CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BEQUEST 
 
 WILLIAM P. CHAPMAN, Jr. 
 
 Class of 1895 
 
 1947 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PS 2359.M16R3 
 
 The red rose of Savannah :a novel /by A. 
 
 3 1924 022 498 905 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022498905 
 
THE 
 
 SOUTHERN "ROSE" SERIES. 
 
 THE WHITE ROSE OF MEMPHIS 
 
 BY W. C. FALKNER. 
 
 Price, $i.oo 
 
 THE RED ROSE OF SAVANNAH 
 
 BY A. S. M. 
 
 Price,$i.oo 
 
 THE YELLOW ROSE OF NEW ORLEANS 
 
 BY A. S. M. 
 Author of " The Red Bose of SaTannah." 
 Price, $i.oo 
 
 THE PINK ROSE OF MEXICO 
 
 BY A. S. M. 
 Author of "The Red Rose of SavaDnah." 
 
 Price, $i.oo 
 
 The above popular books have an im 
 mense sale throughout the South. 
 
 G. W. Dillingham. Publisher, 
 Ne-w York. 
 
THE RED ROSE 
 
 OF SAVANNAH 
 
 Bt a. S. M. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 Copyright, 1894, By 
 
 W. DILLINGHAM, PUBLISHER, 
 SwccEssoR TO G. W. Carleton & Ca 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This is a simple story, stating only bare 
 facts. Each reader may look at it from 
 his or her own particular standpoint. 
 In an earlier novel, the author was 
 severely criticised by most of the news- 
 paper critics for having produced a hero 
 and heroine impossibly good, and for not 
 having made allowance enough for their 
 "animal inheritance." 
 
 The following episode will at least 
 escape that judgment. It is presented to 
 the reader in nude reahty, unadorned by 
 flowery thought or needless remark. 
 
 A. S. M. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 C!BASTBB PAOB 
 
 I. On the Eialto 7 
 
 II. APublicMan 17 
 
 III. The Eed Rose of Savannah 26 
 
 rV. " A Pretty Foot " 89 
 
 V. "ILoveToul Loveyoul" 56 
 
 VI. At " The Chambers "— " Bumpers " of 
 
 Champagne "75 
 
 Vn. Mrs. Foster ; A Strange Home 96 
 
 VIII. The Tragic/ Tmth 116 
 
 IX. On the World 137 
 
 X The Novel 156 
 
 XI. Desertion 169 
 
 xn. Foster's Visit 187 
 
 XIII. Flight 201 
 
 XIVT Magdalena Villa 215 
 
 XV. TheNameless Baby 231 
 
 XYL The FinalJustice of f roTideuce 251 
 
THE EED ROSE OF SATAMAH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ON THE RIALTO. 
 
 There was commotion on the Bialto. 
 A girl about nineteen years old had 
 fainted and was lying upon the broad 
 pavement. The beautiful face, almost 
 childish in its youthfulness, was like 
 marble, and even the finely moulded 
 lips wore a death-like pallor. Her eye- 
 brows were most remarkable. In contour 
 
 they were almost perfect, and gracefully 
 
 7 
 
ON TBS niALTO. 
 
 arched. But they were black as jet 
 and heavy almost to deformity. By 
 just escaping the latter, they became 
 her chief beauty, as is not infrequently 
 the case with a questionable feature. 
 
 A big, strong man with a kindly 
 face, picked up the fragile form and 
 tenderly laid the fair head on his com- 
 fortable shoulder. The luxuriant golden 
 brown hair became loosened and fell 
 in unconfined masses over both their 
 shoulders like a rich cloak. A letter in 
 a United States Senate envelope was 
 clasped tightly in one of the girl's small 
 ladylike hands. He carried her, stiU 
 unconscious, to the address the letter bore, 
 under the name of Miss Elsie McHenry. 
 
 It was some two or three blocks to the 
 
ON TBE BlALfO. 
 
 house, and as they walked along the 
 pretty white face upturned, and the long 
 dark lashes in such striking contrast, 
 fringing the closed eyelids, a corpulent, 
 quick-stepping and well-dressed man of 
 middle age met the strange procession. 
 Natural curiosity led him to stop and see 
 what was the matter. It was only for 
 an instant. Then his face blanched, his 
 small black eyes scintillated, and he was 
 heard to ejaculate in an agonized — or was 
 it a terrified ? — voice, " Great God, it's 
 Elsie ! " Then he walked rapidly to the next 
 corner and boarded the down-town cable. 
 
 The big man with his apparently life- 
 less burden, a dozen or more followers, 
 and a pohceman or two, soon arrived at a 
 most respectable four-story, brown-stone 
 
10 OJSr THM niALTO. 
 
 dwelling, where it was supposed the girl 
 lived. One o£ the policemen rang the 
 bell. 
 
 The door was opened by a cold-looking 
 but clean woman of fifty, who said she 
 was the matron. She recognized Miss 
 McHenry as having engaged a room 
 of her a few days before, and said she 
 knew the child had not been very well 
 since she came. 
 
 The kindly man laid her gently on the 
 snowy bed, and as he did so the slight jar 
 roused her to semi-consciousness. The 
 sad, fawn-like, brown eyes opened wearily, 
 a grateful, tired smile suffused them, and 
 the coarsely-dressed man felt amply repaid 
 for caring for her in her helplessness. 
 Then the eyes closed again and she lay 
 
ON THE niALTO. \\ 
 
 perfectly still. A doctor was summoned. 
 
 Elsie McHenry was strangely ill. 
 
 " Ronald," she murmured softly, " Eon- 
 aid," and then the same deathlike 
 silence. 
 
 For nearly two weeks this comatose 
 condition existed unchanged. She ate 
 nothing, and said nothing. She seemed 
 thoroughly exhausted and resting. If she 
 woke, it was just to plead, with her speak- 
 ing eyes, for a caress ; for some one to 
 smooth her hair or hold her hand. Then 
 she would nestle in a weak, infantile way 
 against the new friendly hand, and drop 
 off to slumber again. 
 
 The girl was a total stranger to these 
 people, yet they were good to her. The 
 physician seemed, from the first of her 
 
12 ON TBB BIALTO. 
 
 illness, to take a strange, abnormal interest 
 in his fragile charge. 
 
 As soon as she woke and was some- 
 what recovered from the lengthened 
 stupor, he took the frousled head on his 
 arm, and told her the terrible truth, — told 
 her that she would be a mother in a few 
 months, but that he would care for her, 
 and she need not even tell him her story 
 unless she liked. This was in order to 
 soothe her, for as soon as she heard the 
 word mother, her face took a terrified 
 agonized expression, and she cried out in 
 fierce anguish, " Please kill me ! " begging 
 them to murder her, and finally telling 
 them, when she became calmer, that God 
 would not let such a thing happen, for He 
 knew all, and that she was good. " Be- 
 
ON TEE RIALTO. 13 
 
 lieve me," she cried in deep despair, *'I 
 am not bad, not at all. McHenry is not 
 my name, but I cannot, dare not tell you 
 the truth." Then she swooned, and woke 
 in a delirious condition, crying out for the 
 doctor to save her, and all night long the 
 wailing moan echoed in the stiU room, 
 " Save me ! Mamma, mamma ! " 
 
 The doctor who had been called seemed 
 a good-hearted man, and soothed her. 
 " Yes, yes, I'll do it, go to sleep." When 
 she had fallen asleep he said aloud to him- 
 self, " She's nothing but a baby ; not more 
 than nineteen. Damn him, whoever he 
 is, to throw such an angel on the world 
 this way. She has been shamefully and 
 outrageously treated by some one, and she 
 loves him even now so well that she 
 
14 ON IRE RIALTO. 
 
 will ^ot tell, though it be to save her 
 life." 
 
 Strange as it may seem, believing all 
 these things, he never shrank from caring 
 for her most tenderly. But he thought a 
 great deal, and as she grew no better he 
 became curious to know who she really 
 was. 
 
 One day a stranger called and inquired 
 for Miss McHenry, It was the first per- 
 son that had ever been to see the girl, 
 and when she looked at the card and in- 
 sisted, ill as she was, upon being dressed 
 and seeing him in the reception-room, they 
 had to obey her, and she went; but the 
 doctor was on the qui vive. 
 
 " Oh, Ronald," he heard her say as she 
 sank, white and trembling, in the man's 
 
ON THE BIALTO. 15 
 
 arms as he met her, " Ronald," and 
 a dry sob choked her voice, "take me 
 away and be married again. This doctor 
 says," and the pretty lips were placed 
 against his ear for some minutes. Then 
 he pushed her from him, and, with a heart- 
 rending cry which brought the doctor to 
 her side, she turned and would have fall- 
 en, had he not carried her to her room. 
 The strange man left and never called 
 again at that house, but the shrewd doctor 
 kept the card the sick girl had dropped. 
 
 That night marked a serious relapse. 
 For twenty days and nights the fair young 
 stranger, Elsie McHenry, lay at the point 
 of death. 
 
 The doctor had been in the world long 
 enough to see that this man, about whose 
 
16 ON TBE MIALTO. 
 
 n^k Elsie had thrown her arms, and 
 whom she had loved too well by far, was 
 one of those who set their fancy upon a fair, 
 sweet creature like his patient, lie in wait 
 for it, beset it with kindness, persevere 
 in overcoming its wildness, win its confi- 
 dence at last, and then entangle it by 
 every appeal that can be made to its feeble 
 intelligence of such affairs. Then are 
 amused, delighted, proud of their success. 
 But the gikl t>i£s. 
 
A PUBLIC MAM. 17 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A PUBLIC MAN. 
 
 The Honorable Ronald P. Foster "was 
 one of the most noted men in the United 
 States. He was an Englishman, forty- 
 three years old. He was rotund and 
 robust, with black hair and eyes, and a 
 smooth face. He was what Americans 
 call a self-made man, the possessor of only 
 an ordinary education, but was active and 
 quick. He had, in his career, been a re- 
 porter on a western paper, government 
 
 clerk, founder and editor of an eastern- 
 2 
 
18 A PUBLIC MAN. 
 
 daily, office-holder, again editor, and had 
 finally connected himself with an old and 
 reHable insurance company. 
 
 Perhaps the Honorable Ronald P. Foster 
 had some reason for seeking retirement 
 from publicity. The truth of the matter 
 was, that the last amorous episode of his 
 eventful hfe was too serious to become 
 public. He doubtless thought so, and 
 doubtless his wife and intimate friends 
 shared his opinion. So in the weeks fol- 
 lowing the events of this story he was 
 ostensibly ill, and indeed secluded and out 
 of humor. He knew he was guilty of the 
 very lowest, basest act, so base that, hard- 
 ened as he was in sin, it weighed upon 
 even him. 
 
 At the age of twenty he was first mar- 
 
A PUBLIC MAN. 19 
 
 ried to the pretty but brainless daugliter 
 of a saloon-keeper in the western vil- 
 lage where both lived. They had two 
 children, boys, when, with his family, 
 Ronald Fostei' moved to Chicago and 
 became a newspaper reporter. 
 
 Employed on the same paper as the 
 young, impressionable and verdant f eUow, 
 was a woman somewhat older, perhaps 
 twenty-six or seven. She was one of the 
 curl-paper order, who wore loud hats with 
 her "frizzes," went to office, took assign- 
 ments, and was masculine. Some time 
 before she had left home and parents 
 for no reason whatever, had thrown her- 
 self into the lake, and tried in various 
 ways to make herseK notorious, all to no 
 purpose. She went to the city, and when 
 
20 A PUBLIC MAN. 
 
 the youthful and short-trousered Foster 
 came to hand she seized upon him. When 
 he was appointed to a clerkship in one of 
 the censuses, she followed him east and 
 demanded that he should care for her as 
 he was in duty bound to, which was true, 
 if unlicensed wrong has such a tie. 
 
 He sent her to Europe, presumably on 
 business for some paper. There the child 
 was born. Meanwhile his wife had been 
 led to the discovery of it all. She im- 
 mediately obtained a divorce, and the am- 
 orous young unfortunate was compelled to 
 marry the lake-bathed woman as soon as 
 the boat from Europe came to port. They 
 had a number of children. This was his 
 first illegitimate episode. 
 
 During the years that followed, it seemed 
 
A PUBLIC MAN. 21 
 
 that, as his mental ability increased, his 
 morals decreased in the same proportion. 
 When he became editor of a prominent 
 daily and was, in 1890, appointed to a 
 government office, many things were 
 rumored which this story wUl not even 
 mention. It only confines itself to this 
 one episode, covering a period from March 
 to the following January. The time when 
 the Hon. R. P. Foster entered the life of 
 the winsome and modest Rose of Savan- 
 nah, Elsie Vane. 
 
 Ronald Foster had been before tiie 
 public in many scandals, principally since 
 his assuming the governmental respon- 
 sibilities where there were so many young 
 girls under his official protection. One 
 newspaper gave him column after column 
 
22 A PXJBLIC MAN. 
 
 because of liis conduct, most reprehensi- 
 ble in tbe eyes of right-minded people, 
 wifh one of his clerks, a widow of about 
 forty. But this was before Elsie Vane's 
 time, and she was ignorant of it all. 
 
 It was current talk, too, among a cer- 
 tain class, that this man had broken up 
 the happy homes of others in his employ. 
 One woman, whose young husband was 
 the nephew of a prominent poHtician, he 
 had caused to be scandalized, and brought 
 about a divorce suit. The devoted young 
 fellow did not get over it, and went to the 
 bad. The wife, after securing the sepa- 
 ration, became an inmate of a questionable 
 place, deserted by the man who had black- 
 ened her life. 
 
 And yet such a man won Elsie. Had 
 
A PITS Lie MAN. 23 
 
 she only had the slightest warning ! But 
 it was all so sudden. It seemed to her that 
 she had loved him the moment he said, 
 "You are charming." 
 
 Naturally, a man with as much expe- 
 rience in affairs of this kind as had Ronald 
 P. Foster, could easily dupe a pure- 
 minded girl. In fact, events have shown 
 that these are the very ones chosen as 
 being easy of deception, as well as unso- 
 phisticated and chaste. 
 
 It is not at all unlikely that this par- 
 ticular branch of Uncle Sam's business 
 house contained other Elsie Vanes be- 
 side the one with whom this story con- 
 cerns itself. Let us only hope that they 
 were at least spared her sufferings. 
 
 Had she had a mother, or had she been 
 
24 A PUB Lid J/J.V. 
 
 under the control of a sensitive heart, and 
 the influence of the man she loved, she 
 might have escaped this fate ; but she was 
 ignorant and alone. 
 
 Bonald Foster was just the man to take 
 advantage of aU the opportunities for what 
 would usually be called self-abasement, 
 but from which just judgment he was 
 exempted, he thought, by his high posi- 
 tion. None would dare accuse him of 
 crime ; if the more bold papers did, there 
 were plenty left to uphold him in his 
 illegitimate intimacies. 
 
 And for many months he did hold com- 
 plete sway. 
 
 Wickedness at that time was rife in 
 Washington. Such an era had never been 
 known, as, in the face of indisputable facts, 
 
A PVSLiC MAit. 2a 
 
 the era of this man inaugurated. Un- 
 known numbers of happy lives were 
 wrecked, and family hopes shaken to the 
 very foundations. 
 
26 THM BED ROSE OF SAVANNAS. 
 
 CHAPTER ni. 
 
 THE BED KOSE OE SAYAHNAH. 
 
 Savannah is a beautiful city. Its insid- 
 iously reposeful climate, its charming 
 and hospitable old people, its voluptuous 
 middle-aged women, and its chic young 
 girls, all unite to make it beyond compare. 
 
 In a suburban cottage, just at the edge 
 of the city and completely surrounded by 
 trees, lived a United States senator with 
 his wife and only daughter, Elsie. 
 
 The little gem of a buildiqg was like a 
 chalet and sparkled like a ruby in the 
 
T^HE BUD ROSS: OF 8AVANNAti. 27 
 
 sun. Senator Vane had spent a fortune 
 in the construction of it. The building was 
 made of brilliant red brick,* pointed with 
 white. The window frames were paint- 
 ed a lively green, the woodwork brown, 
 bordering on yellow. The roof overhung 
 by several feet. A pretty gallery, with 
 open-work balustrade, surmounted the 
 lower floor and projected at the centre of 
 the f agade into a veranda with glass sides. 
 The ground floor had a charming salon 
 and a dining-room, separated from each 
 other by the landing of a staircase built 
 of wood, designed and decorated with 
 elegant simplicity. 
 
 Back of the dwelling was a truly Pa- 
 risian garden, and all over its walls, all 
 over the cottage, bordering the walks, 
 
28 Tst! USD nosx: op savannas. 
 
 . _i 
 
 in summer-liouses and on great trellises, 
 everywhere, was a profusidn of white 
 roses, which seemed blooming all the 
 time. 
 
 The interior of this charming cottage 
 harmonized with the exterior . The salon, 
 floored entirely with iron-wood, was 
 painted in a style that suggested the 
 beauties of Chinese lacquer. On black 
 panels, edged with gold, birds of every 
 color, foliage of impossible greens, and 
 fantastic Oriental designs glowed and 
 shimmered. The dining-room was entirely 
 sheathed in northern woods, carved and cut 
 in open-work like the beautiful Russian 
 chalets. One little ante-chamber, formed 
 by the odd staircase, was painted in old oak, 
 to represent Gothic ornament. The bed- 
 
THE RED BOSE OF SAVANNAH. 29 
 
 rooms were charming in their hangings 
 and costly simplicity. The study was 
 panelled from top to bottom most mag- 
 nificently, not unlike the mansions of 
 German royalty. 
 
 It was eminently the home of an aes- 
 thetic gentleman. A contented man. For 
 Senator Vane had not only a luxurious 
 home, an unimpeachable reputation and 
 national honor, but a devoted wife and 
 mother, and the most beautiful daughter 
 in Savannah. 
 
 As the story proceeds the reader wiU 
 not regret having learned in advance a 
 few particulars in regard to the home and 
 parents of Elsie, for at the age of seven- 
 teen people and things have as much in- 
 fluence upon the future life as a person's 
 
30 THM BSD B08E OF SAVANNAH, 
 
 own character — indeed, character often 
 receives ineffaceable impressions from its 
 surroundings. 
 
 At this age Elsie Vane was known all 
 over Savannah as the "Red Rose." How 
 she got the name, or how long she had 
 borne it, no one could exactly tell, but 
 every one approved the sobriquet. Per- 
 haps the aristocratic old senator first used 
 it because the rosy cheeks and bright face 
 of his httle child were a brilliant contrast 
 to the white roses which so abounded at 
 the cottage. However it was, the Red 
 Rose of Savannah bid fair to reign in her 
 native city. 
 
 She was unmistakably beautiful. Not 
 only pretty, but truly beautiful. Girls of 
 the south develop rapidly and it was de- 
 
THE nED HOSE OF SAVANNAa. 31 
 
 cided that Elsie should make her debut 
 before she was quite eighteen. On the 
 evening of that occasion, so portentous in 
 the life of a girl, she wore a soft and 
 snowy dress of silken mull, modestly out- 
 lining the bust and covering the shoulders, 
 leaving nothing to view but the first curves 
 of the throat where it joined the shoulders. 
 From the aspect of the young girl's face, 
 at once ethereal and intelligent, where the 
 delicacy of a Greek nose with its rosy nos- 
 trils and firm modelling marked something 
 positive and defined; where the poetry 
 enthroned upon an almost mystic brow 
 seemed belied at times by the pleasure- 
 loving expression of the mouth; where 
 candor claimed the depths profound and 
 varied of the eye, and disputed them with 
 
32 THE RED ROSE OF SAVANNAH. 
 
 a spirit of irony that was trained and 
 educated — from all these signs an observer 
 would have felt that this young girl, with 
 the keen, alert ear that waked at every 
 sound; with a nostril ever open to catch 
 the fragrance of the celestial flower of 
 the ideal, was a creature destined to be 
 the battle-ground of a struggle between 
 the poesies of the dawn and the labors of 
 the day; between fancy and reality; the 
 spirit and the real of life. Elsie was a 
 pure young girl, inquisitive after knowl- 
 edge, and filled with chastity. But yet 
 she was of the earth and human. She 
 was the Virgin of Spain rather than the 
 Madonna of Kaphael. 
 
 Had not adversity and its attending un- 
 foreseen ills come upon her, what might 
 
THE BED ROSE OF SAVANNAH. 33 
 
 not have been the great destiny of so 
 glorious a person ? 
 
 The husband and father had been ex- 
 pected home for the festivities, but, instead, 
 word had come from Washington, at the 
 very hour he should have arrived, that he 
 was dead. The news of hjs bankruptcy 
 had killed him suddenly. 
 
 It was a sad time in the pretty rose- 
 covered chhlet. And the young girl 
 showed strange fortitude jn supporting 
 her mother when the body of the good 
 senator was brought home. Elsie, too, it 
 was who sat with and nursed Mrs. Vane 
 after the funeral. But a ilionth later it 
 was a paler Elsie who had stood by the 
 grave of her mother, and come to the 
 full realization that she was an orphan. 
 
84 TBE BED ROSE OP SAVANNAH. 
 
 She knew she was the very last Vane in 
 existence, and that she had no relatives ; 
 not a single one, however distant, that she 
 knew o£. Destitute was Elsie. Even the 
 beloved home was no longer hers. Many 
 were the pangs to this sensitive heart, 
 upon leaving this garden spot with its 
 hosts of merry, childish memories. Words 
 will ever prove inadequate to express the 
 real suffering of youth's first grief. She 
 did not become ill, but her heart was 
 sore. 
 
 Different friends offered her the hos- 
 pitality of their respective homes, but the 
 girl would accept none, and, when her 
 father's colleague told her he could take 
 her to Washington and get her a govern- 
 ment position, she had passed through a 
 
THE RED ROSE OF S-^V^NNAH. 35 
 
 fearful and awful struggle with her pride. 
 But no one knew, and she humbly but 
 proudly accepted the kind offer. She 
 had been well educated, and she was a 
 clever artist and a good musician. A 
 lady born, her parents had taken special 
 pride in giving her receptive mind all the 
 advantages it craved. 
 
 And so it was that in less than three 
 months after her tragic sorrow, Elsie Vane 
 was sitting at a desk, doing clerical work, 
 the same as hundreds of other girls and 
 women, some of them ignoble and of 
 low rank. She felt her position keenly, 
 but never complained, for should she not 
 feel grateful for anything, situated as she 
 was ? So she pursued the even tenor 
 of her way, absolutely unacquainted and 
 
36 THE BED ROSE OF SAVANNAH. 
 
 alone, always late at her desk, for she had 
 not yet acquired the habit of early rising, 
 always alone, but pleasant. She could 
 not have frowned and looked long-faced 
 and ugly ; it was not in her nature. 
 
 The girl knew nothing about the various 
 government departments and their work- 
 ings, and had never, previous to this time, 
 been in Washington. And so it was that 
 she had been employed in the bureau 
 superintended by the Honorable Ronald P. 
 Foster some little time before she even 
 heard of that person, or knew exactly 
 where she was. In fact she had never 
 thought of the matter at all. She merely 
 knew that she was employed at a salary 
 of nine hundred dollars a year by the 
 government, and was conscious that she 
 
laE BED ROSE OF SAVANNAH. 37 
 
 was out of her element, but that could 
 not be helped at present. 
 
 She lived at the home of her father's 
 friend, who had secured the place for 
 her, but it was sombre and cheerless. He 
 was a busy man, seemed to regard Elsie 
 as completely settled, and never inquired 
 about her duties, nor went to see how she 
 was getting along. And so Elsie lived ; 
 under protection, but not protected as a 
 girl of her years should be, and daily 
 growing more beautiful and lovable. 
 
 Solitude sometimes inspires. It was so 
 with this pure girl, and under the inspira- 
 tion of her present situation, she began 
 putting to music certain stanzas she 
 specially loved, and would spend hours at 
 the piano of an evening, improvising and 
 
38 THE BED ROSE OF B&V^JiNNAB. 
 
 arranging with inexpressible charm of 
 sentiment at times. This was a step to 
 poetry, andiinally she began making the 
 lines from her own mind to better suit the 
 music. 
 
 " A rare, sweet girl ! " the senator and 
 his wife commented, as the melody floated 
 to them. 
 
"A PS.ETTT FOOT." S9 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 "a pretty foot." 
 
 Perhaps once a month the Hon. R. P. 
 Foster reviewed his force. That meant he 
 walked round among them occasionally, 
 asking a question of some attractive look- 
 ing girl about her method of work. On 
 these celebrated occasions word would be 
 heralded from elevator and guards, ''Fos- 
 tei" in the building," and the phrase was a 
 signal for the most zealous attention to 
 work. 
 
 The first time Elsie Vane heard it, and 
 
40 "A PRETTY FOOT." 
 
 saw the clerks all run to their places, she 
 made bold to ask the fat Qerman gu-lwho 
 sat next to her who "Foster" was, and 
 learned that he was the great and mighty 
 monarch o£ them all. Indeed, from her in- 
 formant's account she might have beUeved 
 him to be the ruler of the entire popula- 
 tion of the capital city under twenty-five, 
 and, beside these, of aU the widows and 
 poverty-stricken ex-congressmen, and re- 
 tired congressional ^ro^^gfees of every sort. 
 On this occasion Elsie naturally became 
 nervous and expectant. She wished this 
 monster-man would hurry and come and 
 be gone. She could not do her work well 
 for thinking each minute that the follow- 
 ing one would find him behind her chair, 
 watching. So she began nervously writing 
 
" A PHETTT FOOT." 41 
 
 some jingling lines on her blotting-pad 
 and became interested in -her occupation. 
 Suddenly she looked up, why, she did not 
 know, but her chUdish, half-frightened, 
 half-puzzled eyes met the piercing and 
 slightly amused gaze of a pair of black 
 ones. 
 
 The man seemed to enjoy the girl's 
 blushing embarrassment which followed 
 her immediate recognition of him, and, ex- 
 perienced as he was, he read the pure, untar- 
 nished soul before him, shining forth as it 
 did in Elsie Vane's fair face, in that one 
 brief glance. 
 
 One week passed. The clerks of this 
 special division were again startled by the 
 presence of this august personage. It was 
 the general verdict of the talkative ones, 
 
42 " A PRSTTT FOOT." 
 
 upon hearing so soon again the ominoua 
 "Paltry in the building," that he had 
 made a mistake; that he had forgotten 
 his visit only the week before. 
 
 This time Elsie was not frightened. 
 When she heard the announcement she 
 was thinking of her happy home, and of 
 her unclouded childhood. It sometimes 
 rested her to think of it. A pathetic, 
 half-finished poem, rarely well done for 
 one of her years, was lying in f uU view on 
 her desk. At this time Elsie never con- 
 cealed anything. It was her intention to 
 complete the verses as soon as she had 
 finished the piece of work in hand. So 
 she was hurrying and performing the dis- 
 tasteful divisions, and making percentages 
 with alarming rapidity, and perhaps with 
 
" A PSSTTT FOOT." 43 
 
 disastrous and surprising results to certain 
 industries when the reports were published. 
 
 The Hon. R. P. Foster, after making a 
 circuit of the room, approached her desk 
 and stood back of her for a few moments. 
 The girl was all obUvious and very busy, 
 and the stout, well-groomed man noted 
 the facile movement of the white, unorna~ 
 mented fingers, but her glorious, resplend- 
 ent bair most impressed him, and he felt 
 a shght intoxication. 
 
 The following seems scarcely credible 
 of a man of his experience, but he said, 
 "How did you do that?" and was only 
 conscious of having uttered something, 
 what, he did not know, and the sensation 
 was new. 
 
 The girl's pencil made a long zigzag 
 
44 "A PBETTT FOOT." 
 
 mark on the tablet. She raised her liquid 
 eyes with their trustful expression up into 
 those over her. She saw the head slightly 
 bending and eyes fixed to hers, and as she 
 looked, a speU came over her. Her face 
 paled perceptibly, and her heart gave one 
 great bound that almost suffocated her. 
 Both felt it. He, doubtless, in a minor 
 degree. What was it ? He knew. The 
 man of the world and the woman of the 
 world will know, as soon as they read this; 
 but Elsie was neither, and she only knew 
 that she was trembling and thought she 
 must have been badly frightened at having 
 been observed and her work noticed. 
 
 She had not replied to his question, he 
 had left so abruptly. 
 
 As the man joined his party in the cor- 
 
"A PBETTT FOOT." 45 
 
 rldor (he was accompanied by several con- 
 gressmen who had taken occasion to call 
 and see their respective charges at work), 
 one might have remarked the satisfied ex- 
 pression of his face. His visit had evi- 
 dently been highly satisfactory to his taste, 
 educated in such affairs. He was in ex- 
 cellent spirits. 
 
 " Charming eyes in there," he said, bring- 
 ing his hand down forcibly on the shoulder 
 of one of the men. " I believe I've found 
 another treasure ; modest, too, and shy as 
 a kitten." Then to himself, " Wonder how 
 she got here ; must have been by a sen- 
 ator." 
 
 During the next few days he was very 
 busy, but the event had by no means left 
 his mind. He had sent for the girl's 
 
46 "A PBETTT FOOT." 
 
 papers, learned all about her appointment, 
 and, incidentally, through one of his friends, 
 that she was the last of the old family of 
 Vane, and that the aged senator had died 
 insolvent. The information suited him 
 exactly. He would cultivate her. A lady, 
 and his eyes sparkled. 
 
 In the meanwhile Elsie Vane had arrived 
 at a sudden but fixed determination. She 
 was going to leave the office, or rather its 
 dreadful associates. It happened thus : 
 She was seated in a ' room with twelve 
 others, women, but such women as she 
 had never seen before. Her desk had 
 been moved, and she was told this was to 
 be her future permanent place, and that 
 her salary had been raised to one thousand 
 dollars. These women were low and 
 
" A PRETTY FOOT." 47 
 
 ignorant in conversation and dialect. She 
 never dreamed how bad they really were 
 until one day when their talk took an ex- 
 tremely personal turn, and they discussed, 
 intimately and freely, private affairs and 
 well-known congressmen. The girl heard 
 (tnd was horrified, shocked and determined. 
 She told no one. They were things she 
 would not have thought of repeating, not 
 even to her own mother had she lived. 
 How could she get away from it all ? Be- 
 come a poetess? She would try. 
 
 Then it was that she began to write 
 poetry in earnest, — ^yards of it. That 
 would certainly opea a way for her to 
 leave the government. She would get a 
 volume published, arid then would not 
 need her income longer. She did uot 
 
48 " A PRETTY FOOT." 
 
 dream of the years of unceasing toil re- 
 quired to be a poet the people like and 
 read. 
 
 When she had written about a hundred 
 poems of all kinds, she confided in her 
 father's phlegmatic colleague. As before 
 stated, the girl was far too modest to tell 
 him why they had been written, or even 
 that she desired to leave her position. 
 But she did ask his opinion of the verses, 
 and that he would help her find a pub- 
 lisher. 
 
 Senator Paran, that was his name, was 
 a thoroughly honest, unemotional man. 
 He had come up from obscurity aU by his 
 own efforts. He had a regard, as such 
 men often have, for a person like Elsie 
 Vane, because she was eminently aristo- 
 
•' A PRJSTTr FOOT." 49 
 
 cratic. He knew that she was very pretty, 
 and an ornament, to his family in many 
 ways. There was an unmistakable air of 
 repose and gentility about his home since 
 she had come to live with them, and he 
 was naturally inclined to think well of 
 anything she did. He had not forgotten, 
 either, the day, a few years ago, that 
 her father had loaned him the sum of 
 money by which he saved his entire foi> 
 tune. 
 
 Perhaps he had never before heard a 
 poem in his life. Certain it is he had 
 never heard an author read a production of 
 his or her own as Elsie Vane read hers. He 
 would not have wasted the time to listen 
 to the poetry of any one else. But the 
 
 girl stole up to him one evening, as he 
 
 4= 
 
50 •• A Jr-iiJiTTT FOOT." 
 
 ■ ■*■■ 
 
 was sitting in the darkened library smok- 
 ing in solitude. 
 
 "Paran," she said, she had always, 
 even when a baby, called him by the 
 same appellation her father used, " listen ! " 
 Her voice was low and musical, and as 
 the Hght from the incandescent on the 
 street corner, not far away, reflected from 
 her fair girlish face, and burnished the 
 gold in her brown hair, she repeated to 
 him some of her verses, the ones she 
 liked best. 
 
 The old man was delighted. They 
 were a revelation to him. He knew no 
 poetry, and his own mood and Elsie's 
 voice and manner had worked wonders in 
 his dormant finer feelings. The next day 
 he told the family of the girl's talent, 
 
"APBETTT.F002." 51 
 
 and took her to New York to find a pub- 
 lisher. Of course he failed, and Elsie's 
 ardor received its first dampening. She 
 was disappointed but not discouraged. 
 The senator soon forgot, and dropped the 
 whole occurrence from his mind. 
 
 Again the girl's wits went to work- to 
 devise some other plan to leave the sur- 
 roundings which were daily becoming more 
 obnoxious to her. 
 
 She would go to the superintendent 
 and ask him to send her as a delegate 
 from his bureau to the "World's Fair. 
 Elsie never hesitated long after making 
 up her mind to do a thing, and went at 
 once to his office, armed with a letter of 
 introduction to his secretary. 
 
 Ponald P- Foster was fitting alone at 
 
52 "A PRETTY FOOT." 
 
 his desk when the girl -was presented to 
 him. He was more than pleased at the 
 tavorahle turn fortune was giving him. 
 He could not have better arranged it him- 
 self. What could the girl want, he 
 wondered. He hoped it was a promotion, 
 or some favor, and it was. He was fault- 
 lessly dressed and a little excitement 
 lurked in the nervous corners of his broad 
 mouth. He was not handsome, but he 
 possessed that strange, subtle lovableness 
 that was so remarkable in Elsie's nature. 
 This unconsciously made them feel more 
 at home with each other at once. He 
 asked the girl to sit down near him and 
 tell him what she wanted. Elsie did so, 
 and was surprised to find herself convers- 
 ing with him more freely than even with 
 
" A PRETTY FOOT." 53 
 
 Mr. Paran. She did not tell him why she 
 wished to leave the office, but that she 
 wanted to go to the Fair. Then they 
 talked a Uttle of other things, and h» told 
 her she might have her wish, and that on 
 the morrow she would be transferred to 
 his building in order to learn her duties, 
 and she rose to go. 
 
 The girl looked infinitely more beauti- 
 ful than Bonald P. Foster had imagined 
 her. Her pleasing grace of movement 
 and perfect health appealed to everybody 
 who saw her. This day she wore a gown 
 of fine black material, as she was stiU in 
 mourning. The trimmings were of white 
 crepe, and a small black hat, with two 
 small white birds perched in front, adorned 
 her head. Her gloves were black, and 
 
54 "A PEETTT FOOT." 
 
 she wore the most dainty shoes. She had 
 a classic foot, and dressed it exceptionally 
 well. As she stood by his desk, one hand 
 resting on it, the man's eyes rested on 
 her. Not a detail of her toilet was 
 omitted. But the foot was just in such a 
 position as to display it to the best advan- 
 tage, although Elsie did not know it at the 
 time. 
 
 As he raised his pleased eyes from the 
 dainty little patent leather and silken 
 covered ankle, they met the girl's. The 
 latter was embarrassed, for she thought he 
 might have seen her foot, and again she 
 felt that strange, new and inexplicable 
 emotion stifling her very heart. She felt 
 as one in a vise. It was mutual. Foster 
 took her hand hastily and murmured, 
 
*'A pshttt poot:^ 65 
 
 looking direct in her shy eyes, " You are 
 charming." The girl hurried away with- 
 out even saying good-day. 
 
 " A damned p7'etty foot" he said aloud 
 to himself as the door closed. He was 
 moved and disconcerted, and left the office 
 at once, thinking and planning. The 
 owner of the pretty foot had inspired 
 him with a strong asserting passion, and 
 he knew it, and was glad. 
 
5ff ^' i Lots Tou t LoVs Tori ! " 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " I LOVE YOU ! LOVE YOTT ! " 
 
 The next day Elsie was transferred to 
 the main building. She had only been 
 at her new place a few hours when 
 word came by a private messenger that 
 she was wanted in the superintendent's 
 office. 
 
 When she approached his desk he 
 merely said, " Good-morning, Miss Vane," 
 and looked at her as if in enjoyment of 
 her embarassed blushes for several minutes. 
 Finally she rose to go, but he laid his 
 
^'t LOVE TotTi Love Yott/" 57 
 
 hand on her arm to detain her, and asked 
 her to be seated again, as he had some- 
 thing to say. He then began talking in 
 a most entertaining way about books and 
 their authors, and all sorts of interesting 
 things, always omitting to speak of the 
 office or her work. Elsie was amazed, 
 but unaffectedly pleased. He took delight 
 in practically undoing, by means of his 
 mature judgment, the fanciful ideals she 
 had formed of many characters of fiction. 
 The day before, upon her arrival at 
 her adopted home, Elsie had found a 
 bunch of magnificent roses. She knew 
 no one in the city, and feigned ignorance 
 as to their sender, but yet, in her heart, 
 they stirred a strange chord, and she was 
 not displeased. 
 
58 "I LOVM TOtl! LOVE TOUt'' 
 
 This evening she found more flowers 
 for her, and some books they had been 
 discussing. By the flowers was a note 
 in an almost iUegible hand, but the girl 
 read it easily. It was somewhat peculiar 
 that this girl could so readily read 
 the handwriting that men who had 
 known Foster for years could not de- 
 cipher. 
 
 She said right out, before reading the 
 letter, " Oh, these are from Mr. Foster," 
 but the senator was reading some House 
 discussion of the day before, his wife was 
 speaking to her maid, and no one paid 
 any attention, or seemed to even hear the 
 remark, and Elsie carried the flowers away 
 to arrange them, and took the letter to 
 her room. It read thus : 
 
"I LOVE rotn LOVE roift" 59 
 
 « Dear Miss Vane : " 
 
 "Is it quite loyal for you to so enthrone 
 yourself in the heart of a lonely man, that he 
 can think of nothing else? Permit me to call 
 on you this evening. 
 
 " RoNALi) P. Foster. 
 
 '"The Chambers,' Conn. Ave." 
 
 Elsie did not reply. Again, the follow- 
 ing day, she was called before him. He 
 wanted to know how she had liked the 
 book, and if she had read it, as he re- 
 quested, from his standpoint. Incident- 
 ally he mentioned, too, his letter, and 
 said he had come very near calling any- 
 how. He had been exceedingly restless 
 and lonesome, he said. Might he not 
 call that evening ? " You are excused now 
 and can go home. Then write me at 
 what hour." He held her hand warmly at 
 
60 ''tLotE Totn LOri: You I" 
 
 parting, and his own trembled. He was 
 a strong man, and his emotions were cor- 
 respondingly powerful. 
 
 The girl went home, and right to Mrs. 
 Paran, to whom she told aU. That good 
 lady had never heard of the Honorable 
 K. P.Foster, but, as he was the child's 
 chief, she looked upon him in her simple 
 way as a sort of protector and official 
 guardian. "He can come to see you," 
 she said. " I think that will be very 
 pleasant, for you must be lonely for 
 younger society than ours." So it was 
 Elsie wrote him that she should expect 
 him at seven o'clock. Then she returned 
 to Mrs. Paran. 
 
 "Elsie, dear," that lady began. "This 
 Mr, Foster is single ? " 
 
"I LOVE YOUl LOVE TOUl" 61 
 
 " Oh, yes," replied the innocent Elsie. 
 " He says he is alone and lonely, and then I 
 heard the women in the other division 
 say, the day I left them, that i£ Miss 
 somebody, Tve forgotten the name, did 
 not look out, the superintendent would 
 escape her. He is such a nice, kind 
 man, Mrs. Paran, I am sure you will like 
 him." 
 
 But the senator and his wife were 
 going out to dinner that evening, and so 
 Elsie was left alone with the servants, and 
 in this one dinner-party what a tragedy 
 fate was beginning ! For had " Paran " as 
 Elsie called him, even heard the name 
 "Eoster," he could have saved the girl 
 then. But socially and officially, he 
 was very much occupied. They had not 
 
62 "I LOVE YOU! LOVE YOU I" 
 
 left the house ten minutes when the bell 
 rang, sharp and incisive. 
 
 Elsie was a charming hostess, and as 
 the man told her of the trials of his early 
 life and what he was doing when just her 
 age, how he was struggling for a place in 
 the world, she was naturally sympathetic, 
 and her admiration for his heroism beamed 
 in her expressive eyes. 
 
 This gratified him. The pure, sponta- 
 neous, disinterested homage of the heart 
 of a girl who is both educated and 
 chaste, is one of those celestial flowers 
 that rarely blossom here, and that console 
 every grief. They are as irresistible as 
 the grandeur of some magnificent scenery, 
 touched, as you view it, with one of God's 
 own glorious, unearthly sunsets. Thus 
 
"I LOVE YOU! LOVE YOUI" 63 
 
 Elsie began to love, by giving the pearls 
 of her charity. 
 
 At nine, when he left, he murmured 
 warm words of love, pure love, in the 
 young girl's pink ear ; words she had not 
 the strength to resist, for love, with its aU- 
 powerf ul forces was at work and consuming 
 her. She scarcely knew what was trans- 
 piring. The two were alone together. 
 True, in a brilliantly-lighted drawing-room, 
 but when a healthy, physically perfect but 
 bad man, meets a chaste, simple and 
 lovely girl, darkened rooms and the sus- 
 ceptibilities of glamour are not requisite. 
 This was the exquisite prelude of their 
 great and eventful love and future misery 
 and wretchedness. 
 
 "When Mrs. Paran returned, she sought 
 
64 "I LOVE TOU! LOVE TOU!" 
 
 the girl in the library, where she was 
 usually to be found no matter how late 
 they stayed away. She had retired, the 
 maid said. The good woman tiptoed up 
 to her bed and kissed her. She felt the 
 face unnaturally hot and strucl^ a light. 
 Elsie's cheeks were flushed and she began 
 to murmur something excitedly. What it 
 was she could not make out, but she sat 
 down by the pretty brass bed and stroked 
 the fine hair for half an hour. " I hope 
 she'll never faU in love and leave us," 
 she said to herself as she lowered the Ught 
 and left the now peaceful child; and 
 she wondered if Mr. Fo(ster had called. 
 
 A love, so combined with intensest pas- 
 sion as was that generated so quickly in 
 the souls of these two people of age so 
 
" I LOVE TOU ! LOVE YOU ! " 65 
 
 widely divergent, is sole master. Nothing 
 can daunt or dismay it. It lives in its 
 object, for it, and demands to be with it. 
 Beauty is, undoubtedly the signature of the 
 master to the work into which he has put 
 his soul, and so this common worldly man 
 was all the more irresistibly drawn toward 
 the beautiful girl. He was imperiously 
 swayed. It was fate. Fate had knocked 
 at the door of his heart, and the mortal 
 had to bid it enter. But to do the man 
 no injustice, it must be said he fuUy ap- 
 preciated the young girl's innocence and 
 ignorance of the world. And inasmuch 
 as he was capable, he respected it. But 
 the human element in his nature was 
 more powerful than the spirituelle. The 
 
 latter had been so often quelled that it 
 5 
 
66 "I LOVE TOUl LOVE TOUI" 
 
 was not very difficult to overcome when 
 his pleasure was at stake. Therefore, al- 
 though as soon as he became acquainted 
 with Elsie, and read her like an open 
 page, the books he sent her were beautiful, 
 gem-like and pure. He made a specialtj 
 of selecting only such for her. Yet all 
 the time, down deep in his soul, undevel- 
 oped even to him, were, plots for her ruin 
 if the judgment is to be controlled by 
 what followed. So strong became the in- 
 fluence of this isolated girl over him that 
 he could think of nothing else. It was 
 plain to his mind that something must be 
 done. He would leave her. Would go 
 to his home and family. His wife had 
 written him, some days before, to come at 
 once to attend to som6 affairs of business. 
 
"I LOVE TOUl LOVE TOU!" 67 
 
 Elsie did not go to the office the next 
 day, nor for several days. Mrs. Faran 
 sent word that she was not well. She 
 was up, but abnormally nervous, a condi- 
 tion never before noticed in her. But it 
 seemed to grow worse, and she insisted 
 upon returning to her work. The truth 
 was, although she did not know it herself, 
 her whole sensitive being craved the pres- 
 ence of this man who had so impressed 
 her. And so it was that they returned 
 the same day. He from his home, and 
 equally as impatient as she. 
 
 It was no use. He could not resist 
 sending down for her to come to his 
 office. He knew she would have to 
 come, and he was eager to see how his 
 absence had affected her. At the first 
 
68 "I LOVE TOU! LOVE TOUi" 
 
 glimpse of her face the man knew she 
 loved him. What man of the world, at 
 forty-three, could not discern the love of 
 an unsophisticated girl of eighteen. And 
 he mentally vowed to have her for his own 
 if it took a lifetime. "She is worth it," he 
 thought. There were some other women 
 in the room, but he found opportunity to 
 slip a handsome ring from his finger to 
 hers, and whisper, while the plain women 
 were talking among themselves, "I love 
 you dearly. Love you, love you ! " 
 
 That evening, at dinner, Elsie was radi- 
 ant. Mrs- Paran was glad she had con- 
 sented to her going out again. After 
 dinner she improvised for an hour or more 
 on the piano. She felt her lover would 
 come. He could not stay away, she waa 
 
"I LOVE TOU! LOVM TOUI" 69 
 
 ^■■1 M ■ — I ■ - — ■ - - ■■ I I.I - -I I ^ 
 
 sure. She was in a fever o£ excitement 
 every time the bell rang. Finally she 
 threw herself on the rugs before the cosey 
 fire, such as is necessary in the damp 
 early spring, and almost instantly fell 
 
 The bell gave a quick ring, but she 
 slept on. To the query if Miss Vane was at 
 home, the maid, who had heard her play- 
 ing only a few moments before replied, 
 "You'll find Miss Elsie in there," and 
 then pointing to the drawiag-room, went 
 about her duties. 
 
 Eonald Foster drew aside the portiferesi 
 There lay Elsie, beautiful as a dream,^ 
 peacefully sleeping with her hands clasped 
 above her head. Her breathing was reg- 
 ular, and the ring he had placed on her 
 
fO ''I LOVE TOU! LOVE YOU!" 
 
 finger glistened in the firelight. The 
 voluptuous bosom was slightly exposed by 
 the house-dress she wore, and its scarlet 
 folds delicately outlined the graceful limbs. 
 The satin French shoes were very low and 
 narrow, and modestly displayed the slim 
 ankle. Again this particular : beauty 
 moved him tremendously, and the feeling 
 must have been communicated to the 
 sleeping ^1, for, just as he stooped to 
 kiss her, the soft eyes opened and smiled 
 into his in undisguised love. She did 
 not permit him to kiss her, but quickly 
 rose and took his hat, which he still held 
 in one hand. 
 
 The spell of her beauty, and the pict* 
 ure which had greeted him was upon, 
 him. He was lost to everything from 
 
" I LOVE Tout LOVE YOU}" 71 
 
 now on, except Elsie Vane. Had she 
 known all, and how evanescent, she might 
 sooner have nurtured in her beautiful 
 bosom a vile and venomous reptile. But 
 she did not, and her capability of lov- 
 ing was vast and overwhelming. At this 
 stage it is doubtful if it could have been 
 restrained. Does the lofty reasoner want 
 any better excuse for what is to follow, 
 the events this love led to, than that it 
 was irresistible ? Elsie Vane went to this 
 man as sunflowers turn to the sun. He 
 became her light and her God from the 
 moment he told her he loved her. Had 
 he died at this time, it would undoubt- 
 edly have killed her too. She worshipped 
 him. Even her prayers seemed to con- 
 tain no other worthy object. 
 
72 "I LOVE Tour LOVE Tonr 
 
 He sat by her in the firelight and held 
 her hand in his. He told her he .had 
 never seen anything so beautiful as she 
 looked lying on the rugs, until she forgot 
 to be sorry he had found her sleeping in- 
 stead of expecting him; that he never 
 knew what love was until now ; that they 
 would go away together ; and the girl's 
 heart beat faster. Would she be willing 
 to go with him ? Give up everything else ? 
 Did she know, could she appreciate his 
 emotion? He would be miserable if she 
 should under-estimate it. "Don't say any- 
 thing about it at present," he warned her, 
 " and I win find a way for us. Can you 
 dine with me to-morrow at five o'clock 
 without Mrs. Paran knowing? Do, 
 I must see you^ and I know it is Mrs., 
 
"Jr LOm TOUI L0V7C YOU J" 73 
 
 Paran's reception afternoon. Slip away 
 and come. I shall expect you, and shall 
 take a disappointment as proof that your 
 love does not equal mine." This was a 
 serious matter to the girl whose love was 
 so strong, and the following day, at the 
 appointed hour, she pleaded a headache, 
 the first act of deception in her whole 
 innocent life, and went to "The Cham- 
 bers." 
 
 The Hon. R. P. Foster had his valet on 
 the lookout for her. An elegant suite of 
 apartments was already engaged, and the 
 elaborate dinner ordered, so sure he was 
 of the girl's coming. That evening 
 Elsie drank her first of wine, so carefully 
 had she been reared, and he kissed her 
 forehead and her dainty hands. Then he 
 
74 "I LOVE TOUl LOVE YOUl" 
 
 took her home. She was highly excited, 
 as never before in her existence, and for 
 a girl so high-strung that meant much. 
 Mrs.. Paran met her, but asked no ques- 
 tions, thinking she had been to mail a 
 letter or something of that sort. But later 
 she sent one of the black servants to see 
 if the girl was comfortable, and to in- 
 quire about her head specially. Word 
 was sent back that she was much better, 
 but it came in a gay voice through the 
 keyhole. 
 
 In truth the child was almost crazed 
 with wine and love. 
 
4T " THM chambers:' 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 AT "the chambers" " BUMPERS " OF 
 
 CHAMPAGNE. 
 
 It was past midnight. The Kght still 
 burned brightly in Elsie's room. She had 
 tried to sleep, but her brain seemed swol- 
 len and frantically active. To her heated 
 imagination it seemed that she reviewed 
 every act of her life, certainly of her new- 
 ly-found love. Paramount to all else 
 loomed up her great ideal. How good 
 he was and how fond ! There were mo- 
 ments during that night, when this young, 
 
76 AT" THE CB AMBERS." 
 
 childish girl was pacing the floor o£ her 
 pretty bedroom, that she would have given 
 all of life to have had him there. Only 
 to have been able to touch his hand or his 
 hair. Again she felt the burning, pas- 
 sionate kisses on her forehead. Why had 
 she not responded ; why had she not drawn 
 down his head and kissed his face, his 
 lips ! Oh, to touch his lips with her own ! 
 There was a splendid misery in the mere 
 thought ! What ecstasy the reality she 
 dared not think. Why did not the morn- 
 ing break, and daylight come ? She 
 would see him then. He would send for 
 her the first thing in the morning. She 
 knew he would miss her just as she had 
 missed him. The love of a ;^irl like this 
 is a wondrous thing ; a divine and tender 
 
AT " THE CHAMBERS." 77 
 
 plant plucked from the gardens of paradise. 
 True, paradise is not in the skies, but on 
 the Ups of those we love. 
 
 The next day, as the girl had said, he 
 sent for her, but she was not at the office. 
 
 She had fallen asleep shortly after break- 
 fast, and Mrs. Paran, fearing from her 
 looks she was not well, would not ^ake 
 her. 
 
 Later he sent a messenger twice to her 
 home, but she was not in, the word re- 
 turned. 
 
 As he was walking through one of the 
 beautiful northwestern streets of the city 
 the same evening, about half -past four, the 
 fashionable hour for driving, he saw her 
 in a deep, comfortable victoria. It was 
 white-lined, but he thought her face even 
 
78 AT" THE CHAMBER 8." 
 
 paler. The Paran coachman was oa the 
 box, and she was alone. He lifted his hat, 
 and saw her speak to the driver, then come 
 toward him and stop. Elsie, in the sim- 
 plicity of her open nature, asked him to 
 drive with her, and he said he would if 
 she would stop at his hotel and dine. 
 " Well, we will see," she replied, as he sat 
 down by her side. 
 
 Let it be said, she had at that moment 
 no intention of stopping to dine with 
 him, much as she would like to have done 
 so. She somehow felt that it was not ex- 
 actly the thing to do, and remembered the 
 awful effects of the wine and the fearful 
 separation from which she was only re- 
 covering. But he insisted and pleaded. 
 Mrs. Paran need never know, he told her ; 
 
AT " THE CHAMBEAS." 79 
 
 but seeing her alarmed expression, as she 
 thought of a second deception, he said 
 hastily, "That is, teU the coachman to 
 teU them not to be uneasy about you, that 
 you are dining with Mr. Fostei-. And 
 when he promised he would not order 
 wine, they both got out at " The Cham- 
 bers." 
 
 This time he took her to a second-floor 
 suite, — his own, as she learned a few 
 hours later. He seemed to be possessed 
 with a spirit to make her secure. First he 
 drew down the blinds and lighted the gas, 
 although it was broad daylight. Then he 
 rang for several beU-boys. One to say he 
 was out of the city, i£ inquired for, and an- 
 other to take the order for dinner. With 
 the last course Elsie saw, with surprise 
 
80 AT " THE CHAMBERS." 
 
 and disappointment, three large bottles of 
 champagne. Foster kissed away the per- 
 turbed expression on her face and said she 
 need not drink any ; but he said it in a 
 tone that made her think she was displeas- 
 ing him. She hated the taste of the wine, 
 of all wines, but " he will love me better 
 and be happier if I drink a little, or at 
 least pretend." And she did. He told 
 her what a " bumper " was, and told her 
 to drink one to him ; for him ; it would 
 do her good. " Do it to please me, Elsie," 
 he said. It was the first time he had 
 spoken her given name, and it made the 
 girl love him more dearly, and she drank 
 as many gulps as she possibly could, hold- 
 ing her breath each swallow. He fiUed 
 her glass again and again, still saying she 
 
AT " THE CHAMBERS." 81 
 
 had not taken enough to do her a bit of 
 goodj until finally she drank without an 
 effort — without knowing what she was 
 doing. 
 
 " I feel so strange. Like this," she said 
 thickly, and made a loose, rapid, airy move- 
 ment with her fingers in the air. "Is 
 there any danger of it making me intox- 
 icated ? " she continued, bungling the last 
 word fearfully. 
 
 " No, no," he replied and led her to the 
 
 piano. The girl played as only a talented 
 
 person can under the influence of good 
 
 health and liquor. When the man asked 
 
 her to come to him she rose and passed 
 
 her hand over her forehead as if to clear 
 
 away something. It would have been 
 
 pitiable to most persons, the sight of a 
 6 
 
82 AT " THE CHAJUBEBS." 
 
 young pure girl so entirely at the merey 
 of any one, and, most of all, a base man, 
 capable of doing -what he did that night, 
 and live for the next five or six months. 
 
 She swayed, and he took her supple- 
 ness in his arms. " Elsie," he said, " I do 
 not see how you can go home to-night, 
 or to-day, rather. The little wine you 
 drank has affected you powerfully." And 
 it had. She was at his command. When 
 he asked her if he could not send for her 
 brushes and night garments, if she had 
 not a faithful servant, she wrote a note to 
 her favorite, and copied it from his origi- 
 nal, and he dispatched his valet at once to 
 her home. 
 
 Meanwhile he talked ardent love to the 
 gal, who was half-unconscious. Told her 
 
AT " THIS GHAMBEBS." 83 
 
 he would take care of her, and by morning 
 she would be all right ; he would undress 
 her so tenderly and let down her hair and 
 bathe her eyes. He, too, had drank 
 heavily, and all at once his better nature 
 seemed in the ascendancy. " I don't want 
 to harm you, child, he said, " but I am mad 
 with love. WiU you marry me right away, 
 to-night, inside of five minutes ? " 
 
 The girl did not reply, but he knew she 
 would do whatever he said. 
 
 When the man returned with dainty 
 articles in a leather bag, he was sent on 
 another errand. Foster owned this lad, 
 body and soul, and knew he could trust 
 him. What the second errand was, Elsie 
 never knew. 
 
 She felt as if ^he were abpiit tp have a 
 
84 AT " THE CHAMBERS." 
 
 tooth extracted,* or some fearful ordeal, and 
 she was so very sorry she could not think 
 clearer. Why had she drank those bum- 
 pers? 
 
 Perhaps all her life she had that vague 
 recollection of a strange proceeding. Some 
 people she could not clearly see. They 
 seemed black at times and then all white 
 to her distended, benumbed eyes. A 
 minister, Konald had told her, and she had 
 said what he told her to, and had put on 
 a plain gold band, heavy and engraved 
 April 7, 1893. She was conscious of 
 desiring to feel very happy, but she was 
 so weak and " far away." Then they all 
 went away, and Eonald took her in his 
 arms, carried her to his own sleeping-room 
 and called her Mrs. Foster. 
 
AT " THE CHAMBERS." 85 
 
 When he had prepared her to retire, 
 she implored him to leave her, for, intox- 
 icated as she was, she felt — we may beheve 
 it was her guardian angel whispered it to 
 her — ^in her extremity that something was 
 wrong. Not that she doubted the cere- 
 mony, for her faith in Foster was implicit ; 
 but she knew she was not herself, and was 
 ashamed of it and wanted to be alone. 
 But the man had not gone to all this 
 trouble for nothing. He was extremely self- 
 ish and had all those attributes for self -grat- 
 ification which accompany such a nature. 
 This young girl, only a child in her teens, 
 was as completely at the mercy of this pas- 
 sionate man as he was at the mercy of the 
 passion. But he had planned it all. The 
 man had his servants notified, and would 
 
AT " TEE CHAMBERS.'* 
 
 havb called on the girl had he not met 
 her driving. The entire thing had been 
 arranged in his mind and with the trusty 
 parties concerned that very day. To Elsie 
 it appeared as he meant it should, perfect 
 and spontaneous love ; love that leaps all 
 bounds, love that led her into deceptions, 
 the wine, the hasty marriage, and — 
 womanhood. 
 
 The following morning he filled their 
 rooms with gorgeous carnations, and they 
 spent the day together and alone, oblivious 
 of any outer world. Toward evening, 
 when the girl was feeling more like her- 
 self than she had for many hours, she be- 
 gan thinking of her home and what the 
 Parans must think. They would be very 
 nervous over her absence, for she had 
 
AT " THM GBAMBEttS." g7 
 
 never been away from them before, and 
 she spoke of it to Ronald, asking him to 
 take her back to them, and let her tell 
 th^m aU. 
 
 " No," he said, " whatever you do, do 
 not tell them what has happened. My dar- 
 ling, grant me one favor. Keep this whole 
 thing as our own secret for — until I tell 
 you differently. Promise me, Elsie, it is 
 for the best for both of us that no one 
 know at present. When they learn you 
 are Mrs. Hon. R. P. Foster they will for- 
 give you, no matter what they now think." 
 
 "But, Mr. Foster, Ronald," and the 
 childish voice quavered, " I feel so strange 
 and unnatural, and so wicked, somehow, 
 for they have been so good to me and 
 love me." 
 
88 At " The chAMbmus:' 
 
 " Don't I love you, little witch, better 
 than aU the world ? You won't be a baby, 
 will you ; you do not regret anything, do 
 you?" 
 
 " No, I have nothing to regret, for I 
 worship you, and you are my husband." 
 And she blushed violently as he drew her 
 to him. 
 
 "Yes, and I'll love you forever. I 
 have never known what love was until 
 now this little bit of heaven comes to 
 me," he replied passionately. " Oh, what 
 kisses, and how beautiful you are ! I 
 never saw you look so supernaturaUy 
 lovely as this morning and now. What 
 are you, Elsie, divine? I could devour 
 you ! Promise you'll never regret ? " 
 
 " I never will; ' she answered, her eyes 
 
AT" fUE CB AMBERS.'* 89 
 
 bright and flashing. " I will do anything 
 you ask. Follow you to the ends of the 
 earth. Leave all, and cling to my hus- 
 band, my first love, my life ! " and she 
 sank on her knees by his side. 
 
 " Go home, then," he said, " and say 
 nothing. Get ready, and we will go to 
 Chicago at once. None will suspect. I 
 wiU call in an hour or so, and to-morrow 
 night at this time we will be together, 
 never to be parted. I am impatient ! " 
 and he rang the bell and ordered a car- 
 riage. 
 
 He left the girl at her beautiful 
 adopted home, and she crept softly up to 
 her room and to bed. There the maid 
 ^and Mrs. Paran found her, a little later, 
 peacefully sleeping. Her face and Hps 
 
90 At " fnii 0SAMS6RB." 
 
 were angelic. She was smiling and quiet. 
 " She's more than half angel," the maid 
 muttered, as she sat down to stay h j the 
 bed, and Mrs. Paran nodded assent and 
 kissed the fair sleeper, praying God in 
 her warm heart to let no harm befall her 
 precious charge. Was it too late ? 
 
 And was it symbolioal or merely a 
 coincidence that with that self-same 
 prayer still trembling within her, she 
 should reach the lower hall just in time 
 to hear the maid say to a stranger at the 
 door, " Miss Vane is not at home." 
 
 " Good-evening," he said questioningly, 
 in order to correct the maid's error. 
 « I am Ronald Foster, Miss Vane's 
 superintendent. She has not been at the 
 office, and I came to see and inquire about 
 
AT " fas CBAMBIIBS." 91 
 
 her. She is one of our best clerks, and 
 it is rather important that I see her if 
 possible." 
 
 Mrs. Faran, in the goodness of her 
 heart, never dreaming of deception, led 
 him to the girl's room. It was a beauti- 
 ful place. The tapestried walls, the 
 richly perfumed, dainty hangings of rare 
 silk, the costly bed and deep rugs, 
 aU about the beautiful girl breathed 
 elegance and refinement. Elsie was one 
 of those exotics that cannot Uve without 
 luxuries. AU her money went for them. 
 The handsomest of silver brushes and 
 toilet articles, and the rarest of comfort- 
 able chairs and corners were there. 
 
 The man's heart swelled with pride as 
 he looked at her in these surroundings. 
 
92 AT " mm CBAMBEBS." 
 
 She was his, all his, she loved him, an 
 only such a girl could love in the first 
 ecstasy of that passion. She awoke as 
 they approached the bed, and said'gladly, 
 
 " My bus ," but he checked her before 
 
 Mrs. Paran heard the spontaneous out- 
 burst. 
 
 He could only stroke her hair and say 
 he hoped to see her at the office the fol- 
 lowing day, accompanying the latter with 
 a smile most significant to Elsie as they 
 left the room. 
 
 The girl had forgotten he was coming, 
 and had needed rest. Mrs. Paran had 
 asked no questions, but she would the 
 next day. She did, but the girl hung 
 her head and did not reply. As Mr. 
 Paran looked up from his plate (it was 
 
AT " THE CHAMBERS." 
 
 at breakfast), in wonderment that she 
 should refuse to tell where she had been 
 over night, Elsie said brightly, " It's all 
 right, only I must not tell just yet," and 
 her face was so happy, a little troubled, 
 but thoroughly truthful, they let the 
 matter drop, and Mrs. Paran turned the 
 subject to Mr. Foster's call the night 
 before. 
 
 Senator Paran was a quiet man, not a 
 man of the world in the same sense as 
 Foster. He had no children of his own, 
 and in a fatherly way his heart had gone 
 out to the orphan child of his friend. He 
 knew of Foster and his reputation, and, as 
 he left the table, he placed both his large 
 hands on the girl's hair, and said gently, 
 « Beware of tijis Foster, Elsie." 
 
94 AT " THE CHAMBERS." 
 
 A cold fear seized her, but dissipated 
 at sight of Eonald's face a few hours later, 
 when he sent for her to come to him. 
 She was a trifle pale, and, when questioned, 
 told him of the remark " Paran " had 
 made. He laughed, and said people did 
 talk about him, just because he had been 
 successful, but it was only malice. There 
 was no truth whatever in any of it. And 
 he referred to the woman she had heard 
 discussed in the other division. " I never 
 was with her but once in my life," he as- 
 sured her. " Oh, my little bit of paradise, 
 it is you I love — only you. I never before 
 knew what the word meant. You cannot 
 doubt me, sweet," and he kissed her 
 fondly, again and again. 
 
 Then they made their pUns. 5e would 
 
AT " THE CHAMBERS." 95 
 
 send for her trunks and call for her at 
 half-past eight. They would leave on the 
 midnight train, hut he wanted to get her 
 away at bedtime so as not to excite suspi- 
 cion before they had started. 
 
 And so it was Elsie Vane, true as steel 
 to her husband if false to every one else, 
 went to the library and kissed Mrs. Faran 
 good-night at eight o'clock and went to 
 her room. 
 
 The piano was silent that evening, and 
 the front of the house deserted. 
 
96 MRS. POSTER ; A STRANGE HOME, 
 
 CHAPTER Vn. 
 
 MRS. JffOSTEE ; A STRANGE HOME. 
 
 Ronald Foster was really in love, or 
 else his nature was experiencing a depth 
 of passion never before fathomed. Per- 
 haps it was the latter. Poor Elsie ! When 
 she had disappeared, that night they left 
 for Chicago, the Parans made no effort to 
 find her. Mr. Paran learned at the office 
 that the girl had been sent to the Fair, 
 and they tried to feel easy about her. 
 After all, they consoled themselves ; she 
 was not their own, and somehow they 
 
MRS. FOSTER; A STRANGE HOME. 97 
 
 were glad of it. They did not relish 
 worriment of any kind. 
 
 The two runaways had a stateroom, for 
 there was fear of Elsie's being ill during 
 the long ride. Ronald read short sketches 
 to her and fed her iced .champagne. The 
 assertion is ventured that the trip to 
 Chicago was never made to pass so quick- 
 ly and happily as for them on this, their 
 wedding journey. 
 
 They were taken to the Richelieu. The 
 girl was there, for the first time, introduced 
 among some of Foster's friends, his most 
 intimate friends, as Mrs. Foster. Elsie 
 did not think this man she had married 
 was a great man. She had known many 
 greater. Her own father had been ; her 
 grandfather and ancestors from time 
 
98 UBS. FOSTER; A STRANGE HOME. 
 
 immemorial. But she loved him. Loved 
 him as only such a girl could. To her 
 he ever seemed so gentle-born, so noble, 
 and above all so true. She never doubted 
 for a moment but that he had good rea- 
 sons for wishing the marriage kept a 
 secret for a time, and she trusted him im- 
 plicitly, unquestionably. For the time her 
 love became her life, and she lived only 
 in him. They were inseparable. The 
 drives, theatres, suppers, and impromptu 
 lunches ; the wonders of the Exposition 
 with its hurry and crowd and bustle ; the 
 busy Midway ; the breezy lake-rides in a 
 private launch ; and, after these, the home- 
 coming to their pretty suite, and their 
 unutterable happiness. All this lingered 
 in the youthful misguided mind long years 
 
MBS. FOSTER; A STRANGE HOME. 99 
 
 before she should have had such sorrow, 
 but she was perfectly happy then, happy 
 because i^ bUssful ignorance. She wrote 
 to no one. None knew where she was. 
 She was soaring in those ethereal regions 
 far beyond such commonplaces. The spirit 
 of love shone from every lineament of both 
 their faces in those brief days, for Foster 
 too, was happier, so his friends said, than 
 he had ever been known. He was actu- 
 ally growing handsome, they told him. 
 One boldly asked Elsie what she had 
 done to so improve him, and was never 
 again recognized by the girl. 
 
 After a few weeks, Foster had to go 
 east. Very important business, he told 
 Elsie. He was greatly moved at the part- 
 ing, although only for a few days, ^aid 
 
100 MBS. FOSTER; A STSANGE HOME. 
 
 he felt it was wrenching and tearing his 
 heart out, and he cried like a child. That 
 he had a mind to take her along. Then 
 he had written her such beautiful letters, 
 dozens of them, always chiding her for 
 not replying to each one. 
 
 Finally, in four days he returned to her, 
 and she met him, as arranged by tele- 
 graph, at the depot with a carriage. But 
 to her infinite amazement, he had it driven 
 to a different hotel, where they were regis- 
 tered, as she learned long months after- 
 ward as Mr. and sister. His cousin, 
 
 a resident of the city, engaged them the 
 handsomest suite of rooms available, and 
 again they settled down to unalloyed 
 pleasure. The weather was very hot and 
 they did not go out any. His mail was 
 
MS8. FOSTER; A STRANGE HOME. 101 
 
 brought by the officious relative ; she 
 had none. When Elsie woke one warm 
 night, with a very bad sore throat, and 
 delirious, he was so thoughtful and gentle 
 — nursed her so tenderly, and jokingly 
 told her of the tariff talks she had de- 
 hvered in her fevered sleep. None were 
 ever happier than they. He had given 
 Elsie no excuse for having changed hotels, 
 and she had asked none. 
 
 Again he was called east. In a day 
 or so, the young wife received the follow- 
 ing telegram : 
 
 « Come ! I cannot live without you. Will 
 meet you." 
 
 Before leaving he had arranged for the 
 possibility of her making the trip alone. 
 
102 MRS.. FOSTER; A STRANGE HOME. 
 
 and she knew just what to do ; but the 
 next day followed a long telegram of 
 unnecessary directions, verifying his devo- 
 tion. 
 
 During the quick journey, telegrams 
 met her at every point. Delightful ones, 
 and she replied. Then she was with him, 
 and kissing him as she got off the train. 
 " Thank God you are here," he exclaimed, 
 when he saw her, and tears stood in his 
 sparkling eyes. " You are such a dear, 
 and I love you, love you." And his fine 
 voice was so deep and ardent that the 
 girlish heart under the stylish jacket 
 almost burst from throbbing. She must 
 be very fatigued, he thought, and insisted 
 that she drink some wine at once. Then 
 they took a carriage. Elsie Vane had not 
 
MBS. FOSTER; A STttANGE SOME. 103 
 
 the vaguest idea where they were going. 
 She never thought of it. She did not 
 care. Was she not with him ? Her 
 Ronald? What mattered it where they 
 went only so that they were not separated. 
 Separation meant such vast agony for 
 this sensitive, emotional, warm-blooded 
 girl. The first time he had left her to go 
 east she almost went mad. She could 
 not sleep ; neither eat. Always her soul 
 cried out for the one she loved. Hers 
 was no common nature, but one capable 
 of the noblest love and the deepest suffer- 
 ing, as wiU be proven as the story pro- 
 gresses. In the night she would wake 
 before fairly asleep, every nerve in her 
 beautiful body quivering and pleading for 
 him. The man, too, must have felt of 
 
104 MRS. FOSTER; A STRANGE HOME. 
 
 this agony when he sent for her so hastily. 
 A rare love, such as visits few in this 
 life. One worthy any sacrifice. 
 
 They stopped before a stone house. A 
 very stout woman sat on the steps (it was 
 dark), dressed in a mother-hubbard. She 
 welcomed the girl warmly, and shook 
 hands cordially with Foster. Then they 
 aU went into the pretty, dimly-lighted 
 parlor, and Ronald sat by Elsie on the 
 sofa and put his arm about her, and the 
 girl blushed, because of the presence of 
 the woman. He kissed her then, and 
 asked her to play for them. She did, 
 nervously and timidly. She felt strange, 
 and out of her element. Strange, for the 
 first time in their acquaintance, strange 
 before the man she loved. What did it 
 
MBS. FOSTER; A STUANQE HOME. 105 
 
 mean ? What forbode ? Who was the 
 woman to whose home she had been 
 brought ? Had Elsie only known ! 
 
 " Ronald, I am tired," she said softly, 
 leaving the piano and sinking down by 
 him, her head on his broad shoulder. " So 
 tired." 
 
 " Of course you are, you little darling," 
 he replied, smoothing her forehead, and 
 brushing away the heavy curls. " We 
 will go upstairs right away." She was 
 tremulous, and he half carried her — after 
 saying "good-night" to the stranger — 
 upstairs to their rooms. There he told her 
 that he had brought her to the home of 
 the mistress of one of his friends, the only 
 son of a prominent New Yorker. 
 
 She was greatly shocked, for she was 
 
106 MBS. FOSTER; A STRANGE HOME. 
 
 pure-minded and sweet, and shed some 
 silent tears after her husband was asleep. 
 Rather bitter tears they were, too. Had 
 her love been less, they would have been 
 tears of an outraged ladyhood. But he 
 had assured her it was for the happiness 
 and best of both of them, at present and 
 in behalf of the future. He never seemed 
 very explicit about the future, save that it 
 would be spent together at all hazards. 
 
 In the delight of being again with him 
 her spirits soon returned, and love threw 
 its seductive glamour over all that was not 
 supreme. For a month they lived in un- 
 alloyed bliss, save for one little annoy- 
 ance. 
 
 Ronald had rooms for business pur- 
 poses and to keep their secret, he told 
 
MRS. FOSTER; A 8TRAN0B HOME. 107 
 
 Elsie, at the Windsor hotel, but they were 
 seldom occupied save for a few minutes at 
 a time. He breakfasted and dined with 
 Elsie, breakfasted in bed. She with her 
 picturesque tousled head serving him his 
 coffee and buttering his thin bread while 
 he read aloud the papers to her. Then he 
 would write editorials, he was an editor 
 at this time — someliimes in the tiny room 
 adjoining, sometimes at his down-town of- 
 fice. And he published some of her writ- 
 ings — ^many of them — now on the edito- 
 rial page in large print, and again short 
 stories. They were happy halcyon days. 
 But one evening at dinner a star-actor 
 was present, dining with the lady of the 
 house, and he smiled on Elsie across from 
 him at the table. Ronald saw it. After 
 
108 MBS. FOSTER; A STBANGS HOME. 
 
 dinner, as the party were going up the 
 stairs to the parlors, he placed his hand 
 on hers, which she quickly withdrew. 
 She spoke of it to Bonald, and saw him 
 angry for the first time. He was furious, 
 and paced up and down the chamhers like 
 a madman until she almost wished she had 
 not told him. But it was contrary to her 
 frank and open nature to have such a 
 thing on her mind. It would have made 
 her feel like a culprit. 
 
 The next few days he took her away to 
 dinner, that she should not meet the man, 
 and in the meantime the Irish nightingale 
 left the city, which was well for Ronald's 
 peace of mind. This was the one and only 
 real unhappy episode of their life at that 
 strange house. To be sure, Elsie's whole 
 
MMS. FOaTER; A STRANGE HOME. 109 
 
 soul revolted when the woman, during 
 Ronald's daily absence, drew her into con- 
 versation about herself, and when she 
 asked her once what her relations with Mr. 
 Foster were, the girl was indignant and 
 horrified. At once she thought of his 
 warning to secrecy,and so she said nothing ; 
 but when he came home she told him all. 
 Her face was hot and flushed, and she was 
 plainly hurt at heart. He felt sorry for 
 her innocence and ignorance, but he stiU 
 loved and could not live without her, so 
 he said, " Tell her you are going to marry 
 me. That we will be married very soon ; 
 very soon," he added pensively. And a 
 few days later, when occasion offered, she 
 did, and the woman, the woman of the 
 world, of thirty-five or six, said to Elsie, 
 
110 MRS. FOSTER; A STRANGE HOME. 
 
 ■ " Beware ! You're young, men are not 
 what they seem. Mind what I tell you. 
 Some day you'll remember it," and she 
 sighed deeply. 
 
 Then she told the girl her own history. 
 The tragic story of her own li£e. How 
 her last husband had committed suicide, 
 and she had sat with his dead body, at an 
 undertaker's store, all night long watch- 
 ing thinking o£ their unhappy past. She 
 was a queer woman. A weird woman at 
 times. Especially when she fell to dilat- 
 ing on her illegitimate love for the man 
 who lived with her and bore her name. 
 And Elsie would feel glued to the chair, 
 and an icy coldness steaUng over her as 
 she heard her talk so easily and calmly of 
 a thing which seemed so very heinous in 
 
MRS. FOSTER; A STRANGE HOME. HI 
 
 her pure eyes. " I had rather be any man's 
 mistress than his wife," was one of her 
 favorite remarks. She was rather a pretty 
 woman, stout and fair, and German with 
 a brogue, but she struck terror to the young 
 heart of her hearer. Naturally Elsie hked 
 her, could have grown fond of her, had it 
 not been for her life and sentiments. 
 When, one day, she spoke as if Elsie was 
 like her in some ways, the girl had been 
 taken with a deathlike faintness, and hur- 
 ried to her own room, summoned her 
 maid, and sobbed and trembled as if her 
 heart would break. 
 
 When she told Ronald, he said she 
 should not have any more lengthy conver- 
 sation with her. He would keep his dar- 
 ling's over-active mind busy with helping 
 
112 MBS. FOSTER; A STRANGE HOME. 
 
 him ; would bring her some work that day. 
 And he did. Th« girl was pleased with 
 his thoughtfulness. The work was church 
 statistics, not unlike what she had been 
 doing in the abandoned government office. 
 
 They never spoke of that position she 
 had held, nor of Washington. Ronald 
 asked her not to refer to it, because it led 
 to talk and thoughts of the Parans, and 
 Elsie's eyes always filled with tears. 
 
 Foster felt miserably guilty at times, 
 and himself uncomfortable, too, to think 
 to what he had brought this sweet flower. 
 He recalled mth a pang, quite perceptible 
 even to his necessarily hardened nature, 
 the vision of the girl as he saw her that 
 night before their elopement. The honest, 
 luxurious home, and the loving comforts 
 
UBS. FOSTER; A STRANGE HOME. 113 
 
 with which she had been surrounded. 
 They contrasted very unfavorably with 
 her present, and yet she never considered 
 it a moment, so sweet and loving was she, 
 never weighed it against him, nor dreamed 
 of it. But he knew he had and was drag- 
 ging her slowly but surely down — down. 
 And he was disgusted with himself for 
 having thought of it, of anything un- 
 pleasant, at such length. Every man did 
 just as he was doing. They were aU alike, 
 and no one of them but would be delighted 
 to have captured such a prize as the dainty 
 southern girl. In fact, some of his more 
 knowing friends had expressed their envy, 
 and he felt he had done the noble thing 
 by greeting their sally with an ominous 
 
 frown. 
 8 
 
114 MBS. FOSTER; A STRANGE HOME. 
 
 She was yet more beautiful each day. 
 Love has a ripening, softening influence on 
 the form and features of a delicate girl. Yet 
 at times a slight, very slight, shade of long- 
 ing stole into the depths of the soft brown 
 eyes. A look that an artist would have 
 felt and understood, and that the angels 
 recognized. She did not know it herself, 
 so vague it was. She only wished Konald 
 were more explicit with her, less superfi- 
 cial. That is, her finer fibers craved an 
 unknown something. She would have 
 liked to have taken him with her back to 
 dear Mrs. Paran and her father " Paran," 
 and to have said to them, " Take us both ; 
 he loves me and I adore him. Fold us to 
 your hearts, and forgive us." She said this 
 to him one day, and it seemed to her finely 
 
MBS. FOSTER; A STRANGE HOME. 115 
 
 discerning mind that he was a trifle im- 
 patient. So she endeavored to forget 
 everything but the present. To live for 
 that alone. But still that troubled well in 
 her soul. 
 
 Aud the angels sighed. 
 
116 THE TRAGIC TRUTB. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE TRAGIC TBTJTH. 
 
 We will not attempt to describe the 
 working of the mind of the Honorable 
 Ronald P. Foster at this time. He did 
 not, for it was unpleasant employment. 
 The girl pleased him, was necessary to 
 him, perhaps he even thought of marry- 
 ing her rightly. Wished it. But he 
 feared that to air his scandalous past 
 would mean to be scorned by Elsie, and 
 he doubtless dreaded the effect of the 
 little truth to which she would have to 
 
TBE TBA6JC TRVTE. 117 
 
 awaken some day. What a wicked heart 
 such a man must have ! 
 
 While in Chicago he had resigned his 
 prominent government position in Wash- 
 ington, perhaps that his passion might 
 have freer scope, and had, after asking 
 Elsie's advice in a truly husband-like 
 manner, become editor of a New York 
 daily. The girl rarely thought of her 
 old office life, and it became daily more 
 and more like an unhappy dream, fore- 
 runner of an ecstatic awakening, because 
 it was the path to her love and happiness. 
 Poor Elsie ! It was to be so all through 
 her life, that her sorrows were to come 
 through believing and trusting people too 
 implicitly, as hearts in which there is no 
 guile or sinfulness are prone to do. | 
 
118 TBH TRAGIC TRUTH. 
 
 In these days Elsie was always pre- 
 sented as Mrs. Foster at dinner parties, 
 box parties and yachting trips. There 
 was absolutely nothing o£ sufficient im- 
 portance to raise the slightest doubt in 
 her childish mind. They spent some of 
 the warmer weather at Long Branch at 
 the beautiful " Hollywood," and there the 
 same trusting bliss of being alone with 
 him filled her heart. 
 
 A week after their return, Konald came 
 hastily home from his office at noon, just 
 an hour after he had left. Specially 
 tender he had been lately, vowing eternal 
 devotion and endless love. It could not 
 have been with a fiendish desire to make 
 her grief more poignant, yet why was it 
 that, on the verge of her destruction, he 
 
TBE TRAGIC TUVTB. 119 
 
 freshened these protestations which were 
 to haunt her with such pain and keen 
 anguish. 
 
 It was Monday. He came to Elsie's 
 room where she was working busily and 
 happily, and closed the door, bolting it. 
 The room was plainly furnished, plainer 
 than any Elsie had known in her short life. 
 It contained a brass bedstead, a comfortable 
 but ugly lounge, and a rather tasty little 
 writing desk of oak. It was at this he 
 found Elsie sitting, still in her morning 
 dress. 
 
 He walked toward her as she jumped 
 up to kiss him. His face was pale. 
 " Ronald, my darling," Elsie exclaimed 
 in alarm, leading him to the sofa, and ar- 
 ranging the pillows for his head. " Lie 
 
120 THE TRAGIC TRUTBi 
 
 still a few minutes and then tell me," she 
 said> 
 
 As he lay -with closed eyes, and his 
 hands in hers clasped so warmly, it seemed 
 to the girl she had never loved him so 
 much as at that moment. The force of 
 the emotion was almost overpowering. 
 He drew her to him, passionately, fondly, 
 again and again. " You know how I 
 love you, don't you, Elsie ; love you, love 
 you, adore you as an angel ; my own pure 
 angel. Your innocence and sweetness 
 was what drew me so irresistibly toward 
 you. Say you love me, quick," he con- 
 tinued. " Say, ' Ronald, I love you and will 
 forever and forever, nothing under heaven 
 can alter that love.' Say it, Elsie, 
 my God ! " and as the girl repeated his 
 
THE TRAGIC TBtTTB. 121 
 
 •words the strong man broke down and 
 sobbed. Was it acting ? 
 
 Then, looking her steadily in the face, 
 he handed her a letter. The address was 
 in a very large bold hand, and covered 
 almost all the envelope. It was from a 
 place she had never heard of, but after- 
 wards learned was his home, at least 
 where his wife and children were. 
 
 It was a letter from a wife to her hus- 
 band. In it she spoke of their children, 
 and said she would be in New York the 
 following day. This for a supposed wife, 
 with the same husband's kisses still warm 
 on her lips and the weight of promises in 
 her brain. 
 
 Elsie had a quick intellect and saw it 
 all. She read it again to make sure. 
 
122 TBE TRAGIC TRUTH. 
 
 Was she dreaming? She was violently 
 stunned. Ronald she could not see, 
 although he sat with his black piercing 
 eyes glued to hers. Then the most 
 piteous wail broke from her white lips 
 and she lost consciousness. 
 
 When she came to herself, a few hours 
 later, the woman was bending over the 
 bed, and Ronald, with anguish in every 
 lineament of his face, was wildly kissing 
 her lips and chafing her little hands. It 
 was to the woman the wronged child 
 then turned. Heart-rending was her 
 pleading to her who had never looked so 
 kind and lovable. " Let me live with 
 you, — ^be your maid, anything ! What 
 will become of me ? I cannot go back to 
 my home, and then — Oh, Ronald," and she 
 
THE TBAOIC TBUTB. 123 
 
 turned her beautiful moist eyes on him, 
 " you know what I told you, and what 
 you said it meant. What will become of 
 me ! Oh, Mamma Vane, Mamma Vane ! 
 Angels keep it from her ! God, do not 
 let her know in heaven ! " And again she 
 fell back, exhausted and unconscious. 
 
 Foster was crying like a child, and so 
 was the woman Elsie had not liked at 
 first, but whose breast held a true sympa- 
 thetic heart for those in such sorrow as 
 that of this sweet young girlj for whom 
 her affection was more than casual. They 
 let her lie so, and looked at each other. 
 She with quiet reproach in her eyes, he 
 with conscious guUt in his. 
 
 "I could not help it. I tell you I 
 adore her. I never loved any one this 
 
124 TUP, TRAGIC TRUTB. 
 
 way. I had to have her. I could not 
 resist her charms. It was terrible. My 
 God ! terrible, fiendish ! But any man 
 would have done just as I did. What 
 have I done, what have I done ! Oh, Elsie, 
 Elsie, come back, come back to Konald ! " 
 and it seemed for a moment he was 
 crazed by the review of his crime. He 
 did not tell the woman of the marriage, 
 and the girl had never told any one. So 
 no one knew, at least none that knew 
 her. Could words ever be found to tell 
 or even vaguely express Elsie's anguish ? 
 Wonderful it was that she lived through 
 that night. For twelve hours she suffered 
 more than words can tell. 
 
 Then she woke to realization. 
 
 Ronald kissed her and she shuddered. 
 
THE TRAGIC TRUTH. 125 
 
 " You'll never leave me, will you, Elsie ? 
 I can take care of you with one hand and 
 not half try. I will see you every day. 
 It is not as bad as it might be. Suppose 
 I did not love you ! " And he tried to 
 make her smile. 
 
 " We will keep these rooms just as they 
 are, and I'll come here and write and 
 talk to you for hours. Our same happy 
 past will be continued," he went on, as if 
 striving to cheer her, " and sometimes we 
 will take little journeys together. You are 
 only frightened about the other afEair. 
 Come, and let me help you pack this 
 small steamer trunk for both of us when 
 we go away together." 
 
 He never spoke of the wrong he had 
 done her, never , referred to the mar- 
 
126 THE TRAGIC TRUTH. 
 
 riage, but seemed to think she would 
 keep up the relation, even knowing it was 
 illegitimate ; but he mistook her. Much 
 as she loved him she could not do that. 
 It never even occurred to her as a pos- 
 sibility. Her husband, as she thought, 
 going to live with another woman ! The 
 thought was horrible, and she had re- 
 solved to end her life. She would be 
 dead before the woman arrived, and, to 
 please Ronald, she smiled a faint snule, 
 and did as he wished in regard to the 
 trunk, putting in just what he told her, 
 and he chose the garments from his 
 wardrobe that he knew she Uked best, 
 and she did the same. Then they laughed 
 and chatted, and he made her promise 
 that she would try to think it was not a§ 
 
THE TRAGIC TRUTH. 127 
 
 bad as it had seemed at first. She hugged 
 him tightly to her and pressed her pale 
 face close, close against his as they sat on 
 the floor by the trunk. 
 
 He had brought it, a pretty tan-colored 
 affair, home with him when he brought the 
 tragic letter ; then they locked it, and he 
 gave her one key and kept the other. 
 "When you come to the rooms, always 
 bring it," he said, " and so will I, even if 
 you are not here, for I shall want to see 
 the dear little garments and imagine them 
 on you. 
 
 " I do not want you to live here any 
 longer, Elsie, these people are not your 
 hind," he remarked a moment later, but 
 stiU he gave no excuse for having taken 
 her there. " I will find a nice place for you 
 
128 THE TRAGIC TRUTH. 
 
 among good church people and literary 
 folks, where you belong socially ; you are 
 an angel, anyway, and too good for this 
 earth," he went on rapturously, gazing 
 into her eyes as if he was entranced. The 
 sorrowful, half-crazed beauty of the girl 
 had a strange influence over him. He 
 had never seen her look thus. Her eyes 
 seemed too large and bright, and she was 
 nervous to a degree that alarmed the 
 man. 
 
 " Now I'll go and see about the room 
 for you somewhere, for she will be here 
 this evening, and I want you to teU me 
 you will lie down and have a quiet rest and 
 sleep." And he carried her to the bed 
 and arranged the pillows and kissed her 
 lips and eyes and forehead, longingly and 
 
THE TRAGIC TRUTB. 129 
 
 lovingly, as if he could not go, then left 
 her, his eyes filled with tears. 
 
 Elsie immediately rang for her maid, 
 and said she wanted to go out. " Get me 
 my street suit, the black one," she added, 
 imperiously, as the maid hesitated, think- 
 ing the sweet Mrs. Foster looked too ill to 
 leave the house. 
 
 An hour later, after failure at several 
 drug-stores, the sombre clad figure regis- 
 tered at one as Jennie Wilson, gave some 
 fictitious address, and took away a small 
 bottle of dark-colored liquid. The clerk 
 looked after her as if half sorry he had 
 let her have it, but she had fulfilled the 
 requirements as to name and address, and 
 she had an honest sweet pair of eyes he 
 saw through her veil. The faithful, con- 
 
130 THE TRAGIC TRUTH. 
 
 cerned maid was waiting for Mrs. Foster 
 when she returned to her apartment, where 
 she had seen so much of both supreme 
 happiness and deep bitter, sorrow. " Go, 
 Lizzie, and bring me some luncheon," she 
 said, " I am not very well," and as she left 
 the room the woman of the house came 
 over to the girl, and placed her arm 
 around her. 
 
 " What is it, tell me ? I can sympathize 
 ■with you, Mrs, Foster." 
 
 Then it was that the flood-gates of 
 Elsie's heart were opened, and she sobbed 
 aloud in her anguish. Before this she had 
 shed few tears, she was too stunned. It 
 was something like the cut of a sharp in- 
 strument. The severe pain does not begin 
 at once. At least it is not felt. And theo 
 
THE TRAGIC TRUTH. X31 
 
 she freed herself from the woman and 
 walked up and down, wringing her hands in 
 agony. Separation, desertion ! She, Elsie 
 Vane, had been a man's mistress. Nothing 
 more nor less. Before the world little 
 better than those she had been taught to 
 and naturally loathed. When the woman's 
 supposed husband came in, the all but dis- 
 tracted girl, with tear-stained face, be- 
 sought and implored him not to let her 
 sufEer. Asked him to promise never to let 
 her be thrown on the world, and he and 
 the woman consoled her as best they could, 
 and she at length fell exhausted on the 
 sofa, the deadly bottle still clasped in one 
 nerveless hand. 
 
 The thoughtful, observant woman had 
 noticed the clenched hand, and was watch- 
 
132 THE TRAGIC TRUTH. 
 
 ing. When she had fallen asleep she 
 took it away, and they telegraphed for 
 Bonald to come at once. They thought 
 she would die of her grief. 
 
 When he arrived and stooped over her, 
 the girl at once awoke and missed the 
 poison. A blush stole over her face, in- 
 creasing her loveliness. He lifted her to 
 his arms, and told her, between caresses, 
 that he had such a nice place for her ; a 
 minister, his own rector, had told him of it, 
 and there he would take her about four 
 o'clock. Her name, he told her, would be 
 Miss McHenry hereafter in New York, for 
 he well knew it would be fearful to her to 
 be her old self even in name under such 
 painful circumstances. But he had no 
 doubt in his mind, less fine than the gfirl's, 
 
THE TRAGIC TBUTB. 133 
 
 tiiat she would eventually resume her own, 
 so rarely enviable and aristocratic. He 
 even told his friend and the woman that 
 she would forget the sorrow as she grew 
 older. She would fall in love with some 
 one else and marry him. When the girl 
 heard of it — ^he mentioned something of 
 the same nature to Elsie — she felt her re- 
 spect for him lower vastly, and almost she 
 felt contempt for the man she would have 
 died for a moment before. This was dis- 
 illusion. 
 
 At the appointed hour they left the 
 house and went to the place he had 
 spoken of on East Twenty-second Street. 
 It looked clean and respectable, but oh, the 
 anguish in the heart of the girl as she 
 heard " Miss Hannard, Miss McHenry. 
 
m THE TRAGIC TRTTTB. 
 
 I am the Hon. R. P. Foster. Miss Mc- 
 Henry, this little girl," taking her hand as 
 he saw her trembling increase, " is doing 
 statistical work for our rector. He told 
 me of your house," etc., etc. And while 
 they talked away as if the world held 
 never a heart-rending sorrow, the girl 
 went through the same slough of despond 
 as before they left their home, only ag- 
 gravated. 
 
 He engaged a room for her, and then 
 the matron limped away and left them 
 alone in the great lonesome parlors ; 
 regulation boarding-house parlors. 
 
 Foster was surely suffering. Compared 
 to this he had never known what it was 
 to suffer. Every glance at the sad ap- 
 pealing eyes of the girl, who was trying 
 
THE TRAGIC TRUTH. 135 
 
 to be so brave, went with edged keenness 
 to his very soul. 
 
 And he left her, assuring her they 
 would yet be happy as in the past. The 
 girl went to her poor little room to throw 
 herself violently on the hard bed and lie 
 there in quiet despair, praying God to 
 take her to her own mother. 
 
 She did not notice the lunch hour, nor 
 that of dinner. She was oblivious to all 
 else save her great sorrow and loneliness. 
 Disgraced, deserted and alone in New 
 York ! Later her trunks arrived, and with 
 them some letters from Ronald, which, the 
 boy said, had been downstairs " all after- 
 noon since five." They were to meet at 
 their rooms the next day at two, in order 
 that the girl inight tell him how she was 
 
136 THE TRAGIC TBUTH. 
 
 getting along. He should be wild to see 
 her, he said intensely. 
 
 In one of the letters he asked her to 
 be sure and write to him that evening. 
 He must hear from her before he slept, 
 and the girl had a messenger called and 
 sent him a brief note. It was loving, and 
 mentioned their meeting on the morrow. 
 For Elsie meant to see Mm once^ and 
 then — try again. 
 
ON TBE WORLD. 137 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ON THE WORLD. 
 
 A TELEGRAM came. It was morning, but 
 she did not know it. She had not slept. 
 The sky-window rattled dismally in the 
 little room, and it was cold. Northern 
 winter was already beginning, although it 
 was just the first of October. Elsie had 
 never felt a cold northern winter, and it 
 added to her discomfort. There was no 
 fire to cheer her, nor a voice. 
 
 She knew the telegram was from 
 Ronald. He had taught her to call him 
 
138 ON THE WORLD. 
 
 that, with a great deal of trouble. He was 
 wont to say he loved to hear her mellow 
 tones pronounce it so differently from any 
 one else. The message said : 
 
 "Elsie, my little love, you remember the 
 picture. She knows of it. I adore you, and 
 hope you have slept. 
 
 "EOITALD." 
 
 The picture was a life-sized portrait of 
 himself. He had brought it to her from 
 Washington, where they had given a 
 banquet in his honor upon his resigna- 
 tion. How she loved it, and how dis- 
 tinctly she recalled the morning he came 
 home — after spending his first night away 
 from her in New York ! They had made 
 him a present of a magnificent punch-bowl, 
 elaborately engraved, and that, too, he 
 
ON TBE tVOnLL. ■ 139 
 
 had hastened to show her. The picture 
 she had taken, after asking him if it was 
 hers for good, to a pietnre-f ramer, and had 
 it framed in plain white ivory with a little 
 gilt next the matting, and had glass put 
 over it to better preserve the signature, 
 " Yours faithfuUy, Ronald P. Foster." 
 Now loomed up what she supposed was 
 the woman's clue. At the framer's she 
 had given her name Mrs. Foster, and had 
 it sent to that address. She knew no 
 better. She had taken him with her to 
 look at the frame before it was made, 
 and he called her Mrs. Foster. They 
 lived only a short distance from that 
 framer, and she must have learned from 
 him that there had been another Mrs. 
 Foster. Perhaps he had asked the real wife 
 
140 ON TBM WORLD. 
 
 if they were related, when she was having 
 work done. All such wild terrorizing 
 thoughts passed through her active mind. 
 It seemed to her she lived years before 
 two o'clock. 
 
 They met in the still room where they had 
 known such happiness, both heartbroken. 
 But Ronald Foster was most worried, the 
 girl soon discovered, lest his wife should 
 know the whole truth, and jeopardize his 
 reputation. He told the girl how furious 
 she had been. How she had torn the 
 costly rings from her fingers and thrown 
 them at him in a paroxysm of fury and 
 temper. She called the girl an adven- 
 turess, and he wanted her to promise she 
 would go to see his wife and tell her she 
 was not. " Tell her what you are, Elsie, 
 
ON THE WOBLD. 141 
 
 you don't want her to think you bad," he 
 arged, seeing her shrink back in terror at 
 the proposition. " Let her see you. Tell 
 her you love me, tell her how you love 
 me. She got your letter, too, and read it 
 before I did. You had better see her, 
 Elsie." And the timid girl promised, but 
 she did not kiss Ronald. 
 
 " She says you must leave the city," he 
 went on. "I guess you had better go back 
 to the government." 
 
 It was a wonder the girl's mind stood 
 the cool way in which he dealt with this, 
 the vital part of her life. Merely an oc- 
 currence to him, evidently. 
 
 Then he called a cab and took her to 
 present her to the rector for whom she 
 was doing the work begun with Bonald. 
 
142 ON THE WORLD. 
 
 " Miss McHenry " he called her, then back 
 to herself and aggravated grief in solitude. 
 She was to see his wife that evening, but 
 she fainted on the stair and was too ill 
 and weak. Foster called to inquire, fear- 
 ing she was iU, but could not see her. 
 
 He was told, however, that she had re- 
 ceived a telegram ; it was one of his which 
 came late that evening, the first time she 
 had been down to the table, and had left 
 suddenly. One of the boarders had found 
 her in a dead faint. He left word, asking 
 her to call the following evening, and 
 rather than disappoint him the girl 
 went. 
 
 Surely this woman who met her was not 
 his wife ! The man Elsie loved marry 
 such a woman ! Then she talked to her, 
 
ON THE WORLD. 14a 
 
 finally exacting a promise that the girl 
 would leave the city the next day. For 
 six months she should not see Ronald, 
 and if, at the end of that time, she stiU 
 loved him — very well. It was plainly evi- 
 dent that she had surely no idea of the 
 truth, the real awful truth, that was every 
 moment staring the wronged girl in the 
 face, that weighed on her mind constantly. 
 A fact that she well, only too well knew 
 should not trouble one unmarried. The 
 tears that would dim the beautiful eyes 
 were more bitter by far than the cold 
 woman who talked so cruelly about " get- 
 ting over " her love could comprehend 
 perhaps. 
 
 She was alone with his wife, and she 
 felt that if the truth were known she 
 
144 ON THE WORLD. 
 
 might be justified in killing her. And 
 she was frightened and wished Ronald 
 would come. Of one thing the girl was 
 certain. She would leave Ronald for 
 good. That was her duty. But she for- 
 got for the moment the great and all-im- 
 portant duty he must necessarily owe her. 
 Forgot it until he placed her with such 
 tender care in the Washington sleeper the 
 next night at ten o'clock. Then it came 
 to her in all its awful enormity, and the 
 man saw and read and understood it in a 
 glance, but, alas, the train was moving and 
 he kissed her good-bye. 
 
 The girl had not thought of going back 
 to the Parans'. The office was enough to 
 recall the untarnished past of Elsie Vane. 
 So she lived with a congressman and his 
 
ON TBE WORLD. 145 
 
 •wife who had a big house, and had 
 known the daughter of Senator Vane 
 eince childhood, — had been neighbors. 
 The man was elected by a large majority 
 and had just taken his seat. 
 
 They made her comfortable, and she un 
 packed her trunk. Oh, the sorrow dragged 
 forth as each article came to light ! His 
 pictures — ^lots of them. Gowns she had 
 worn on well-remembered occasions. News- 
 paper extracts about her husband, as she 
 thought. And she bundled them aU up 
 hastily and covered them over. It was 
 like a funeral. For she seemed leaving 
 him forever, and each garment taken from 
 the trunk was a bolt in the coffin of a 
 living love the unsophisticated girl was 
 tiying to bury. Perhaps she would have 
 
146 ON THE WORLD. 
 
 succeeded, as people do who undertake to 
 bury the living in real life, had not some 
 one beside herself discovered it. God 
 knows it were better she had succeeded, 
 but it was to be otherwise. One sin and 
 crime at least of this Hon. E. P.Foster 
 was to come to light and be visited on the 
 innocent girl. 
 
 When she could no longer stand the 
 vivid pictures recalled by the ordeal of 
 unpacking, she sent for Mrs. Ripley, and 
 wept as though she would never stop. 
 But she could not be induced to tell what 
 was the cause of the outburst, and never 
 did. Mr. Ripley found out, but never 
 mentioned it to Elsie. They wisely and 
 kindly respected her grief, little knowing 
 that before many moons all the world 
 
ON TSE WORLD. 147 
 
 would know, and be pleased to call it her 
 shame. 
 
 The next day Elsie went to the office, 
 the old place. It was hard, and every few 
 seconds tears would well up in her eyes 
 despite her heroic efforts to conquer them. 
 She was greeted kindly for a stranger, and 
 given her old desk and work, and aU the 
 day she tried to be contented and her 
 natural self. To blot out all that had 
 intervened since the last time she had sat 
 there. But it was impossible. If she 
 raised her eyes it was to look into his as 
 she saw him that first time he reviewed the 
 clerks. If she walked about, each bit of 
 furnishing had on its front some reference 
 to him. AU the work bore his autograph, 
 just as she had seen him write it hundreds 
 
148 ON THE WORLD. 
 
 of times and had practiced so hard to imitate 
 one evening at " The Chambers," such a 
 short time ago, although this one day 
 seemed interminable. 
 
 About two o'clock a note was handed 
 her and a telegram. The latter stated 
 that Foster had arrived, but for her to tell 
 no one. The note said that a carriage 
 was in waiting to take her to him at a big 
 insurance building, where he would meet 
 her. " Get excused," it said, " and hurry." 
 
 Glad and trembling, she forgot her re- 
 solves and went. It was raining, pouring. 
 This pleased her, for the long mackintosh 
 covered her identity to some extent, and 
 she began, as soon as she left the office, to 
 feel, for the first time in her short life, 
 guilty. That she somehow should not see 
 
ON TBE WORLD. 149 
 
 him. It did not accord with her best 
 ideas of her own future conduct. 
 
 As soon, however, as she saw Bonald, 
 the other possible futurity, that soul har- 
 rowing one pressed to the front, and he 
 too, knew it when he met her eyes. He 
 took her into the office, and introduced 
 her to some of his friends. What one of 
 her names he used she did not know, 
 and never recalled. It might iave been 
 anything, for she was very much agi- 
 tated. There was a certain pleasure un- 
 sanctioned by her conscience, in the fact 
 that he had so soon followed her to her 
 unhappy work of forgetting. 
 
 They lingered but a moment and then 
 were driven together to their first home 
 at " The Chambers." The gl9,mour of win© 
 
150 ON THE WOSLD. 
 
 was o£E it now, and Elsie longed to be 
 back with Mrs. Ripley. Not because she 
 had ceased to love Ronald, but because 
 she felt it was wrong to be there, knowing 
 all she now knew. To be sure the injury 
 to her and to her character had been 
 accomplished, but yet — she was still the 
 daughter of a Vane. Wine was immedi- 
 ately brought them, for this man knew 
 what would be the girl's feelings better 
 than she. But Elsie would not taste 
 it. He asked her minutely about all her 
 doings since her return, where she was hv- 
 ing, and so many questions, that at last 
 her childish heart opened and she pic- 
 tured vividly to him all the anguish of 
 her return, until tears shone in his eyes, 
 and he said he was so sorry. They 
 
ON TBE WOSLD. 151 
 
 spoke of the other — ^Ronald Foster did,— 
 and told her to go to the doctor who had 
 attended her once at Mrs. Paran's when 
 she had had a slight attach of diphtheria. 
 '* He was friendly to you, Elsie," he said, 
 " and you can tell him you were married 
 to an old friend of yours at the Fair, 
 and that he has gone away for some 
 time ; or, say he died. That would be 
 better, now I come to think of it. He 
 will believe you. Every one would believe 
 you, Elsie, my little sweetheart ; truth is 
 written all over your beautiful face." 
 
 But Elsie could not do that. She was 
 not equal to such deception then. She 
 was, later, when she could not procure a 
 death-drug, and must act. But that was 
 two months later, and youth does not duly 
 
152 oiv THE World. 
 
 anticipate trouble. That is one of its 
 faults. The doctor he referred to was a 
 warm friend of Paran's and of the girl. 
 Elsie interested him greatly, and he had 
 taken her and Paran for more than one 
 drive with his big horses. No, she could 
 not do it. But she did not tell Ronald 
 " no ;" she just leaned back and was quiet, 
 for she would surely die before shame came 
 to her. God would not let her live to bear 
 what she had never deserved, the igno- 
 miny of her race and family. So she did 
 not annoy him by a refusal. 
 
 At parting he took her hands in his, say- 
 ing he would spend weeks with her there 
 every month. All the time he could. 
 But Elsie shuddered, and he saw her. 
 Plainly he had mistaken her love, it was 
 
aM TBS M^OJJXi). 163 
 
 not of that kind. He bent over to kiss 
 her and tried to draw her close to him, but 
 she would not. " I'll be back in a few 
 days, Elsie, to stay longer," he persuaded 
 again, but she nodded adieu and went to 
 the waiting carriage. 
 
 She reached Ripley's just in time for 
 dinner but she did not eat. She talked 
 rapid nonsense during the meal, and until 
 they were all tired, then she went «arly ^o 
 her room, but could not sleep alone ; she 
 was afraid, and so slept with the maid. 
 
 The next day she went as usual to her 
 work. At four o'clock that afternoon she 
 was notified by of&cial letter that her serv- 
 ices were no longer requu'ed. Like wildfire 
 the news of the dismissal of Foster's favor- 
 ite flew through the building. For such 
 
154 ON TBM WOULD. 
 
 secrets, however well guarded, will out. 
 As she hade the chief good-bye and left 
 the building forever, some woman tried to 
 tender her sympathy, but Elsie did not 
 know her and wanted no sympathy. She 
 had, four days before, while in New York, 
 been telegraphed to return, or rather Mr. 
 Foster had received the message, and she 
 felt the humiliation of the dismissal 
 keenly. Hers was the only one, and 
 every employee knew of it. 
 
 She went directly to Mr. Ripley, and told 
 him all, but never mentioned it to any one 
 else, not even Foster. Mr. Ripley advised 
 her to stay awhile with them, and get 
 strong, and let matters take their course. 
 The troubled girl was taken very ill ; for 
 ten days she was kept close and quiet. 
 
ON THE WOULD. , 155 
 
 Notes came from " The Ckambers " — ^Fos- 
 ter had returned — but were delivered again 
 to him unopened. The girl's life depended 
 on non-excitement and absolute rest and 
 quiet. So he went on, south. On his re- 
 turn he called again at the big house to 
 see the girl, but she had left. 
 
 The rector had telegraphed for her to 
 come back to N»w York and finish his 
 work, and the independent girl, with ten 
 dollars in her purse, had gone. Mr. 
 Bipley insisted on sending her to Vassar 
 college, as he had no children of his own, 
 and believed in her capabilities, but the girl 
 thought of the possible other — ^^that night- 
 mare to her. 
 
166 THE NOVEL. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE NOVEL. 
 
 When Elsie had discovered all, she had 
 sent for a little money she had in 
 bank in Washington, and had given it aU 
 to Foster for her expenses. " I have 
 never been your wife, and you never have 
 had a right to support me," and she felt 
 much better, having done this. 
 
 Upon her return to New York, she did 
 not go again to the house where Foster 
 had introduced her as Miss McHenry, but 
 she did take the same name. She did not 
 
THE NOVEL. 157 
 
 go there because she feared Mrs. Foster 
 or her husband would learn of her where- 
 abouts. The former she knew would 
 regard it as treachery to her promise, and 
 the latter she knew would learn of her 
 dismissal, and would want to talk of it or 
 sympathize. She felt she could not en- 
 dure his sympathy of all persons. 
 
 During those several eventful days before 
 leaving New York Elsie had met an old 
 white-bearded historian. He lived in that 
 same house. It was he who had found 
 the girl on the stair and carried her to the 
 matron's room. 
 
 After her return, she met him faee to 
 face one day as she was leaving the parish 
 house, where the rector had permitted 
 her to do the work, her own little hall-room 
 
158 THE NOVEL. 
 
 being too dark and small for handling 
 the large sheets of figures. She lived 
 those hard days, until she met the histo- 
 rian, in a tiny bedroom without even a 
 window. It had been built against. It 
 was a horrible experience for a girl reared 
 as she had been, but she had no more 
 money, and had to do it. It cost two 
 dollars and a half a week, and was not 
 ten doors from where Foster, the man 
 who had caused all this, lived with his 
 wife and family. It was near the house 
 where she was employed, and she left 
 the hollow, wretched bed as soon as 
 possible for the cahn of the parish house 
 and the soft pictures of the Madonna, 
 and the Child Jesus. She never ven- 
 tured anywhere else, only back and 
 
TUE NOVEL. 159 
 
 forth, night and morning, for two 
 weeks. 
 
 But one day the thought that was now 
 constantly with her seemed at length to 
 rule her. She had finished the portion 
 she had laid out to do that day, and felt an 
 irresistible desire to walk by the house 
 where they had lived, where she had so hap- 
 pily built up the foundation for this sorrow 
 which bid fair to consume her ; that 
 made her pray night and day to die ; 
 that God would rescue her. 
 
 And she went, but not far before she 
 met the historian. He noticed her paUor,. 
 and inquired about her health and where 
 she was living, and how it was she was 
 back so soon. He had understood she 
 was in Florida. Ronald had told her to 
 
160 THE NOVEL. 
 
 tell the people so when she had left for 
 Washingfton. 
 
 Elsie did not teU him about her dismissal. 
 He had never known she had a govern- 
 ment position, and it was not necessary. 
 But she did tell him where she lived 
 and what she was doing. He insisted on 
 leatbing if she was comfortable, and when 
 she told him, as if possessed by the spirit 
 of narrative, all about her wretched little 
 room, and the poor outlook, he told her 
 he was in need of some one to read the 
 proofs of his new books, and also to write 
 other tilings for Mm. He would pay her 
 forty dollars a month. 
 
 The girl was delighted. This, with 
 what she was expecting to earn from the 
 church people would enable her to leave 
 
THE NOVEL. 161 
 
 the squalid place where she was living at 
 once. And when the good man gave her 
 two bright five-dollar gold-pieces in ad- 
 vance, and told her that he would take it 
 out of her first month's wages, she no 
 longer hesitated, but took them, thinking 
 she had never seen anything look so 
 beautiful. 
 
 That night she studied a paper, and 
 moved at once to the house in which she 
 was living when the story opens. Much as 
 she saw of her benefactor during the fol- 
 lowing days, she never told him of her life 
 — nothing of it, and he did not inquire. 
 He did not even suspect that her name 
 was. assumed. But Elsie was restless. 
 She felt that indefinable lack of some- 
 thing in her life. Was it love her heart 
 II 
 
162 THE NOVEL. 
 
 craved? Yes. The love of a mother, 
 and her tender care. 
 
 She then wrote to the Ripleys, because 
 she knew they would feel concerned for 
 her safety, and told them about her as- 
 sumed name, but gave no reason for 
 it, and they asked none. Foster and 
 his wife, she on the evening of that 
 memorable interview, both advised the 
 girl to write a book and make herself 
 famous. 
 
 The idea of a person in her situation, and 
 with so much work in hand necessary for 
 sustenance, writing a book had never 
 looked possible to Elsie. How could she, 
 unless she wrote what weighed on her mind 
 BO heavily ; that which came with every 
 breath she drew ? 
 
THE NOVEL. 163 
 
 After she moved, she had hired a coup^ 
 and been driven to look at the frontage of 
 a number of places she had taken from. 
 " Rooms to Let " in the paper. She had 
 stopped at this, thinking from its exterior 
 that it was the private residence of the 
 physician whose plate was on the door. 
 She vaguely thought it would be better to 
 live in a private family than in a public 
 place. 
 
 She had been there only a few days 
 when she was strangely impelled to right 
 herself in the eyes of the people to whom 
 the Hon. R. P. Foster had introduced 
 her as Mrs. Foster. They had doubtless 
 known all the time of the existence of the 
 former wife, and she trembled to think 
 what must be their opinion of her. But 
 
164 THE NOVEL. 
 
 how could she do it. She finally decided 
 to write a letter to one of the young men, 
 she had met and become somewhat ac- 
 quainted with. He was only a few years 
 older than she, and seemed good and hon- 
 est. As she recalled his expression now, 
 upon hearing her name, Mrs. Foster, she 
 did not know but it was considerate. Had 
 he known ? Without a doubt. She would 
 ask him to come to see her and tell him 
 all about it. He, of all persons, must not 
 think her guilty. 
 
 To him she wrote such a note as he 
 could not fail to respond to, and he came 
 to see her. But Elsie could not find cour- 
 age to tell him the terrible truth. Not 
 even when she thought of the inevitable 
 future. For above all self-protection rang 
 
TBE NOVEL. 165 
 
 out, "What will Ronald think?" He 
 would hate her. And so all she could tell 
 him was that her name was not really her 
 own, and she vaguely recalled having said 
 something in answer to his inquiries about 
 being related to Mr. Foster. Oh, it was a 
 fearful, desperate situation, and she only 
 made it more so by the rash act. She 
 never saw him again. 
 
 Then, after this signal and single failure, 
 she began to write in the night. Began 
 her novel without really knowing it. She 
 could not sleep, and must not think with- 
 out acting. Her nervous activity at this 
 time was remarkable. For two weeks the 
 girl absolutely never slept. She would do 
 her daily writing and reading for the old 
 historian and retire at a seasonable tour, 
 
166 THM NOVEL. 
 
 after spending the evening at the piano, 
 which she found she could afford to hire, 
 but could not induce her eyes to stay in 
 any other condition but staring wide open. 
 It was a serious physical state, but she 
 told no one, and knew none of the people 
 in the house save the matron, who paid 
 not the slightest attention to any one or 
 anything except bills and receipts. And 
 so it was before she knew it, almost, she 
 had written and completed her novel, and 
 a novel it was. She had endeavored to 
 conceal the real, and to sugar-coat all 
 Foster's acts until he himself would 
 scarcely have recognized the character as 
 himself. But she did not make the mis- 
 take that most young writers do, putting 
 herself in the book. Her heroine was a 
 
THE NOVEL. 167 
 
 really good creation and wonderful, too 
 wonderful, and as overdrawn in some 
 regards as the most exaggerated one of 
 Balzac's many. 
 
 Her room was over that occupied by the 
 doctor as an office. Often he would hear 
 the soft tread of slippered feet above him 
 as he was preparing to make a sudden 
 night-caU, or was returning home in the 
 early hours of dawn. And he wondered, 
 both from the standpoint of a physician 
 and from curiosity, if that young lady 
 never slept. The novel was just finished 
 when he asked the matron to be presented, 
 if the girl had no objection. Perhaps this 
 was all well and perhaps ill. 
 
 The first publisher to whom the novel 
 was submitted accepted and published it. 
 
168 TBB NOVEL. 
 
 Then, the strain of It all over with, and all 
 else settled, Elsie fell ill, as described in 
 the opening chapter. 
 
DEatlRTtON. 16a 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 DBSERTIOK. 
 
 Just after the event on the Rialto Elsie 
 had, as soon as she was able, written the 
 following letter and sent it to Eonald Fos" 
 ter. That was why he had called. It 
 was a letter that brought him at once to 
 her side. 
 
 What else could she do. To her it was 
 a most serious thing. A thing that preyed 
 constantly on her mind. That had given 
 her unnatural strength, while eating out 
 her soul. Days of absence, when they do 
 not kiU lore, revive aU the ardor of its 
 
170 DESERTION. 
 
 earlier days, and are the reasons for mak- 
 ing love eternal. Though Elsie had cast 
 his pro£Eered love aside now that she knew 
 it to be wrong, yet she knew her bones 
 would love him in the grave, such had been 
 its power of endurance. 
 
 At times she suffered abnormally, and 
 felt she could not endure the separation. 
 But she forced herself until the crisis came 
 when the physician sanctioned her fears. 
 Before her illness the girl found the peo- 
 ple with whom she passed the time, so she 
 wrote Mrs. Ripley, in a " try-to-be-cheerful 
 letter," so thoroughly bourgeois. " Pity 
 me ! Imag^e j I pass my time with ple- 
 beians ! Oh, what a change from my for- 
 mer life ! " 
 
 But to Ronald she did not try to con- 
 
DESEnnON. 171 
 
 ceal the truth ; she knew he most help 
 her. To him she wrote : 
 
 " Ronald : 
 
 " I must write to you In my deep trouble. 
 Why do I turn to you ? Because I had 
 the right. God knows I thought it was 
 truly and honestly. Have I now the right ? 
 Heaven protect me, but the world says 
 'no.' I do not claim it now, dear as it 
 was to me. This is only an irresistible im- 
 pulse. You wiU, in memory of the past, 
 show me some easy way out of the diffi- 
 culties which beset me on all sides. To 
 no one else on earth can I turn and con- 
 fide. You know why. None would com- 
 prehend my most peculiar situation and 
 sympalthize with my agonized distress. 
 
172 DESHETtOir. 
 
 You are the author of it all, but do not 
 think I blame you. I loved too well, and 
 too ignorantly. But, Eonald, I had no 
 mother, and no one warned me until too 
 late. With such a burning love as mine 
 for you, I doubt if I would have listened 
 to a warning had it been tendered me. If 
 you had only known you would have 
 loved my mother. And now that tender 
 heart, that clear intellect, that cheerful 
 temper and sweet dignity have met that 
 destruction, less severe than mine, death. 
 What she was to me I cannot express to 
 you. She taught me to be as virtuous 
 and honest as she, and I am, despite my 
 mistaken past. I am not a fallen girl, 
 nor do I feel in the least degraded. My 
 marriage to you was as sacred and beauti- 
 
DESMBTION. 173 
 
 ful to me as that of any lady in any land. 
 I loved you purely and irresistibly, and I 
 went to you with all the simplicity and 
 trust of that love. But, oh, the agony of 
 the thought, that for years the stigma of 
 it all will he upon me, because the world 
 does not and cannot understand, unless 
 you tell them. 
 
 " Remember, I am honest. I have no 
 desire to take you from your family as 
 you so often suggested. There was a 
 time when I would have done so, but I 
 was not as strong in purpose and memory 
 of my mother as I now am. The night 
 I left you the angels alone know how I 
 suffered; that night I would have gone 
 blindly with you even to hell. The awak- 
 ening to know that you are thoroughly 
 
174 DESERTION. 
 
 bad was the bitterest and keenest pang. 
 That I, Elsie Vane, the only hope o£ the 
 proudest family o£ the South, should have, 
 could have loved a base man. Pardon 
 me, but sometimes it comes to me with 
 maddening force. I vowed never to see 
 you more, but I have an important 
 communication to make you; I fear 
 serious and distinctly unpleasant. You 
 will know as soon as I teU you whether I 
 need worry or not. Come to me at once, 
 or I shall be frenzied with doubt. Why, 
 oh, why did I love you ! If I had only 
 succeeded that awful night in swallowing 
 that stuff. That was the time for me to 
 have died. 
 
 " Come to me and help me, for I need 
 you. Elsib." 
 
DESERTION. 17S 
 
 Ronald Foster had been to call on the 
 girl before since she had been living 
 there. In fact a number of times. When 
 he had learned, through some of his 
 Washington friends, of her dismissal, he 
 was annoyed. More because he did not 
 know what she would do than for any 
 other reason, and he feared she might go 
 back to New York just as she did. Elsie 
 appreciated this feeling on his part ; also 
 the desire to get rid of her easily and still 
 see her as he wished. 
 
 Through the rector, in whose employ 
 she was, he first learned her whereabouts, 
 and later, at a Delmonico dinner, at which 
 the historian was present, Foster drew 
 from him what he had learned of the girl. 
 
 He had called and had told her that 
 
176 DESERTION. 
 
 his wife knew of her return, having told 
 him that she only moved twelve squares 
 farther from him and had not left the city 
 as she had promised, and that she re- 
 garded it as treachery on Elsie's part. 
 But what could the girl do other than 
 return ? Nothing else offered, and she 
 could not accept charity, or go to college 
 with the awful future staring her in the 
 face. She had not been treacherous, and 
 so told him during the conversation. He 
 also said the woman had told him of a 
 journey Elsie had taken for Foster while 
 in Chicago, saying the girl had related 
 its outcome and all the circumstances of 
 it at the boarding-house table ; that friends 
 of Mrs. Foster Uved in the same house 
 and had heard her. The truth of the 
 
DESERTION. 17T 
 
 matter was, Elsie had only been to the 
 
 table for one meal, and that was the 
 
 eventful night of the telegram. She had 
 
 spoken to no one at aU. Not a word. 
 
 These things engendered in her young 
 
 heart a strong suspicion and dislike for 
 
 the woman. One who could originate 
 
 such malicious statements was capable of 
 
 crime, she thought. No one in the world 
 
 save Ronald and Elsie knew of the 
 
 journey, — the facts; and the former must 
 
 have told his wife, who fixed the thing 
 
 just to make him think the girl untrue. 
 
 Elsie told him it was a mistake, that 
 
 was all. She did not even say what 
 
 she thought, for the woman was his 
 
 wife. 
 
 And he told her on that occasion to send 
 12 
 
178 DESERTION. 
 
 for him when in difficulties. Again she 
 mentioned the thing nearest her heart and 
 destroying her peace. But he seemed to 
 take little notice of it, and had lost what 
 serious regard he had evidenced at Wash- 
 ington. His nonchalance made the girl 
 some cahner, but what did it mean ? Was 
 it not so serious after all ? She was puz- 
 zled, for she knew so little of such mat- 
 ters. This was weeks before she fainted 
 on the Rialto. 
 
 Once, not long after, she had telegraphed 
 him to his office to come immediately. 
 She was in distress. This was what it 
 was about. The wife had sent her a 
 peremptory letter asking her to return 
 Mr. Foster's pictures, of which Elsie had 
 dozens, as they were needed for iUustra- 
 
DESERTION. 179 
 
 tions. She specially made mention of the 
 large one, doubtless meaning the life-sized 
 one that Elsie had not with her. Eonald 
 had asked his friend with whom they had 
 lived during their honeymoon to take it to 
 his home, and pretend it was his, because 
 he feared this very trouble, and did not 
 relish the idea of its being found in the 
 girl's possession. Why ? To protect the 
 girl? No. To protect the Hon. R. P. 
 Foster from the rage of his wife. Al- 
 though he told poor, believing, guUable 
 Elsie differently. 
 
 And she had sent for him to know 
 what to do ; how to reply. He had patted 
 her head, and told her it was nothing, he 
 would fix it all up. And she did nothing, 
 but put the letter in her desk, and it went 
 
180 DE8EBTI0N. 
 
 out of her mind, before the other sorrow 
 so much greater. 
 
 But when she sent the last letter, the 
 long one, it was with a different heart. 
 She was ruined and deserted. Without a 
 friend or a home. It was pitiable. 
 
 The pictures were a set taken while they 
 were happiest. The night he returned 
 from the Washington banquet Ronald had 
 given them all to Elsie, saying they were 
 herq, that no one else should ever have 
 any. And Elsie had cherished them as 
 only a sentimental young wife of her first 
 love could. 
 
 He had told the girl, when he came in 
 reply to her urgent soulful letter, that he 
 would see her every few days, but he did 
 not. She should, he said, teU the doctor 
 
DESEBTION. 181 
 
 that her husband was dead. It was not 
 much. He could help her, and no one 
 ever know. " Be sure to tell him your 
 husband is dead," he had repeated, and 
 then she had thrown her arms around his 
 neck, and begged him to stay with her. 
 " How can you leave me," she had 
 pleaded, but he was seemingly relentless, 
 and left for Washington that day, telling 
 her he would soon return and would write 
 to her. 
 
 And Elsie, pure-hearted Elsie Vane, 
 went back to her room and went to bed. 
 And she pleaded with the doctor to save 
 her from disgrace, not to let her live. 
 But he had another way of which the girl 
 was ignorant at the time. For two weeks 
 she was very, very ill, and frequently de- 
 
182 VESEBTION. 
 
 lirious. Then came the time ■when for 
 an hour her life hung by a single thread, 
 and the physician who had attended her, 
 to the exclusion of everybody else, was 
 glad, very glad. 
 
 A day or two later a telegram came for 
 her. It was the very first time any one 
 had seemed to know of her illness. No 
 one had inquired save the historian and 
 the people of the house, who had taken a 
 kindly interest in the fair stranger who 
 was so ill they tiptoed by her door, and 
 scarcely dared ask how the patient was 
 lest they should learn she was dying. 
 
 When the telegram came Elsie was 
 awake, conscious, and it was thought some 
 better, but very still, pale and weak. The 
 maid took her the message, and she read, 
 
DESXRTION. 183 
 
 as her trembling hand held it: "Write 
 me to the Normandie to-night how you 
 are." It was signed " Gleason," but she 
 knew who it was from, and burst into 
 tears. She sobbed and trembled until the 
 doctor had to be summoned. 
 
 The telegram she had torn to pieces 
 and sent to the waste-basket, knowing she 
 was too ill to reply, and not daring to 
 trust any one to do it for her, lest Ronald 
 should be displeased or annoyed. 
 
 She made a practice of destroying all 
 her letters, especially his, because he had 
 asked her to do so and had impressed upon 
 her the importance of so doing in order to 
 run no risk and better preserve their beau- 
 tiful secret until he was ready to divulge 
 it. Only two of his many letters were at 
 
184 bESEHTlOlf. 
 
 this time in her possession. These he 
 had insisted upon her keeping forever, 
 for his sake, and that she read them 
 over often. With them, in the same 
 " Windsor " hotel envelope, with her 
 name " Elsie " written in Ronald's 
 characteristic hand, were also two he 
 likes best of those the girl had writ- 
 ten him. He had sent aU four to her 
 together. They were tender, sweet and 
 loving. 
 
 These had strangely disappeared during 
 her illness. 
 
 Her wedding ring, too, was gone from 
 her hand. 
 
 She was naturally frightened. She 
 feared they had been stolen, as she missed 
 also some pictures of her friends ; and 
 
bBSEUTloN. 185 
 
 her first thought was, " Would it trouble 
 Eonald?" 
 
 As soon as she was able she went to 
 another place to live. Somehow she was 
 afraid to stay in that house longer. She 
 was still not well. The doctor's biU had 
 been very large, fifteen hundred dollars, 
 and she could not pay it. It was impos- 
 sible, and she was sued for the amount. 
 This worried her and kept her ill. 
 
 Eonald P. Foster had not called during 
 her serious illness nor sent any word of 
 inquiry save the telegram from Washing- 
 ton. This wounded the sensitive heart, 
 though she doubted not at that time he 
 had some reason for the neglect. 
 
 News of the suit had been published in 
 all the papers. Some even spoke of her 
 
186 DESSRTIoar. 
 
 book in connection with it. All this was 
 hard for Elsie, defenceless and alone. 
 
 Truly one woe trod upon the heels of 
 another, so fast they followed I 
 
FOSTER'S VISIT. 187 
 
 CHAPTER Xa 
 
 ■Foster's visit. 
 
 The illness of the beautiful girl had 
 been as serious as it was inexplicable. 
 Evidently she had been married, and yet 
 why had she foolishly gone as Miss Mc- 
 Henry ? These facts puzzled the doctor. 
 He could not think ill of her. No one to 
 look once into her truthful sweet face could 
 possibly doubt her goodness. Sorrow and 
 refinement were there, but not sin. She 
 wore a heavy wedding-ring on her finger, 
 iind when she had told the physician, as 
 
188 JFOSTMB'S VISIT. 
 
 ■ . .« . 
 
 Ronald had said, that her husband was 
 dead, the man beKeved her, and saved her 
 from public shame. 
 
 When she began to get well, the future 
 worried her. The doctor said she would 
 soon be up, and he also told her that the 
 worst had been averted, and the girl asked 
 no questions ; but she slept soundly and 
 sweetly the rest of convalescence. 
 
 At times she was despondent when she 
 thought of Ronald, and she would listen 
 for hours for his voice in the hall, unable 
 to believe he had not come and would not. 
 Then, again, she would become ambitious 
 to make a name for herself in the world. 
 To become famous by good work. This 
 was when she felt strong and brave. 
 
 She told the physician and nurse of her 
 
FOSTER'S VISIT. 18^ 
 
 plans. " Perhaps I'll write good poetry, 
 and more novels," then she would go on 
 musingly, her fine eyes brilliant and 
 dreamy, swimming in a sea of beauty. " I 
 must be famous and good, then I can go 
 back " — ^but she stopped in time. It was 
 ever her thought of any happiness in the 
 future to go back to the Parans. This she 
 felt she could never do until she was able 
 to teU them the whole truth, and prove to 
 them, by what followed her sorrow, that it 
 had not ruined her. No one must or 
 dare ever think of her as a fallen Vane ! 
 And her cheeks became tinged with a pink 
 glow as she thought. 
 
 The doctor was watching her intently. 
 What a wonderful girl she was ! How 
 brave and faithful to the past ! 
 
190 FOSTERS VISIT. 
 
 " Do you know, Miss McHenry " — he 
 had called her " child " during the serious 
 days of her suffering, hut the other 
 since her convalescence — " that when you 
 pleaded with me to kill you, and I looked 
 into that innocent face, I vowed I'd 
 help you, and I have." This was said 
 abruptly, and with tearful eyes. 
 
 A few days later she had missed the ring 
 and letters, and told him she was going to 
 leave, requesting her bill at the same time. 
 
 At this time her income from her novel 
 was her only means of support. The his- 
 torian who had befriended her was seri- 
 ously ill and in a hospital. 
 
 She said nothing to any one, but she did 
 lose hope again. It seemed to her the sun 
 would never shine into her life. 
 
FOSTER'S VISIT. 191 
 
 Poor lonely Elsie, trying to be so brave ! 
 Witbout borne and no money for tbe doc- 
 tor. Out of one gulf of trouble into 
 another. Would sbe ever be free from 
 griefs attending ber only bappiness ? Sbe 
 bad not sinned, but anotber bad. 
 
 One day, soon after moving into tbe cosy 
 flat, ber new borne, sbe was sitting up, and 
 a card, " Mr. Gleason," was brougbt ber. 
 Sbe knew at once it was Eonald, and bis 
 deception was painful. It was tbe first 
 time be bad ever failed to send ber bis own 
 card wben be called. Was be about to 
 wound ber intentionally ? No, tbat could 
 not be, sbe tbougbt. He bad some reason. 
 Tbis was bis first visit to ber new bome. 
 How did be know wbere sbe was ? 
 
 " Yes, sbe would see bim, and tell bim 
 
192 FO'^TRF'S VISIT. 
 
 all. He doubtless knew much already, 
 and perhaps, joyous thought, he had some 
 panacea for her woes and difficulties. So 
 she had them help her dress as if entirely 
 well, and sent the maid away to be alone 
 with the man she even yet would protect 
 to the uttermost, though he had been 
 hardly humane to her. And she vividly, as 
 she waited his ring, recalled how she had 
 listened and longed for him in her suffer- 
 ings, for only a message, or a single look. 
 And she marvelled that she was not trem- 
 bling now with pleasant anticipation, and 
 more glad to know he would be with 
 her. 
 
 Did she love him less ? And then tie 
 entered. 
 
 "Elsie ! " he said. His voice was fer- 
 
FOSTER'S VISIT. 193 
 
 vent and full of emotion as he took her in 
 his arms. 
 
 " Oh, Ronald, I have suffered," the girl 
 replied slowly and painfully, her head 
 drooping for a moment on his shoulder. 
 " You know all ? " she queried, quickly 
 releasing herself, as he would have pressed 
 his lips to hers. " How dare he kiss her ! " 
 she thought, a flush of indignation on her 
 fair face, he who had not even been 
 humane when she was so ill, so seriously 
 ill, and all because of his deception. 
 
 " I know all, and have only a moment 
 to stay," and as she uttered these words, 
 Elsie felt that cold strangling of her vital 
 forces. " Mrs. Foster has friends in these 
 flats," he continued, and the girl remem- 
 bered only too well that it had been the 
 13 
 
194 FOSTER'S VISIT. 
 
 case at the other place too. Evidently 
 the woman's boardings-house friends must 
 be numerous. 
 
 " She is having me watched, I am sure," 
 he went on, looking cautiously about as if 
 half-expecting to find some detective under 
 the furniture of Elsie's cosy little rooms. 
 '* You must get my letter back. Must, 
 I say. Do anything. It will ruin me ! 
 It's a good letter, and, as I said, I would 
 not be ashamed to have the world read it. 
 Lucky you used it in your book, but you 
 must have it back." 
 
 Then Elsie broke down, and threw her 
 arms around his neck and cried as though 
 her heart would break. " I have tried. Oh, 
 so hard," she said softly, " but I cannot 
 find them. Everything, over and over 
 
FOSTER'S VISIT. 195 
 
 again I have tried, Ronald. I am so dis- 
 couraged! Why did I not die?" and 
 she told him all about the terrible iUness, 
 and he questioned her about her suffering. 
 
 " You are a dear, sweet, little thing to 
 never tell. You are a wonderful little 
 woman, Elsie. It is a pity more are not 
 like you. Now kiss me, and do not think 
 any more about tliat ordeal. You were 
 brave, and I should have gone to see you, 
 but you did not answer my telegram, and 
 I thought something must have gone 
 wrong and was afraid to call." 
 
 And again Elsie's heart grew cold. 
 
 " But kiss me, we will be happy yet, and 
 I want you to write a letter for me, and to 
 me. Do you remember the date that you 
 discovered the letters had disappeared ? 
 
FOaTEl.'S VISIT. 
 
 " Not exactly," she replied. " I wanted 
 to read them when I began to grow better, 
 and told the maid where to find them, but 
 they were gone. They were just as you 
 had sent them to me to keep. All in one 
 hotel envelope with ' Elsie ' written acrosa 
 it in your hand. Yes, they were gone, 
 and with them my peace of mind. That 
 was a few days before I left the house 
 where I was ill." She nervously left his 
 side, and walked up and down the room. 
 
 " Come and let me dictate, in case there 
 should be any theft about it, dear. Sit 
 down here at the desk and write just what 
 I say, dating it just about the time you 
 came here to live, as nearly as you can 
 to the exact time of their disappearance." 
 
 She did so. 
 
FOSTER'S VISIT. 197 
 
 "Now tell me in your own language 
 that the letter I wrote for your novel, has 
 disappeared and you fear, if it should have 
 fallen into the hands of unscrupulous 
 persons, it might cause me some embarrass- 
 ment ; that you hope it will not and so on ; 
 mention that it, with others, was taken 
 during a severe speU of illness, and sign 
 yourself." 
 
 And the girl did exactly as he told 
 her, signing herself Elsie McHenry. 
 
 She would gladly have died to save him 
 trouble, but it was not to be so. 
 
 He took the letter and put it into his 
 pocket saying, " You are a trump, Elsie." 
 Then he walked about the room, smiling 
 and talking. He drew aside the portieres, 
 and said significantly, " This is your " 
 
198 FOSTER'S VISIT. 
 
 he would have said " bed " but the light- 
 ning flash he met in the young girl's eyes 
 restrained him. 
 
 He soon left. The maid returned, and 
 Elsie was worse. She was thinking, think- 
 ing. She was so tired of action and 
 worry. She wanted only to drift, only to 
 be calm and quiet. But the more she 
 tried to cease thinking, the more rapidly 
 did thoughts chase each other through 
 her brain. Her head seemed afire. The 
 room where they had lived ; the pictures 
 and books, what if they should be found ? 
 And the trunk they had packed. Ronald's 
 clothes were marked ; so were her ker- 
 chiefs, their laundress had done it, "F " 
 aU of them, and some of her old girlish 
 clothes had "Elsie Vane" embroidered 
 
FOSTBS'S VISIT. 199 
 
 on them. What if some one should find 
 that trunk and its contents ? and she had 
 the maid hand her the tiny jewel-case from 
 the table, that she might see if the key 
 was there. They had two keys. Eonald 
 had the other. Oh, the marriage ! He 
 would never let it come to the public, 
 surely. And then her active mind would 
 picture the whole scene and the scandal, 
 and all the maddening features of such a 
 thing as she imagined them in her heated, 
 fanciful condition, should the truth be 
 discovered. How both men and women 
 would read it eagerly, and all curious, so 
 indecently curious. 
 
 There was none to sympathize with her. 
 The maid knew nothing. No one about 
 her knew from Elsie. She had told no 
 
200 FOSTER'S VISIT. 
 
 person save Ronald and his friend, whom 
 he had sent to see why she* had not 
 answered his Washington telegram, and to 
 learn what was the matter, and pave the 
 way for his own visit. He was a true 
 friend to Ronald, and the girl therefore 
 trusted him with the whole secret. Beside, 
 they had lived with him, and were all 
 friends. So she suffered alone. 
 
 Would they all prove false to the girl ? 
 The innocent, ensnared Elsie ? 
 
 The sea of deep trouble was surely 
 engulfing the only really innocent in the 
 whole affair, and the future of Elsie was 
 one of doubt and uncertainty. 
 
 What was to become of a girl of nine- 
 teen in the hands of all these men, and at 
 the mercy of cold facts as the world sees ? 
 
FLlGBT. 201 
 
 CHAPTER XHi. 
 
 PLIGHT. 
 
 Elsie had told Ronald about being 
 sued for non-payment of her doctor's bill. 
 About the summons, and her fears and 
 misunderstanding, and aU her worries. 
 " You will tell me what to do, won't you ? " 
 she had asked, 'and showed him the 
 lawyer's letter. 
 
 After he left her, Ronald P. Foster 
 became awake to the enormity of his 
 crime as visited upon the innocent, tender 
 girl he had loved. He called on his 
 lawyer. 
 
202 FLIGHT. 
 
 " Willdns," lie said, taking him away 
 from sight, up into the top story of his 
 office building, " there's a little girl up 
 here that liked me, and wrote me some 
 sentimental letters." These were the 
 exact words of a man who had loved and 
 married the most unsuspecting of girls. 
 How it would have wrung her heart to 
 have heard them ! From the man who 
 had written her daily five or six tender, 
 loving letters, only scrawls to most 
 people, but beautiful and legible to the 
 loving girl, and who had so often chided 
 her for not replying more frequently and 
 freely. This from him ? Was he true ? 
 And in the justice of fate how came it 
 that a true person like this girl could love 
 such a man — one who would thus stoop 
 
FLIGBT. 203 
 
 to the meanest kind of betrayal just to pro- 
 tect himself. Then he went on to tell the 
 lawyer how one of the letters, perhaps he 
 said " the one " letter, had been stolen, 
 and the result he feared. The exposure 
 of himself. But he did not reveal his 
 crime. He failed to teU, even to the law- 
 yer, the facts. How he had, in the girl's 
 eyes, honorably wooed and won her, and 
 even married her at " The Chambers," and 
 given her some money for the chamber- 
 maid next morning, asking her to tell the 
 maid that they were just married and 
 from France. No, he concealed the truth, 
 and sent this very lawyer to Elsie. 
 
 And so it was that when she returned 
 from riding in the park. one evening, he 
 was awaiting her. She was not surprised, 
 
204 FLIGHT. 
 
 for she at once divined his mission and 
 who had sent him ; but she was plainly ex- 
 cited. She had met the lawyer before. 
 Ronald had introduced her to him as Miss 
 McHenry just after they had separated, 
 when she was so ill and sad. He had 
 thought maybe Mr. Wilkins could obtain 
 for her something to keep her mind busy, 
 and keep her in New York. That was be- 
 fore the real Mrs. Foster had discovered 
 about the picture. Later, too, she had met 
 him and his young and charming wife also, 
 when she was with the historian, who hap- 
 pened to be his old college professor. She 
 wished Ronald might have sent some one 
 else. The mere sight of this man caused 
 a flood of recollections to sweep over her. 
 This was her first thought. But in a few 
 
FLIGHT. 205 
 
 moments, after she had talked with him, 
 she concluded it was kind to send some 
 one they both knew and not an entire 
 stranger. Ronald had thought so, she felt 
 sure. 
 
 So straightway, when he began ques- 
 tioning her, she began concealing the truth 
 and shielding the man. And this she con- 
 tinued to do, until the real became obvi- 
 ous in other ways. Then the whole truth, 
 weeks later, broke unrestrainedly from her, 
 and she opened her heart and sobbingly 
 told him every detail. It was an ordeal, 
 but the poor girl had had so much trouble, 
 so many hard ordeals. 
 
 " I love him, and always shall," she said 
 over and over again during the recital. 
 
 And Ronald P. Foster was ill — so she 
 
206 FLIGHT. 
 
 was told — dangerously ill. All now de- 
 volved on the young shoulders. All the 
 anxiety of averting discovery and pubHc 
 scandal. She was not equal to it, and so 
 made mistakes, and herself ill again. 
 
 One morning the thought of the trunk 
 and belongings came strongly over her, 
 and she went to the house where they had 
 left it. It was deserted, and no trace of 
 the woman could be found. Elsie was 
 more than anxious. Ronald must know 
 that the trunk could not be found. He 
 must know it ! " Must, must," kept ring- 
 ing in her ears, until, scarce knowing what 
 she did, she was driven in front of his door. 
 His own door, where he lived with his wife 
 and children. She rang the bell, her heart 
 palpitating furiously. 
 
FLIGHT. 207 
 
 "Is Mr. Foster in ?" she asked timidly 
 of the maid. 
 
 "Right in there," was the smiling reply, 
 and Elsie slowly approached the man who 
 was, even at that time, that critical time, re- 
 turning perfidy for her unselfish devotion. 
 
 " Elsie," he said, as if deeply moved, 
 " in God's name how did you come here ? 
 Mrs. Foster will be home in a few moments ; 
 she is only across the street. Go, I beg 
 of you, go at once." 
 
 " There is so much you ought to know," 
 the girl faltered, but he put his arm about 
 her and tenderly led her towards the door. 
 " She must not see you here. Mr. Wilkins 
 is coming this afternoon and he will tell 
 me all," and Elsie left, never to see him 
 again. 
 
208 FLIGHT. 
 
 And now the woman was aroused. He 
 was plainly ill, but yet he evinced no de- 
 sire to save or help her. He had sent 
 her from him, she who was only trying 
 to do the best for him. At that time she 
 had not even told the lawyer all the facts. 
 She went directly to his office now from 
 Foster's home. She was uneasy for fear 
 Ronald, the man she loved, would die. 
 He looked so frail, and he had been so 
 well. Now there were great dark circles 
 under his eyes, and he had only a ghost 
 of his old snule. Was his own guilt kill- 
 ing him ? It might have killed a more 
 refined nature, if one could have com- 
 mitted his sin. 
 
 And she told the lawyer what she had 
 done, because she feared it was wrong j 
 
FLIGHT. 209 
 
 that she might have caused him to have 
 a relapse. She still loved him, despite the 
 rude dismissal. 
 
 Mr. Wilkins soothed her as best he 
 could, and told her to go right home, 
 and wait for him. He would go to Mr. 
 Foster, and then write to her and tell her 
 the result of his visit — what Foster meant 
 to do to release her from the matter. 
 He did not even then know all. 
 
 About three hours later he found Elsie, 
 pale but quiet, and ready to hear what was 
 to be her sentence. 
 
 '■'Well," he said, " Mr. Foster is pretty- 
 sick, so I could not talk much to him ; but 
 he gave me his will to draw up even 
 tighter for his wife, and asked me to tell 
 you never again go to his house. That 
 
210 FLIGHT. 
 
 you had given him a terrific shock. He 
 says he wants to see you, but in my pres- 
 ence only, not alone. 
 
 "Now tell me, Miss McHenry, tell me 
 the exact truth about this matter. I am 
 your lawyer, and must know all. About 
 this trunk, and everything." Then the girl 
 thought it was no use to longer hesitate. 
 The thing would kUl her before long, and, 
 if she did not tell, another would. And 
 she told the miserable truth, of her serious 
 illness and fatal love, that led her to thus 
 protect the man at her own expense. 
 
 When she had finished he remarked 
 in a sober, earnest voice, full of feeling : 
 
 " Well, Foster has been my friend, but 
 I have the utmost contempt for him in 
 this matter. If he thinks I wiU help 
 
FLIGHT. 211 
 
 him out of this affair, he has the wrong 
 man. 
 
 " You poor girl, you have my prof ound- 
 est sympathy, and I will do aU I can to 
 help you. The affair will be settled, and 
 you win not have to go to court. But 
 go away. You need a change." 
 
 There had been no escape. She had to 
 teU the truth. Yet, now that it was over, 
 the girl was all broken-spirited. She knew 
 she ought to despise Foster, but still cared 
 for his comfort. She was afraid he would 
 be enraged by her revelation, disap- 
 pointed in her. Had he really expected 
 her to maintain silence, or did he mean 
 her to tell the lawyer all when he sent him 
 to her ? She was aU but mad to know. 
 
 She told Mr. WUkins she would go 
 
212 FLIGHT. 
 
 siwsLj, then sent for the doctor and told 
 him the facts as she had told them to 
 the other. He, too, advised her to go 
 away. 
 
 Elsie was almost beyond believing in 
 anybody. At this time her mind was in a 
 fearful condition. Her heart seemed to 
 be ossifying. She had told the doctor 
 the story which she should have told 
 him, or rather Mr. Foster should at the 
 time of her extreme illness, dry-eyed and 
 calmly, and his replies sounded far away. 
 She had lost all interest in life, pursued 
 as she had been by the sin which she felt 
 ■vras not her own. She longed for death 
 —oblivion. In the days that followed 
 while the trial for her bill stiU hung, she 
 never wote but that she was rather sad 
 
FLIGHT. 213 
 
 to think she had not been taken to 
 heaven in the night. And it was a little 
 consolation to her to feel that God, at least, 
 knew her to be innocent. Her mother, 
 too, and her father were not here to wit- 
 ness before the earth-blinded masses the 
 disgrace of their child. 
 
 Yes, Elsie felt the scandal keenly. No 
 one that knew her could possibly think 
 her a person capable of anything dis- 
 honorable, but only a few knew her, 
 while many knew of the book she had 
 written. 
 
 About this time it became current talk 
 that friends of Foster had bought up the 
 book, all the editions out, and were sup- 
 pressing it. AU these things weighed 
 down the youthful Elsie, so unaccustomed 
 
214 FLIGHT. 
 
 to harsh things, and added years to her 
 mentality. 
 
 And she went away. Where? 
 
MAGDALMNA TILLA. 216 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 MAGDALBNA VILLA. 
 
 FoTJB years have elapsed since Elsie 
 Vane deserted the tribulations which be- 
 set and overwhelmed her spirit. She had 
 not gone to the bad, as was predicted by 
 her lawyer and by the friends of Mr. 
 Foster, but she went out of their lives 
 forever. 
 
 Not a great many miles from the city 
 of New Orleans, in a beautiful suburban 
 paradise, such as nature sometimes good-i 
 humoredly makes, is Magdalena Villa, 
 
216 MAGBALENA VILLA. 
 
 founded by a young and wealthy Mrs. 
 Du Bois, the gifted southern poetess. 
 
 The villa was a work of art and marvel 
 of architectural beauty, unlike anything 
 else. It had a hospitable, home-like ap- 
 pearance that at once attracted the 
 stranger. Flowers grew in such unre- 
 stricted profusion as only tropical climes 
 can boast. Rare blooms everywhere, 
 and vines, honeysuckles and white roses 
 clambered all over the building. Noth- 
 ing was staid and with that painful 
 symmetry which marks the homes of 
 private wealth. Everywhere was the 
 grace of nature's own liking. 
 
 It was a home for girls ; young, inno- 
 cent girls who had been deceived and 
 betrayed. Daughters of the leading 
 
MAQDALISNA VILLA. 217 
 
 families of the United States were there, 
 retired from the world and sin. Refined 
 creatures and timid, who would have died 
 but for the shelter and care of Magdalena 
 ViUa. Not coarse, fallen women, but 
 loved and lovely hopes of families, proud 
 of their spotless names. Some of the 
 tragedies here discovered and buried it 
 were almost too painfid to relate. On 
 the death-bed of one fragile girl of seven- 
 teen, her constant companion since they 
 had met a few months before at the Villa, 
 also a pretty, quiet blonde, of eighteen, 
 threw herself sobbing beside her as if 
 mortally wounded. Why? The dying 
 girl had looked up at her with large eyes 
 from which reason had all but flown, and 
 where the glamour of eternity was fast 
 
218 MAGDALSNA VILLA. 
 
 gathering, and murmured in a clear, low 
 voice the name of her lover who had 
 betrayed her. It was a public man, and 
 that of her friend's seducer. Both had 
 loved the same man. He lived unpunished, 
 and great in the eyes of the world, but 
 the innocent lie in the still Uttle burying- 
 ground of Magdalena Villa, and who will 
 say it is not " God's acre" and His alone. 
 Two narrow houses had been made deep 
 in the ground, under the sod and the 
 daisies, and two instead of one soul fled to 
 their Maker, for the gratification of one 
 man. Cases like that of the Red Rose of 
 Savannah, where girls were deceived, 
 deserted, and fled to the sheltering Villa. 
 Mr. Du Bois lived, with his charming 
 wife, in a quaintly beautiful chctlet in 
 
MAGLALENA VILLA. 219 
 
 Savannah. It was Elsie, the Red Bose. 
 She had made the strange Villa the im- 
 mediate object of her life when peace re- 
 turned to her, and very often she visited 
 the charming spot, grateful that she had 
 been able to do something in the world. 
 
 True, there already existed " homes ; " 
 but a high-minded girl would never think 
 of going to one of those. A child of re- 
 finement and luxury would die first, and 
 Elsie trembled as she thought of a young 
 and only child alone in extremity in New 
 York City — her bitter past. Ah, but the 
 sequel was revealing itself. Courage, 
 Elsie ! You shall yet shine, as if there 
 had been no dark pages in the book of 
 your life, with the inner glow from a 
 heart refined as by fire. Nobler and 
 
220 MAGDALENA VILLA. 
 
 brighter and purer from having learned 
 of sorrow. 
 
 Her tragic story was known in her 
 native town — nowhere better — but the 
 leading people there knew also, when 
 their attention was drawn to the man 
 Foster, of his dastardly life ; and so it was, 
 when Ned Du Bois, a nephew of Senator 
 Paran, brought home again to them the 
 daughter of Senator Vane as his beauti- 
 ful bride, these good people received her 
 with open arms and tearful eyes. 
 
 She learned afterward that some two 
 years before, when all hope of finding 
 her had been abandoned by the surpris- 
 ingly diligent Mr. Paran, there had been 
 hot and serious talk of publicly proclaim- 
 ing Foster a fraud, and even, among the 
 
MAGDALENA VILLA. 221 
 
 impulsive young folks, always defending 
 their Rose, of lynching him. 
 
 They had learned all through the news- 
 papers, and though the girl was far from 
 them, and they feared dead, their hearts 
 were for her — every one. 
 
 Elsie had not known Ned Du Bois when 
 she had lived in Savannah some four years 
 and a half before. He had been in New 
 York at that time, going to her native 
 city about the time the girl left. Later 
 he had gone to New York again, and 
 there it was that Elsie met him. 
 
 She had taken the advice of lawyer 
 and doctor and gone away from her 
 troubles for a time. She had gone into 
 the mountains, taking writings enough 
 with her to last some months, and support 
 
222 MAGDALEN A VILLA. 
 
 her from their income, and in her leisure 
 moments she revised her poems. 
 
 They were published the following fall, 
 and she was enabled, from the proceeds of 
 the book, to pay the doctor the fifteen 
 hundred dollars in full, which was a source 
 of great happiness or rather peace to her. 
 
 Then she went quietly back to New 
 York, where she lived secluded and alone, 
 writing the poetical and subUme Vivas 
 which afterward made her famous in two 
 continents. None of her old acquaint- 
 ances knew where she was, and once she 
 saw an article in a Southern paper ad- 
 vancing many proofs of her death. And 
 she smiled. It was a sort of living death, 
 her present mode of life. 
 
 She lived in a luxurious little flat, alone 
 
MAODALENA VILLA. 22S 
 
 with her maid, a woman of thirty-five, and 
 seldom went out, save occasionally to drive 
 or ride. There was a melancholy pleasure 
 in being thought out of existence, espe- 
 cially when she recalled the past, known 
 to aU who had known Elsie Vane. 
 
 She had always loved to see good act- 
 ing. One night, about seven o'clock, she 
 was seized with an irresistible desire to see 
 Bernhardt, who was playing in the city in 
 " CamiUe." She had seen her play it once 
 with Ronald. To-night she felt she could 
 stand the memories it would recall ; was in- 
 indeed eager to go. Word was returned 
 from the' theatre that every seat and box 
 was taken. A little later a message said that 
 a man who had a box by himself, upon 
 overhearing that it was a lady, and a 
 
224 MAGDALENA VILLA 
 
 poetess he had read and appreciated, had 
 tendered her and her friend chairs in hia 
 box. 
 
 She went. Her maid accompanying her 
 to the door with instructions to call in the 
 carriage for her at eleven. 
 
 Elsie was a trifle late, owing to her sud- 
 den whim to hear the play that night. 
 When she entered the box, Ned Du Bois 
 was already there, seated in a darkened 
 corner near the entrance. It had occurred 
 to him after he had mentioned " friend " 
 in the note he had dictated, that perhaps 
 the lady might be alone, and he would 
 just wait and see. 
 
 With a grateful glance from her beau- 
 tiful eyes Elsie at once divined and ac- 
 knowledged his gracious thoughtfulness, 
 
MAGDALEN A VILLA. 225 
 
 and, removing her cloak, opened her fan 
 and sat down without a word, but with her 
 own charming composure. No one in the 
 aiudience would have supposed but that 
 they were there together. 
 
 The acting was superb, and Elsie en- 
 joyed every moment of the first act. Rec- 
 ollection had not then begun its harrow- 
 ing work. As the curtain fell for the 
 first intermission, the handsome stranger 
 handed her a dainty handkerchief that had 
 fallen from her hand, so intent had she 
 been on the events of the stage. He had 
 been watching her intently, knowing she 
 was oblivious of his presence. He noted 
 the unconscious expressions of her mobile 
 lips and eyes, as she sighed and smiled 
 
 with the heroine, and the charming contour 
 15 
 
226 MAGDALENA VILLA. 
 
 of her figure. What a beauty she was to 
 be sure ! He had supposed, if he ever 
 thought of the author of the poems, that 
 she was an old or middle-aged woman. 
 But this girl was surely little over twenty, 
 and he fell to studying her until the bit 
 of scented lace fell to the floor. 
 
 Elsie turned to thank him, and their 
 eyes met. In all the months that had 
 passed since her separation from Ronald, 
 she had made no friend of any man. Her 
 nature seemed to have acquired an innate 
 fear of the sex. Men had sought her, but 
 without success. Yet, as she met his eyes, 
 so frank and boyish, she read truth and 
 candor in his entire face. 
 
 He was not a young man, but about 
 forty-eight, and a thorough gentleman of 
 
MAGBALENA VILLA. 227 
 
 the world. His eyes were black and 
 speaking. He wore a well-cared-for 
 moustache, and his closely-cut, dark hair 
 revealed a remarkably well-shaped head. 
 His attire was perfect, and as soon as the 
 girl noted this, after seeing into his candid 
 face, she did not fear him, nor resent his 
 asking her how she liked the play, and if 
 her seat commanded a good view. 
 
 It was rather an awkward position for 
 Elsie, and perhaps, had she thought long, 
 she would not have gone. But she had 
 not lost all her wayward impulsiveness, so 
 pronounced in her childhood. Every now 
 and then she did things on the spur of 
 the moment. This was one of those 
 times. Mr. Du Bois excused himself a 
 moment, and returned, with a card in- 
 
228 MAGBALENA VILLA. 
 
 troducing himself. Then Elsie drew him 
 to talking of himself, lest he should ask 
 her questions she did not care to answer, 
 or she should inadvertently say some little 
 thing she would regret. Before the play 
 was over she had learned that he was the 
 nephew of dear old "Paran," a man she had 
 heard her father and the senator discuss 
 when she was a child, and she was fright- 
 ened and alarmed for fear he should dis- 
 cover her. 
 
 And he did, though he had never seen 
 her. Spontaneous love opened his eyes 
 unnaturally. 
 
 When in Savannah he had heard much 
 of Elsie Vane and her sad, tragic history. 
 He had heard the old people speak in low 
 voices, and then sigh to think how wicked 
 
MAGDALEN A VILLA. 229 
 
 men were becoming, and he felt an inter- 
 est in the story, and that he would like to 
 have known the girl whose beauty and 
 sweetness seemed thus to have won all 
 hearts in her city. He knew, too, of the 
 vain attempts that had been made to 
 find out her whereabouts. It was known 
 through the court items that the judgment 
 had been paid in full, but that was all, and 
 she was generally believed to be dead. 
 
 Somehow, as he had sat, during the 
 first act, of which he saw or heard little, 
 looking at and studying the fair face by 
 his side, he was thinking of Elsie's sad 
 story. They, the youth of Savannah, had 
 told him of her marvellous eyes — ^unlike 
 those of any one else in their captivating 
 expression and depth. The poetess had 
 
330 MAGDALENA VILLA. 
 
 wondrous fine eyes and luxuriant hair of 
 golden brown. So had Elsie Vane. 
 
 At the middle of the last act the 
 emotions of the young woman overcame 
 her, and she bent forward to the edge of 
 the box, her lorgnette fixed on the 
 actress. Then, unconsciously she turned 
 her graceful head, bent toward the stranger, 
 and without looking at him, for she seemed 
 out of her own composed self, she mur- 
 mured, in the most melodious tones he had 
 ever heard, one word which told him all, 
 and discovered the lost Rose of Savannah. 
 
 That word, love-laden, was " Ronald." 
 
TBE NAMELESS SABT. 231 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE NAMELESS BABY. 
 
 Ned du Bois was thrilled through and 
 through by the passionate musical utter- 
 ance of that one word. It was as if the 
 ^l had been completely transported back 
 to the past, and the last time she had 
 seen the wonderful play with him she 
 loved. 
 
 When she looked up and saw what she 
 had done, her face paled, and she rose to 
 leave. He went with her. 
 
 "Elsie Vane," he said, "Elsie Vane, I 
 
232 THM NAMELESS BABY. 
 
 can comfort you. Permit me. Talk with 
 me, and come back to your home. Let 
 me tell you how they miss you in beauti- 
 ful Savannah." 
 
 He had already merited her confidence, 
 and, by these few words, her trust, and she 
 took him home with her, where they had 
 a conversation that did the girl worlds of 
 good. 
 
 This was the beginning, and so he won 
 her. She told him frankly she could 
 not love as she had loved, and when she 
 consented to marry him, it was because 
 he understood she had the highest regard 
 for him, and he felt within him a power 
 to win her eternal love. 
 
 They were married in Washington at 
 the home of the Parans. When Elsie 
 
THE NAMELESS SABY. 233 
 
 was asked where she would choose to live 
 her heart yearned for the home of her 
 childhood, so there it was they- went. 
 Again in the pretty chctlet, among the 
 familiar scenes and faces of the friends of 
 her parents, she grew more like herself. 
 At times a great sorrow seemed to fill her 
 eyes, welUng up from the depths of her 
 soul, but few ever saw this. These were 
 her moments of weakness. A girl so con- 
 stituted as she could not forget a thing 
 that had played the most important part 
 in her existence, nor could she cease to 
 recall those happy fleeting months spent 
 in the heaven of first trusting love with- 
 out a pang, and an all but invincible blush 
 mantling her cheek from the palpitation 
 the mere thought caused to her heart. 
 
234 THt! NAMELESS BABY. 
 
 She was a sensitive plant, and no wonder 
 it was Ned Du Bois, the bachelor, whom 
 none believed would ever marry, loved 
 her and adored her. 
 
 They were in New Orleans. Elsie had 
 gone out to the ViUa. Ned was alone in 
 their apartments at the hotel. A terrible 
 storm arose. He had been reading of the 
 work of a certain minister of the Park- 
 hurst order, and his efforts in behalf of 
 some wicked portions of the Crescent City. 
 He suddenly became aware of a bright 
 flash of lightning, and hurriedly threw 
 down the paper, and went to the tele- 
 graph office. He was going to send word 
 to his wife not to try to return until after 
 the storm, when he would go for her. But 
 he found a message awaiting him, stating 
 
THE NAMELMSS BABY. 235 
 
 that she would stop there at the Villa for 
 several hours, perhaps all night, and she 
 had added, " Do not come for me until I 
 send you word." 
 
 A very strange thing had happened at 
 Magdalena Villa. The rain was falling 
 in sheets. It was early evening. Elsie was 
 in the chapel, playing on its magnificent 
 organ to amuse herself. At times she had 
 a strange desire to be alone and let her 
 emotions waft her where they would. 
 Only once in a great whUe, and this was 
 one of the times. The sombre light from 
 the colored window above her threw a 
 weird glow on her countenance, and trans- 
 formed her into a veritable Madonna as 
 her facile fingers wandered over the keys, 
 drawing from the depths of the great 
 
236 TBS NAMELESS BABT. 
 
 instrument strains o£ heavenly melody. 
 She might have been painted so as St. 
 Agnes, the patron saint of maidens. 
 
 Upon an occasion like this, Elsie did not 
 know whether she was happy or miserable. 
 She was merely at the mercy of the spir- 
 ituelle within her. Sometimes she was 
 carried away to her babyhood, and again 
 to Ronald Foster. To-night it was the 
 latter. Her heart ached until in vibrated 
 in the organ, thrilling it as if by life in 
 solemn, passionate, sorroAvf ul chords which 
 echoed and re-echoed in the silence. No 
 one was near, and none knew where Elsie 
 was, thinking, if at all, that she was in her 
 room, until the wonderful sounds were 
 wafted through the entire Villa in the in- 
 tervals between the pitter-patter of the 
 
THE NAMELESS BABY. 237 
 
 rain, when it abated, seemingly to gather 
 strength for a renewed outburst, more vio- 
 lent and copious- 
 It was a terrific storm. Suddenly 
 Elsie's hands made a thundering discord 
 and dropped into her lap, trembling un- 
 controllably. A blinding flash of light- 
 ning, and a deafening peal of thunder, 
 simultaneous with that of the organ, had 
 been the prelude to the most agonized 
 shriek the girl had ever heard. It was a 
 human voice — ^the voice of some one in 
 fear and peril. For a moment she seemed 
 petrified to her place. She could not 
 move. Again the cry rang out. This 
 time it was more a superhuman wail, under- 
 neath the very chapel window. 
 
 Darkness was falling fast. Elsie, 
 
238 THE NAMELESS BABT. 
 
 frightened to an unearthly degree of pal- 
 lor, with starting, wide-open eyes, but a 
 heart brave to help any one in trouble, 
 strong in her very weakness, opened the 
 heavy door and looked out into the blind- 
 ing rain. Another brilliant flash illumi- 
 nated the scene. She closed her eyes and 
 almost fainted. Another flash and an- 
 other, and she saw a sight which brought 
 all of the wonderful humanity in her 
 being to the surface. 
 
 The cemetery, lined with magnolia trees, 
 joined the chapel. One low, neatly modest 
 headstone, marking the graves of the two 
 young girls laid away so tenderly only a 
 few weeks before, was within ten feet of 
 where Elsie stood. Hanging over this, 
 with one arm stretched out over the grassy 
 
THE NAMELESS BABT. 239 
 
 mound, and the other thrown toward the 
 bundle at her side, as if reaching out to 
 protect it, was the body of a woman. It 
 was still now, and the awful silence seemed 
 to oppress Elsie. And even the rain ceased 
 for a few moments as if it had become 
 curious. 
 
 As the girl approached the drooping 
 form she saw that the bundle was moving, 
 and heard a feeble little cry. It was a 
 baby, and snatching it up to her breast 
 she carried it into the chapel, and ran as 
 swiftly as if pursued into the library, where 
 she rang for help. Oh, how memory was 
 at work as she sat holding that baby be- 
 fore the big open fireplace ! She kissed 
 the little wai£ frantically again and again, 
 gobbing and crying, until it laughed up 
 
240 THE NAMELESS BABY. 
 
 into her face, and opened its black eyes, 
 as if delighted at the sound of her grief. 
 There the matron found her, a few mo- 
 ments later, hugging the tiny form close 
 to her and smiling through her tears. It 
 was only a baby, but what flood-gates of 
 the past and the might-have-beens it un- 
 loosed for Elsie ! 
 
 Strong men went to look for the woman. 
 They carried her, still unconscious and 
 dripping wet, into one of the cheery, beauti- 
 ful rooms, and sent for a nurse and doctor. 
 
 She was a strong girl, of about Elsie's 
 own age, and the doctor said she would 
 recover; that there was nothing to fear 
 saye the results of the wet and exposure. 
 But the baby, the baby that Elsie had clung 
 to so tightly, took the ci^oup and died 
 
THE NAMELESS BABT. 241 
 
 before morning in her arms. Only a few 
 
 hours after it had been laughing in hei 
 
 face. How she tried to save it ! She did 
 
 not think of the young mother after she 
 
 was brought in from the storm, but oh, the 
 
 black-eyed baby ! How bright its eyes 
 
 were, and now they were closing and the 
 
 tiny lungs could not get air. She snatched 
 
 it away from the nurse, and strained it to 
 
 her. Then she breathed into its little 
 
 mouth, and tried frantically to save its life. 
 
 It must not die. Its eyes were those of 
 
 Konald. " Oh, it must get well ! You 
 
 must give the baby air ! I cannot see it 
 
 die. It cannot be buried in the ground. 
 
 Oh, its eyes are getting dim ! Oh, my baby, 
 
 my baby ! You might have been my baby. 
 
 Oh, save it, save it ! " she raved frantic- 
 16 
 
242 THE NAMELESS BABY. 
 
 ally, as the tiny bit of humanity looked 
 once more into her face, with a smile of 
 heaven on its countenance and in the black 
 eyes, then gave a little shuddering gasp 
 and was still. 
 
 It was an illegitimate baby, yet who will 
 say its spotless soul did not join the cherub 
 angels ? 
 
 They buried the infant, nameless here, 
 the next day. The white and exquisite 
 little casket Elsie had chosen was put, not 
 so very deep, into the damp, rich earth 
 underneath a broad-leaved magnolia. The 
 fragrance of the blossoms was sickening 
 after the rain, and ever after, under like 
 conditions of the air, the odor made Elsie 
 deadly faint. That the laughing eyes of 
 the beautiful child were still in death 
 
THE NAMELESS BABY. 243 
 
 haunted her for days. Then she realized, 
 after talking with the unfeeling girl- 
 mother, that it was a providence of God, 
 and that the bahy soul, that beautiful, ten- 
 der, fragile blossom, was in paradise, safe 
 with Him among the immortally happy and 
 blessed. 
 
 The nurse attending the strangely-found 
 woman, or girl, had sent for Mrs. Du 
 Bois to come quickly. That they could 
 do nothing with the patient, and were 
 afraid to tell her that her baby was dead 
 and buried. That every little while, 
 whenever any one spoke to her, she would 
 rise up in bed and tear her hair and say 
 blasphemous things. 
 
 Elsie stole softly to the sick girl's bed- 
 side. She was sleeping, apparently, but 
 
244 THE NAMELESS BABT. 
 
 — ■ ... - . 11 • m 
 
 before long Elsie detected a stealthy 
 glance from under the broad eyelids. 
 
 " Ah, I'm so glad you are waking, and 
 better," she said quickly. " Do you 
 suffer? '- 
 
 The gentle, musical tones had a lulling 
 effect on the girl, stretched out so un- 
 gracefully on the snowy bed. 
 
 " Only here," she said, clutching at her 
 heart. "I hope my baby will die here 
 where it wiU be buried decently. It has 
 no father. I hate it," she went on 
 suUenly. 
 
 Elsie told her the baby was dead. 
 
 " I had a father," the sick woman con-i 
 tinned, her small, dark eyes flashing and 
 Ecintillating, and then she rose up in the 
 bed, her short fine hair standing in every 
 
THE NAMELESS BABT. 245 
 
 direction, and Elsie's blood ran cold at 
 the blasphemous words that flowed un- 
 restrainedly from her sensuous looking 
 mouth, as she cursed her father. 
 
 "He was a devil," she said between oaths. 
 " Not many knew it, but I did. I know 
 where I inherited my wickedness. Sin of 
 fathers visited on children. Oh, I hate 
 God. I don't think there is one," she went 
 on wildly, " I wonder where my baby is 
 gone ; my sins will never be visited on it. 
 I would have killed it as soon as I got 
 well before such a fate should pursue it 
 as has followed me. I am wicked through 
 and through, lady, I love sin. I can 
 hardly wait to get back to New Orleans. 
 You see I came south from New York 
 where my parents live, because I was get 
 
246 THE NAMELESS BAST. 
 
 ting ■worse and worse, and wanted to 
 leave home ; my stepmother said I must. 
 That was six months ago. I went into a 
 house in New Orleans, and" there, three 
 weeks ago, my nameless baby was 
 born. I had been studying many ways 
 to get rid of it, and finally started to bring 
 it here and leave it under the window. 
 Then I heard the music, and I love music, 
 indeed," and Elsie saw a real candid look 
 come into the dark bad eyes. " I stopped 
 to listen, my baby in my arms. I grew 
 so tired ; so tired and weary I just closed 
 my eyes and listened as the sounds began 
 to sound far off and soft. Then a great 
 wave of anguish came upon me, the organ 
 seemed to burst itself to help me express 
 it, to relieve me, and I let my baby fall 
 
THE NAMXLE8S BABT. 247 
 
 and shrieked twice, then that was all until 
 that ugly hateful old nurse," she added 
 maliciously, "began to pray when she 
 saw me open my eyes. Pray for me," 
 and a sardonic gleam of hate overspread 
 her face, and her hands twitched. " I 
 slapped her face ; I wish I could have 
 killed her. I will if I stay here long. 
 Oh, I'm bad. I'm pretty near as bad as 
 my father," and she closed her eyes and 
 turned from Elsie, muttering. 
 
 Elsie was trembling, and left her to 
 herself a little while. Later she took her 
 some delicious tidbit to tempt her, and 
 put a slight? sedative in it to quiet her 
 pulse. 
 
 The black eyes were open and staring 
 at the door as she entered to the low 
 
248 tilE NAMELESS SABY. 
 
 " come in." The invalid's face was pale, 
 not flushed as before, and she was glad. 
 
 " Eat this, please, little girl," she said, 
 sitting down by the bed, and smiling one 
 of her irresistible smiles. " We wUl lunch 
 together," and they did. 
 
 The sick girl was passive and absolutely 
 quiet, but still that fiendish look about 
 her whole face, as of one hardened to sin, 
 and longing for it. 
 
 After she had finished she lay back on 
 the pillows and closed her eyes. What 
 she thought will never be known. But, 
 without opening them, she began, in a wild 
 voice, to tell Elsie of her life. It was a 
 fearful narative of sin and wrong-doing, 
 but told without the oaths of the morning. 
 
 " 1 am going to leave here to-morrow," 
 
THt: NAMELUSS SAST. 249 
 
 she said. " This is not a place for such 
 as me ; but I am going to tell you who I 
 am, and who is my father, and then I'm 
 going back. I hate it here. It's too 
 good. I stand out so boldly in my wicked- 
 ness here in these surroundings that I'd 
 die of contrast," and she opened her eyes 
 and smiled unpleasantly. 
 
 How Elsie pitied her ! Did blood, then, 
 teU so really? And in her heart she fer- 
 vently thanked God that the baby had 
 died. His ways are best. And she 
 longed to save the girl ; to keep her 
 there and strive to win her back to right 
 and truth, and she told her that she was 
 not well enough to leave. She would 
 have to stay at the VUla until she was 
 real strong again. 
 
260 TBS NAMSLSsa SABT. 
 
 " Oh, I'm strong," was the reply, " look 
 at my arms ; I've got the finest constitu- 
 tion you ever heard o£. Inherited that, 
 too ; " and again the diabolical laugh. 
 
 Elsie could not bear to look in the 
 girl's eyes. Why, she could not tell. 
 They stirred her very soul not unlike 
 those of the baby had, only these were 
 so evil in their expression, as if all the 
 good had long ago died out of them, or 
 rather the soul whose windows they were. 
 
 The girl was repulsive to Elsie. She 
 could not kiss her, but she did take her 
 hands tenderly in her own and teU her 
 to go right to sleep, that she had talked 
 a great deal. Perhaps too much for her 
 strength. " Do not think too much," she 
 added, considerately. 
 
THE NAMELESS BABY. 251 
 
 At this the girl grasped her hand. " You 
 are good Mrs. Du Bois, Elsie Vane," and 
 Elsie started as if struck at the mention 
 of her name by this strangely familiar 
 girl, " the best woman I have ever met. 
 If I had known you sooner, — who knows," 
 she ended abruptly in a deep-drawn sigh 
 of genuine momentary misery. " Oh, the 
 sins of the fathers ! " And Elsie was glad 
 to get away to herself to think it out. 
 
 The next day the room was empty. 
 The bed was smooth and white, but the 
 girl had flown in the night. On the 
 pillow was a letter addressed to Elsie. 
 
 With trembhng hands she opened the 
 page and read. 
 
 " You are sweet and good. You conid not 
 be anything else. Yoa were bom good, and of 
 
252 THE NAMELESS BAST. 
 
 good people. There was no father's sin to rest 
 on you, so your goodness does you little more 
 credit than my badness does me. I know all 
 your story, and did when I went to the Villa 
 with that nasty baby of mine. I knew how 
 you loved my father, and I suppose I pitied, 
 was sorry for you. Anyhow I wanted you to 
 know just what he always was and is. That a 
 daughter should hate a parent ! Do not think 
 about me. I am young, not as old as you ; 
 only just twenty, but I will try and live several 
 years in one, and get through life quickly. If 
 not, I'll kill myself, or get one of my lovers to. 
 Had I had the influence of a mother like you 
 
 perhaps but no, I had a stepmother like 
 
 my father. 
 
 " I thank you for keeping that praying, cant- 
 ing nurse from my room, and for burying my 
 baby. Believe me, I would not be other than 
 I am, so don't bruise your tender heart by 
 
 regrets. 
 
 " Rbna Foster. 
 
 " P. S. One of those damnable preachers 
 
THE NAMELESS BABY. 253 
 
 raided the house that night you found me in 
 the rain, and I had to fly ; this is truth. All 
 this letter is true." 
 
 This was Ronald's beloved daughter; 
 his first-born. Now she could account for 
 the strange influence of the eyes of the 
 baby she had buried. They were eyes 
 like those she had loved. Ronald's eyes. 
 
 But Elsie Vane's poignant misery was 
 over forever. 
 
254 THE JUSTICE OF PROVIDENCE, 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE FINAL JUSTICE OF PKOVIDENOE. 
 
 Elsie returned at once to her husband. 
 He had grown somewhat uneasy about her 
 prolonged absence. She found him with 
 a paper on his knees and a tiny miniature 
 of herself in his hand. He did not 
 hear her enter the room, and she crept 
 softly, and knelt beside him, her curly 
 head on his lap, and her form trembling : 
 Oh, Ned, Ned, I do love you ! I love 
 you more than I have ever loved any one 
 else in my life. My own good honest 
 
TBE JUSTICE OF PROVIDENCE. 255 
 
 Ned,"slie murmured in low, dulcet, intense 
 tones. " My tusband ! " and he took her 
 into his arms and folded her to his long- 
 ing faithful breast. 
 
 " My precious Elsie ! " 
 
 And the gates of a true paradise were 
 thrown open wide for them to enter. 
 
 Ronald Foster had never been himself 
 since the strange disappearance of Elsie 
 Vane from his life forever. He had 
 reckoned his love and regard for her too 
 lightly, and peace and happiness had for- 
 ever left him. He had gone down, with 
 a listless air, from the esteem of his friends 
 and from his public position. He was no 
 longer a great man. That ardor that had 
 always marked his doings and disting^shed 
 him above other men had fled. Perhaps 
 
256 THE JUSTICE OF PROVIDENCE. 
 
 it was the judgment of a just God; at 
 least he could not help it. All interest in 
 hfe had departed, and his maturing 
 children were a source of endless, painful 
 anxiety. 
 
 Ever since the day he gave the innocent, 
 loving girl who believed in him the letter 
 which told her all so cruelly, something 
 seemed to rise and thrust itself between 
 him and happiness. Always before him, 
 vivid almost to reality, rose the beautiful, 
 ever-present face, as she lay, pale, ex- 
 hausted, fainting, in his arms, and yet 
 looking up at him with those eyes that 
 bore such love as he had never seen. 
 They haunted him mercilessly and would 
 till the ground closed over him, perhaps 
 beyond. 
 
THE JUSTICE OF PROVIDENCE. 257 
 
 The weight of his crime was full upon 
 him. Senator Paran, who could not 
 control his grief at Elsie's death, for so 
 he regarded her absence, had called on him. 
 He was enraged and had said to the Hon. 
 R. P. Foster that surely, while he was yet 
 above ground, hell wanted its master. 
 This rang in his memory, and aggravated 
 his suffering ; for the senator had been 
 friendly to him as one public man to an- 
 other, until it developed he was a scoun- 
 drel. 
 
 Of his eldest daughter Foster thought 
 all the world. All his parental love 
 centred in her and her future, as a 
 baby. But when she grew to woman- 
 hood he discovered the evil tendencies in 
 
 her nature. 
 
 17 
 
258 THE JUSTICE OE PBOTIDENCE. 
 
 As a child of nine she might easily have 
 passed for twelve, so tall and muscular was 
 she. Dark like her father, she had also 
 his broad shoulders and deep chest. Her 
 eyes were small and very dark, black they 
 were called, and usually at that time were 
 cold and unemotional. Her bearing was 
 easy and self-possessed, her small hands 
 contrasted curiously with the plebeian 
 weight and solidity of her build. Her at- 
 tainments were not many, but her capacity 
 for mischief was remarkable. Otherwise 
 she promised well; she had a splendid 
 appetite and was full of noise and fun, 
 and really a good child to manage, 
 "Takes so much after her father," was 
 the usual opinion. 
 
 There were times, however, when the 
 
THE JUSTICE OF PROVIDENCE. 259 
 
 child had misunderstandings with her 
 nurses and parents, especially her step- 
 mother, of whom she never was fond. She 
 would fling anything that came to hand at 
 their heads, arousing" the whole household 
 by her fearful yells, and enforcing her 
 privileges by kicking, scratching, and even 
 biting. 
 
 At eighteen she had developed a temper 
 that was the terror of who all were near her. 
 Twice she had disappeared from her home 
 during these spells and remained away 
 for several days. Returning, none dared 
 question her for fear of a renewed out- 
 burst. 
 
 She was naturally bright and was sent 
 to the best of schools. But the best in- 
 stitution for learning that can open its 
 
260 THE JUSTICE OF PROVIDENCE. 
 
 portals to any one, can do no more than 
 afford the opportunity for instruction. It 
 must depend on each scholar whether they 
 wiU he instructed or not, and to what point 
 they will push their instruction. Bena 
 would not learn. She preferred being off 
 with boys and girls of her own age, having 
 fun. Several times the faculty had been 
 compelled to suspend her, and had it not 
 been for the sake of her father it would 
 have been indefinitely. 
 
 They were compelled to allow her to 
 leave school. She was not accomplished, 
 and had no desire to be, but just lived in 
 an aimless sort of way, at her father's 
 house, always at swords' points with his 
 wife. 
 
 When his reverses came, simultaneous 
 
TSs MsficS off PBoVibJSNGM. 261 
 
 with them they discovered that Reua was 
 unmistakably bad. At the age of twenty, 
 a wUd, disgraceful escapade, only one of 
 many, resulted in the irate woman order- 
 ing the girl from home forever. And 
 she had disappeared. Her respect for 
 her father had never been great since 
 she was old enough to know anytHng. 
 All his wrong-doing, every scandal, how- 
 ever remote, in which he had ever been 
 involved, she had ferreted out, with inde- 
 fatigable energy. She seemed to have a 
 natural penchant for tracking the ques- 
 tionable in his life, past and present. 
 Not a fact about the Elsie Vane affair 
 but she knew thoroughly before any one 
 else had dreamed of any compHcation 
 whatever. She had found a letter in his 
 
262 TBE JtrSTlCM OF PBOVIDBNCM. 
 
 pocket, which told much to her mind, so 
 keen in such matters. Every event she 
 had followed. She divined the girl's 
 innocence, but never thought of warn- 
 ing her^ but rather envied her father 
 the "good time" as she would have 
 called it. AH but the marriage she 
 knew. That would have shocked even 
 her. 
 
 As she grew, and after she left home, 
 she began to hate him. It was from him 
 she had inherited evil tastes, and the 
 temper increased as she suffered. 
 
 Ronald Foster had but reaped the re- 
 ward of his own wrong-doing. Before 
 he was fifty years old he was a broken 
 man, physically and mentally. Family 
 sorrows had told on him grievously, and 
 
TBB JUSTICE OF PROVIDENCE. 263 
 
 accentuated the crimes of his past most 
 painfully. First, the affair with the 
 daughter of Senator Vane became too 
 public. The papers were inclined to find 
 out the truth. His friends had all they 
 could do to suppress it eventually, but 
 too late. Soon his poUtical confreres 
 began to look on him with pity, and then 
 contempt as, one after another, the shady 
 episodes of his past life were dragged 
 forth. A bright girl, whose sister had 
 loved the man, and who had died upon 
 learning the truth too late, wrote books 
 holding him up to ridicule by making 
 him their amorous, unprincipled hero, and 
 they contained too much of truth to be 
 without effect. She watched his life 
 narrowly and studied every phase of his 
 
264 TliE JrJStlC!^ OP pnoViDSNoe. 
 
 clouded past, such was her ardor in the 
 avenging of her dead sister. 
 
 He could no longer struggle against 
 the tide that had set in, bearing along its 
 indisputable facts. Had it not been for 
 home trials he might have resisted loi^r, 
 have struggled with more bravery before 
 the world and those who would like to 
 have beUeved in him, but murder will out. 
 And he had more than once caused the 
 death of innocence. 
 
 His boys grew up ashamed of their 
 father, and started careers in the west for 
 themselves. Two were rather successful, 
 and two died ignominious deaths. 
 
 Terrible sorrows may be made a means 
 of grace. It is written in second Corin- 
 thians, fourth chapter, seventeenth and 
 
Tat! .rtfSTiOJS OP PROVlbMNCK 265 
 
 eighteenth verses, " These afflictions which 
 are but for a moment, will work out a far 
 more exceeding and eternal weight of 
 glory." 
 
 So it was with Elsie Du Bois. Peace 
 and contentment followed the tragic 
 events of her early maturity, and a 
 broader and deeper nature was hers for 
 having suffered. For her the path to 
 exceeding and eternal glory was ever to 
 be bordered with the fragrant and beau- 
 tiful flowers of charity. To do good to 
 those about her, and to reflect the happi- 
 ness from within, became the unselfish 
 desire of her being, and then — ^heaven ! 
 
 On the other hand, how different was 
 the late hfe of the man Ronald P. Foster, 
 Sometimes, not always, but occasionally, in 
 
266 TBE JUSTICE OF PROVIDENCE. 
 
 this world is judgment meted out. He 
 had done the work of Belial. The curse 
 of God was upon him, and he came to 
 naught. 
 
 A multiplicity of emotions lessen the 
 strength of feelings. The man of the 
 world had never felt so deeply as did the 
 chaste girl. When he talked during the 
 first of the acquaintance, displaying the 
 warmth of his fancy and all his graces, 
 when he spoke of love, marriage and the 
 devotion of women, he had touched the 
 heart of his listener and fascinated her. 
 In the days following he had taken advan- 
 tage of every moment when he found 
 himself alone with her, to weave the web 
 of passionate language around his love. 
 
 Deception had become natural with him 
 
THE JUSTICE OF PROVIt>ENCE. 267 
 
 SO long as he had deceived. Theyouthfid 
 victim was powerless. But if his crime had 
 been enormous, his punishment proved 
 proportional. 
 
 Acidity became the paramount trait of 
 his nature'. The "Honorable" had dis- 
 appeared from his name as quickly as it 
 had sprung there. Strong as he was, he 
 could not banish entirely from his mind 
 the thoughts of his various wrong-doings 
 and sins before God. There was a hard 
 fight, but memory won, because of her 
 superior and more numerous forces. And 
 the strain told wonderfully on his nerves 
 and finally his whole constitution. 
 
 He lost the esteem of all save one little 
 fair-haired, blue-eyed maiden, living alone 
 in a squalid chamber on Rivington Street, 
 
268 fBM JUSTICE OF PBoVlDMNCH. 
 
 She still loved him. She was dying of 
 consumption and neglect. She was a 
 daughter of the middle classes, thoroughly 
 good until the unscrupulousFosterfancied 
 her, when she knowingly fell. This girl 
 stiU loved him, and held a miserable old 
 newspaper woodcut of his face in her 
 thin, dirty hand as she lay, but Ronald 
 Foster never visited her. He knew where 
 she lived, or rather died, but he did not 
 Uke the street. Jler parents had long 
 ago, on his account, denounced her, and 
 the city buried her. 
 
 Foster still held some little funds in his 
 possession, very Kttle; only enough to 
 sustain him. He lived in a small room 
 and rarely walked out. 
 
 People said he was peculiar. Old gos- 
 
THE JUSTICE OF PROVIDENCE. 269 
 
 sips would shake their heads as he passed, 
 and croon delightedly of his fall. They 
 would contrast what he had been with the 
 object so dejected before them, until they 
 fairly caused themselves to shudder. 
 
 " The judgment of his own sins ! " they 
 concluded. The old man was deserted 
 and lonesome. He suffered as much as 
 he was capable of suffering, but it ended 
 in a dull sort of indifferent apathy, 
 that made some say he was insane or 
 foolish. 
 
 He took long walks by himself, often 
 thinking of the baby Rena he had loved 
 so well. And his famished heart, now 
 that wickedness for it was over, and his 
 vitality well spent, longed to see her again. 
 His daughter ! His only daughter ! She 
 
270 TEE JUSTICE OF PROVIDENCE. 
 
 was wrong in her evil ways, but still she 
 was his child, and he yearned for her in 
 his feeble way. The way in which she 
 used, as a child, to throw her firm round 
 arms about his neck and call him names of 
 her own manufacturing, the time so long 
 ago that she had said, in order to emphasize 
 her devotion for him, " Why, papa, I'd 
 love you if you were bad ! " all came to 
 his debilitated memory at times. 
 
 Eena had not loved him when she grew 
 older. She had been a child when she 
 made the quaint remark. As a woman 
 she had forgotten it in the presence of his 
 crimes. And he recalled with bitterness 
 that she had been the first to not only 
 denounce, but to curse him. 
 
 But he was still her father, and she 
 
THE JUSTICE OF PROVIDENCE. Tl\ 
 
 his child. Where was she? he wondered. 
 Was she happy in her downfall? Had 
 he been happy in his sin? He did not try 
 to answer. 
 
 One night he dreamed of the blact-eyed 
 baby face, bright but not yet bold. Again 
 he heard the lisping voice with its childish 
 earnestness saying, " Why, papa, I'd love 
 you if you were bad ! " He thought he 
 had her again in his arms, and so awoke. 
 He was so glad, and such a happy smile 
 was for one brief moment in the dim eyes. 
 But only for a moment. He was alone. 
 It had been but a cruel dream. And he 
 bowed his bent head in his hands. 
 
 That morning he took one of his long 
 walks, returning to the city late in the 
 afternoon. He had started with a vague 
 
272 THE JUSTICE OF PROVIDENCE. 
 
 idea of searching for his daughter. He had 
 been lately haunted with an idea that it 
 was his duty as a parent. He had never 
 before felt the impetus of duty in that 
 direction. 
 
 The city lights were already beginning 
 to twinkle in the water as he crossed one 
 of the bridges. He followed a small crowd 
 ahead of him. He noticed they were 
 quiet but eager and excited. He was 
 fatigued, but curious. They were carry- 
 ing something. He peered closer. It 
 was a form on a litter, with four strong 
 men on either side. 
 
 "What is it?" he asked of a lad, who 
 looked at the old man as if wondering 
 what business he had with curiosity at 
 his age. 
 
THE JUSTICE OF PROVIDENCE. 273 
 
 " Girl," he replied briefly, starting to 
 run, "goin' to morgue." 
 
 The old man pressed nearer. A gfirl I 
 Ah, he had had a child, and a girl. 
 
 They carried the covered figure into the 
 odd old building, and the old man watched 
 eagerly, he did not know why. Then he 
 found himself beside the corpse, touching 
 the boards with his hands. 
 
 Suddenly a strange, uncontrollable ter- 
 ror seized him, and held the prematurely 
 aged body as in a vice. 
 
 " Uncover her, I say," he shrieked like 
 a madman. "Do you hear, you dogs, 
 you ghouls of darkness, you crime-mon- 
 gers ! " and he continued to hurl vitupera- 
 tions at the pall-bearers, who stood as if 
 
 dazed by his language. 
 18 
 
274 TBE JUSTICE OF PEOVIUJUNCE. 
 
 In an instant he jerked the cover ofE 
 ■with his trembling boily fingers, and 
 fell, with a cry as of extreme mortal 
 anguish, /beside the damp, water-soaked 
 figure, lying so still and cold, his wrinkled 
 face pressed against its swollen feat- 
 ures. " Kena ! " 
 
 The cry reverberated through the 
 building and out into the street. It 
 caught the ear of the lad to whom the 
 old stranger had spoken a few minutes 
 before. 
 
 "Who's Rena?" he asked, in an awed 
 voice, of the gamins surrounding him. 
 
 " Dunno. Guess the old fellow's dead," 
 was the response, as they crowded into 
 the building. 
 
THS JUSTICE Off PBOtlDENCM. 275 
 
 The attendants covered the slender, 
 strong form, and raised the old man from 
 the ground, wet with drippings from the 
 litter. 
 
 But Bonald P. Foster was not dead. 
 He had seen his daughter, and had re- 
 ceived a terrible shock, but he lived on. 
 
 Years after a white-haired man might 
 have been seen climbing slowly, not un- 
 like a child, a step at a time, up the stone 
 stairs leading to a certain bridge near an 
 old morgue. Children jeered at him, and 
 sometimes he would stop, turn round and 
 shake his trembling fist, again he would 
 laugh immoderately. 
 
 Two well-dressed men of middle life 
 met the strange, dilapidated figure one 
 day, as he was crossing the bridge. 
 
276 THE JUSTICE OF PROVIDENCM. 
 
 They were talking earnestly. Suddenly 
 one pointed to the approaching object, 
 " Queer-looking genius," he remarked. 
 
 « That's old Foster," replied the other. 
 
 " How the mighty have fallen • " and 
 both laughed and passed on. 
 
 Funs.