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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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