Mrs. Walraven stood up, walked over to the whole-length mirror, and took a prolonged and complacent view of her full-blown charms.

"How do you think I am looking, Guy?" languidly. "Rather too pale, am I not? I must have recourse to that vulgar necessity, rouge. Don't you think this new shade of pink lovely? and so highly suitable to my brunette style."

Dr. Oleander gave her a glance of disgust, took his hat, and turned to leave.

"I didn't come here to talk of new shades of pink, or your brunette style, either. Excuse me for trespassing on your valuable time, and permit me to wish you good-evening."

"Good-evening, cousin mine," Mme. Blanche responded, sweetly. "Come to-morrow, and we'll have another little chat. By the bye, how long do you expect to remain in the city?"

"Until I have engaged an attendant," answered the doctor, rather sulkily.

"Ah! and that will be day after to-morrow, at furthest. You will find dozens of applicants. Well, by-bye. Come again soon. I shall be anxious always for your success."

Dr. Oleander departed. His practice was extensive, and he had hosts of neglected patients to attend to.

Mrs. Walraven saw nothing of him all next day; but in the evening of the succeeding day, and just as she was getting very uneasy, Dr. Oleander entered, pale and fagged.

Dr. Oleander had spent a most harassing afternoon, his office besieged with applicants for that advertised situation. The number of incapables that thought themselves capable, and the number of capables who flatly declined the moment they heard they were to go down into the country, might have worn out the patience of a more patient man. And the capables willing to overlook the dreariness of the country in consideration of high wages rose up immediately and bid him good-day when informed the patient was a lunatic.

Dr. Oleander was driven to the verge of desperation, when, lo! just as he was about to give it up in despair, there entered an applicant who suited as if made to order.

The applicant—this "last, and brightest, and best"—was a woman of uncertain age, tall and stout, strong and strapping, and adorned with a head of violent red hair and a pair of green spectacles. Minus these two disagreeable items, she was a highly respectable woman, with a grave, shrewd face, and a portly person wrapped in a somber plaid shawl.

She stated her case. She had seen the advertisement, and had come to apply for the situation. She was accustomed to the office of sick-nurse, and considered herself fully qualified for it.

Her statement was plain and straightforward—much more so than that of her predecessors. Dr. Oleander was inclined to be pleased, despite the green spectacles.

"But I should wish you to go into the country—a very dull place indeed."

The applicant folded her cotton gloves one over the other, and met the doctor's gaze with composed green glasses.

"The country is no objection, sir. I'm used to quiet, and all places are alike to me."

"You have your credentials with you, I suppose?"

"I have, sir. Here they are."

She handed two or three certificates of capability to the toxicologist.

He glanced them lightly over, and saw that Mrs. Susan Sharpe was all that heart could desire in the way of sick-nurse.

"These are satisfactory," handing them back. "But I have one fact to mention that may discourage you: the lady—the patient—is insane."

Mrs. Susan Sharpe heard this startling statement without moving a muscle of her dull, white face.

"Indeed, sir! A violent lunatic, sir?"

"Oh, dear, no! merely insane. Subject to occasional fits of violence, you understand, but quiet generally. But even in her most violent fits she would be nothing in your hands—a strong, large woman like you. She is little more than a child in years, and quite a child in weakness. If you don't mind the dullness of the country, you would suit admirably, I think."

"I don't in the least mind, sir. The situation will suit me very well."

"I am very glad to hear it," said the doctor, immensely relieved. "We may consider it a bargain, then?"

"If you please, sir," rising quietly. "When will you want me to go?"

"To-morrow morning. By the way, Mrs. Sharpe," said the doctor, eying the obnoxious lunettes, "why do you wear green glasses?"

"My eyes are weak, sir." Mrs. Sharpe removed the spectacles as she spoke, and displayed a pair of dull gray eyes with very pink rims. "The light affects them. I hope my glasses are no objection, sir?"

"Oh, not in the least! Excuse my question. Very well, then, Mrs. Sharpe; just give me your address, and I'll call round for you to-morrow forenoon."

Mrs. Sharpe gave him the street and number—a dirty locality near the East River. Dr. Oleander "made a note of it," and the new nurse made her best obeisance and departed.

And, to inform Mme. Blanche of his success in this matter, Dr. Guy presented himself at the Walraven mansion just as the misty twilight was creeping out and the stars and street lamps were lighting up.

He found the lady, as usual, beautiful and elegant, and dressed to perfection, and ready to receive him alone in the drawing-room.

"I've been seriously anxious about you, Guy," Mrs. Walraven said. "Your prolonged absence nearly gave me a nervous fit. I had serious ideas of calling at your office this afternoon. Why were you not here sooner?"

"Why wasn't I? Because I couldn't be in half a dozen places at once," answered her cousin, rather crossly. "I've been badgered within an inch of my life by confounded women in shabby dresses and poky bonnets all day. Out of two or three bushels of chaff I only found one grain of wheat."

"And that one?"

"Her earthly name is Susan Sharpe, and she rejoices in red hair and green glasses, and the blood and brawn and muscle of a gladiator—a treasure who doesn't object to a howling wilderness or a raving-mad patient. I clinched her at once."

"And she goes with you—when?"

"To-morrow morning. If Mollie's still obdurate, I must leave her in this woman's charge, and return to town. As soon as I can settle my affairs, I will go back to the farm and be off with my bride to Havana."

"Always supposing she will not consent to return with you to New York in that character?"

"Of course. But she never will do that," the doctor said, despondently. "You don't know how she hates me, Blanche."

Blanche shrugged her graceful shoulders.

"Do you implicitly trust this woman you have hired?"

"I trust no one," responded Dr. Guy, brusquely. "My mother and Sally and Peter will watch her. Although, I dare say, there may be no necessity, it is always best to be on the safe side."

"How I should like to see her—to triumph over her—to exult in her misery!" Blanche cried, her eyes sparkling.

"I dare say," said Dr. Oleander, with sneering cynicism. "You would not be a woman, else. But you will never have the chance. I don't hate my poor little captive, remember. There! is that the dinner-bell?"

"Yes—come! We have Sir Roger Trajenna to-day, and Mr. Walraven detests being kept waiting."

"Poor Sir Roger!" with a sneering laugh. "How does the lovesick old dotard bear this second loss?"

"Better than he did the first; his pride aids him. It is my husband who is like a man distraught."

"The voice of Nature speaks loudly in the paternal-breast," said Dr. Oleander. "'Nater will caper,' as Ethan Spike says. Mollie's mamma must have been a very pretty woman, Blanche."

Mrs. Walraven's black eyes snapped; but they were at the dining-room door, and she swept in as your tall, stately women in trailing silks do sweep, bowing to the baronet, and taking her place, and, of course, the subject of the interesting captive down in Long Island was postponed indefinitely.

Dr. Oleander dined and spent the evening at the Walraven palace, and talked about his ward's second flight with her distressed guardian, and opined she must have gone off to gratify some whim of her own, and laughed in his sleeve at the two anxious faces before him, and departed at ten, mellow with wine and full of hope for the future.

Early next morning Dr. Oleander called round for Susan Sharpe, and found that treasure of nurses ready and waiting. All through the long drive she sat by his side in his light wagon, never opening her discreet lips except to respond to his questions, and gazing straight ahead through her green glasses into the world of futurity, for all her companion knew.

"Among your charge's hallucinations," said Dr. Oleander, just before they arrived, "the chief is that she is not crazy at all. She will tell you she has been brought here against her will; that I am a tyrant and a villain, and the worst of men; and she will try and bribe you, I dare say, to let her escape. Of course you will humor her at the time, but pay not the least attention."

"Of course," Mrs. Susan Sharpe answered.

There was a pause, then the nurse asked the first question she had put:

"What is my patient's name, sir?"

Dr. Oleander paused an instant, and mastered a sudden tremor. His voice was quite steady when he replied:

"Miss Dane. Her friends are eminently respectable, and have the utmost confidence in me. I have every reason to hope that the quiet of this place and the fresh sea air will eventually effect a cure."

"I hope so, sir," Mrs. Susan Sharpe said; and the pink-rimmed eyes glowed behind the green glasses, and into the tallow-candle complexion crept just the faintest tinge of red.

It was an inexpressibly lonely place, as Mrs. Sharpe saw it. A long stretch of bleak, desolate, windy road, a desolate, salty marsh, ghostly woods, and the wide, dreary sea. Over all, this afternoon, a sunless sky, threatening rain, and a grim old pile of buildings fronting the sea view.

"A lonesome place," Mrs. Susan Sharpe said, as if in spite of herself—"an awfully lonesome place!"

Dr. Oleander looked at her suspiciously as he drew up before the frowning gate.

"It is lonely," he said, carelessly. "I told you so, you remember; but, from its very loneliness, all the better for my too excitable patient."

Mrs. Sharpe's face seemed to say she thought it might be more conducive to begetting melancholy madness than curing it, but her tongue said nothing. Two big dogs, barking furiously, came tumbling round the angle of the house. Dr. Oleander struck at them with his whip.

"Down, Tiger! Silence, Nero, you overgrown brute!" he cried, with an angry oath. "Come along, Mrs. Sharpe. There's no occasion to be alarmed; they won't touch you."

Mrs. Sharpe, despite this assurance, looking mortally afraid, kept close to the doctor, and stood gazing around her while waiting to be admitted. Bolts grated, the key creaked, and heavily and warily old Peter opened the door and reconnoitered.

"It is I, Peter, you old fool! Get out of the way, and don't keep us waiting!"

With which rough greeting the young man strode in, followed by the nurse.

"He fetches a woman every time," murmured old Peter, plaintively, "and we've got a great plenty now, Lord knows!"

"This way, ma'am," called Dr. Oleander, striding straight, to the kitchen; "we'll find a fire here, at least. It's worse than Greenland, this frigid-zone!"

Mrs. Oleander sat before the blazing fire, plucking a fowl; Sally stood at the table, kneading dough. Both paused, with feminine exclamations, at sight of the doctor, and turned directly, with feminine curiosity, to stare at the woman.

"How do, mother? How are you, Sally? Back again, you see, like the proverbial bad shilling! This is Mrs. Susan Sharpe, the nurse I promised to bring. How's our patient?"

He turned anxiously to his mother. She took her eyes from Mrs. Sharpe to answer.

"I don't know; she frightens me, Guy."

"Frightens you!" growing very pale. "How? Is she so violent?"

"No; it's the other way. She's so still; she's like one dead in life. She sits all day, and never moves nor speaks. She doesn't eat enough to keep a bird alive, and she never sleeps, I believe; for, go into her room night or day, there you find her sitting wide awake."

Dr. Oleander looked white with dismay.

"Does she never speak?" he asked.

"She never spoke to me but once, and that was to ask me who I was. When I told her I was your mother, she turned her back upon me, with the remark, 'He says I'm mad, and surely none but a mad-woman would look for mercy from a tiger's dam!' She has never spoken to me since."

Dr. Oleander stood listening with a very gloomy face. Mrs. Sharpe, sitting warming herself before the fire, looked straight at it, with a blank, sallow face.

"What do you find her doing mostly?" he asked, after awhile.

"Sitting by the window, looking at the sea," answered his mother—"always that—with a face the color of snow."

The gloom on the young man's face deepened. What if he should prove himself a prophet? What if this spirited, half-tamed thing should go melancholy mad?

"I will go to her at once!" he exclaimed, starting up. "If she goes into a passion at sight of me, it will do her good. Anything is better than this death in life."

He held out his hand for the key of the room upstairs. His mother handed it to him, and he strode out at once; and then Mrs. Oleander turned her regards upon the new nurse.

Strangers were "sight for sair een" in that ghostly, deserted farmhouse. But the new nurse never looked at her; she sat with those impenetrable green glasses fixed steadfastly on the blazing fire.



CHAPTER XIX.

MISTRESS SUSAN SHARPE.

Dr. Oleander was by no means a coward, yet it is safe to say his heart was bumping against his ribs, with a sensation that was near akin to fear, as he ascended the stairs. He was really infatuatedly in love with his fair-haired little enchantress, else he never had taken his late desperate step to win her; and now, having her completely in his power, it was rather hard to be threatened with her loss by melancholy madness.

"What shall I do with her?" he asked himself, in a sort of consternation. "I must keep her here until I get my affairs settled, and that will be a week at the soonest. If we were safely en route for Havana, I should cease to fear. How will she receive me, I wonder?"

He tapped softly at the door. There was no response. The silence of the grave reigned all through the lonely old house. He tapped again. Still no answer. "Mollie!" he called. There was no reply. The next moment he had inserted the key, turned it, and opened the prison door.

Dr. Oleander paused on the threshold and took in the picture. He could see the low-lying, sunless afternoon sky, all gray and cheerless; the gray, complaining sea creeping up on the greasy shingle; the desolate expanse of road; the tongue of marshland; the strip of black pine woods—all that could be seen from the window. The prison-room looked drear and bleak; the fire on the hearth was smoldering away to black ashes; the untasted meal stood on the table. Seated by the window, in a drooping, spiritless way, as if never caring to stir again, sat bright Mollie, the ghost of her former self. Wan as a spirit, thin as a shadow, the sparkle gone from her blue eyes, the golden glimmer from the yellow hair, she sat there with folded hands and weary, hopeless eyes that never left the desolate sea. Not imprisonment, not the desolation of the prospect, not the loneliness, not the fasting had wrought the change, but the knowledge that she was this man's wife.

Dr. Oleander had ample time to stand there and view the scene. She never stirred. If she heard the door open, she made no more sign than if she were stone deaf.

"Mollie!" he called, advancing a step.

At the sound of that hated voice she gave a violent start, a faint, startled cry, and, turning for the first time, eyed him like a wild animal at bay.

"Mollie, my poor little girl," he said in a voice of real pity, "you are gone to a shadow! I never thought a few days' confinement could work such a change."

She never spoke; she sat breathing hard and audibly, and eying him with wild, wide eyes.

"You mustn't give way like this, Mollie; you mustn't really, you know. It will not be for long. I mean to take you away from here. Very soon we will go to Cuba, and then my whole life will be devoted to you. No slave will serve his mistress as I will you."

He drew nearer as he spoke. Quick as lightning her hand sought her breast, and the blue gleam of the dagger dazzled his eyes.

"One step nearer," she hissed, between set, glistening teeth, "and I'll bury it in your heart or my own!"

She raised it with a gesture grand and terrible, and rising slowly from her seat, confronted him like a little tigress.

"Mollie," he said, imploringly, "listen to me—your husband!"

Her white teeth locked together with a clinching noise; she stood there like a pale little fury.

"Have you no pity for such love as mine, Mollie? Is your heart made of stone, that all my devotion can not melt it?"

To his horror, she broke into a discordant, mirthless laugh.

"His devotion! He tears me away from my friends, he locks me up in a dungeon until he drives me mad! His devotion!"

She laughed hysterically again.

"It seems harsh, Mollie, but it is not meant in harshness. If there were any other way of winning you, you know I would never resort to such extreme measures. I am not the only man that has carried off the woman he loved, when other means failed to win her."

Again he came nearer, holding out his hands with an imploring gesture.

"Only say that you will try and love me—only say that you will be my wife—promise me on your word of honor, and I will take you back to New York this day!"

But Mollie's answer was to raise her formidable knife.

"One step more," she said, glaring upon him with suppressed fury—"one step nearer, if you dare!"

He saw in her face it was no idle threat, and he recoiled.

"Stay here, then," he angrily cried, "since you will have it so! It is your own fault, and you must abide the consequences. Mine you shall be, by fair means or foul! I leave you now, since my presence does no good, but by this day week you will be sailing with me to sunny Cuba. There I can have things my own way, and your high-tragedy airs will avail you little."

He walked to the door, turned, paused. She stood like a statue, white as marble, but with, oh! such fiercely burning eyes!

"I have brought you an attendant," he said, sullenly. "I will send her up for those things," pointing to the untasted dinner; "she will wait upon you during the brief time you are to remain here."

She never moved. She stood there white and defiant and panting, her glittering eyes riveted to his face. With a sullen oath he opened the door and walked out, baffled once more.

"Curse the little vixen!" he muttered, as he stalked down-stairs; "she's made of the stuff that breaks but never bends. I believe in my soul if I was to carry her off to sea to-morrow she would leap overboard and end it all the day after. I wish I had never listened to Blanche's tempting. I wish I had left the little termagant in peace. The game isn't worth the candle."

He found Mrs. Susan Sharpe sitting where he had left her, with her imperturbable face still turned to the fire, her bonnet and shawl still on.

"Take off those things!" he ordered, harshly, pointing to the offending garments—it was a relief to vent his spleen on some one. "Why the deuce don't you take her to her room?" turning savagely upon Sally. "Let her have the chamber next my patient, and then go into her room and fetch away the tray, and see what you can do for her."

He flung himself into a chair. Mrs. Sharpe rose with an immovable face.

"Lor'!" said old Sally, "don't snap our heads off, Master Guy! I can't help that young woman's tantrums upstairs; so, if she puts you out of temper, you needn't come howling at me. This way, ma'am."

Mrs. Sharpe, with a stolid countenance, followed Sally upstairs. The old woman, grumbling angrily all the way, led her into a small, draughty apartment adjoining that of her charge.

"There!" said Sally, snappishly: "this here is your room, and the crazy young woman's is next. Take off your things, and then come down-stairs and see what he wants next, and don't have him biting at us as if we was dogs!"

Mrs. Sharpe obeyed orders to the letter. In five minutes she was back in the kitchen, ready for action. The carroty locks were partly covered with a black, uncouth cap, and a large stuff apron protected her dingy bombazine dress. She turned a questioning face upon her employer, but spoke never a word.

"This is the key of your patient's room," he said, handing it to her; "you will go up and introduce yourself, and do whatever is needful. I am going back to town to-night. Don't let me have any fault to find with you when I return."

Mrs. Sharpe took the key and turned to go.

"I know my duty, sir," she said, as she walked out. "I know what I came to do, and I'll do it."

Dr. Oleander turned to his mother and old Sally when the nurse had gone.

"What do you think of her, mother?"

"I don't like her," Mrs. Oleander answered, promptly. "I wouldn't trust a person with hair like that as far as I could see them!"

"Pooh, pooh! what's her hair got to do with it?"

"Very well," said Mrs. Oleander, nodding sagaciously. "It's nothing to me; but a red-haired person is never to be trusted."

"Then watch her," said the doctor. "I trust you and Sally to do that. I know nothing about her; but don't you let her play me false. It is of the greatest importance to me that the insane girl upstairs does not escape—and escape she will if she can. She will try to bribe the nurse—do you watch the nurse. It will only be for a week at furthest."

"I am glad to hear it," said his mother, spitefully. "I don't like my house full of mad-women and mad-women's nurses, and I don't like playing the spy!"

"It will only be for a week," the doctor repeated. "I will never trouble you in this way again. And now I must be off at once. I want to sleep in New York to-night."

Without further parley Dr. Oleander stalked out of the kitchen and out of the house. Five minutes more, and they heard the sharp rattle of his wheels on the gravel. Then old Peter bolted and locked and put up the chains, and made the lonely farmhouse as much like a jail as bolts and bars could render it. Their situation was so isolated, and they themselves so helpless, that, although there was but little to fear, these precautionary measures were natural enough.

Meantime, the new nurse had ascended the stairs and unlocked her captive's door. She rapped respectfully before entering; but, as usual, Mollie deigned no notice, and after waiting an instant, she turned the handle and went in.

Mollie had resumed her seat by the window, and, with her chin resting on her hand, was gazing with gloomy eyes at the evening mists rising over the bleak gray sea.

Much weeping had dulled the luster of those sparkling eyes and paled the bright bloom of the once rounded cheeks.

The Christmas snows were not whiter nor colder than the girl who sat there and stared in blank despair at the wide sea.

"I beg your pardon, miss," said Mrs. Susan Sharpe, halting in the door-way; "I want to come in."

At the sound of the strange voice, the prisoner wheeled suddenly around and confronted her.

"Come in, then," she said: and Mrs. Sharpe came slowly in and closed the door. "Who are you?" Mollie asked, transfixing her with her steadfast gaze. "I never saw you before."

"No, miss; I only came from New York to-day."

"Who are you?"

"I'm Susan Sharpe."

"And what are you doing here?"

"I'm to be your nurse, miss. Doctor Oleander hired me and brought me down."

"Doctor Oleander is a villain, and you are, I suspect, his tool."

"I'm sorry you think so, miss," Mrs. Susan Sharpe said, composedly. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

But Mollie did not reply. She was staring at her new attendant with all her might.

"Who are you?" she said, breathlessly. "Surely someone I know."

The woman smiled.

"No one you know, miss—unless you have the advantage of me. I don't suppose you ever heard my name before."

"I don't suppose I have," retorted Miss Dane; "but I have certainly heard your voice."

"No! Have you, now? Where, I wonder?"

Mollie gazed at her wistfully, scrutinizingly. Surely that face, that voice, were familiar; and yet, as soon as she strove to place them, all became confusion. She turned away with a sigh.

"It's of no use. I suppose you're in league with the rest. I think the people in this house have hearts harder than stone."

"I'm very sorry for you, miss, if that's what you mean," said Mrs. Susan Sharpe, respectfully. "Yours is a very sad affliction, indeed."

"A very sad affliction! Do you mean being imprisoned here?"

"Oh, dear, no, miss!" looking embarrassed. "I mean—I'm sure, I beg your pardon, miss—I mean—"

"You mean you pretend to believe Doctor Oleander's romance," interrupted Mollie, contemptuously. "You mean I am crazy!"

"Don't be angry, miss," said Mrs. Sharpe, deprecatingly. "I wouldn't give offense for the world."

"Look at me," said Mollie, impetuously—"look me in the face, Susan Sharpe, and tell me if I look like one insane!"

Mrs. Sharpe turned the mild light of the green glasses on the pale, excited young face.

"No, miss, I can't say you do; but it isn't for me to judge. I'm a poor woman, trying to turn an honest penny—"

"By helping the greatest scoundrel that ever escaped the gallows to keep prisoner an unoffending girl! Is that how you try to turn an honest penny, Susan Sharpe?"

Susan Sharpe, shrinking, as well as she might, from the fiery flashing of two angry blue eyes, murmured an inaudible something, and busied herself among the dishes.

"Listen to me, woman," cried Mollie, pushing back her wild, loose hair, "and pity me, if you have a woman's heart. This man—this Doctor Oleander—led me into a trap, inveigled me from home, brought me here, and keeps me here a prisoner. To further his own base ends he gives out that I am insane. My friends are in the greatest distress about me, and I am almost frantic by being kept here. Help me to escape—my friends in Now York are rich and powerful—help me, Susan Sharpe, and you will never know want more!"

Mrs. Susan Sharpe had keen ears. Even in the midst of this excited address she had heard a stealthy footstep on the creaking stairs—a footstep that had paused just outside the door. She took her cue, and made no sign.

"I'm very sorry, miss," slightly raising her voice—"very sorry for you, indeed. What you say may be all very true, but it makes no difference to me. My duty's plain enough. I'm paid for it, I've promised to do it, and I'll do it."

"And that is—"

"To wait upon you. I'll be your faithful attendant while I'm here; but to help you to escape I can't. Doctor Oleander tells me you're insane; you tell me yourself you're not insane. I suppose you ought to know best; but I've been in lunatic asylums before now, and I never yet knew one of 'em to admit there was anything the matter with 'em."

And with this cruel speech, Mrs. Susan Sharpe, keeping her eyes anywhere but upon the young lady's face, lifted the tray and turned to go.

"Is there anything I can do for you, miss?" she said, pausing at the door. "Is there anything nice you would like for supper?"

But Mollie did not reply. Utterly broken down by fasting, and imprisonment, and solitude, she had flung herself passionately on the floor, and burst out into a wild storm of hysterical weeping.

"I'm very sorry for you, Miss Dane," the nurse said for the benefit of the eavesdropper without; "but my duty's my duty, and I must do it. I'll fetch you up your supper presently—a cup of tea will cure the 'stericks."

She opened the door. Mrs. Oleander, at the head of the staircase, was making a great show of having just come up.

"They'll be the death of me yet—those stairs!" she panted. "I often tell my son I'm not fitted to mount up and down a dozen times a day, now in my old age; but, la! what do young men care?"

"Very true, ma'am," replied the imperturbable nurse to this somewhat obscure speech.

"And how's your patient?" continued the old lady.

"Very bad, ma'am—'stericky and wild-like. I left her crying, poor soul!"

"Crying! For what?"

"Because I wouldn't help her to escape, poor dear!" said Mrs. Sharpe in a tone of commiseration. "She's greatly to be pitied."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Oleander, carelessly; "you couldn't help her, you know, even if you would. There's Peter, and Sally, and me on the watch all day long, and from nightfall we let loose Tiger and Nero. They'd tear you both to pieces in five minutes. Tell her so, poor creature, if she talks any more of escape."

"I will, ma'am," responded the respectful Mrs. Sharpe.

Mrs. Oleander ascended the stairs and went to her own room, very well satisfied with the submissive and discreet new nurse; and the new nurse descended to the kitchen, and prepared her patient's supper of tea and toast, delicate sliced ham, and raspberry preserves.

The dusk of the sunless afternoon was falling out-of-doors ere her preparations were completed, and the stair-ways and halls of the dreary house were in deepest gloom as she returned to her patient's room.

She found that unhappy little patient lying prone on her face on the floor, as still, as motionless as if death had hushed forever that impulsive heart. She made no sign of having heard when Mrs. Sharpe entered—she never moved nor looked up until the nurse set the tray on the table, and stooping over her, gave her a gentle shake.

"Miss Dane," she said in her stolid tones, "please to get up. Here's your supper."

And Mollie, with a low, wailing cry, raised her wan face and fixed her blue eyes on the woman's face with a look of passionate reproach.

"Why don't you let me alone? Why don't you leave me to die? Oh, if I had but the courage to die by my own hand!"

"Please to take your supper," was Mrs. Sharpe's practical answer to this insane outburst. "Don't be foolish."

She lifted Mollie bodily up, led her over, seated her in her chair, poured her out a cup of tea, and made her drink it, before that half-distracted creature knew what she was about.

"Now take another," said sensible Mrs. Sharpe; "tea will do you a power of good; and eat something; there's nothing like good, wholesome victuals for curing people of notions."

Wearied out in body and mind, Mollie let herself be catered for in submissive silence. She took to her new nurse as she had never taken to any one else in this horrid house. She had a kindly face, had Mrs. Susan Sharpe.

"You feel better now, don't you?" said that worthy woman, the meal completed. "Suppose you go to bed? You look tired. Let me undress you and tuck you in."

And again willful Mollie submitted, and dropped asleep as soon as her head was fairly on the pillow. Motherly Mrs. Sharpe "tucked her in" and kissed her, and then, with the remains of the supper, went down-stairs to partake of her own evening repast.

Mrs. Oleander took tea with her servants, and was very gossipy indeed. So, too, was old Sully; so, likewise, was old Peter. The beverage that exhilarates seemed to lighten their aged hearts wonderfully; but Mrs. Susan Sharpe did not thaw out under the potent spell of the best English breakfast tea. Silent and attentive, she ate, and drank, and listened, and responded when directly addressed; and, when it was over, helped Sally to clear up, and then pounced upon a basket of undarned hose under the table, and worked away with a will. Her energy and good-will, and the admirable manner in which she filled up the holes in the stockings with wondrous crisscross work, quite won the hearts of both Sally and Sally's mistress.

The clock struck nine; work was laid aside; Mrs. Oleander read a chapter aloud out of the Bible, and they then all adjourned to their respective chambers. Doors and windows had been secured at nightfall, Tiger and Nero liberated—their hoarse, deep growls every now and then making night hideous.

Up in her own apartment, Mrs. Susan Sharpe's first act was to pull up the curtain and seat herself by the window. The night was pitch dark—moonless, starless—with a sighing wind and a dully moaning sea. It was the desolation of utter desolation, down in that dismal sea-side prison—the two huge dogs below the only living things to be heard.

"It's enough to drive any one mad, this horrible place," said Mrs. Susan Sharpe, to herself; "and the very weather seems in the conspiracy against us."

She took her lamp as she spoke, and held it close to the window, with an anxious, listening face. Its solitary red ray streamed far out over the black road.

Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed, then a sound rent the night silence—a long, shrill, sharp whistle.

"Thank the Lord!" said Mrs. Susan Sharpe. "I thought he wouldn't fail."

She dropped the curtain, set the light on the table, knelt down and said her prayers, rose up and undressed herself; and then this extraordinary female went to bed and to sleep.



CHAPTER XX.

HUGH INGELOW KEEPS HIS PROMISE.

Mrs. Susan Sharpe was up with the lark, or, rather, with the sea-gulls whirling and shrieking out on the tossing waters. The early morning sun streamed in the little chamber; the wind wailed plaintively still, and the dull tramp, tramp of the multitudinous waves kept up their ceaseless refrain.

All was yet still in the lone farmhouse—no living thing was stirring, not even the rats, that had held high carnival all night. Down in the back yard and front garden, Tiger and Nero prowled about their beat, surlily growling at the tossing trees, and were monarchs of all they surveyed.

Mrs. Sharpe was not an imaginative person, luckily. She got up and made her toilet, and splashed herself briskly in a basin of cold water. The effect of these ablutions was singular—they effected a total cure of her inflamed eyelids.

More singular still, a wig of red hair stood on the dressing-table, and Mrs. Sharpe's cranium was adorned with a respectable growth of dark, glossy, brown hair.

"If they only saw me now," said Mrs. Sharpe to herself, with a chuckle, "I rather think they'd open their old eyes!"

She went to work artistically—reddened her eyelids over again, carefully adjusted her wig, set her cap on it, fixed her spectacles on her nose, and surveyed herself complacently in the cracked chimney-glass.

"You'll do," said Mrs. Sharpe, nodding familiarly to her image: "You're as ugly as if somebody had bespoke you. I only wonder how that little unfortunate can take to such a looking object—and she does take to me, poor dear! And now I'll write to him. He's sure to be along in the course of the morning."

Taking from her capacious pocket a blank-book and a lead-pencil, Mrs. Susan Sharpe sat down and wrote.

And this is what Mrs. Sharpe wrote:

"She's here, and safe and well, and don't know me no more than the dead. But I can't get her out. Two old women and one old man are on the watch all day long. I daren't sneeze but they know it. And before they go off the watch there's two big, savage dogs goes on, and prowl about all night. I don't know what to do; tell me. She's awful down-hearted, and cries and goes on. I heard your whistle last night. Her room is next to mine—the windows to the left. If you walk on the beach she'll see you; she sits at the window all day. Doctor O. is going to Cuba in a week, and going to take her with him; so you had better be quick."

Mrs. Sharpe read her own composition over two or three times, with a satisfied look.

"I think that will do," she murmured. "Trust him to find a way out of a fix, and we're in a fix now, if there ever was one. Drat the dogs! If it wasn't for them I could get on myself."

Mrs. Sharpe was not a rapid scribe. It had taken her a considerable while to write this, and the household was astir. She folded it up in the smallest possible dimensions, and wedged it into her thimble.

"A brass thimble makes a good, strong envelope," said the nurse, with a grim smile. "And now to begin my day's work."

She quitted her own apartment and went into that of her charge. Mollie was still asleep—sleeping like a babe, with lips apart, and cheeks softly flushed, and loose, golden hair falling in burnished masses over the pillow. Involuntarily Mrs. Sharpe paused.

"She looks like a picture," she thought. "No wonder he's crazy in love."

The sound of the opening door awoke the light sleeper. She rose up on her elbow and stared around. The nurse advanced with a propitiatory smile.

"Good-morning, miss," she said, cheerfully. "I hope you had a nice sleep."

"Oh, is it you?" said Mollie. "I was dreaming I was back home with guardy, and Sir Roger, and poor Hugh, and here I am still. Oh!" in a voice of bitter anguish, "why did you awake me?"

"My poor dear," said the nurse, touched, "I didn't know, you know, or I wouldn't. There! don't think about it now, but get up, like a good girl, and wash and dress yourself, and have your breakfast comfortable. Things won't be always like this, you know."

Mollie looked wistfully at her, but Mrs. Sharpe wasn't going to commit herself, with no certainty but that listening ears were at the door.

She assisted the poor prisoner with her toilet, combed out and curled the beautiful, abundant hair, and made her as pretty as a picture.

"She's lost her rosy cheeks, and is failed away to nothing," mused the nurse. "Only for that, she'd be the loveliest thing the sun shines on."

"And now you're fixed, my pretty dear," said Mrs. Sharpe, "I'll go down and get your breakfast. Nobody ever feels right in the morning on an empty stomach."

Down in the kitchen, Mrs. Sharpe found things in a lively state of preparation—coffee boiling, steak broiling, toast making, and muffins baking. Old Sally, in a state threatening spontaneous combustion, bent over the fire, and Mrs. Oleander, in her rocking-chair, superintended.

"Are you only getting up now?" asked the doctor's mother, suspiciously.

"Been up these two hours, ma'am," responded Mrs. Sharpe. "I tidied up myself and my room, and then tidied up Miss Dane and her'n. I came down to fetch up her breakfast."

"It's all ready," said Sally. "Fetch along your tray."

So Susan Sharpe fetched along her tray, and received a bountiful supply of coffee and toast, and steak and muffins.

"There's nothing like plenty of good victuals for curing the vapors," observed Sally, sagely. "You make the young woman eat this, Mrs. Sharpe, and she'll feel better, you'll see."

Mrs. Sharpe smiled, as she bore off her burden, at the idea Sally must have of one little girl's appetite.

She found Mollie sitting at the window gazing at the sea, sparkling as if sown with stars, in the morning sunshine.

"Is it not beautiful?" she said, turning to the nurse. "Oh, if I were only free once more—free to have a plunge in that snow-white surf—free to have a breezy run along that delightful beach this magnificent morning?"

Mrs. Sharpe set down her tray, looked cautiously around her, lowered her voice, fixed her green-spectacled eyes meaningly on Mollie's face, and uttered these remarkable words:

"Wait! You may be free before long!"

"What do you mean?" cried Mollie, starting violently.

"Hush! 'Sh! 'sh!" laying her hand over the girl's mouth. "Not a word. Walls have ears, in prisons. Take your breakfast, miss," raising her voice. "It will do you no good, acting ugly and not eating."

For the stairs had creaked under a cautious, ascending footstep, and Mrs. Sharpe had heard that creak.

So, too, had Mollie this time; and she turned her shining eyes in eloquent silence to Mrs. Sharpe, and Mrs. Sharpe had nodded, and smiled, and grimaced toward the door in a way that spoke volumes.

"I'm going down to get my breakfast, now," she said, authoritatively. "Let me see what you'll have done by the time I get back."

The stairs were creaking again. Mrs. Sharpe did not hurry too much, and Mrs. Oleander, all panting, was back in her rocker when she re-entered the kitchen, trying very hard to look as though she had never left it.

"And how's your patient to-day, Mrs. Sharpe?" she asked, as soon as she could properly get her wind.

"Much the same," said Mrs. Sharpe, with brevity; "wants to starve herself to death, crying in spells, and making a time. Let me help you."

This to Sally, who was scrambling to get half a dozen things at once on the table. Mrs. Sharpe came to the rescue with a practiced hand, and upon the entrance of old Peter, who had been out chaining up the dogs, the quartet immediately sat down to breakfast.

After breakfast, the new nurse again made herself generally useful in the kitchen, helped Sally, who was inclined to give out at the knees, to "red up," washed dishes and swept the floor with a brisk celerity worthy of all praise.

And then, it being wash-day, she whipped up her sleeves, displaying two lusty, round arms, and fell to with a will among the soiled linens and steaming soap-suds.

"I may as well do something," she said, brusquely, in answer to Mrs. Oleander's very faint objections; "there's nothing to do upstairs, and she doesn't want me. She only calls me names."

So Mrs. Susan Sharpe rubbed, and wrung, and soaped, and pounded, and boiled, and blued for three mortal hours, and then there was a huge basket of clothes all ready to go on the line.

"Now, ma'am," said this priceless treasure, "if you'll just show me the clothes-line, I'll hang these here out."

Mrs. Oleander pointed to two long ropes strung at the lower end of the back yard, and Susan Sharpe, hoisting the basket, set off at once to hang them to dry.

The two old women watched her from the window with admiring eyes.

"She's a noble worker!" at last said old Sally. "She 'minds me of the time when I was a young girl myself. Dearie me! It went to my heart to see her rubbing them sheets and things as if they were nothing."

"And I think she's to be trusted, too," said Mrs. Oleander. "She talks as sharp to that girl as you or I, Sally. I shouldn't mind if we had her here for good."

Meantime, the object of all this commendation had marched across the yard, and proceeded scientifically to hang the garments on the line. But all the while the keen eyes inside the green spectacles went roving about, and alighted presently on something that rewarded her for her hard day's work.

It was a man emerging from the pine woods, and crossing the waste strip of marshland that extended to the farm.

A high board fence separated the back yard from this waste land, and but few ever came that way.

The man wore the dress and had the pack of a peddler, and a quantity of tow hair escaped from under a broad-brimmed hat. The brown face was half hidden in an enormous growth of light whiskers.

"Can it be?" thought Susan, with a throbbing heart. "I darsn't speak, for them two old witches are watching from the window."

Here the peddler espied her, and trolled out, in a rich, manly voice:

"My father he has locked the door, My mother keeps the key: But neither bolts nor bars shall part My own true love and me."

"It is him!" gasped Mrs. Susan Sharpe. "Oh, good gracious!"

"Good-day to you, my strapping, lass. How do you find yourself this blessed morning?"

Susan Sharpe knew there were listening ears and looking eyes in the kitchen, and for their benefit she retorted:

"It's no business of yours how I am! Be off with you! We don't allow no vagrants here!"

"But I ain't a vagrant, my duck o' diamonds. I'm a respectable Yankee peddler, trying to turn an honest penny by selling knickknacks to the fair sect. Do let me in, there's a pretty dear! You hain't no idee of the lovely things I've got in my pack—all dirt cheap, too!"

"I don't want nothing," said Mrs. Susan Sharpe.

"But your ma does, my love, or your elder sister, which I see 'em at the winder this minute. Now do go, there's a lamb, and ask your ma if I mayn't come in."

Mrs. Sharpe dropped her basket in a pet and stalked back to the house.

"It's a peddler-man," she said, crossly, "a-wanting to come in. I told him he couldn't, and it's of no use; and the best thing you can do is to set the dogs on him."

"No, no!" cried Mrs. Oleander, shrilly. "Let him come in. I like peddlers. Go with her, Sally, and tell the man to come round to the garden gate."

"I'll tell him," said Susan Sharpe, stalking out again. "Let Sally go and open the gate."

She marched across the yard and addressed the "perambulating merchant."

"You're to go round to the front gate. This way. I've a note for you in my thimble. I'll drop the thimble in your box."

The first half of Mrs. Sharpe's speech was given for the benefit of Mrs. Oleander's greedy ears—the latter half, hurriedly and in a low voice, for his own.

The sagacious peddler nodded, struck up a second stave of his ditty, and trudged round to the front gate.

Mrs. Sharpe finished hanging out the clothes before she re-entered the kitchen. When she did, there sat the peddler displaying his wares, and expatiating volubly on their transcendent merits. And there stood Sally and Mrs. Oleander, devouring the contents of the box with greedy eyes.

It is not in the heart of women—country women, particularly—to resist the fascinations of the peddler's pack.

Mrs. Oleander and her old servant were rather of the strong-minded order; but their eyes glistened avariciously, for all that, at the display of combs, and brushes, and handkerchiefs, and ribbons, and gaudy prints, and stockings, and cotton cloth, and all the innumerables that peddlers do delight in.

"This red-and-black silk handkerchief, ma'am," the peddler was crying, holding up a gay square of silk tartan, "is one fifty, and dirt cheap at that. Seein' it's you, ma'am, however, I'll take a dollar for it. Wuth two—it is, by ginger! Sold three dozens on 'em down the village, and got two dollars apiece for 'em, every one."

"I'll take it at a dollar," said Mrs. Oleander. "Sally, that piece of brown merino would just suit you."

"Makes up lovely, ma'am," said the peddler, turning to Sally; "only four dollars for the hull piece. Jest feel of it—soft as a baby's skin. Halloo! miss, what can I do for you?"

This last to Susan Sharpe, who had set down her basket, and was looking on.

"Nothing," replied Susan, with asperity.

"Oh, now, don't you say that!" exclaimed this persuasive man; "you do want suthin'—lots o' things—I kin see it in them air sparklin' eyes o' your'n. What makes you wear green glasses. See here, I've blue, and white, and fancy colors, with silver straddles for the nose. Do look at 'em—there's a love!"

Mrs. Oleander laughed, and Mrs. Sharpe so far unbent her austerity as to kneel down and begin rummaging the miscellaneous articles.

The peddler's quick eye never left her hands; and when he heard the tiny click of something falling, an intelligent flash shot from him to the obnoxious green glasses.

"I want a thimble," said Mrs. Sharpe, with phlegm. "I've lost mine. How much do you ask for these here, mister?"

"Three cents apiece."

Susan paid down the three cents, pocketed the brass thimble, and slowly rose.

"No more to sell to-day," said the peddler, bundling up with celerity. "So you won't take the brown, ma'am? Sorry we can't make a trade; but I'll run up again to-morrow with a new lot, and I've no doubt we can strike a bargain. Good-morning, ladies."

With which Mr. Peddler shouldered his pack and trudged away, singing. Old Peter let him out, and locked the gate after, and watched him out of sight. The peddler ceased his song the moment he was out of hearing, struck into the woods the instant he was out of sight, and flinging his pack on the grass, tore it open.

He had not long to search—Mrs. Sharpe's tarnished old thimble was conspicuous enough among his glistening new ones. He fished it up, poked out the crumpled bit of paper, and slowly read it through. When read, he tore it into fifty morsels, and scattered them in a white shower all about. Then, with knitted brows and compressed lips, he sat and thought and thought for a full hour.

Meanwhile, matters went on smoothly behind him. Mrs. Sharpe, having finished the washing, and quite won the hearts of the two old women by her workmanlike manner, prepared her patient's dinner, and brought it up.

On this occasion Mrs. Oleander undertook to accompany her. They found that refractory patient at her usual post—the window—gazing with dreamy, empty eyes over the ceaseless sea.

Susan Sharpe was strictly on her guard; her austere face never unbent, and Mollie took her cue once more.

"Here's your dinner miss," she said, briefly; "is there anything I can do for you?"

"Nothing," replied Mollie, sullenly. "Only leave me alone. I never want to see either of your ugly old faces."

She turned her back upon them as she spoke, and never turned round until they had quitted the room.

"She's a little imp, if there ever was a little imp yet," said Mrs. Oleander, spitefully. "Does she always treat you like that?"

"Worse, mostly," said the imperturbable Susan; "but, la! I don't mind; I'm used to 'em."

"Do you think she'll ever get better?"

"I think it's very likely, ma'am," responded Mrs. Sharpe. "Your cross ones are always the likeliest. But, of course, I can't say."

All that long afternoon Mollie was left quite alone. Mrs. Sharpe never came near her. This indifference on the part of the nurse quite disarmed Mrs. Oleander's suspicions. If she had any wish to carry favor with her son's patient, or help her to escape, surely she would not sit there in the kitchen, hemming her new silk handkerchief, all the while. That was what Susan did, however, and the weary, weary hours of the warm, sunny day wore blankly on the poor, lone Mollie.

The horrible stillness of the place seemed driving her mad. The endless monotony of the waves rolling up on the beach was growing unendurable. The wild waste of sparkling-waters, ending in the low horizon line, wearied her eyes like the sands of the desert.

"I shall lose all the little reason I ever had if I am kept in this howling desolation much longer," she said, pressing her hands to her throbbing temples. "Oh! to shut out this mocking sunshine—to lose sight of this dreary waste, where no living thing comes! Oh, to get away from that horrible sea! If I could only die and end it all! But I live on, and live on where others would be happier and find death."

She sighed wearily, and looked across at the radiant western sky, gorgeous with the coming sunset.

"What did that woman mean? Did she mean anything? Yes, I am sure she did, and she has come here to help me to escape. Oh, Heaven have pity, and grant me freedom once more!"

She clasped her hands and sat there like one out of herself, while the moments wore on. Purple and gold made the western sky luminous with glory, and when the gorgeous flames were at their brightest, and the sea turning to a lake of blood-red fire, a little white boat, with a blue pennant flying, shot out of the red light and drifted close to the shore.

Mollie fixed her eyes on this tiny skiff—why, she could not have told. Boats passed and repassed often enough, but seldom so close to the shore. The beauty of the little bark attracted her, nestling as it did like a white dove on the water, and that fairy azure banner flying.

A solitary figure sat in the boat, his face turned her way; but the distance was too great for her to distinguish that face. A word in white letters she could see on the blue flag; but again the distance was too great for her to distinguish. She sat and watched and watched, until the opening of the door startled her. She turned round and saw Susan Sharpe—this time alone.

"Look there!" said Mollie, obeying a sudden impulse; "did you ever see anything so pretty?"

The nurse looked—bent her brows and looked again. Her face flushed—she caught her breath.

"Who is the man?" she asked, hurriedly, lowly.

"I don't know," in the same breathless way. "He is watching here—but the distance is so great. Oh, nurse—"

She did not finish the sentence, but with hands clasped and lips parted, stood looking imploringly in the woman's face.

"Wait a minute," said Mrs. Susan Sharpe; "there is no one on the watch this time, thank the Lord! Mrs. Oleander's down with the toothache."

She left the room—was absent in her own two or three minutes—then returned with a pocket telescope in her hand.

"Try this," she said, quietly; "it's small, but it's powerful."

She put it in the girl's hand. Mollie turned eagerly to the window—the boat and the man were near enough now. The word on the blue flag was Hope; the face of the man was still toward her, true as the needle to the north star. With the first look she recognized it. A low cry of amaze, and she dropped the glass, and stood all trembling with the sudden joyful shock.

For it was the face she had sighed for, day-time and night time—it was the man she loved. It was Hugh Ingelow.



CHAPTER XXI.

MRS. SHARPE DOES HER DUTY.

"You know that man, miss?" Mrs. Sharpe said, ineffably calm, stooping to pick up the glass.

Mollie turned to her with eyes wild and wide.

"I know him—yes. And you—Oh, for pity's sake, say you know him, too!"

"How on earth can I say so until I've seen him?" said Mrs. Sharpe, poising her glass and clapping her eye to it, one hand over the other, after the fashion of the sex.

She took a long look.

"Well?" Mollie panted.

Mrs. Susan Sharpe turned to her with a singular smile—a smile that made luminous the sallow face and glorified the green spectacles.

Just then the stairs creaked under a cautious, ascending tread.

"It's Sally," said Mrs. Sharpe, not moving a muscle. "Eat your supper, and keep your eyes off the window if she comes in. Keep up heart, and think of the word on the blue banner—hope."

She turned away and abruptly opened the door as she spoke. There stood old Sally, with the eyes of a watching cat.

"Oh, dear me!" exclaimed the ancient handmaiden of Mrs. Oleander, very much discomposed by this abrupt proceeding. "How you do startle a body with your quick ways! Is Mrs. Oleander in here?"

"No," said Susan. "How could Mrs. Oleander be here when I left her, five minutes ago, half crazy with toothache?"

"Well, she left the kitchen after you, and came up, and I thought she might have dropped in to see the young woman," fibbed Sally. "How is she?"

"Suppose you drop in and see for yourself," responded the nurse, provoked into being pert to her elders. "Miss Dane, here's a visitor for you."

Mollie turned round from the table, where she sat taking her evening meal.

"I don't want you or your visitors, Mrs. Sharpe, if that be your name," said the irascible patient. "You're all a set of old tabby cats together, and if you don't clear out, I'll fling something at your head!"

She bounced from her chair as she spoke and brandished the tea-pot.

With a howl of dismay, old Sally turned tail and fled incontinently. Just waiting to exchange one approving glance with her patient, the nurse thought it prudent to follow her example.

This little incident had one salutary effect. It frightened Sally out of her feeble old wits, confirming, as it did, Dr. Guy's fable of the periodical fits of madness to which the young lady was prone. She related to her mistress, in shrill falsetto, what had occurred.

"And if ever I go near the crazy little hussy again, as long as she's under this roof," concluded Sally, wildly, "I'm a Dutchman!"

"Weren't you frightened?" Mrs. Oleander asked, turning to the nurse.

"Oh, not much!" said the serene Susan. "I'm used to it, you know. I could have dodged if she had heaved the tea-pot. She takes them tantrums once or twice a day."

Mollie spent the evening alone, of course, but in despair no longer. Hope had planted her shining foot on the threshold of her heart, and for the time she could forget she was the most miserable wife of Dr. Oleander, in the face of freedom. And Hugh Ingelow was near, and she loved Hugh. Oh, if she had never refused him—bravest, noblest heart that ever beat! the most generous gentleman the Creator ever made!

Alone Mollie sat—alone, but lonely no longer; for yonder, drifting lazily into the setting tide, the sunset glowing above and around it, floated the snow-white skift. In the amber mist fluttered the banner of blue—the banner of hope—and there, lounging easily, with his face turned to her, was the man she loved, handsome Hugh! her beloved—her darling!

"And, oh! that I were by his side," Mollie exclaimed, in her rhapsody, "never, never to leave it again."

Solitude and imprisonment had done this willful child some good, you see. They had taught her to think—to know herself. She never could be the same crude, madcap Mollie again.

The last, low, yellow gleam died out of the sunset—slowly crept up the twilight, palely, gemmed with stars. A round, red moon showed its crimson disk above the silvery horizon line, whitening as it arose, until it trailed a flood of crystal radiance over the purple bosom of the sleeping sea. And still Mollie sat there, watching the shining stars creep out, and still the fairy bark floated lazily with the drifting current. She could have sat there and watched him forever—her noble, gallant Hugh! But by and by, as the night wind grew chill, the little white boat, glided away and disappeared.

The entrance of Mrs. Sharpe, with her night-lamp, aroused Mollie from her trance. She turned eagerly round to greet her. Next to Hugh Ingelow, her hope now was in this mysterious woman.

Mrs. Sharpe closed the door carefully after her, set the lamp on the table, dropped the curtain, and then turned her face to Mollie. One look at that face told Mollie something had occurred.

"What is it?" she asked in a breathless whisper.

And Susan Sharpe, bending down, whispered hurriedly:

"Doctor Oleander is here."

Mollie barely repressed a cry. Susan Sharpe caught her, in alarm, by the shoulder.

"Hush! Are you crazy? Not a word. Yes, he's down-stairs—came half an hour ago. Don't look so frightened—he won't trouble you this time."

"This time," repeated Mollie, noticing the emphasis. "What do you mean?"

"That he was only run down to see how we get along, and to tell us to be all ready for an early start. We are going to Cuba."

"We?"

"Yes," with a grim smile and nod, "we. You, and me, and Doctor Oleander."

"Oh, nurse—"

"Hush! Hear me out—I can stay but a minute. He is going to take you to Cuba. His affairs are nearly arranged. He means to start on Friday night—this is Tuesday. A schooner will be in waiting at the wharf, in the village yonder. I am to go with you as attendant. He is very much pleased with me, and I have consented."

Mrs. Sharpe laughed softly.

"But, nurse—"

"Yes, yes; be still. We won't go—be sure of that. He wanted to come up to see you, but I told him he had better not, if he wanted to have you quiet when the time came. So he goes off again to-night without troubling you."

Mollie clasped her hands in thankfulness.

"How can I thank you? How good you are!"

"Thank me by going straight to bed and sleeping like a top. Let the thought that it is likely to be your last night under this accursed roof be your lullaby. And now I must go."

Mollie held up her rosy lips—tempting and sweet—and the woman stooped and kissed her.

"You are my best friend," Mollie said, simply. "God bless you!"

The woman smiled.

"Nay, the kiss and the blessing, if meant for your best friend, should have been kept for Hugh Ingelow. I but obey his orders."

Mollie turned radiantly red. Mrs. Susan Sharpe, with a significant smile at her own keenness, immediately quitted the room.

Dr. Oleander did not disturb Mollie. He departed half an hour after Mrs. Sharpe quitted her for the night. The account his mother and Sally gave of the nurse made him disposed to trust her.

"I will take her with me," he thought, "since she is so trustworthy. It would be too horribly dreary for Mollie without one companion of her own sex."

So he offered liberal terms, and Mrs. Sharpe closed with his offer readily enough.

"I'd as lief go to Cuba as not," she said, in her sedate way. "One place is the same as another to me. But it's very soon to be ready."

"Never mind," replied the doctor. "We'll find dry-goods stores in Havana, I dare say, and, meantime, I'll provide some ready-made things from New York."

Dr. Oleander departed very well satisfied. He would have liked very much to see Mollie, but his approach always threw her into such a fury, and he wanted her kept as quiet as possible until the hour of departure.

"I'll have to resort to the vulgar alternative of chloroform, I dare say," he thought. "She'll make a fight for it at the last. I can quiet her, however."

And so Dr. Oleander went back to New York without one suspicion that his new nurse was playing him false.

Within an hour after breakfast, the peddler presented himself next morning. Again Mrs. Oleander and Sally were vividly interested, and again each purchased something. Again Mrs. Sharpe said she wanted nothing, and again she knelt down to examine the contents of the pack. The peddler pressed his goods, Mrs. Sharpe obdurately declined. He persisted, Mrs. Sharpe grew angry.

"Take these here gloves, then, for massy sake!" cried the peddler in desperation, "ef yer won't take nothin' else. They're the richest of silk gloves, and, bein' it's you, only fifty cents. Just you feel 'em."

He looked Mrs. Sharpe full in the face. She took the gloves—a slip of paper was to be felt inside—a moment's demur, then she purchased and put them in her pocket.

The peddler departed; Mrs. Sharpe went upstairs, and drew forth the slip of paper. There were but three lines:

"Meet me this afternoon at two. I will be waiting in the woods near the shore, where you saw my boat yesterday. I know he was with you last night."

Mrs. Sharpe read this, destroyed it, and sat ruminating.

"What if they won't let me go? But no, they wouldn't dare keep me a prisoner, and if it came to fisticuffs," smiling to herself, "I could beat the three of them—poor old bodies! I'll go by strategy, if possible—by main force, if necessary. But I'll go."

Five minutes longer the nurse sat thinking. Then she arose, walked down-stairs, and complained drearily of a shocking bad headache.

Mrs. Oleander recommended a woman's cure—a cup of strong tea and going to bed. But Susan Sharpe shook her head.

"Tea never does me no good, and going to bed only makes me worse. I suppose it's staying in-doors so much. I ain't used to it. I always take a walk every afternoon. I'll wait and see if it gets better. If it don't, I'll go and take a little walk along the shore. A mouthful of fresh air will do me good."

Mrs. Sharpe waited accordingly, but the headache did not get better. On the contrary, it grew so much worse that when the one-o'clock dinner was ready, she was unable to eat a mouthful. She lay with her head on the table in a sort of stupor.

"I think you had better take a walk," said Mrs. Oleander, who was not an ill-natured old woman on the whole. "I don't want you to be laid up on our hands."

Mrs. Sharpe glanced at the clock; it wanted a quarter of two. She rose at once.

"I think I must, or I'll be fit for nothing for a week. I'll go and put on my things."

In five minutes, Susan Sharpe walked out of the garden gate and down to the shore. Old Peter closed the gate, watched her out of sight, and went back to the house, unsuspectingly.

Mrs. Sharpe sauntered slowly over the sandy beach to the strip of dark woods, skirted them, to avoid being seen from the windows of the house, and called:

"Mr. Ingelow."

"Here," answered a voice, and the peddler emerged from the trees and stood beside her. "You're a treasure, Mrs. Susan Sharpe," said the peddler—"worth your weight in crown diamonds. How is she?"

"As well as can be expected. A good deal the better for seeing you from her window last evening."

"I saw you both watching. She knows I have come to rescue her?"

"Of course. She is a woman."

"Does she recognize you?"

"No," with a laugh. "She called me her best friend last night. If she only knew!"

"She would still call you her best friend, perhaps. Your 'make-up' is a good one, Sarah, since she has failed to recognize you. What brought the doctor?"

Susan Sharpe briefly told him.

Mr. Ingelow whistled expressively.

"So soon? But I have thought so. He is not the man to wait. Well, we must be ahead of him, Sarah."

Sarah nodded.

"Yes—how?"

"I have it all arranged. Miss Dane must escape to-night. Look at this."

He pointed to a basket at his feet.

Mrs. Sharpe lifted the cover, and saw two lumps of raw beef.

"Well?" she asked, wonderingly.

"'A sop for Cerberus,'" laughed Hugh Ingelow; "a supper for the dogs. They'll never want another after."

"What do you mean?"

"The meat is poisoned; there is strychnine enough in these two pieces to kill a dozen dogs. I mean to throw that to them this evening."

"But how?"

"Over the wall, of course. What's their names? They'll come when I call them."

"Tiger and Nero."

"So be it. Tiger and Nero will devour the beef and ask no questions. An hour after they'll be as dead as two door-nails."

"Poor fellows! But it can't be helped, I suppose?"

"I suppose not. Save your sympathy, Sarah. You must do for the three old folks."

"Poison them, too?" asked Sarah, grimly.

"Not quite. Just put them to sleep."

"Indeed! How?"

Mr. Ingelow produced a little white paper from his vest pocket.

"You see this powder?" holding it up. "Drop it into the tea-pot this evening, and don't drink any of the tea."

The woman shrunk a little.

"I'm almost afraid, Mr. Ingelow. I don't like drugging. They're old and feeble; I daren't do it."

"You must do it," Hugh Ingelow said, sternly. "I tell you there is no danger. Do you take me for a murderer?"

"No; but there might be a mistake."

"There is none. The powder is an opiate; it will harm no one. They will go to sleep a little earlier, and sleep a little longer and a little sounder than usual—that is all."

Mrs. Sharpe took the paper, but with evident reluctance.

"I tell you it is all right," reiterated Hugh Ingelow; "no one is to be murdered but the dogs. Doctor Oleander will have no scruple about drugging Miss Dane on Friday night, you will see. The choice lies between her and them. Are you going to fail me at the last, Sarah?" sternly.

"No," said the woman. She dropped the little package in her pocket, and looked him firmly in the face. "I'll do it, Mr. Ingelow. And then?"

"And then the dogs will be dead, and the people asleep, before ten o'clock. At ten I'll be at the gate; a vehicle will be waiting down below in the clump of cedars. You will open the house door and the garden gate, and let me in. Before another day we'll be in the city."

"So be it. And now," said Mrs. Sharpe, drawing her shawl around her, "I must go. I came to walk off a bad headache; I find it is gone, so I had better return."

"Good-bye, and God speed you!" said Hugh Ingelow.

Mrs. Sharpe walked back to the house. Old Peter admitted her, and all three were solicitous about her headache.

"Much better," Mrs. Sharpe said, quietly. "I knew that walk would cure it."

All the rest of the afternoon she helped old Sally to manufacture pies. Tea-time came, and, ever willing, she volunteered to make the tea.

"Do so," said old Sally. "I can't abear to take my hands out o' dough when they're into it."

The tea was made, the supper-table set, and then Mrs. Sharpe begged permission to make herself a cup of coffee.

"I find it better for my head than tea. It will cure me quite, I know."

Mrs. Oleander assented, and the coffee was made. The quartet sat down to supper, and Susan Sharpe felt an inward quaking as she watched them drink the tea. Mrs. Oleander complained that it was weak; Sally said it must have boiled, it had such a nasty taste; but they drank it for all that.

Supper over, Mrs. Sharpe brought up her patient's. But she carried her coffee, and left the doctored tea behind.

"We are to escape to-night," she said to Mollie. "Be ready. We will start at ten. Don't ask me to explain now. I feel nervous and am going down."

Before an hour had elapsed the drug began its work. Mrs. Oleander nodded over her knitting; Sally was drowsy over her dishes; Peter yawned audibly before the fire.

"I don't know what makes me so sleepy this evening," Mrs. Oleander said, gaping. "The weak tea, I suppose. Peter, close up early to-night; I think I'll go to bed."

"I'll let the dogs loose now," said Peter. "I'm blamed sleepy myself."

The old man departed. Very soon the hoarse barking of the dogs was heard as they scampered out of their kennel. Peter returned to find the two old women nodding in company.

"You had better go to bed," suggested Mrs. Sharpe. "I'm going myself. Good-night."

She quitted the kitchen. Mrs. Oleander, scarcely able to keep her eyes open, rose up also.

"I will go. I never felt so sleepy in my life. Good-night; Sally."

"Good-night," said Sally, drowsily. "I'll go after you."

Before the kitchen clock struck nine, sleep had sealed the eyelids of Mrs. Oleander and her servants more tightly than they were ever sealed before. And out in the yard, stiff and stark, lay Nero and Tiger. They had eaten the poisoned beef, and, like faithful sentinels, were dead at their posts.



CHAPTER XXII.

A MOONLIGHT FLITTING.

The big Dutch clock on the kitchen mantel struck nine. The silence of the grave reigned within the house. With the first clear chime Mrs. Susan Sharpe rose from the bed on which she had thrown herself, dressed and prepared for action.

She drew the curtain and looked out. The night was celestial. A brilliant, full moon flooded the dark earth and purple sea with silvery radiance; the sky was cloudless—blue as Mollie Dane's eyes, the stars beyond number, big and bright.

A faint sea-breeze just stirred the swaying trees; the surf broke in a dull, monotonous wash on the shining strand; even the dreary Long Island farmhouse and its desolate surroundings were transfigured and glorified by the radiant moonlight.

Mrs. Susan Sharpe was an inestimable woman in her way, but neither a poet nor an artist. She gave a complacent glance at earth, and sky, and water, thankful that the benign influences, in the way of weather, were at work to aid them.

"It's a very nice night," murmured Mrs. Susan Sharpe. "Couldn't be better if they tried ever so much. It would have been dreadful awkward if it rained. How still the house is—like a tomb! Dear me, I hope there was no harm done by that drug! I must go and get ready at once."

But just at that moment she heard a sharp, shrill, prolonged whistle. She paused. An instant more and a man vaulted lightly over the high board fence.

"Lor'!" said Mrs. Sharpe, "if it isn't him already! I hope the dogs are done for."

It seemed as if they were, for, as she looked and listened, in considerable trepidation, the man approached the house in swift, swinging strides. Of course, it was the peddler. Mrs. Sharpe threw up her window and projected her head.

"Mr. Ingelow!"

"Halloo!"

The man halted and looked up.

"Where are the dogs?"

"In the dogish elysium, I hope. Dead and done for, Sarah. Come down, like a good girl, and let me in."

"I'm not sure that they're fast asleep."

"Oh, they are," said Hugh Ingelow, confidently, "if you administered the drug and they drank the tea."

"I did," said Mrs. Sharpe, "and they drank the tea and went to bed awful sleepy. If you think it's safe, I'll go down."

"All right. Come along."

Mrs. Sharpe lowered the sash and hurried down stairs. Bolts clattered, the lock creaked, but the sleepers in the house made no sign. A second or two and the nocturnal marauders were together in the hall.

"I told you it was safe," said Mr. Ingelow. "You are a woman in a thousand, Sarah, to manage so cleverly! Now, then, for Miss Dane! Upstairs, is it? Do you go in first, Sarah; but don't tell her I'm coming. I want the pleasure of surprising her myself."

Sarah smiled, and unlocked Mollie's door. The girl was sitting with an anxious, listening, expectant face. She rose up and turned around at the opening of the door.

"Is it you, nurse? Oh, I have been so uneasy! What noise was—"

She never finished the sentence—it died out in an inarticulate cry of joy. For Hugh Ingelow, his disguise torn off, stood in the door-way, smiling and serene as the god of safety himself.

Mollie Dane was a creature of impulse—she never stopped to think. One faint; suppressed cry, one bound forward, and she was in the young man's arms.

"Hugh! Hugh! Hugh!" she cried, hysterically, clinging to him, "save me! save me!"

It was the first time she had ever called him other than Mr. Ingelow. The young man's arms closed around her as if they never would open again.

"My darling, I have come to save you!"

It had all passed in five seconds, but that short interval was long enough for Mollie's womanly instincts to take the alarm. She disengaged herself, reddening violently. What would he think of her? and Mrs. Sharpe there, too!

"They have driven me nearly out of my senses!" she said, with a sort of choking sob. "I don't know what I am doing half the time, and I was so glad to see a friend's familiar face, Mr. Ingelow."

The blue eyes—the eyes of a very child—lifted themselves wistfully, deprecatingly, shining in tears. Hugh Ingelow was touched to the core of his heart.

"I know it, my poor little girl! It is enough to drive any one out of his senses. But let us see if we can't outwit the crafty Oleander. Put your bonnet on and come."

Mollie paused suddenly, and looked first at him, then at Mrs. Susan Sharpe, then back again.

"Well, Miss Dane," said Mr. Ingelow, "you're not afraid to come with me?"

"Afraid?" the blue eyes turned upon him with an eloquent glance. "Oh, no! But she—Mrs. Sharpe—"

"Is coming, too, of course, to play propriety," laughed Hugh. "Mrs. Sharpe," turning to that demure lady, "put on your fixings and let us fly!"

Mrs. Sharpe nodded, and turned to go into her own room.

"There's Miss Dane's things," she said, pointing to the pegs on which they hung. "I'll be back in two minutes."

Mr. Ingelow took them down, and tenderly wrapped the long mantle about the slender, girlish figure.

"Are you sure you will be warm enough, Mollie?—I beg your pardon—Miss Dane."

"Ah, call me Mollie!" the eloquent glance once more. "How good you are to me, Mr. Ingelow!"

Hugh Ingelow winced as if she had stabbed him.

"I'm a wretch—a brute—a heartless monster! That's what I am, Mollie, and you'll think so, too, some day—that's the worst of it. Don't wear that puzzled, frightened face, my darling! Heaven knows I would die for you!"

She took his hand and kissed it. Before either had time to speak, of course Mrs. Sharpe must happen in and spoil all.

But Hugh Ingelow, strange to say, looked rather relieved. His face had flushed hotly under that innocent kiss, and then grown deathly pale. He was very white when Mrs. Sharpe came in, and Mrs. Sharpe's sharp eyes saw it. The green glasses were gone.

"You look fit to die," observed Mrs. Susan Sharpe, eying him. "What's the matter?"

Mollie looked at him, then turned away. Had she been forward? Was he mortified?

She colored painfully, then slowly petrified to marble. But the young artist only laughed.

"Pining for you, Mrs. Sharpe. I only exist in the light of your eyes. By the way, where's the green spectacles?"

"In my pocket. Come!"

Mollie had knotted her bonnet strings with nervous, trembling fingers. She was thrilling through with mortification. She had been bold, and she had disgusted his fastidious taste, and she had not meant it. She was so grateful, and she loved him so dearly, but she never would offend in that way again.

Mr. Ingelow offered her his arm, but she drew back.

"I will follow you," she said, in a low voice, shrinking painfully into herself.

He said no more, but led the way. Mrs. Sharpe went after, Miss Dane last. No sound broke the stillness of the house. They might have been in their beds for all the noise they made.

"I hope it's all right," Mrs. Sharpe said, with a very uneasy face; "but I feel scared."

"You needn't, then," answered Mr. Ingelow; "they're safe enough. They'll be all alive in two or three hours from now, and will never know what ailed them. Save your sympathy, Susan, for time of need."

They went down-stairs, out-of-doors, into the cool, bright moonlight. Mollie Dane drew a long, long breath of unspeakable thankfulness as she breathed the fresh, free air once more.

"Thank Heaven," she thought, "and—Hugh Ingelow!"

They reached the garden gate; it stood wide; they passed out, and the artist closed it securely after him.

"'Safe bind, safe find!' Now, Miss Dane, take my arm, and let us see you step out. I have a trap waiting down the road. Neat thing this in the way of moonlight, isn't it?"

Mollie essayed to laugh. He had not waited for her to decline his proffered arm this time—he had taken her hand and drawn it securely through.

"How does freedom feel, Mollie, after a week or two of close imprisonment?"

"Very delightful. You must suffer the imprisonment first, Mr. Ingelow, before you can realize it."

"I would prefer trying to realize it without. Ah, my worthy Doctor Oleander, I think I have outwitted you nicely!"

"I have been so bewildered, and so flurried, and so stunned from the first," said Mollie, "that I can not properly comprehend anything, but I should like to hear how you have brought all this about."

"Why," said Mr. Ingelow, "Mrs. Sharpe told me."

"Yes; but you sent Mrs. Sharpe here in the first place; she told me that. How did you know I was here?"

"Ah! thereby hangs a tale—too long to tell at this sharp pace. Wait until to-morrow, Miss Mollie. There's our vehicle yonder. I might tell you by the way, but the road is long, and the night is chill, and I am to be charioteer. I couldn't do proper justice to the subject, you perceive; and besides, I want you to cuddle up and go to sleep. Here we are. Pile in, Mrs. Sharpe; the back seat, if you please. Miss Dane and I will sit in front and shield you from the inclemency of the weather."

"Much obliged to you, sir," Mrs. Sharpe said, dryly, obeying orders, nevertheless.

"I'll sit back with Mrs. Sharpe," said Mollie, sensitively shrinking.

"You'll do nothing of the sort!" retorted Mr. Ingelow, authoritatively. "You'll do precisely as I tell you! You and Mrs. Sharpe are both in my power, and if you don't keep uncommonly civil and docile, I'll run off with the pair of you and start a seraglio! There, ma'am, you're comfortable, I hope? Now, the sooner you go to sleep the better."

He helped Mrs. Sharpe into the back seat of the two-seated buggy, wrapped her up, and then assisted Mollie up in front.

"A splendid night for our business," he said, getting in beside her and gathering up the reins. "Now then, off we go, over 'brake, bush and scaur,' and good-bye to Doctor Oleander and the trip to Cuba!"

Obedience was not very hard in this instance. Miss Dane snugged up nice and close to Mr. Ingelow, and felt very comfortable indeed. As for him, there was a glow of happiness about his heart like the halo round a full moon. They would have been satisfied, just then, to sit side by side and drive along in a glory of moonshine forever and ever.

"Where are we going?" Mollie asked once.

"To the city—to New York."

"Oh! I know. But where?"

"Wherever you please, Miss Mollie. That will be Mr. Walraven's, I presume?"

"But—"

Mollie hesitated.

"What?" he said, in surprise. "Don't you want to go home?"

"Very much, Mr. Ingelow. It isn't that."

"Well, what is it, then?"

"Mr. Ingelow, you'll think me very silly, I dare say; but I don't want to go up there in a matter-of-fact sort of way at day-break to-morrow morning, in this double buggy, with you and Mrs. Sharpe. I should like—how shall I say it?—a little coup de thtre!"

"Oh! I understand," Mr. Ingelow laughed. "It is quite natural. I should like it myself. And, by Jove! I've got a capital idea."

Mollie looked up brightly.

"Oleander has given out that he is going to Cuba—he makes no secret of one half the story, you see—and Mr. Walraven gives a farewell dinner in honor of the mournful occasion, on Thursday—to-morrow evening. The party is select—very—on your account, you know—only Sir Roger Trajenna, Walraven's lawyer, Sardonyx, and myself. Now, when we're all assembled, discussing your absence, as I'll take care we shall be, and Oleander is telling lies by the yard, do you appear like a thunder-clap and transfix him. Guilt will be confounded, innocence triumphantly vindicated, the virtuous made happy, and the curtain will go down amid tremendous applause. Eh, how do you like the style of that?"

Mollie laughed gleefully. Half-tamed thing that she was, a few moments of breezy freedom, by the side of the man she loved, made her all her old, happy, mischief-loving self again. In the first bright sparkle and intoxication, she could quite forget that awful fact that she was Dr. Oleander's wedded wife.

"Splendid! Oh! what fun it will be to see him! And such glorious revenge, too!"

"Seriously, Mollie," said Mr. Ingelow, "he deserves to be punished for his unmanly trick."

"And he shall be!" Mollie cried, her eyes sparkling. "He shall be, if all the world knows the story! What care I? I will have my revenge on the man I hate—on the man who has wronged me beyond reparation. And then I can go away where no one will know me, and make my own way through the world, as I did before I ever came to New York."

Hugh Ingelow looked at her. Her eyes were alight, her cheeks flushed, her whole face eager, angry, and aglow.

"Wronged you beyond reparation!" he slowly repeated. "Mollie, what do you mean?"

"I mean," Mollie passionately cried, "that I am his wife. And I will never forgive him for making me that—never, never, if it were my dying day!"

"His wife!"

The young man looked at her thunder-struck.

"Oh! you don't know. You hadn't heard, of course. It wasn't this time. I would have murdered him and myself this time before he would ever lay a finger on me. It was before. You remember that other time I was carried off?"

"Oh!"

It was all Mr. Ingelow said; but, singular to relate, he looked unutterably relieved.

"He married me then—forced me to marry him—and I—Oh, miserable girl that I am! why did I not die a thousand deaths sooner than consent? But I was mad, and it's too late now. Mr. Rashleigh married us. You recollect that story he told at Mrs. Grand's dinner-party? Well, I was the masked heroine of that adventure; but I never, never, never thought Guy Oleander was the hero. I'd have died, even then, sooner than become his wife. I hoped it was—I thought it was—"

She paused abruptly.

"Who?" pointedly asked Hugh Ingelow.

Mollie stole a side-long glance from under her sweeping lashes at the handsome face.

"Some one who loved me as well, and whom I—well, didn't exactly hate; and I do hate Doctor Oleander!"

"Which is extremely natural; at the same time wicked, I suppose. Now, Mollie, don't try to keep awake and talk, because the journey is long and dreary. Follow Mrs. Sharpe's example and go to sleep."

He wrapped her up closer; and Mollie, with a delicious sense of safety, and comfort, and sleepiness, cuddled close in her wraps and felt luxuriously happy.

She had slept very little of late. Tears had been her nightly portion, instead of slumber. Now she was happy and at rest; and the very rush of the swift wind, as they bowled along, made her drowsy. She leaned her head against his arm and fell fast asleep.



CHAPTER XXIII.

PRIVATE THEATRICALS.

It was broad day when Mollie awoke, the sun shining brilliantly. She started up on her elbow, bewildered, and gazed around.

She was lying on a lounge in a strange room, and Mrs. Susan Sharpe was seated in an elbow-chair before her, nodding drowsily. At Mollie's exclamation she opened her eyes.

"Where are we?" asked the young lady, still bewildered.

"In Mr. Ingelow's studio," responded Mrs. Susan Sharpe.

"Oh, Broadway! Then we are safe in New York?"

The uproar in the great thoroughfare below answered her effectually. She rose up and walked to one of the windows. Life was all astir on the noisy pave. The crowds coming and going, the rattle and clatter were unspeakably delightful, after the dead stagnation of her brief imprisonment.

"How did we come here?" asked Mollie, at length, turning round. "The last I remember I was dropping asleep in the buggy."

"And you stayed asleep—sound—all the way," replied Mrs. Sharpe. "You slept like the dead. Mr. Ingelow lifted you out and carried you up here, and you never woke. I was asleep, too; but he made no ado about rousing me up. You were quite another matter."

Mollie blushed.

"How soundly I must have slept! What's the hour, I wonder?"

"About half past eight."

"Is that all? And where is Mr. Ingelow?"

"Gone to get his breakfast and send us ours. Hadn't you better wash and comb your hair, Miss Dane? Here is the lavatory."

Miss Dane refreshed herself by a cold ablution, and combed out her beautiful, shining tresses.

As she flung them back, a quick, light step came flying upstairs, a clear voice sounded, whistling: "My Love is But a Lassie Yet."

"That's Mr. Ingelow," said Susan Sharpe, decisively.

The next instant came a light rap at the door.

"The room is thine own," said Mollie, in French. "Come in."

"Good-morning, ladies," Mr. Ingelow said, entering, handsome and radiant. "Miss Dane, I trust you feel refreshed after your journey?"

"And my long sleep? Yes, sir."

"And ready for breakfast?"

"Quite ready."

"That is well, for here it comes."

As he spoke, a colored personage in a white apron entered, staggering under the weight of a great tray.

"Breakfast for three," said Mr. Ingelow, whipping off the silver covers. "Set chairs, Sam. Now, then, ladies, I intended to breakfast down at the restaurant; but the temptation to take my matinal meal in such fair company was not to be resisted. I didn't try to resist it, and—here we are!"

Mollie sat beside him, too pretty to tell, and smiling like an angel. At Seventeen, one night is enough to make us as happy as a seraph. For golden-haired, blue-eyed Mollie earth held no greater happiness, just then, than to sit by Hugh Ingelow's side and bask in the light of his smile.

"Delightfully suggestive all this, eh?" said the artist, helping his fair neighbor bountifully.

And Mollie blushed "celestial, rosy red."

"What comes next?" she asked. "After breakfast—what then?"

"That is for Mistress Mollie to decide."

"I am not to go home until this evening?"

"Not if you wish to give unlucky Oleander his coup de grce. Poor devil! I pity him, too. If you intend to make your entree like the ghost of Banquo at the feast, you can't appear, of course, until evening."

"Must I stay here all day?"

"Will it be so very hard?" with an eloquent glance. "I shall be here."

"No, no!" Mollie said, hastily, blushing and laughing. "It would be light penance, in any case; to spend a day here, after a fortnight down yonder. What I mean is, I might improve the time by going to see Miriam."

"If you wait, Miriam may improve the time by coming to see you."

"No! What does she know about your studio?"

"Heaps!" said Mr. Ingelow, coolly. "It isn't the first time ladies have come to my studio."

"I know; but Miriam—"

"It isn't the first time for Miriam, either."

Mollie opened wide her eyes.

"I protest, Mr. Ingelow, I didn't know you were acquainted with her at all."

"Which proves you are not au fait of all my lady acquaintances. But, to solve the riddle, it was Miriam who first came here and put me on your track."

The blue eyes opened wider.

"You see," said Mr. Ingelow, with the air of one entering upon a story, "she knew about your appointment that night, and was at the place of rendezvous, all silent and unseen. She saw you go off in the carriage with that man, and took it into her head that something was wrong. She called at Mr. Walraven's that day, and found you were missing—no tale nor tidings to be had of you. Then, what does she do but come to me?"

Mr. Ingelow looked full at the young lady as he spoke, and once more Mollie was silly enough to blush.

"I really don't know how it was," pursued Mr. Ingelow, with provoking deliberation, "but Madame Miriam had taken it into her head that I was the man you had gone to meet. Extraordinary, wasn't it? She thought so, however, and was taken all aback to find me quietly painting here."

Mollie did not dare to look up. All her saucy insouciance was gone. Her face was burning. She felt as though it would be an infinite relief to sink through the floor. The floor not being practicable for the purpose, she stole a look at Mrs. Sharpe; but Mrs. Sharpe sat with the face of a wooden figure-head, intent on the business of eating and drinking.

"Miriam and I had a long and confidential talk," the young artist continued, "and came to the conclusion that Doctor Oleander was at the bottom of the matter, and that, wherever you were, you were an unwilling prisoner. Of course, to a gentleman of my knight-errantry, that was sufficient to fire my blood. I put lance in rest, buckled on my armor, mounted my prancing charger, and set off to the ogre's castle to rescue the captive maiden! And for the rest, you know it. I came, I saw, I conquered—Doctor Oleander!"

"Which means," Mollie said, trying to laugh, "you imposed Mrs. Sharpe here upon Doctor Oleander as the nurse for his purpose, and fooled him to the top of his bent. Well, Mr. Ingelow, you have gone to a great deal of trouble on my account, and I am very much obliged to you."

"Is that all?"

"Is that not enough?"

"Hardly. I don't labor for such poor pay. As you say, I have gone to a great deal of trouble, and lost three nights' sleep running. I want something more than 'thank you' for all that."

Mollie tried to laugh—all in a flutter.

"Name your price, then, sir. Though it were half my kingdom, you shall be paid."

"And don't mind me, sir," suggested Mrs. Sharpe, demurely.

"Ah! but I do mind you," said Mr. Ingelow; "and besides, the time for payment has not yet come. Doctor Oleander's little bill must be settled first. What do you mean to do about it, Miss Dane?"

"Punish him to the utmost of my power."

"And that will be pretty severe punishment, if you appeal to the laws of our beloved country. Abductions, and forcible marriages, and illegal imprisonment don't go for nothing, I fancy. Only, unfortunately, the whole land will ring with your story, and your notoriety will be more extensive than gratifying."

Mollie made a gesture of horror.

"Oh, stop! Not that! I should die if it were known I was Guy Oleander's wife! I mean it, Hugh Ingelow. I should die of shame!"

She rose impetuously from the table and walked away to one of the windows.

"You don't know how I abhor that man—abhor, detest, hate, loathe him! There is no word in all the language strong enough to express my feeling for him. Think of it, Mr. Ingelow!"—she faced around, her eyes flashing fire—"think of tearing a bride from the very altar on her wedding-night, and compelling her to marry a man she abhorred! You, who are a brave man and an honorable gentleman, tell me what language is strong enough for so dastardly a deed."

Hugh Ingelow left his seat and faced her, very pale. Mrs. Sharpe slipped out of the room.

"Do you regret your broken marriage with Sir Roger Trajenna, Mollie?"

"No—yes—no. I don't know—I don't think I do. It isn't that. I didn't care for Sir Roger. I was mean enough and shabby enough to consent to marry him for his wealth and title. But I was such a little fool! Sir Roger was a thousand times too good for me, and he and I are both well out of that matter. But that is no excuse for such a villainous deed."

"True. Nothing can excuse it. But you must be merciful. The man loved you passionately."

"Mr. Ingelow," opening her eyes wild and wide, "are you pleading Doctor Oleander's case?"

"No, Mollie—the case of the man who loved you so madly, so recklessly, that the thought of your being another's—another's whom you did not love—drove him to insanity, and to the commission of an insane deed."

"And that man was Doctor Oleander."

"It was not!"

"Mr. Ingelow!"

"No, Mollie; never Guy Oleander. He hadn't the pluck. He never cared for you enough."

"But he did it twice."

"Once only—this last time—stung, goaded into it by the lash of Mrs. Walraven's waspish tongue. But he is not the man who married you, whoever that man may be. At least," cooling down suddenly, as he saw the full blue eyes fixed upon him with piercing intentness, "I don't believe it."

"What do you believe, then, Mr. Ingelow?" Mollie said, slowly and suspiciously.

"That when you made Miriam the confidante of your story, on a certain night in your bedroom, Mrs. Carl Walraven overheard you."

"Impossible!"

"Perhaps so; but you'll find that's the way of it. She listened and heard, and patched it up with Mr. Rashleigh's dinner-table tale, and confabulated with her cousin, and put him up to this last dodge. She saw your advertisement in the paper, and understood it as well as you did, and Doctor Oleander was there in waiting. You committed one unaccountable blunder. You appointed ten for the nocturnal interview, and were at the place of the tryst at half past nine. How do you explain that little circumstance?"

"It seems to me, Mr. Ingelow," said Mollie, "that you must be a sorcerer. How do you know all this?"

"Partly from Miriam, partly from my own inborn ingenuity, as a Yankee, in guessing. Please answer my question."

"I didn't know I was before time. It was later than half past nine by my watch when I quitted the house. I remember listening for the clocks to strike ten as I reached Fourteenth Street."

"You didn't hear them?"

"No."

"Of course not. Your watch was tampered with, and that confirms my suspicion of Mrs. Walraven. Believe me, Mollie, a trap was laid for you, and you were caught in it. You never met 'Black Mask' that night."

"If I thought so!" Mollie cried, clasping her hands.

"You will find it so," Hugh Ingelow said, very quietly. "Let that be Doctor Oleander's punishment. Make him confess his fraud—make him confess Mrs. Walraven aided and abetted him—to-night."

"How can I?"

"Simply enough. Accuse him and her before us all. There will be no one present you can not trust. Your guardian, Sir Roger, and myself know already. Sardonyx is Mr. Walraven's lawyer, and silence is a lawyer's forte."

"Well?" breathlessly.

"Accuse him—threaten him. Tell him you know his whole fraud from first to last. Accuse her! Tell him if he does not prove to your satisfaction he is the man who carried you off and married you, or if he refuses to own he is not the man, that he will go straight from the house to prison. He knows you can fulfill the threat. I think it will succeed."

"And if he confesses he is not the man who married me—if he acknowledges the fraud—what then?"

"Ah! what then? Doctor Oleander will not be your husband."

"And I will be as much in the dark as ever."

"A moment ago you were in despair because you thought he, of all men, was the man," said Hugh Ingelow. "It seems to me you are hard to satisfy."

"No," said Mollie; "if it be as you suspect, I shall be unspeakably thankful. No fate earth can have in store for me can be half so horrible as to know myself the wife of Guy Oleander."

"And if I thought you were his wife, Mollie, rest assured I should never have taken you from him," said Mr. Ingelow, decidedly. "You are no more Guy Oleander's wife than I am."

"Heaven be praised for that!" Mollie cried. "But then, I am entirely in the dark. Whose wife am I?"

Mr. Ingelow smiled.

"That question has an extraordinary sound. One doesn't hear it often in a life-time. If I were a sorcerer, as you accuse me of being, I might perhaps answer it. As it is, I leave it to your own woman's wit to discover."

"My woman's wit is completely at a loss," said Mollie, despairingly. "If ever I do find out, and I think it likely I shall, the divorce law will set me free. I must tell guardy all, and get him to help me."

"Is there no one you suspect?"

"Not one—now," Mollie replied, turning away from him.

How could Mollie Dane tell him she had ever suspected, ever hoped, it might be himself? It was evidently a matter of very little moment to him.

"And you can not forgive the love that resorts to such extreme measures, Mollie?" he asked, after a pause.

"No more than I can forgive Doctor Oleander for carrying me off and holding me captive in his dreary farmhouse," answered Mollie, steadily. "No, Mr. Ingelow, I will never forgive the man who married me against my will."

"Not even if you cared a little for him, Mollie?"

He asked the question hesitatingly, as if he had something at stake in the answer. And Mollie's eyes flashed and her cheeks flushed angry red as she heard it.