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the one he adopted. But to have an empty hollow where your beautiful hoard of pure gold was stored is a thing it takes time to grow used to. He is not an unhappy lover now, certainly; but he is a man who has been robbed, and he has fallen into the habit of low spirits. It is a thousand pities his poor mother and sister could not have been spared to make a home for him. Being too much alone is bad for any one. He shuts himself in with his blues, and they are growing more and more confirmed. Love is a curious thing." Leslie said the latter separately and after a pause, as if from a particular case she had been led to reviewing the whole subject. "It complicates life so," she added, and rose to go.

They teased her to remain and lunch with them. But Leslie was suddenly more tired at the contemplation of life than she had been when she came. The total result of her call had not been to cheer her, for by an uncomfortable stirring within, as soon as she had finished, she was made to repent having talked to outsiders about things so personal, so private, regarding Gerald-Gerald, who was abnormally reserved. It seemed a crime against friendship. That somebody else would have been sure to tell his story did not excuse her.

Leslie's mood to talk was over for that morning and she went home, but not before she had been forced to take a bottle of perfume which she had carelessly picked up off Aurora's toilet-table, sniffed, and praised; also, lifted out of their vase, a bunch of orchids for her mother; and for Lily the box of sweets that had stood invitingly open on the sitting-room table.

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recognized Mrs. Hawthorne standing at full height in the moving carriage and waving both hands, as he must suppose, nobody else being near, to him.

He lifted his hat. He saw her reach for the coachman and by touch make him aware that she wished to stop. The horses were pulled up. Mrs. Hawthorne, from the seat into which the jerk had thrown her, made beckoning signs to him, laughing the while, and calling, "Mr. Fane! Mr. Fane!"

He went to stand at the carriage-step. "I thought," said Mrs. Hawthorne, "that you were going to come and take us sight-seeing."

"I thought I was," said Gerald, with that scant smile of his; "but I was not so fortunate as to find you at home."

It was true that he had gone to her door one afternoon, having previously caught a glimpse of her in the heart of the city, shopping.

"You mean to say you came?"

"You did not find my card?"

"No; but it's all right. This is Miss. Madison-Mr. Fane. We are together. What have you got to do?"

Gerald looked as if the question had not been quite clear, and he waited for some amplification of it before he could.

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The horses were jingling their bits, frisking their docked tails. The driver, checking their restless attempts to start, was giving them smothered thunder in Italian. Gerald withdrew by a step from the danger to his shins.

"Oh, jump in!" said Mrs. Hawthorne for the third time. And because his choice lay between saying curtly, "Impossible!" and letting the impatient horses proceed, or else obeying, Gerald, who hated being rude to women, found himself irresolutely climbing in, just long enough, as he intended, to explain that he could not and must not go home with them to the hot biscuits and syrup.

The little third seat had been let down for him; his knees were snugly wedged in between those of the ladies. Aurora was beaming over at him; Estelle was beaming, too. Aurora's smile was a blandishment; Estelle's was a light. The horses were flying toward the Lungarno. And he gave up; he helplessly gave up trying to find an excuse for asking to be set down again and allowed to go his lonely way.

It might be entertaining, he tried to think, to see what they had done to the Hermitage. But, no! That was very sure to be revolting. If the evening was to afford entertainment, it must be found in watching this healthy and unhampered being who, just as certain fishes color the water around them, seemed to affect the air in such a way that, coming near enough, you were forced to like her without ceasing to think her the most impossible person that had ever found her way into cultivated society.

The carriage-wheels crunched gravel; the horses' hoofs rang on the pavement of a columned portico; the door was opened by a man in blue livery.

Entering the wide hall, they faced a wide double staircase, between the converging flights of which stood, closed, a great stately white-and-gold door.

Gerald, as bidden, followed the ladies up the stairs to the cozier sitting-room, where a fire, they hoped, had been kept up. In the beginning dimness of an early twilight he first saw the big red flowers and green, green leaves. He was left a moment alone while the ladies took off their hats, and he sent his eyes traveling around him, prepared really for something worse than they found, though the pictures on the wall called from him the gesture of trying to sweep away an unpleasant dream.

Aurora reappeared from her room in a businesslike white apron.

"Now I'm going down to make the biscuit. Oh, no trouble. No trouble at all. I want them myself. I'm homesick for some food that tastes like home. Estelle will entertain you while I'm gone. I sha'n't be but a minute.”

Estelle sat in a low arm-chair close to the fire.

Gerald, to whom it did not seem cold enough for a fire, took a seat nearer the windows, whence he could watch the fading sunset-end beyond garden and street, river and hill.

He would have cared less, no doubt, to make himself not too dull company for this stranger, had he known that there, before that fireplace, a few days before, she had been placed in possession of the most intimate facts of his humiliating destiny. Unsuspecting, in a mood rather more amiable than usual, he asked, by way of entering into conversation, whether she and her friend were not New-Englanders. It established the sense of a bond, however light, to find that they and he were almost townsmen. He had been born in Boston, or, at least, near it. His parents had owned a house in Charlestown, where he had lived till he was ten years old. They talked of Boston.

A maid brought in a lighted lamp, and, as is the pleasant custom of the country, wished them a happy evening.

Very soon after it came Aurora, with a dab of flour on one cheek, which the kitchen fire had warmed to a deeper pink.

"There," she said, "they 're in the

oven. When we took the house, all the
stove we had was a big stone block thing
with little square holes. The cook fanned
them with a turkey-wing. But now we
've got
range. Don't you want me to
show you over the house? There'll be
just time before supper."

"I'm afraid it's all dark," said Estelle. "Let me ring and have them light up. Think of a city house without gas!"

"No, they'd be too long. I can take a lamp."

She went for it to her dressing-room, and came back with one easy to carry, long in the stem and small in the tank, from which, to make it brighter, she had lifted off the shade. Gerald reached to take it from her, but she refused his help.

"The weight 's nothing. I want you to be free to look around. Coming, Estelle?"

"I'll join you in a minute."

They went down the wide stairs side by side. She led through a door, at the right, as you entered the house, of the main door.

"Here's one of the parlors. We have four on this floor, between big and little. Four parlors and a dining-room. Does n't that seem a good many for two lone women?"

The unshaded lamplight showed a crowd of furniture, modern, muffled, expensive, the lack of simplicity in design of which was further rendered dreadful to the artist by every device to make it still less simple: embroidered scarfs thrown over chair-backs, varicolored textiles depending from the mantel-shelf, drooping over the mirror; down pillows of every shape and tint piled in sofa-corners. Nothing was left undecorated. The waste-basket even wore a fat satin bow, like a pet poodle. Every horizontal surface was encumbered with knickknacks.

"This is where we have people come when we don't know them very well," said Mrs. Hawthorne, hardly concealing her pride. "We could n't ask the minister to come right up-stairs, as we did you. How

do

you—”

"Mrs. Hawthorne,"

from Gerald, "I beg you will not ask me
how I like it! It is a peculiarity like—like
not liking oysters.
I can't bear to be
asked how I like things."

"How funny! But, then, you 're different from other people, are. n't you? That's what makes you so interesting."

She preceded him into the next room, which was not so bad as the first for the reason that, she explained, "they had n't yet finished with it." He seized the occasion almost eagerly to praise the chairs.

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"We found them here when we came,' she informed him. "There was a good lot of furniture of this big, bare sort; clumsy, I call it. We stored some of it in the top rooms, but Leslie Foss begged me so to let these stay that we just had the seats covered over with something new and left them."

When she opened the next door and stepped into the space beyond it seemed as if her lamp had dwindled to a taper, the room was so vast. It had nine great windows, five in an unbroken row on the front of the house, the entire width of which it occupied. Aurora's light was faintly reflected in a polished floor; it twinkled in the myriad motionless drops of two great crystal chandeliers.

"Ah," exclaimed Gerald in a long sigh, "this is superb!"

"Yes," she said, "but you might as well try to furnish all outdoors. You see that we have n't done anything beyond putting up curtains. We never use it. All those chairs along the walls are going to be regilded when we can get them to come and fetch them. Things move awfully slowly over here, don't they, even if you 're willing to pay."

"What a ball-room!"

"Yes. Wish we could give a ball; but we only know about a dozen people. We 've got to wait till we know enough at least for two sets of a quadrille."

She was moving across the wide floor, holding her torch-like lamp high the better to illumine the great pale, silent emptiness. No longer hearing his footsteps echoing behind hers, she looked over her came hurriedly shoulder; whereupon he hurriedly joined

her, without explaining why he had lagged.

"This," she said, as turning to the left they passed from the ball-room into a small oval room the domed ceiling of which was all tenderly bepainted with Cupids and garlands-"this is almost my favorite."

She set down her lamp on a table of rose-tinged marble, and dropped for a minute on to a little rococo settee.

"The things in here we found just as you see them."

"So I imagined."

"All but the ornaments on the mantel." "Very astute in me; I divined that, too."

"We liked it, so we left it. Pretty, ain't it? Oh, beg pardon!" She blushed and looked at him sidelong, laughing. "That was a bad break! That came mighty near to being the forbidden question how you like it. All the same, it is pretty, is it not?"

"Extremely. Extremely pretty."

"There are going to be some tapestries presently. Oh, don't be afraid! Not those old worsted things full of maggots, but beautiful new ones, painted by hand, all in these same delicate colors. A story in four scenes, one for each panel. 'Fountain of Love' is the subject. sounds to me like something Biblical, Sunday-schoolish; but Mr. Hunt says no, it is not."

"Mr. Hunt-"

The

"The nephew, Charlie. You know him, don't you? He's getting them done. for me. He's a great friend of mine. He's helped me a lot to buy things."

"Did he help you to buy the pictures?" "Yes. He knows the dealers, and gets them to make fair prices. I think it perfectly wonderful how cheap everything is over here. He helped me to buy these, too." She lifted the chain of pink corals, graduated from the size of a pea to that of a hazelnut, which with their delicate living color brightened her winter dress. "I can't say, though," she dropped, "that I found these particularly cheap. Hush!" she broke off. "It 's Hat! Quick!" she

whispered, "let's get behind the door and say 'Boo!' as she comes in."

Amazingly, incredibly to him, this grown woman appeared about to ensconce herself.

"But won't it make her jump?" he asked, supposing it to be Miss Madison for whom the little surprise was intended. "Of course it'll make her jump. No matter how often I do it, she jumps. That's the fun."

"Mrs. Hawthorne, please!" he begged nervously. "As a very special favor to me, don't! It would make me jump, too -horribly."

She stood listening while the footsteps turned away and faded fruitlessly. With a look of disappointment, as at opportunity missed, she took up her lamp and moved on.

"And here," she said, leaving the oval room by the door opposite to the one they had come through, "is the dining-room. Which takes us back to the hall and completes the circle."

This room, of a fine new Pompeian red, was lighted. The table was set, and a butler busy at the sideboard. Gerald's eye was caught by the brightness of a china basket piled high with sumptuous fruit, and similarly caught the next moment by the pattern of the curtains, in which the same rampant red lion was innumerably repeated on a ground of widemeshed lace.

"Would n't it be a lovely house to give a party in?" she asked him. "Is n't it exactly right to give a party in? There are two big spare chambers up-stairs at the back that would do, one for gentlemen, one for ladies, to lay off their things in. No use; we shall have to give a party."

Having returned up-stairs, he was without any false delicacy shown her bedroom. and her friend's bedroom and their dressing-rooms, as well as given a peep into the two spare rooms, as yet incompletely furnished, that he might get an idea how beautiful these were going to be when finally industry and good taste had been brought to bear on them.

At dinner, which Mrs. Hawthorne seemed to have a fixed preference for calling supper, it was Gerald who did most of the talking. The ladies abandoned the lead to him, and listened with flattering attention while he called into use his not too sadly rusted social gifts.

Whenever he stopped there was silence, which he hastened again to break.

"You talk like Leslie," suddenly remarked Mrs. Hawthorne.

But now came the hot biscuits and the syrup, borne in by the mystified butler at the same time as the more conventional dessert prepared by the cook.

Aurora smiled at the biscuits' beautiful brown and, having broken one to test its lightness, nodded in self-approval.

"They 're all right. Now you want to put on lots of butter," she said. "Here, that 's not near enough," she reproved him. She reached over, took his biscuit, buttered it as she thought it should be buttered, and returned it to his plate; then, while eating, watched him eat with eyes that expressed her simple love of feeding up any one, man or animal, as lean as he.

There had been shining in Aurora's eyes all this evening, when they rested on him, a look of great kindness, the consequence of knowing how badly life had treated him, and desiring that compensation should be made. He could not fail to feel that warm ray playing over his bleak surface. He could not but think what nice eyes Mrs. Hawthorne had.

When he asked her if she knew how to make many other such delicious things, it became her turn to talk. Estelle here joined in, and they exalted the fare of home, affecting the fiction of having found nothing but frogs' legs, cocks' combs, and snails to feed upon since they struck Italy. Blueberry-pie-did Mr. Fane remember it? Fried oysters! Buckwheat cakes!

He said he remembered, but did not confess to any great emotion.

"You wait till Thursday," said Aurora. "It's Thanksgiving. We're going to have chicken-pie, roast turkey, mince-pie, squash-pie, everything but cranberry

sauce. We can't get the cranberries. Will you come?"

In haste and confusion he said, alas! it would be impossible, wholly impossible, intimating that he was a man of a thousand engagements and occupations.

But after an interval, and talk of other things, he inquired, with an effect of enormous discretion, whether he might without too great impertinence ask who was coming to eat that wonderful Thanksgiving dinner which her own hands, he must suppose, would largely have to prepare.

"Just the Fosses. All the Fosses." "Ah, Mr. Foss will feel agreeably like the Great Turk."

"You mean he'll be the only man? I guess he can stand it. We thought of asking Charlie Hunt, too, but he 's English and would seem an outsider at this particular gathering. Wish you 'd come. You 're such a friend of theirs. Come on, come!"

"Mrs. Hawthorne, you are so very unusually kind. If you would leave it open, and then when the day arrives, if I should find I could do so without-without-"

"Oh, yes. Come if you can. And be

sure, now, you come!"

THEY were still sitting at the table-dinner had been retarded by the circumstantial round of the house-when music resounding through the echoing rooms stopped the talk.

It was the piano across the hall that had been briskly and powerfully attacked. The "Royal March" of Italy was played, first baldly, then with manifold clinging and wreathing variations.

Aurora signed to the servant to open the dining-room door. All three at the table sat in silence till the end of the piece.

Gerald wondered what the evening caller could be who made the moments of waiting light to himself in this fanciful

manner.

"It 's Italo," said Mrs. Hawthorne, rising. "I call him Italo because I never can remember his other name. Come, let's go into the parlor."

It was all rosily lighted. Candles set

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