Meanwhile, back in the drawing-room, Jacqueline was having a conversation with Simon Peter, who was raking down the fire for the night. General and Mrs. Temple had left the room. Usually Jacqueline slipped off to bed an hour before they did; but to-night she lingered, standing over the fire with one little foot on the brass fender.

“How does it look to-night, Uncle Simon?” she asked, meaning how did the sky look, and what were the chances for good weather.

“Hit looks mighty cu’rus to me, Miss Jacky,” answered Simon Peter, in a queer sort of a voice that made Jacqueline stare at him. “I seed two tuckey-buzzards flyin’ ober de house tog’er’r—and dat’s a sign—”

“A sign of what?”

“A sign ’tain’ gwi’ be no weddin’ at Barn Elms dis year.”

Jacqueline turned a little pale. It had not been a great many years since she had fully believed every one of Simon Peter’s signs and omens; and even now, his solemn prophecies sent a chill to her childish heart.

“An’,” continued Simon Peter, advancing and raising a prophetic forefinger, “dis heah night I done heah de owls hootin’ ‘Tu-whoo, tu-whoo, tu-whoo!’—three times, dat ar way—dat doan’ means nuttin’ but a funeral, when owls hoots dat away.”

Jacqueline shuddered.

“O Uncle Simon, hush!”

“I tole you kase you arsk me,” replied Simon Peter, stolidly; and at that moment Delilah came in.

“O mammy,” cried Jacqueline, fairly bursting into tears, “you don’t know what awful signs and things Uncle Simon has been seeing—funerals, and buzzards, and no wedding!”

“He have, have he!” snapped Delilah, with wrath and menace. “Simon Peter, he su’t’ny is de foolishest nigger I ever seed. He ain’ never got ’ligion good; he allus wuz a blackslider, an’ heah he come skeerin’ my little missy ter def wid he buzzards an’ he things!”

Simon Peter, who bore this marital assault with meekness, copied from General Temple, only remarked sheepishly:

“I done see de signs; an’, Miss Jacky, she arsk me, an’ I done tole her ’bout de two buzzards.”

“Wid de tails tied tog’er’r, I reckon!” answered Delilah, with withering sarcasm; “an’ maybe dey wuz gwi’ fly ter Doc Wortley’s ter see ef anybody gwi’ die soon.—Doan’ you min’ Simon Peter, honey; jes’ come wid mammy up-sty’ars an’ she holp you to ondress an’ put you in yo’ bed.”

Jacqueline went off, and in half an hour was tucked snugly in the great four-poster. But she would not let Delilah leave her. She kept her pulling the window-curtains this way and that, then raking down the fire because the light from the blazing logs hurt her eyes, and then stirring the flames into a blaze so that she might see the shadows on the wall. At last, however, Delilah got out, Jacqueline calling after her disconsolately:

“O mammy, do you believe in the two buzzards flying—”

“You jes’ shet dat little mouf, an’ go ter sleep, honey,” was Delilah’s sensible reply, as she went out.

The next day the whole party got off, General Temple leaving directions enough behind him to last if he were going to Turkey instead of to Richmond. Jacqueline at the last seemed loath to part from Judith. She said good-by half a dozen times, and wept a little at parting. There would be no need of letters, as they would only be gone four days. Jacqueline was to stop off at the station, and join her father and mother there on their return from Richmond, getting home ten days before the wedding. There was some talk of asking Mrs. Sherrard to come over and stay with Judith during the absence of General and Mrs. Temple, but Judith protested. With her child she would not suffer for company, and the work on Jacqueline’s wedding-dress would keep her busily employed, while Delilah and Simon Peter were protection enough for her at night. Besides this, Throckmorton and Jack would be over every day to look after her. When it was all arranged, Judith felt a sensation of gladness. She would have four days in which she would not be compelled to play her silent and desperate part. She could weep all night without the fear that Mrs. Temple’s clear eyes would notice how pale and worn she was in the morning; she could relax a little the continual tension on her nerves, her feelings, her expression. So, when they were gone, she came back into the lonely house, and, leaving Beverley with his mammy, went up to her own room, and taking out the white silk wedding-gown went to work on it with a pale, unhappy face; she had dared not show an unhappy face before.

The day passed quickly enough, and the short winter afternoon closed in. Judith would no longer take time for her usual afternoon walk; every moment must be devoted to Jacqueline’s gown. About eight o’clock, as she sat in the drawing-room, stitching away, while overhead in her own room Delilah watched the little Beverley as he slept, she heard Throckmorton’s step upon the porch. As she heard it, she gave a slight start, and put her hand on her heart—something she always felt an involuntary inclination to do, and which she had to watch herself to prevent. Throckmorton came in, and greeted her with his usual graceful kindness.

“I thought I would come over and see that nobody stole you and Beverley,” he said.

“There’s no danger for me,” answered Judith; “but for a beautiful boy like my boy—why, he’s always in danger of being stolen.”

Throckmorton scoffed at this.

In five minutes they were seated together, having the first real tête-à-tête of their lives. Judith sat under the mellow gleam of the tall, old-fashioned lamp, the light falling on her chestnut hair and black dress and the billowy expanse of white silk spread over her lap, making high white lights and rich shadows. Throckmorton had often admired her as she sewed. Sewing was a peculiarly gracious and feminine employment, he thought, and Judith’s sewing, when he saw it, was always something artistic like what she was now doing. Throckmorton lay back in one corner of the great sofa, his feet stretched out to the fire. They talked occasionally, but there were long stretches of silence when the only sound was the crackling of the wood-fire and the dropping of the embers. Yet the unity was complete; there is no companionship so real as that which admits of perfect silence. Throckmorton, on the whole, though, talked more than usual. Something in Judith always inspired him to speak of things that he rarely mentioned at all. They talked a little of Jacqueline, but there were innumerable subjects on which they found themselves in sympathy. The evening passed quickly for both. When Throckmorton had gone, and the house was shut up for the night, Judith felt that she had passed the evening in a sort of shadowy happiness; it would have been happiness itself, except that in ten days more it would be wrong even to think of Throckmorton.

Two days more passed. Every evening Throckmorton found himself making his way toward Barn Elms. Each evening passed in the same quiet, simple fashion, but yet there was something different to Throckmorton from any evenings he had ever spent in his life. As for Judith, after the first one, she began to look forward with feverish eagerness to the evening. She lived all day in expectation of that two hours’ talk with Throckmorton. She dressed for him; she hurried little Beverley to bed that she might be ready for him. Her eyes assumed a new brilliancy, and she became handsomer day by day.

On the day that the general and Mrs. Temple were to leave for home a letter arrived from Mrs. Temple. The general had been seized with an acute attack of gout, and it would probably take two or three days nursing to bring him around, so that they would not be home until the last of the week. Mrs. Temple had written to Jacqueline, and would write again in a day or two, notifying Judith when to send to the river landing for them. The delay was peculiarly inconvenient then, but it was God’s will. Mrs. Temple never had any trouble in reconciling herself to God’s will, except where Beverley was concerned.

Not a line had been received from Jacqueline. It did not surprise Judith, because Jacqueline hated letter-writing; but Throckmorton admitted, in an embarrassed way, that he had written to her, but she had not answered his letter.

During all this time Freke had not put in an appearance, for which Judith was devoutly thankful.

On the fifth evening that Throckmorton went his way to Barn Elms, it occurred to him that he went there oftener when Jacqueline was away than when she was there, and he was glad there were no gossiping tongues to wag about it. But luckily little Beverley, Delilah, and Simon Peter were the only three persons who knew where Throckmorton spent his evenings, and none of them were either carping or critical.

He found Judith as usual in the drawing-room, and as usual embroidering on the wedding-dress. But there was something strange about her appearance; she looked altogether different from what she usually did—more girlish, more unrestrained. Throckmorton could not make it out for a long time. Then he said, suddenly, “You have left off your widow’s cap.”

Judith let her hands fall into her lap, and looked at him with glittering eyes.

“Yes,” she said, calmly. “I grew intolerably tired of being a hypocrite, and to-night I determined for once to be my true self, so I laid aside my widow’s cap. I believe, if I had owned a white gown, I should have put it on.”

Throckmorton was so startled that he rose to his feet. Judith rose, too, letting the white silk fall in a heap on the floor.

“Are you surprised?” she asked, with suppressed excitement. “Well, so am I. But I will tell you—what I never dared breathe before—I am no true widow to Beverley Temple’s memory. I never loved him. I married him because—because I did not know any better, I suppose. I spent two miserable weeks as his wife. I was beginning to find out—and then he went away, and almost before I realized it, he was killed.” She hesitated for a moment; the picture of Throckmorton and Beverley in their life-and-death struggle came quickly before her eyes. Throckmorton was too dazed, astounded, confounded, to open his mouth. He only looked at her as she stood upright, trembling and red and pale by turns.

“I had no friends but General and Mrs. Temple; he was my guardian. You know, I had neither father nor mother, brother nor sister. I felt the most acute remorse for Beverley, and the most intense pity for him, cut off as he was, and I fancied I felt the profoundest grief. One suffers in sympathy, you know, and, when I saw his mother’s pitiable sorrow, it made me feel sorry too. The world—my world—saw me a broken-hearted widow—a widow while I was almost a bride. Don’t you think any woman of feeling would have done as I did—tried to atone to the man I had mistakenly married by being true to his memory? I determined to devote my life to his father and mother; and, in some way I can’t explain, except that you know how Mrs. Temple is, I pretended that my heart was broken; but I tell you, Beverley Temple never touched my heart, either in life or death, although I did not know it then. But for—for some time the deceit has lain heavy upon me. I am tired of pretending to be what I am not. I wish for life, for love, for happiness.”

She stopped and threw herself into a chair with an abandon that Throckmorton had never seen before. Still, he did not utter a word. But Judith knew that he was keenly observing her, feeling for her, and even deeply moved by what she told him.

“So to-night the feeling was so strong upon me, I took off my widow’s cap and threw it on the floor; it was a sudden impulse, just as I was leaving my room, and I took Beverley’s picture from around my neck, and I didn’t have the courage to throw it in the fire as I wanted to; I only”—with a nervous laugh—“put it in my pocket.”

She took the picture from her dress and handed it him. Throckmorton received it mechanically, but, the instant his eyes fell upon it, his countenance changed. In a moment or two he said, in an indescribable voice:

“I know this face well; he was killed on the 14th of April. I shall never forget that face to my dying day.”

“I know all about it,” responded Judith, rising and coming toward him; “Freke told me.”

Her excitement was no longer suppressed, and Throckmorton was deeply agitated. He took Judith’s hand.

“But did he tell you all? I did not fire the shot that killed your husband; it was fired by one of his own men—probably aimed for me. I never succeeded in drawing my pistol at all. The first I knew, in those frightful moments, was when he shrieked and threw up his arms. I thought he would never breathe again.”

“But he lived some hours,” continued Judith, “and—and—I thought it was you, and I ought to have hated you for it, but I could not; I could not; and now, God is so good!”

She dropped into a chair. Throckmorton felt as if the world were coming to an end, his ideas about Judith were being so quickly and strangely transformed. He was too stupefied to speak, and for five minutes there was a dead silence between them. Then Throckmorton’s strong common sense awoke. He went to her and took her hand.

“For your own sake, for your child’s sake, be careful. Do not tell any one what you have told me. The penalty of deception is great, and your penalty will be to keep it up a little while longer. When I am married to Jacqueline, you will have a friend, a home. Then, if you want to take off those black garments, to be yourself, you may count on me; but, for the present, be prudent. You are so impulsive.”

But Judith now was weeping violently and accusing herself. The reaction had come. Throckmorton felt strangely thrilled by her emotion. He comforted her, he held her hands, and even pressed kisses on them. In a few minutes he had soothed her. The old habits of self-control came back to her. She rallied bravely, and in half an hour she was quite composed. But it was the composure of despair. She remembered, then, had Throckmorton but loved her, the only obstacle between them would have been shown to be imaginary.

Throckmorton stayed late. In spite of Judith’s quietness, he felt unhappy about her. She was too quiet, too deathly pale. He felt an intense pity for her, and he feared that she and her child would not much longer find a home under the roof of Barn Elms.

Three days more passed. There was still no word from Jacqueline, and Mrs. Temple wrote that the general’s gout bade fair to be a much more serious matter than they had first anticipated. It might be that the wedding—which was to be of the quietest sort—might have to be postponed. But that was nothing to Mrs. Temple and the general, who reveled in the luxury of a meeting where Beverley was remembered, praised, and eulogized as can be done only by Southerners. Nor did it seem to matter to Jacqueline. In fact, Throckmorton and Judith appeared to be the only persons particularly interested in it. As for Freke, he had not been seen by either of them since the day the Barn Elms people left.

Throckmorton continued to spend his evenings at Barn Elms. The idea of Judith sitting solitary and alone in the drawing-room the whole long, dull evening, drew him irresistibly. Not one line had Jacqueline written, either to him or to Judith. Nor had Throckmorton written again to her. He was not the man to give a woman more than one opportunity to snub him. In his heart he was cruelly mortified; his pride, of which he had much, was hurt. He feared that it was a part of that arrogance which first youth shows to maturity.

On the eighth day after Jacqueline’s departure something like alarm began to possess Judith. She called it superstition, and tried to put it away from her. The day had been dull and gloomy—a fine, drizzling rain falling. The flat, monotonous landscape looked inexpressibly dreary in the gray mist that hung low over the trees. It was dark long before six o’clock. The night had closed in, and Judith, sitting alone in the drawing-room, had risen to light the lamp, when she heard the front door open softly, and the next instant she recognized Jacqueline’s peculiar light step—so light that even Mrs. Temple’s keen ears could not always detect it when fits of restlessness seized the girl at night, and she would walk up and down her room over her mother’s head. And in a moment Jacqueline came into the room, and up to Judith, and looked at her with strange, agonized eyes.

The surprise, the shock of seeing her at that hour and in that way, was extreme; and Judith’s first words as her hands fell on Jacqueline’s shoulder were:

“Jacqueline, you are wet through.”

“I know it,” answered Jacqueline, in a voice as unlike her own as her looks; “I have been out in the rain for hours and hours!”

“What is the matter with you?” cried Judith, taking hold of her. “Something dreadful has happened!”

“Dreadful enough for me!” replied Jacqueline, white and dry-eyed.

“What is it?” Judith was not easily frightened, but she trembled as she spoke.

“Everything!” answered Jacqueline. “In the first place, I have left Freke. That broke my heart!”

“Left Freke!”

“Yes. I didn’t go to Aunt Steptoe’s. I got off at the station and Freke was there. He took me to a minister’s and got him to marry us. The man could hardly read and write, and he said something about a license; but Freke gave him fifty dollars, and he performed the ceremony.”

Judith caught hold of her, to see if she were really in the flesh, talking in this way.

“Don’t hold me so hard, Judith. I will tell you all I can; but I feel as if I should die, I am so weak and ill—” and she suddenly began to cough violently. Judith ran and got her a glass of wine. The first idea in her mind was, not the poor, deluded child, but Throckmorton.

“But where is Freke—and your father and mother?—O Jacqueline, Jacqueline!”

“Don’t reproach me, Judith. But for you I would never have returned. My father and mother know nothing about it. Freke found out they were yet in Richmond. If they had been at Barn Elms, I don’t think I ever would have had the courage to come back. The feeling soon came to me that I had committed a great wrong in marrying Freke; and then—and then—he told me perhaps we weren’t married at all in Virginia, and so I would have to go with him out to the place—somewhere in the West—and be married to him straight and right.”

“If Freke had never committed any other wrong in his whole life, his telling you that made him deserve to be killed!” cried Judith.

“Don’t say a word against Freke,” said Jacqueline, a new anger blazing up in her eyes. “I love Freke; it almost kills me when I think I may never see him again, for I ran away from him. At first I thought all the time of the trouble I should bring upon you all. I could see my father’s gray head sink down in his hands. I could imagine how my mother would shut herself up in her room as she did when Beverley died. They had always thought so little of me that it gave me a kind of triumph when I remembered, ‘They’ll have to think about me now!’”

“And Throckmorton?”

“I never thought about him at all. As Freke said, he was entirely too old for me. But I will not speak of him. He knew I never loved him—or he ought to have known it. Then, when Freke found out that mamma and papa were still in Richmond, it came to me like a flash that I could get home, and I was sure of one friend, and only one in the world now—yourself. And I thought you were so clever you could manage to keep anybody from finding out where I had been. I seemed to hear your voice calling to me all the time, and every moment it seemed to crush me more and more that Freke was a divorced man, and that, however he might say he was free, he was not. So, we were staying at a little town through which the railroad passed, and Freke had to go into Richmond yesterday to get some money, and my conscience suddenly rose up and tortured me, and I couldn’t stay another moment—and, mind you, Judith, I love Freke. So I took the train all alone, and made the boat, and landed at Oak Point about twelve o’clock. I pretended to be surprised that nobody was there to meet me, and said I would walk as far as Turkey Thicket—you know it is only a little way from the landing. But, of course, I did not. Then I was so afraid that some one would see me that, instead of taking the main road, I came through the fields and by-paths. I believe I have walked ten miles instead of six, from Oak Point—and it was raining, too. I was nearly frightened out of my life—frightened by negroes and stray dogs, and afraid that I should see Freke every moment before me, and, if he should overtake me, I knew I should go back with him. I can no more resist him when he is with me than I can stop breathing. Well, with weakness—for I felt ill from the moment I started—and with fear, and being so tired, and the rain, I thought I should die before I reached here. But now I am home—home!—” Jacqueline’s voice rose in a piteous cry. She had been weeping all the time, but now she burst into a perfect tempest of sobs and tears that shook her like a leaf.

In her quiet life Judith had never been brought face to face with any terrible emergency, and this one unnerved and horrified her so that for a time she was as helpless as Jacqueline. She walked the floor, struggling with the wild impulse to send for Throckmorton; that he alone could tell them what to do; and else she and the poor child would sink under the horror of the situation, for to her simple and straightforward mind both conscience and the social code were unalterably opposed to considering a divorced man as a single man. But some instinct of common sense saved her—saved her even from calling Delilah, and caused her to face the thing alone. She gave Jacqueline brandy, she rubbed her vigorously; she even got her up-stairs alone and into her bed. By that time the violence of her emotions was spent; Jacqueline lay in the large four-poster perfectly calm and white. After a while even a sense of physical well-being seemed to possess her; warmth and light and stimulation had their effect. She fell into a heavy sleep, but Judith was terrified to notice her pallor give place to a crimson flush on her face, and her icy hands grow burning hot. By that time Judith’s composure had partly returned. She called Delilah, who came in wondering, and told her briefly that Jacqueline had come home unexpectedly and was not well, without mentioning how she had come from the river-landing. Delilah, who was not of a curious turn, saw for herself that part of Judith’s statement was true, for Jacqueline had a burning fever. It was impossible to get Dr. Wortley before morning, but, like most women who live in the country, Judith could cope with ordinary ailments, and, whenever the doctor was called in, he always found that the proper thing had been done beforehand.

But, besides Jacqueline’s undeniable illness, the thought that tormented Judith was how to keep the dreadful thing that had happened from Jacqueline’s father and mother and from the world. It must inevitably come out that she had not been near Mrs. Steptoe’s, and only the fact that Jacqueline was a poor correspondent had kept it from being known already. On the impulse of the moment, Judith sat down and wrote Mrs. Steptoe a letter, begging her, for General and Mrs. Temple’s sake, not to mention until she heard further from Barn Elms, that Jacqueline had not been with her; and as she wrote hurriedly and nervously, she could hear Jacqueline’s heavy and fitful breathing. Some simple remedies had been applied, but Judith knew that the best thing for her was to sleep, and so her troubled slumber was undisturbed except by her own feverish mutterings. All the time it hung like a sword over Judith. “What will Throckmorton say?” for, of course, he must be the first one to know it; there could be no mercy in deceiving him. Judith, sitting before the fire, gazing into it with troubled eyes and aching heart, began thinking, pitying, praying for Throckmorton. Yes, it would be a frightful blow to him. There would be no need for the wedding-gown now. As this thought occurred to her, Judith rose and, going softly toward the wardrobe where she kept her dainty work, took out the dress, and, unwrapping it from the white cloth in which she laid it away so carefully every night, spread it over her knees. How much love, despair, and torture had been worked into that embroidery! “It is so pretty, it is a pity it can’t be used,” she said to herself, absently, turning the silk about in her fingers; and at that moment she heard a choking, gurgling sound from the bed. Jacqueline was half sitting up, her head supported on her arm, and a thin stream of blood was trickling from her lips.

Judith, who for once lost her presence of mind, ran toward the bed, and, supporting Jacqueline’s head, called loudly for help. In her haste she had thrown the dress almost across Jacqueline, and a few drops of blood fell upon it.

“Look, look!” gasped Jacqueline; “my dress is being ruined!”

Judith heard Delilah running up the stairs in response to her frightened call, but Jacqueline’s eyes had such a strange expression in them that she asked her involuntarily, as she tremblingly supported her:

“Jacqueline, do you know me?”

“Perfectly,” answered Jacqueline. “I know everything about me.”

Delilah, who was a natural-born nurse, was as calm as Judith was agitated.

“’Tain’ nuttin’ tall, chile; ’scusin’ ’tis er leetle speck o’ blood fum yo’ th’oat. I kin stop it righter way”; and, sure enough, in ten minutes she had applied some simple remedy and the blood ceased to flow. Meanwhile Jacqueline, unable to speak, had motioned eagerly and violently to Judith to remove the white silk dress. Judith threw it on a chair. Jacqueline’s eyes filled with tears.

“It is such a pity to have it ruined—and one’s wedding-dress, too!”

“Hush-hush! you must not talk,” cried Judith.

The flow of blood apparently was a trifle, and in a little while Jacqueline lay back in the great, old-fashioned bed silent, deadly white, but composed.

Judith, with overflowing eyes, folded up the white dress, but she could not prevent some tears falling on it, and the dress, already stained with blood, was also stained with tears. The thought of Jacqueline, though, could not banish the thought of Throckmorton; the more so when Jacqueline, beckoning, brought Judith close to her. Judith thought she wanted something for her comfort.

“You must tell him; he will take it better from you.”

Jacqueline, lying wide awake in the bed, and Judith, sitting by her, holding her hand, were both expectant of Throckmorton. At last, about half-past eight, his firm step was heard on the porch. Judith’s heart leaped into her mouth; she did not exactly take in all the bearings of what Jacqueline had told her, or whether she was or was not married to Freke; and Throckmorton, with his knowledge of affairs, would know all.

She rose silently and went down-stairs, leaving Delilah with Jacqueline. Throckmorton was standing before the fire in the drawing-room. There was something in his determined eye and in his tone as he spoke to her that struck a chill to Judith’s heart.

“Jacqueline, has come, you know,” she said.

“Yes, Simon Peter told me so at the door. It does not surprise me.”

Judith remained silent for a few moments, when Throckmorton, suddenly wheeling toward her, and looking her straight in the face, said, curtly:

“What is all this? She never was near Mrs. Steptoe’s. I found out, by having my letter returned to me by Mrs. Steptoe herself. What has made her ill? Don’t tremble so, but tell me—you know I have a right to know it all.”

But Judith continued to be silent and to tremble. She even began to weep; but Throckmorton, taking her hand, said, firmly:

“There must be no concealments.”

His own stern composure controlled Judith’s agitation.

“All?” she asked, faintly.

“Yes—all!” he answered.

When Throckmorton used an authoritative tone with her, he could always compel her; and so, scarcely knowing how she did it, with tears and sobs, and faint deprecations for Jacqueline, she told him all. She noticed Throckmorton’s dark skin growing paler and paler; he began to gnaw his iron-gray mustache—always a sign of extreme agitation with him.

“Now, tell me this—collect your thoughts and don’t cry so—does she—does she love that—” He could not bring himself to utter Freke’s name.

Judith remained silent. Throckmorton, in his determination to make her answer, seized her arm. It hurt her so that she could have cried out, but she made no sound.

“Tell me!” he said, in a voice and manner so unlike his own gentle courtesy, that Judith could scarcely have recognized it. But Judith was obstinately silent. Nevertheless, she lifted her eyes to his with so eloquent a plea for mercy for Jacqueline, that he was unconsciously softened.

“You will not tell me!” he said, relaxing his fierce hold. “I can’t make you answer—you have a spirit like a soldier. But it makes no difference now whether she loves him or not. If she were free to-morrow, I could kill her with my own hands easier than I could marry her!—and yet—I loved her well.”

“But,” cried Judith, putting her hand on his arm in her eagerness, “something must be done. It must be managed so that people shall not know it, until her father and mother have decided what is to be done. It will almost kill them!”

“Yes. But if you can manage with Mrs. Steptoe—”

“I have already written to her.”

“I am no lawyer, but it seems to me that it rests with Jacqueline whether it is a marriage or not. But General and Mrs. Temple would rather see her in her grave than married to any divorced man—and to him!”

“And there is a good deal of doubt about his divorce, I believe,” added Judith.

“There is at present nothing to be done. General and Mrs. Temple will no doubt be here as soon as possible; it is hardly worth while to alarm them. Is she very ill, do you think?”

“I don’t know—Jacqueline was always delicate. And—what of him—of Freke?” continued Judith, in a trembling voice. “Is there to be no punishment for him?”

Like a woman, Judith could not look at the case in its practical light; but like a man, Throckmorton, in the midst of his horror, grief, and surprise, yet retained his balance.

“Any punishment of him would react on her—to have her name made public with his—Good God! But there is no power on earth to keep General Temple from committing some frightful folly when he knows of it.”

This was a new horror to Judith. A painful pause followed. Then Judith said:

“How like Freke it was—how perfectly reckless of consequences! He is unlike any man I ever saw or heard of. I believe, in his strange way, he loves Jacqueline; but what does any one know of such a man!”

The absence of vindictiveness toward Freke, on Throckmorton’s part, surprised Judith; but, in truth, he scarcely thought of Freke: a creature as weak and impressionable as Jacqueline was bound to succumb to the first overmastering influence. Throckmorton himself had never been able to get any real influence over her. Presently Judith said:

“One thing I do know—she wants your forgiveness.”

“She has it, poor child!”

Then there was another pause. Throckmorton, after a while, rose to go.

“If you want anything, send for me. I shall be over early in the morning.” He hesitated a moment, and then said: “This has been a strange experience for me; but it is over—” And then, as if checking a confession, went out of the room and out of the house.

When Judith went up-stairs, Jacqueline was still sleeping, but presently she wakened, and turned her lovely, troubled eyes on Judith.

“He is very sorry, Jacqueline, and he forgives you and will trouble you no more,” she whispered. A look of relief came into Jacqueline’s face. She closed her eyes as if to sleep.

CHAPTER XII.

“If I thought Freke was really a single man, I would give up everybody—even you—for him. But nobody on earth knows what I suffered from my conscience while I was with him! And I believe Freke told the truth when he said we weren’t married, after all, in spite of that minister and the fifty dollars. And now, dear Judith, it seems so easy to keep papa and mamma from knowing it.”

“Easy, Jacqueline?—”

“Yes, easy, if you will only write to Aunt Steptoe; and it would kill me to have to face them!”

“But, Jacqueline, suppose—suppose Freke should claim you, or you might, in years to come, want to marry some one else?”

“I will promise you I will not—I will swear it—if I can’t marry Freke, you may depend upon it I sha’n’t marry anybody else! But, Judith, will you promise me to say nothing to papa and mamma until you have seen Freke, for he knows what ought to be done? I know—and I am sure—he will come back in a day or two. He knows well enough where I have run away to.”

Judith was loath to making any promise at all, but Jacqueline became so violently agitated and distressed that at last, almost beside herself, Judith promised that for a few days, at least, she would say nothing about it.

Mrs. Temple was so full of Beverley, and the proceedings at Richmond, that she troubled Jacqueline but little with questions; and Judith was amazed at hearing Jacqueline describe to her mother a visit to her aunt, as if it had really been paid. The idea of concealment had taken complete possession of Jacqueline’s mind, and she stopped at nothing.

Of course, the wedding had to be postponed; and Jacqueline surprised her mother, after two letters had passed between Throckmorton and herself, by telling her quite calmly one day that the wedding was off, and that Throckmorton would shortly leave the county. General and Mrs. Temple were stunned; and Mrs. Temple, who had secretly thought the marriage preposterous from the start, now suddenly changed front, and was bitterly disappointed at this strange and unaccountable breaking off. Jacqueline would only say, “I found I didn’t love him, and couldn’t marry him”; and she repeated this with a sort of childish obstinacy—so it seemed to Mrs. Temple. Throckmorton accepted his supposed bad news with the firmness and dignity that always characterized him. He told Mrs. Temple, when she and the general, sitting in solemn conclave in the drawing-room, had sent for him to give him this unalterable determination of Jacqueline’s:

“Her happiness should be first always. The difference in our years I always felt; but, when she began to feel it, she was right in breaking with me. It is better that it should come now than later on.”

Mrs. Temple was thoroughly puzzled by Throckmorton. She could not make out his quiet acquiescence in Jacqueline’s decision—it was so unlike his usual vigorous way of overcoming obstacles. But, before he left, Freke had reappeared, and the dreadful truth had come to him and to Throckmorton and to Judith that, after all, according to the statutes of Virginia, he was not at liberty to marry again. Dreadful it was to Freke, who, light-minded and evil as he was, had really believed himself free, and whose implied doubt to Jacqueline was merely for the purpose of frightening her into submission. Freke went up to Richmond one day and returned the next. Half an hour’s interview each with half a dozen lawyers had settled a hypothetical case that covered Freke’s exactly: not all the clerks and licenses and ceremonies in Virginia could make his marriage to anybody good as it stood. It was true that there was an excellent chance that in the course of time various defects in the somewhat informal divorce proceedings that Freke had really thought sufficient might be remedied, and he would be a free man; but, for the present, he certainly was not.

Freke, who had thought his courage impeccable, found it failed him when he met Judith, for the first and last time, to settle upon the best course to pursue. Judith had Throckmorton’s advice and assistance to back her up. Freke positively cowered under her gaze. It was settled that he was to go to the Northwest immediately, and devote all his energies to straightening out the strange tangle in which he had left his matrimonial affairs there; and, when it was settled, he was to return to Virginia, and then let Jacqueline decide what was to be done. He swore—and swore so that Judith believed him—that he thought himself a free man, and only despised the narrowness of people who believed there was no such thing as divorce. Why he should have fallen in love with Jacqueline did not puzzle Judith: had she not, with those irresistible glances of hers, ensnared a much stronger man? But one thing was decided as much by Jacqueline’s agony of fear as anything else: nothing was to be said about the terrible complication to General and Mrs. Temple. Mrs. Steptoe’s answer to Judith’s letter gave a promise that nothing should be said about Jacqueline’s non-appearance; and that removed any immediate danger of discovery. And, in a little while, both Freke and Throckmorton were gone—Freke, to move heaven and earth to get his divorce in proper shape; and Throckmorton, merely to be out of the way, and as far out of the way as possible.

To Judith it seemed as if the world were coming to an end. How a thing so dreadful, so unlike anything she had ever known before, could happen in their quiet lives, seemed more and more extraordinary. Here was Jacqueline—last year a child in heart, and now the first person in a tragedy. Never had she anything to conceal before; and now, with the most perfect art and premeditation, she was concealing, every day and hour, something that would be even more overwhelming to her father and mother than Beverley’s death, and would convulse the little world in which they lived. As for the innumerable chances that it might be found out any day, Judith was abnormally alive to them. Every morning, when she went down-stairs, she half expected that the disclosure would come; every night she thanked Heaven it had been postponed a day.

Meanwhile Jacqueline, lying in her great four-poster, progressed slowly but gradually toward recovery. One night she called Judith to the bedside. She was fast getting well then.

“Judith,” she said, “you know what queer notions I take? Well, I have been lying here thinking, thinking, perhaps you won’t be able to keep the whole county from knowing about—”

The haunting fear of this never left Judith, but she could not but try and comfort Jacqueline.

“We will try—O Jacqueline, we will try!”

“And do you know it has troubled me even more than losing Freke; for I feel he is lost to me, even if he were to come to-morrow morning and say he was a free man; the fear that when I get well I shall be avoided; the people will leave me alone at church, and the county people will stop visiting us. That would indeed kill me.”

“Dear child, we will hope and pray. I believe it would kill me too.”

Jacqueline at this worked herself up into such a violent fit of weeping that Judith was frightened into giving her a great many more assurances of safety than her own anxious heart believed, but Jacqueline at last was quieted. In both of them, so widely unlike, was that profound respect for their neighbors, characteristic of simple and provincial souls. They knew no other world but that little neighborhood around Severn church, and its opinion was life or death.

But it troubled Judith that by degrees visitors began to fall off and inquiries ceased for Jacqueline. The temper and habit of the people were such that Judith knew Jacqueline could never hope for any forgiveness if that week’s journey should be known. Jacqueline too, although she was entirely silent afterward upon the subject, was thinking and dreading and fearing. It was the custom for many kindly and neighborly visits to be paid the sick, many flowers and delicacies to be sent them; but after a while Jacqueline ceased to have either flowers or visitors. She was nearly well, though, or at least she protested that she was. But, although Jacqueline declared to Judith that, if Freke were legally free to-morrow, she would not marry him as long as that other woman lived, it was plain that he had completely captivated her imagination. She loved him in her own wild, unreasoning way. Judith was hourly amazed at the sudden self-control, finesse, the power to deceive, that Jacqueline developed regarding him. Usually her composure was perfect, but once in her own room, Jacqueline threw herself on the rug before the fire and wept and sobbed so that Judith was seriously alarmed. But, still trying to keep the burden from the unconscious father and mother, she remained with Jacqueline until a calm had come after the storm.

“I love him! I love him!” was all Jacqueline would say, and Judith believed her.

“You told me how I ought to love Throckmorton,” she said that night, with a melancholy smile; “it is exactly how I love Freke. Don’t look at me in that indignant way, Judith. It is not my fault.”

Jack Throckmorton had remained at Millenbeck when his father left. Throckmorton had briefly announced to him that the wedding was off. Jack came at last to see them, looking very sheepish. Judith suspected that he came in obedience to Throckmorton’s wishes. But Jacqueline at once slipped back into her old friendly way, if a little less gay and thoughtless than before. Jack sent her flowers, and would have brought his dog-cart over every day to take her to drive, so much touched was he by Jacqueline’s illness, but Judith would not let him. Nevertheless, he was in and out of the house very much as he had been ever since that first night he was there. Judith, who had come to love him for his sweet, bright, boyish nature, he felt was his friend, as indeed everybody at Barn Elms was. The whole affair was intensely puzzling to Jack. He dared not show Throckmorton the awkward sympathy that he was struggling first to express and then to repress; but Jacqueline was young and ill, and had few pleasures, and he had once been a little gone on her, so it seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should be kind to her.

There were mysterious hints, though, flying about the county regarding Jacqueline’s affairs. Mrs. Sherrard was dying with curiosity, and made many visits to Barn Elms for the purpose of gratifying it. But she soon found out that, beyond knowing that Jacqueline had tired of her engagement and had thrown Throckmorton over, neither General nor Mrs. Temple knew anything to communicate. About this time, too, the party-giving fever, which was never long in abeyance with Mrs. Sherrard, seized her. A party she must give. General Temple brought a note to that effect, coupled with a request for Mrs. Temple’s salad-bowls and ladles, one day from the post-office. Jacqueline, who had been out-of-doors several times and had quite given up her invalidism, showed the keenest and the most unexpected delight when she heard of the party. She jumped up and down, clapped her hands, and began to dance.

“Oh, how glad I am! It has been so stupid lately. I do want to dance again dreadfully. How I wish I could go to a ball every night in the week!”

Judith was surprised at Jacqueline’s eagerness about the party. Mrs. Temple had first said decidedly that Jacqueline should not go, at which Jacqueline threw her hands up to her face and burst into such a passion of stormy weeping that Mrs. Temple was completely puzzled, and so was Judith.

“But, my child, you are not strong enough!”

“I am!—I am!” cried Jacqueline. “I will ask Dr. Wortley if I can’t go to the party. I am sure I will cry myself ill if I don’t go; and I am so well and strong.”

Mrs. Temple, who had got a little indulgent to Jacqueline since her illness, agreed to leave it to Dr. Wortley. The next time he came over to pay a friendly visit, Jacqueline took him off to herself, and came back triumphant. Dr. Wortley had agreed. The old doctor had a queer look in his face.

“I consented, madam,” he said to Mrs. Temple, “because this young lady promised me that she would make herself ill if she did not go; and I have known young women to keep that promise. She has given me her word she will be very prudent—will not overexert herself; and Mrs. Beverley is to watch her.”

“And I’ll come home the instant Judith proposes it!” cried Jacqueline.

Mrs. Temple finally agreed, upon condition that the weather was fit. For some days before the party it threatened to be very unfit. Dark clouds overhung the sky, and a biting March wind swept over the bare fields and through the somber aspens and Lombardy poplars, as yet leafless and wintry, around the house. Jacqueline seemed to have but one idea in her head, and that was the party. She haunted the windows where the cutting wind came in through the open chinks and crannies, until Judith warned her that she would soon begin to cough again, and worse, if she did not take care of herself. She pestered Simon Peter with asking for weather signs. When the morning broke, cloudy and overcast, Jacqueline was almost in despair; she could eat no breakfast, but sat at the table watching the clouds. Presently the sun came out upon the dreary landscape, and the sun in Jacqueline’s eyes came out too. From the deepest gloom she passed to the wildest gayety. Her eyes shone; and taking little Beverley into the great, empty drawing-room, she waltzed around with him, singing and capering about until the boy, like herself, was in a gale of good humor. Judith had never ceased being puzzled by it. Still another obstacle, though, seemed to arise in Jacqueline’s path. General Temple had a suspicion of gout, and declared that the party was out of the question for him. At this, Jacqueline looked so pale and disappointed that even Mrs. Temple’s heart melted toward her.

“But I can take care of Jacqueline, mother,” said Judith; “we are safe, you know, with Simon Peter on the box, and we will come home before twelve o’clock.”

Mrs. Temple consented, and for the second time that day Jacqueline’s spirits rose. Toward twilight, when the fires had been lighted in their rooms for the two girls to dress, for early hours prevail in the country, Judith went into Jacqueline’s room. Jacqueline was twisting up her beautiful blonde hair into a knot on top of her head, taking infinite pains; her eyes were shining, her whole air one of quick expectancy.

“Why are you so anxious about this party, Jacqueline?” asked Judith, to whose lips the question had often risen during the last week.

“Wait a moment and I will tell you,” replied Jacqueline, still intent on her hair.

Judith waited until the last tress was in place, and Jacqueline came over to the fireplace.

“Because—because, Judith, I have a feeling—I don’t know where it comes from—that everybody knows about—” She stopped and cast down her eyes in a troubled way, but without blushing. “And I thought if I went to this party I would be convinced that it was all a mistake. I know it is very silly, but it has kept me awake at night ever since I was first ill, thinking how the people would eye me at church. You know how sick people take up those fancies. Well, I am determined to prove to myself it isn’t so. Jack Throckmorton won’t be at the party, but I shall no doubt have a plenty of partners, and this horrible feeling—that I am disgraced in some way—will leave me; I am sure it will. You know mamma’s way of treating these notions. ‘Just give your secret fears an airing, and see how they will disappear,’ that’s what I mean to do. Like ghosts, they vanish when you speak to them and try to handle them, and then you are rid of them for good.”

Judith said not a word. The same horrible fear had been with her. Freke and Throckmorton were safe—General and Mrs. Temple suspected nothing—it made her sick at heart as she thought about the news traveling over the county.

When Jacqueline was dressed in the same white frock she had worn the evening she had captivated Throckmorton, she preened like a young peacock before the admiring eyes of Delilah and Simon Peter. She whirled round on her toes like a ballet-dancer. She courtesied to the ground, showing them how she would do at the party. She walked away from the little glass on her dressing-table, arching her neck and fluttering her fan.

“I allus did say Marse George Throckmorton wuz too ole fur little Miss Jacky,” Simon Peter remarked to Delilah, after the performance. Delilah, who was bound to differ with Simon Peter, promptly took issue.

“Marse George, he ain’ ole, he jes’ in he prime. Dat’s de way wid you wuffless niggers—call a man ole in he prime.”

“But whar’ he gwi’ be, when she in her prime? You heah me, ’oman?”

Delilah, for once, had no answer to make. The reflection had occurred to her.

As Judith and Jacqueline were jolted along the road, in the darkness, toward Turkey Thicket, both of them were reminded of that other party there, when Throckmorton had been present. Neither of them said anything, though. Judith, as she watched the shadowy trees slip past, began to think how strangely things had gone with her since then. Almost from that time she had felt a steady and ceaseless pain associated with Throckmorton. She then suffered, she thought, with him, and for him, although not one word had come from him since he had left the county, a month ago. Where was he? What was he doing at that very moment? Then she tried to fancy how it would have been with her had she seen daily before her Throckmorton and Jacqueline’s married happiness. The sight of it would have been intolerable to her. “And nobody in the world suspects me of being the most impressionable, emotional, jealous, and miserable woman on earth,” she thought to herself.

Jacqueline sat back in the carriage, occasionally speculating on who would be at the party, and how often she might dance without breaking Dr. Wortley’s orders.

When they drove up to the door and got out, Jacqueline ran lightly up the steps, like her old self. Judith followed her. In Mrs. Sherrard’s own comfortable old-fashioned room, where the ladies’ wraps were removed, a number of girls about Jacqueline’s age were laughing, chattering, getting their wraps off and their slippers on. Jacqueline ran up to them, and was about to join their circle; but by a slight, indescribable motion, they all drew back. It was a mere gesture, but it froze Jacqueline as she stood. She turned a frightened, piteous glance on Judith, who, with a flushed face, walked straight up to the little group.

“How do you do?” she said, calling each one by name, and holding out her hand. If there were any cloud upon the Temple family, she would force them to come out boldly and define it. Her fine nostrils dilated with anger—for not only was it her duty to stand by Jacqueline, but was not she, Judith, a Temple, too? And Judith had one of those proud and self-respecting souls to whom everything and everybody closely connected with her was due a certain deference. Something in her eye and manner commanded civility—then her greetings were answered even more cordially than she had given them.

But there was still an ominous change toward Jacqueline. The color had all dropped out of her face, and she had not recovered the plumpness she had lost during her illness. She looked nearer ugly than at any time in her whole life.

Judith was soon ready to go down-stairs. She no longer wore black dresses, but white ones. They were as severely simple as the black ones, though. She turned with Jacqueline following her, and went slowly out the door, and down the broad, old-fashioned stairs. In the large, uncarpeted hall, dancing was going on. As Judith, tall and stately in her white dress, holding gracefully a large white fan in her hands, passed through the hall, she was greeted with the hearty kindness she had always met with; but Jacqueline at her side, who was wont to run the gantlet of laughter and jokes and merry salutations, was met with a strange and distant politeness that blanched her face, and brought a glitter to Judith’s usually soft eyes. She could have borne it better for herself; but for this unthinking child—this young creature Throckmorton loved—it was too much.

Mrs. Sherrard, with her diamond comb shining in her gray hair, and looking as she always did superbly dressed, without anything splendid about her, received them. In her there was no change. She met Jacqueline just as she always did.

“Why, little Jacky,” she cried, “how glad I am to see you out again! You must let me see your little feet tripping about as if you had never been ill.”

Jacqueline responded with a faint smile. Suppose she should not be asked to dance?

Judith, taking in at once this universal shyness shown toward Jacqueline, did not move from her side. People came up and spoke to them civilly enough, but chiefly the older people. Out in the hall beyond, the black fiddlers were scraping, and Jacqueline could see a large quadrille forming. But no partner appeared for her. Until the very last she hoped desperately. Never before had Jacqueline, in the few parties she had been to in her short life, failed to be asked to dance—she was so pretty, so undeniably captivating. She turned two despairing dark eyes and two pale cheeks on Judith. It was indeed cruel and heart-breaking. Jacqueline’s evident anguish almost took away Judith’s self-possession.

“Perhaps you will have better luck next time, dear,” she whispered.

“No,” replied Jacqueline, trembling, “I feel it. I know what it means. They all know it. Heavens! what do they think I am?”

The quadrille was soon over, but the time seemed interminable to Judith and Jacqueline. Some of the dancers, flushed and excited, were walking around the hall, while others, more indefatigable, whirled around in a waltz. It was all quite plain to Jacqueline, watching them with strange and miserable eyes. Was she then barred out forever from those people, and all for Freke, while even the happiness of being with him was denied her? Mrs. Sherrard, seeing Jacqueline sitting so still and quiet by Judith, came over to them.

“My dear, I see you are not dancing; shall I get you a partner?”

Mrs. Sherrard’s sharp eyes saw something was amiss.

“No, please, Mrs. Sherrard,” cried Jacqueline, in an eager voice. “I promised Dr. Wortley not to dance much; perhaps I will dance a little after a while.”

But she did not. Nobody came near her to ask her; and even to Judith it was plain that people avoided them both. Most of the county people they knew came up and talked a little, but there was a changed atmosphere around them. Judith looked wonderingly at these people. In all the years they had lived in that county there had been nothing but neighborly kindness, good-will, and friendliness; and now, not one among them, seemed to feel the slightest spark of pity or charity for Jacqueline. They had all condemned her unheard. What version of the story had got abroad, she could not tell; but it was enough to blast the friendship of generations.

It was getting on, hour after hour.

“Shall we go home, Jacqueline?” whispered Judith.

“Not yet—not yet!” Jacqueline would answer, with trembling lips. She kept on hoping against hope. By that time everybody in the rooms had seen it all, except Mrs. Sherrard. She supposed she had done her best, coming up and talking to them incessantly; but, Jacqueline having refused a partner when offered one, Mrs. Sherrard naturally supposed she did not dance from preference, and accepted the idea that Dr. Wortley was responsible. It was past midnight before Jacqueline would agree to go. Judith, as stately, if paler and haughtier than ever in her life, went up to Mrs. Sherrard, made her farewells, and walked the whole length of the rooms, holding Jacqueline’s hand. The poor child tried to hold her head up, inspired by Judith’s courage, but it drooped, and she could not raise her eyes from the floor. A slight thrill of remorse seemed to come over those who saw her, at the piteous sight; but it was now too late. Jacqueline only longed to escape.

The instant they were in the carriage and alone, Jacqueline threw her arms around Judith and began to weep and sob desperately. Judith could only hold her to her heart and say: “Never mind, Jacqueline; if all the world should be against you, I would not be—nor Throckmorton.”

But Jacqueline did not cease to sob and weep with a sort of despair that struck a chill to Judith’s heart. She had never seen anybody weep so. When they reached home, Judith got her up-stairs to her room and undressed her, taking off the little chain around her neck that held the pearl pendant Jacqueline only wore on great occasions, uncurling the bright hair she had dressed so carefully, and laying away the simple white dress—Jacqueline’s only ball-dress—that she had admired herself in so much. Jacqueline submitted, still sobbing a continual sob, that showed no signs of abatement. Judith put her in bed, turned out the lamp, and kissing her affectionately went out, thinking Jacqueline would soon cry herself to sleep.

An hour afterward Judith, who had keen hearing, fancied she heard a sound from Jacqueline’s room. She went in softly. In the ghastly light that came through the closed shutters she saw Jacqueline sitting up in the great, white bed, still weeping.

“My darling,” said Judith, taking the girl in her arms, “you will be ill!”

“Ill!” cried Jacqueline; “I am ill now—so ill, I never shall be well again! Judith, I can’t live under this. I am going to die; and I am glad of it.”