The Argonauts of North Liberty Read online

  CHAPTER II

  The male figure, however, after mingling with his fellow-worshippersto the corner of the block, stopped a moment under the lamp-post as ifuncertain as to the turning, but really to cast a long, scrutinizinglook towards the scattered umbrellas now almost lost in the oppositedirection. He was still gazing and apparently hesitating whether toretrace his steps, when a horse and buggy rapidly driven down the sidestreet passed him. In a brief glance he evidently recognized the driver,and stepping over the curbstone called in a brief authoritative voice:

  "Ned!"

  The occupant of the vehicle pulled up suddenly, leaned from the buggy,and said in an astonished tone:

  "Dick Demorest! Well! I declare! hold on, and I'll drive up to thecurb."

  "No; stay where you are."

  The speaker approached the buggy, jumped in beside the occupant,refastened the apron, and coolly taking the reins from his companion'shand, started the horse forward. The action was that of an habituallyimperious man; and the only recognition he made of the other's ownershipwas the question:

  "Where were you going?"

  "Home--to see Joan," replied the other. "Just drove over from WarensboroStation. But what on earth are YOU doing here?"

  Without answering the question, Demorest turned to his companion withthe same good-natured, half humorous authority. "Let your wife wait;take a drive with me. I want to talk to you. She'll be just as glad tosee you an hour later, and it's her fault if I can't come home with younow."

  "I know it," returned his companion, in a tone of half-annoyed apology."She still sticks to her old compact when we first married, that sheshouldn't be obliged to receive my old worldly friends. And, see here,Dick, I thought I'd talked her out of it as regards YOU at least, butParson Thomas has been raking up all the old stories about you--youknow that affair of the Fall River widow, and that breaking off of GarrySpofferth's match--and about your horse-racing--until--you know, she'smore set than ever against knowing you."

  "That's not a bad sort of horse you've got there," interrupted Demorest,who usually conducted conversation without reference to alien topicssuggested by others. "Where did you get him? He's good yet for a spindown the turnpike and over the bridge. We'll do it, and I'll bring youhome safely to Mrs. Blandford inside the hour."

  Blandford knew little of horseflesh, but like all men he was notsuperior to this implied compliment to his knowledge. He resignedhimself to his companion as he had been in the habit of doing, andDemorest hurried the horse at a rapid gait down the street until theyleft the lamps behind, and were fully on the dark turnpike. The sleetrattled against the hood and leathern apron of the buggy, gusts offierce wind filled the vehicle and seemed to hold it back, but Demorestdid not appear to mind it. Blandford thrust his hands deeply intohis pockets for warmth, and contracted his shoulders as if in doggedpatience. Yet, in spite of the fact that he was tired, cold, and anxiousto see his wife, he was conscious of a secret satisfaction in submittingto the caprices of this old friend of his boyhood. After all, DickDemorest knew what he was about, and had never led him astray by hisautocratic will. It was safe to let Dick have his way. It was true itwas generally Dick's own way--but he made others think it was theirstoo--or would have been theirs had they had the will and the knowledgeto project it. He looked up comfortably at the handsome, resoluteprofile of the man who had taken selfish possession of him. Many womenhad done the same.

  "Suppose if you were to tell your wife I was going to reform," saidDemorest, "it might be different, eh? She'd want to take me into thechurch--'another sinner saved,' and all that, eh?"

  "No," said Blandford, earnestly. "Joan isn't as rigid as all that, Dick.What she's got against you is the common report of your free way ofliving, and that--come now, you know yourself, Dick, that isn't exactlythe thing a woman brought up in her style can stand. Why, she thinksI'm unregenerate, and--well, a man can't carry on business always like aclass meeting. But are you thinking of reforming?" he continued, tryingto get a glimpse of his companion's eyes.

  "Perhaps. It depends. Now--there's a woman I know--"

  "What, another? and you call this going to reform?" interruptedBlandford, yet not without a certain curiosity in his manner.

  "Yes; that's just why I think of reforming. For this one isn't exactlylike any other--at least as far as I know."

  "That means you don't know anything about her."

  "Wait, and I'll tell you." He drew the reins tightly to accelerate thehorse's speed, and, half turning to his companion, without, however,moving his eyes from the darkness before him, spoke quickly between theblasts: "I've seen her only half a dozen times. Met her first in 6.40train out from Boston last fall. She sat next to me. Covered up withwraps and veils; never looked twice at her. She spoke first--kind ofhalf bold, half frightened way. Then got more comfortable and unwoundherself, you know, and I saw she was young and not bad-looking.Thought she was some school-girl out for a lark--but rather new at it.Inexperienced, you know, but quite able to take care of herself, byGeorge! and although she looked and acted as if she'd never spoken toa stranger all her life, didn't mind the kind of stuff I talked to her.Rather encouraged it; and laughed--such a pretty little odd laugh, asif laughing wasn't in her usual line, either, and she didn't know how tomanage it. Well, it ended in her slipping out at one end of the car whenwe arrived, while I was looking out for a cab for her at the other." Hestopped to recover from a stronger gust of wind. "I--I thought it a goodjoke on me, and let the thing drop out of my mind, although, mind you,she'd promised to meet me a month afterwards at the same time and place.Well, when the day came I happened to be in Boston, and went to thestation. Don't know why I went, for I didn't for a moment think she'dkeep her appointment. First, I couldn't find her in the train, but afterwe'd started she came along out of some seat in the corner, prettierthan ever, holding out her hand." He drew a long inspiration. "You canbet your life, Ned, I didn't let go that little hand the rest of thejourney."

  His passion, or what passed for it, seemed to impart its warmth to thevehicle, and even stirred the chilled pulses of the man beside him.

  "Well, who and what was she?"

  "Didn't find out; don't know now. For the first thing she made mepromise was not to follow her, nor to try to know her name. In returnshe said she would meet me again on another train near Hartford. Shedid--and again and again--but always on the train for about an hour,going or coming. Then she missed an appointment. I was regularly cut up,I tell you, and swore as she hadn't kept her word, I wouldn't keep mine,and began to hunt for her. In the midst of it I saw her accidentally; nomatter where; I followed her to--well, that's no matter to you, either.Enough that I saw her again--and, well, Ned, such is the influence ofthat girl over me that, by George! she made me make the same promiseagain!"

  Blandford, a little disappointed at his friend's dogmatic suppression ofcertain material facts, shrugged his shoulders.

  "If that's all your story," he said, "I must say I see no prospect ofyour reforming. It's the old thing over again, only this time you areevidently the victim. She's some designing creature who will have you ifshe hasn't already got you completely in her power."

  "You don't know what you're talking about, Ned, and you'd better quit,"returned Demorest, with cheerful authoritativeness. "I tell you thatthat's the sort of girl I'm going to marry, if I can, and settle downupon. You can make a memorandum of that, old man, if you like."

  "Then I don't really see why you want to talk to ME about it. And if youare thinking that such a story would go down for a moment with Joan asan evidence of your reformation, you're completely out, Dick. Was thatyour idea?"

  "Yes--and I can tell you, you're wrong again, Ned. You don't knowanything about women. You do just as I say--do you understand?--anddon't interfere with your own wrong-headed opinions of what other peoplewill think, and I'll take the risks of Mrs. Blandford giving me goodadvice. Your wife has got a heap more sense on these subjects than youhave, you bet. You just tell her that I want to mar
ry the girl and wanther to help me--that I mean business, this time--and you'll see howquick she'll come down. That's all I want of you. Will you or won'tyou?"

  With an outward expression of sceptical consideration and an inwardsuspicion of the peculiar force of this man's dogmatic insight,Blandford assented, with, I fear, the mental reservation of tellingthe story to his wife in his own way. He was surprised when his friendsuddenly drew the horse up sharply, and after a moment's pause beganto back him, cramp the wheels of the buggy and then skilfully, in thealmost profound darkness, turn the vehicle and horse completely round tothe opposite direction.

  "Then you are not going over the bridge?" said Blandford.

  Demorest made an imperative gesture of silence. The tumultuous rushand roar of swollen and rapid water came from the darkness behind them."There's been another break-out somewhere, and I reckon the bridge hasgot all it can do to-night to keep itself out of water without taking usover. At least, as I promised to set you down at your wife's door insideof the hour, I don't propose to try." As the horse now travelled moreeasily with the wind behind him, Demorest, dismissing abruptly all othersubjects, laid his hand with brusque familiarity on his companion'sknee, and as if the hour for social and confidential greeting had onlyjust then arrived, said: "Well, Neddy, old boy, how are you getting on?"

  "So, so," said Blandford, dubiously. "You see," he began,argumentatively, "in my business there's a good deal of competition, andI was only saying this morning--"

  But either Demorest was already familiar with his friend's arguments,or had as usual exhausted his topic, for without paying the slightestattention to him, he again demanded abruptly, "Why don't you go toCalifornia? Here everything's played out. That's the country for a youngman like you--just starting into life, and without incumbrances. If Iwas free and fixed in my family affairs like you I'd go to-morrow."

  There was such an occult positivism in Demorest's manner that for aninstant Blandford, who had been married two years, and was transactinga steady and fairly profitable manufacturing business in the adjacenttown, actually believed he was more fitted for adventurous speculationthan the grimly erratic man of energetic impulses and pleasures besidehim. He managed to stammer hesitatingly:

  "But there's Joan--she--"

  "Nonsense! Let her stay with her mother; you sell out your interestin the business, put the money into an assorted cargo, and clap it andyourself into the first ship out of Boston--and there you are. You'vebeen married going on two years now, and a little separation untilyou've built up a business out there, won't do either of you any harm."

  Blandford, who was very much in love with his wife, was not, however,above putting the onus of embarrassing affection upon HER. "You don'tknow, Joan, Dick," he replied. "She'd never consent to a separation,even for a short time."

  "Try her. She's a sensible woman--a deuced sight more than you are. Youdon't understand women, Ned. That's what's the matter with you."

  It required all of Blandford's fond memories of his wife's conservativehabits, Puritan practicality, religious domesticity, and strong familyattachments, to withstand Demorest's dogmatic convictions. He smiled,however, with a certain complacency, as he also recalled the previousautumn when the first news of the California gold discovery hadpenetrated North Liberty, and he had expressed to her his belief that itwould offer an outlet to Demorest's adventurous energy. She had receivedit with ill-disguised satisfaction, and the remark that if this exodusof Mammon cleared the community of the godless and unregenerate it wouldonly be another proof of God's mysterious providence.

  With the tumultuous wind at their backs it was not long before thebuggy rattled once more over the cobble-stones of the town. Under thedirection of his friend, Demorest, who still retained possession of thereins, drove briskly down a side street of more pretentious dwellings,where Blandford lived. One or two wayfarers looked up.

  "Not so fast, Dick."

  "Why? I want to bring you up to your door in style."

  "Yes--but--it's Sunday. That's my house, the corner one."

  They had stopped before a square, two-storied brick house, with anequally square wooden porch supported by two plain, rigid woodencolumns, and a hollow sweep of dull concavity above the door, evidentlyof the same architectural order as the church. There was no corner orprojection to break the force of the wind that swept its smooth glacialsurface; there was no indication of light or warmth behind its sixclosed windows.

  "There seems to be nobody at home," said Demorest, briefly. "Come alongwith me to the hotel."

  "Joan sits in the back parlor, Sundays," explained the husband.

  "Shall I drive round to the barn and leave the horse and buggy therewhile you go in?" continued Demorest, good-humoredly, pointing to thestable gate at the side.

  "No, thank you," returned Blandford, "it's locked, and I'll have to openit from the other side after I go in. The horse will stand until then.I think I'll have to say good-night, now," he added, with a suddenhalf-ashamed consciousness of the forbidding aspect of the house, andhis own inhospitality. "I'm sorry I can't ask you in--but you understandwhy."

  "All right," returned Demorest, stoutly, turning up his coat-collar, andunfurling his umbrella. "The hotel is only four blocks away--you'll findme there to-morrow morning if you call. But mind you tell your wife justwhat I told you--and no meandering of your own--you hear! She'll strikeout some idea with her woman's wits, you bet. Good-night, old man!" Hereached out his hand, pressed Blandford's strongly and potentially, andstrode down the street.

  Blandford hitched his steaming horse to a sleet-covered horse blockwith a quick sigh of impatient sympathy over the animal and himself, andafter fumbling in his pocket for a latchkey, opened the front door.A vista of well-ordered obscurity with shadowy trestle-like objectsagainst the walls, and an odor of chill decorum, as if of a damp butrespectable funeral, greeted him on entering. A faint light, like a colddawn, broke through the glass pane of a door leading to the kitchen.Blandford paused in the mid-darkness and hesitated. Should he first goto his wife in the back parlor, or pass silently through the kitchen,open the back gate, and mercifully bestow his sweating beast in thestable? With the reflection that an immediate conjugal greeting, whilehis horse was still exposed to the fury of the blast in the street,would necessarily be curtailed and limited, he compromised by quicklypassing through the kitchen into the stable yard, opening the gate,and driving horse and vehicle under the shed to await later and morethorough ministration. As he entered the back door, a faint hope thathis wife might have heard him and would be waiting for him in the hallfor an instant thrilled him; but he remembered it was Sunday, and thatshe was probably engaged in some devotional reading or exercise.He hesitatingly opened the back-parlor door with a consciousness ofcommitting some unreasonable trespass, and entered.

  She was there, sitting quietly before a large, round, shiningcentre-table, whose sterile emptiness was relieved only by a shaded lampand a large black and gilt open volume. A single picture on theopposite wall--the portrait of an elderly gentleman stiffened over acorresponding volume, which he held in invincible mortmain in his rigidhand, and apparently defied posterity to take from him--seemed to offera not uncongenial companionship. Yet the greenish light of the shadefell upon a young and pretty face, despite the color it extracted fromit, and the hand that supported her low white forehead over whichher full hair was simply parted, like a brown curtain, was slim andgentle-womanly. In spite of her plain lustreless silk dress, in spite ofthe formal frame of sombre heavy horsehair and mahogany furniture thatseemed to set her off, she diffused an atmosphere of cleanly grace andprim refinement through the apartment. The priestess of this ascetictemple, the femininity of her closely covered arms, her pink ears, anda little serviceable morocco house-shoe that was visible lower down,resting on the carved lion's paw that upheld the centre-table, appearedto be only the more accented. And the precisely rounded but softlyheaving bosom, that was pressed upon the edges of the open book ofsermons before her, seemed to
assert itself triumphantly over the rigorsof the volume.

  At least so her husband and lover thought, as he moved tenderlytowards her. She met his first kiss on her forehead; the second, asupererogatory one, based on some supposed inefficiency in the first,fell upon a shining band of her hair, beside her neck. She reached upher slim hands, caught his wrists firmly, and, slightly putting himaside, said:

  "There, Edward?"

  "I drove out from Warensboro, so as to get here to-night, as I have toreturn to the city on Tuesday. I thought it would give me a littlemore time with you, Joan," he said, looking around him, and, at last,hesitatingly drawing an apparently reluctant chair from its formalposition at the window. The remembrance that he had ever dared to occupythe same chair with her, now seemed hardly possible of credence.

  "If it was a question of your travelling on the Lord's Day, Edward, Iwould rather you should have waited until to-morrow," she said, withslow precision.

  "But--I--I thought I'd get here in time for the meeting," he said,weakly.

  "And instead, you have driven through the town, I suppose, whereeverybody will see you and talk about it. But," she added, raising herdark eyes suddenly to his, "where else have you been? The train getsinto Warensboro at six, and it's only half an hour's drive from there.What have you been doing, Edward?"

  It was scarcely a felicitous moment for the introduction of Demorest'sname, and he would have avoided it. But he reflected that he had beenseen, and he was naturally truthful. "I met Dick Demorest near thechurch, and as he had something to tell me, we drove down the turnpike alittle way--so as to be out of the town, you know, Joan--and--and--"

  He stopped. Her face had taken upon itself that appalling andexasperating calmness of very good people who never get angry, but driveothers to frenzy by the simple occlusion of an adamantine veil betweentheir own feelings and their opponents'. "I'll tell you all about itafter I've put up the horse," he said hurriedly, glad to escape untilthe veil was lifted again. "I suppose the hired man is out."

  "I should hope he was in church, Edward, but I trust YOU won't delaytaking care of that poor dumb brute who has been obliged to minister toyour and Mr. Demorest's Sabbath pleasures."

  Blandford did not wait for a further suggestion. When the door hadclosed behind him, Mrs. Blandford went to the mantel-shelf, where agrimly allegorical clock cut down the hours and minutes of men with ascythe, and consulted it with a slight knitting of her pretty eyebrows.Then she fell into a vague abstraction, standing before the open bookon the centre-table. Then she closed it with a snap, and methodicallyputting it exactly in the middle of the top of a black cabinet in thecorner, lifted the shaded lamp in her hand and passed slowly with it upthe stairs to her bedroom, where her light steps were heard moving toand fro. In a few moments she reappeared, stopping for a moment in thehall with the lighted lamp as if to watch and listen for her husband'sreturn. Seen in that favorable light, her cheeks had caught a delicatecolor, and her dark eyes shone softly. Putting the lamp down in exactlythe same place as before, she returned to the cabinet for the book,brought it again to the table, opened it at the page where she hadplaced her perforated cardboard book-marker, sat down beside it, andwith her hands in her lap and her eyes on the page began abstractedly totear a small piece of paper into tiny fragments. When she had reduced itto the smallest shreds, she scraped the pieces out of her silk lap andagain collected them in the pink hollow of her little hand, kneelingdown on the scrupulously well-swept carpet to peck up with a bird-likeaction of her thumb and forefinger an escaped atom here and there. Theseand the contents of her hand she poured into the chilly cavity of asepulchral-looking alabaster vase that stood on the etagere. Returningto her old seat, and making a nest for her clasped fingers in the lapof her dress, she remained in that attitude, her shoulders a littlenarrowed and bent forward, until her husband returned.

  "I've lit the fire in the bedroom for you to change your clothes by,"she said, as he entered; then evading the caress which this wifelyattention provoked, by bending still more primly over her book, sheadded, "Go at once. You're making everything quite damp here."

  He returned in a few moments in his slippers and jacket, but evidentlyfound the same difficulty in securing a conjugal and confidentialcontiguity to his wife. There was no apparent social centre or nucleusof comfort in the apartment; its fireplace, sealed by an iron ornamentlike a monumental tablet over dead ashes, had its functions supersededby an air-tight drum in the corner, warmed at second-hand from thedining-room below, and offered no attractive seclusion; the sofa againstthe wall was immovable and formally repellent. He was obliged to drawa chair beside the table, whose every curve seemed to facilitate hiswife's easy withdrawal from side-by-side familiarity.

  "Demorest has been urging me very strongly to go to California, but, ofcourse, I spoke of you," he said, stealing his hand into his wife's lap,and possessing himself of her fingers.

  Mrs. Blandford slowly lifted her fingers enclosed in his clasping handand placed them in shameless publicity on the volume before her. Thisimplied desecration was too much for Blandford; he withdrew his hand.

  "Does that man propose to go with you?" asked Mrs. Blandford, coldly.

  "No; he's preoccupied with other matters that he wanted me to talk toyou about," said her husband, hesitatingly. "He is--"

  "Because"--continued Mrs. Blandford in the same measured tone, "if hedoes not add his own evil company to his advice, it is the best he hasever given yet. I think he might have taken another day than the Lord'sto talk about it, but we must not despise the means nor the hour whencethe truth comes. Father wanted me to take some reasonable moment toprepare you to consider it seriously, and I thought of talking to youabout it to-morrow. He thinks it would be a very judicious plan. EvenDeacon Truesdail--"

  "Having sold his invoice of damaged sugar kettles for mining purposes,is converted," said Blandford, goaded into momentary testiness by hiswife's unexpected acquiescence and a sudden recollection of Demorest'sprophecy. "You have changed your opinion, Joan, since last fall, whenyou couldn't bear to think of my leaving you," he added reproachfully.

  "I couldn't bear to think of your joining the mob of lawless and sinfulmen who use that as an excuse for leaving their wives and families. Asfor my own feelings, Edward, I have never allowed them to stand betweenme and what I believed best for our home and your Christian welfare.Though I have no cause to admire the influence that I find this man,Demorest, still holds over you, I am willing to acquiesce, as you see,in what he advises for your good. You can hardly reproach ME, Edward,for worldly or selfish motives."

  Blandford felt keenly the bitter truth of his wife's speech. For themoment he would gladly have exchanged it for a more illogical andselfish affection, but he reflected that he had married this religiousgirl for the security of an affection which he felt was not subject tothe temptations of the world--or even its own weakness--as was too oftenthe case with the giddy maidens whom he had known through Demorest'scompanionship. It was, therefore, more with a sense of recalling thisdistinctive quality of his wife than any loyalty to Demorest that hesuddenly resolved to confide to her the latter's fatuous folly.

  "I know it, dear," he said, apologetically, "and we'll talk it overto-morrow, and it may be possible to arrange it so that you shall gowith me. But, speaking of Demorest, I think you don't quite do HIMjustice. He really respects YOUR feelings and your knowledge of rightand wrong more than you imagine. I actually believe he came hereto-night merely to get me to interest you in an extraordinary loveaffair of his. I mean, Joan," he added hastily, seeing the same look ofdull repression come over her face, "I mean, Joan--that is, you know,from all I can judge--it is something really serious this time. Heintends to reform. And this is because he has become violently smittenwith a young woman whom he has only seen half a dozen times, at longintervals, whom he first met in a railway train, and whose name andresidence he don't even know."

  There was an ominous silence--so hushed that the ticking of theallegorical clock
came like a grim monitor. "Then," said Mrs. Blandford,in a hard, dry voice that her alarmed husband scarcely recognized,"he proposed to insult your wife by taking her into his shamefulconfidence."

  "Good heavens! Joan, no--you don't understand. At the worst, this issome virtuous but silly school-girl, who, though she may be intendingonly an innocent flirtation with him, has made this man actually anddeeply in love with her. Yes; it is a fact, Joan. I know Dick Demorest,and if ever there was a man honestly in love, it is he."

  "Then you mean to say that this man--an utter stranger to me--a manwhom I've never laid my eyes on--whom I wouldn't know if I met in thestreet--expects me to advise him--to--to--" She stopped. Blandford couldscarcely believe his senses. There were tears in her eyes--this womanwho never cried; her voice trembled--she who had always controlled heremotions.

  He took advantage of this odd but opportune melting. He placed hisarm around her shoulders. She tried to escape it, but with a coy, shymovement, half hysterical, half girlish, unlike her usual stony, moralprecision. "Yes, Joan," he repeated, laughingly, "but whose fault is it?Not HIS, remember! And I firmly believe he thinks you can do him good."

  "But he has never seen me," she continued, with a nervous little laugh,"and probably considers me some old Gorgon--like--like--Sister JemimaSkerret."

  Blandford smiled with the complacency of far-reaching masculineintuition. Ah! that shrewd fellow, Demorest, was right. Joan, dear Joan,was only a woman after all.

  "Then he'll be the more agreeably astonished," he returned, gayly, "andI think YOU will, too, Joan. For Dick isn't a bad-looking fellow; mostwomen like him. It's true," he continued, much amused at the noveltyof the perfectly natural toss and grimace with which Mrs. Blandfordreceived this statement.

  "I think he's been pointed out to me somewhere," she said, thoughtfully;"he's a tall, dark, dissipated-looking man."

  "Nothing of the kind," laughed her husband. "He's middle-sized and asblond as your cousin Joe, only he's got a long yellow moustache, andhas a quick, abrupt way of talking. He isn't at all fancy-looking; you'dtake him for an energetic business man or a doctor, if you didn't knowhim. So you see, Joan, this correct little wife of mine has been alittle, just a little, prejudiced."

  He drew her again gently backwards and nearer his seat, but she caughthis wrists in her slim hands, and rising from the chair at the samemoment, dexterously slipped from his embrace with her back towards him."I do not know why I should be unprejudiced by anything you've told me,"she said, sharply closing the book of sermons, and, with her back stillto her husband, reinstating it formally in its place on the cabinet."It's probably one of his many scandalous pursuits of defenceless andbelieving women, and he, no doubt, goes off to Boston, laughing at youfor thinking him in earnest; and as ready to tell his story to anybodyelse and boast of his double deceit." Her voice had a touch of humanasperity in it now, which he had never before noticed, but recognizing,as he thought, the human cause, it was far from exciting hisdispleasure.

  "Wrong again, Joan; he's waiting here at the Independence House for meto see him to-morrow," he returned, cheerfully. "And I believe him somuch in earnest that I would be ready to swear that not another personwill ever know the story but you and I and he. No, it is a real thingwith him; he's dead in love, and it's your duty as a Christian to helphim."

  There was a moment of silence. Mrs. Blandford remained by the cabinet,methodically arranging some small articles displaced by the return ofthe book. "Well," she said, suddenly, "you don't tell me what mother hadto say. Of course, as you came home earlier than you expected, you hadtime to stop THERE--only four doors from this house."

  "Well, no, Joan," replied Blandford, in awkward discomfiture. "You see Imet Dick first, and then--then I hurried here to you--and--and--I cleanforgot it. I'm very sorry," he added, dejectedly.

  "And I more deeply so," she returned, with her previous bloodless moralprecision, "for she probably knows by this time, Edward, why you haveomitted your usual Sabbath visit, and with WHOM you were."

  "But I can pull on my boots again and run in there for a moment," hesuggested, dubiously, "if you think it necessary. It won't take me amoment."

  "No," she said, positively; "it is so late now that your visit wouldonly show it to be a second thought. I will go myself--it will be a callfor us both."

  "But shall I go with you to the door? It is dark and sleeting,"suggested Blandford, eagerly.

  "No," she replied, peremptorily. "Stay where you are, and when Ezekieland Bridget come in send them to bed, for I have made everything fast inthe kitchen. Don't wait up for me."

  She left the room, and in a few moments returned, wrapped from head tofoot in an enormous plaid shawl. A white woollen scarf thrown over herbare brown head, and twice rolled around her neck, almost concealed herface from view. When she had parted from her husband, and reached thedarkened hall below, she drew from beneath the folds of her shawl athick blue veil, with which she completely enveloped her features. Asshe opened the front door and peered out into the night, her own husbandwould have scarcely recognized her.

  With her head lowered against the keen wind she walked rapidly downthe street and stopped for an instant at the door of the fourth house.Glancing quickly back at the house she had left and then at the closedwindows of the one she had halted before, she gathered her skirts withone hand and sped away from both, never stopping until she reached thedoor of the Independence Hotel.