone out here, Betsy! Wouldn’t it be beautiful!” sighed the girl.

“’Twould, as sure as you’re born; but we ain’t bondholders, so we have to work our way, both of us; and it’s worth it. That’s what I say, and that’s what I want you to feel.”

“I wouldn’t mind if no one else minded,” said Rosalie meekly.

“Don’t mind, anyway,” returned Betsy stoutly. “That’s what I was just sayin’. Your soul’s your own – ”

“But she spent so much money on me.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know; but if I could pay it back, and needn’t care how her eyes look – ”

“Very likely you will pay her some day. Meanwhile keep a stiff upper lip. Don’t act as if you’d done anything wrong, ’cause you haven’t.”

“I’m not clever,” mourned Rosalie. “Look at Helen Maynard. See what she has done. She was a poor girl, too. She was older than I, and we seldom met at school; but she studied practical things. I was so happy, and my teachers so delightful, but what did it fit me for?”

“Nothin’, and I knew it,” responded Betsy bluntly.

“It made life brighter and fuller,” said Rosalie, and her eyes looked away to where Betsy knew she could not follow. Her old idea of the princess in exile returned upon her with force as she gazed at the girl, for Rosalie drew herself up unconsciously; leafy shadows lay in her pensive eyes and brocaded her white gown, while an arrow of sunlight gilded the braided coronet of her hair.

“Although I went back to washing Mrs. Pogram’s dishes, I didn’t live in that kitchen,” she went on softly. “There were great fields – green fields and pastures new, where my thoughts went roving.”

They both kept silence for a space; then Rosalie came back from her short day-dream and met her friend’s eyes. “I don’t think I have a bad disposition?” she said questioningly.

“I’ve never seen any signs of it,” returned Betsy dryly.

“There are moments when I wish I had borne with Loomis. One of them was when Mr. Derwent said he had known my father; and Mrs. Nixon looked at me from such a lofty height!” The girl’s cheeks burned again.

Betsy heaved a quiet sigh. “There’s only one thing the matter with you, Rosalie.” As she spoke, Betsy ran her fingers down the girl’s backbone, and the latter squirmed away. “It’s your spine.”

“What’s the matter with it?” asked Rosalie, startled.

“I don’t know; but ’tain’t stiff enough.” Betsy smiled faintly into her companion’s puzzled face. “Seems sort o’ tough to be born a vine, and then not be given a thing to cling to.” She shook her head. “You was born a vine, Rosalie, and now that the supports have been pulled out, you can either trail along the ground where every passer-by is likely to step on you, or you can reach around till you find a new support for yourself.”

She paused, and Rosalie looked troubled and thoughtful.

“Vines ain’t left altogether helpless,” went on Betsy. “They’re given lots o’ tendrils, and they lay hold o’ the queerest and most unpromising things sometimes and begin to pull themselves up.”

“But who wants to be a parasite!” exclaimed Rosalie. “They destroy!”

“A wholesome vine only benefits,” answered the other; “and it mustn’t be content with shrinkin’ along the ground and invitin’ everybody to step on it, and hurt it. Even a vine has its own sort of backbone, its own power, and it hasn’t a thing to fear. It’ll find its place to climb if it looks up and not down.”

“There’s one trellis I wish I could have,” said Rosalie wistfully, gazing at her friend, “and its name is Betsy Foster.”

“Come now, Rosalie; that’s pretty hard.” The older woman’s lips twitched. “I’ve got some flesh on my bones.”

“O Betsy! Dear Betsy!” burst forth the girl lovingly. “Clever Betsy, as Captain Salter calls you.”

“You know Hiram, do you?”

“Yes, indeed; and when I first came to Fairport, – it was the winter before Mrs. Bruce sent me to school, – he told me about you, and told me you’d be there in summer with this rich family, and that if I could get you for a friend it would be the best thing that could happen to me; and it has been, Betsy – except that it did give me that bitter-sweet school experience.” The girl put her arm around her companion. “Captain Salter told me so much about you – how you had always managed to do for people in the village. He thinks you’re a wonder.”

Miss Foster started to speak, but changed her mind and merely grunted. Then, after a silent moment of endurance of the girl’s embrace, she changed the subject.

“Unwind that tendril now,” she said, taking Rosalie’s hand and moving her away; “and be careful, child, who you do reach out to,” she added seriously.

“Oh, are you going, Betsy?” exclaimed the girl, troubled.

The woman hesitated. “You let me go tell Mrs. Bruce that I’ll walk back to the hotel so they won’t wait for me. They’re probably all in the wagon by this time, and wonderin’ where I am.”

“I’ll wait right here,” returned Rosalie eagerly, and she stood watching Betsy’s retreating figure with wistful eyes.

Miss Foster presented herself in the group who were waiting for the carriage, and announced to Mrs. Bruce her wish to walk back to the hotel.

“With that girl, I suppose,” said Mrs. Bruce, scorn in her voice. “Do as you please, Betsy. I’ve certainly had one more lesson in letting well enough alone. It is likely she never would have grumbled with her bread and butter and left Mrs. Pogram, if I had not been the means of putting ideas into her head. I’m obliged to admit that you were right, Betsy, when you talked to me about it a few weeks ago.” Mrs. Bruce gave a little sigh. “I wish I weren’t so warm-hearted and impulsive. Doesn’t it lead one into lots of trouble, Mrs. Nixon?”

Mrs. Nixon was of the opinion that it did; and she still held by the arm a victim of misguided emotion. Irving and Robert had disappeared.

“Come home in the carriage with us, Henry,” she said to her captive. “There will be a vacant place now.”

There was still wandering upon the river bank among the overhanging trees a golden-haired dryad, whose presence caused the lady to desire the sanctuary of the park wagon for her brother until she could have a few words with him in private.

This she accomplished after they reached the hotel and she had lured him out upon the large upper veranda, where reclining chairs invited wanderers to repose in the sunshine.

Mr. Derwent recognized the symptoms of extreme solicitude for his comfort, and smiles which were like flashes of heat-lightning. His sister was a woman of much poise, and heat-lightning seldom portends showers; still they had been known to arrive before the atmosphere could clear, and he had the ordinary masculine dread of them.

After accepting the chair beside his sister which she offered to him, he leaned back with every evidence of comfort, and his first words adroitly changed her aggression to defense.

“You take trifles far too seriously, Marion,” he observed.

She stared, and he smilingly offered her the rubber disk.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“Oh, yes, you do.”

Mrs. Nixon compressed her lips.

“You misunderstand entirely,” she said at last. “I took a very great fancy to that young girl.”

“It does you credit, Marion.”

“And you’ve spoiled everything,” she retorted. “I was going to arrange to have her come to us in Boston.”

“In what capacity?”

“Waitress, of course. And now you’ve made it impossible.”

“It always would have been impossible. I couldn’t think of allowing Gorham Vincent’s daughter to wait on our table. I highly approve of having her come to us, however, – the charming creature.”

“What are you thinking of?”

“Why, it seems she has no one belonging to her.”

“Henry!” said Mrs. Nixon sonorously, “the home circle is sacred.”

She was greatly startled; and she looked at the insouciant face and figure of her brother with repressed exasperation.

“It is a small circle in our case, certainly.”

“Now that Robert is at home, we shall be three,” returned the lady.

It was her house, and her home circle; and even though her wealthy bachelor brother was its most valuable asset, she did not intend to cede her rights.

There was a space of silence; then she spoke accusingly again.

“I have been thinking the last week, Henry, that perhaps in bringing your stenographer on this trip, and making her of use to me also, you have had it in mind to suggest, on our return, that she remain with us.”

Mr. Derwent’s eyes were fixed on the landscape. He did not respond at once, and Mrs. Nixon, looking at him sharply, was in doubt whether to interpret his silence as a guilty one.

“Marion,” he said at last, “do you often think of Alan?”

“Why – ” Mrs. Nixon paused in her surprise at this irrelevancy, – “why, yes, I do.” It was with an effort that her thought unclasped itself from the present, to revert to the unfortunate one of the family: the brother whose every effort to succeed in life had seemed to be thwarted; whose children had died, and whose own life had suddenly and unexpectedly closed before he had arrived at middle age.

Mr. Derwent’s lips compressed under his white mustache, and his nostrils dilated.

Mrs. Nixon observed the change in his face with some dismay. She could not remember when she had last heard him refer to their sorrow. For the first time she realized that this was perhaps because it had gone too deep.

He still kept his gaze ahead as he continued, in detached sentences: “I never sympathized enough with Alan. I let him fight alone too long. I criticised when I should have carried him. There is no torture like that unavailing regret. Yesterday is dead, and repining is weakness. The only atonement I can make is to look on each individual need that presents itself before me, and ask myself what I would do now if that need was Alan’s.”

Mrs. Nixon was silent; her folded hands tightened. She was beholding an unsuspected wound, hidden always beneath her brother’s imperturbable exterior; and the apparition held her tongue-tied.

They both kept silence while the shadow crept along the veranda rail. At last Mr. Derwent spoke again in his ordinary manner, and with deliberation.

“I have had some such thought as you suspect concerning Helen Maynard.”

“Is the girl friendless? Where has she been living?” returned Mrs. Nixon defensively, conscious that when this subdued moment had passed, she should find a hundred embarrassments in the prospect of housing her brother’s stenographer.

“She has been living in a boarding-house. She has grandparents on a farm in the country.”

Mrs. Nixon maintained an ominous silence. Her brother changed his position, and an odd look of amusement grew in his averted eyes.

“I have made up my mind to tell you what has been a secret up to now, Marion.”

This quiet sentence sent a stream of color over his companion’s face; evidence of a shock that sent a wild throng of thoughts careering through her brain.

Horrors! What was coming now? Her brother, whose fortune, as everybody knew, was to go to Robert; her brother, whose affliction made him averse to society! Could such a thing be as that this very narrowing of his social life had thrown him back on the society and sympathy of the neat, well-groomed girl, who was his right hand at the office.

Why, of course! and Mrs. Nixon called herself imbecile for never having feared it. She reproached herself wildly for not having provided better for his recreation. More card-parties, more reading aloud; more sympathy in the travel-lectures he enjoyed. Oh, fool that she had been! Probably he had escorted Miss Maynard to those very lectures, and she had elucidated the pictures.