Part 2.

XV.

Mrs. Lander went to a hotel in New York where she had been in the habit

of staying with her husband, on their way South or North. The clerk knew

her, and shook hands with her across the register, and said she could

have her old rooms if she wanted them; the bell-boy who took up their

hand-baggage recalled himself to her; the elevator-boy welcomed her with

a smile of remembrance.

Since she was already up, from coming off the sleeping-car, she had no

excuse for not going to breakfast like other people; and she went with

Clementina to the dining-room, where the head-waiter, who found them

places, spoke with an outlandish accent, and the waiter who served

them had a parlance that seemed superficially English, but was inwardly

something else; there was even a touch in the cooking of the familiar

dishes, that needed translation for the girl's inexperienced palate.

She was finding a refuge in the strangeness of everything, when she was

startled by the sound of a familiar voice calling, “Clementina Claxon!

Well, I was sure all along it was you, and I determined I wouldn't stand

it another minute. Why, child, how you have changed! Why, I declare you

are quite a woman! When did you come? How pretty you are!” Mrs. Milray

took Clementina in her arms and kissed her in proof of her admiration

before the whole breakfast room. She was very nice to Mrs. Lander, too,

who, when Clementina introduced them, made haste to say that Clementina

was there on a visit with her. Mrs. Milray answered that she envied her

such a visitor as Miss Claxon, and protested that she should steal her

away for a visit to herself, if Mr. Milray was not so much in love with

her that it made her jealous. “Mr. Milray has to have his breakfast in

his room,” she explained to Clementina. “He's not been so well, since he

lost his mother. Yes,” she said, with decorous solemnity, “I'm still in

mourning for her,” and Clementina saw that she was in a tempered black.

“She died last year, and now I'm taking Mr. Milray abroad to see if it

won't cheer him up a little. Are you going South for the winter?” she

inquired, politely, of Mrs. Lander. “I wish I was going,” she said, when

Mrs. Lander guessed they should go, later on. “Well, you must come in

and see me all you can, Clementina; and I shall have the pleasure of

calling upon you,” she added to Mrs. Lander with state that was lost in

the soubrette-like volatility of her flight from them the next moment.

“Goodness, I forgot all about Mr. Milray's breakfast!” She ran back to

the table she had left on the other side of the room.

“Who is that, Clementina?” asked Mrs. Lander, on their way to their

rooms. Clementina explained as well as she could, and Mrs. Lander summed

up her feeling in the verdict, “Well, she's a lady, if ever I saw a

lady; and you don't see many of 'em, nowadays.”

The girl remembered how Mrs. Milray had once before seemed very fond of

her, and had afterwards forgotten the pretty promises and professions

she had made her. But she went with Mrs. Lander to see her, and she saw

Mr. Milray, too, for a little while. He seemed glad of their meeting,

but still depressed by the bereavement which Mrs. Milray supported

almost with gayety. When he left them she explained that he was a good

deal away from her, with his family, as she approved of his being,

though she had apparently no wish to join him in all the steps of the

reconciliation which the mother's death had brought about among them.

Sometimes his sisters came to the hotel to see her, but she amused

herself perfectly without them, and she gave much more of her leisure to

Clementina and Mrs. Lander.

She soon knew the whole history of the relation between them, and the

first time that Clementina found her alone with Mrs. Lander she could

have divined that Mrs. Lander had been telling her of the Fane affair,

even if Mrs. Milray had not at once called out to her, “I know all about

it; and I'll tell you what, Clementina, I'm going to take you over

with me and marry you to an English Duke. Mrs. Lander and I have been

planning it all out, and I'm going to send down to the steamer office,

and engage your passage. It's all settled!”

When she was gone, Mrs. Lander asked, “What do you s'pose your folks

would say to your goin' to Europe, anyway, Clementina?” as if the matter

had been already debated between them.

Clementina hesitated. “I should want to be su'a, Mrs. Milray really

wanted me to go ova with her.”

“Why, didn't you hear her say so?” demanded Mrs. Lander.

“Yes,” sighed Clementina. “Mrs. Lander, I think Mrs. Milray means what

she says, at the time, but she is one that seems to forget.”

“She thinks the wo'ld of you,” Mrs. Lander urged.

“She was very nice to me that summer at Middlemount. I guess maybe she

would like to have us go with her,” the girl relented.

“I guess we'll wait and see,” said Mrs. Lander. “I shouldn't want she

should change her mind when it was too late, as you say.” They were

both silent for a time, and then Mrs. Lander resumed, “But I presume she

ha'n't got the only steams that's crossin'. What should you say about

goin' over on some otha steams? I been South a good many wintas, and I

should feel kind of lonesome goin' round to the places where I been with

Mr. Landa. I felt it since I been here in this hotel, some, and I can't

seem to want to go ova the same ground again, well, not right away.”

Clementina said, “Why, of cou'se, Mrs. Landa.”

“Should you be willin',” asked Mrs. Lander, after another little pause,

“if your folks was willin', to go ova the'a, to some of them European

countries, to spend the winta?”

“Oh yes, indeed!” said Clementina.

They discussed the matter in one of the full talks they both liked. At

the end Mrs. Lander said, “Well, I guess you betta write home, and ask

your motha whetha you can go, so't if we take the notion we can go any

time. Tell her to telegraph, if she'll let you, and do write all the ifs

and ands, so't she'll know just how to answa, without havin' to have you

write again.”

That evening Mrs. Milray came to their table from where she had been

dining alone, and asked in banter: “Well, have you made up your minds to

go over with me?”

Mrs. Lander said bluntly, “We can't ha'dly believe you really want us

to, Mrs. Milray.”

“I don't want you? Who put such an idea into your head! Oh, I know!” She

threatened Clementina with the door-key, which she was carrying in her

hand. “It was you, was it? What an artful, suspicious thing! What's got

into you, child? Do you hate me?” She did not give Clementina time to

protest. “Well, now, I can just tell you I do want you, and I'll be

quite heart-broken if you don't come.”

“Well, she wrote to her friends this mohning,” Mrs. Lander said, “but I

guess she won't git an answa in time for youa steamer, even if they do

let her go.”

“Oh, yes she will,” Mrs. Milray protested. “It's all right, now; you've

got to go, and there's no use trying to get out of it.”

She came to them whenever she could find them in the dining-room, and

she knocked daily at their door till she knew that Clementina had heard

from home. The girl's mother wrote, without a punctuation mark in her

letter, but with a great deal of sense, that such a thing as her going

to Europe could not be settled by telegraph. She did not think it worth

while to report all the facts of a consultation with the rector which

they had held upon getting Clementina's request, and which had renewed

all the original question of her relations with Mrs. Lander in an

intensified form. He had disposed of this upon much the same terms as

before; and they had yielded more readily because the experiment had so

far succeeded. Clementina had apparently no complaint to make of Mrs.

Lander; she was eager to go, and the rector and his wife, who had been

invited to be of the council, were both of the opinion that a course of

European travel would be of the greatest advantage to the girl, if she

wished to fit herself for teaching. It was an opportunity that they

must not think of throwing away. If Mrs. Lander went to Florence, as

it seemed from Clementina's letter she thought of doing, the girl would

pass a delightful winter in study of one of the most interesting cities

in the world, and she would learn things which would enable her to do

better for herself when she came home than she could ever hope to do

otherwise. She might never marry, Mr. Richling suggested, and it was

only right and fair that she should be equipped with as much culture as

possible for the struggle of life; Mrs. Richling agreed with this rather

vague theory, but she was sure that Clementina would get married to

greater advantage in Florence than anywhere else. They neither of them

really knew anything at first hand about Florence; the rector's opinion

was grounded on the thought of the joy that a sojourn in Italy would

have been to him; his wife derived her hope of a Florentine marriage for

Clementina from several romances in which love and travel had gone hand

in hand, to the lasting credit of triumphant American girlhood.

The Claxons were not able to enter into their view of the case, but if

Mrs. Lander wanted to go to Florence instead of Florida they did not see

why Clementina should not go with her to one place as well as the other.

They were not without a sense of flattery from the fact that their

daughter was going to Europe; but they put that as far from them as they

could, the mother severely and the father ironically, as something too

silly, and they tried not to let it weigh with them in making up their

mind, but to consider only Clementina's best good, and not even

to regard her pleasure. Her mother put before her the most crucial

questions she could think of, in her letter, and then gave her full

leave from her father as well as herself to go if she wished.

Clementina had rather it had been too late to go with the Milrays, but

she felt bound to own her decision when she reached it; and Mrs. Milray,

whatever her real wish was, made it a point of honor to help get Mrs.

Lander berths on her steamer. It did not require much effort; there

are plenty of berths for the latest-comers on a winter passage, and

Clementina found herself the fellow passenger of Mrs. Milray.

XVI.

As soon as Mrs. Lander could make her way to her state-room, she

got into her berth, and began to take the different remedies for

sea-sickness which she had brought with her. Mrs. Milray said that was

nice, and that now she and Clementina could have a good time. But before

it came to that she had taken pity on a number of lonely young men whom

she found on board. She cheered them up by walking round the ship with

them; but if any of them continued dull in spite of this, she dropped

him, and took another; and before she had been two days out she had

gone through with nearly all the lonely young men on the list of cabin

passengers. She introduced some of them to Clementina, but at such times

as she had them in charge; and for the most part she left her to Milray.

Once, as the girl sat beside him in her steamer-chair, Mrs. Milray shed

a wrap on his knees in whirring by on the arm of one of her young men,

with some laughed and shouted charge about it.

“What did she say?” he asked Clementina, slanting the down-pulled brim

of his soft hat purblindly toward her.

She said she had not understood, and then Milray asked, “What sort of

person is that Boston youth of Mrs. Milray's? Is he a donkey or a lamb?”

Clementina said ingenuously, “Oh, she's walking with that English

gentleman now--that lo'd.”

“Ah, yes,” said Milray. “He's not very much to look at, I hear.”

“Well, not very much,” Clementina admitted; she did not like to talk

against people.

“Lords are sometimes disappointing, Clementina,” Milray said, “but

then, so are other great men. I've seen politicians on our side who were

disappointing, and there are clergymen and gamblers who don't look

it.” He laughed sadly. “That's the way people talk who are a little

disappointing themselves. I hope you don't expect too much of yourself,

Clementina?”

“I don't know what you mean,” she said, stiffening with a suspicion that

he might be going to make fun of her.

He laughed more gayly. “Well, I mean we must hold the other fellows up

to their duty, or we can't do our own. We need their example. Charity

may begin at home, but duty certainly begins abroad.” He went on, as

if it were a branch of the same inquiry, “Did you ever meet my sisters?

They came to the hotel in New York to see Mrs. Milray.”

“Yes, I was in the room once when they came in.”

“Did you like them?”

“Yes--I sca'cely spoke to them--I only stayed a moment.”

“Would you like to see any more of the family?”

“Why, of cou'se!” Clementina was amused at his asking, but he seemed in

earnest.

“One of my sisters lives in Florence, and Mrs. Milray says you think of

going there, too.”

“Mrs. Landa thought it would be a good place to spend the winter. Is it

a pleasant place?”

“Oh, delightful! Do you know much about Italy?”

“Not very much, I don't believe.”

“Well, my sister has lived a good while in Florence. I should like to

give you a letter to her.”

“Oh, thank you!” said Clementina.

Milray smiled at her spare acknowledgment, but inquired gravely: “What

do you expect to do in Florence?”

“Why, I presume, whateva Mrs. Landa wants to do.”

“Do you think Mrs. Lander will want to go into society?”

This question had not occurred to Clementina. “I don't believe she

will,” she said, thoughtfully.

“Shall you?”

Clementina laughed, “Why, do you think,” she ventured, “that society

would want me to?”

“Yes, I think it would, if you're as charming as you've tried to make me

believe. Oh, I don't mean, to your own knowledge; but some people have

ways of being charming without knowing it. If Mrs. Lander isn't going

into society, and there should be a way found for you to go, don't

refuse, will you?”

“I shall wait and see if I'm asked, fust.”

“Yes, that will be best,” said Milray. “But I shall give you a letter to

my sister. She and I used to be famous cronies, and we went to a great

many parties together when we were young people. We thought the world

was a fine thing, then. But it changes.”

He fell into a muse, and they were both sitting quite silent when Mrs.

Milray came round the corner of the music room in the course of her

twentieth or thirtieth compass of the deck, and introduced her lord to

her husband and to Clementina. He promptly ignored Milray, and devoted

himself to the girl, leaning over her with his hand against the bulkhead

behind her and talking down upon her.

Lord Lioncourt must have been about thirty, but he had the heated and

broken complexion of a man who has taken more than is good for him in

twice that number of years. This was one of the wrongs nature had done

him in apparent resentment of the social advantages he was born to, for

he was rather abstemious, as Englishmen go. He looked a very shy person

till he spoke, and then you found that he was not in the least shy. He

looked so English that you would have expected a strong English accent

of him, but his speech was more that of an American, without the

nasality. This was not apparently because he had been much in America;

he was returning from his first visit to the States, which had been

spent chiefly in the Territories; after a brief interval of Newport

he had preferred the West; he liked rather to hunt than to be hunted,

though even in the West his main business had been to kill time, which

he found more plentiful there than other game. The natives, everywhere,

were much the same thing to him; if he distinguished it was in favor

of those who did not suppose themselves cultivated. If again he had a

choice it was for the females; they seemed to him more amusing than the

males, who struck him as having an exaggerated reputation for humor. He

did not care much for Clementina's past, as he knew it from Mrs. Milray,

and if it did not touch his fancy, it certainly did not offend his

taste. A real artistocracy is above social prejudice, when it will; he

had known some of his order choose the mothers of their heirs from

the music halls, and when it came to a question of distinctions among

Americans, he could not feel them. They might be richer or poorer; but

they could not be more patrician or more plebeian.

The passengers, he told Clementina, were getting up, at this point

of the ship's run, an entertainment for the benefit of the seaman's

hospital in Liverpool, that well-known convention of ocean-travel, which

is sure at some time or other, to enlist all the talent on board every

English steamer in some sort of public appeal. He was not very clear how

he came to be on the committee for drumming up talent for the occasion;

his distinction seemed to have been conferred by a popular vote in the

smoking room, as nearly as he could make out; but here he was, and he

was counting upon Miss Claxon to help him out. He said Mrs. Milray had

told him about that charming affair they had got up in the mountains,

and he was sure they could have something of the kind again. “Perhaps

not a coaching party; that mightn't be so easy to manage at sea. But

isn't there something else--some tableaux or something? If we couldn't

have the months of the year we might have the points of the compass, and

you could take your choice.”

He tried to get something out of the notion, but nothing came of it that

Mrs. Milray thought possible. She said, across her husband, on whose

further side she had sunk into a chair, that they must have something

very informal; everybody must do what they could, separately. “I know

you can do anything you like, Clementina. Can't you play something, or

sing?” At Clementina's look of utter denial, she added, desperately, “Or

dance something?” A light came into the girl's face at which she caught.

“I know you can dance something! Why, of course! Now, what is it?”

Clementina smiled at her vehemence. “Why, it's nothing. And I don't know

whether I should like to.”

“Oh, yes,” urged Lord Lioncourt. “Such a good cause, you know.”

“What is it?” Mrs. Milray insisted. “Is it something you could do

alone?”

“It's just a dance that I learned at Woodlake. The teacha said that all

the young ladies we'e leaning it. It's a skut-dance--”

“The very thing!” Mrs. Milray shouted. “It'll be the hit of the

evening.”

“But I've never done it before any one,” Clementina faltered.

“They'll all be doing their turns,” the Englishman said. “Speaking, and

singing, and playing.”

Clementina felt herself giving way, and she pleaded in final reluctance,

“But I haven't got a pleated skut in my steama trunk.”

“No matter! We can manage that.” Mrs. Milray jumped to her feet and took

Lord Lioncourt's arm. “Now we must go and drum up somebody else.” He

did not seem eager to go, but he started. “Then that's all settled,” she

shouted over her shoulder to Clementina.

“No, no, Mrs. Milray!” Clementina called after her. “The ship tilts

so--”

“Nonsense! It's the smoothest run she ever made in December. And I'll

engage to have the sea as steady as a rock for you. Remember, now,

you've promised.”

Mrs. Milray whirled her Englishman away, and left Clementina sitting

beside her husband.

“Did you want to dance for them, Clementina?” he asked.

“I don't know,” she said, with the vague smile of one to whom a pleasant

hope has occurred.

“I thought perhaps you were letting Mrs. Milray bully you into it. She's

a frightful tyrant.”

“Oh, I guess I should like to do it, if you think it would be--nice.”

“I dare say it will be the nicest thing at their ridiculous show.”

Milray laughed as if her willingness to do the dance had defeated a

sentimental sympathy in him.

“I don't believe it will be that,” said Clementina, beaming joyously.

“But I guess I shall try it, if I can find the right kind of a dress.”

“Is a pleated skirt absolutely necessary,” asked Milray, gravely.

“I don't see how I could get on without it,” said Clementina.

She was so serious still when she went down to her state-room that Mrs.

Lander was distracted from her potential ailments to ask: “What is it,

Clementina?”

“Oh, nothing. Mrs. Milray has got me to say that I would do something at

a concert they ah' going to have on the ship.” She explained, “It's that

skut dance I learnt at Woodlake of Miss Wilson.”

“Well, I guess if you're worryin' about that you needn't to.”

“Oh, I'm not worrying about the dance. I was just thinking what I should

wear. If I could only get at the trunks!”

“It won't make any matte what you wear,” said Mrs. Lander. “It'll be the

greatest thing; and if 't wa'n't for this sea-sickness that I have to

keep fightin' off he'a, night and day, I should come up and see you

myself. You ah' just lovely in that dance, Clementina.”

“Do you think so, Mrs. Landa?” asked the girl, gratefully. “Well, Mr.

Milray didn't seem to think that I need to have a pleated skut.

Any rate, I'm going to look over my things, and see if I can't make

something else do.”

XVII.

The entertainment was to be the second night after that, and Mrs. Milray

at first took the whole affair into her own hands. She was willing to

let the others consult with her, but she made all the decisions, and she

became so prepotent that she drove Lord Lioncourt to rebellion in the

case of some theatrical people whom he wanted in the programme. He

wished her to let them feel that they were favoring rather than favored,

and she insisted that it should be quite the other way. She professed a

scruple against having theatrical people in the programme at all, which

she might not have felt if her own past had been different, and she

spoke with an abhorrence of the stage which he could by no means

tolerate in the case. She submitted with dignity when she could not help

it. Perhaps she submitted with too much dignity. Her concession verged

upon hauteur; and in her arrogant meekness she went back to another

of her young men, whom she began to post again as the companion of her

promenades.

He had rather an anxious air in the enjoyment of the honor, but the

Englishman seemed unconscious of its loss, or else he chose to ignore

it. He frankly gave his leisure to Clementina, and she thought he was

very pleasant. There was something different in his way from that of any

of the other men she had met; something very natural and simple, a way

of being easy in what he was, and not caring whether he was like others

or not; he was not ashamed of being ignorant of anything he did not

know, and she was able to instruct him on some points. He took her quite

seriously when she told him about Middlemount, and how her family came

to settle there, and then how she came to be going to Europe with

Mrs. Lander. He said Mrs. Milray had spoken about it; but he had not

understood quite how it was before; and he hoped Mrs. Lander was coming

to the entertainment.

He did not seem aware that Mrs. Milray was leaving the affair more and

more to him. He went forward with it and was as amiable with her as she

would allow. He was so amiable with everybody that he reconciled many

true Americans to his leadership, who felt that as nearly all the

passengers were Americans, the chief patron of the entertainment ought

to have been some distinguished American. The want of an American who

was very distinguished did something to pacify them; but the behavior of

an English lord who put on no airs was the main agency. When the night

came they filled the large music room of the 'Asia Minor', and stood

about in front of the sofas and chairs so many deep that it was hard to

see or hear through them.

They each paid a shilling admittance; they were prepared to give

munificently besides when the hat came round; and after the first burst

of blundering from Lord Lioncourt, they led the magnanimous applause. He

said he never minded making a bad speech in a good cause, and he made

as bad a one as very well could be. He closed it by telling Mark Twain's

whistling story so that those who knew it by heart missed the point; but

that might have been because he hurried it, to get himself out of the

way of the others following. When he had done, one of the most ardent of

the Americans proposed three cheers for him.

The actress whom he had secured in spite of Mrs. Milray appeared

in woman's dress contrary to her inveterate professional habit, and

followed him with great acceptance in her favorite variety-stage song;

and then her husband gave imitations of Sir Henry Irving, and of Miss

Maggie Kline in “T'row him down, McCloskey,” with a cockney accent. A

frightened little girl, whose mother had volunteered her talent, gasped

a ballad to her mother's accompaniment, and two young girls played a

duet on the mandolin and guitar. A gentleman of cosmopolitan military

tradition, who sold the pools in the smoking-room, and was the friend of

all the men present, and the acquaintance of several, gave selections of

his autobiography prefatory to bellowing in a deep bass voice, “They're

hanging Danny Deaver,” and then a lady interpolated herself into the

programme with a kindness which Lord Lioncourt acknowledged, in saying

“The more the merrier,” and sang Bonnie Dundee, thumping the piano out

of all proportion to her size and apparent strength.

Some advances which Clementina had made for Mrs. Milray's help about the

dress she should wear in her dance met with bewildering indifference,

and she had fallen back upon her own devices. She did not think of

taking back her promise, and she had come to look forward to her part

with a happiness which the good weather and the even sway of the ship

encouraged. But her pulses fluttered, as she glided into the music room,

and sank into a chair next Mrs. Milray. She had on an accordion skirt

which she had been able to get out of her trunk in the hold, and she

felt that the glance of Mrs. Milray did not refuse it approval.

“That will do nicely, Clementina,” she said. She added, in careless

acknowledgement of her own failure to direct her choice, “I see you

didn't need my help after all,” and the thorny point which Clementina

felt in her praise was rankling, when Lord Lioncourt began to introduce

her.

He made rather a mess of it, but as soon as he came to an end of his

well-meant blunders, she stood up and began her poses and paces. It was

all very innocent, with something courageous as well as appealing. She

had a kind of tender dignity in her dance, and the delicate beauty of

her face translated itself into the grace of her movements. It was not

impersonal; there was her own quality of sylvan, of elegant in it; but

it was unconscious, and so far it was typical, it was classic; Mrs.

Milray's Bostonian achieved a snub from her by saying it was like a

Botticelli; and in fact it was merely the skirt-dance which society had

borrowed from the stage at that period, leaving behind the footlights

its more acrobatic phases, but keeping its pretty turns and bows and

bends. Clementina did it not only with tender dignity, but when she

was fairly launched in it, with a passion to which her sense of Mrs.

Milray's strange unkindness lent defiance. The dance was still so new a

thing then, that it had a surprise to which the girl's gentleness lent

a curious charm, and it had some adventitious fascinations from the

necessity she was in of weaving it in and out among the stationary

armchairs and sofas which still further cramped the narrow space where

she gave it. Her own delight in it shone from her smiling face, which

was appealingly happy. Just before it should have ended, one of those

wandering waves that roam the smoothest sea struck the ship, and

Clementina caught herself skilfully from falling, and reeled to her

seat, while the room rang with the applause and sympathetic laughter

for the mischance she had baffled. There was a storm of encores, but

Clementina called out, “The ship tilts so!” and her naivete won her

another burst of favor, which was at its height when Lord Lioncourt had

an inspiration.

He jumped up and said, “Miss Claxon is going to oblige us with a little

bit of dramatics, now, and I'm sure you'll all enjoy that quite as much

as her beautiful dancing. She's going to take the principal part in the

laughable after-piece of Passing round the Hat, and I hope the audience

will--a--a--a--do the rest. She's consented on this occasion to use a

hat--or cap, rather--of her own, the charming Tam O'Shanter in which

we've all seen her, and--a--admired her about the ship for the week

past.”

He caught up the flat woolen steamer-cap which Clementina had left in

her seat beside Mrs. Milray when she rose to dance, and held it aloft.

Some one called out, “Chorus! For he's a jolly good fellow,” and led

off in his praise. Lord Lioncourt shouted through the uproar the

announcement that while Miss Claxon was taking up the collection, Mr.

Ewins, of Boston, would sing one of the student songs of Cambridge--no!

Harvard--University; the music being his own.

Everyone wanted to make some joke or some compliment to Clementina

about the cap which grew momently heavier under the sovereigns and

half sovereigns, half crowns and half dollars, shillings, quarters,

greenbacks and every fraction of English and American silver; and the

actor who had given the imitations, made bold, as he said, to ask his

lordship if the audience might not hope, before they dispersed, for

something more from Miss Claxon. He was sure she could do something

more; he for one would be glad of anything; and Clementina turned from

putting her cap into Mrs. Milray's lap, to find Lord Lioncourt bowing

at her elbow, and offering her his arm to lead her to the spot where she

had stood in dancing.

The joy of her triumph went to her head; she wished to retrieve herself

from any shadow of defeat.

She stood panting a moment, and then, if she had had the professional

instinct, she would have given her admirers the surprise of something

altogether different from what had pleased them before. That was what

the actor would have done, but Clementina thought of how her dance had

been brought to an untimely close by the rolling of the ship; she burned

to do it all as she knew it, no matter how the sea behaved, and in

another moment she struck into it again. This time the sea behaved

perfectly, and the dance ended with just the swoop and swirl she had

meant it to have at first. The spectators went generously wild over her;

they cheered and clapped her, and crowded upon her to tell how lovely it

was; but she escaped from them, and ran back to the place where she had

left Mrs. Milray. She was not there, and Clementina's cap full of alms

lay abandoned on the chair. Lord Lioncourt said he would take charge of

the money, if she would lend him her cap to carry it in to the purser,

and she made her way into the saloon. In a distant corner she saw Mrs.

Milray with Mr. Ewins.

She advanced in a vague dismay toward them, and as she came near Mrs.

Milray said to Mr. Ewins, “I don't like this place. Let's go over

yonder.” She rose and rushed him to the other end of the saloon.

Lord Lioncourt came in looking about. “Ah, have you found her?” he

asked, gayly. “There were twenty pounds in your cap, and two hundred

dollars.”

“Yes,” said Clementina, “she's over the'a.” She pointed, and then shrank

and slipped away.

XVIII.

At breakfast Mrs. Milray would not meet Clementina's eye; she talked to

the people across the table in a loud, lively voice, and then suddenly

rose, and swept past her out of the saloon.

The girl did not see her again till Mrs. Milray came up on the promenade

at the hour when people who have eaten too much breakfast begin to

spoil their appetite for luncheon with the tea and bouillon of the

deck-stewards. She looked fiercely about, and saw Clementina seated

in her usual place, but with Lord Lioncourt in her own chair next

her husband, and Ewins on foot before her. They were both talking to

Clementina, whom Lord Lioncourt was accusing of being in low spirits

unworthy of her last night's triumphs. He jumped up, and offered his

place, “I've got your chair, Mrs. Milray.”

“Oh, no,” she said, coldly, “I was just coming to look after Mr. Milray.

But I see he's in good hands.”

She turned away, as if to make the round of the deck, and Ewins hurried

after her. He came back directly, and said that Mrs. Milray had gone

into the library to write letters. He stayed, uneasily, trying to talk,

but with the air of a man who has been snubbed, and has not got back his

composure.

Lord Lioncourt talked on until he had used up the incidents of the night

before, and the probabilities of their getting into Queenstown before

morning; then he and Mr. Ewins went to the smoking-room together, and

Clementina was left alone with Milray.

“Clementina,” he said, gently, “I don't see everything; but isn't there

some trouble between you and Mrs. Milray?”

“Why, I don't know what it can be,” answered the girl, with trembling

lips. “I've been trying to find out, and I can't undastand it.”

“Ah, those things are often very obscure,” said Milray, with a patient

smile.

Clementina wanted to ask him if Mrs. Milray had said anything to him

about her, but she could not, and he did not speak again till he heard

her stir in rising from her chair. Then he said, “I haven't forgotten

that letter to my sister, Clementina. I will give it to you before we

leave the steamer. Are you going to stay in Liverpool, over night, or

shall you go up to London at once?”

“I don't know. It will depend upon how Mrs. Landa feels.”

“Well, we shall see each other again. Don't be worried.” He looked up at

her with a smile, and he could not see how forlornly she returned it.

As the day passed, Mrs. Milray's angry eyes seemed to search her out for

scorn whenever Clementina found herself the centre of her last night's

celebrity. Many people came up and spoke to her, at first with a certain

expectation of knowingness in her, which her simplicity baffled. Then

they either dropped her, and went away, or stayed and tried to make

friends with her because of this; an elderly English clergyman and

his wife were at first compassionately anxious about her, and then

affectionately attentive to her in her obvious isolation. Clementina's

simple-hearted response to their advances appeared to win while it

puzzled them; and they seemed trying to divine her in the strange double

character she wore to their more single civilization. The theatrical

people thought none the worse of her for her simple-heartedness,

apparently; they were both very sweet to her, and wanted her to promise

to come and see them in their little box in St. John's Wood. Once,

indeed, Clementina thought she saw relenting in Mrs. Milray's glance,

but it hardened again as Lord Lioncourt and Mr. Ewins came up to her,

and began to talk with her. She could not go to her chair beside

Milray, for his wife was now keeping guard of him on the other side with

unexampled devotion. Lord Lioncourt asked her to walk with him and she

consented. She thought that Mr. Ewins would go and sit by Mrs. Milray,

of course, but when she came round in her tour of the ship, Mrs. Milray

was sitting alone beside her husband.

After dinner she went to the library and got a book, but she could not

read there; every chair was taken by people writing letters to send back

from Queenstown in the morning; and she strayed into the ladies'

sitting room, where no ladies seemed ever to sit, and lost herself in a

miserable muse over her open page.

Some one looked in at the door, and then advanced within and came

straight to Clementina; she knew without looking up that it was Mrs.

Milray. “I have been hunting for you, Miss Claxon,” she said, in a voice

frostily fierce, and with a bearing furiously formal. “I have a letter

to Miss Milray that my husband wished me to write for you, and give you

with his compliments.”

“Thank you,” said Clementina. She rose mechanically to her feet, and at

the same time Mrs. Milray sat down.

“You will find Miss Milray,” she continued, with the same glacial

hauteur, “a very agreeable and cultivated lady.”

Clementina said nothing; and Mrs. Milray added,

“And I hope she may have the happiness of being more useful to you than

I have.”

“What do you mean, Mrs. Milray?” Clementina asked with unexpected spirit

and courage.

“I mean simply this, that I have not succeeded in putting you on your

guard against your love of admiration--especially the admiration

of gentlemen. A young girl can't be too careful how she accepts the

attentions of gentlemen, and if she seems to invite them--”

“Mrs. Milray!” cried Clementina. “How can you say such a thing to me?”

“How? I shall have to be plain with you, I see. Perhaps I have not

considered that, after all, you know nothing about life and are not

to blame for things that a person born and bred in the world would

understand from childhood. If you don't know already, I can tell you

that the way you have behaved with Lord Lioncourt during the last two or

three days, and the way you showed your pleasure the other night in his

ridiculous flatteries of you, was enough to make you the talk of the

whole steamer. I advise you for your own sake to take my warning in

time. You are very young, and inexperienced and ignorant, but that will

not save you in the eyes of the world if you keep on.” Mrs. Milray rose.

“And now I will leave you to think of what I have said. Here is the

letter for Miss Milray--”

Clementina shook her head. “I don't want it.”

“You don't want it? But I have written it at Mr. Milray's request, and I

shall certainly leave it with you!”

“If you do,” said Clementina, “I shall not take it!”

“And what shall I say to Mr. Milray?”

“What you have just said to me.”

“What have I said to you?”

“That I'm a bold girl, and that I've tried to make men admi'a me.”

Mrs. Milray stopped as if suddenly daunted by a fact that had not

occurred to her before. “Did I say that?”

“The same as that.”

“I didn't mean that--I--merely meant to put you on your guard. It may be

because you are so innocent yourself, that you can't imagine what others

think, and--I did it out of my regard for you.”

Clementina did not answer.

Mrs. Milray went on, “That was why I was so provoked with you. I think

that for a young girl to stand up and dance alone before a whole steamer

full of strangers”--Clementina looked at her without speaking, and

Mrs. Milray hastened to say, “To be sure I advised you to do it, but I

certainly was surprised that you should give an encore. But no matter,

now. This letter--”

“I can't take it, Mrs. Milray,” said Clementina, with a swelling heart.

“Now, listen!” urged Mrs. Milray. “You think I'm just saying it because,

if you don't take it I shall have to tell Mr. Milray I was so hateful to

you, you couldn't. Well, I should hate to tell him that; but that isn't

the reason. There!” She tore the letter in pieces, and threw it on the

floor. Clementina did not make any sign of seeing this, and Mrs. Milray

dropped upon her chair again. “Oh, how hard you are! Can't you say

something to me?”

Clementina did not lift her eyes. “I don't feel like saying anything

just now.”

Mrs. Milray was silent a moment. Then she sighed. “Well, you may hate

me, but I shall always be your friend. What hotel are you going to in

Liverpool?

“I don't know,” said Clementina.

“You had better come to the one where we go. I'm afraid Mrs. Lander

won't know how to manage very well, and we've been in Liverpool so

often. May I speak to her about it?”

“If you want to,” Clementina coldly assented.

“I see!” said Mrs. Milray. “You don't want to be under the same roof

with me. Well, you needn't! But I'll tell you a good hotel: the one that

the trains start out of; and I'll send you that letter for Miss Milray.”

Clementina was silent. “Well, I'll send it, anyway.”

Mrs. Milray went away in sudden tears, but the girl remained dry-eyed.

XIX.

Mrs. Lander realized when the ship came to anchor in the stream at

Liverpool that she had not been seasick a moment during the voyage. In

the brisk cold of the winter morning, as they came ashore in the tug,

she fancied a property of health in the European atmosphere, which she

was sure would bring her right up, if she stayed long enough; and a

regret that she had never tried it with Mr. Lander mingled with her new

hopes for herself.

But Clementina looked with home-sick eyes at the strangeness of the

alien scene: the pale, low heaven which seemed not to be clouded and yet

was so dim; the flat shores with the little railroad trains running in

and out over them; the grimy bulks of the city, and the shipping in the

river, sparse and sombre after the gay forest of sails and stacks at New

York.

She did not see the Milrays after she left the tug, in the rapid

dispersal of the steamer's passengers. They both took leave of her at

the dock, and Mrs. Milray whispered with penitence in her voice and

eyes, “I will write,” but the girl did not answer.

Before Mrs. Lander's trunks and her own were passed, she saw Lord

Lioncourt going away with his heavily laden man at his heels. Mr.

Ewins came up to see if he could help her through the customs, but she

believed that he had come at Mrs. Milray's bidding, and she thanked him

so prohibitively that he could not insist. The English clergyman who had

spoken to her the morning after the charity entertainment left his wife

with Mrs. Lander, and came to her help, and then Mr. Ewins went his way.

The clergyman, who appeared to feel the friendlessness of the young girl

and the old woman a charge laid upon him, bestowed a sort of fatherly

protection upon them both. He advised them to stop at a hotel for a

few hours and take the later train for London that he and his wife were

going up by; they drove to the hotel together, where Mrs. Lander could

not be kept from paying the omnibus, and made them have luncheon with

her. She allowed the clergyman to get her tickets, and she could not

believe that he had taken second class tickets for himself and his wife.

She said that she had never heard of anyone travelling second class

before, and she assured him that they never did it in America. She

begged him to let her pay the difference, and bring his wife into her

compartment, which the guard had reserved for her. She urged that the

money was nothing to her, compared with the comfort of being with some

one you knew; and the clergyman had to promise that as they should be

neighbors, he would look in upon her, whenever the train stopped long

enough.

Before it began to move, Clementina thought she saw Lord Lioncourt

hurrying past their carriage-window. At Rugby the clergyman appeared,

but almost before he could speak, Lord Lioncourt's little red face

showed at his elbow. He asked Clementina to present him to Mrs. Lander,

who pressed him to get into her compartment; the clergyman vanished, and

Lord Lioncourt yielded.

Mrs. Lander found him able to tell her the best way to get to Florence,

whose situation he seemed to know perfectly; he confessed that he

had been there rather often. He made out a little itinerary for going

straight through by sleeping-car as soon as you crossed the Channel; she

had said that she always liked a through train when she could get it,

and the less stops the better. She bade Clementina take charge of the

plan and not lose it; without it she did not see what they could do.

She conceived of him as a friend of Clementina's, and she lost in the

strange environment the shyness she had with most people. She told him

how Mr. Lander had made his money, and from what beginnings he rose to

be ignorant of what he really was worth when he died. She dwelt upon

the diseases they had suffered, and at the thought of his death, so

unnecessary in view of the good that the air was already doing her in

Europe, she shed tears.

Lord Lioncourt was very polite, but there was no resumption of the

ship's comradery in his manner. Clementina could not know how quickly

this always drops from people who have been fellow-passengers; and she

wondered if he were guarding himself from her because she had danced at

the charity entertainment. The poison which Mrs. Milray had instilled

worked in her thoughts while she could not help seeing how patient he

was with all Mrs. Lander's questions; he answered them with a simplicity

of his own, or laughed and put them by, when they were quite impossible.

Many of them related to the comparative merits of English and American

railroads, and what he thought himself of these. Mrs. Lander noted the

difference of the English stations; but she did not see much in the

landscape to examine him upon. She required him to tell her why the

rooks they saw were not crows, and she was not satisfied that he should

say the country seat she pointed out was a castle when it was plainly

deficient in battlements. She based upon his immovable confidence in

respect to it an inquiry into the structure of English society, and she

made him tell her what a lord was, and a commoner, and how the royal

family differed from both. She asked him how he came to be a lord, and

when he said that it was a peerage of George the Third's creation, she

remembered that George III. was the one we took up arms against. She

found that Lord Lioncourt knew of our revolution generally, but was

ignorant of such particulars as the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the

Surrender of Cornwallis, as well as the throwing of the Tea into Boston

Harbor; he was much struck by this incident, and said, And quite right,

he was sure.

He told Clementina that her friends the Milrays had taken the steamer

for London in the morning. He believed they were going to Egypt for the

winter. Cairo, he said, was great fun, and he advised Mrs. Lander, if

she found Florence a bit dull, to push on there. She asked if it was

an easy place to get to, and he assured her that it was very easy from

Italy.

Mrs. Lander was again at home in her world of railroads and hotels; but

she confessed, after he left them at the next station, that she should

have felt more at home if he had been going on to London with them. She

philosophized him to the disadvantage of her own countrymen as much less

offish than a great many New York and Boston people. He had given her

a good opinion of the whole English nation; and the clergyman, who had

been so nice to them at Liverpool, confirmed her friendly impressions of

England by getting her a small omnibus at the station in London before

he got a cab for himself and his wife, and drove away to complete his

own journey on another road. She celebrated the omnibus as if it were

an effect of his goodness in her behalf. She admired its capacity for

receiving all their trunks, and saving the trouble and delay of the

express, which always vexed her so much in New York, and which had

nearly failed in getting her baggage to the steamer in time.

The omnibus remained her chief association with London, for she decided

to take the first through train for Italy in the morning. She wished

to be settled, by which she meant placed in a Florentine hotel for

the winter. That lord, as she now began and always continued to call

Lioncourt, had first given her the name of the best little hotel in

Florence, but as it had neither elevator nor furnace heat in it, he

agreed in the end that it would not do for her, and mentioned the most

modern and expensive house on the Lungarno. He told her he did not

think she need telegraph for rooms; but she took this precaution before

leaving London, and was able to secure them at a price which seemed to

her quite as much as she would have had to pay for the same rooms at a

first class hotel on the Back Bay.

The manager had reserved for her one of the best suites, which had just

been vacated by a Russian princess. “I guess you better cable to

your folks where you ah', Clementina,” she said. “Because if you're

satisfied, I am, and I presume we sha'n't want to change as long as we

stay in Florence. My, but it's sightly!” She joined Clementina a moment

at the windows looking upon the Arno, and the hills beyond it. “I guess

you'll spend most of your time settin' at this winder, and I sha'n't

blame you.”

They had arrived late in the dull, soft winter afternoon. The landlord

led the way himself to their apartment, and asked if they would have

fire; a facchino came in and kindled roaring blazes on the hearths;

at the same time a servant lighted all the candles on the tables and

mantels. They both gracefully accepted the fees that Mrs. Lander made

Clementina give them; the facchino kissed the girl's hand. “My!” said

Mrs. Lander, “I guess you never had your hand kissed before.”

The hotel developed advantages which, if not those she was used to, were

still advantages. The halls were warmed by a furnace, and she came to

like the little logs burning in her rooms. In the care of her own fire,

she went back to the simple time of her life in the country, and chose

to kindle it herself when it died out, with the fagots of broom that

blazed up so briskly.

In the first days of her stay she made inquiry for the best American

doctor in Florence; and she found him so intelligent that she at once

put her liver in his charge, with a history of her diseases and symptoms

of every kind. She told him that she was sure that he could have

cured Mr. Lander, if he had only had him in time; she exacted a new

prescription from him for herself, and made him order some quinine pills

for Clementina against the event of her feeling debilitated by the air

of Florence.

XX.

In these first days a letter came to Clementina from Mrs. Lander's

banker, enclosing the introduction which Mrs. Milray had promised to

her sister-in-law. It was from Mr. Milray, as before, and it was in

Mrs. Milray's handwriting; but no message from her came with it. To

Clementina it explained itself, but she had to explain it to Mrs.

Lander. She had to tell her of Mrs. Milray's behavior after the

entertainment on the steamer, and Mrs. Lander said that Clementina had

done just exactly right; and they both decided, against some impulses

of curiosity in Clementina's heart, that she should not make use of the

introduction.

The 'Hotel des Financieres' was mainly frequented by rich Americans full

of ready money, and by rich Russians of large credit. Better Americans

and worse, went, like the English, to smaller and cheaper hotels;

and Clementina's acquaintance was confined to mothers as shy and

ungrammatical as Mrs. Lander herself, and daughters blankly indifferent

to her. Mrs. Lander drove out every day when it did not rain, and she

took Clementina with her, because the doctor said it would do them

both good; but otherwise the girl remained pent in their apartment. The

doctor found her a teacher, and she kept on with her French, and began

to take lessons in Italian; she spoke with no one but her teacher,

except when the doctor came. At the table d'hote she heard talk of the

things that people seemed to come to Florence for: pictures, statues,

palaces, famous places; and it made her ashamed of not knowing about

them. But she could not go to see these things alone, and Mrs. Lander,

in the content she felt with all her circumstances, seemed not to

suppose that Clementina could care for anything but the comfort of the

hotel and the doctor's visits. When the girl began to get letters from

home in answer to the first she had written back, boasting how beautiful

Florence was, they assumed that she was very gay, and demanded full

accounts of her pleasures. Her brother Jim gave something of the village

news, but he said he supposed that she would not care for that, and she

would probably be too proud to speak to them when she came home. The

Richlings had called in to share the family satisfaction in Clementina's

first experiences, and Mrs. Richling wrote her very sweetly of their

happiness in them. She charged her from the rector not to forget any

chance of self-improvement in the allurements of society, but to

make the most of her rare opportunities. She said that they had got a

guide-book to Florence, with a plan of the city, and were following her

in the expeditions they decided she must be making every day; they were

reading up the Florentine history in Sismondi's Italian Republics,

and she bade Clementina be sure and see all the scenes of Savonarola's

martyrdom, so that they could talk them over together when she returned.

Clementina wondered what Mrs. Richling would think if she told her that

all she knew of Florence was what she overheard in the talk of the girls

in the hotel, who spoke before her of their dances and afternoon teas,

and evenings at the opera, and drives in the Cascine, and parties to

Fiesole, as if she were not by.

The days and weeks passed, until Carnival was half gone, and Mrs. Lander

noticed one day that Clementina appeared dull. “You don't seem to get

much acquainted?” she suggested.

“Oh, the'e's plenty of time,” said Clementina.

“I wish the'e was somebody you could go round with, and see the place.

Shouldn't you like to see the place?” Mrs. Lander pursued.

“There's no hurry about it, Mrs. Lander. It will stay as long as we do.”

Mrs. Lander was thoughtfully silent. Then she said, “I declare, I've got

half a mind to make you send that letta to Miss Milray, after all. What

difference if Mrs. Milray did act so ugly to you? He never did, and

she's his sista.”

“Oh, I don't want to send it, Mrs. Landa; you mustn't ask me to. I shall

get along,” said Clementina. The recognition of her forlornness deepened

it, but she was cheerfuller, for no reason, the next morning; and that

afternoon, the doctor unexpectedly came upon a call which he made haste

to say was not professional.

“I've just come from another patient of mine, and I promised to ask

if you had not crossed on the same ship with a brother of hers,--Mr.

Milray.”

Celementina and Mrs. Lander looked guiltily at each other. “I guess we

did,” Mrs. Lander owned at last, with a reluctant sigh.

“Then, she says you have a letter for her.”

The doctor spoke to both, but his looks confessed that he was not

ignorant of the fact when Mrs. Lander admitted, “Well Clementina, he'e,

has.”

“She wants to know why you haven't delivered it,” the doctor blurted

out.

Mrs. Lander looked at Clementina. “I guess she ha'n't quite got round to

it yet, have you, Clementina?”

The doctor put in: “Well, Miss Milray is rather a dangerous person

to keep waiting. If you don't deliver it pretty soon, I shouldn't be

surprised if she came to get it.” Dr. Welwright was a young man in the

early thirties, with a laugh that a great many ladies said had done more

than any one thing for them, and he now prescribed it for Clementina.

But it did not seem to help her in the trouble her face betrayed.

Mrs. Lander took the word, “Well, I wouldn't say it to everybody. But

you're our doctor, and I guess you won't mind it. We don't like the way

Mrs. Milray acted to Clementina, in the ship, and we don't want to be

beholden to any of her folks. I don't know as Clementina wants me to

tell you just what it was, and I won't; but that's the long and sho't of

it.”

“I'm sorry,” the doctor said. “I've never met Mrs. Milray, but Miss

Milray has such a pleasant house, and likes to get young people about

her. There are a good many young people in your hotel, though, and

I suppose you all have a very good time here together.” He ended by

speaking to Clementina, and now he said he had done his errand, and must

be going.

When he was gone, Mrs. Lander faltered, “I don't know but what we made a

mistake, Clementina.”

“It's too late to worry about it now,” said the girl.

“We ha'n't bound to stay in Florence,” said Mrs. Lander, thoughtfully.

“I only took the rooms by the week, and we can go, any time, Clementina,

if you are uncomf'table bein' here on Miss Milray's account. We could go

to Rome; they say Rome's a nice place; or to Egypt.”

“Mrs. Milray's in Egypt,” Clementina suggested.

“That's true,” Mrs. Lander admitted, with a sigh. After a while she went

on, “I don't know as we've got any right to keep the letter. It belongs

to her, don't it?”

“I guess it belongs to me, as much as it does to her,” said Clementina.

“If it's to her, it's for me. I am not going to send it, Mrs. Landa.”

They were still in this conclusion when early in the following afternoon

Miss Milray's cards were brought up for Mrs. Lander and Miss Claxon.

“Well, I decla'e!” cried Mrs. Lander. “That docta: must have gone

straight and told her what we said.”

“He had no right to,” said Clementina, but neither of them was

displeased, and after it was over, Mrs. Lander said that any one would

have thought the call was for her, instead of Clementina, from the way

Miss Milray kept talking to her. She formed a high opinion of her; and

Miss Milray put Clementina in mind of Mr. Milray; she had the same hair

of chiseled silver, and the same smile; she moved like him, and talked

like him; but with a greater liveliness. She asked fondly after him, and

made Clementina tell her if he seemed quite well, and in good spirits;

she was civilly interested in Mrs. Milray's health. At the embarrassment

which showed itself in the girl, she laughed and said, “Don't imagine I

don't know all about it, Miss Claxon! My sister-in-law has owned up

very handsomely; she isn't half bad, as the English say, and I think she

likes owning up if she can do it safely.”

“And you don't think,” asked Mrs. Lander, “that Clementina done wrong to

dance that way?”

Clementina blushed, and Miss Milray laughed again. “If you'll let Miss

Claxon come to a little party I'm giving she may do her dance at my

house; but she sha'n't be obliged to do it, or anything she doesn't

like. Don't say she hasn't a gown ready, or something of that kind! You

don't know the resources of Florence, and how the dress makers here doat

upon doing impossible things in no time at all, and being ready before

they promise. If you'll put Miss Claxon in my hands, I'll see that she's

dressed for my dance. I live out on one of the hills over there, that

you see from your windows”--she nodded toward them--“in a beautiful

villa, too cold for winter, and too hot for summer, but I think Miss

Claxon can endure its discomfort for a day, if you can spare her, and

she will consent to leave you to the tender mercies of your maid, and--”

Miss Milray paused at the kind of unresponsive blank to which she found

herself talking, and put up her lorgnette, to glance from Mrs. Lander to

Clementina. The girl said, with embarrassment, “I don't think I ought to

leave Mrs. Landa, just now. She isn't very well, and I shouldn't like to

leave her alone.”

“But we're just as much obliged to you as if she could come,” Mrs.

Lander interrupted; “and later on, maybe she can. You see, we han't got

any maid, yit. Well, we did have one at Woodlake, but she made us do so

many things for her, that we thought we should like to do a few things

for ouaselves, awhile.”

If Miss Milray perhaps did not conceive the situation, exactly, she

said, Oh, they were quite right in that; but she might count upon Miss

Claxon for her dance, might not she; and might not she do anything in

her power for them? She rose to go, but Mrs. Lander took her at her

word, so far as to say, Why, yes, if she could tell Clementina the best

place to get a dress she guessed the child would be glad enough to come

to the dance.

“Tell her!” Miss Milray cried. “I'll take her! Put on your hat, my

dear,” she said to Clementina, “and come with me now. My carriage is at

your door.”

Clementina looked at Mrs. Lander, who said, “Go, of cou'se, child. I

wish I could go, too.”

“Do come, too,” Miss Milray entreated.

“No, no,” said Mrs. Lander, flattered. “I a'n't feeling very well,

to-day. I guess I'm better off at home. But don't you hurry back on

my account, Clementina.” While the girl was gone to put on her hat she

talked on about her. “She's the best gul in the wo'ld, and she won't be

one of the poorest; and I shall feel that I'm doin' just what Mr. Landa

would have wanted I should. He picked her out himself, moa than three

yea's ago, when we was drivin' past her house at Middlemount, and it was

to humor him afta he was gone, moa than anything else, that I took her.

Well, she wa'n't so very easy to git, either, I can tell you.” She cut

short her history of the affair to say when Clementina came back, “I

want you should do the odderin' yourself, Miss Milray, and not let her

scrimp with the money. She wants to git some visitin' cahds; and if you

miss anything about her that she'd ought to have, or that any otha yong

lady's got, won't you just git it for her?”

As soon as she imagined the case, Miss Milray set herself to overcome

Mrs. Lander's reluctance from a maid. She prevailed with her to try the

Italian woman whom she sent her, and in a day the genial Maddalena had

effaced the whole tradition of the bleak Ellida. It was not essential to

the understanding which instantly established itself between them that

they should have any language in common. They babbled at each other,

Mrs. Lander in her Bostonized Yankee, and Maddalena in her gutteral

Florentine, and Mrs. Lander was flattered to find how well she knew

Italian.

Miss Milray had begun being nice to Clementina in fealty to her brother,

who so seldom made any proof of her devotion to him, and to whom she

had remained passionately true through his shady past. She was eager

to humor his whim for the little country girl who had taken his

fancy, because it was his whim, and not because she had any hopes that

Clementina would justify it. She had made Dr. Welwright tell her all he

knew about her, and his report of her grace and beauty had piqued her

curiosity; his account of the forlorn dullness of her life with Mrs.

Lander in their hotel had touched her heart. But she was still skeptical

when she went to get her letter of introduction; when she brought

Clementina home from the dressmaker's she asked if she might kiss her,

and said she was already in love with her.

Her love might have made her wish to do everything for her that she now

began to do, but it simplified the situation to account for her to the

world as the ward of Mrs. Lander, who was as rich as she was vulgar, and

it was with Clementina in this character that Miss Milray began to

make the round of afternoon teas, and inspired invitations for her at

pleasant houses, by giving a young ladies' lunch for her at her own.

Before the night of her little dance, she had lost any misgiving she had

felt at first, in the delight of seeing Clementina take the world as if

she had thought it would always behave as amiably as that, and as if she

had forgotten her unkind experiences to the contrary. She knew from Mrs.

Lander how the girls at their hotel had left her out, but Miss Milray

could not see that Clementina met them with rancor, when her authority

brought them together. If the child was humiliated by her past in the

gross lonely luxury of Mrs. Lander's life or the unconscious poverty of

her own home, she did not show it in the presence of the world that now

opened its arms to her. She remained so tranquil in the midst of all

the novel differences, that it made her friend feel rather vulgar in her

anxieties for her, and it was not always enough to find that she had

not gone wrong simply because she had hold still, and had the gift of

waiting for things to happen. Sometimes when Miss Milray had almost

decided that her passivity was the calm of a savage, she betrayed

so sweet and grateful a sense of all that was done for her, that her

benefactress decided that she was not rustic, but was sylvan in a way

of her own, and not so much ignorant as innocent. She discovered that

she was not ignorant even of books, but with no literary effect from

them she had transmitted her reading into the substance of her native

gentleness, and had both ideas and convictions. When Clementina most

affected her as an untried wilderness in the conventional things she

most felt her equality to any social fortune that might befall her, and

then she would have liked to see her married to a title, and taking the

glory of this world with an unconsciousness that experience would never

wholly penetrate. But then again she felt that this would be somehow

a profanation, and she wanted to pack her up and get her back to

Middlemount before anything of the kind should happen. She gave Milray

these impressions of Clementina in the letter she wrote to thank him for

her, and to scold him for sending the girl to her. She accused him of

wishing to get off on her a riddle which he could not read himself; but

she owned that the charm of Clementina's mystery was worth a thousand

times the fatigue of trying to guess her out and that she was more and

more infatuated with her every day.

In the meantime, Miss Milray's little dance grew upon her till it became

a very large one that filled her villa to overflowing when the time came

for it. She lived on one of the fine avenues of the Oltrarno region,

laid out in the brief period of prosperity which Florence enjoyed as

the capital of Italy. The villa was built at that time, and it was much

newer than the house on Seventeenth street in New York, where she spent

the girlhood that had since prolonged itself beyond middle life with

her. She had first lived abroad in the Paris of the Second Empire,

and she had been one winter in Rome, but she had settled definitely in

Florence before London became an American colony, so that her

friends were chiefly Americans, though she had a wide international

acquaintance. Perhaps her habit of taking her brother's part, when he

was a black sheep, inclined her to mercy with people who had not been so

blameless in their morals as they were in their minds and manners.

She exacted that they should be interesting and agreeable, and not too

threadbare; but if they had something that decently buttoned over the

frayed places, she did not frown upon their poverty. Bohemians of all

kinds liked her; Philistines liked her too; and in such a place as

Florence, where the Philistines themselves are a little Bohemian, she

might be said to be very popular. You met persons whom you did not quite

wish to meet at her house, but if these did not meet you there, it was

your loss.

XI.

On the night of the dance the line of private carriages, remises and

cabs, lined the Viale Ariosto for a mile up and down before her gates,

where young artists of both sexes arrived on foot. By this time her

passion for Clementina was at its height. She had Maddalena bring her

out early in the evening, and made her dress under her own eye and her

French maid's, while Maddalena went back to comfort Mrs. Lander.

“I hated to leave her,” said Clementina. “I don't believe she's very

well.”

“Isn't she always ill?” demanded Miss Milray. She embraced the girl

again, as if once were not enough. “Clementina, if Mrs. Lander won't

give you to me, I'm going to steal you. Do you know what I want you

to do tonight? I want you to stand up with me, and receive, till the

dancing begins, as if it were your coming-out. I mean to introduce

everybody to you. You'll be easily the prettiest girl, there, and you'll

have the nicest gown, and I don't mean that any of your charms shall be

thrown away. You won't be frightened?”

“No, I don't believe I shall,” said Clementina. “You can tell me what to

do.”

The dress she wore was of pale green, like the light seen in thin woods;

out of it shone her white shoulders, and her young face, as if rising

through the verdurous light. The artists, to a man and woman, wished to

paint her, and severally told her so, during the evening which lasted

till morning. She was not surprised when Lord Lioncourt appeared, toward

midnight, and astonished Miss Milray by claiming acquaintance with

Clementina. He asked about Mrs. Lander, and whether she had got to

Florence without losing the way; he laughed but he seemed really to

care. He took Clementina out to supper, when the time came; and she

would have topped him by half a head as she leaned on his arm, if she

had not considerately drooped and trailed a little after him.

She could not know what a triumph he was making for her; and it was

merely part of the magic of the time that Mr. Ewins should come in

presently with one of the ladies. He had arrived in Florence that day,

and had to be brought unasked. He put on the effect of an old friend

with her; but Clementina's curiosity was chiefly taken with a tall

American, whom she thought very handsome. His light yellow hair was

brushed smooth across his forehead like a well-behaving boy's; he was

dressed like the other men, but he seemed not quite happy in his evening

coat, and his gloves which he smote together uneasily from time to time.

He appeared to think that somehow the radiant Clementina would know how

he felt; he did not dance, and he professed to have found himself at the

party by a species of accident. He told her that he was out in Europe

looking after a patent right that he had just taken hold of, and was

having only a middling good time. He pretended surprise to hear her say

that she was having a first-rate time, and he tried to reason her out of

it. He confessed that from the moment he came into the room he had made

up his mind to take her to supper, and had never been so disgusted in

his life as when he saw that little lord toddling off with her, and

trying to look as large as life. He asked her what a lord was like,

anyway, and he made her laugh all the time.

He told her his name, G. W. Hinkle, and asked whether she would be

likely to remember it if they ever met again.

Another man who interested her very much was a young Russian, with

curling hair and neat, small features who spoke better English than

she did, and said he was going to be a writer, but had not yet decided

whether to write in Russian or French; she supposed he had wanted her

advice, but he did not wait for it, or seem to expect it. He was very

much in earnest, while he fanned her, and his earnestness amused her as

much as the American's irony. He asked which city of America she came

from, and when she said none, he asked which part of America. She

answered New England, and he said, “Oh, yes, that is where they have the

conscience.” She did not know what he meant, and he put before her the

ideal of New England girlhood which he had evolved from reading American

novels. “Are you like that?” he demanded.

She laughed, and said, “Not a bit,” and asked him if he had ever met

such an American girl, and he said, frankly, No; the American girls were

all mercenary, and cared for nothing but money, or marrying titles. He

added that he had a title, but he would not wear it.

Clementina said she did not believe she cared for titles, and then

he said, “But you care for money.” She denied it, but as if she had

confessed it, he went on: “The only American that I have seen with that

conscience was a man. I will tell you of him, if you wish.”

He did not wait for her answer. “It was in Naples--at Pompeii. I saw

at the first glance that he was different from other Americans, and I

resolved to know him. He was there in company with a stupid boy, whose

tutor he was; and he told me that he was studying to be a minister of

the Protestant church. Next year he will go home to be consecrated. He

promised to pass through Florence in the spring, and he will keep

his word. Every act, every word, every thought of his is regulated by

conscience. It is terrible, but it is beautiful.” All the time, the

Russian was fanning Clementina, with every outward appearance of

flirtation. “Will you dance again? No? I should like to draw such a

character as his in a romance.”

XXII.

It was six o'clock in the morning before Miss Milray sent Clementina

home in her carriage. She would have kept her to breakfast, but

Clementina said she ought to go on Mrs. Lander's account, and she wished

to go on her own.

She thought she would steal to bed without waking her, but she was

stopped by the sound of groans when she entered their apartment; the

light gushed from Mrs. Lander's door. Maddalena came out, and blessed

the name of her Latin deity (so much more familiar and approachable than

the Anglo-Saxon divinity) that Clementina had come at last, and poured

upon her the story of a night of suffering for Mrs. Lander. Through her

story came the sound of Mrs. Lander's voice plaintively reproachful,

summoning Clementina to her bedside. “Oh, how could you go away and

leave me? I've been in such misery the whole night long, and the docta

didn't do a thing for me. I'm puffectly wohn out, and I couldn't make

my wants known with that Italian crazy-head. If it hadn't been for the

portyary comin' in and interpretin', when the docta left, I don't know

what I should have done. I want you should give him a twenty-leary note

just as quick as you see him; and oh, isn't the docta comin'?”

Clementina set about helping Maddalena put the room, which was in an

impassioned disorder, to rights; and she made Mrs. Lander a cup of her

own tea, which she had brought from S. S. Pierces in passing through

Boston; it was the first thing, the sufferer said, that had saved her

life. Clementina comforted her, and promised her that the doctor should

be there very soon; and before Mrs. Lander fell away to sleep, she was

so far out of danger as to be able to ask how Clementina had enjoyed

herself, and to be glad that she had such a good time.

The doctor would not wake her when he came; he said that she had been

through a pretty sharp gastric attack, which would not recur, if she ate

less of the most unwholesome things she could get, and went more into

the air, and walked a little. He did not seem alarmed, and he made

Clementina tell him about the dance, which he had been called from to

Mrs. Lander's bed of pain. He joked her for not having missed him; in

the midst of their fun, she caught herself in the act of yawning, and

the doctor laughed, and went away.

Maddalena had to call her, just before dinner, when Mrs. Lander had been

awake long enough to have sent for the doctor to explain the sort of

gone feeling which she was now the victim of. It proved, when he came,

to be hunger, and he prescribed tea and toast and a small bit of steak.

Before he came she had wished to arrange for going home at once, and

dying in her own country. But his opinion so far prevailed with her that

she consented not to telegraph for berths. “I presume,” she said, “it'll

do, any time before the icebugs begin to run. But I d' know, afta this,

Clementina, as I can let you leave me quite as you be'n doin'. There was

a lot of flowas come for you, this aftanoon, but I made Maddalena put

'em on the balcony, for I don't want you should get poisoned with 'em in

your sleep; I always head they was dangerous in a person's 'bed room. I

d' know as they are, eitha.”

Maddalena seemed to know that Mrs. Lander was speaking of the flowers.

She got them and gave them to Clementina, who found they were from some

of the men she had danced with. Mr. Hinkle had sent a vast bunch of

violets, which presently began to give out their sweetness in the warmth

of the room, and the odor brought him before her with his yellow hair,

scrupulously parted at the side, and smoothly brushed, showing his

forehead very high up. Most of the gentlemen wore their hair parted in

the middle, or falling in a fringe over their brows; the Russian's was

too curly to part, and Lord Lioncourt had none except at the sides.

She laughed, and Mrs. Lander said, “Tell about it, Clementina,” and she

began with Mr. Hinkle, and kept coming back to him from the others. Mrs.

Lander wished most to know how that lord had got down to Florence; and

Clementina said he was coming to see her.

“Well, I hope to goodness he won't come to-day, I a'n't fit to see

anybody.”

“Oh, I guess he won't come till to-morrow,” said Clementina; she

repeated some of the compliments she had got, and she told of all Miss

Milray's kindness to her, but Mrs. Lander said, “Well, the next time,

I'll thank her not to keep you so late.” She was astonished to hear

that Mr. Ewins was there, and “Any of the nasty things out of the hotel

the'e?” she asked.

“Yes,” Clementina said, “the'e we'e, and some of them we'e very nice.

They wanted to know if I wouldn't join them, and have an aftanoon of our

own here in the hotel, so that people could come to us all at once.”

She went back to the party, and described the rest of it. When she came

to the part about the Russian, she told what he had said of American

girls being fond of money, and wanting to marry foreign noblemen.

Mrs. Lander said, “Well, I hope you a'n't a going to get married in a

hurry, anyway, and when you do I hope you'll pick out a nice American.”

“Oh, yes,” said Clementina.

Mrs. Lander had their dinner brought to their apartment. She cheered

up, and she was in some danger of eating too much, but with Clementina's

help she denied herself. Their short evening was one of the gayest;

Clementina declared she was not the least sleepy, but she went to bed at

nine, and slept till nine the next day.

Mrs. Lander, the doctor confessed, the second morning, was more shaken

up by her little attack than he had expected; but she decided to see

the gentleman who had asked to call on Clementina. Lord Lioncourt did

not come quite so soon as she was afraid he might, and when he came he

talked mostly to Clementina. He did not get to Mrs. Lander until just

before he was going. She hospitably asked him what his hurry was, and

then he said that he was off for Rome, that evening at seven. He was

nice about hoping she was comfortable in the hotel, and he sympathized

with her in her wish that there was a set-bowl in her room; she told him

that she always tried to have one, and he agreed that it must be very

convenient where any one was, as she said, sick so much.

Mr. Hinkle came a day later; and then it appeared that he had a mother

whose complaints almost exactly matched Mrs. Lander's. He had her

photograph with him, and showed it; he said if you had no wife to carry

round a photograph of, you had better carry your mother's; and Mrs.

Lander praised him for being a good son. A good son, she added, always

made a good husband; and he said that was just what he told the young

ladies himself, but it did not seem to make much impression on them. He

kept Clementina laughing; and he pretended that he was going to bring

a diagram of his patent right for her to see, because she would be

interested in a gleaner like that; and he said he wished her father

could see it, for it would be sure to interest the kind of man Mrs.

Lander described him to be. “I'll be along up there just about the time

you get home, Miss Clementina. When did you say it would be?”

“I don't know; pretty ea'ly in the spring, I guess.”

She looked at Mrs. Lander, who said, “Well, it depends upon how I git up

my health. I couldn't bea' the voyage now.”

Mr. Hinkle said, “No, best look out for your health, if it takes all

summer. I shouldn't want you to hurry on my account. Your time is my

time. All I want is for Miss Clementina, here, to personally conduct

me to her father. If I could get him to take hold of my gleaner in New

England, we could make the blueberry crop worth twice what it is.”

Mrs. Lander perceived that he was joking; and she asked what he wanted

to run away for when the young Russian's card came up. He said, “Oh,

give every man a chance,” and he promised that he would look in every

few days, and see how she was getting along. He opened the door after he

had gone out, and put his head in to say in confidence to Mrs. Lander,

but so loud that Clementina could hear, “I suppose she's told you who

the belle of the ball was, the other night? Went out to supper with

a lord!” He seemed to think a lord was such a good joke that if you

mentioned one you had to laugh.

The Russian's card bore the name Baron Belsky, with the baron crossed

out in pencil, and he began to attack in Mrs. Lander the demerits of the

American character, as he had divined them. He instructed her that

her countrymen existed chiefly to make money; that they were more

shopkeepers than the English and worse snobs; that their women were

trivial and their men sordid; that their ambition was to unite their

families with the European aristocracies; and their doctrine of liberty

and equality was a shameless hypocrisy. This followed hard upon her

asking, as she did very promptly, why he had scratched out the title on

his card. He told her that he wished to be known solely as an artist,

and he had to explain to her that he was not a painter, but was going to

be a novelist. She taxed him with never having been in America, but he

contended that as all America came to Europe he had the materials for a

study of the national character at hand, without the trouble of crossing

the ocean. In return she told him that she had not been the least

sea-sick during the voyage, and that it was no trouble at all; then he

abruptly left her and went over to beg a cup of tea from Clementina, who

sat behind the kettle by the window.

“I have heard this morning from that American I met in Pompeii” he

began. “He is coming northward, and I am going down to meet him in

Rome.”

Mrs. Lander caught the word, and called across the room, “Why, a'n't

that whe'e that lo'd's gone?”

Clementina said yes, and while the kettle boiled, she asked if Baron

Belsky were going soon.

“Oh, in a week or ten days, perhaps. I shall know when he arrives. Then

I shall go. We write to each other every day.” He drew a letter from his

breast pocket. “This will give you the idea of his character,” and he

read, “If we believe that the hand of God directs all our actions, how

can we set up our theories of conduct against what we feel to be his

inspiration?”

“What do you think of that?” he demanded.

“I don't believe that God directs our wrong actions,” said Clementina.

“How! Is there anything outside of God?

“I don't know whether there is or not. But there is something that

tempts me to do wrong, sometimes, and I don't believe that is God.”

The Russian seemed struck. “I will write that to him!”

“No,” said Clementina, “I don't want you to say anything about me to

him.”

“No, no!” said Baron Belsky, waving his band reassuringly. “I would not

mention your name!”

Mr. Ewins came in, and the Russian said he must go. Mrs. Lander tried

to detain him, too, as she had tried to keep Mr. Hinkle, but he was

inexorable. Mr. Ewins looked at the door when it had closed upon him.

Mrs. Lander said, “That is one of the gentlemen that Clementina met the

otha night at the dance. He is a baron, but he scratches it out. You'd

ought to head him go on about Americans.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Ewins coldly. “He's at our hotel, and he airs

his peculiar opinions at the table d'hote pretty freely. He's a

revolutionist of some kind, I fancy.” He pronounced the epithet with

an abhorrence befitting the citizen of a state born of revolution and a

city that had cradled the revolt. “He's a Nihilist, I believe.”

Mrs. Lander wished to know what that was, and he explained that it was a

Russian who wanted to overthrow the Czar, and set up a government of the

people, when they were not prepared for liberty.

“Then, maybe he isn't a baron at all,” said Mrs. Lander.

“Oh, I believe he has a right to his title,” Ewins answered. “It's a

German one.”

He said he thought that sort of man was all the more mischievous on

account of his sincerity. He instanced a Russian whom a friend of his

knew in Berlin, a man of rank like this fellow: he got to brooding

upon the condition of working people and that kind of thing, till he

renounced his title and fortune and went to work in an iron foundry.

Mr. Ewins also spoke critically of Mrs. Milray. He had met her in Egypt;

but you soon exhausted the interest of that kind of woman. He professed

a great concern that Clementina should see Florence in just the right

way, and he offered his services in showing her the place.

The Russian came the next day, and almost daily after that, in the

interest with which Clementina's novel difference from other American

girls seemed to inspire him. His imagination had transmuted her simple

Yankee facts into something appreciable to a Slav of his temperament. He

conceived of her as the daughter of a peasant, whose beauty had charmed

the widow of a rich citizen, and who was to inherit the wealth of her

adoptive mother. He imagined that the adoption had taken place at a

much earlier period than the time when Clementina's visit to Mrs. Lander

actually began, and that all which could be done had been done to efface

her real character by indulgence and luxury.

His curiosity concerning her childhood, her home, her father and mother,

her brothers and sisters, and his misunderstanding of everything she

told him, amused her. But she liked him, and she tried to give him some

notion of the things he wished so much to know. It always ended in a

dissatisfaction, more or less vehement, with the outcome of American

conditions as he conceived them.

“But you,” he urged one day, “you who are a daughter of the fields and

woods, why should you forsake that pure life, and come to waste yourself

here?”

“Why, don't you think it's very nice in Florence?” she asked, with eyes

of innocent interest.

“Nice! Nice! Do we live for what is nice? Is it enough that you have

what you Americans call a nice time?”

Clementina reflected. “I wasn't doing much of anything at home, and

I thought I might as well come with Mrs. Lander, if she wanted me so

much.” She thought in a certain way, that he was meddling with what was

not his affair, but she believed that he was sincere in his zeal for

the ideal life he wished her to lead, and there were some things she had

heard about him that made her pity and respect him; his self-exile and

his renunciation of home and country for his principles, whatever they

were; she did not understand exactly. She would not have liked never

being able to go back to Middlemount, or to be cut off from all her

friends as this poor young Nihilist was, and she said, now, “I didn't

expect that it was going to be anything but a visit, and I always

supposed we should go back in the spring; but now Mrs. Lander is

beginning to think she won't be well enough till fall.”

“And why need you stay with her?”

“Because she's not very well,” answered Clementina, and she smiled, a

little triumphantly as well as tolerantly.

“She could hire nurses and doctors, all she wants with her money.”

“I don't believe it would be the same thing, exactly, and what should I

do if I went back?”

“Do? Teach! Uplift the lives about you.”

“But you say it is better for people to live simply, and not read and

think so much.”

“Then labor in the fields with them.”

Clementina laughed outright. “I guess if anyone saw me wo'king in the

fields they would think I was a disgrace to the neighbahood.”

Belsky gave her a stupified glare through his spectacles. “I cannot

understand you Americans.”

“Well, you must come ova to America, then, Mr. Belsky”--he had asked her

not to call him by his title--“and then you would.”

“No, I could not endure the disappointment. You have the great

opportunity of the earth. You could be equal and just, and simple and

kind. There is nothing to hinder you. But all you try to do is to get

more and more money.”

“Now, that isn't faia, Mr. Belsky, and you know it.”

“Well, then, you joke, joke--always joke. Like that Mr. Hinkle. He wants

to make money with his patent of a gleaner, that will take the last

grain of wheat from the poor, and he wants to joke--joke!”

Clementina said, “I won't let you say that about Mr. Hinkle. You don't

know him, or you wouldn't. If he jokes, why shouldn't he?”

Belsky made a gesture of rejection. “Oh, you are an American, too.”

She had not grown less American, certainly, since she had left home;

even the little conformities to Europe that she practiced were traits of

Americanism. Clementina was not becoming sophisticated, but perhaps she

was becoming more conventionalized. The knowledge of good and evil in

things that had all seemed indifferently good to her once, had crept

upon her, and she distinguished in her actions. She sinned as little

as any young lady in Florence against the superstitions of society; but

though she would not now have done a skirt-dance before a shipful of

people, she did not afflict herself about her past errors. She put on

the world, but she wore it simply and in most matters unconsciously.

Some things were imparted to her without her asking or wishing, and

merely in virtue of her youth and impressionability. She took them from

her environment without knowing it, and in this way she was coming by an

English manner and an English tone; she was only the less American for

being rather English without trying, when other Americans tried so hard.

In the region of harsh nasals, Clementina had never spoken through her

nose, and she was now as unaffected in these alien inflections as in the

tender cooings which used to rouse the misgivings of her brother Jim.

When she was with English people she employed them involuntarily, and

when she was with Americans she measurably lost them, so that after half

an hour with Mr. Hinkle, she had scarcely a trace of them, and with Mrs.

Lander she always spoke with her native accent.

XXIII

One Sunday night, toward the end of Lent, Mrs. Lander had another of

her attacks; she now began to call them so as if she had established an

ownership in them. It came on from her cumulative over-eating, again,

but the doctor was not so smiling as he had been with regard to the

first. Clementina had got ready to drive out to Miss Milray's for one of

her Sunday teas, but she put off her things, and prepared to spend the

night at Mrs. Lander's bedside. “Well, I should think you would want

to,” said the sufferer. “I'm goin' to do everything for you, and you'd

ought to be willing to give up one of youa junketin's for me. I'm sure I

don't know what you see in 'em, anyway.”

“Oh, I am willing, Mrs. Lander; I'm glad I hadn't stahted before it

began.” Clementina busied herself with the pillows under Mrs. Lander's

dishevelled head, and the bedclothes disordered by her throes, while

Mrs. Lander went on.

“I don't see what's the use of so much gaddin', anyway. I don't see as

anything comes of it, but just to get a passal of wo'thless fellas afta

you that think you'a going to have money. There's such a thing as two

sides to everything, and if the favas is goin' to be all on one side I

guess there'd betta be a clear undastandin' about it. I think I got a

right to a little attention, as well as them that ha'n't done anything;

and if I'm goin' to be left alone he'e to die among strangers every time

one of my attacks comes on--”

The doctor interposed, “I don't think you're going to have a very bad

attack, this time, Mrs. Lander.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you, docta! But you can undastand, can't you,

how I shall want to have somebody around that can undastand a little

English?”

The doctor said, “Oh yes. And Miss Claxon and I can understand a good

deal, between us, and we're going to stay, and see how a little morphine

behaves with you.”

Mrs. Lander protested, “Oh, I can't bea' mo'phine, docta.”

“Did you ever try it?” he asked, preparing his little instrument to

imbibe the solution.

“No; but Mr. Landa did, and it 'most killed him; it made him sick.”

“Well, you're about as sick as you can be, now, Mrs. Lander, and if you

don't die of this pin-prick”--he pushed the needle-point under the skin

of her massive fore-arm--“I guess you'll live through it.”

She shrieked, but as the pain began to abate, she gathered courage, and

broke forth joyfully. “Why, it's beautiful, a'n't it? I declare it wo'ks

like a cha'm. Well, I shall always keep mo'phine around after this, and

when I feel one of these attacks comin' on--”

“Send for a physician, Mrs. Lander,” said Dr. Welwright, “and he'll know

what to do.”

“I an't so sure of that,” returned Mrs. Lander fondly. “He would if you

was the one. I declare I believe I could get up and walk right off, I

feel so well.”

“That's good. If you'll take a walk day after tomorrow it will help you

a great deal more.”

“Well, I shall always say that you've saved my life, this time, doctor;

and Clementina she's stood by, nobly; I'll say that for her.” She

twisted her big head round on the pillow to get sight of the girl. “I'm

all right, now; and don't you mind what I said. It's just my misery

talkin'; I don't know what I did say; I felt so bad. But I'm fustrate,

now, and I believe I could drop off to sleep, this minute. Why don't you

go to your tea? You can, just as well as not!”

“Oh, I don't want to go, now, Mrs. Lander; I'd ratha stay.”

“But there a'n't any more danger now, is the'e, docta?” Mrs. Lander

appealed.

“No. There wasn't any danger before. But when you're quite yourself, I

want to have a little talk with you, Mrs. Lander, about your diet. We

must look after that.”

“Why, docta, that's what I do do, now. I eat all the healthy things I

lay my hands on, don't I, Clementina? And ha'n't you always at me about

it?”

Clementina did not answer, and the doctor laughed. “Well, I should like

to know what more I could do!”

“Perhaps you could do less. We'll see about that. Better go to sleep,

now, if you feel like it.”

“Well, I will, if you'll make this silly child go to her tea. I s'pose

she won't because I scolded her. She's an awful hand to lay anything up

against you. You know you ah', Clementina! But I can say this, doctor:

a betta child don't breathe, and I just couldn't live without her. Come

he'e, Clementina, I want to kiss you once, before I go to sleep, so's

to make su'a you don't bea' malice.” She pulled Clementina down to kiss

her, and babbled on affectionately and optimistically, till her talk

became the voice of her dreams, and then ceased altogether.

“You could go, perfectly well, Miss Claxon,” said the doctor.

“No, I don't ca'e to go,” answered Clementina. “I'd ratha stay. If she

should wake--”

“She won't wake, until long after you've got back; I'll answer for that.

I'm going to stay here awhile. Go! I'll take the responsibility.”

Clementina's face brightened. She wanted very much to go. She should

meet some pleasant people; she always did, at Miss Milray's. Then the

light died out of her gay eyes, and she set her lips. “No, I told her I

shouldn't go.”

“I didn't hear you,” said Dr. Welwright. “A doctor has no eyes and ears

except for the symptoms of his patients.”

“Oh, I know,” said Clementina. She had liked Dr. Welwright from the

first, and she thought it was very nice of him to stay on, after he

left Mrs. Lander's bedside, and help to make her lonesome evening pass

pleasantly in the parlor. He jumped up finally, and looked at his

watch. “Bless my soul!” he said, and he went in for another look at Mrs.

Lander. When he came back, he said, “She's all right. But you've made me

break an engagement, Miss Claxon. I was going to tea at Miss Milray's.

She promised me I should meet you there.”

It seemed a great joke; and Clementina offered to carry his excuses to

Miss Milray, when she went to make her own.

She went the next morning. Mrs. Lander insisted that she should go; she

said that she was not going to have Miss Milray thinking that she wanted

to keep her all to herself.

Miss Milray kissed the girl in full forgiveness, but she asked, “Did Dr.

Welwright think it a very bad attack?”

“Has he been he'a?” returned Clementina.

Miss Milray laughed. “Doctors don't betray their patients--good doctors.

No, he hasn't been here, if that will help you. I wish it would help me,

but it won't, quite. I don't like to think of that old woman using you

up, Clementina.”

“Oh, she doesn't, Miss Milray. You mustn't think so. You don't know how

good she is to me.”

“Does she ever remind you of it?”

Clementina's eyes fell. “She isn't like herself when she doesn't feel

well.”

“I knew it!” Miss Milray triumphed. “I always knew that she was a

dreadful old tabby. I wish you were safely out of her clutches. Come and

live with me, my dear, when Mrs. Lander gets tired of you. But she'll

never get tired of you. You're just the kind of helpless mouse that

such an old tabby would make her natural prey. But she sha'n't, even

if another sort of cat has to get you! I'm sorry you couldn't come

last night. Your little Russian was here, and went away early and very

bitterly because you didn't come. He seemed to think there was nobody,

and said so, in everything but words.”

“Oh!” said Clementina. “Don't you think he's very nice, Miss Milray?”

“He's very mystical, or else so very simple that he seems so. I hope you

can make him out.”

Don't you think he's very much in ea'nest?

“Oh, as the grave, or the asylum. I shouldn't like him to be in earnest

about me, if I were you.”

“But that's just what he is!” Clementina told how the Russian had

lectured her, and wished her to go back to the country and work in the

fields.

“Oh, if that's all!” cried Miss Milray. “I was afraid it was another

kind of earnestness: the kind I shouldn't like if I were you.”

“There's no danger of that, I guess.” Clementina laughed, and Miss

Milray went on:

“Another of your admirers was here; but he was not so inconsolable,

or else he found consolation in staying on and talking about you, or

joking.”

“Oh, yes; Mr. Hinkle,” cried Clementina with the smile that the thought

of him always brought. “He's lovely.”

“Lovely? Well, I don't know why it isn't the word. It suits him a great

deal better than some insipid girls that people give it to. Yes, I could

really fall in love with Mr. Hinkle. He's the only man I ever saw who

would know how to break the fall!”

It was lunch-time before their talk had begun to run low, and it swelled

again over the meal. Miss Milray returned to Mrs. Lander, and she made

Clementina confess that she was a little trying sometimes. But she

insisted that she was always good, and in remorse she went away as soon

as Miss Milray rose from table.

She found Mrs. Lander very much better, and willing to have had her

stay the whole afternoon with Miss Milray. “I don't want she should have

anything to say against me, to you, Clementina; she'd be glad enough to.

But I guess it's just as well you'a back. That scratched-out baron has

been he'e twice, and he's waitin' for you in the pahla', now. I presume

he'll keep comin' till you do see him. I guess you betta have it ova;

whatever it is.”

“I guess you're right, Mrs. Lander.”

Clementina found the Russian walking up and down the room, and as soon

as their greeting was over, he asked leave to continue his promenade,

but he stopped abruptly before her when she had sunk upon a sofa.

“I have come to tell you a strange story,” he said.

“It is the story of that American friend of mine. I tell it to you

because I think you can understand, and will know what to advise, what

to do.”

He turned upon his heel, and walked the length of the room and back

before he spoke again.

“Since several years,” he said, growing a little less idiomatic in his

English as his excitement mounted, “he met a young girl, a child,

when he was still not a man's full age. It was in the country, in the

mountains of America, and--he loved her. Both were very poor; he, a

student, earning the means to complete his education in the university.

He had dedicated himself to his church, and with the temperament of

the Puritans, he forbade himself all thoughts of love. But he was of a

passionate and impulsive nature, and in a moment of abandon he confessed

his love. The child was bewildered, frightened; she shrank from his

avowal, and he, filled with remorse for his self-betrayal, bade her let

it be as if it had not been; he bade her think of him no more.”

Clementina sat as if powerless to move, staring at Belsky. He paused in

his walk, and allowed an impressive silence to ensue upon his words.

“Time passed: days, months, years; and he did not see her again. He

pursued his studies in the university; at their completion, he entered

upon the course of divinity, and he is soon to be a minister of his

church. In all that time the image of the young girl has remained in his

heart, and has held him true to the only love he has ever known. He will

know no other while he lives.”

Again he stopped in front of Clementina; she looked helplessly up at

him, and he resumed his walk.

“He, with his dreams of renunciation, of abnegation, had thought some

day to return to her and ask her to be his. He believed her capable of

equal sacrifice with himself, and he hoped to win her not for himself

alone, but for the religion which he put before himself. He would have

invited her to join her fate with his that they might go together on

some mission to the pagan--in the South Seas, in the heart of Africa,

in the jungle of India. He had always thought of her as gay but good,

unworldly in soul, and exalted in spirit. She has remained with him a

vision of angelic loveliness, as he had seen her last in the moonlight,

on the banks of a mountain torrent. But he believes that he has

disgraced himself before her; that the very scruple for her youth, her

ignorance, which made him entreat her to forget him, must have made her

doubt and despise him. He has never had the courage to write to her

one word since all those years, but he maintains himself bound to her

forever.” He stopped short before Clementina and seized her hands. “If

you knew such a girl, what would you have her do? Should she bid him

hope again? Would you have her say to him that she, too, had been

faithful to their dream, and that she too--”

“Let me go, Mr. Belsky, let me go, I say!” Clementina wrenched her hands

from him, and ran out of the room. Belsky hesitated, then he found his

hat, and after a glance at his face in the mirror, left the house.

XXIV.

The tide of travel began to set northward in April. Many English,

many Americans appeared in Florence from Naples and Rome; many who had

wintered in Florence went on to Venice and the towns of northern Italy,

on their way to Switzerland and France and Germany.

The spring was cold and rainy, and the irresolute Italian railroads were

interrupted by the floods. A tawny deluge rolled down from the mountains

through the bed of the Arno, and kept the Florentine fire-department

on the alert night and day. “It is a curious thing about this country,”

said Mr. Hinkle, encountering Baron Belsky on the Ponte Trinita, “that

the only thing they ever have here for a fire company to put out is a

freshet. If they had a real conflagration once, I reckon they would want

to bring their life-preservers.”

The Russian was looking down over the parapet at the boiling river. He

lifted his head as if he had not heard the American, and stared at him

a moment before he spoke. “It is said that the railway to Rome is broken

at Grossetto.”

“Well, I'm not going to Rome,” said Hinkle, easily. “Are you?”

“I was to meet a friend there; but he wrote to me that he was starting

to Florence, and now--”

“He's resting on the way? Well, he'll get here about as quick as he

would in the ordinary course of travel. One good thing about Italy is,

you don't want to hurry; if you did, you'd get left.”

Belsky stared at him in the stupefaction to which the American humor

commonly reduced him. “If he gets left on the Grossetto line, he can go

back and come up by Orvieto, no?”

“He can, if he isn't in a hurry,” Hinkle assented.

“It's a good way, if you've got time to burn.”

Belsky did not attempt to explore the American's meaning. “Do you

know,” he asked, “whether Mrs. Lander and her young friend are still in

Florence?

“I guess they are.”

“It was said they were going to Venice for the summer.”

“That's what the doctor advised for the old lady. But they don't start

for a week or two yet.”

“Oh!”

“Are you going to Miss Milray's, Sunday night? Last of the season, I

believe.”

Belsky seemed to recall himself from a distance.

“No--no,” he said, and he moved away, forgetful of the ceremonious

salutation which he commonly used at meeting and parting. Hinkle

looked after him with the impression people have of a difference in the

appearance and behavior of some one whose appearance and behavior do not

particularly concern them.

The day that followed, Belsky haunted the hotel where Gregory was to

arrive with his pupil, and where the pupil's family were waiting for

them. That night, long after their belated train was due, they came; the

pupil was with his father and mother, and Gregory was alone, when Belsky

asked for him, the fourth or fifth time.

“You are not well,” he said, as they shook hands. “You are fevered!”

“I'm tired,” said Gregory. “We've bad a bad time getting through.”

“I come inconveniently! You have not dined, perhaps?”

“Yes, Yes. I've had dinner. Sit down. How have you been yourself?”

“Oh, always well.” Belsky sat down, and the friends stared at each

other. “I have strange news for you.”

“For me?”

“You. She is here.”

“She?”

“Yes. The young girl of whom you told me. If I had not forbidden myself

by my loyalty to you--if I had not said to myself every moment in her

presence, 'No, it is for your friend alone that she is beautiful and

good!'--But you will have nothing to reproach me in that regard.”

“What do you mean?” demanded Gregory.

“I mean that Miss Claxon is in Florence, with her protectress, the rich

Mrs. Lander. The most admired young lady in society, going everywhere,

and everywhere courted and welcomed; the favorite of the fashionable

Miss Milray. But why should this surprise you?”

“You said nothing about it in your letters. You--”

“I was not sure it was she; you never told me her name. When I had

divined the fact, I was so soon to see you, that I thought best to keep

it till we met.”

Gregory tried to speak, but he let Belsky go on.

“If you think that the world has spoiled her, that she will be different

from what she was in her home among your mountains, let me reassure you.

In her you will find the miracle of a woman whom no flattery can turn

the head. I have watched her in your interest; I have tested her. She is

what you saw her last.”

“Surely,” asked Gregory, in an anguish for what he now dreaded, “you

haven't spoken to her of me?”

“Not by name, no. I could not have that indiscretion--”

“The name is nothing. Have you said that you knew me--Of course not! But

have you hinted at any knowledge--Because--”

“You will hear!” said Belsky; and he poured out upon Gregory the story

of what he had done. “She did not deny anything. She was greatly moved,

but she did not refuse to let me bid you hope--”

“Oh!” Gregory took his head between his hands. “You have spoiled my

life!”

“Spoiled” Belsky stopped aghast.

“I told you my story in a moment of despicable weakness--of impulsive

folly. But how could I dream that you would ever meet her? How could I

imagine that you would speak to her as you have done?” He groaned, and

began to creep giddily about the room in his misery. “Oh, oh, oh! What

shall I do?”

“But I do not understand!” Belsky began. “If I have committed an

error--”

“Oh, an error that never could be put right in all eternity!”

“Then let me go to her--let me tell her--”

“Keep away from her!” shouted Gregory. “Do you hear? Never go near her

again!”

“Gregory!”

“Ah, I beg your pardon! I don't know what I'm doing--saying. What will

she think--what will she think of me!” He had ceased to speak to Belsky;

he collapsed into a chair, and hid his face in his arms stretched out on

the table before him.

Belsky watched him in the stupefaction which the artistic nature feels

when life proves sentient under its hand, and not the mere material of

situations and effects. He could not conceive the full measure of the

disaster he had wrought, the outrage of his own behavior had been lost

to him in his preoccupation with the romantic end to be accomplished. He

had meant to be the friend, the prophet, to these American lovers, whom

he was reconciling and interpreting to each other; but in some point he

must have misunderstood. Yet the error was not inexpiable; and in his

expiation he could put the seal to his devotion. He left the room, where

Gregory made no effort to keep him.

He walked down the street from the hotel to the Arno, and in a few

moments he stood on the bridge, where he had talked with that joker in

the morning, as they looked down together on the boiling river. He had

a strange wish that the joker might have been with him again, to learn

that there were some things which could not be joked away.

The night was blustering, and the wind that blew the ragged clouds

across the face of the moon, swooped in sudden gusts upon the bridge,

and the deluge rolling under it and hoarsely washing against its piers.

Belsky leaned over the parapet and looked down into the eddies and

currents as the fitful light revealed them. He had a fantastic pleasure

in studying them, and choosing the moment when he should leap the

parapet and be lost in them. The incident could not be used in any novel

of his, and no one else could do such perfect justice to the situation,

but perhaps afterwards, when the facts leading to his death should be

known through the remorse of the lovers whom he had sought to serve,

some other artist-nature could distil their subtlest meaning in a memoir

delicate as the aroma of a faded flower.

He was willing to make this sacrifice, too, and he stepped back a pace

from the parapet when the fitful blast caught his hat from his head, and

whirled it along the bridge. The whole current of his purpose changed,

and as if it had been impossible to drown himself in his bare head, he

set out in chase of his hat, which rolled and gamboled away, and escaped

from his clutch whenever he stooped for it, till a final whiff of wind

flung it up and tossed it over the bridge into the river, where he

helplessly watched it floating down the flood, till it was carried out

of sight.

XXV.

Gregory did not sleep, and he did not find peace in the prayers he put

up for guidance. He tried to think of some one with whom he might take

counsel; but he knew no one in Florence except the parents of his pupil,

and they were impossible. He felt himself abandoned to the impulse which

he dreaded, in going to Clementina, and he went without hope, willing

to suffer whatever penalty she should visit upon him, after he had

disavowed Belsky's action, and claimed the responsibility for it.

He was prepared for her refusal to see him; he had imagined her wounded

and pathetic; he had fancied her insulted and indignant; but she met him

eagerly and with a mystifying appeal in her welcome. He began at once,

without attempting to bridge the time since they had met with any

formalities.

“I have come to speak to you about--that--Russian, about Baron Belsky--”

“Yes, yes!” she returned, anxiously. “Then you have hea'd”

“He came to me last night, and--I want to say that I feel myself to

blame for what he has done.”

“You?”

“Yes; I. I never spoke of you by name to him; I didn't dream of his ever

seeing you, or that he would dare to speak to you of what I told him.

But I believe he meant no wrong; and it was I who did the harm, whether

I authorized it or not.”

“Yes, yes!” she returned, with the effect of putting his words aside as

something of no moment. “Have they head anything more?”

“How, anything more?” he returned, in a daze.

“Then, don't you know? About his falling into the river? I know he

didn't drown himself.”

Gregory shook his head. “When--what makes them think”--He stopped and

stared at her.

“Why, they know that he went down to the Ponte Trinity last night;

somebody saw him going. And then that peasant found his hat with his

name in it in the drift-wood below the Cascine--”

“Yes,” said Gregory, lifelessly. He let his arms drop forward, and his

helpless hands hang over his knees; his gaze fell from her face to the

floor.

Neither spoke for a time that seemed long, and then it was Clementina

who spoke. “But it isn't true!”

“Oh, yes, it is,” said Gregory, as before.

“Mr. Hinkle doesn't believe it is,” she urged.

“Mr. Hinkle?”

“He's an American who's staying in Florence. He came this mo'ning to

tell me about it. Even if he's drowned Mr. Hinkle believes he didn't

mean to; he must have just fallen in.”

“What does it matter?” demanded Gregory, lifting his heavy eyes.

“Whether he meant it or not, I caused it. I drove him to it.”

“You drove him?”

“Yes. He told me what he had said to you, and I--said that he had

spoiled my life--I don't know!”

“Well, he had no right to do it; but I didn't blame you,” Clementina

began, compassionately.

“It's too late. It can't be helped now.” Gregory turned from the mercy

that could no longer save him. He rose dizzily, and tried to get himself

away.

“You mustn't go!” she interposed. “I don't believe you made him do it.

Mr. Hinkle will be back soon, and he will--”

“If he should bring word that it was true?” Gregory asked.

“Well,” said Clementina, “then we should have to bear it.”

A sense of something finer than the surface meaning of her words pierced

his morbid egotism. “I'm ashamed,” he said. “Will you let me stay?”

“Why, yes, you must,” she said, and if there was any censure of him at

the bottom of her heart, she kept it there, and tried to talk him away

from his remorse, which was in his temperament, perhaps, rather than his

conscience; she made the time pass till there came a knock at the door,

and she opened it to Hinkle.

“I didn't send up my name; I thought I wouldn't stand upon ceremony just

now,” he said.

“Oh, no!” she returned. “Mr. Hinkle, this is Mr. Gregory. Mr. Gregory

knew Mr. Belsky, and he thinks--”

She turned to Gregory for prompting, and he managed to say, “I don't

believe he was quite the sort of person to--And yet he might--he was in

trouble--”

“Money trouble?” asked Hinkle. “They say these Russians have a perfect

genius for debt. I had a little inspiration, since I saw you, but there

doesn't seems to be anything in it, so far.” He addressed himself to

Clementina, but he included Gregory in what he said. “It struck me that

he might have been running his board, and had used this drowning episode

as a blind. But I've been around to his hotel, and he's settled up,

all fair and square enough. The landlord tried to think of something he

hadn't paid, but he couldn't; and I never saw a man try harder, either.”

Clementina smiled; she put her hand to her mouth to keep from laughing;

but Gregory frowned his distress in the untimely droning.

“I don't give up my theory that it's a fake of some kind, though. He

could leave behind a good many creditors besides his landlord. The

authorities have sealed up his effects, and they've done everything but

call out the fire department; that's on duty looking after the freshet,

and it couldn't be spared. I'll go out now and slop round a little

more in the cause,” Hinkle looked down at his shoes and his drabbled

trousers, and wiped the perspiration from his face, “but I thought I'd

drop in, and tell you not to worry about it, Miss Clementina. I would

stake anything you pleased on Mr. Belsky's safety. Mr. Gregory, here,

looks like he would be willing to take odds,” he suggested.

Gregory commanded himself from his misery to say, “I wish I could

believe--I mean--”

“Of course, we don't want to think that the man's a fraud, any more than

that he's dead. Perhaps we might hit upon some middle course. At any

rate, it's worth trying.”

“May I--do you object to my joining you?” Gregory asked.

“Why, come!” Hinkle hospitably assented. “Glad to have you. I'll be back

again, Miss Clementina!”

Gregory was going away without any form of leavetaking; but he turned

back to ask, “Will you let me come back, too?”

“Why, suttainly, Mr. Gregory,” said Clementina, and she went to find

Mrs. Lander, whom she found in bed.

“I thought I'd lay down,” she explained. “I don't believe I'm goin' to

be sick, but it's one of my pooa days, and I might just as well be in

bed as not.” Clementina agreed with her, and Mrs. Lander asked: “You

hea'd anything moa?”

“No. Mr. Hinkle has just been he'a, but he hadn't any news.”

Mrs. Lander turned her face toward the wall. “Next thing, he'll be

drownin' himself. I neva wanted you should have anything to do with the

fellas that go to that woman's. There ain't any of 'em to be depended

on.”

It was the first time that her growing jealousy of Miss Milray had

openly declared itself; but Clementina had felt it before, without

knowing how to meet it. As an escape from it now she was almost willing

to say, “Mrs. Lander, I want to tell you that Mr. Gregory has just been

he'a, too.”

“Mr. Gregory?”

“Yes. Don't you remember? At the Middlemount? The first summa? He was

the headwaita--that student.”

Mrs. Lander jerked her head round on the pillow. “Well, of all the--What

does he want, over he'a?”

“Nothing. That is--he's travelling with a pupil that he's preparing for

college, and--he came to see us--”

“D'you tell him I couldn't see him?”

“Yes”

“I guess he'd think I was a pretty changed pusson! Now, I want you

should stay with me, Clementina, and if anybody else comes--”

Maddalena entered the room with a card which she gave to the girl.

“Who is it?” Mrs. Lander demanded.

“Miss Milray.”

“Of cou'se! Well, you may just send wo'd that you can't--Or, no; you

must! She'd have it all ova the place, by night, that I wouldn't let

you see her. But don't you make any excuse for me! If she asks after me,

don't you say I'm sick! You say I'm not at home.”

“I've come about that little wretch,” Miss Milray began, after kissing

Clementina. “I didn't know but you had heard something I hadn't, or

I had heard something you hadn't. You know I belong to the Hinkle

persuasion: I think Belsky's run his board--as Mr. Hinkle calls it.”

Clementina explained how this part of the Hinkle theory had failed, and

then Miss Milray devolved upon the belief that he had run his tailor's

bill or his shoemaker's. “They are delightful, those Russians, but

they're born insolvent. I don't believe he's drowned himself. How,”

she broke off to ask, in a burlesque whisper, “is-the-old-tabby?” She

laughed, for answer to her own question, and then with another sudden

diversion she demanded of a look in Clementina's face which would not be

laughed away, “Well, my dear, what is it?”

“Miss Milray,” said the girl, “should you think me very silly, if I told

you something--silly?”

“Not in the least!” cried Miss Milray, joyously. “It's the final proof

of your wisdom that I've been waiting for?”

“It's because Mr. Belsky is all mixed up in it,” said Clementina, as

if some excuse were necessary, and then she told the story of her love

affair with Gregory. Miss Milray punctuated the several facts with vivid

nods, but at the end she did not ask her anything, and the girl somehow

felt the freer to add: “I believe I will tell you his name. It is Mr.

Gregory--Frank Gregory--”

“And he's been in Egypt?”

“Yes, the whole winta.”

“Then he's the one that my sister-in-law has been writing me about!”

“Oh, did he meet her the'a?”

“I should think so! And he'll meet her here, very soon. She's coming,

with my poor brother. I meant to tell you, but this ridiculous Belsky

business drove it out of my head.”

“And do you think,” Clementina entreated, “that he was to blame?”

“Why, I don't believe he's done it, you know.”

“Oh, I didn't mean Mr. Belsky. I meant--Mr. Gregory. For telling Mr.

Belsky?”

“Certainly not. Men always tell those things to some one, I suppose.

Nobody was to blame but Belsky, for his meddling.”

Miss Milray rose and shook out her plumes for flight, as if she were

rather eager for flight, but at the little sigh with which Clementina

said, “Yes, that is what I thought,” she faltered.

“I was going to run away, for I shouldn't like to mix myself up in your

affair--it's certainly a very strange one--unless I was sure I could

help you. But if you think I can--”

Clementina shook her head. “I don't believe you can,” she said, with a

candor so wistful that Miss Milray stopped quite short. “How does Mr.

Gregory take this Belsky business?” she asked.

“I guess he feels it moa than I do,” said the girl.

“He shows his feeling more?”

“Yes--no--He believes he drove him to it.”

Miss Milray took her hand, for parting, but did not kiss her. “I won't

advise you, my dear. In fact, you haven't asked me to. You'll know what

to do, if you haven't done it already; girls usually have, when they

want advice. Was there something you were going to say?”

“Oh, no. Nothing. Do you think,” she hesitated, appealingly, “do you

think we are--engaged?”

“If he's anything of a man at all, he must think he is.”

“Yes,” said Clementina, wistfully, “I guess he does.”

Miss Milray looked sharply at her. “And does he think you are?”

“I don't know--he didn't say.”

“Well,” said Miss Milray, rather dryly, “then it's something for you to

think over pretty carefully.”

XXVI.

Hinkle came back in the afternoon to make a hopeful report of his

failure to learn anything more of Belsky, but Gregory did not come with

him. He came the next morning long before Clementina expected visitors,

and he was walking nervously up and down the room when she appeared. As

if he could not speak, he held toward her without speaking a telegram in

English, dated that day in Rome:

“Deny report of my death. Have written.

“Belsky.”

She looked up at Gregory from the paper, when she had read it, with

joyful eyes. “Oh, I am so glad for you! I am so glad he is alive.”

He took the dispatch from her hand. “I brought it to you as soon as it

came.”

“Yes, yes! Of cou'se!”

“I must go now and do what he says--I don't know how yet.” He stopped,

and then went on from a different impulse. “Clementina, it isn't a

question now of that wretch's life and death, and I wish I need

never speak of him again. But what he told you was true.” He looked

steadfastly at her, and she realized how handsome he was, and how

well dressed. His thick red hair seemed to have grown darker above his

forehead; his moustache was heavier, and it curved in at the corners of

his mouth; he bore himself with a sort of self-disdain that enhanced his

splendor. “I have never changed toward you; I don't say it to make favor

with you; I don't expect to do that now; but it is true. That night,

there at Middlemount, I tried to take back what I said, because I

believed that I ought.”

“Oh, yes, I knew that,” said Clementina, in the pause he made.

“We were both too young; I had no prospect in life; I saw, the instant

after I had spoken, that I had no right to let you promise anything.

I tried to forget you; I couldn't. I tried to make you forget me.” He

faltered, and she did not speak, but her head drooped a little. “I won't

ask how far I succeeded. I always hoped that the time would come when

I could speak to you again. When I heard from Fane that you were at

Woodlake, I wished to come out and see you, but I hadn't the courage,

I hadn't the right. I've had to come to you without either, now. Did he

speak to you about me?”

“I thought he was beginning to, once; but he neva did.”

“It didn't matter; it could only have made bad worse. It can't help me

to say that somehow I was wishing and trying to do what was right; but I

was.”

“Oh, I know that, Mr. Gregory,” said Clementina, generously.

“Then you didn't doubt me, in spite of all?”

“I thought you would know what to do. No, I didn't doubt you, exactly.”

“I didn't deserve your trust!” he cried. “How came that man to mention

me?” he demanded, abruptly, after a moment's silence.

“Mr. Belsky? It was the first night I saw him, and we were talking about

Americans, and he began to tell me about an American friend of his, who

was very conscientious. I thought it must be you the fust moment,” said

Clementina, smiling with an impersonal pleasure in the fact.

“From the conscientiousness?” he asked, in bitter self-irony.

“Why, yes,” she returned, simply. “That was what made me think of you.

And the last time when he began to talk about you, I couldn't stop him,

although I knew he had no right to.”

“He had no right. But I gave him the power to do it! He meant no harm,

but I enabled him to do all the harm.”

“Oh, if he's only alive, now, there is no harm!”

He looked into her eyes with a misgiving from which he burst

impetuously. “Then you do care for me still, after all that I have done

to make you detest me?” He started toward her, but she shrank back.

“I didn't mean that,” she hesitated.

“You know that I love you,--that I have always loved you?”

“Yes,” she assented. “But you might be sorry again that you had said

it.” It sounded like coquetry, but he knew it was not coquetry.

“Never! I've wished to say it again, ever since that night at

Middlemount; I have always felt bound by what I said then, though I took

back my words for your sake. But the promise was always there, and my

life was in it. You believe that?”

“Why, I always believed what you said, Mr. Gregory.”

“Well?”

Clementina paused, with her head seriously on one side. “I should want

to think about it before I said anything.”

“You are right,” he submitted, dropping his outstretched arms to his

side. “I have been thinking only of myself, as usual.”

“No,” she protested, compassionately. “But doesn't it seem as if we

ought to be su'a, this time? I did ca'e for you then, but I was very

young, and I don't know yet--I thought I had always felt just as you

did, but now--Don't you think we had both betta wait a little while till

we ah' moa suttain?”

They stood looking at each other, and he said, with a kind of passionate

self-denial, “Yes, think it over for me, too. I will come back, if you

will let me.”

“Oh, thank you!” she cried after him, gratefully, as if his forbearance

were the greatest favor.

When he was gone she tried to release herself from the kind of abeyance

in which she seemed to have gone back and been as subject to him as in

the first days when he had awed her and charmed her with his superiority

at Middlemount, and he again older and freer as she had grown since.

He came back late in the afternoon, looking jaded and distraught.

Hinkle, who looked neither, was with him. “Well,” he began, “this is the

greatest thing in my experience. Belsky's not only alive and well, but

Mr. Gregory and I are both at large. I did think, one time, that the

police would take us into custody on account of our morbid interest in

the thing, and I don't believe we should have got off, if the Consul

hadn't gone bail for us, so to speak. I thought we had better take the

Consul in, on our way, and it was lucky we did.”

Clementina did not understand all the implications, but she was willing

to take Mr. Hinkle's fun on trust. “I don't believe you'll convince Mrs.

Landa that Mr. Belsky's alive and well, till you bring him back to say

so.”

“Is that so!” said Hinkle. “Well, we must have him brought back by the

authorities, then. Perhaps they'll bring him, anyway. They can't try him

for suicide, but as I understand the police, here, a man can't lose his

hat over a bridge in Florence with impunity, especially in a time of

high water. Anyway, they're identifying Belsky by due process of law in

Rome, now, and I guess Mr. Gregory”--he nodded toward Gregory, who

sat silent and absent “will be kept under surveillance till the whole

mystery is cleared up.”

Clementina responded gayly still, but with less and less sincerity, and

she let Hinkle go at last with the feeling that he knew she wished him

to go. He made a brave show of not seeing this, and when he was gone,

she remembered that she had not thanked him for the trouble he had

taken on her account, and her heart ached after him with a sense of his

sweetness and goodness, which she had felt from the first through his

quaint drolling. It was as if the door which closed upon him shut her

out of the life she had been living of late, and into the life of the

past where she was subject again to the spell of Gregory's mood; it was

hardly his will.

He began at once: “I wished to make you say something this morning that

I have no right to hear you say, yet; and I have been trying ever since

to think how I could ask you whether you could share my life with

me, and yet not ask you to do it. But I can't do anything without

knowing--You may not care for what my life is to be, at all!”

Clementina's head drooped a little, but she answered distinctly, “I do

ca'e, Mr. Gregory.”

“Thank you for that much; I don't count upon more than you have said.

Clementina, I am going to be a missionary. I think I shall ask to be

sent to China; I've not decided yet. My life will be hard; it will be

full of danger and privation; it will be exile. You will have to think

of sharing such a life if you think--”

He stopped; the time had come for her to speak, and she said, “I knew

you wanted to be a missionary--”

“And--and--you would go with me? You would”--He started toward her,

and she did not shrink from him, now; but he checked himself. “But you

mustn't, you know, for my sake.”

“I don't believe I quite undastand,” she faltered.

“You must not do it for me, but for what makes me do it. Without that

our life, our work, could have no consecration.”

She gazed at him in patient, faintly smiling bewilderment, as if it were

something he would unriddle for her when he chose.

“We mustn't err in this; it would be worse than error; it would be

sin.” He took a turn about the room, and then stopped before her. “Will

you--will you join me in a prayer for guidance, Clementina?”

“I--I don't know,” she hesitated. “I will, but--do you think I had

betta?”

He began, “Why, surely”--After a moment he asked gravely, “You believe

that our actions will be guided aright, if we seek help?”

“Oh, yes--yes--”

“And that if we do not, we shall stumble in our ignorance?”

“I don't know. I never thought of that.”

“Never thought of it--”

“We never did it in our family. Father always said that if we really

wanted to do right we could find the way.” Gregory looked daunted, and

then he frowned darkly. “Are you provoked with me? Do you think what I

have said is wrong?”

“No, no! You must say what you believe. It would be double hypocrisy in

me if I prevented you.”

“But I would do it, if you wanted me to,” she said.

“Oh, for me, for ME!” he protested. “I will try to tell you what I mean,

and why you must not, for that very reason.” But he had to speak of

himself, of the miracle of finding her again by the means which should

have lost her to him forever; and of the significance of this. Then it

appeared to him that he could not reject such a leading without error,

without sin. “Such a thing could not have merely happened.”

It seemed so to Clementina, too; she eagerly consented that this was

something they must think of, as well. But the light waned, the

dark thickened in the room before he left her to do so. Then he said

fervently, “We must not doubt that everything will come right,” and his

words seemed an effect of inspiration to them both.

XXVII.

After Gregory was gone a misgiving began in Clementina's mind, which

grew more distinct, through all the difficulties of accounting to Mrs.

Lander for his long stay, The girl could see that it was with an obscure

jealousy that she pushed her questions, and said at last, “That Mr.

Hinkle is about the best of the lot. He's the only one that's eva had

the mannas to ask after me, except that lo'd. He did.”

Clementina could not pretend that Gregory had asked, but she could not

blame him for a forgetfulness of Mrs. Lander which she had shared with

him. This helped somehow to deepen the misgiving which followed her from

Mrs. Lander's bed to her own, and haunted her far into the night. She

could escape from it only by promising herself to deal with it the

first thing in the morning. She did this in terms much briefer than she

thought she could have commanded. She supposed she would have to write a

very long letter, but she came to the end of all she need say, in a very

few lines.

DEAR MR. GREGORY:

“I have been thinking about what you said yesterday, and I have to

tell you something. Then you can do what is right for both of us;

you will know better than I can. But I want you to understand that

if I go with you in your missionary life, I shall do it for you, and

not for anything else. I would go anywhere and live anyhow for you,

but it would be for you; I do not believe that I am religious, and I

know that I should not do it for religion.

“That is all; but I could not get any peace till I let you know just

how I felt.

“CLEMENTINA CLAXON.”

The letter went early in the morning, though not so early but it was put

in Gregory's hand as he was leaving his hotel to go to Mrs. Lander's. He

tore it open, and read it on the way, and for the first moment it seemed

as if it were Providence leading him that he might lighten Clementina's

heart of its doubts with the least delay. He had reasoned that if she

would share for his sake the life that he should live for righteousness'

sake they would be equally blest in it, and it would be equally

consecrated in both. But this luminous conclusion faded in his thought

as he hurried on, and he found himself in her presence with something

like a hope that she would be inspired to help him.

His soul lifted at the sound of the gay voice in which she asked, “Did

you get my letta?” and it seemed for the instant as if there could be no

trouble that their love could not overcome.

“Yes,” he said, and he put his arms around her, but with a

provisionality in his embrace which she subtly perceived.

“And what did you think of it?” she asked. “Did you think I was silly?”

He was aware that she had trusted him to do away her misgiving. “No,

no,” he answered, guiltily. “Wiser than I am, always. I--I want to talk

with you about it, Clementina. I want you to advise me.”

He felt her shrink from him, and with a pang he opened his arms to free

her. But it was right; he must. She had been expecting him to say that

there was nothing in her misgiving, and he could not say it.

“Clementina,” he entreated, “why do you think you are not religious?”

“Why, I have never belonged to chu'ch,” she answered simply. He looked

so daunted, that she tried to soften the blow after she had dealt it.

“Of course, I always went to chu'ch, though father and motha didn't. I

went to the Episcopal--to Mr. Richling's. But I neva was confirmed.”

“But--you believe in God?”

“Why, certainly!”

“And in the Bible?”

“Why, of cou'se!”

“And that it is our duty to bear the truth to those who have never heard

of it?”

“I know that is the way you feel about it; but I am not certain that

I should feel so myself if you didn't want me to. That's what I got to

thinking about last night.” She added hopefully, “But perhaps it isn't

so great a thing as I--”

“It's a very great thing,” he said, and from standing in front of her,

he now sat down beyond a little table before her sofa. “How can I ask

you to share my life if you don't share my faith?”

“Why, I should try to believe everything that you do, of cou'se.”

“Because I do?”

“Well-yes.”

“You wring my heart! Are you willing to study--to look into these

questions--to--to”--It all seemed very hopeless, very absurd, but she

answered seriously:

“Yes, but I believe it would all come back to just where it is, now.”

“What you say, Clementina, makes me so happy; but it ought to make

me--miserable! And you would do all this, be all this for me, a wretched

and erring creature of the dust, and yet not do it for--God?”

Clementina could only say, “Perhaps if He meant me to do it for Him, He

would have made me want to. He made you.”

“Yes,” said Gregory, and for a long time he could not say any more. He

sat with his elbow on the table, and his head against his lifted hand.

“You see,” she began, gently, “I got to thinking that even if I eva

came to believe what you wanted me to, I should be doing it after all,

because you wanted me to--”

“Yes, yes,” he answered, desolately. “There is no way out of it. If you

only hated me, Clementina, despised me--I don't mean that. But if you

were not so good, I could have a more hope for you--for myself. It's

because you are so good that I can't make myself wish to change you,

and yet I know--I am afraid that if you told me my life and objects were

wrong, I should turn from them, and be whatever you said. Do you tell me

that?”

“No, indeed!” cried Clementina, with abhorrence. “Then I should despise

you.”

He seemed not to heed her. He moved his lips as if he were talking to

himself, and he pleaded, “What shall we do?”

“We must try to think it out, and if we can't--if you can't let me give

up to you unless I do it for the same reason that you do; and if I

can't let you give up for me, and I know I could neva do that; then--we

mustn't!”

“Do you mean, we must part? Not see each other again?”

“What use would it be?”

“None,” he owned. She had risen, and he stood up perforce. “May I--may I

come back to tell you?”

“Tell me what?” she asked.

“You are right! If I can't make it right, I won't come. But I won't say

good bye. I--can't.”

She let him go, and Maddalena came in at the door. “Signorina,” she

said, “the signora is not well. Shall I send for the doctor?”

“Yes, yes, Maddalena. Run!” cried Clementina, distractedly. She hurried

to Mrs. Lander's room, where she found her too sick for reproaches, for

anything but appeals for help and pity. The girl had not to wait for

Doctor Welwright's coming to understand that the attack was severer than

any before.

It lasted through the day, and she could see that he was troubled. It

had not followed upon any imprudeuce, as Mrs. Lander pathetically called

Clementina to witness when her pain had been so far quelled that she

could talk of her seizure.

He found her greatly weakened by it the next day, and he sat looking

thoughtfully at her before he said that she needed toning up. She caught

at the notion. “Yes, yes! That's what I need, docta! Toning up! That's

what I need.”

He suggested, “How would you like to try the sea air, and the baths--at

Venice?”

“Oh, anything, anywhere, to get out of this dreadful hole! I ha'n't had

a well minute since I came. And Clementina,” the sick woman whimpered,

“is so taken up all the time, he'a, that I can't get the right

attention.”

The doctor looked compassionately away from the girl, and said, “Well,

we must arrange about getting you off, then.”

“But I want you should go with me, doctor, and see me settled all right.

You can, can't you? I sha'n't ca'e how much it costs?”

The doctor said gravely he thought he could manage it and he ignored the

long unconscious sigh of relief that Clementina drew.

In all her confusing anxieties for Mrs. Lander, Gregory remained at

the bottom of her heart a dumb ache. When the pressure of her fears was

taken from her she began to suffer for him consciously; then a letter

came from him:

“I cannot make it right. It is where it was, and I feel that I must

not see you again. I am trying to do right, but with the fear that

I am wrong. Send some word to help me before I go away to-morrow.

F. G.”

It was what she had expected, she knew now, but it was none the less to

be borne because of her expectation. She wrote back:

“I believe you are doing the best you can, and I shall always

believe that.”

Her note brought back a long letter from him. He said that whatever he

did, or wherever he went, he should try to be true to her ideal of him.

If they renounced their love now for the sake of what seemed higher than

their love, they might suffer, but they could not choose but do as they

were doing.

Clementina was trying to make what she could of this when Miss Milray's

name came up, and Miss Milray followed it.

“I wanted to ask after Mrs. Lander, and I want you to tell her I did.

Will you? Dr. Welwright says he's going to take her to Venice. Well,

I'm sorry--sorry for your going, Clementina, and I'm truly sorry for

the cause of it. I shall miss you, my dear, I shall indeed. You know I

always wanted to steal you, but you'll do me the justice to say I never

did, and I won't try, now.”

“Perhaps I wasn't worth stealing,” Clementina suggested, with a

ruefulness in her smile that went to Miss Milray's heart.

She put her arms round her and kissed her. “I wasn't very kind to you,

the other day, Clementina, was I?”

“I don't know,” Clementina faltered, with half-averted face.

“Yes, you do! I was trying to make-believe that I didn't want to meddle

with your affairs; but I was really vexed that you hadn't told me your

story before. It hasn't taken me all this time to reflect that you

couldn't, but it has to make myself come and confess that I had been dry

and cold with you.” She hesitated. “It's come out all right, hasn't it,

Clementina?” she asked, tenderly. “You see I want to meddle, now.”

“We ah' trying to think so,” sighed the girl.

“Tell me about it!” Miss Milray pulled her down on the sofa with her,

and modified her embrace to a clasp of Clementina's bands.

“Why, there isn't much to tell,” she began, but she told what there was,

and Miss Milray kept her countenance concerning the scruple that had

parted Clementina and her lover. “Perhaps he wouldn't have thought of

it,” she said, in a final self-reproach, “if I hadn't put it into his

head.”

“Well, then, I'm not sorry you put it into his head,” cried Miss Milray.

“Clementina, may I say what I think of Mr. Gregory's performance?”

“Why, certainly, Miss Milray!”

“I think he's not merely a gloomy little bigot, but a very hard-hearted

little wretch, and I'm glad you're rid of him. No, stop! Let me go on!

You said I might!” she persisted, at a protest which imparted itself from

Clementina's restive hands. “It was selfish and cruel of him to let you

believe that he had forgotten you. It doesn't make it right now, when an

accident has forced him to tell you that he cared for you all along.”

“Why, do you look at it that way, Miss Milray? If he was doing it on my

account?”

“He may think he was doing it on your account, but I think he was doing

it on his own. In such a thing as that, a man is bound by his mistakes,

if he has made any. He can't go back of them by simply ignoring them.

It didn't make it the same for you when he decided for your sake that he

would act as if he had never spoken to you.”

“I presume he thought that it would come right, sometime,” Clementina

urged. “I did.”

“Yes, that was very well for you, but it wasn't at all well for him. He

behaved cruelly; there's no other word for it.”

“I don't believe he meant to be cruel, Miss Milray,” said Clementina.

“You're not sorry you've broken with him?” demanded Miss Milray,

severely, and she let go of Clementina's hands.

“I shouldn't want him to think I hadn't been fai'a.”

“I don't understand what you mean by not being fair,” said Miss Milray,

after a study of the girl's eyes.

“I mean,” Clementina explained, “that if I let him think the religion

was all the'e was, it wouldn't have been fai'a.”

“Why, weren't you sincere about that?”

“Of cou'se I was!” returned the girl, almost indignantly. “But if the'e

was anything else, I ought to have told him that, too; and I couldn't.”

“Then you can't tell me, of course?” Miss Milray rose in a little pique.

“Perhaps some day I will,” the girl entreated. “And perhaps that was

all.”

Miss Milray laughed. “Well, if that was enough to end it, I'm satisfied,

and I'll let you keep your mystery--if it is one--till we meet in

Venice; I shall be there early in June. Good bye, dear, and say good bye

to Mrs. Lander for me.”

XXVIII.

Dr. Welwright got his patient a lodging on the Grand Canal in Venice,

and decided to stay long enough to note the first effect of the air and

the baths, and to look up a doctor to leave her with.

This took something more than a week, which could not all be spent in

Mrs. Lander's company, much as she wished it. There were hours which he

gave to going about in a gondola with Clementina, whom he forbade to

be always at the invalid's side. He tried to reassure her as to Mrs.

Lander's health, when he found her rather mute and absent, while they

drifted in the silvery sun of the late April weather, just beginning to

be warm, but not warm enough yet for the tent of the open gondola. He

asked her about Mrs. Lander's family, and Clementina could only tell him

that she had always said she had none. She told him the story of her own

relation to her, and he said, “Yes, I heard something of that from Miss

Milray.” After a moment of silence, during which he looked curiously

into the girl's eyes, “Do you think you can bear a little more care,

Miss Claxon?”

“I think I can,” said Clementina, not very courageously, but patiently.

“It's only this, and I wouldn't tell you if I hadn't thought you equal

to it. Mrs. Lander's case puzzles me. But I shall leave Dr. Tradonico

watching it, and if it takes the turn that there's a chance it may take,

he will tell you, and you'd better find out about her friends, and--let

them know. That's all.”

“Yes,” said Clementina, as if it were not quite enough. Perhaps she

did not fully realize all that the doctor had intended; life alone is

credible to the young; life and the expectation of it.

The night before he was to return to Florence there was a full moon; and

when he had got Mrs. Lander to sleep he asked Clementina if she would

not go out on the lagoon with him. He assigned no peculiar virtue to the

moonlight, and he had no new charge to give her concerning his patient

when they were embarked. He seemed to wish her to talk about herself,

and when she strayed from the topic, he prompted her return. Then he

wished to know how she liked Florence, as compared with Venice, and all

the other cities she had seen, and when she said she had not seen any

but Boston and New York, and London for one night, he wished to know

whether she liked Florence as well. She said she liked it best of all,

and he told her he was very glad, for he liked it himself better than

any place he had ever seen. He spoke of his family in America, which

was formed of grownup brothers and sisters, so that he had none of the

closest and tenderest ties obliging him to return; there was no reason

why he should not spend all his days in Florence, except for some brief

visits home. It would be another thing with such a place as Venice; he

could never have the same settled feeling there: it was beautiful, but

it was unreal; it would be like spending one's life at the opera. Did

not she think so?

She thought so, oh, yes; she never could have the home-feeling at Venice

that she had at Florence.

“Exactly; that's what I meant--a home-feeling; I'm glad you had it.” He

let the gondola dip and slide forward almost a minute before he added,

with an effect of pulling a voice up out of his throat somewhere, “How

would you like to live there--with me--as my wife?”

“Why, what do you mean, Dr. Welwright?” asked Clementina, with a vague

laugh.

Dr. Welwright laughed, too; but not vaguely; there was a mounting

cheerfulness in his laugh. “What I say. I hope it isn't very

surprising.”

“No; but I never thought of such a thing.”

“Perhaps you will think of it now.”

“But you're not in ea'nest!”

“I'm thoroughly in earnest,” said the doctor, and he seemed very much

amused at her incredulity.

“Then; I'm sorry,” she answered. “I couldn't.”

“No?” he said, still with amusement, or with a courage that took that

form. “Why not?”

“Because I am--not free.”

For an interval they were so silent that they could hear each other

breathe: Then, after he had quietly bidden the gondolier go back to

their hotel, he asked, “If you had been free you might have answered me

differently?”

“I don't know,” said Clementina, candidly. “I never thought of it.”

“It isn't because you disliked me?”

“Oh, no!”

“Then I must get what comfort I can out of that. I hope, with all my

heart, that you may be happy.”

“Why, Dr. Welwright!” said Clementina. “Don't you suppose that I should

be glad to do it, if I could? Any one would!”

“It doesn't seem very probable, just now,” he answered, humbly. “But

I'll believe it if you say so.”

“I do say so, and I always shall.”

“Thank you.”

Dr. Welwright professed himself ready for his departure, at breakfast

next morning and he must have made his preparations very late or very

early. He was explicit in his charges to Clementina concerning Mrs.

Lander, and at the end of them, he said, “She will not know when she

is asking too much of you, but you will, and you must act upon your

knowledge. And remember, if you are in need of help, of any kind, you're

to let me know. Will you?”

“Yes, I will, Dr. Welwright.”

“People will be going away soon, and I shall not be so busy. I can come

back if Dr. Tradonico thinks it necessary.”

He left Mrs. Lander full of resolutions to look after her own welfare in

every way, and she went out in her gondola the same morning. She was not

only to take the air as much as possible, but she was to amuse herself,

and she decided that she would have her second breakfast at the Caffe

Florian. Venice was beginning to fill up with arrivals from the south,

and it need not have been so surprising to find Mr. Hinkle there over a

cup of coffee. He said he had just that moment been thinking of her,

and meaning to look her up at the hotel. He said that he had stopped at

Venice because it was such a splendid place to introduce his gleaner; he

invited Mrs. Lander to become a partner in the enterprise; he promised

her a return of fifty per cent. on her investment. If he could once

introduce his gleaner in Venice, he should be a made man. He asked Mrs.

Lander, with real feeling, how she was; as for Miss Clementina, he need

not ask.

“Oh, indeed, the docta thinks she wants a little lookin' after, too,”

said Mrs. Lander.

“Well, about as much as you do, Mrs. Lander,” Hinkle allowed,

tolerantly. “I don't know how it affects you, ma'am, such a meeting of

friends in these strange waters, but it's building me right up. It's

made another man of me, already, and I've got the other man's appetite,

too. Mind my letting him have his breakfast here with me at your table?”

He bade the waiter just fetch his plate. He attached himself to them;

he spent the day with them. Mrs. Lander asked him to dinner at her

lodgings, and left him to Clementina over the coffee.

“She's looking fine, doesn't the doctor think? This air will do

everything for her.”

“Oh, yes; she's a great deal betta than she was befo'e we came.”

“That's right. Well, now, you've got me here, you must let me make

myself useful any way I can. I've got a spare month that I can put in

here in Venice, just as well as not; I sha'n't want to push north till

the frost's out of the ground. They wouldn't have a chance to try my

gleaner, on the other side of the Alps much before September, anyway.

Now, in Ohio, the part I come from, we cut our wheat in June. When is

your wheat harvest at Middlemount?”

Clementina laughed. “I don't believe we've got any. I guess it's all

grass.”

“I wish you could see our country out there, once.”

“Is it nice?”

“Nice? We're right in the centre of the state, measuring from north to

south, on the old National Road.” Clementina had never heard of this

road, but she did not say so. “About five miles back from the Ohio

River, where the coal comes up out of the ground, because there's so

much of it there's no room for it below. Our farm's in a valley, along

a creek bottom, what you Yankees call an intervals; we've got three

hundred acres. My grandfather took up the land, and then he went back

to Pennsylvania to get the girl he'd left there--we were Pennsylvania

Dutch; that's where I got my romantic name--they drove all the way out

to Ohio again in his buggy, and when he came in sight of our valley with

his bride, he stood up in his buggy and pointed with his whip. 'There!

As far as the sky is blue, it's all ours!'”

Clementina owned the charm of his story as he seemed to expect, but when

he said, “Yes, I want you to see that country, some day,” she answered

cautiously.

“It must be lovely. But I don't expect to go West, eva.”

“I like your Eastern way of saying everr,” said Hinkle, and he said it

in his Western way. “I like New England folks.”

Clementina smiled discreetly. “They have their faults like everybody

else, I presume.”

“Ah, that's a regular Yankee word: presume,” said Hinkle. “Our teacher,

my first one, always said presume. She was from your State, too.”

XXIX.

In the time of provisional quiet that followed for Clementina, she

was held from the remorses and misgivings that had troubled her before

Hinkle came. She still thought that she had let Dr. Welwright go

away believing that she had not cared enough for the offer which had

surprised her so much, and she blamed herself for not telling him how

doubly bound she was to Gregory; though when she tried to put her sense

of this in words to herself she could not make out that she was any more

bound to him than she had been before they met in Florence, unless she

wished to be so. Yet somehow in this time of respite, neither the regret

for Dr. Welwright nor the question of Gregory persisted very strongly,

and there were whole days when she realized before she slept that she

had not thought of either.

She was in full favor again with Mrs. Lander, whom there was no one

to embitter in her jealous affection. Hinkle formed their whole social

world, and Mrs. Lander made the most of him. She was always having him

to the dinners which her landlord served her from a restaurant in her

apartment, and taking him out with Clementina in her gondola. He came

into a kind of authority with them both which was as involuntary with

him as with them, and was like an effect of his constant wish to be

doing something for them.

One morning when they were all going out in Mrs. Lander's gondola, she

sent Clementina back three times to their rooms for outer garments of

differing density. When she brought the last Mrs. Lander frowned.

“This won't do. I've got to have something else--something lighter and

warma.”

“I can't go back any moa, Mrs. Landa,” cried the girl, from the

exasperation of her own nerves.

“Then I will go back myself,” said Mrs. Lander with dignity, “and we

sha'n't need the gondoler any more this mo'ning,” she added, “unless you

and Mr. Hinkle wants to ride.”

She got ponderously out of the boat with the help of the gondolier's

elbow, and marched into the house again, while Clementina followed her.

She did not offer to help her up the stairs; Hinkle had to do it, and he

met the girl slowly coming up as he returned from delivering Mrs. Lander

over to Maddalena.

“She's all right, now,” he ventured to say, tentatively.

“Is she?” Clementina coldly answered.

In spite of her repellent air, he persisted, “She's a pretty sick woman,

isn't she?”

“The docta doesn't say.”

“Well, I think it would be safe to act on that supposition. Miss

Clementina--I think she wants to see you.”

“I'm going to her directly.”

Hinkle paused, rather daunted. “She wants me to go for the doctor.”

“She's always wanting the docta.” Clementina lifted her eyes and looked

very coldly at him.

“If I were you I'd go up right away,” he said, boldly.

She felt that she ought to resent his interference, but the mild

entreaty of his pale blue eyes, or the elder-brotherly injunction of his

smile, forbade her. “Did she ask for me?”

“No.”

“I'll go to her,” she said, and she kept herself from smiling at the

long sigh of relief he gave as she passed him on the stairs.

Mrs. Lander began as soon as she entered her room, “Well, I was just

wonderin' if you was goin' to leave me here all day alone, while you

staid down the'e, carryin' on with that simpleton. I don't know what's

got into the men.”

“Mr. Hinkle has gone for the docta,” said Clementina, trying to get into

her voice the kindness she was trying to feel.

“Well, if I have one of my attacks, now, you'll have yourself to thank

for it.”

By the time Dr. Tradonico appeared Mrs. Lander was so much better that

in her revulsion of feeling she was all day rather tryingly affectionate

in her indirect appeals for Clementina's sympathy.

“I don't want you should mind what I say, when I a'n't feelin'

just right,” she began that evening, after she had gone to bed, and

Clementina sat looking out of the open window, on the moonlit lagoon.

“Oh, no,” the girl answered, wearily.

Mrs. Lander humbled herself farther. “I'm real sorry I plagued you so,

to-day, and I know Mr. Hinkle thought I was dreadful, but I couldn't

help it. I should like to talk with you, Clementina, about something

that's worryin' me, if you a'n't busy.”

“I'm not busy, now, Mrs. Lander,” said Clementina, a little coldly, and

relaxing the clasp of her hands; to knit her fingers together had been

her sole business, and she put even this away.

She did not come nearer the bed, and Mrs. Lander was obliged to speak

without the advantage of noting the effect of her words upon her in her

face. “It's like this: What am I agoin' to do for them relations of Mr.

Landa's out in Michigan?”

“I don't know. What relations?”

“I told you about 'em: the only ones he's got: his half-sista's

children. He neva saw 'em, and he neva wanted to; but they're his kin,

and it was his money. It don't seem right to pass 'em ova. Do you think

it would yourself, Clementina?”

“Why, of cou'se not, Mrs. Lander. It wouldn't be right at all.”

Mrs. Lander looked relieved, and she said, as if a little surprised,

“I'm glad you feel that way; I should feel just so, myself. I mean to do

by you just what I always said I should. I sha'n't forget you, but whe'e

the'e's so much I got to thinkin' the'e'd ought to some of it go to his

folks, whetha he ca'ed for 'em or not. It's worried me some, and I guess

if anything it's that that's made me wo'se lately.”

“Why by Mrs. Landa,” said the girl, “Why don't you give it all to them?”

“You don't know what you'a talkin' about,” said Mrs. Lander, severely.

“I guess if I give 'em five thousand or so amongst'em, it's full moa

than they eve' thought of havin', and it's moa than they got any right

to. Well, that's all right, then; and we don't need to talk about it

any moa. Yes,” she resumed, after a moment, “that's what I shall do.

I hu'n't eva felt just satisfied with that last will I got made, and I

guess I shall tear it up, and get the fust American lawyer that comes

along to make me a new one. The prop'ty's all goin' to you, but I guess

I shall leave five thousand apiece to the two families out the'e. You

won't miss it, any, and I presume it's what Mr. Landa would expect I

should do; though why he didn't do it himself, I can't undastand, unless

it was to show his confidence in me.”

She began to ask Clementina how she felt about staying in Venice all

summer; she said she had got so much better there already that she

believed she should be well by fall if she stayed on. She was certain

that it would put her all back if she were to travel now, and in Europe,

where it was so hard to know how to get to places, she did not see how

they could pick out any that would suit them as well as Venice did.

Clementina agreed to it all, more or less absentmindedly, as she sat

looking into the moonlight, and the day that had begun so stormily ended

in kindness between them.

The next morning Mrs. Lander did not wish to go out, and she sent

Clementina and Hinkle together as a proof that they were all on

good terms again. She did not spare the girl this explanation in his

presence, and when they were in the gondola he felt that he had to say,

“I was afraid you might think I was rather meddlesome yesterday.”

“Oh, no,” she answered. “I was glad you did.”

“Yes,” he returned, “I thought you would be afterwards.” He looked at

her wistfully with his slanted eyes and his odd twisted smile and they

both gave way in the same conscious laugh. “What I like,” he explained

further, “is to be understood when I've said something that doesn't mean

anything, don't you? You know anybody can understand you if you really

mean something; but most of the time you don't, and that's when a friend

is useful. I wish you'd call on me if you're ever in that fix.”

“Oh, I will, Mr. Hinkle,” Clementina promised, gayly.

“Thank you,” he said, and her gayety seemed to turn him graver. “Miss

Clementina, might I go a little further in this direction, without

danger?”

“What direction?” she added, with a flush of sudden alarm.

“Mrs. Lander.”

“Why, suttainly!” she answered, in quick relief.

“I wish you'd let me do some of the worrying about her for you, while

I'm here. You know I haven't got anything else to do!”

“Why, I don't believe I worry much. I'm afraid I fo'get about her when

I'm not with her. That's the wo'st of it.”

“No, no,” he entreated, “that's the best of it. But I want to do the

worrying for you even when you're with her. Will you let me?”

“Why, if you want to so very much.”

“Then it's settled,” he said, dismissing the subject.

But she recurred to it with a lingering compunction.

“I presume that I don't remember how sick she is because I've neva been

sick at all, myself.”

“Well,” he returned, “You needn't be sorry for that altogether. There

are worse things than being well, though sick people don't always think

so. I've wasted a good deal of time the other way, though I've reformed,

now.”

They went on to talk about themselves; sometimes they talked about

others, in excursions which were more or less perfunctory, and were

merely in the way of illustration or instance. She got so far in one of

these as to speak of her family, and he seemed to understand them. He

asked about them all, and he said he believed in her father's unworldly

theory of life. He asked her if they thought at home that she was like

her father, and he added, as if it followed, “I'm the worldling of my

family. I was the youngest child, and the only boy in a flock of girls.

That always spoils a boy.”

“Are you spoiled?” she asked.

“Well, I'm afraid they'd be surprised if I didn't come to grief

somehow--all but--mother; she expects I'll be kept from harm.”

“Is she religious?”

“Yes, she's a Moravian. Did you ever hear of them?” Clementina shook

her head. “They're something like the Quakers, and something like the

Methodists. They don't believe in war; but they have bishops.”

“And do you belong to her church?”

“No,” said the young man. “I wish I did, for her sake. I don't belong to

any. Do you?”

“No, I go to the Episcopal, at home. Perhaps I shall belong sometime.

But I think that is something everyone must do for themselves.” He

looked a little alarmed at the note of severity in her voice, and she

explained. “I mean that if you try to be religious for anything besides

religion, it isn't being religious;--and no one else has any right to

ask you to be.”

“Oh, that's what I believe, too,” he said, with comic relief. “I didn't

know but I'd been trying to convert you without knowing it.” They both

laughed, and were then rather seriously silent.

He asked, after a moment, in a fresh beginning, “Have you heard from

Miss Milray since you left Florence?”

“Oh, yes, didn't I tell you? She's coming here in June.”

“Well, she won't have the pleasure of seeing me, then. I'm going the

last of May.”

“I thought you were going to stay a month!” she protested.

“That will be a month; and more, too.”

“So it will,” she owned.

“I'm glad it doesn't seem any longer--say a year--Miss Clementina!”

“Oh, not at all,” she returned. “Miss Milray's brother and his wife are

coming with her. They've been in Egypt.”

“I never saw them,” said Hinkle. He paused, before he added, “Well,

it would seem rather crowded after they get here, I suppose,” and he

laughed, while Clementina said nothing.

XXX.

Hinkle came every morning now, to smoothe out the doubts and

difficulties that had accumulated in Mrs. Lander's mind over night, and

incidentally to propose some pleasure for Clementina, who could feel

that he was pitying her in her slavery to the sick woman's whims, and

yet somehow entreating her to bear them. He saw them together in what

Mrs. Lander called her well days; but there were other days when he saw

Clementina alone, and then she brought him word from Mrs. Lander, and

reported his talk to her after he went away. On one of these she sent

him a cheerfuller message than usual, and charged the girl to explain

that she was ever so much better, but had not got up because she felt

that every minute in bed was doing her good. Clementina carried back his

regrets and congratulation, and then told Mrs. Lander that he had asked

her to go out with him to see a church, which he was sorry Mrs.

Lander could not see too. He professed to be very particular about his

churches, for he said he had noticed that they neither of them had any

great gift for sights, and he had it on his conscience to get the best

for them. He told Clementina that the church he had for them now could

not be better if it had been built expressly for them, instead of

having been used as a place of worship for eight or ten generations of

Venetians before they came. She gave his invitation to Mrs. Lander, who

could not always be trusted with his jokes, and she received it in the

best part.

“Well, you go!” she said. “Maddalena can look after me, I guess. He's

the only one of the fellas, except that lo'd, that I'd give a cent

for.” She added, with a sudden lapse from her pleasure in Hinkle to her

severity with Clementina, “But you want to be ca'eful what you' doin'.”

“Ca'eful?”

“Yes!--About Mr. Hinkle. I a'n't agoin' to have you lead him on, and

then say you didn't know where he was goin'. I can't keep runnin' away

everywhe'e, fo' you, the way I done at Woodlake.”

Clementina's heart gave a leap, whether joyful or woeful; but she

answered indignantly, “How can you say such a thing to me, Mrs. Lander.

I'm not leading him on!”

“I don't know what you call it. You're round with him in the gondoler,

night and day, and when he's he'e, you'a settin' with him half the time

on the balcony, and it's talk, talk, the whole while.” Clementina took

in the fact with silent recognition, and Mrs. Lander went on. “I ain't

sayin' anything against it. He's the only one I don't believe is afta

the money he thinks you'a goin' to have; but if you don't want him, you

want to look what you're about.”

The girl returned to Hinkle in the embarrassment which she was helpless

to hide, and without the excuse which she could not invent for refusing

to go with him. “Is Mrs. Lander worse--or anything?” he asked.

“Oh, no. She's quite well,” said Clementina; but she left it for him

to break the constraint in which they set out. He tried to do so at

different points, but it seemed to close upon them--the more inflexibly.

At last he asked, as they were drawing near the church, “Have you ever

seen anything of Mr. Belsky since you left Florence?”

“No,” she said, with a nervous start. “What makes you ask?”

“I don't know. But you see nearly everybody again that you meet in your

travels. That friend of his--that Mr. Gregory--he seems to have dropped

out, too. I believe you told me you used to know him in America.”

“Yes,” she answered, briefly; she could not say more; and Hinkle went

on. “It seemed to me, that as far as I could make him out, he was about

as much of a crank in his way as the Russian. It's curious, but when you

were talking about religion, the other day, you made me think of him!”

The blood went to Clementina's heart. “I don't suppose you had him in

mind, but what you said fitted him more than anyone I know of. I could

have almost believed that he had been trying to convert you!” She stared

at him, and he laughed. “He tackled me one day there in Florence all of

a sudden, and I didn't know what to say, exactly. Of course, I respected

his earnestness; but I couldn't accept his view of things and I tried to

tell him so. I had to say just where I stood, and why, and I mentioned

some books that helped to get me there. He said he never read anything

that went counter to his faith; and I saw that he didn't want to save

me, so much as he wanted to convince me. He didn't know it, and I didn't

tell him that I knew it, but I got him to let me drop the subject. He

seems to have been left over from a time when people didn't reason about

their beliefs, but only argued. I didn't think there was a man like that

to be found so late in the century, especially a young man. But that was

just where I was mistaken. If there was to be a man of that kind at all,

it would have to be a young one. He'll be a good deal opener-minded when

he's older. He was conscientious; I could see that; and he did take the

Russian's death to heart as long as he was dead. But I'd like to talk

with him ten years from now; he wouldn't be where he is.”

Clementina was still silent, and she walked up the church steps from the

gondola without the power to speak. She made no show of interest in the

pictures and statues; she never had really cared much for such things,

and now his attempts to make her look at them failed miserably. When

they got back again into the boat he began, “Miss Clementina, I'm afraid

I oughtn't to have spoken as I did of that Mr. Gregory. If he is a

friend of yours--”

“He is,” she made herself answer.

“I didn't mean anything against him. I hope you don't think I wanted to

be unfair?”

“You were not unfair. But I oughtn't to have let you say it, Mr. Hinkle.

I want to tell you something--I mean, I must”--She found herself panting

and breathless. “You ought to know it--Mr. Gregory is--I mean we are--”

She stopped and she saw that she need not say more.

In the days that followed before the time that Hinkle had fixed to leave

Venice, he tried to come as he had been coming, to see Mrs. Lander,

but he evaded her when she wished to send him out with Clementina. His

quaintness had a heartache in it for her; and he was boyishly simple in

his failure to hide his suffering. He had no explicit right to suffer,

for he had asked nothing and been denied nothing, but perhaps for this

reason she suffered the more keenly for him.

A senseless resentment against Gregory for spoiling their happiness

crept into her heart; and she wished to show Hinkle how much she valued

his friendship at any risk and any cost. When this led her too far she

took herself to task with a severity which hurt him too. In the midst

of the impulses on which she acted, there were times when she had a

confused longing to appeal to him for counsel as to how she ought to

behave toward him.

There was no one else whom she could appeal to. Mrs. Lander, after her

first warning, had not spoken of him again, though Clementina could feel

in the grimness with which she regarded her variable treatment of him

that she was silently hoarding up a sum of inculpation which would crush

her under its weight when it should fall upon her. She seemed to be

growing constantly better, now, and as the interval since her last

attack widened behind her, she began to indulge her appetite with a

recklessness which Clementina, in a sense of her own unworthiness, was

helpless to deal with. When she ventured to ask her once whether she

ought to eat of something that was very unwholesome for her, Mrs. Lander

answered that she had taken her case into her own hands, now, for she

knew more about it than all the doctors. She would thank Clementina not

to bother about her; she added that she was at least not hurting anybody

but herself, and she hoped Clementina would always be able to say as

much.

Clementina wished that Hinkle would go away, but not before she had

righted herself with him, and he lingered his month out, and seemed as

little able to go as she to let him. She had often to be cheerful for

both, when she found it too much to be cheerful for herself. In

his absence she feigned free and open talks with him, and explained

everything, and experienced a kind of ghostly comfort in his imagined

approval and forgiveness, but in his presence, nothing really happened

except the alternation of her kindness and unkindness, in which she was

too kind and then too unkind.

The morning of the day he was at last to leave Venice, he came to say

good bye. He did not ask for Mrs. Lander, when the girl received him,

and he did not give himself time to lose courage before he began, “Miss

Clementina, I don't know whether I ought to speak to you after what I

understood you to mean about Mr. Gregory.” He looked steadfastly at her

but she did not answer, and he went on. “There's just one chance in a

million, though, that I didn't understand you rightly, and I've made up

my mind that I want to take that chance. May I?” She tried to speak,

but she could not. “If I was wrong--if there was nothing between you and

him--could there ever be anything between you and me?”

His pleading looks entreated her even more than his words.

“There was something,” she answered, “with him.”

“And I mustn't know what,” the young man said patiently.

“Yes--yes!” she returned eagerly. “Oh, yes! I want you to know--I want

to tell you. I was only sixteen yea's old, and he said that he oughtn't

to have spoken; we were both too young. But last winta he spoke again.

He said that he had always felt bound”--She stopped, and he got infirmly

to his feet. “I wanted to tell you from the fust, but--”

“How could you? You couldn't. I haven't anything more to say, if you are

bound to him.”

“He is going to be a missionary and he wanted me to say that I would

believe just as he did; and I couldn't. But I thought that it would come

right; and--yes, I felt bound to him, too. That is all--I can't explain

it!”

“Oh, I understand!” he returned, listlessly.

“And do you blame me for not telling before?” She made an involuntary

movement toward him, a pathetic gesture which both entreated and

compassionated.

“There's nobody to blame. You have tried to do just right by me, as well

as him. Well, I've got my answer. Mrs. Lander--can I--”

“Why, she isn't up yet, Mr. Hinkle.” Clementina put all her pain for him

into the expression of their regret.

“Then I'll have to leave my good-bye for her with you. I don't believe

I can come back again.” He looked round as if he were dizzy. “Good-bye,”

he said, and offered his hand. It was cold as clay.

When he was gone, Clementina went into Mrs. Lander's room, and gave her

his message.

“Couldn't he have come back this aftanoon to see me, if he ain't goin'

till five?” she demanded jealously.

“He said he couldn't come back,” Clementina answered sadly.

The woman turned her head on her pillow and looked at the girl's face.

“Oh!” she said for all comment.

XXXI.

The Milrays came a month later, to seek a milder sun than they had left

burning in Florence. The husband and wife had been sojourning there

since their arrival from Egypt, but they had not been his sister's

guests, and she did not now pretend to be of their party, though the

same train, even the same carriage, had brought her to Venice with them.

They went to a hotel, and Miss Milray took lodgings where she always

spent her Junes, before going to the Tyrol for the summer.

“You are wonderfully improved, every way,” Mrs. Milray said to

Clementina when they met. “I knew you would be, if Miss Milray took you

in hand; and I can see she has. What she doesn't know about the world

isn't worth knowing! I hope she hasn't made you too worldly? But if

she has, she's taught you how to keep from showing it; you're just as

innocent-looking as ever, and that's the main thing; you oughtn't to

lose that. You wouldn't dance a skirt dance now before a ship's company,

but if you did, no one would suspect that you knew any better. Have you

forgiven me, yet? Well, I didn't use you very well, Clementina, and I

never pretended I did. I've eaten a lot of humble pie for that, my dear.

Did Miss Milray tell you that I wrote to her about it? Of course you

won't say how she told you; but she ought to have done me the justice

to say that I tried to be a friend at court with her for you. If she

didn't, she wasn't fair.”

“She neva said anything against you, Mrs. Milray,” Clementina answered.

“Discreet as ever, my dear! I understand! And I hope you understand

about that old affair, too, by this time. It was a complication. I had

to get back at Lioncourt somehow; and I don't honestly think now that

his admiration for a young girl was a very wholesome thing for her. But

never mind. You had that Boston goose in Florence, too, last winter,

and I suppose he gobbled up what little Miss Milray had left of me. But

she's charming. I could go down on my knees to her art when she really

tries to finish any one.”

Clementina noticed that Mrs. Milray had got a new way of talking. She

had a chirpiness, and a lift in her inflections, which if it was not

exactly English was no longer Western American. Clementina herself in

her association with Hinkle had worn off her English rhythm, and in her

long confinement to the conversation of Mrs. Lander, she had reverted to

her clipped Yankee accent. Mrs. Milray professed to like it, and said

it brought back so delightfully those pleasant days at Middlemount, when

Clementina really was a child. “I met somebody at Cairo, who seemed very

glad to hear about you, though he tried to seem not. Can you guess who

it was? I see that you never could, in the world! We got quite chummy

one day, when we were going out to the pyramids together, and he gave

himself away, finely. He's a simple soul! But when they're in love

they're all so! It was a little queer, colloguing with the ex-headwaiter

on society terms; but the head-waitership was merely an episode, and the

main thing is that he is very talented, and is going to be a minister.

It's a pity he's so devoted to his crazy missionary scheme. Some one

ought to get hold of him, and point him in the direction of a rich New

York congregation. He'd find heathen enough among them, and he could do

the greatest amount of good with their money; I tried to talk it into

him. I suppose you saw him in Florence, this spring?” she suddenly

asked.

“Yes,” Clementina answered briefly.

“And you didn't make it up together. I got that much out of Miss Milray.

Well, if he were here, I should find out why. But I don't suppose you

would tell me.” She waited a moment to see if Clementina would, and then

she said, “It's a pity, for I've a notion I could help you, and I think

I owe you a good turn, for the way I behaved about your dance. But if

you don't want my help, you don't.”

“I would say so if I did, Mrs. Milray,” said Clementina. “I was hu't, at

the time; but I don't care anything for it, now. I hope you won't think

about it any more!”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Milray, “I'll try not to,” and she laughed. “But

I should like to do something to prove my repentance.”

Clementina perceived that for some reason she would rather have more

than less cause for regret; and that she was mocking her; but she was

without the wish or the power to retaliate, and she did not try to

fathom Mrs. Milray's motives. Most motives in life, even bad motives,

lie nearer the surface than most people commonly pretend, and she might

not have had to dig deeper into Mrs. Milray's nature for hers than that

layer of her consciousness where she was aware that Clementina was a

pet of her sister-in-law. For no better reason she herself made a pet

of Mrs. Lander, whose dislike of Miss Milray was not hard to divine, and

whose willingness to punish her through Clementina was akin to her own.

The sick woman was easily flattered back into her first belief in Mrs.

Milray and accepted her large civilities and small services as proof

of her virtues. She began to talk them into Clementina, and to contrast

them with the wicked principles and actions of Miss Milray.

The girl had forgiven Mrs. Milray, but she could not go back to any

trust in her; and she could only passively assent to her praise. When

Mrs. Lander pressed her for anything more explicit she said what she

thought, and then Mrs. Lander accused her of hating Mrs. Milray, who

was more her friend than some that flattered her up for everything, and

tried to make a fool of her.

“I undastand now,” she said one day, “what that recta meant by wantin'

me to make life ba'd for you; he saw how easy you was to spoil. Miss

Milray is one to praise you to your face, and disgrace you be hind your

back, and so I tell you. When Mrs. Milray thought you done wrong she

come and said so; and you can't forgive her.”

Clementina did not answer. She had mastered the art of reticence in her

relations with Mrs. Lander, and even when Miss Milray tempted her one

day to give way, she still had strength to resist. But she could not

deny that Mrs. Lander did things at times to worry her, though she ended

compassionately with the reflection: “She's sick.”

“I don't think she's very sick, now,” retorted her friend.

“No; that's the reason she's so worrying. When she's really sick, she's

betta.”

“Because she's frightened, I suppose. And how long do you propose to

stand it?

“I don't know,” Clementina listlessly answered.

“She couldn't get along without me. I guess I can stand it till we go

home; she says she is going home in the fall.”

Miss Milray sat looking at the girl a moment.

“Shall you be glad to go home?”

“Oh yes, indeed!”

“To that place in the woods?”

“Why, yes! What makes you ask?”

“Nothing. But Clementina, sometimes I think you don't quite understand

yourself. Don't you know that you are very pretty and very charming?

I've told you that often enough! But shouldn't you like to be a great

success in the world? Haven't you ever thought of that? Don't you care

for society?”

The girl sighed. “Yes, I think that's all very nice I did ca'e, one

while, there in Florence, last winter!”

“My dear, you don't know how much you were admired. I used to tell you,

because I saw there was no spoiling you; but I never told you half. If

you had only had the time for it you could have been the greatest sort

of success; you were formed for it. It wasn't your beauty alone; lots

of pretty girls don't make anything of their beauty; it was your

temperament. You took things easily and naturally, and that's what the

world likes. It doesn't like your being afraid of it, and you were not

afraid, and you were not bold; you were just right.” Miss Milray grew

more and more exhaustive in her analysis, and enjoyed refining upon it.

“All that you needed was a little hard-heartedness, and that would

have come in time; you would have learned how to hold your own, but the

chance was snatched from you by that old cat! I could weep over you when

I think how you have been wasted on her, and now you're actually willing

to go back and lose yourself in the woods!”

“I shouldn't call it being lost, Miss Milray.”

“I don't mean that, and you must excuse me, my dear. But surely your

people--your father and mother--would want to have you get on in the

world--to make a brilliant match--”

Clementina smiled to think how far such a thing was from their

imaginations. “I don't believe they would ca'e. You don't undastand

about them, and I couldn't make you. Fatha neva liked the notion of my

being with such a rich woman as Mrs. Lander, because it would look as if

we wanted her money.”

“I never could have imagined that of you, Clementina!”

“I didn't think you could,” said the girl gratefully. “But now, if I

left her when she was sick and depended on me, it would look wohse,

yet--as if I did it because she was going to give her money to Mr.

Landa's family. She wants to do that, and I told her to; I think that

would be right; don't you?”

“It would be right for you, Clementina, if you preferred it--and--I

should prefer it. But it wouldn't be right for her. She has given you

hopes--she has made promises--she has talked to everybody.”

“I don't ca'e for that. I shouldn't like to feel beholden to any one,

and I think it really belongs to his relations; it was HIS.”

Miss Milray did not say anything to this. She asked, “And if you went

back, what would you do there? Labor in the fields, as poor little

Belsky advised?”

Clementina laughed. “No; but I expect you'll think it's almost as crazy.

You know how much I like dancing? Well, I think I could give dancing

lessons at the Middlemount. There are always a good many children, and

girls that have not grown up, and I guess I could get pupils enough,

as long as the summa lasted; and come winter, I'm not afraid but what I

could get them among the young folks at the Center. I used to teach them

before I left home.”

Miss Milray sat looking at her. “I don't know about such things; but it

sounds sensible--like everything about you, my dear. It sounds queer,

perhaps because you're talking of such a White Mountain scheme here in

Venice.”

“Yes, don't it?” said Clementina, sympathetically. “I was thinking of

that, myself. But I know I could do it. I could go round to different

hotels, different days. Yes, I should like to go home, and they would

be glad to have me. You can't think how pleasantly we live; and we're

company enough for each other. I presume I should miss the things I've

got used to ova here, at fust; but I don't believe I should care a great

while. I don't deny but what the wo'ld is nice; but you have to pay for

it; I don't mean that you would make me--”

“No, no! We understand each other. Go on!”

Miss Milray leaned towards her and pressed the girl's arm reassuringly.

As often happens with people when they are told to go on, Clementina

found that she had not much more to say. “I think I could get along in

the wo'ld, well enough. Yes, I believe I could do it. But I wasn't bohn

to it, and it would be a great deal of trouble--a great deal moa than

if I had been bohn to it. I think it would be too much trouble. I would

rather give it up and go home, when Mrs. Landa wants to go back.”

Miss Milray did not speak for a time. “I know that you are serious,

Clementina; and you're wise always, and good--”

“It isn't that, exactly,” said Clementina. “But is it--I don't know how

to express it very well--is it wo'th while?”

Miss Milray looked at her as if she doubted the girl's sincerity. Even

when the world, in return for our making it our whole life, disappoints

and defeats us with its prizes, we still question the truth of those who

question the value of these prizes; we think they must be hopeless of

them, or must be governed by some interest momentarily superior.

Clementina pursued, “I know that you have had all you wanted of the

wo'ld--”

“Oh, no!” the woman broke out, almost in anguish. “Not what I wanted!

What I tried for. It never gave me what I wanted. It--couldn't!”

“Well?”

“It isn't worth while in that sense. But if you can't have what you

want,--if there's been a hollow left in your life--why the world goes

a great way towards filling up the aching void.” The tone of the last

words was lighter than their meaning, but Clementina weighed them

aright.

“Miss Milray,” she said, pinching the edge of the table by which she

sat, a little nervously, and banging her head a little, “I think I can

have what I want.”

“Then, give the whole world for it, child!”

“There is something I should like to tell you.”

“Yes!”

“For you to advise me about.”

“I will, my dear, gladly and truly!”

“He was here before you came. He asked me--”

Miss Milray gave a start of alarm. She said, to gain time: “How did he

get here? I supposed he was in Germany with his--”

“No; he was here the whole of May.”

“Mr. Gregory!”

“Mr. Gregory?” Clementina's face flushed and drooped Still lower. “I

meant Mr. Hinkle. But if you think I oughtn't--”

“I don't think anything; I'm so glad! I supposed from what you said

about the world, that it must be--But if it isn't, all the better. If

it's Mr. Hinkle that you can have--”

“I'm not sure I can. I should like to tell you just how it is, and then

you will know.” It needed fewer words for this than she expected, and

then Clementina took a letter from her pocket, and gave it to Miss

Milray. “He wrote it on the train, going away, and it's not very plain;

but I guess you can make it out.”

Miss Milray received the penciled leaves, which seemed to be pages torn

out of a note-book. They were dated the day Hinkle left Venice, and the

envelope bore the postmark of Verona. They were not addressed, but began

abruptly: “I believe I have made a mistake; I ought not to have given

you up till I knew something that no one but you can tell me. You are

not bound to any body unless you wish to be so. That is what I see now,

and I will not give you up if I can help it. Even if you had made a

promise, and then changed your mind, you would not be bound in such

a thing as this. I say this, and I know you will not believe I say it

because I want you. I do want you, but I would not urge you to break

your faith. I only ask you to realize that if you kept your word when

your heart had gone out of it, you would be breaking your faith; and if

you broke your word you would be keeping your faith. But if your heart

is still in your word, I have no more to say. Nobody knows but you. I

would get out and take the first train back to Venice if it were not for

two things. I know it would be hard on me; and I am afraid it might

be hard on you. But if you will write me a line at Milan, when you get

this, or if you will write to me at London before July; or at New York

at any time--for I expect to wait as long as I live--”

The letter ended here in the local addresses which the writer gave.

Miss Milray handed the leaves back to Clementina, who put them into her

pocket, and apparently waited for her questions.

“And have you written?”

“No,” said the girl, slowly and thoughtfully, “I haven't. I wanted to,

at fust; and then, I thought that if he truly meant what he said he

would be willing to wait.”

“And why did you want to wait?”

Clementina replied with a question of her own. “Miss Milray, what do you

think about Mr. Gregory?”

“Oh, you mustn't ask me that, my dear! I was afraid I had told you too

plainly, the last time.”

“I don't mean about his letting me think he didn't ca'e for me, so long.

But don't you think he wants to do what is right! Mr. Gregory, I mean.”

“Well, if you put me on my honor, I'm afraid I do.”

“You see,” Clementina resumed. “He was the fust one, and I did ca'e for

him a great deal; and I might have gone on caring for him, if--When I

found out that I didn't care any longer, or so much, it seemed to me as

if it must be wrong. Do you think it was?”

“No--no.”

“When I got to thinking about some one else at fust it was only not

thinking about him--I was ashamed. Then I tried to make out that I was

too young in the fust place, to know whether I really ca'ed for any

one in the right way; but after I made out that I was, I couldn't feel

exactly easy--and I've been wanting to ask you, Miss Milray--”

“Ask me anything you like, my dear!”

“Why, it's only whether a person ought eva to change.”

“We change whether we ought, or not. It isn't a matter of duty, one way

or another.”

“Yes, but ought we to stop caring for somebody, when perhaps we

shouldn't if somebody else hadn't come between? That is the question.”

“No,” Miss Milray retorted, “that isn't at all the question. The

question is which you want and whether you could get him. Whichever you

want most it is right for you to have.”

“Do you truly think so?”

“I do, indeed. This is the one thing in life where one may choose safest

what one likes best; I mean if there is nothing bad in the man himself.”

“I was afraid it would be wrong! That was what I meant by wanting to be

fai'a with Mr. Gregory when I told you about him there in Florence. I

don't believe but what it had begun then.”

“What had begun?”

“About Mr. Hinkle.”

Miss Milray burst into a laugh. “Clementina, you're delicious!” The

girl looked hurt, and Miss Milray asked seriously, “Why do you like Mr.

Hinkle best--if you do?”

Clementina sighed. “Oh, I don't know. He's so resting.”

“Then that settles it. From first to last, what we poor women want is

rest. It would be a wicked thing for you to throw your life away on some

one who would worry you out of it. I don't wish to say any thing against

Mr. Gregory. I dare say he is good--and conscientious; but life is a

struggle, at the best, and it's your duty to take the best chance for

resting.”

Clementina did not look altogether convinced, whether it was Miss

Milray's logic or her morality that failed to convince her. She said,

after a moment, “I should like to see Mr. Gregory again.”

“What good would that do?”

“Why, then I should know.”

“Know what?”

“Whether I didn't really ca'e for him any more--or so much.”

“Clementina,” said Miss Milray, “you mustn't make me lose patience with

you--”

“No. But I thought you said that it was my duty to do what I wished.”

“Well, yes. That is what I said,” Miss Milray consented. “But I supposed

that you knew already.”

“No,” said Clementina, candidly, “I don't believe I do.”

“And what if you don't see him?”

“I guess I shall have to wait till I do. The'e will be time enough.”

Miss Milray sighed, and then she laughed. “You ARE young!”

XXXII.

Miss Milray went from Clementina to call upon her sister-in-law, and

found her brother, which was perhaps what she hoped might happen.

“Do you know,” she said, “that that old wretch is going to defraud

that poor thing, after all, and leave her money to her husband's

half-sister's children?”

“You wish me to infer the Mrs. Lander--Clementina situation?” Milray

returned.

“Yes!”

“I'm glad you put it in terms that are not actionable, then; for your

words are decidedly libellous.”

“What do you mean?”

“I've just been writing Mrs. Lander's will for her, and she's left

all her property to Clementina, except five thousand apiece to the

half-sister's three children.”

“I can't believe it!”

“Well,” said Milray, with his gentle smile, “I think that's safe ground

for you. Mrs. Lander will probably have time enough to change her will

as well as her mind several times yet before she dies. The half-sister's

children may get their rights yet.”

“I wish they might!” said Miss Milray, with an impassioned sigh. “Then

perhaps I should get Clementina--for a while.”

Her brother laughed. “Isn't there somebody else wants Clementina?

“Oh, plenty. But she's not sure she wants anybody else.”

“Does she want you?”

“No, I can't say she does. She wants to go home.”

“That's not a bad scheme. I should like to go home myself if I had one.

What would you have done with Clementina if you had got her, Jenny?”

“What would any one have done with her? Married her brilliantly, of

course.”

“But you say she isn't sure she wishes to be married at all?”

Miss Milray stated the case of Clementina's divided mind, and her belief

that she would take Hinkle in the end, together with the fear that

she might take Gregory. “She's very odd,” Miss Milray concluded. “She

puzzles me. Why did you ever send her to me?”

Milray laughed. “I don't know. I thought she would amuse you, and I

thought it would be a pleasure to her.”

They began to talk of some affairs of their own, from which Miss

Milray returned to Clementina with the ache of an imperfectly satisfied

intention. If she had meant to urge her brother to seek justice for the

girl from Mrs. Lander, she was not so well pleased to have found justice

done already. But the will had been duly signed and witnessed before

the American vice-consul, and she must get what good she could out of an

accomplished fact. It was at least a consolation to know that it put

an end to her sister-in-law's patronage of the girl, and it would

be interesting to see Mrs. Milray adapt her behavior to Clementina's

fortunes. She did not really dislike her sister-in-law enough to do her

a wrong; she was only willing that she should do herself a wrong. But

one of the most disappointing things in all hostile operations is

that you never can know what the enemy would be at; and Mrs. Milray's

manoeuvres were sometimes dictated by such impulses that her strategy

was peculiarly baffling. The thought of her past unkindness to

Clementina may still have rankled in her, or she may simply have felt

the need of outdoing Miss Milray by an unapproachable benefaction. It is

certain that when Baron Belsky came to Venice a few weeks after her own

arrival, they began to pose at each other with reference to Clementina;

she with a measure of consciousness, he with the singleness of a nature

that was all pose. In his forbearance to win Clementina from Gregory he

had enjoyed the distinction of an unique suffering; and in allowing the

fact to impart itself to Mrs. Milray, he bathed in the warmth of her

flattering sympathy. Before she withdrew this, as she must when she got

tired of him, she learned from him where Gregory was; for it seemed that

Gregory had so far forgiven the past that they had again written to each

other.

During the fortnight of Belsky's stay in Venice Mrs. Lander was much

worse, and Clementina met him only once, very briefly--She felt that he

had behaved like a very silly person, but that was all over now, and she

had no wish to punish him for it. At the end of his fortnight he went

northward into the Austrian Tyrol, and a few days later Gregory came

down from the Dolomites to Venice.

It was in his favor with Clementina that he yielded to the impulse he

had to come directly to her; and that he let her know with the first

words that he had acted upon hopes given him through Belsky from Mrs.

Milray. He owned that he doubted the authority of either to give him

these hopes, but he said he could not abandon them without a last effort

to see her, and learn from her whether they were true or false.

If she recognized the design of a magnificent reparation in what Mrs.

Milray had done, she did not give it much thought. Her mind was upon

distant things as she followed Gregory's explanation of his presence,

and in the muse in which she listened she seemed hardly to know when he

ceased speaking.

“I know it must seem to take something for granted which I've no right

to take for granted. I don't believe you could think that I cared for

anything but you, or at all for what Mrs. Lander has done for you.”

“Do you mean her leaving me her money?” asked Clementina, with that

boldness her sex enjoys concerning matters of finance and affection.

“Yes,” said Gregory, blushing for her. “As far as I should ever have

a right to care, I could wish there were no money. It could bring no

blessing to our life. We could do no good with it; nothing but the

sacrifice of ourselves in poverty could be blessed to us.”

“That is what I thought, too,” Clementina replied.

“Oh, then you did think--”

“But afterwards, I changed my Mind. If she wants to give me her money I

shall take it.”

Gregory was blankly silent again.

“I shouldn't know how to refuse, and I don't know as I should have any

right to.” Gregory shrank a little from her reyankeefied English, as

well as from the apparent cynicism of her speech; but he shrank in

silence still. She startled him by asking with a kindness that was

almost tenderness, “Mr. Gregory, how do you think anything has changed?”

“Changed?”

“You know how it was when you went away from Florence. Do you think

differently now? I don't. I don't think I ought to do something for you,

and pretend that I was doing it for religion. I don't believe the way

you do; and I know I neva shall. Do you want me in spite of my saying

that I can neva help you in your work because I believe in it?”

“But if you believe in me--”

She shook her head compassionately. “You know we ahgued that out before.

We are just whe'e we were. I am sorry. Nobody had any right to tell you

to come he'e. But I am glad you came--” She saw the hope that lighted up

his face, but she went on unrelentingly--“I think we had betta be free.”

“Free?”

“Yes, from each other. I don't know how you have felt, but I have not

felt free. It has seemed to me that I promised you something. If I did,

I want to take my promise back and be free.”

Her frankness appealed to his own. “You are free. I never held you bound

to me in my fondest hopes. You have always done right.”

“I have tried to. And I am not going to let you go away thinking that

the reason I said is the only reason. It isn't. I wish to be free

because--there is some one else, now.” It was hard to tell him this, but

she knew that she must not do less; and the train that carried him from

Venice that night bore a letter from her to Hinkle.

XXXIII.

Clementina told Miss Milray what had happened, but with Mrs. Milray the

girl left the sudden departure of Gregory to account for itself.

They all went a week later, and Mrs. Milray having now done her whole

duty to Clementina had the easiest mind concerning her. Miss Milray felt

that she was leaving her to greater trials than ever with Mrs. Lander;

but since there was nothing else, she submitted, as people always do

with the trials of others, and when she was once away she began to

forget her.

By this time, however, it was really better for her. With no one to

suspect of tampering with her allegiance, Mrs. Lander returned to her

former fondness for the girl, and they were more peaceful if not happier

together again. They had long talks, such as they used to have, and in

the first of these Clementina told her how and why she had written to

Mr. Hinkle. Mrs. Lander said that it suited her exactly.

“There ha'n't but just two men in Europe behaved like gentlemen to me,

and one is Mr. Hinkle, and the other is that lo'd; and between the two I

ratha you'd have Mr. Hinkle; I don't know as I believe much in American

guls marryin' lo'ds, the best of 'em.”

Clementina laughed. “Why, Mrs. Landa, Lo'd Lioncou't never thought of me

in the wo'ld!”

“You can't eva know. Mrs. Milray was tellin' that he's what they call

a pooa lo'd, and that he was carryin' on with the American girls like

everything down there in Egypt last winta. I guess if it comes to money

you'd have enough to buy him and sell him again.”

The mention of money cast a chill upon their talk; and Mrs. Lander said

gloomily, “I don't know as I ca'e so much for that will Mr. Milray made

for me, after all. I did want to say ten thousand apiece for Mr. Landa's

relations; but I hated to befo'e him; I'd told the whole kit of 'em so

much about you, and I knew what they would think.”

She looked at Clementina with recurring grudge, and the girl could not

bear it.

“Then why don't you tear it up, and make another? I don't want anything,

unless you want me to have it; and I'd ratha not have anything.”

“Yes, and what would folks say, afta youa taken' care of me?”

“Do you think I do it fo' that?”

“What do you do it fo'?”

“What did you want me to come with you fo'?”

“That's true.” Mrs. Lander brightened and warmed again. “I guess it's

all right. I guess I done right, and I got to be satisfied. I presume I

could get the consul to make me a will any time.”

Clementina did not relent so easily. “Mrs. Landa, whateva you do I don't

ca'e to know it; and if you talk to me again about this I shall go home.

I would stay with you as long as you needed me, but I can't if you keep

bringing this up.”

“I suppose you think you don't need me any moa! Betta not be too su'a.”

The girl jumped to her feet, and Mrs. Lander interposed. “Well, the'a!

I didn't mean anything, and I won't pesta you about it any moa. But I

think it's pretty ha'd. Who am I going to talk it ova with, then?”

“You can talk it ova with the vice-consul,” paid Clementina, at random.

“Well, that's so.” Mrs. Lander let Clementina get her ready for the

night, in sign of returning amity; when she was angry with her she

always refused her help, and made her send Maddalena.

The summer heat increased, and the sick woman suffered from it, but she

could not be persuaded that she had strength to get away, though the

vice-consul, whom she advised with, used all his logic with her. He was

a gaunt and weary widower, who described himself as being officially

between hay and grass; the consul who appointed him had resigned after

going home, and a new consul had not yet been sent out to remove him. On

what she called her well days Mrs. Lander went to visit him, and she did

not mind his being in his shirt-sleeves, in the bit of garden where she

commonly found him, with his collar and cravat off, and clouded in his

own smoke; when she was sick she sent for him, to visit her. He made

excuses as often as he could, and if he saw Mrs. Lander's gondola

coming down the Grand Canal to his house he hurried on his cast

clothing, and escaped to the Piazza, at whatever discomfort and risk

from the heat.

“I don't know how you stand it, Miss Claxon,” he complained to

Clementina, as soon as he learned that she was not a blood relation of

Mrs. Lander's, and divined that she had her own reservations concerning

her. “But that woman will be the death of me if she keeps this up. What

does she think I'm here for? If this goes on much longer I'll resign.

The salary won't begin to pay for it. What am I going to do? I don't

want to hurt her feelings, or not to help her; but I know ten times as

much about Mrs. Lander's liver as I do about my own, now.”

He treated Clementina as a person of mature judgment and a sage

discretion, and he accepted what comfort she could offer him when she

explained that it was everything for Mrs. Lander to have him to talk

with. “She gets tied of talking to me,” she urged, “and there's nobody

else, now.”

“Why don't she hire a valet de place, and talk to him? I'd hire one

myself for her. It would be a good deal cheaper for me. It's as much as

I can do to stand this weather as it is.”

The vice-consul laughed forlornly in his exasperation, but he agreed

with Clementina when she said, in further excuse, that Mrs. Lander was

really very sick. He pushed back his hat, and scratched his head with a

grimace.

“Of course, we've got to remember she's sick, and I shall need a little

sympathy myself if she keeps on at me this way. I believe I'll tell

her about my liver next time, and see how she likes it. Look here, Miss

Claxon! Couldn't we get her off to some of those German watering places

that are good for her complaints? I believe it would be the best thing

for her--not to mention me.”

Mrs. Lander was moved by the suggestion which he made in person

afterwards; it appealed to her old nomadic instinct; but when the consul

was gone she gave it up. “We couldn't git the'e, Clementina. I got to

stay he'e till I git up my stren'th. I suppose you'd be glad enough to

have me sta't, now the'e's nobody he'e but me,” she added, suspiciously.

“You git this scheme up, or him?”

Clementina did not defend herself, and Mrs. Lander presently came to

her defence. “I don't believe but what he meant it fo' the best--or you,

whichever it was, and I appreciate it; but all is I couldn't git off.

I guess this aia will do me as much good as anything, come to have it a

little coola.”

They went every afternoon to the Lido, where a wheeled chair met them,

and Mrs. Lander was trundled across the narrow island to the beach. In

the evenings they went to the Piazza, where their faces and figures had

become known, and the Venetians gossipped them down to the last fact

of their relation with an accuracy creditable to their ingenuity in the

affairs of others. To them Mrs. Lander was the sick American, very rich,

and Clementina was her adoptive daughter, who would have her millions

after her. Neither knew the character they bore to the amiable and

inquisitive public of the Piazza, or cared for the fine eyes that aimed

their steadfast gaze at them along the tubes of straw-barreled Virginia

cigars, or across little cups of coffee. Mrs. Lander merely remarked

that the Venetians seemed great for gaping, and Clementina was for the

most part innocent of their stare.

She rested in the choice she had made in a content which was qualified

by no misgiving. She was sorry for Gregory, when she remembered him; but

her thought was filled with some one else, and she waited in faith and

patience for the answer which should come to the letter she had written.

She did not know where her letter would find him, or when she should

hear from him; she believed that she should hear, and that was enough.

She said to herself that she would not lose hope if no answer came for

months; but in her heart she fixed a date for the answer by letter, and

an earlier date for some word by cable; but she feigned that she did not

depend upon this; and when no word came she convinced herself that she

had not expected any.

It was nearing the end of the term which she had tacitly given her lover

to make the first sign by letter, when one morning Mrs. Lander woke her.

She wished to say that she had got the strength to leave Venice at

last, and she was going as soon as their trunks could be packed. She had

dressed herself, and she moved about restless and excited. Clementina

tried to reason her out of her haste; but she irritated her, and fixed

her in her determination. “I want to get away, I tell you; I want to get

away,” she answered all persuasion, and there seemed something in her

like the wish to escape from more than the oppressive environment,

though she spoke of nothing but the heat and the smell of the canal. “I

believe it's that, moa than any one thing, that's kept me sick he'e,”

she said. “I tell you it's the malariar, and you'll be down, too, if you

stay.”

She made Clementina go to the banker's, and get money to pay their

landlord's bill, and she gave him notice that they were going that

afternoon. Clementina wished to delay till they had seen the vice-consul

and the doctor; but Mrs. Lander broke out, “I don't want to see 'em,

either of 'em. The docta wants to keep me he'e and make money out of

me; I undastand him; and I don't believe that consul's a bit too good

to take a pussentage. Now, don't you say a wo'd to either of 'em. If you

don't do exactly what I tell you I'll go away and leave you he'e. Now,

will you?”

Clementina promised, and broke her word. She went to the vice-consul and

told him she had broken it, and she agreed with him that he had better

not come unless Mrs. Lander sent for him. The doctor promptly imagined

the situation and said he would come in casually during the morning, so

as not to alarm the invalid's suspicions. He owned that Mrs. Lander was

getting no good from remaining in Venice, and if it were possible for

her to go, he said she had better go somewhere into cooler and higher

air.

His opinion restored him to Mrs. Lander's esteem, when it was expressed

to her, and as she was left to fix the sum of her debt to him, she

made it handsomer than anything he had dreamed of. She held out against

seeing the vice-consul till the landlord sent in his account. This was

for the whole month which she had just entered upon, and it included

fantastic charges for things hitherto included in the rent, not only for

the current month, but for the months past when, the landlord explained,

he had forgotten to note them. Mrs. Lander refused to pay these demands,

for they touched her in some of those economies which the gross rich

practice amidst their profusion. The landlord replied that she could not

leave his house, either with or without her effects, until she had paid.

He declared Clementina his prisoner, too, and he would not send for the

vice-consul at Mrs. Lander's bidding. How far he was within his rights

in all this they could not know, but he was perhaps himself doubtful,

and he consented to let them send for the doctor, who, when he came,

behaved like anything but the steadfast friend that Mrs. Lander supposed

she had bought in him. He advised paying the account without regard to

its justice, as the shortest and simplest way out of the trouble; but

Mrs. Lander, who saw him talking amicably and even respectfully with the

landlord, when he ought to have treated him as an extortionate scamp,

returned to her former ill opinion of him; and the vice-consul now

appeared the friend that Doctor Tradonico had falsely seemed. The doctor

consented, in leaving her to her contempt of him, to carry a message to

the vice-consul, though he came back, with his finger at the side of his

nose, to charge her by no means to betray his bold championship to the

landlord.

The vice-consul made none of those shows of authority which Mrs. Lander

had expected of him. She saw him even exchanging the common decencies

with the landlord, when they met; but in fact it was not hard to treat

the smiling and courteous rogue well. In all their disagreement he had

looked as constantly to the comfort of his captives as if they had been

his chosen guests. He sent Mrs. Lander a much needed refreshment at the

stormiest moment of her indignation, and he deprecated without retort

the denunciations aimed at him in Italian which did not perhaps carry

so far as his conscience. The consul talked with him in a calm scarcely

less shameful than that of Dr. Tradonico; and at the end of their parley

which she had insisted upon witnessing, he said:

“Well, Mrs. Lander, you've got to stand this gouge or you've got to

stand a law suit. I think the gouge would be cheaper in the end. You

see, he's got a right to his month's rent.”

“It ain't the rent I ca'e for: it's the candles, and the suvvice, and

the things he says we broke. It was undastood that everything was to be

in the rent, and his two old chaias went to pieces of themselves when

we tried to pull 'em out from the wall; and I'll neva pay for 'em in the

wo'ld.”

“Why,” the vice-consul pleaded, “it's only about forty francs for the

whole thing--”

“I don't care if it's only fotty cents. And I must say, Mr. Bennam,

you're about the strangest vice-consul, to want me to do it, that I eva

saw.”

The vice-consul laughed unresentfully. “Well, shall I send you a

lawyer?”

“No!” Mrs. Lander retorted; and after a moment's reflection she added,

“I'm goin' to stay my month, and so you may tell him, and then I'll see

whetha he can make me pay for that breakage and the candles and suvvice.

I'm all wore out, as it is, and I ain't fit to travel, now, and I don't

know when I shall be. Clementina, you can go and tell Maddalena to stop

packin'. Or, no! I'll do it.”

She left the room without further notice of the consul, who said

ruefully to Clementina, “Well, I've missed my chance, Miss Claxon, but I

guess she's done the wisest thing for herself.”

“Oh, yes, she's not fit to go. She must stay, now, till it's coola. Will

you tell the landlo'd, or shall--”

“I'll tell him,” said the vice-consul, and he had in the landlord. He

received her message with the pleasure of a host whose cherished guests

have consented to remain a while longer, and in the rush of his good

feeling he offered, if the charge for breakage seemed unjust to the

vice-consul, to abate it; and since the signora had not understood

that she was to pay extra for the other things, he would allow the

vice-consul to adjust the differences between them; it was a trifle, and

he wished above all things to content the signora, for whom he professed

a cordial esteem both on his own part and the part of all his family.

“Then that lets me out for the present,” said the vice-consul, when

Clementina repeated Mrs. Lander's acquiescence in the landlord's

proposals, and he took his straw hat, and called a gondola from the

nearest 'traghetto', and bargained at an expense consistent with his

salary, to have himself rowed back to his own garden-gate.

The rest of the day was an era of better feeling between Mrs. Lander and

her host than they had ever known, and at dinner he brought in with his

own hand a dish which he said he had caused to be specially made for

her. It was so tempting in odor and complexion that Mrs. Lander declared

she must taste it, though as she justly said, she had eaten too much

already; when it had once tasted it she ate it all, against Clementina's

protestations; she announced at the end that every bite had done her

good, and that she never felt better in her life. She passed a happy

evening, with renewed faith in the air of the lagoon; her sole regret

now was that Mr. Lander had not lived to try it with her, for if he had

she was sure he would have been alive at that moment.

She allowed herself to be got to bed rather earlier than usual; before

Clementina dropped asleep she heard her breathing with long, easy, quiet

respirations, and she lost the fear of the landlord's dish which had

haunted her through the evening. She was awakened in the morning by a

touch on her shoulder. Maddalena hung over her with a frightened face,

and implored her to come and look at the signora, who seemed not at all

well. Clementina ran into her room, and found her dead. She must have

died some hours before without a struggle, for the face was that of

sleep, and it had a dignity and beauty which it had not worn in her life

of self-indulgent wilfulness for so many years that the girl had never

seen it look so before.

XXXIV.

The vice-consul was not sure how far his powers went in the situation

with which Mrs. Lander had finally embarrassed him. But he met the new

difficulties with patience, and he agreed with Clementina that they

ought to see if Mrs. Lander had left any written expression of her

wishes concerning the event. She had never spoken of such a chance, but

had always looked forward to getting well and going home, so far as the

girl knew, and the most careful search now brought to light nothing that

bore upon it. In the absence of instructions to the contrary, they did

what they must, and the body, emptied of its life of senseless worry and

greedy care, was laid to rest in the island cemetery of Venice.

When all was over, the vice-consul ventured an observation which he had

hitherto delicately withheld. The question of Mrs. Lander's kindred had

already been discussed between him and Clementina, and he now felt that

another question had duly presented itself. “You didn't notice,” he

suggested, “anything like a will when we went over the papers?” He

had looked carefully for it, expecting that there might have been some

expression of Mrs. Lander's wishes in it. “Because,” he added, “I happen

to know that Mr. Milray drew one up for her; I witnessed it.”

“No,” said Clementina, “I didn't see anything of it. She told me she had

made a will; but she didn't quite like it, and sometimes she thought she

would change it. She spoke of getting you to do it; I didn't know but

she had.”

The vice-consul shook his head. “No. And these relations of her

husband's up in Michigan; you don't know where they live, exactly?”

“No. She neva told me; she wouldn't; she didn't like to talk about them;

I don't even know their names.”

The vice-consul thoughtfully scratched a corner of his chin through his

beard. “If there isn't any will, they're the heirs. I used to be a sort

of wild-cat lawyer, and I know that much law.”

“Yes,” said Clementina. “She left them five thousand dollas apiece. She

said she wished she had made it ten.”

“I guess she's made it a good deal more, if she's made it anything. Miss

Claxon, don't you understand that if no will turns up, they come in for

all her money.

“Well, that's what I thought they ought to do,” said Clementina.

“And do you understand that if that's so, you don't come in for

anything? You must excuse me for mentioning it; but she has told

everybody that you were to have it, and if there is no will--”

He stopped and bent an eye of lack-lustre compassion on the girl, who

replied, “Oh, yes. I know that; it's what I always told her to do. I

didn't want it.”

“You didn't want it?”

“No.”

“Well!” The vice-consul stared at her, but he forbore the comment that

her indifference inspired. He said after a pause, “Then what we've got

to do is to advertise for the Michigan relations, and let 'em take any

action they want to.”

“That's the only thing we could do, I presume.”

This gave the vice-consul another pause. At the end of it he got to his

feet. “Is there anything I can do for you, Miss Claxon?”

She went to her portfolio and produced Mrs. Lander's letter of credit.

It had been made out for three thousand pounds, in Clementina's name as

well as her own; but she had lived wastefully since she had come abroad,

and little money remained to be taken up. With the letter Clementina

handed the vice-consul the roll of Italian and Austrian bank-notes which

she had drawn when Mrs. Lander decided to leave Venice; they were to the

amount of several thousand lire and golden. She offered them with the

insensibility to the quality of money which so many women have, and

which is always so astonishing to men. “What must I do with these?” she

asked.

“Why, keep them! returned the vice-consul on the spur of his surprise.

“I don't know as I should have any right to,” said Clementina. “They

were hers.”

“Why, but”--The vice-consul began his protest, but he could not end it

logically, and he did not end it at all. He insisted with Clementina

that she had a right to some money which Mrs. Lander had given her

during her life; he took charge of the bank-notes in the interest of the

possible heirs, and gave her his receipt for them. In the meantime he

felt that he ought to ask her what she expected to do.

“I think,” she said, “I will stay in Venice awhile.”

The vice-consul suppressed any surprise he might have felt at a decision

given with mystifying cheerfulness. He answered, Well, that was right;

and for the second time he asked her if there was anything he could do

for her.

“Why, yes,” she returned. “I should like to stay on in the house here,

if you could speak for me to the padrone.”

“I don't see why you shouldn't, if we can make the padrone understand

it's different.”

“You mean about the price?” The vice-consul nodded. “That's what I want

you should speak to him about, Mr. Bennam, if you would. Tell him that

I haven't got but a little money now, and he would have to make it very

reasonable. That is, if you think it would be right for me to stay, afta

the way he tried to treat Mrs. Lander.”

The vice-consul gave the point some thought, and decided that the

attempted extortion need not make any difference with Clementina, if she

could get the right terms. He said he did not believe the padrone was a

bad fellow, but he liked to take advantage of a stranger when he could;

we all did. When he came to talk with him he found him a man of heart if

not of conscience. He entered into the case with the prompt intelligence

and vivid sympathy of his race, and he made it easy for Clementina to

stay till she had heard from her friends in America. For himself and

for his wife, he professed that she could not stay too long, and they

proposed that if it would content the signorina still further they would

employ Maddalena as chambermaid till she wished to return to Florence;

she had offered to remain if the signorina stayed.

“Then that is settled,” said Clementina with a sigh of relief; and she

thanked the vice-consul for his offer to write to the Milrays for her,

and said that she would rather write herself.

She meant to write as soon as she heard from Mr. Hinkle, which could

not be long now, for then she could be independent of the offers of help

which she dreaded from Miss Milray, even more than from Mrs. Milray; it

would be harder to refuse them; and she entered upon a passage of her

life which a nature less simple would have found much more trying.

But she had the power of taking everything as if it were as much to be

expected as anything else. If nothing at all happened she accepted the

situation with implicit resignation, and with a gayety of heart which

availed her long, and never wholly left her.

While the suspense lasted she could not write home as frankly as before,

and she sent off letters to Middlemount which treated of her delay in

Venice with helpless reticence. They would have set another sort of

household intolerably wondering and suspecting, but she had the comfort

of knowing that her father would probably settle the whole matter by

saying that she would tell what she meant when she got round to it; and

apart from this she had mainly the comfort of the vice-consul's society.

He had little to do besides looking after her, and he employed himself

about this in daily visits which the padrone and his wife regarded as

official, and promoted with a serious respect for the vice-consular

dignity. If the visits ended, as they often did, in a turn on the Grand

Canal, and an ice in the Piazza, they appealed to the imagination of

more sophisticated witnesses, who decided that the young American girl

had inherited the millions of the sick lady, and become the betrothed

of the vice-consul, and that they were thus passing the days of their

engagement in conformity to the American custom, however much at

variance with that of other civilizations.

This view of the affair was known to Maddalena, but not to Clementina,

who in those days went back in many things to the tradition of her life

at Middlemount. The vice-consul was of a tradition almost as simple, and

his longer experience set no very wide interval between them. It

quickly came to his telling her all about his dead wife and his married

daughters, and how, after his home was broken up, he thought he would

travel a little and see what that would do for him. He confessed that

it had not done much; he was always homesick, and he was ready to go as

soon as the President sent out a consul to take his job off his hands.

He said that he had not enjoyed himself so much since he came to Venice

as he was doing now, and that he did not know what he should do if

Clementina first got her call home. He betrayed no curiosity as to

the peculiar circumstances of her stay, but affected to regard it as

something quite normal, and he watched over her in every way with a

fatherly as well as an official vigilance which never degenerated into

the semblance of any other feeling. Clementina rested in his care in

entire security. The world had quite fallen from her, or so much of it

as she had seen at Florence, and in her indifference she lapsed into

life as it was in the time before that with a tender renewal of

her allegiance to it. There was nothing in the conversation of the

vice-consul to distract her from this; and she said and did the things

at Venice that she used to do at Middlemount, as nearly as she could; to

make the days of waiting pass more quickly, she tried to serve herself

in ways that scandalized the proud affection of Maddalena. It was not

fit for the signorina to make her bed or sweep her room; she might sew

and knit if she would; but these other things were for servants like

herself. She continued in the faith of Clementina's gentility, and saw

her always as she had seen her first in the brief hour of her social

splendor in Florence. Clementina tried to make her understand how

she lived at Middlemount, but she only brought before Maddalena the

humiliating image of a contadina, which she rejected not only in

Clementina's behalf, but that of Miss Milray. She told her that she was

laughing at her, and she was fixed in her belief when the girl laughed

at that notion. Her poverty she easily conceived of; plenty of signorine

in Italy were poor; and she protected her in it with the duty she did

not divide quite evenly between her and the padrone.

The date which Clementina had fixed for hearing from Hinkle by cable

had long passed, and the time when she first hoped to hear from him by

letter had come and gone. Her address was with the vice-consul as Mrs.

Lander's had been, and he could not be ignorant of her disappointment

when he brought her letters which she said were from home. On the

surface of things it could only be from home that she wished to hear,

but beneath the surface he read an anxiety which mounted with each

gratification of this wish. He had not seen much of the girl while

Hinkle was in Venice; Mrs. Lander had not begun to make such constant

use of him until Hinkle had gone; Mrs. Milray had told him of

Clementina's earlier romance, and it was to Gregory that the vice-consul

related the anxiety which he knew as little in its nature as in its

object.

Clementina never doubted the good faith or constancy of her lover; but

her heart misgave her as to his well-being when it sank at each failure

of the vice-consul to bring her a letter from him. Something must have

happened to him, and it must have been something very serious to keep

him from writing; or there was some mistake of the post-office. The

vice-consul indulged himself in personal inquiries to make sure that the

mistake was not in the Venetian post-office; but he saw that he brought

her greater distress in ascertaining the fact. He got to dreading a look

of resolute cheerfulness that came into her face, when he shook his

head in sign that there were no letters, and he suffered from the covert

eagerness with which she glanced at the superscriptions of those he

brought and failed to find the hoped-for letter among them. Ordeal for

ordeal, he was beginning to regret his trials under Mrs. Lander. In them

he could at least demand Clementina's sympathy, but against herself this

was impossible. Once she noted his mute distress at hers, and broke into

a little laugh that he found very harrowing.

“I guess you hate it almost as much as I do, Mr. Bennam.”

“I guess I do. I've half a mind to write the letter you want, myself.”

“I've half a mind to let you--or the letter I'd like to write.”

It had come to her thinking she would write again to Hinkle; but she

could not bring herself to do it. She often imagined doing it; she had

every word of such a letter in her mind; and she dramatized every fact

concerning it from the time she should put pen to paper, to the time

when she should get back the answer that cleared the mystery of his

silence away. The fond reveries helped her to bear her suspense; they

helped to make the days go by, to ease the doubt with which she lay down

at night, and the heartsick hope with which she rose up in the morning.

One day, at the hour of his wonted visit, she saw the vice-consul from

her balcony coming, as it seemed to her, with another figure in his

gondola, and a thousand conjectures whirled through her mind, and then

centred upon one idea. After the first glance she kept her eyes down,

and would not look again while she told herself incessantly that it

could not be, and that she was a fool and a goose and a perfect coot, to

think of such a thing for a single moment. When she allowed herself, or

forced herself, to look a second time; as the boat drew near, she had to

cling to the balcony parapet for support, in her disappointment.

The person whom the vice-consul helped out of the gondola was an elderly

man like himself, and she took a last refuge in the chance that he might

be Hinkle's father, sent to bring her to him because he could not come

to her; or to soften some terrible news to her. Then her fancy fluttered

and fell, and she waited patiently for the fact to reveal itself.

There was something countrified in the figure of the man, and something

clerical in his face, though there was nothing in his uncouth best

clothes that confirmed this impression. In both face and figure there

was a vague resemblance to some one she had seen before, when the

vice-consul said:

“Miss Claxon, I want to introduce the Rev. Mr. James B. Orson, of

Michigan.” Mr. Orson took Clementina's hand into a dry, rough grasp,

while he peered into her face with small, shy eyes. The vice-consul

added with a kind of official formality, “Mr. Orson is the half-nephew

of Mr. Lander,” and then Clementina now knew whom it was that he

resembled. “He has come to Venice,” continued the vice-consul, “at

the request of Mrs. Lander; and he did not know of her death until I

informed him of the fact. I should have said that Mr. Orson is the son

of Mr. Lander's half-sister. He can tell you the balance himself.” The

vice-consul pronounced the concluding word with a certain distaste, and

the effect of gladly retiring into the background.

“Won't you sit down?” said Clementina, and she added with one of the

remnants of her Middlemount breeding, “Won't you let me take your hat?”

Mr. Orson in trying to comply with both her invitations, knocked his

well worn silk hat from the hand that held it, and sent it rolling

across the room, where Clementina pursued it and put it on the table.

“I may as well say at once,” he began in a flat irresonant voice, “that

I am the representative of Mrs. Lander's heirs, and that I have a letter

from her enclosing her last will and testament, which I have shown to

the consul here--”

“Vice-consul,” the dignitary interrupted with an effect of rejecting any