PART II

I

A year had gone by since Trescot’s death. St. Ann was prospering and on the way to become a great city. The shops were larger, the cotton-presses more busy, a new railroad was approaching the town. Already the divided water-front at the bend was being needed for cotton-storage and to supply landings for freight-boats.

Greyhurst profited by the general rise in real estate, and was able to sell two or three lots at good prices. His political prospects were also promising, and with increased means and lessening causes of irritability, he began to feel some return of self-confidence and the amiability of a man reassured as to his future. A fortunate decision in a case against the United States government added local popularity, and it may be said that, except in the opinion of a small class, he had suffered little in the eyes of a community largely made up of not altogether the best elements of the West and South. As he became busier, chiefly with small suits, occupation served to assist the blurring influence of time.

And yet he had his hours, or at least his minutes, of regret. He was sensitive, as the irritable often are, not merely to slights, but also to memorial reminders. He never willingly walked over the ground where he had seen Trescot fall. He had that day put a rose in his buttonhole. He never did so again. He still excused his act as justified by what Trescot had said, and by the self-belief encouraged in his trial by those who swore they thought Trescot was about to draw and defend himself. He was measurably successful, but never could deal as readily with his remembrance of the agonized face of Constance Trescot. That she had gone, never to be seen by him again, was a vast relief.

There is, however, a little space of time when the specters of thought or memory possess the scene. In the brief interval between the waking state and sleep, when the will is becoming dormant, and imagination plays us sad tricks, he saw her as she stood before him pronouncing the sentence which he never could forget. Of late this visualized memory was becoming less vivid. He felt that also to be a relief.

On the ninth of October, the anniversary of Trescot’s death, Greyhurst walked up the hill slope from his own house, and past the long-closed home of the man he had killed. He had a startling revival of memory as he saw that the windows were open, but he reflected with satisfaction that it had some new owner. Very naturally he had never spoken of it or its former tenant, and knew nothing in regard to it. He went on, setting his mind upon the business of the day, nor did he venture to ask any one who had taken the house.

At dusk the day before Constance Trescot and a maid arrived at St. Ann. Unrecognized in her black veil, she had driven to her old home. A letter from her and a despairing note from Susan Hood had prepared the Averills for her coming, so that she found the house in order and her old servants ready.

For two days she was, by her own wish, alone, having begged her sister, who utterly disapproved of her return to St. Ann, not to join her for a fortnight.

She found the house, as she had desired to find it, unaltered. She went up-stairs and changed her dress, asking to have tea sent up to her. Later in the evening, when the house had been closed, and the servants had gone to bed, she took a candle and went down to the study. The room, by her wish, had never been opened, and the dust lay thick on everything. For a minute she stood with the candlestick in her hand and looked about her. There were the table and books—the Bible with one of her own gloves left in it as a marker at the story of Ruth, which Trescot had meant next to read to her. The dead rose-stem was in the tall glass, the dried petals on the table. The piano was there, and her music; on a chair lay Trescot’s spurs and his riding-whip. She sat down, and for the first time in months broke into a passion of tears. That yearning for the dead which few escape came upon her. She threw up her hands with a wild gesture of utter despair. “How am I to bear it?” she cried. “How am I to bear it?”

At last she lay down on the lounge, and, wiping her eyes, resolutely controlled herself. Once repossessed of power to think, she lay quiet, reflecting. All summer, at times, she had set herself to plan some scheme of punishment for the man who had wrecked her life. She had schemed in vain. She was a woman, and powerless. What could she do?

The air was warm, the room close. She opened a door and went out and stood in the garden. The damp night air brought to her the fragrance of lingering autumn roses, with the keen memories perfumes so surely recall, and the darkness intensified her abiding sense of loneliness.

She sat down on the steps of the porch, and fed her grief with remembered joy. An immense longing came over her to see her dead as he was in life, and it seemed to her as though she must have some power to compel this vision. She had greatly desired to dream of him, and had never done so. At times, as now, she failed to be able to call his face into mental view. The longing seemed to affect her whole strong young body, so that she felt her heart beat in her neck and down to her finger-ends.

Suddenly she swayed to one side. She sat up, alarmed. A slight, abrupt sense of weakness, of want of control over her muscles, announced that to indulge in the remembrance of hours of passionate love, or of joyous comradeship, was perilous to such absolute self-command as she well knew she should need. She recalled the old doctor’s warning. He had said that to give way to emotion would for a long time to come be likely to bring about a fresh attack of loss of self-command. She set herself sternly to recover calmness of mind, and with it the power to reason. As she rose she felt amazed at this sudden feebleness. Resolving not again to give way to the sweetness and pain of trying to live back into the too real recollection of the days of a supreme passion, she went in, and, to her surprise, slept a deep and, as she knew next morning, an unrefreshing slumber. “This shall not happen again,” she said, as she turned over her letters at breakfast; and, in fact, unsatisfied desire to make her husband’s murderer atone in suffering took the place of a more perilous form of mental activity.

After breakfast she quietly arranged her household affairs for the day, and then busied herself in setting the study in order, dusting it, with care to leave all things as they had been.

At last she sat down at Trescot’s table, and, preoccupied, dipped a pen into the dry inkstand. She laid down the pen and went to get her traveling-inkstand. Returning, she stood still a moment, and then turned to her own table, and again sat down. She had the feeling that not where he sat could she plan a course of life so opposed to all he held dear. He would have said, “Forgive; forget.” For a minute, and for the first time, the woman hesitated. She was at the parting of the ways. She looked around her at the memorials of a true and noble life, and forward at the lonely desert of days and years without hope and void of all the joys that belong to youth and love. She did not reason—she simply felt. “No,” she said aloud; “I must go my way.” From that sad hour she held to one unchanging resolve.

First she must see Coffin, and must know all that was possible of her enemy’s life. How could she, a young woman, enter into it with power to ruin and make him suffer? She resolved to be patient. Had it been some lesser injury, she could have made the man love her and then cast him aside to realize the pain of loss. She knew, as by instinct, her power over men. She dismissed the thought in disgust and horror, and, rising, walked about, and at last went into the front parlor, and, to air the long-closed room, threw up a sash. As she moved to the other window she saw herself in a mirror, a tall form in deep mourning-dress, with a face the whiter from contrast with her black gown and mass of dark hair. She threw up the sash and stood still, held motionless as if by some fascination; for, on the farther side of the street, in the brilliant sunshine, she saw John Greyhurst walking slowly toward the town. He glanced over at the house and saw and knew her. Instantly quickening his pace, he looked away and moved on.

Noting the suddenly averted head, the abrupt hastening of his steps, she looked after him, and said aloud: “He feels; he is sensitive.” A stern joy possessed her, and she turned away satisfied. “Now I know,” she said.

When she went back to the study she saw Tom Coffin on the back porch. She called him: “Tom, Tom!”

“I heard you was here. I was that sure you would come back. Are you going to stay, ma’am?”

“Yes; I do not know how long. I told you I meant to come. Did you keep my secret?”

“I did.”

“Are you doing well on the bluff?”

“Why, Mrs. Trescot, I’m saving money. Never did that before in all my life, and it’s all along of you. Oh, we’re right well pleased, all of us.”

It was a long speech for Tom.

“I am very glad. And now I want something. I want to know all about that man, Tom. How he spends his time. He goes to his office, I suppose, and to that club, and to—to the court-house. Does he go to any houses? Does he visit any one—any woman?”

“You want me to find out? That’s easy enough.”

“But he must not know he is watched.”

Tom smiled. “All right.” He looked at her and wondered what she could mean to do. It seemed simple to him—a rifle-shot, and that would end the matter. She had said no. Her desire for some continuity of punishment would have been foreign to his mountain code of vengeance. For men of his kind there was some recognized joy in the crude pleasure of pipe and glass, of the visible results of the hunt, and of the use of ax and plow. The men he knew had no other joys, and to take life was to take away all that was valuable, and competently to deal with a wrong. He left her, puzzled as to what she meant to do, but, as always, her willing instrument, in small things or in large.

On the following day the general found her in the parlor.

“Well, my dear,” he said, “we are glad and sorry to see you here again. You are still too pale. Are you well?”

“Yes; I think I may say that I am as strong as I ever was. Sit down; I want to talk to you.”

“Certainly, my dear child. There is a good deal of business. The water-front at the bend ought to be improved, and—”

“Excuse me, general, but those matters may wait. I have other things to speak of, and, to me, far more important things.”

He was surprised and curious. “Now, as always, I am at your disposal.”

“I asked you some time ago to do for me what I was sure you would disapprove of.”

“Yes, on the whole I did disapprove; and when the warden said he would never consent I felt relieved. Mrs. Averill and I considered it unwise, and only to be explained by the condition in which your illness left you. It would have been an impropriety, to say no more.”

“I do not feel as you do,” she returned. “A useful, noble life is ended by a brute’s anger. He lives on unpunished. A jury justifies his act; no one remembers. Is there to be no record? Must this man live and go his way just as before? As I live, I do not mean that he shall. If to kill him would satisfy me, and I had been a man, I would have shot him as I should any other wild beast, and not have had a pang of remorse. But something I must do—oh, something!”

She rose and walked up and down the room, the figure of an avenging fate, splendid in her wrath.

“My dear Constance! let me beg of you—”

“Pardon me, let me finish. I mean to make this man suffer—oh, as I have suffered; oh, more, if that be possible! I have now but one purpose in life, and to it I mean to give my strength, my thought, and, at need, every dollar I have in the world.”

He lifted a hand in appeal: “God knows, dear, that I feel for you; but what can you do?”

He felt in a larger way much as Coffin felt; but this woman’s talk of some more refined vengeance struck him as pitiable in its incapacities.

“What I can do, general, I do not know as yet. I have felt, however, that I wished you beforehand to understand that if I seem strange in what I do, or, as men see things, eccentric, you will not consider me insane. I am fully aware that you will disapprove. I cannot help that. A man dies, and a woman must sit down and cry. I am not so made; I cannot, and I would not if I could.”

This stormy passion troubled him. It was not like any woman he had ever known. There was something in it of the deadly instinct of attack of a wounded animal—something not modern. Revenge had been in his experience the prerogative of man. He did not know how to answer her, and fell upon petty futilities. People would talk—she would surely be thought to be crazy. He hesitated to say that this vain dream of a woman ruining a strong man outside of the possibility of contact or influence was absurd, and might come to seem ridiculous, even with the tragedy behind it.

He moved her no whit. As he talked she continued to walk about uneasily, and at last pausing before him, said: “I know how you, how any man, must feel about what I have said. If there are men fools enough to think lightly of it, I swear to you there will be one man who will not laugh when I am done with him.”

The general began to think that it might very well be. He said: “I should be a poor friend, Constance, if I did not try to stop you. Think it over. Let Mrs. Averill talk to you, and wait, my dear. Do nothing rash.”

“Certainly, general, I shall do as you say. I am in no hurry, but nothing on earth will move me.”

“I am very, very sorry.”

“I could hardly have imagined that you would agree with me. May I ask you if that man is prosperous, if people have condoned his act?”

He hesitated. It was unnatural, disagreeable, this curiosity about a man who ought to have passed unmentioned out of her life.

“You do not want to answer me.”

“Frankly, I do not. He and I do not speak. If ever he did, I should call him out and kill him.”

“Thank you. I shall not urge you further. I can easily learn all I need to learn. Ask my dear Mrs. Averill to come here at four to-day. I have the miniatures for her. I have made myself unpleasant. You will forgive me, I am sure.”

He took her hand as he rose, kissed it in the old-fashioned way, and left her, feeling that he had entirely failed to bring her to reason.

When he related to Mrs. Averill this amazing interview, she said: “It is very sad, but it is also absurd. I will make her understand that, as a woman, I feel with and for her. It will then be easy to make clear how utterly impossible it is for her to do anything. It is really childish.”

The general smiled. “Wait a little,” he said—“wait until you hear her talk.”

When Mrs. Averill had kissed the pale cheek and expressed pleasure at seeing her again, Constance gave her the two miniatures. They were admirably done, and the mother’s eyes filled as she looked up and thanked the kind thought which had made them hers.

“And now, dear,” she said, “the general has told me of your talk. I am a woman and can enter into your feelings; but, dear, I am a Christian, and must plead with you, by all that George Trescot held dear and true, to put aside these thoughts of revenge. They are wicked; and even if they were not, it is practically useless for you or me, or any woman, to think of affecting the life of such a man.”

“But I am not a Christian, Mrs. Averill.”

“No; Susan told me that long ago, to my regret, dear. But still you must at least feel—”

“Pardon me, my dear Mrs. Averill,” she broke in. “I must go my way, and I mean to do so. I may fail; I think I shall not fail. But let me say, dear friend, once for all, just this,” and she laid a hand on the knee of the elder woman. “I am here for a purpose, but I shall live my life—the usual life. I shall see you often, I hope; and while here I shall try to do what good I can to those who are in need or suffering. All pain and all human distress appeal to me as they never did before. We will never recur to this subject, and yet, last of all, let me say just only this: if a man killed me, do you think George Trescot, no matter what his creed, would have left him unpunished?”

“But that is different,” said the old lady, feebly.

“I do not so see it,” said Constance. “We won’t talk about it any more. Here are some new flower-seeds and a meerschaum pipe for our dear general.”

Mrs. Averill thanked her, and they spoke of other matters—Susan, dress, foreign travel, and, at last, of the home for the orphans of Confederate soldiers. She—Constance—desired to help it.

After a long chat, the pretty old lady put on her gloves and rose, quite conscious that she had fared no better than her husband. She had been accustomed to act in her quiet, sweet-tempered way as a peace-making influence. Her gray, wrinkled, patient face preached silent sermons of gentleness and endurance. She had lost children, fortune, and all that helps us to bear the inevitable addition of such physical disabilities as the years bring to the old. She still retained a certain pleasure in her power to affect for good the lives of the younger people, whom, now that the general was once more prosperous, she liked to see about her—the young and the happy. What she had heard from Constance was both a novel revelation and a shock to her womanly sense of what was proper and reasonable. With larger knowledge and increased opportunities she might be able to turn this young friend aside from a course which seemed to her both wrong and foolish. She, too, had suffered, and had won at last the sad serenity of a sorrow for which this earth has no competent relief, and which looks for answer to another world than ours. She had nothing in her own nature or experience to explain either the strength or the defects of a woman like Constance Trescot. That she should want to avenge an injury, and yet earnestly desire to help the poor and the suffering, seemed to Eleanor Averill an incredible attitude of mind. As she walked homeward she consoled herself with the belief that perhaps, after all, Constance would soon come to realize her own incapacity and abandon her purpose. She had learned, as the old learn, to have great faith in time.

II

Greyhurst, who had reflected not a little on the return of Mrs. Trescot, concluded that her large business interests alone could have brought her to St. Ann. She was unlikely to remain; and even if her stay should be long, what did it matter? On the third day after her return he went to his office and began to read his letters. One in a firm, large-charactered woman’s hand interested him. He broke the black seal of the mourning-paper. A yellow slip fell out. He read:

“Sir:

“The inclosed telegram was in the hand of the man you murdered at the moment he was going toward you to offer, as before he had no power to do, a friendly, and even generous, division of the lands at the bend. His blood is on it, as I trust it may rest on your own soul.

“Constance Trescot.”

His first feeling was simply astonishment. For a moment he held the letter in act to tear it up. Then, as if that were impossible, he laid it down and mechanically unfolded the telegram and read it over and over. It was terribly new to him. The general had never spoken to him since the day of his fatal anger. He knew, of course, of the more recent and accepted proffer to Mrs. Baptiste to divide the frontage. He sat stupefied. He saw the brown blood-stains on the paper, and let it fall. The scene came back to him. Yes, the man was smiling—he had thought it the smile of triumph. There he was, dead—dead! He tore the papers to pieces and cast them into the waste-basket at his side. A brief fury of anger came over him. He rose and walked to and fro. “By heavens, if she were a man!” Then he controlled himself, saying: “After all, what does it matter—a woman’s revenge!”

I have said that he was variously sensitive. By degrees he had set aside and carefully rid himself of even the smallest reminder of an hour which he deeply regretted. He had ceased to wear his revolver; had put it aside and locked it up. He had found that the gray suit he wore during the trial revived a dark memory. He gave it away. And now, the feeble ingenuity of a woman’s hatred had brought back in dreadful clearness all that time had mercifully dealt with.

He went out and forced himself to attend to the business of the day. He stayed late at the club, seeking society, unwilling to face the solitude of his own house.

As he walked homeward in the darkness he took refuge in that which had somewhat helped him at an earlier period. During his trial men swore to their belief that the younger man was in act to draw his pistol. This, as he thought of it in cold blood, justified his own action as defensive. He clung to this view of the matter; set it before his mind as true, and, with sophistry which was scarcely self-convincing, so manipulated the facts that at last mere repetition of the mental states did assist him to escape from the self-reproach which fell upon him when Averill had struck him with the verdict of a man whom all men honored. The telegram and Mrs. Trescot’s letter had forced him again to think it all over. He realized how small had been his victory over the recording power of memory. He had been at the mercy of a slip of paper—and, at once, that which chanced a year ago was to him as if it had happened yesterday. At times he felt competent to defend and excuse his action; at others he suffered the anguish of such regret as was inevitable in an imaginative man, who felt keenly the accusation of having taken advantage of a man who carried no arms and was, to some extent, incapable of protecting himself.

By degrees, as the days went by, he comforted himself with the idea that here at least was the end. He had, too, at times an indistinct feeling that there was cruelty in thus tormenting a man who had bitterly repented; and the memory of the beauty and grace of the woman, and his immense admiration of her, barbed and poisoned the shaft which had gone so surely to its mark.

Meanwhile, Constance took up her life, but with more or less thought of its supreme purpose. She heard from Coffin what were the habits of Greyhurst’s days, and began to plan ways of knowing more of his life. At first all thought of him disturbed her emotionally; but this she learned to put aside. She was frequently at the general’s, but would go nowhere else. He had found for her riding-horses, and an old slave for a groom, so that soon her figure in the black riding-habit became familiar in and near the town. In a word, she lived, or seemed to live, the ordinary life of a young widow of more than usual means.

No one she knew mentioned Greyhurst, and, except the Averills and Coffin, no one suspected that she was doing or thinking otherwise than the two or three sad women in St. Ann who, like herself, were suffering from the cruel consequences of some deadly quarrel.

Toward the close of her second week at St. Ann, Mrs. Averill asked her to be present at a meeting of women who were interested in their modest home for the orphans of Confederate soldiers, to which Constance had promised help from Susan and herself. Contact with the Averills, and the misery she had seen as the direct or indirect result of war, had lessened her own strong partisan feeling. Disposed by nature to be generous, she was, moreover, eager to make friends and secure allies; and thus, although rather reluctant to face the many she would meet, she decided at last to accept Mrs. Averill’s invitation. It was late in the afternoon when she found herself among some two dozen ladies, old and young. Many of them she had met, and all were either anxious to express their sympathy by a kindly greeting, or were merely curious to see the rich widow who had so strangely elected to return to St. Ann.

Mrs. Averill explained that the meeting was informal and designed to assist the male managers of the home. She spoke, for Constance’s information, of the good it had done, and of the great difficulty they had in carrying it on. A lady read the quarterly statement of the treasurer, and the smallness of the deficit gave Constance a sad sense of their limited resources. Several women offered modest aid, and then there was the usual silence.

Constance whispered to Mrs. Averill, who said:

“Certainly, my dear. Ask what questions you please.”

Constance rose. “Mrs. Averill permits me to ask for some little information. May I inquire how many children you have in your home?”

From this she went on in a businesslike way to put herself in possession of all the facts she required to know.

“I have had,” she said, “some acquaintance with an institution like yours, and now may I learn finally how much per head per day it costs you?”

No one was quite prepared to answer; but Miss Bland, a spinster she had met before, said: “We can say that if we had a thousand dollars a year, with our present subscriptions, it would be enough to support all our home has room for.”

Constance then said: “My sister and I shall be most glad to give, between us, that amount for five years; and probably we may be able then to secure the same sum to you as a permanent income.”

There were exclamations of pleasure and surprise, and warm and grateful words as they turned to thank her. At last, on the suggestion of further business, Mrs. March, a stout, elderly dame, and their chairman, said: “We shall ask the gentlemen, our managers, to offer you formal thanks, Mrs. Trescot, for your generous help. As Southern ladies we thank you, and may I venture to add that every one in St. Ann appreciates the kind and liberal way in which you and Miss Hood have dealt with the squatters and, indeed, with all those with whom you have had to deal.”

Mrs. March drew back her chair and, smoothing out her gown, sat down, well pleased with her little speech.

“Thank you, Mrs. March,” said Constance. “It is quite unnecessary to thank us formally. I have here a blank check; I will fill it out for the first six months. And your little deficit I shall like to make good as my personal gift.”

Miss Bland, who sat on her right, said: “Oh, thank you; and don’t you want to see our printed report?”

Mrs. Averill shook her head; but the signal came too late. Constance said: “Yes, certainly, Miss Bland; I am much interested.” She glanced at the first page and saw that the managers were all ex-officers of the Confederacy, and that the seventh name was John Greyhurst’s. A faint flush rose to cheek and forehead. “Thank you,” she said as, with an effort to seem calm, she returned the pamphlet. “I do not want it.”

“Oh, keep it,” said Miss Bland; “I have another copy.”

“I said, ‘I do not want it,’” returned Constance, with emphasis.

Mrs. Averill frowned, and Mrs. Dudley, seated behind Miss Bland, whispered to her, with vicious satisfaction: “Take care, Eliza! How could you?”

“I do not see what I have done.”

As Mrs. Trescot rejected the pamphlet she sat up, quite too visibly disturbed to escape the notice of those who were within view of her face. With the persistency of the dull-witted, Miss Bland, annoyed at Mrs. Dudley’s reproof, exclaimed: “Oh, do take it!”

Constance turned toward her, saying so as to be generally heard: “I know, Miss Bland, that it could not have occurred to you that among the names of the managers is that of—” and she stopped, controlling herself.

Mrs. Dudley, leaning over the back of Miss Bland’s chair, whispered, “It is Greyhurst! How could you!”

“Oh, I never thought!” cried Miss Bland, awkwardly apologetic. “I am sorry. I didn’t remember.”

“I was sure of that. Do not let it trouble you.” Constance’s voice broke, and then, recovering, she added, “You have really done me a service.”

“You may be sure, Mrs. Trescot,” said Mrs. Dudley, “that we never thought—we—”

“Excuse me if I interrupt you,” returned Mrs. Trescot. “After what I have just learned, I must ask you to consider our gift as entirely in the hands of the visiting ladies, and not at the disposal of the male managers.”

Mrs. Averill said at once: “It shall be as you wish, dear. The gentlemen have been so inactive that it did not occur to any of us to think of them. The man referred to was put on the board three years ago, when it was first formed. It should have occurred to us; I ought to have told you.”

There was a moment of silence, when Mrs. March said: “You may rest assured, Mrs. Trescot, that no one here fails to feel with you; and if, under the circumstances, you would rather not give at all, we should all understand it.”

“Thank you,” said Constance, proudly; “you are most considerate. But you are welcome to all we can do, and if you find the situation embarrassing, as may be the case, I will write to Colonel Dudley and explain it myself. I see that he is chairman of the board.”

“Oh, no, no,” said several women. “By no means; it is quite unnecessary.”

Constance smiled in her cold way, shaking her head as she spoke, and rising.

“I must go. It is—it was a little too much for me. And you are all so good. I must go. Good-by.”

Mrs. Averill went with her to the outer door. “Oh, my dear, I am so sorry—and in my house, too; I am so very sorry!”

“I am not very sure that I am,” said Constance, as she kissed her and went away.

Mrs. Averill looked after her in puzzled amazement, and then returned to the room where her friends were busily discussing this unpleasant incident.

“It is just as well; she had to know soon or late,” said Mrs. March. “Of course he will hear of it—and I, for one, hope that he will hear of it.”

Others were of her way of thinking, and in a dozen homes that evening the sad story was revived and Constance’s generosity praised, and her sad fate pitied anew.

That evening she wrote to Mrs. March, inclosing a copy of a note sent to Colonel Dudley. She could not leave the ladies in a situation which obliged them to make to the managers an explanation which should properly come from her.

To the president of the board of the home she wrote:

“Dear Colonel Dudley:

“My sister and I are much interested in your excellent charity, and we shall have the pleasure of aiding it to the extent of one thousand dollars a year for five years. Then, or sooner, we hope to endow it with enough to represent the same income. An accident brought to my knowledge the fact that one of your members is the man who murdered my husband. You will, I am sure, understand why I have felt it to be impossible for me to confide our gladly given help to a board of which he is a member. I have placed the money, and shall in future place it, in the hands of the visiting committee of ladies, for their use, and theirs alone. My own strong feeling, and my late husband’s great regard for you, will, I know, excuse to you my very frank statement.”

A courteous note acknowledging the receipt of her letter was all she heard of it for a week or more.

Susan Hood had twice put off her journey to St. Ann, having no reason to leave the home she loved except her affection for Constance. She had reluctantly come to the conclusion that marriage and trouble had in some way set up barriers between them. She had been the one strong, and even jealous, affection of Constance’s younger life, and now sadly felt that it had incomprehensibly lessened, and that her sister seemed to have been incapable of more than one such relation at a time.

After Trescot’s death Constance had begun again to rely on her, and to defer to her opinion on the lesser matters of life. But all through the summer and their many months of travel she had felt that the mind once so open to her was hiding and cherishing thoughts which she, Susan, was not allowed to share. All her kindly attempts to enter into the confidence of her sister failed, and now, being about to join her, she wrote, in some anxiety and distress:

“My dear Conny:

“Why you so obstinately insisted upon returning to a place which must be full of painful memories I have never yet learned. Even for me it must ever be hateful. But you are all I have in life; whither you go I shall go. It is my duty, and I shall make it my pleasure. That is all—except, dear, that I am sure you are bent on something which you have, so far, concealed, and which I hope to understand. I have respected your reticence, assured that it must have a reasonable basis; but we once lived a frank and undivided life, and your attitude to me all summer has made me most unhappy. Let us be, dear, as we once were.

“Try to get a good horse for me. Love to the Averills. I shall arrive on November 2, D. V.

“Yours always, Susan.

“October 25, 1871.”

It was near to the close of the month when Constance received this letter, and she knew at once that further concealment would be impossible. She was equally well aware that Susan would be shocked and grieved at a course of conduct so opposed to the beliefs which governed her own actions. Constance was sorry, but it did not affect her resolve.

She was always at home to the increasing number of women, young and old, who called upon her. Although her piano remained closed, she made her house interesting to people who had few chances of intellectual enjoyment, lending books and magazines, and when alone busying herself with hanging prints and water-colors brought from abroad. In the afternoons she rode in all weathers.

So far she had won her way, as she had meant to do, making her rather excessive bounty to the poor and sick the more gracious by the attraction of manner which made those whom she tactfully obliged partners of the honest joy she felt, especially in helping the sad and hopelessly stranded women of her own class.

Her desire to know more of her enemy than Coffin could tell her found at last an ally. Just before Susan’s arrival, she had come from a long ride, and met at her door a woman whose face and worn look had interested her for a moment at the meeting in Mrs. Averill’s home. Seeing her in her riding-dress, the woman would have gone away, but Constance said: “No, I am quite at leisure. Do come in. You are, I think, the matron of the home. I saw you at the meeting.”

“Yes; I am Miss Althea Le Moine.”

She was dressed in clothes which had evidently been long in use. Her air of furtive apprehension struck Constance. “A provincial lady,” was the hostess’s conclusion, as they sat down. Constance rang, saying: “I have the habit of indulging myself with a cup of tea after I ride. May I tempt you?”

The tea was brought, and the toast and cake evidently enjoyed, while they talked of the home and its needs, or Constance turned over her Florentine photographs, setting at ease a woman whom she felt to be somewhat embarrassed.

At last Miss Althea said: “I have come to you, Mrs. Trescot, to ask a little help.”

“Now that is very kind of you,” said her hostess. “Let us talk. What is it?”

It seemed that she owned a small house left to her by a brother who had fallen at Lookout Mountain. “He was a Confederate soldier,” she added. A mortgage upon it was one of the smaller debts due to Mr. Hood. Perhaps Mrs. Trescot would kindly wait. The interest was in arrears—the rent was ill paid; but she hoped—

Constance interrupted her. “I shall have pleasure in speaking of it to General Averill. I think that it has already been considered—and, by the way, how much is it?”

“Five hundred dollars; and really the house is all I have.”

“Make your mind easy; when my sister arrives we will do something to relieve you, and will certainly cancel the back interest. Now don’t cry. You have given me a pleasure, and if you cry I shall cry, and I hate to cry. Let us talk of something else.”

“How can I thank you? I have been so troubled—you won’t mind my telling you the rest?”

“I? No, indeed. What is it?”

“One of my brothers was in the Northern army. He lived in Kentucky. He died some time ago. Last month the ladies found out that he was a Federal officer, and now I am so afraid they will think—oh, one of them said I ought not to be kept on.”

“No one will disturb you. You are needlessly alarmed. I will speak to Mrs. March. You may feel entirely at ease. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Oh, no,” said Miss Althea, as she rose. “I do think I shall sleep to-night. I wish there was anything I could do to show you how grateful I am.”

“Stop,” said Mrs. Trescot. “Sit down. You can help me. But, first, I want to ask you to consider what I shall say as confidential—absolutely confidential.”

“Yes, of course.” Miss Althea was curious, and her narrowing life had left her little of interest.

“I learned lately, as you know, that the man who killed my husband is one of the managers of the home. It embarrassed me. You can understand that, and why it must keep me from visiting at the home as I should like to do.”

“But he never comes there, Mrs. Trescot. At the visitors’ meeting yesterday Mrs. Dudley said that the colonel had told him that, as he never attended their meetings, he ought to resign, and he has done so.”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Trescot. “I have reasons—very good reasons—for desiring to know more of this man. I have trusted you; and now, when you hear anything of interest about him, I want you to come and tell me.”

Miss Althea, much astonished, promised to be watchful, and went away comforted, but with her curiosity ungratified.

On the following day Greyhurst recognized in the morning mail the black-edged envelop and the writing of Constance Trescot. He threw it on the table. He had again the feeling that in a variety of ways he had been made to atone for a minute of passionate resentment and the fatal action in which it had resulted. Always what men called thin-skinned, and feeling keenly what would have affected others but little, he had become, of late, less obviously irritable, but even more sensitive. The hint to resign from the board, which a year before he would have angrily resented, humiliated him the more when, hearing later of Mrs. Trescot’s gift to the home, he knew at once what hand had struck him. He knew, too, as he sat at his table, that to burn this letter would be the wiser course. He could not. It held him as with a spell, as a serpent charms a bird, both drawing and repelling. He tore it open at last, and an inclosure fell out. For a moment he held it unread; and then, as if compelled, read:

Sir:

The inclosed is a copy of a letter my husband left on his desk the morning of October 7, 1870. You will see that he meant to sacrifice his position as my uncle’s agent if Mr. Hood still refused to deal generously with your clients. My husband’s murder and my uncle’s death left to my sister and to me the privilege of generous dealing, of which your hand deprived George Trescot.

“Constance Trescot.”

“Curse the woman!” he cried. “I was a fool to read it.” He crumpled Trescot’s letter in his hands as he sat, and then smoothed it out and read it again. He never for a moment doubted that it told the truth. He was a man of too easy morals, but capable of affection and even of love. A new and overwhelming realization of what he had done to this woman swept over him in a storm of self-reproach and pity.

He sat with his face in his hands, his elbows on the table, the copy of Trescot’s letter before him. He lit a match and saw that his hand shook as he held the two papers over it and they slowly burned away. Then, rising, he lighted a cigar and threw himself on a sofa. The cigar went out. He cast it away. How would this end? There must be a limit to the ability of this woman to torture him, and to his own capacity to suffer. After all, he was a man and she but a woman. The matter of his resignation from the board of the home was a trifle, and he was prospering as never before. It was not so easy to deal with the horrible power these letters had to bring back emotions which time had helped to render less poignant. He had a bad memory for faces; but now, as he lay, he saw again the smiling young fellow approaching with his message of peace and kindness. He might have understood even then; but long years of unrestraint had combined with the bitterness of defeat to ruin him. He rose and, returning to his table, tried to lose himself in the enforced study of an important case. It was vain. He went out to a stable near by and mounted a horse he had just bought. It proved unruly, and a furious ride brought back the horse tired and the rider relieved, more at ease, and with a renewed sense of mastery.

His life was too busy to leave him large leisure for painful reflection. He had cases to try, and one which called him away to the capital of the State. He was gone for a week. His political ambitions also claimed a part of his time, as he hoped in a year to be a successful candidate for the legislature, and would then be absent for long periods.

Meanwhile, in one and another way, from Coffin and from the gossip Althea Le Moine willingly and in wonder brought to Constance, she knew of Greyhurst’s habits and expectations, and silently brooded over plans of disturbing her prey, not as yet fully realizing her power, nor comprehending how far the sensitive nature of the man was aiding her purpose.

III

Susan Hood had been a week at St. Ann before she was able to learn anything of the design, so steadily held, that had brought Constance back to a place which she, at least, wished never to see again.

She found the house made pretty and far more comfortable, and a part of the back porch converted into a conservatory. There were riding-horses,—the best they had ever had,—and, in fact, every sign of intention to make St. Ann a place of long, if not permanent, residence.

It seemed also to Susan that there was more cordiality in the many women and the few men who dropped in after their easy Southern way. Evidently there was here some change. It had never been her sister’s habit or desire to be on terms of cordial relation to society at large, so that her present absence of reserve, and her rather watchful eagerness to please everybody, for a time puzzled the elder woman.

No one entered Trescot’s library except Constance. She herself kept it dusted, neat, and unchanged. Susan understood why, being Constance, she should spend daily certain hours alone where Trescot had lived with her and his books. “It would not have been my way,” said Susan; “but, then, I am commonplace.” She thought unwholesome her sister’s attitude in the presence of a great calamity, and found, too, something that seemed to her false in the contrasted aspects of Constance’s life. Then, as usual with her, she convicted herself of ignorant want of charity, having never been in love; and said she must really rid herself of what she called cynicism—as if the cynical are themselves ever conscious of the quality.

A week after her arrival they were seated alone before the fire, now grateful at close of day in the November weather.

“Constance,” said Susan, “tell the maid not to let in any visitors. I want to talk to you. We are so rarely alone, and this constant effort to be agreeable to people you certainly were once far from liking is rather surprising.”

Constance, ignoring a part of her sister’s indictment, said: “My dear, you can’t choose here whom you will see. I never refuse to see people. They don’t understand it. At St. Ann you are always at home if you are in.”

“You must have changed your ways, Conny.”

“Yes, I have,” she returned, with a glance at Susan, who was busily cutting the leaves of a book.

She was at once aware that it would not long be possible to hide from so acute an observer as Susan what she was doing, and why she had returned to St. Ann. Indeed, she confessed to herself a certain prospect of relief in being able to break down the barriers of reserve which she had set up. The old affection, strangely weakened by her marriage and her incapacity to care deeply for more than one person at a time, was returning in full force. When she had confessed that, as Susan said, she had changed, both were silent for a moment, when Susan returned:

“You have been unlike my Constance all summer. I can understand that grief like yours may take many forms; but while abroad you would see no one, not even the most interesting people; here you see every one, even that plaintive little shrivel of a woman, Miss Althea. What brought you here, Constance?”

“I knew that you would ask. It is very simple. A man has murdered my husband and utterly wrecked my life. I tried—oh, very hard!—to accept it as other women accept such things. I could not. I know I shall shock you when I say that for a time I thought of suicide. Then it seemed to me that I must kill him. If I had been a man he would have been dead to-day.”

“Oh, sister! How can you say such things?”

Taking no notice of the gentle protest, Constance continued:

“I gave it up because death is no punishment; it merely destroys the power to feel and suffer. I want that man to feel such anguish as he brought into my life, and I want to know that he suffers. I came here resolved to find some way to make him wretched. I know now that he is sensitive. It seems incredible, but he is. And let me say once for all that I shall go my way, and I shall succeed—I know I shall succeed in making his life unbearable—oh, such as he has made mine!”

Susan had thought of many explanations of her sister’s return, but certainly not of this. She had ceased using the paper-knife, and, as Constance spoke with increasing passion, closed the book. A look at the stern, set face, so white, so beautiful, made the elder woman sure that here was a side of character which was serious and new to her, and not to be dealt with lightly. Turning to her sister, she exclaimed: “Dear, dear sister, drop this; come away with me. Let us go abroad again.”

“No.”

“But it is horrible, and what can you do? Think how that dear fellow would have felt. Think what he did feel even in the face of insult; how patiently he bore with the behavior of these people. Oh, Conny!”

“You may rest assured, Susan, that I have thought of all that; but I am not like you—nor, alas! like him. I have no beliefs which teach me to sit down and cry and pretend to forgive. I don’t believe that any one ever does forgive a wrong so cruel. I, at least, cannot, and I never will—never!”

“You can do nothing. Your lives are far apart. What can you do? Even if revenge were right, you are helpless.”

It seemed to Susan’s common sense past belief.

“And, dear,” she went on, “suppose the impossible; suppose you ruin this wretch, make him suffer, what good will it do?”

“It will make me happy—as happy as I can ever be.”

“Happy, Constance! Can revenge bring happiness? Will it not serve only to keep open wounds which ought to close? Does it not keep in your mind thoughts of a bad man, in place of the beauty and nobleness of the man whose death you wish to avenge? To be in thought a murderer—to wish to kill—that seems to me so dreadful that I ask myself if you can be your own self, or if disease or shock has changed you. Let it all go—oh, dear Conny, let it go. Leave it to God to deal with this man. Be sure that in the end he will repay. He has his ways.”

Constance stood up. “His ways—yes. Suppose I am the instrument of his justice. Why not? How do you know? That seems horrible to you; but I can’t help it; we have no common ground. I have love, and loss, and hate; you have never known them. Leave me to do what I think right, for neither man nor woman can turn me nor stop me. I will never willingly speak of this again, and neither must you.”

Puzzled, worried, and hurt, Susan saw that to reason would be vain; that the appeal of affection was thus lightly put aside filled her with slowly gathering anger.

“I shall do now as you say; but I make no promises. You surely do not expect me to help you.”

“I do not. I want you to be the dear, good woman you are. I shall neither ask nor need help.”

“You certainly will not get it from me; I think it wicked, foolish.”

“Yes, yes,” said Constance; “from your point of view, not from mine. But you will not love me the less? I could not bear that. Only, dear, let us never talk of this any more. I am not a child. I am not hysterical or insane. I shall not trouble your life. We will live like other people. Now, that is all.” She bent over and kissed the elder sister, who sat staring into the fire, her hands clasped about her knees. Accepting the kiss coldly, Susan looked up, but finding no comfort in the set face of her sister, her own eyes full of tears,—for she loved with a deep and changeless love, and wished to be able to respect as well as to love,—she rose and said as she stood: “I shall never have a moment’s peace; I shall always be thinking of what you may do. You have made me very unhappy.”

“I am sorry,” said Constance.

Susan left her, saying: “I wish you were more sorry.”

Despite her assertion of certainty, Constance was not secure as to what her future course should be; while Susan, as their life went on in its usual way, regained her belief that Constance would some day acknowledge her schemes to be as absurd as they appeared to her own good sense.

In the morning, a few days later, Constance was leaving General Averill’s house when she saw, for only the second time since her return, the largely built figure of Greyhurst. He came upon her suddenly as she stood at the gate between the high rows of box. His face changed. He half raised his hand in obedience to the habit of salute, dropped it, and went on.

She turned out of the gate, paused a moment, and followed him. Half-way down the slope to the main street he looked back. He saw twenty feet behind him the tall, black-robed woman. He turned to go up the main street. It was the busy hour near to noon. Both were familiar figures. People looked after them in wonder. Two gentlemen in talk on the board sidewalk lifted their hats as she went by, and, observing Greyhurst in front of her, remarked on it as strange. Did Greyhurst know who was behind him? Did she recognize the man? They passed on. At his office he looked back once more. She was very near, and had raised her veil. She met his gaze with steady eyes. He saw the white face with its look of immeasurable pain, and, passing into the house, fell on a chair, limp and wet with the sudden sweat of an emotion akin to terror.

Nor was she less observant. She was aware of the quick change in a face where all expressions revealed themselves with distinctness, and went on her way with her share of a moment of agitation, murmuring: “I must be to him like a ghost. I know now that he suffers—and he shall suffer.”

From that time she was more frequently seen in the morning hours on the one busy street of the town. Now and then, as if by chance, she came upon the man she sought, but was careful not to overdo that which would lose force by repetition. Twice she followed him on his homeward way. The last time was at dusk. He became aware of her presence as he left the verge of the town and turned into West Street. She kept her place some few paces behind him. He did not look back, but was terribly conscious of her nearness. He could not have described or analyzed the form of distress which knowledge of her presence brought upon him. He longed to look back at her, and was sure that to do so would abruptly freshen the memory of all he desired to forget. Now, for the first time, he felt fear in its purity—such fear as the child has when going up-stairs in the dark—fear unassociated with a definite object or distinct idea.

At his own gate he turned and looked back. The tall black figure was but ten steps away. Of a sudden, obeying one of those unreasonable impulses to which he was subject, he went toward her.

For a moment she was afraid, but did not move. He stopped before her and said: “My God! have you no pity? Cannot you see how I suffer?”

“Suffer!” she cried. “I am glad that you suffer! Pity? I have for you such pity as you had for him and me!”

With no more words, she crossed the street, and her dark figure was lost in the deepening gloom. The man looked after her for a moment, and then walked back to his house, and, moving heavily, went up the steps, murmuring, “My God! my God!”

Before this he had thought it hardly strange that he met her so often, for every one met almost daily in the one business street. He had felt it keenly. But now he became certain that she had of purpose chosen to meet and follow him. This sudden sense of being causelessly afraid for a little while occupied his consciousness to the shutting out of other thought. He was a man who had been in battle fearless, and so rash as to be blamed for leading his men into needless peril. What now did he dread? He did not know, and that troubled him. These revelations of what lies hidden in the abysses of the mind are, at times, startling evidence of how little we know of the world of self. That it was not physical fear was what disturbed him most.

When seated in his library, he succeeded in fastening his attention on the tangled accounts of a bankrupt client’s business. He was apt at figures and liked to deal with them. After two hours of hard work he began to consider the situation in which he was placed. To have it continue would be intolerable. He had to be absent for a week, but must return for a day to speak at or near the county town. Then he was to go to California and attend to certain mining interests in which the governor and other political friends were concerned. He would be away at least two months, and, for more than one reason, looked forward with relief to this absence, and with hope as to what it might bring into his life.

However adroitly Constance managed to make her encounters with Greyhurst seem to be accidental, the fact that she did not avoid him, as most women so situated would have done, excited very natural surprise in the little town.

When it became common knowledge that she purposely followed him, the interest and consequent gossip increased. She had made herself liked, but now even her closest friends felt her actions to be indecorous and inexplicably out of relation to an existence so full of good sense and so notable for well-bred regard for the decencies of life. When Mrs. Averill, greatly distressed by the gossip which soon came to her ears, thought proper to talk of Constance to Susan Hood, the latter became fully awakened to the results of her sister’s behavior.

To reason with her would be vain. For a moment she thought of the new rector, with whom she had formed friendly relations, but knew, alas! how futile would be that resort. Mrs. Averill, remembering her former defeat, was indisposed to renew her own efforts, and at last laid the matter before her husband, who had already heard quite too much of it.

He said: “My dear Eleanor, a lady without a husband usually relies on one of two men—her preacher or her doctor. Ask Dr. Eskridge to see her. He ought to be able to influence her, if any one can. He is a gentleman and will see this outrageous conduct in a proper light. As concerns myself, I can do nothing, and whether she annoys that man or not I do not care. But Constance must not be talked about. I had to stop some young fellows at the club last night.”

“Do you think, Edward, that the man feels it?”

“Yes; you asked me that before. This, or something, is affecting him deeply. Ever since he killed poor Trescot he has been—well, softer, less easily put out. But of late he is moody and silent; every one notices it.”

“I wish he would go away, or that she would. However, I will talk to Susan, who is in despair, and I will see the doctor.”

She did both, and, as a consequence, the next morning Dr. Eskridge called on Mrs. Trescot. He led a busy life, and she had seen but little of the cheerful, ruddy, rather stout old man with small bright eyes and alert ways. He had been at one time in charge of the State asylum for the insane, and then, during the war, a surgeon in Pickett’s division of the Confederate army.

While waiting for Mrs. Trescot he looked at the pictures, and then fell with interest upon a magazine, which he laid down as Constance with both hands made him welcome, reproaching him with neglect of an old patient.

“If I come I stay too long, and I am a busy old fellow. I was reading in this journal an account of Pickett’s charge. I was behind his line and got somehow too near. I have still a memorial in my leg. May I take the journal home?”

“Of course. My husband was on the hill. How strange it all seems!”

He looked at the mournful figure and the sad white face, and said to her:

“You will not mind my saying that I and others of our old army both liked and respected your husband.”

“Oh, I know, I know. And he was so sure of the soldiers—so patient with the feeling against us! Oh, doctor, why did I bring him here? He did not want to come. I urged it. I am so unhappy!”

It was the usual story. We must confess to some one—a priest, or, better, to the large, wise charity of the doctor. It was a relief to the woman, who was indisposed to talk of her husband even to Susan, and still less to pour out to any one else her abiding regret at having allowed her eager love to overrule George Trescot’s wish to wait until he could offer her a home in Boston.

“I was wrong,” she said; “and it was I who killed him. But for me, he would be alive now—now!”

“My dear,” he said, “we do what seems best to us, and who can predict the far-away results? I tell a man to go to Europe, and the ship goes down at sea. Am I to blame?”

“Oh, that is different. I was selfish. I did not do what was best. I should have known it was not. I loved as few women love. I could not wait; I wanted him near me always. I should be ashamed to confess how I felt. How did I come to speak of it? I never do.”

He saw that she was wiping her eyes as he returned:

“You are in a mood to assume blame. You are wrong. Mr. Trescot was fully advised by older men, his friends, that it was wise to come here. And, after all, I am right, and there is no use in our vain regrets. If we use the errors or mistakes of the past to wreck our present and make us useless—what of that?”

“Am I useless, doctor?”

He saw that he was astray, and said: “No; I must be pardoned—you are not; but if I am not mistaken, you are doing that which will surely end in ruining your health and making you useless.”

She drew herself up and regarded him with steady eyes. This man understood her and the strain to which she was subjecting herself. That, too, was a relief.

“I am sure that you know I am right,” he urged. “And let me say a few words more. You are exciting talk and gossip by what you are doing. Your sister and your friends are hurt and troubled and—pardon me—ashamed.”

“They have asked you to come here and try to make me do as other weak, helpless women have done?”

“Yes; but I should not so state it.”

“Doctor, you are the one person I can or will talk to freely of this matter. Listen to me.”

“I will.”

“This man murdered my husband. If he had killed your wife, you would have shot him as you would any other wild beast.”

“I would,” he said.

“This accursed town goes through the farce of a trial. He is free. He prospers. Except a few, who cares for the death of a Yankee officer? The man will go to the legislature—perhaps, some day, to Congress. At first people are a little shocked. It was pretty bad, they say. Does no one here punish a murderer? No one! I, at least, cannot sit down and do nothing. I am still too much of a woman to kill him; and, after all, death does not punish—or, if it does, should I ever know? I mean to ruin this man, and I can. These mild women who love in their weak way are shocked. What does that matter to me?”

“I will tell you how it matters,” he said. “I have heard you rave in your illness. I, at least, can understand; I, at least, cannot altogether blame you. But there are two or three things I want to urge upon you. I do not propose to discuss the right and wrong of this matter; but I entreat you to listen to me as patiently as I have listened to you.”

“I will do so.”

“You are following Greyhurst at times. No, do not interrupt me; let me have my say. It has excited unpleasant talk—too unpleasant to repeat. At the club and among the women it is discussed”—he hesitated—“even laughed at.” He knew how bitter was the medicine. “I wish to be frank with you. I know this man. He is by birth and early breeding a gentleman. I am making no plea for him. Who, indeed, could? I am sure that not only has he not escaped self-torment, but that your following him is probably a severe punishment. But what of yourself?”

“Of myself, doctor? I have never in this matter given myself a thought.”

“No, no; and that is the trouble. You are thinking of one thing, and are regardless of everything else, of every one else—of sister, friends, of all who love you. If any woman I did not know and like as I do you were to take so petty a mode of avenging a wrong as great as you have suffered, I should not hesitate to say how it looks to me and to those you cannot fail to respect.”

“What do you mean, doctor?”

“I mean that it is vulgar.”

She colored slightly. “You have certainly the courage of your opinions—”

“And, too,” he said, “a very great regard for a lady who should be far above the use of such means.”

Nothing he had said or could have said affected her as did this sentence. She saw it all in a minute, and gave way at once.

“If it be true that he suffers through me, I am glad to have hurt the man. But I see the force of what you say. I shall not do as I have done; and there are other ways which will neither annoy my friends nor make me seem ridiculous.”

“Thank you,” he said, well pleased. “But that is not all. You speak of other ways. Take care. The steady thinking on anything that involves emotion is full of peril to a woman like you; in fact, to any one, man or woman.”

“I know that. It is true, and I am guarding myself with care. I have taught myself to deal coldly with this matter. I keep myself busy. I ride; I read; I draw; I go among your poor. I have had my lesson.”

“But what do you mean to do?”

“Now there, my dear doctor, I must stop. I do not know. I mean to ruin this man, to drive him to despair.”

As she spoke the doctor considered her resolute face. He had an insecure belief that she would in some way compass her ends. She would collect this debt of vengeance, with usury thereto. How she would do it he could not imagine. He expressed his doubts, and even more than he felt, in the hope of inducing her to give up altogether her use of means full of danger to her mental health. She turned on him at last with her reply:

“You say that I am powerless and that I shall not only harm myself, but hurt all who love me, and yet do this man no real injury. I want one friend who will credit me with not being a fool, and what I say is for you alone.”

“That, of course, Mrs. Trescot.”

She then told him what she had done with the telegram and the letter.

“I cannot blame you,” he said, as she finished a perfectly calm statement. “I do not blame you. I shall say no more. I had far rather you left vengeance to Him who soon or late is sure to punish as man cannot. I see that I, at least, am unable to convince you. But take care; you are on a dark and dangerous way. I shall say no more to Mrs. Averill than that you will occasion no further talk by what you do.”

“Yes,” she said, rising; “thank you, my good doctor. I shall be glad to have you put an end to this gossip. Good-by.”

He went out to his gig, saying to himself as he drove away: “The man is doomed. If she persists he will do something—God knows what. He will be unable to bear it. These sensitive people never can stand still and wait. They are always nettled into doing something.” He began to consider, as he drove into the country, whether he had ever seen any one like Constance Trescot. He at last smiled with the satisfied nod of a man who has found what he was looking for. There was something feline in her delicate ways, her grace of movement, her neatness, the preservation of primitive passions and instincts, her satisfaction in the chase and in torturing. “Let us add,” said the old doctor, “the human intelligence, and we have her. Get up, Bob! It is as near as we shall ever get.”

Two days later the doctor received a note:

“My dear Doctor:

“Yesterday, as Susan wanted to hear a real stump-speech, Colonel Dudley rode with us to Ekron; and there, on the edge of the woods, he got us a standing-place (every one was very kind) close to the speakers. I soon had enough of the sectional eloquence; but Susan, who was taken with the humor of it, would not go. I had been told that that man was not to be present. When he got on the stump, not ten feet from us, for a moment he spoke to the people behind him. Colonel Dudley said to me: ‘Come away; I did not expect this.’ Susan said: ‘I must go.’ I said: ‘No; I will not go; I will not be driven away.’ As I refused he turned and saw me. I cannot describe to you with what satisfaction I saw what before I had only guessed. I cannot describe how his face changed. His voice broke for a moment, and then he went on. He was embarrassed. That might well be; but there was more. He got confused and then was clear again. Some one said he was drunk. Although he tried not to look at me, the speech was evidently a failure, and the crowd surprised. As he stepped down I said: ‘Now we will go.’

“I write because I was seen by many who will think that I went purposely or should have left at once. I wish you, who will hear of it, to know that I did not break my promise.

“Believe me, with grateful remembrance, “Constance Trescot.”

“But she stayed, for all that,” said the doctor. “How will it end?”

Others were as curious; and over the cocktails and juleps at the club on the evening of the stump-speaking, the ex-Confederates and others discussed this novel vendetta. As the doctor entered with Colonel Dudley, a young fellow was describing the scene and the evident effect upon Greyhurst. Another, a little older, said: “I saw her follow him down the street. How the deuce could she want to come back here? It must be awful.”

“Yes; for him.”

Said Dudley: “You boys had better drop that. I took this lady to the meeting. No one knew that Mr. Greyhurst was to speak. And let me, as an old fellow, remind you that we do not discuss ladies here.”

“Oh, but, colonel, this was such an amazing thing.”

“Would make a good article,” said the editor, as they sat down.

“But never will, sir,” remarked the doctor, sharply, over the shrubbery of his julep.

“Of course not,” said the editor.

The young fellows apologized, and the colonel began to chat with the doctor.

A few minutes later Greyhurst entered the smoke-filled room. Without speaking to any one else, he went over to where Dudley sat. “Will you do me the favor to speak to me a few minutes? Not outside,” he added a little louder, as men looked around. The old Confederate rose, saying, “Of course; but let no one take away my julep.”

“Not outside,” Greyhurst repeated. “Up-stairs, colonel.”

Dudley followed him to the room above, where were two candles, some chairs, a poker-table, and mildewed walls.

“Let us sit down,” said Greyhurst. “I shall not keep you long.”

“Very good; it is chilly here. What is it?”

Greyhurst said: “You will, I know, pardon me if I am wrong; but you as much as told me I must leave the board of the orphan home. I have since learned, or inferred, that Mrs. Trescot was behind the matter.”

“Yes, in a way; indirectly. In fact, I have no reason to conceal from you that she declined to leave in the hands of the managers the money she gave, because you were on the board. I thought her justified, but of course I could not bring a lady’s name into the matter when I talked to you.” Dudley was not a man to excuse his actions. He expected an angry answer. To his surprise, Greyhurst said quietly:

“Yes, she was justified. May I ask if, when you rode out with her to the meeting this afternoon, you were aware that I was to speak?”

“I was not. Is that all?” asked the colonel, as he stood up.

“Yes, that is all,” said Greyhurst, in tones both sad and gentle; “and, sir, I trust that you will accept my excuses for such unusual questions.”

“It is all right,” said the colonel. Then, seeing that Greyhurst still lingered, standing, with one thumb on the table, something struck him in this large, square-shouldered man with the dark eyes. Either curiosity or faintly felt pity, or both, made him say:

“Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Yes; if I may keep you a few minutes.”

“Pray, go on.”

“I am in a situation, Colonel Dudley, which is very unusual. I was unfortunate a year ago—most unfortunate; and since Mrs. Trescot has returned to St. Ann I fear that my presence, our accidental encounters, our—well, I find it difficult to avoid her. I put it as a man must do about a lady. It has become unendurable.” He did not wish to complain that he was haunted by this living ghost. He looked steadily at the old colonel, and added: “I hope I make myself understood?” He was unwilling to say that she followed him.

“I suppose,” said Dudley, coldly, “that I must admit that you do. It is plain enough as you put it—unusual, too, as you state; but let me add that I do not propose to discuss with you this lady’s course.”

Greyhurst said promptly: “I did not expect you to do that. I wish to ask advice of an older man as to what, as a gentleman, I should do.”

“I can’t give it, Mr. Greyhurst. There are reasons why even to be asked is disagreeable to me. I allowed you to question me in regard to my presence with Mrs. Trescot at that meeting. I answered you frankly. But I did not like it, sir; I did not like it. If I had declined to reply we should have quarreled. I think this talk had better end before my temper gives out—or yours.”

Greyhurst had been looking down as they talked, seeming to weigh his words. Now, with something like a wan smile on his dark face, he said quickly, as he looked up: “No man, Colonel Dudley, can ever quarrel with me again, or make me quarrel.”

Dudley’s face cleared as he said at once, in his frank, pleasant way: “I misunderstood. You must pardon me. I am free to say to you that, little as I like or approve this lady’s course, you, sir, can do nothing. I did not mean to advise, but now I have done so, and I have only this to add. None of us who know Mrs. Trescot are likely to stop her. I saw her at the meeting. If ever a woman hated a man, she hates you. Whether she is justified in her course or not, you know best. You have made me speak out, and I have had to express myself in a way, sir, which is not agreeable to me and cannot be pleasant to you.”

“I have said that she is justified,” said Greyhurst, slowly. “I have had no day since—since I killed that man which has not been full of regret. I do not hesitate to say so to you. But a man must live. I cannot go away; I have not the means. What can I do?”

“Do? Damn it! you can do nothing.”

“Thank you; that is my own unhappy conclusion. At all events, I shall be released for a time. I go to California next week, and shall be gone a month, or even two. You know, it is about Dexter’s mines.”

He said next, with a certain timidity: “Would you do me the great favor to allow me to refer to you some business matters while I am absent?”

Dudley hesitated, and then replied shortly: “Yes; tell them to come to me.”

“Thank you,” said Greyhurst.

Upon this, they went down-stairs in silence. As Greyhurst turned to go out, the old colonel, for the first time, put out his hand, saying: “I am sorry for you, Greyhurst, both for the past and for the present. Good night.”

The lawyer made no reply, and the colonel went back to his euchre and the julep and the doctor.

“I was afraid,” said the old army comrade, “that there might be something unpleasant.”

“No; but I had to speak my mind. He was as sweet-tempered as—well, as you are, doctor.”

“Then he is changed. In fact, since he killed Trescot he is strangely patient. Every one notices it.”

“Damn him!” said Dudley. “I don’t think he would even kill a fly now. Your deal, doctor.”

The game went on to the end, and the colonel, who had won, said, laughing: “You are not in your usual form, Eskridge.”

“No; my mind was elsewhere. I was thinking of Greyhurst, and what a mess he has made of his life. I do not believe the man has a friend in the world; and I suppose he quarrels with John Greyhurst as often as with others. Many of us are not our own friends. I doubt a little if he is even his own acquaintance.”

Dudley laughed. “You have a queer way of putting things.”

The doctor was in his speculative vein. He went on.

“It was simple murder, that good fellow’s death. I wonder how a man feels after he has done a thing like that. If he is educated and imaginative, and has power to feel, it must set him apart, as it were, in a kind of awful loneliness—a sort of solitary imprisonment in himself.”

“Oh, I don’t suppose men take it that way, Eskridge.”

“Some; not all. Of course there are brutes who have no power to suffer for what they do.”

“And you think this man does suffer?”

“I do. I am sure of it.”

“And so am I. Another julep, doctor?”

“No; I must go. I have one dying man to see, and there is another soul about to fill up the ranks. You see, I live on the skirmish-line of life.”

“What the deuce do you mean?”

“Oh, I leave you to digest my remark.” He went out, laughing.

IV

As the days went by, Greyhurst, somewhat relieved by the prospect of a long absence, arranged his affairs, and prepared himself for his journey to California. Constance Trescot, well aware of his plans, was deep in thought of the man who was, for a time, to be out of her reach. Her increasing abstraction, her lessening interest in books,—and she had never been an eager reader,—her still silent piano, all alike contributed to increase the anxiety in which the elder sister lived. In fact, Constance had exhausted her resources; but now an accident came to her aid, and, doing for her that which she never would have done, inflicted on her enemy a torture beyond the dream of malice, and far-reaching in its consequences.

An errand of charity to one of the families now residing on the bluff had occupied her afternoon. It was dusk and the shadows were deepening as Constance walked slowly along a wood path which led into the road on which she lived. As she came out of the forest in the dusk she quickened her steps, and, deep in thought, moved on, until of a sudden she became aware of being on the same side of the way and in front of the house in which Greyhurst resided. She stopped short, recalling that just here she and her husband had first met him. As she turned quickly to cross the street, she stumbled on the rough sidewalk, recovered her balance, and crossed over to her own side of the way. At her garden gate she suddenly missed a little velvet bag which usually hung from her belt. Instantly she remembered that it held, besides her cards, a small morocco case in which was a photograph of her husband in his major’s uniform. Realizing the fact that she had stumbled and might then have lost it, and much troubled, she was about to return and look for it, when she saw Greyhurst, who had just come out of his garden. As she hesitated, he picked up something which she knew must be her bag. She had a moment of indecision. To seek him, or to send for it, she felt to be impossible. She had a larger copy, a duplicate of the photograph. What effect would this picture of the man he had killed have on the murderer? With a singular smile on her face, she turned and went into her own house. She had a wild desire to see that meeting of the slayer and the slain.

Without the least idea of the ownership of the bag, Greyhurst carelessly laid it on the table of his library. He then lighted a lamp, and, mildly curious, began to look at the contents of the bag. He came first on the small case, and drew out the photograph. As he turned it over he saw the face of George Trescot.

The suddenness of this pictured revival of a face he had of late seen with less painful clearness gave to it the terrible power of an apparition. He let it fall. The face lay uppermost. He made a great effort, and seizing it, threw it from him.

“My God!” he said, “I shall end by killing that woman!”

For a moment he entertained the idea that she had meant him to find it. Then, as he saw the cards and some memoranda, he knew that she must have accidentally dropped the bag; and still, the horror of the thing was increased for him rather than lessened by his certainty that he was the victim of a chance loss. Was everything against him?

He picked up the photograph, and, resolute not to yield to what he felt was weakness, he set it before him, and with his head in his hands stared at the strong, well-bred, kindly face. It was too much for him. The tears began to gather, and as they rolled down his face he slowly replaced the portrait in the case, laid it in the bag, and closed the clasp. The test of endurance had been beyond his powers, and had produced on his nervous system an effect such as could never have been anticipated.

“My God!” he cried, as he fell back in his chair, “am I not punished enough!”

As he spoke, he looked up and saw, as if some ten feet away and a little to the left, the face of the man he had killed. For a moment he was simply astonished. It was larger than life and smiling, and not like the photograph. He rubbed his eyes, closed and opened them, and moved about. The phantom kept its place; and at last he observed that if he looked down he lost it. He was, as I have said, intelligent, and recognized in this vision the effect of long strain and sudden shock. And still it meant even to his knowledge something sinister, but about which it was possible to reason. It affected him at the moment less than had done the letters or telegram, or the presence of the woman who had sent them. His fear was not so much of what was as of what might follow. What did it mean? Was he about to be ill? He resolved to see Dr. Eskridge and to talk to him frankly. He awakened the next day still seeing the face, at times dimly, at others clearly. Its persistency troubled him. Was it a symptom of some impending mental disaster? Had his head been clear of late—his memory unimpaired? When the mind of the sensitive becomes critical concerning the health of its own processes, there is peril in the way. He found himself caught in machinery not readily arrested by the will which set it in motion. He had always been in vigorous health and had rarely had occasion to consult a physician. He had, however, lacked power to dismiss unpleasant thoughts, and now the terror of decay of reason haunted him unceasingly. And it was a woman who had brought this fear upon him, a woman against whom he was absolutely defenseless.

Early in the morning he gave the bag to a maid and asked her, much to her amazement, to leave it at Mrs. Trescot’s. When it was laid on the breakfast table beside Constance, her sister asked a question in regard to it. Constance replied: “I lost it yesterday. I suppose that some one, finding my cards, has returned it.”

“You are fortunate, dear.”

“Yes, am I not?”

V

The town of St. Ann was prospering. There were more horses hitched about the gnawed posts in front of the grocery-shops; more men in well-worn grey coming in from the country to buy or sell. In a word, there was more money. There was also, as a consequence, less anxiety, and more time, or, rather, more leisure; and the Christmas season was less sad as the years went on.

Miss Susan Hood had thrown herself with energy and good humor into the church work, and had reorganized the Sunday-schools. The orphan home had also her care, and as she had money and a bountiful sense of the humorous aspects of life, she found ready occasion for the varied forms of generosity of which she was capable, and constant mild amusement in what she saw and heard. As concerned Constance she was still uneasy, and the more so because she was sure that her sister had by no means given up her designs against Greyhurst. The fact that Constance sedulously concealed whatever she was doing still further added to her discomfort, and, except Mrs. Averill, there was no one to whom she felt free to talk. She resolved once more to reopen the subject with Constance.

On this special morning Miss Althea had been long closeted with Mrs. Trescot, and when she had gone Constance took up her garden gloves, flower-basket, and scissors, and, putting on a long white apron, went out into the little conservatory. Here she found Coffin, who, under her instructions, was with much labor of mind slowly learning how to care for flowers. His old, weather-worn face was more eager than usual.

He said: “That man is going away; I thought to come and tell you.”

“Are you sure? I heard that he was. Don’t speak so loud.”

Tom’s voice had the volume needed for great wood spaces.

“Yes, I’m sure. His old black woman she says so. It’ll be for a month or two.”

“Indeed! So long!” She stood before the lame little woodman, taller by a head. For him there was the sense of a commanding presence, remembrance of kindness with flavor of comprehending friendliness, and yet such sense of aloofness as the statue of a goddess may have had for some Greek hewer of wood. She stood still in thought; at last he asked:

“Was you worried over that vermin?” Her vengeance had brought her into singular partnerships.

“No; not while he is here.”

“Thought you would have liked him clean out of sight.”

“No; I mean to ruin him. If he goes away I cannot.”

What she had done or desired to do he did not know; nor, had he known, would her slow methods have appealed to his coarser conception of what he called “evenin’ up” things.

He said: “It might be best to do what I said. I’d do it. You see, ma’am, it’s sure, and it don’t give no trouble.”

Greyhurst’s life hung on the issue of a minute of indecision. A wild anger came upon her at the thought of his escaping. A little flush grew on the pale cheek, and then faded.

“No,” she said. “I can wait.”

“Well,” returned Coffin, “it isn’t my notion of things. I’d just kill him and get done with him.”

“No; you must not do that.”

“It’ll be as you say. ’Bout these rose-bugs, they’re mighty troublesome, ma’am.”

He dismissed the matter lightly. He was a man of the Tennessee border, where women do not value a man who cannot shoot straight—a land of long-nourished hatreds, where men kill but do not steal, where the vendetta is medieval in the simplicity of its one demand. He could not comprehend the feeling which stayed his hand, but, nevertheless, he was entirely the vassal of her will.

She answered one or two questions about the flowers with some directions, and sent him away with roses for Mrs. March.

While her sister was thus engaged, Susan had been in the parlor in earnest talk with the new rector of the church at St. Ann. Very soon after her arrival she had added to her church work some care of the freed slaves, and, happy in the relief of new duties, had brought inspiriting good sense and money to aid the many forms of usefulness in which Mr. Kent was interested.

The rector had been talking of George Trescot.

“You must have met him,” said Susan.

“No; we exchanged visits, but he was much of the time absent since I came; and for a few weeks I was myself in the East.”

“I am sorry you never met.”

“And I. I think I mentioned that we were related—distant cousins. Perhaps, if Mrs. Trescot knew that, she might be willing to see me. I very much want to help you and her. And there is so much wild talk—”

“Yes, I know; but my sister has opinions which I neither share nor like—oh, excuse me, I fear I must cut short our talk. I see that her gardener is going, and I have to see her before she goes out.”

He rose, saying: “I shall try again. I hope to have better luck.”

“I shall see you to-morrow at the library. The books I ordered should be here to-day.”

“One moment, Miss Hood. May I be pardoned if I ask why Mrs. Trescot never comes to church?”

“That is a long story, and a sad one. Some day we will talk about it, not now.”

“You will not forget the flowers for Sunday?”

“Of course not.”

After he left her, Susan went out into the little conservatory.

Said Constance: “Has your rector, or director, gone? What can you find to talk about? He makes rather long visits. I must admit that he rides well for a preacher. I saw him pass yesterday. He looks to be about twenty-one.”