“But, I’d rather not,” said Mell, drawing back.

“Rather not?” screamed Miss Josey. “Did anybody ever before hear of a woman who would rather not be a queen—a queen in the hearts of men?”

This last remark brought Mell to her senses. Not one of them but would gladly stand where she stood—gladly put themselves in her shoes if they could. Rube was not a mate, as mating goes, to be met with every day in the year. The sugared point of this timely suggestion served Miss Josey’s purpose effectually. It stilled the wild throbbing in the girl’s heart, brought the blood back to her face, and turned the purple of such wondrous hue in her eyes, to the softest black; with intensity of gratification, Jerome himself was forgotten for the nonce.

Miss Josey, still in a flutter of delight, now proceeded to put on her sash, to replace the knot of ribbons at her throat, to pass her hands assuagingly across Mell’s wilderness of frolicsome hair, and to put an extra touch or two to her simple toilette generally; whispering words of stimulation and encouragement all the while.

Thoroughly put to rights, Miss Josey placed the girl’s hand into that of a very grand personage—the president of the Grange, in fact—who led her gallantly to the spot selected for the coronation ceremonies. There stood the hero of the day. He advanced a step or two as she drew near, he bowed low, and then in a distinct voice with a somewhat heightened color, but in his usual simple, straightforward manner, said: “Miss Creecy, I beg you will do me the honor to accept this trophy of my victory.”

Miss Creecy silently bowed her head; he placed the wreath upon it, and lo! what has become of our rustic maiden? She is a Queen!

Nevertheless, she immediately fell back again into Miss Josey’s hands, who hastened to push the crown this way and then that,—forward a little, and then backward a little—just one barley-corn this side and just one the other; until the magical spot of perfect-becomingness having been reached, she wisely let it be. As soon as the crowd caught sight of this bright splendor of yellow hair, surmounted by a wreath of flowers, the shouting and yelling re-commenced; and when it was passed with electric swiftness from mouth to mouth, that the head of the Rutland family, the owner of an honored name and a big estate, had chosen for his queen, not the daughter of a rich planter or a great statesman, but a child of the yeomanry, a ripple of intense excitement flashed through the multitude, and enthusiasm knew no bounds.

“Rutland for the people, and the people for Rutland!” was the joyous outpouring of the common heart. A sentiment which only subsided occasionally, to be renewed with increased vigor and manifold cheers.

“I see your game,” said the secretary of the Grange to Rube, with a sly wink. “You are going to run for the Legislature?”

“Your penetration surprises me,” returned Rube with a laugh. “What a pity the voting couldn’t be done now; I’d be willing to risk a couple of thousand on my own election, if it could!”

“It’s awfully becoming to her, isn’t it?” inquired Jerome, speaking to Clara, and referring to the crown which sat upon the queen’s head.

“I don’t think so,” returned Clara, “not in the least becoming. It doesn’t suit the color of her hair.”

“Sure enough! I had forgotten that. We bought it to suit yours, didn’t we? It is too bad! but never mind; we’ll come in for the second prize, certain.”

“Not I!” exclaimed Clara, with a toss of her head. “It is first or none with me. There is something mean, little, contemptible, about a second prize, just like all second-rate things! Having failed in securing the first, were I in your place, I would not try for the second.”

And she left him, much angered.

“Whew!” softly whistled Jerome. “It strikes me that what pleases one woman, doesn’t please another. Why is that? It also strikes me that it’s no use trying to please any of ’em. A man can’t; not unless he converts himself into a sort of synchronous multiplex machine, and tries seventy-five different ways all at once.”

The stream of people now poured in one direction,—towards royalty. Queens differ; but there is a something about every one of them which fetches the crowd. While this one stood hemmed in on all sides, an object of curiosity to all classes and conditions, all eager for a sight of her, some eager to be made known to her, others wanting to catch a look, a word, a smile, Mell heard some one at her elbow say, softly:

“Mellville.”

Turning, she confronted Jerome. In a flash, her whole appearance changed. The moment before she had been a gracious sovereign, accepting with queenly grace the homage of her loyal subjects. Now, she was an outraged monarch jealous of her rank, standing on her dignity.

“How dare you, sir!” asked Mell, eyeing him haughtily and drawing herself up to her fullest height. “How dare you to speak to me! How dare you touch me! I have not the honor of your acquaintance, sir!”

Jerome was undeniably astonished; but this was not the time, not the place to indulge in a feeling of astonishment, or to make an exhibition of himself or her.

“Your Majesty,” said Jerome, with his characteristic coolness, “will graciously pardon me. The crowd is great, it pressed heavily upon all sides and I have not been able to resist it.”

He fell back at once, and Mell bowed, just as if nothing had happened, to the gentleman, whom the master of ceremonies was in the act of introducing to her.

In the crush, Jerome encountered Rube. He had been called off on some matter under discussion among those running the shebang—Rube’s way of putting it—and was now endeavoring to push his way back to Mell.

“Tip-top!” said Rube, by way of thanks, and seizing his friend’s hand he wrung it as if his intention was to wring it clean off. “You’re a trump!”

“Don’t mention it!” begged Jerome. He began to laugh again. For some reason the whole thing was excessively amusing to Jerome.

“But I will mention it,” persisted Rube. “I’ll thank you for it to my dying day. It was so self-sacrificing on your part, considering everything.”

“Oh, was it?” exclaimed his companion, choking down his risibles. “Well—ah—I don’t exactly feel it that way. A mere trifle.”

“Not to me,” declared Rube.

“Perhaps not to me, either,” conceded Jerome, looking on the subject more seriously. “For Clara—”

“You can patch up Clara,” Rube suggested, soothingly.

“Do you think so? It’s a rankling casus belli at present, I can tell you! But how about your rustic beauty, eh, Rube? Is she pleased? Does she like it?”

“Pleased? Like it? You bet she does! She’s delighted!”

“No one has introduced me yet,” Jerome next remarked, quite incidentally. “And I am sure if her Gracious Majesty smiles upon any of her loyal subjects it ought to be me.”

“That’s so! So come right along now.” They reached her side.

“Mell, here’s the very best fellow in the world,” said Rube, out of the fullness of his heart, forgetting the prescribed forms of etiquette in the absorption of warm feeling.

Mell had noted their approach. She was not taken unawares. She bent her head slightly to the newcomer, she looked him over for a whole minute, it seemed, before she opened her lips and said:

“How do you do, Mr. Very-Best-Fellow-in-the-World?”

Those near enough to hear roared with laughter, for the young queen’s manner made the whole thing so absurdly funny; and perhaps there is nothing a crowd so much enjoys as the taking down of a person whom they regard in the light of one much needing to be taken down.

“His name is Devonhough,” Rube hastened to explain, not relishing the laugh against his friend at this particular time by his particular fault. “Mr. Devonhough, Miss Creecy. He is my very best friend, Mell. Shake hands with him.”

Mell did so; but without the faintest glimmering of a smile, and with such glacial dignity as fairly charged the atmosphere with iciness. Not content with this, she met all his subsequent efforts to cultivate her acquaintance with the briefest and chilliest repulses.

Rube was much concerned. He saw dimly that his best friend had not, somehow, made a favorable impression upon his future wife; but he could not tell the why or wherefore. While he wondered within him what he could do to put things on a pleasanter footing between them, someone else demanded his attention.

“See here,” said Jerome, as soon as Rube’s back was turned. “I hope you now consider me sufficiently punished. I hope you feel even. I hope you won’t treat me to any more state airs. I am tired of them. Your Majesty, let me tell you something. Mark well my words. It is to me, not Rube, you owe your present exaltation.”

“To you!”

The unsmiling countenance now broke into a ripple of scorn.

“What a ridiculous thing for you to say!”

“The whole thing has been ridiculous,” said Jerome. “I never in my whole life ever enjoyed anything so much. ’Tis the one grain of truth which gives point to the ridiculous. Think of Rube, dear fellow, so anxious to crown you, knowing nothing, suspecting nothing, begging me not to run fast, and I, so ten thousand times more anxious than he could possibly be, to have you crowned.”

“You?”

“Yes. Me! Don’t you know, in your heart, Mellville, that I wanted you crowned?”

“But with that wreath in my own hand, Mell, I was morally bound to put it upon another head.”

“Ah, indeed! Why?”

Jerome did not answer immediately. When he did, it was with averted eyes, and with some impatience, and not in reply to her first question at all, but her quick repetition of his own words, “Morally bound, eh?”

“Yes, Mellville. You forget I am a guest in her mother’s house.”

“I do not forget it! I remember it every hour in the whole twenty-four; but does that make it incumbent upon you to ignore me? Jerome, look me in the face. What is Clara Rutland to you?”

“Nothing!” exclaimed he, savagely, between compressed lips. “Less than nothing! A hundred times to-day I have wished her at the bottom of—”

“There! No use to send her there now. It’s too late!”

The knowledge of what she had done, the wretchedness she saw it was destined to entail upon her, all this while couchant like a wild beast within her, now uprose into her expressive features. Jerome was struck with it.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“You will know soon enough,” she responded.

He stooped to pick up the handkerchief she had dropped, and in restoring it, his hand, so cool and steady, came in contact with hers, so hot and tremulous; it touched and lingered, lingered long, and clung in a tender pressure; while a voice so low and firm, a voice, oh! so faint and sweet, stole its way into her ear, murmuring but one word, one little, fond word, which moved her in the strangest way, which thrilled, yet soothed her. Cooler than snow it fell upon her burning cheeks, warmer than a sunbeam into her freezing heart. That little game with Rube passed out of her memory.

But looking up all too soon, she saw him. He smiled upon her. He was glad to see that she and Devonhough were getting along quite pleasantly.

“I wish you would go away!” she suddenly exclaimed, turning upon her companion rudely. “Go back to Clara Rutland! You have no business here! I do not believe a word you have said to me! I yet fail to comprehend why a man may not be the master of his own actions.”

“Heigh-ho!” sighed Jerome. “Just so it is in life. Just as a man begins to think he has put everything in order, and settled the question, here comes chaos again. You do not understand that, Mell? Well, I will tell you. Every man has a master—circumstance. On my side, I am surprised that you, with all your quickness of apprehension, have not been able to see clearer and deeper into this subject. You ought to have known, you must have felt that I had some good reason for acting towards you as I have to-day. Have you been true to your promise to trust me—and trust me blindly? I fear not. You have been cruelly angry with me ever since this morning, when I dared not speak.”

“And why was it that you dared not speak?” demanded Mell, her lip curling contemptuously, but with a tremolo movement in her voice. “Does it then require some courage for a man, in your position to speak to a poor girl like me? Rube does not think so.”

“With Rube it is different.”

“It is, very different. There is no false pride about Rube.”

“And I hope there is none about me. But, Mell, you do not in the least understand my position.”

“I know as much about it as I care to know. Henceforth, Mr. Devonhough, let us be strangers.”

“We can never be strangers,” said Jerome. He was growing earnest; he spoke very low and with that rapidity of utterance which accompanies excited feelings. “This no time nor place, Mell, for such an explanation; but here, and now, I will make it. I cannot longer exist under the ban of your displeasure. Know then, dear, that I would not speak to you this morning for your own sweet sake—not mine. I was driven to it to protect your good name, and keep you out of the mouths of those shallow-pated creatures, who have nothing else to talk about but other people’s failings. Had Clara Rutland once seen me speak to you—had she for one moment suspected the least acquaintance between us, that hydra-headed monster, Curiosity, would have lifted its unpitying voice in a hundred awkward questions: ‘How did you come to know Mell Creecy? Where did you meet her? Who introduced you to her?’ And so on to the end of a long chapter. I did not wish to say, for your sake, that I had never met you anywhere but in a cornfield. I did not wish to say, for your sake, that we had became acquainted in a very delightful, but by no means conventional, manner. I have thought it best, all along, to keep the fact of our acquaintance in the background, until we were brought together in some way perfectly legitimate and customary. Always for your sake, dear, not mine. Now you know in part; to-morrow I will make a clean breast of all my difficulties; so disperse these clouds, and give me one sweet look ere I go.”

Instead of that, Mell swallowed a lump in her throat which felt as big as her head. She studiously avoided, for the rest of the day, any further speech with Jerome. His explanation was plausible enough on its face; but Mell was in no condition of mind to draw conclusions which might stand the test of reason, or be satisfactorily demonstrated on geometrical principles; and nothing that Jerome could say was now calculated to act as a sedative on Mell’s nerves. She kept whispering to herself, “He feels it, yes, he feels it;” and thus nourished the firmness and the bravado necessary to her in the further requirements of her high position. She needed it all, and more, when it came to bestowing upon Jerome a handsome pair of spurs, as the second prize of the day. Certainly he cared for her, or why this glow on his clear-cut face, or why this light in his speaking eyes now bent upon her. Mell turned her head quickly.

“I can’t understand why you don’t like Devonhough,” Rube remarked, noticing the movement. “I think it odd. He carries things with a high hand among the girls, I can tell you. Most all of ’em are dead in love with him.”

“And do you wish me added to the list?” interrogated Mell, finding herself in a tight place, and hardly knowing how to get out of it.

“Well, no; I don’t!” laughed Rube, much appreciating the sly humor of the question.

By seven o’clock the day’s festivities were concluded; and then ensued a melting of all hostile elements into a homogeneous mass, all ravenous after iced-lemonade and home-made cake, and a heterogeneous devouring of the same; after which, the crowd, well pleased, but pretty well fagged out, turned their faces homeward, under a sun still shining, but shorn of its hottest beams.

Ambitious, indeed, must be that girl not satisfied with this wonderful result of one single operation in matrimonial stocks. And yet Mell is not happy. She forgets to give heed to what Rube is saying; she forgets almost to answer him back; so full of regret is she for her own lost self. She had had a thousand longings to get out of her old self, and out of her old life, and now, on the threshold of a new existence, Mell finds herself with only one desire—just to get back where she came from. If only she could—oh! if only she could, most gladly would this lately crowned queen have relinquished the glories of empire, the spoils of captive hearts, the trophies of social triumphs, the high emprise of a brilliant future, only to be simple Mell once more.

Ah, poor Mell! Not for sale now. Sold!

CHAPTER V.
PLAYERS ON A STAGE.

Now, then, here is Thursday. Jerome had said: “You will be on hand without fail, Mell; and so will I, and so will something else.”

“But that something else,” moaned the hapless Mell, bowed down and heart-stricken, “will never be on hand again in the meadow for me, nor anywhere else.”

Saddest of all, she had herself laid the axe to the root of her own happiness; she had baited her own hook and caught a big fish; she had provoked her own doom, and herself sealed it.

Rube was not to blame.

And Jerome—he had made out a good case. Had he loved her less he would, perhaps, have acted differently.

She had digged a pitfall for her own occupation; and of all comfortless and stony places, such pitfalls as this make the hardest lying.

Out in the narrow hall, on its own particular peg, hung Mell’s white sun-bonnet. She took it down and put it on her head, and walked slowly to the top of the hill. With no intention of going to the meadow herself, her feelings demanded that she should find out if Jerome was there.

He was, strolling moodily to and fro, in deep thought.

He knows now. Rube has told him. He despises her to-day, and yesterday he had loved her. Look at him down there in the meadow! a beam from the sun, a breath from the hills, a part of the morning, the most glorious expression of nature in all nature’s glory! Observe how he walks! Note how he stands still! Most men know how to walk, and most men know how to stand still, after a fashion; but not after Jerome’s fashion. In motion, Jerome is a poem set a-going; standing still, he is grace doing nothing. He can lift one hand, and in that ordinary act sow the seed of a dozen beautiful fancies; he can wield such mastery over the physical forces of expression as has wondrous potency to sway the emotions of others.

So she thought; so she stood, hidden herself from sight, but with the meadow in full view; and while so thinking, and so standing, drinking him in with every breath, feeding upon him with her eyes, devouring him with her soul, she, the affianced wife of another!

Oh, wicked Mell!

Jerome grows impatient; he looks at his watch, and turns inquiringly towards the hill; and Mell flies back to the house as if pursued by fiery dragons. For if he but caught sight of her, if he but crooked his finger at her, she would go down there, and then—what then?

“Won’t you give me a little time to think?” she pleaded. “It has come so sudden!”

“Hasn’t it, though!” cried happy Rube. “Do you half realize the romance of the thing, Mellville? ’Tis like a page out of Knight-Errantry, the days of lances and standards, and blood-thrilling adventures, when warriors in steel swore by the Holy-rood, and won fair women’s smiles by deeds of valor—something very unlike the prosaic happenings of this practical modern life. But yesterday a wandering pilgrim, to-day I have found a shrine. ‘’Tis a dream!’ I thought, when I opened my eyes this morning, ‘a dream, too sweet to be true! Rube, old fellow,’ I said to myself, ‘you’ve got something to live for now. You must look to your ways and improve upon the old ones. There’s a dear little hand that belongs to you; there’s a pair of blue eyes to watch for your coming; there’s a sweet little woman who believes in you, God bless her! For her sake I will run the race of life like a man; for her sweet sake I will win it!’”

This was the time for Mell to speak. She wanted to speak, but—she did not. There were just exactly six reasons why she did not.

Here they are, all in a row:

Reason Number One.—She was not quite sure of Jerome—quite sure, perhaps, in regard to his affections, but not his intentions. Love is much, but not everything, and a lover surrounded by difficulties is not to be depended upon matrimonially.

Number Two.—She was as resolutely bent upon getting out of this mean, sordid life as ever, and what way was there but this way?

Number Three.—Rube was rich, and Rube’s wife would be rich, too. For her part, she was sick and tired of poverty. Poverty, in a world governed by wealth, is the most unpardonable sin in that world’s decalogue.

Number Four.—Rube was in “society,” and what ambitious woman ever yet saved her soul outside the magic circle of society?

Number Five.—Rube was an aristocrat, and Rube’s wife would be ex necessitate rei, an aristocrat also. Her Creator, she believed, had intended her for an aristocrat; otherwise why had He endowed her with intellect, beauty, and the power to sway men’s passions?

Number Six.—The fact that she did not love Rube had, in reality, nothing to do with Rube’s eligibility as a husband. He would make a very good one, an infinitely better one than none at all!

Of course, she would be paying a tremendous price for all these worldly advantages. Mell was aware of that all the while, but after deducting from the gross weight of their true value the real or approximate weight of their possible evils and disadvantages, she would undoubtedly still be getting the best of a good bargain.

What is life but an enigmatical offset of losses and gain—so much gain on the one hand, so much loss on the other? And what was this transaction between herself and Rube but a repetition, under a somewhat different formula, of those mathematical problems worked out on her slate at school? It was all very simple.

Young woman, if you were in Mell’s place; if you had six good reasons for not telling the man you are about to marry that you did not care a straw about him, wouldn’t you hold your peace?

Then cast no stones at Mell.

Mell was deeply moved by Rube’s words, but not deep enough to damage her future prospects. And since a woman has very poor prospects outside of matrimony, ought we not to excuse her for attending closely to business?

At all events, although Mell’s thoughts were heavy, and her soul stirred within her, and her thick breathing almost stifled in a painful sense of guilt, she did not say a word. Feeling that Rube’s eyes were fixed upon her, she raised to him her own, suffused in tears; an answer which fully satisfied her companion. From which it will appear that a woman may weep for the man she takes in—weep, and yet keep on taking him in.

And what can a man do? How could Rube tell that it was the hidden pathos of his own groundless faith, and not a feeling of sympathetic affection, which brought such softness of expression into that girl’s luminous orbs?

If the actual is the only true thing, and amounts to everything, as it really does in the school of Realism, there is still one difficulty to be encountered—to get hold of the actual. He who aspires to find out the actual, where a woman is concerned, must get himself another kind of eye, one whose vision is introspective and able to penetrate into that mysterious element in a clever woman’s nature which enables her so successfully to clothe the Not-True in the beautiful garments of Truth.

Rube Rutland felt uncertain about a good many things—his own strength under temptation, his mother’s consent to this marriage, Clara’s temper, the great sea serpent, the Pope’s infallibility, the man in the Iron Mask, and many a cock-and-bull story beside, but he never once doubted Mell Creecy’s love, the purest myth among them all.

He came, after this, every day to the little house upon the hill, and had it out “comferterble in the parler,” as old man Creecy had advised Jerome to do. He courted with the enthusiasm of an incorrigible faddist over a new fad; and no lover of those olden days of which he had spoken, when goodly knights tilted in the jousts of arms, and won fair lady’s favor with deeds of prowess, ever yet surpassed a modern mighty man with a mission. Devotion itself is paralyzed when it comes to them.

At the Bigge House, as one may suppose, there had been considerable consternation when its young master announced his intention of taking to wife old Jacob Creecy’s daughter. Consternation, but hardly surprise; for Rube had ever been one of those lawless members of well-conducted households privileged to say and do outrageous things, and expected to turn out of the beaten track on the slightest provocation.

Miss Rutland was most concerned. Said she to her brother:

This was severe; but it was not all—not half, in fact, that Rube had to hear before he got rid of Clara. But it was not the first time he had brought a hornet’s nest about his ears, nor swam against the stream, nor borne the brunt of Clara’s tongue. Through much practice Rube had pretty well mastered the art of holding out, which does not consist so much in talking back as in saying nothing. Moreover, his cause was good, and half a man can hold out with a good cause to hold on. One hard speech Rube did make to Clara; he told her, in effect, that whatever might be the grammatical shortcomings of old Jacob Creecy himself, his daughter knew more in one single minute than Clara would ever learn in a lifetime.

Mrs. Rutland was not less unwilling, but more reasonable.

“You are my only son,” she said to him, “my first-born. I expected you to add lustre to the family and make a great match.”

“The family is illustrious enough,” replied he; “if not, it will never be more illustrious at my expense. I will have none of your great matches, mother. I intend to marry the woman I love. I have loved her ever since she was a child. None of the rest of you need marry her, however; I will not impose that task upon you. But Mellville is to be my wife to a dead certainty, and I am my own master.”

“You are, my son. I have not sought to prevent your marrying her. I have only expressed my disappointment.”

“Well, I am sorry about that. But see here, mother; I will make it easy for you. Keep this as your own home as long as you live, and I will make another home for myself and the wife you do not like.”

“No, no, my dear boy, ever generous, ever kind! As your wife she must be dear to me. What is a mother’s greedy aspiration compared to her child’s real happiness? Follow your bent, my boy; follow it with your mother’s sanction. And now, do you still love me a little, Rube, in spite of this new love?”

“A little, dear mother!” He threw his arms about her. “No, not a little! Much, very much; more than ever before! And believe me, when you know Mell, you will feel very differently about it. You have only seen her so far, through Clara’s eyes; come and see her as she is; come now, mother, with me.”

This little room did everything it could to please a man, and put nothing in his way; although it made him feel, with its presiding genius in it, every kind of way, except uncomfortable.

There’s a rose upon the mantle, stuck by careless hand in a vase of antique design—one rose, no more; for one such faultless rose as this fills up all the spirit’s longing in a rose. A thousand roses, perfect of their kind, could do no more. Here we have sub rosa a profound philosophical maxim showing its colors—as brief as profound, i.e., enough is enough, whether it be enough rose or enough stewed pigeon with green peas.

On a spider-legged table in this diminutive lady’s bower, there sat a dish of ferns; some moss was growing in a basket; some colored strands of wool lay across a piece of canvas; a carved paper-cutter peeped out from the leaves of an unread book, left lying on an ottoman by some person who had been seated in an easy-chair with silken cushions, soft to rest upon in weariness, in a cozy corner; and on a sofa of crimson plush reposed, in restful quiet, a guitar with blue ribbon attached. This guitar told its own tale; Mell had learned something useful, after all, at that famous boarding-school; for to the strumming of this guitar she could sing you, with inimitable taste and in a bird-like voice, an English madrigal, or a French chansonnette, or one of those plaintive love ditties which finds its way into the listener’s heart through any language.

“Now, mother,” said Rube, looking about him with pardonable pride, “isn’t this pleasant? Have we, amid all our grandeur, any such snug den as this?”

“Well, no, Rube! It is charming! Multum in parvo, one may say. But whom have we here?”

It was Mell, halting for one awe-struck instant in the doorway, attired in a fresh muslin dress, with ribbons to match her eyes, and cheeks dyed a red carnation at the formidable prospect of meeting, face to face, the august mistress of the Bigge House. Rube pressed forward to meet her, and took her fluttering hand in his own, and led her forward.

“Your new daughter, mother, and this, Mellville, is our good mother. You’ll get along famously with her, I believe, in spite of Clara.”

Who but a blundering man, like dear honest Rube, would have so completely let the domestic cat out of the bag?

No need for Mell to be the most wide-awake creature in existence to understand on the spot, the real status of affairs, as concerned herself, at the Bigge House.

She watched the girl closely during the interview which followed. Many girls are pretty and lady-like, not many are to be found as well educated as Mell Creecy, or as thoroughly equipped by both nature and education to entertain, to amuse, to fascinate. This was that part of Mell which “tuck arter her ole daddy,” as old Jacob was wont to say. Even Clara Rutland’s manners were not more easy and irreproachable, and Clara had never been half so ready in speech and apt in reply. It was a matter of agreeable wonder to Mrs. Rutland how a hard-working uneducated farmer could have such a daughter, and she wondered also if this phenomenal social prodigy could be found so strongly marked in any other land under the sun.

Obeying an instinct of curiosity, the visitor inquired:

“Your father and mother, Melville, are they here? Will they see us?”

“Not if I can help it!” inwardly.

Outwardly very different.

“So sorry! Mother is not well to-day. She is rarely well, and rarely sees anyone. Father is as usual busy upon the farm.”

“Rube says your father is a very thorough farmer,” remarked the visitor.

“Doesn’t a good farmer make money out of it,” queried Mell, glancing at her betrothed with a doubtful little smile, “just as a lawyer does out of law, and a doctor out of physic? The earth is full of gold, and ought not a good digger to strike it somewhere—some time? Father, at any rate, is devoted to farming, as an occupation, and is happy in it, getting out of the ground more of God’s secrets than the rest of us find among the stars.”

“That is a pretty idea, Mellville,” said Mrs. Rutland.

“Bless you!” exclaimed Rube, “that’s nothing! She’s full of ’em!”

Full of them, yes; and feeding his honest soul upon them, in place of the real bread of affection.

“Mellville, we are to be very gay next week, a house full of company; but I suspect we shall be honored with very little of Rube’s society unless we first secure yours. Will you come, then, and make us a little visit?”

“You are kind,” answered she, coloring beautifully with intensity of gratification. “Most kind! I will come with exceeding pleasure.”

These were perhaps the first unstudied words she had uttered in Mrs. Rutland’s presence. There was no doubt about her wanting to go to the Bigge House. She had been wanting to go there a long time. A veritable flood-tide of joy filled her being at this speedy consummation of her dearest hopes, but it was not of this she thought at that moment, nor of Mrs. Rutland, nor of Rube. “I will see Jerome,” was what Mell thought.

“Sweetest of mothers!” said Rube inside the vehicle.

“Luckiest of men!” returned his mother. “I am returning home as did the Queen of Sheba; the half was not told!”

Rube now felt solid, unquestionably solid, in his own mind.

Mell, standing yet in the gateway, looked after them; gladly received they had been, like many another guest; gladly, too, dismissed.

“The chain tightens,” cogitated the future mistress of the Bigge House, “and if I should want to break it!”

But why should she want to break it, unless—

“There’s no use counting upon that,” Mell frankly admitted to herself, “and no man’s difficulties must be allowed to interfere with my future. And Rube is so eligible! A good fellow, too; a most excellent fellow! There’s a something, however. What is it?”

We will tell you, Mell—Rube is not Jerome.

Going back into the house she found her father and mother peeping through the blinds.

“Lord, Lord!” exclaimed old Jacob. “You’se jess er gittin’ up, Mell! I knowed ye could do it, darter; but I mus’ say, I never lookt fer yer ter git es high es the Bigge House.”

Mrs. Creecy inquired about Mrs. Rutland. Was she nice? pleasant?

“Very. No one could be nicer or pleasanter. She asked for you—both of you.”

“She did? Then why didn’t you tell us?”

“Wife!” remonstrated the old farmer, “you is sartingly loss yo’ senses! Don’t ye know, when Mell’s fine friends comes er long, we’s expected ter run inter er rat-hole or some udder hole? All the use chillun has fer parients these days is ter keep ’em er going. Onst Mrs. Rullan’, Mell aint gwine ter know us by site! She aint no chile er mine, no how, Mell aint!”

“Wall, now, she is yourn, I kin tell ye,” cried Mrs. Creecy, flaring up, very much to the enjoyment of her liege lord.

The daughter turned off in disgust. Her father’s pleasantries were the least pleasant of all his disagreeable ways. A coarse man’s humor is apt to be the coarsest thing about him.

It was under very different auspices from those of her day dreams, that Mell, after a few days of busy preparation, was admitted into the sacred precincts of the social hierarchy.

Jerome was to have been the founder of her greatness, her steersman in these unknown waters—not Rube.

None in this higher realm welcomed her more graciously than Clara. Clara had high views of philosophy, but only one maxim: “See how the hare runs, hear how the owl cries, accept the inevitable, and get all you can out of it.”

Jerome returned from Cragmore the day following her own domestication into this new sphere of existence. How strange it all seemed, and how unnatural! How strange he should find her there, and with so good a right to be there! Surely years have intervened since those lovely mornings in the meadow, when Sukey cropped the dew-wet grass, and she sat on the old tree-stump and Jerome lay at her feet.

Surely long, long years!

So long that Jerome has forgotten all about them—and her. She is now to him only Miss Creecy, the prospective wife of his nearest friend, the prospective mistress of the Bigge House, and not attractive, it would appear, in these new surroundings. Others, very likely, did not notice how he never spoke to her, if he could help it; how he never looked at her, if he could help it; how they kept far apart, as far as the East is from the West, though sleeping under the same roof, and eating at the same table, and constantly together morning, noon, and night. Others did not notice all these things, but Mell did.

Better go to sleep, Mell; tears cannot wash away stern facts, and what good would it do now, if he did love you?

The other guest has come; the one of whom Jerome had spoken. It is the Honorable Archibald Pendergast, who is middle-aged, well-fed, and somewhat portly, who has big round shoulders and a jolly way of looking at things, who bellows out his words with a broad accent, and says, Aw! aw! with tremendous effect; who wears his whiskers à la manière Anglaise, as befits a man proud of his British ancestry and his English ways. This great man’s marvellous wealth and honors, and incalculable influence in national councils, and stupendous grandeur of future prospects, carry everything before him—at the Bigge House, and everywhere else.

Adapting herself with versatile cleverness, to these prevailing conditions in her unaccustomed environment, Mell’s conception of modes and manners expanded day by day, and she began to see plainly a good many objects only dimly discerned before.

“I don’t think,” remarked she, quite innocently to Rube, the day after the great man’s advent, “that Mr. Devonhough admires the Senator as much as the rest of us.”

“I shouldn’t wonder!”

Rube looked knowing and laughed.

“If he was as badly stuck on you as he appears to be on Clara, I wouldn’t admire him either!”

“But,” said Mell, “is Jerome?”

“How long?” asked not-that-sort-of-a-girl, trying to steady her voice, trying to maintain her rôle of a disinterested inquirer.

“How long have they been engaged!” repeated Rube. “Let me see—Six months at least.”

“Six months!”

“You seem surprised, Mell.” He turned his glance full upon her.

“Not at all,” said she, pulling herself to rights. “I was only thinking that you ought to be willing to wait as long as that.”

“So I would; as many years, for that matter, if there was any good reason why I should. But there is not; not one, and so, Mell—”

“Six months!” ejaculated Mell, in the privacy of her own room. “So all the while he lay at my feet he was engaged to Clara Rutland!”

Mell began to understand Jerome’s difficulties.

Later on she saw clearly some other things. Clara is fond of Jerome, and would gladly, for that reason, marry him; but she is likewise attracted by the mighty Senator’s wealth, and national importance, and English ancestry, and future expectations; and for such reasons leans matrimonially towards the Honorable Archibald, who is thirty years older than Jerome, but thirty years richer and thirty years greater. Between two fires Clara meanwhile keeps to the letter of the law with Jerome, and holds out in ambuscade le pot au lait to the Honorable Archibald.

Another thing, these women at ease, with nothing in the world to do, Mell was thunderstruck to discover, were the hardest worked people she had ever known, striving each on a daily battle-ground of dawdling, dressing, and pleasure. Seeking after some personal end, some empty honor, or some favorite phantom just out of reach. What bickering and strife; what small conspiracies; what canker at the roots and stunting in the fruit; what Guelph and Ghibbeline factions in the midst of all this music, and dancing, and laughter! The same amount of time spent in a good cause, Mell’s long head could not but realize, would ease the rack, plant many a blade of corn, staunch many a bleeding wound, wipe the death drops from many a ghastly brow, lift up heaps of fallen heroes prone on stony plains, and plant the standard of the cross on many a benighted shore. Outside, Mell had yearned towards this stronghold of the rich, as a place where there was plenty of room for growth and happiness: inside, she discovered with astonishment and a groan, that there was plenty of room there for dullness and unhappiness as well. Idleness without repose, leisure and no ease, tears and no time to shed them—on every side, and unexpected dry-rot in the substance of things, she had pictured to her own fancy as fair, and only fair.

“Then,” interrogated Mell of her conscious Ego, “if not here, where dwelleth content?”

Mayhap, Mell, upon the rock where the hawks nest, or in that haven where the roving wind hideth its tired self for rest. Somewhere, but never among the haunts of men. The deep hath its treasures, and there are treasures of the mine; the mind hath its treasures, and there are treasures of store; but content is the golden treasure, hardest of all to find, and when found hardest to keep.

One night there was a ball, and the social lights of Pudney and Cragmore, and the capital of the State itself, turned out in full force. The Bigge House was crammed to its utmost capacity.

Dressing early, Mell left her room to other guests, in various stages of evening toilet, and descending to the first floor, looked about her for some quiet spot where, for a time, she could hide herself and her tumultuous thoughts. The large reception room was dimly lighted as yet, and empty apparently. Glad to find it so, she walked in, and standing between the long pier-glasses, a tapering column draped in tulle clouds, took a full-length, back and front inspection of her own person.

Now this dainty rustic maiden, as we have seen, looked at when framed in a high-necked, long-sleeved, simple morning-gown, made a sweet picture for any eye; but it was, in some respects, a tame presentation compared to this gorgeously arrayed being, bedecked in flowers and a low corsage, with marble shoulders, shapely throat, alabaster neck and rounded arms, bewilderingly displayed, cunningly concealed. This fairy-like being cannot be a bona fide woman; she is more likely a study from Reynolds or Gainsborough, who has stepped out of canvas and a gilt frame on the wall there, merely to delight the living eye and inflame the fumes of vital fancy.

But now, to-night, in this empty room, in this deep silence and blessed solitude, where there is no eye to see, no ear to hear, she will throw off for one thankful moment the ugly, hateful thing. She will allow the dejected visage to fitly portray the dejected mind; she will breathe freely once more, and sigh and sigh, and moan and moan, and wring her hands in uncontrollable agony; and, ignoring the fact that the heaviest part of her trouble is of her own making, wonder why she had ever been born for such as this.

Hope is entirely dead in Mell’s heart. Transplanted out of the lowly valley of her own birth to the mountain-tops of her soul’s desire, she feels as lonely as we might imagine the spirit of Greek art, set down in a modern world. Turn whatever way she would, there was but one fate for her—martyrdom. If she did not marry Rube, she would be a martyr in her own humble home; if she did marry him, she would be a martyr in his more pretentious one; and there was not as great a difference as she had thought between the air in the valley and the air on the mountain-top. It is the lungs which breathe, and not the air inhaled, most at issue, and a martyr is a martyr anywhere, the social type being hardly less excruciating to undergo than others more quickly ended.

Pitiful in the extreme are such thoughts in a young mind; pitiful such manifestations of suffering in one too young to suffer.

How the people upstairs would be surprised if they could see her! How the Honorable Archibald, who liked things jolly, begawd! who thought all evidence of feeling bad form, you know; who believed, root and branch, in British stoicism, even in the jaws of death; how he would advise her in a spirit of friendliness and a well-bred way, not aw to make a blawsted dolt of herself—if he only knew. Fortunately, he did not know; fortunately, nobody knew.

Nobody?

Then who or what is that creature in semblance of man, in attitude of deepest thought, with folded arms and hanging head, darkly shadowed, dimly seen, scarcely discernible in the embrasure of the window over there?

Spirit or man? If a man, he might be a dead one for all the noise he makes—only a dead man was never known before to use his eyes in such a lively manner, or his ears to such good purpose, or to betray so deep an interest in a living woman, even in a ball dress.

Mell did not look towards him, did not know he was there; yet, on a sudden, as if from some inward sense of vigilance rather than any extraneous source of knowledge, her pulses strangely fluttered—she became aware that she was not in reality alone. How, in the absence of visual impression, we can only say by an instinct as unaccountable as the phenomenon of sound waves which excite wire vibrations.

She was mysteriously imbued with another presence, if such a thing is possible, and in all the world there was but one who could so clothe the circumambient air in his own personality.