THE STORY OF A STORY.

I.

THE HEROINE.

A horse-car, for all it is so common a sight, is not without its picturesque side. To stand on a long bridge at night, while the lights twinkle in the perspective, and watch one of these animated servants, with its colored globular eye, come scrambling toward you, is to see a clumsy, good-natured Caliban of this mechanical age. One of these days, when the horse-car is superseded by some electric skipping wicker-basket or what not, the Austin Dobson of the time will doubtless expend his light sympathy of verse on the pathetic old abandoned conveyance.

Such picturesqueness, however, is rather for one who seeks, than a view which thrusts itself upon the merely casual observer. At any rate, another Austin,—Austin Buckingham,—who was engaged one winter evening at the end of a long bridge in idealizing horse-cars, hit upon this way of looking at the one he was waiting for, out of sheer desperation of intellect. He was a young littérateur who was out of work. He was not, like other workmen in similar straits, going from one shop to another looking for a job. Not at all. He recognized the situation. He had only to write a clever story and he could quickly dispose of it. He had written a good many stories in his short day. Now he wished to write another. The pity of it was that he had no story to tell,—absolutely nothing. He had been through his note-books, but they gave him no help; he had kept his ears open for some suggestive little incident, but the whole world seemed suddenly given over to the dreariest commonplace. He had walked out this evening, slowly revolving in his mind the various odds and ends which came upon demand of his rag-picking memory, and yet nothing of value had turned up. He was tired, and determined to take a horse-car for the rest of the way.

It was while he stood watching for the one which took him nearest to his door, that he made the slight reflection with which this story opens. "Could I make a horse-car the hero of my story?" he asked himself, with a petulant tone, as he thought how dismally dull he was. The jingling car came up, and he jumped upon the rear platform, wedged his way through the men and boys who crowded the steps and platform, and so pushed into the interior. He found half a dozen men in various attitudes of neglect, but all hanging abjectly by the loops which a considerate company had provided for its patrons. For his part, he preferred to brace himself against the forward door, which gave him a position where he could watch his fellow-prisoners.

His eye fell at once on a girl for whom he always looked. He did not know her name, but, as the saying goes, he knew her face very well. She lived on the same street where he had his lodging, so that when they met in a horse-car they always got out together. From the regularity with which she came out in a certain car, Buckingham had sagely concluded that she was one of the multitude of girls who earned their living, for whom as a class he had great respect, though he did not happen to know any single member. He liked to look at her. She was shy and discreet in bearing; she usually entertained herself with a book, which permitted him larger liberty of eye; and she dressed with a neatness which had an individuality: she evidently expressed herself in her clothes. That is not all. She was undeniably pretty.

Now, our young friend had seen her in his horse-car a great many times, but never under the conditions which existed at this time. People rarely exclaim to themselves except in novels, but Buckingham did deliberately shout to himself, "Why, this—this is my heroine! I have only to find a hero and a plot. I know this girl very well. I am sure I can make a story about her. Give me a hero, give me a plot, and there is my story!"

II.

MISS MARTINDALE.

When the horse-car stopped at the foot of Grove Street, Austin Buckingham and the prospective heroine of his story got out so nearly at the same time that when they reached the sidewalk they were side by side. Beneath the gas-light stood a tallish man who was looking up to read the name of the street upon the lamp. The light thus fell on his face and brought it into distinctness; especially it disclosed a scar upon his cheek. He caught sight now of these two people, and at once addressed Buckingham:

"Can you tell me whereabouts Mr. Martindale lives?"

Buckingham hesitated, not because he knew and did not wish to tell, but because he did not know, but wished to, if possible, out of courtesy. He was trying to remember. The answer, however, came a moment after from the girl, who had checked her walk upon hearing the name.

"I am going directly there," she said, and the two walked off together, the young man lifting his broad-brimmed felt hat in acknowledgment of her civility. He lifted it by seizing the crown in a bunch. It is difficult to lift a soft hat gracefully. Buckingham followed the pair, and when he had reached his own door-way he continued to follow them with his eyes until they were lost at a bend in the street. Then he entered the house where he lodged, and sat down in his study. He was greatly pleased with this little turn in affairs.

"That is one step further in my story," he said to himself, for there was no one else to say it to. "So she is Miss Martindale, and this young man with a scar has come to see her father on business. He will stay to tea. The father will—what will the father do or say? I must look out the name in the directory, so as to get some solid basis of fact about the father,—something to avoid, of course, when I arrange him in the story. If he is a stone-cutter I must make him a house- and sign-painter. I must disguise him so that his most intimate friend will not detect him."

Austin Buckingham was in the most agreeable humor as he proceeded to prepare his solitary tea, for he was a bachelor and yet he detested restaurants and boarding-houses. His dinner he needed to buy, and eat where he bought it, but his breakfast and tea he provided in the room which served as study and dining-room. He did not wash his dishes, it may be remarked, with the exception of a Kaga cup which was too precious to be intrusted to his landlady.

He had set aside his tea-things, and, with a paper and pencil, was proceeding to sketch a plot for his story, with Miss Martindale for the heroine and the young man with a scar for a hero, when there was a knock at the door, and the servant came in, bearing a card. It contained the name of Henry Dale Wilding, a correspondent whom he had never met, but who had begun with asking for his autograph, and had now ended, it seems, with calling in person.

"Show him up," said the story-teller; and Mr. Wilding, who was two steps behind the servant, instantly presented himself. His face was certainly familiar. Ah! it was the scar upon the face which made the recognition easy.

III.

MR. WILDING.

"This is very pleasant," said Buckingham cordially, as he bade the young man lay aside his coat and take a seat by the fire. While his guest was obeying him, the host said in an aside,—only the aside was inaudible, contrary to the custom of asides,—"He does not recognize me. I will draw him out."

"I was in town this evening,—in fact, in this very street," said Mr. Wilding,—"and I could not resist the temptation to call on you."

"I am very glad you didn't," said Buckingham heartily. "It is evident you were led into it. Have you many friends in town?"

"Not very many. I know one or two men in college. I thought at one time of coming here to college myself. I gave that up, however, and now I am thinking of taking a special course, perhaps in English. Indeed, that is one reason why I came to town to-day."

"Well, the college is hospitable enough. It is a great hotel, with accommodations for regular boarders, but with reduced tickets for the table-d'hôte, and a restaurant for any one who happens in, where one may dine à la carte."

"I have not had a classical education," said the young man.

"Very well: you can make a special point of that. Very few of our later writers have had a classical education. Scholarship is no longer a part of general culture. It is a profession by itself. It is scientific, not literary."

"But you had a classical education, Mr. Buckingham?"

"Yes, I had once. I don't deny that I am glad I had; but I am forced to conceal it nowadays."

"And you still read the classics," he went on, with a respectful glance at a Greek book lying open on the table. Buckingham hastily closed the book.

"Yes, when no one is looking. But tell me about your plans. Shall you room in the college buildings?"

"I have come so late in the year that I cannot get any satisfactory rooms."

"Why not try getting a room somewhere in this neighborhood? There are students, I think, who live on this street. I am afraid there are no vacant rooms in this house, or I would introduce you to my landlady."

"I am not sure but I shall. In fact, I have been looking at a room farther up the street this evening."

"Indeed! What house did you find it in?"

"I found two or three houses that had rooms to let for students. They were not boarding-houses. I don't care to board."

"Mr. Wilding, my opinion of you rises with each sentiment you express. First you think of studying English in a scholarly fashion; then you detest boarding. I am sure we shall be friends. I shall invite you to take tea with me,—not to-night, for I have already had my tea, but when you are settled in your room."

"Thank you; I accept with pleasure. I am glad you did not insist on my taking tea with you to-night, for I have just come from tea."

"Oh! I remember you said you had friends in town."

"Yes; I have some cousins of an indefinite degree. They live on this street, and they will make it pleasant for me. But they know very little about the college, and I ventured to call to ask your advice about this matter of a special course. Would you try for a degree?"

Mr. Buckingham had nothing to do with the college; he was not even a graduate of this particular one; but he dearly loved to give advice. He took down the college catalogue, and talked with great animation for some time to his young friend, who confided to him that his ambition was to be an author, and that he had already written several sketches of character.

"Excellent," said Buckingham to himself. "You shall be my hero; only you will write short poems. Then nobody will detect your likeness."

Wilding stayed an hour, and then made ready to leave.

"If you are going to take the car, you are just in time," said his host, as they shook hands by the door of his room.

"I am going first to my cousin's," said the young man.

"Oh, are you? Wait a moment. I should like a little airing. I will walk along with you." And Buckingham, with a sudden admiration for his prompt seizure of the hour, put on his hat and coat.

IV.

THE PLAY MYSTERY.

Two young women were sitting over their worsted-work in the house numbered 17 Grove Street.

"Twenty-five, twenty-six," said the elder. "Lillie, if I were you, I would always carry one of his books with me in the horse-car, prepared to open and read it whenever he chanced to hang by the straps over me. He would be sure to try to read it upside down, and—"

"Nonsense, Julia! you speak exactly as if I were running after him."

"Not running, my dear, but waiting for him. Confess it; don't you make up stories about this Mr. Buckingham? don't you call him Austin all by yourself?"

"Julia, you are shameless! I have a great mind to roll up my work and go up-stairs."

"Oh, no, Lillie. Stay here; for Henry will surely be back soon, and we shall learn exactly how the lion looked in his den. What a singularly good piece of fortune it was that Henry should have met you both!"

"Julia! you don't suppose that cousin of yours has been telling! You don't suppose he has mentioned me to Mr. Buckingham!"

"It is impossible to say. You get two men talking together, and you may be sure they forget all their promises of secrecy. Now, I shouldn't wonder if Henry were at this very moment—"

"You are simply—"

"Hark! There's Henry now."

For the door opened, and Mr. Wilding entered, the remains of a smile upon his face.

"I really should like to know, Julia," he said, "what you two ladies have been talking about. We could almost hear. We certainly could see."

"We, Henry? Pray, who is we?"

"Why, Mr. Buckingham and I. You have certainly a most hospitable fashion of leaving your shades up. He walked out with me after I had called on him, and he seemed to have a good deal to say after we came to the door. There is an excellent view of the interior from the door; and Miss Vila and you were certainly animated."

"This is really dreadful! Lillie, do you suppose he saw us talk?"

"I don't know. I feel as if he heard every word.—Mr. Wilding, I hope you didn't repeat any of the foolish speeches your cousin made at the tea-table?"

"I was discreetness itself, Miss Vila."

"But why didn't you invite him in, Henry?" asked his cousin.

"Upon my word, this is reasonable! First I am made to promise solemnly that I won't disclose Miss Vila's name, and then I am asked why I didn't bring him in and introduce him. He wanted to come in, I know."

"He wanted to!"

"Yes; he tried to worm out of me who my cousin was, and he walked up here on purpose to find out where you lived."

"How lucky there is no name on the door!" exclaimed the cousin.

"But he heard me ask for your husband's house,—did he not, Miss Vila? And why on earth you should make such a mystery of it all I can't see."

"Do draw the shade, Julia. It makes me nervous. I feel as if he were looking in now."

"Nonsense, Lillie! he's a gentleman."

"But why do you make such a mystery of it all?" persisted the young man.

"There is no mystery," said Miss Vila stiffly. And, gathering up her work, she went up-stairs.

"It's only play mystery, Henry," said his cousin, when they were alone. "You see, Lillie Vila has been coming out in the horse-car with him every night for a long time; and she has seen him watching her. Of course she has seen him, but he has not seen that she has seen him. Men are so stupid. And she knows that he has tried in vain to find out who she is. He saw her once go into the library. She was dreadfully afraid he would come in and see her working behind the screen; but he evidently fancied she went in to get a book. Then he is always managing to stand or sit near her, and he peeks at her book when she is reading. He is just dying, I know, to find out who she is."

V.

THE REAL MYSTERY.

Mr. Austin Buckingham found on his table, when he returned from his walk with Henry Wilding, a scrap of paper. It had nothing on it but the words "The Mystery." This was the heading which he had made for his story. He had been interrupted by his caller just as he had written the words. He had not the remotest notion when he set them down what the mystery was which he meant to reveal. The title now seemed like a prophecy to him. Instead, however, of jotting down an outline of his story, he took out his note-book and wrote busily:

"I wish I knew just what I saw this evening. I had walked out with Henry Wilding, who called, and who was going, he said, to his cousin's. Now, I will not conceal from my faithful journal that I was moved by a desire to know just who his cousin was and where he or she lived; for by a most fortunate chance I have found out that my maiden without a name lives, or probably lives, at a Mr. Martindale's, on this street. I tried to draw Wilding out without betraying my own interest, but he was very obtuse, and even seemed to be ashamed of his cousin. At any rate, he parried my questions, and of course I could not push my curiosity. However, I got the better of him, and walked out with him when he left. As luck would have it again, the shades were drawn at the house where he stopped, and the bright light within made the scene perfectly distinct. I talked on the door-step about I know not what, half hoping that Wilding would invite me in, but really absorbed in watching two ladies who sat by a table. One was my fair unknown, the other a lady whom I have occasionally seen, and whom I take to be Wilding's cousin,—though this is all guess-work. Whether she is or not, she is evidently a very unpleasant sort of body, for, whatever she said, the other was plainly exceedingly vexed and mortified. She covered her face with her hands. At one time she made a movement as if to leave. She looked earnest and troubled. I could vow she was about to burst into tears. Her face was very expressive. No one who shows such sudden changes can help being a person of rare sensibility. I am almost out of conceit of making her the heroine of my story, though, to be sure, I am not likely to interfere with her personal rights, so long as I do not know either her name or her history.

"To come back to the pantomime which I saw through the window. It was probably by no means so mysterious in reality as it appeared to me. Yet what could it have been? or, rather, how can I appropriate it for my purposes? I have it! The very situation of looking through a window shall serve as the critical point in my story, only it shall be the hero of my story, and not an idle spectator like myself, who does the looking. The young poet, Wilding in disguise, only walks out at night. He is a shy fellow, who even in public holds his hat, as it were, before his face. He keeps by himself in his garret, brooding over his poems, and seeing no one, until he almost loses the power of ordinary association with other people. When night comes, he walks, sometimes through the night. But his loneliness has generated a desire for companionship which he can satisfy only by ghostly intercourse. So, instead of knowing people, he imagines them, and falls in love with his imaginations. He observes that one house looking toward the sea always keeps its curtains drawn. He falls into the way of stealing by every night to catch a glimpse of a fireside. There he sees a fair girl,—and I may as well draw her portrait like that of my unknown friend,—with eyes that are downcast but when raised suddenly grow large and lustrous, with hands that fold themselves when disengaged, with hair that peeps shyly over the forehead, and with a figure that seems always to be listening. She becomes the world to him. He has renounced all common association with men and women, and he peoples the world which he has thus brushed out with shapes caught from this one girl. The very silence which separates them makes him more quick in his imagination to invest her with the grace which her distant presence never denies."

"Bah! what superfine nonsense I am writing!" exclaimed Buckingham, pushing his note-book aside, but continuing to sit before his fire in revery.

VI.

THE REVERSE SIDE OF THE TAPESTRY.

Mr. Henry Wilding suited himself easily to a room in a house which stood just beyond his cousin's. He wanted little to make him at home; for he had only pitched his tent in this university town, and had no thought of settling in it. His wish was to get what he came for and to go again as little encumbered with baggage as he had come. Something of this sort he had been saying, not long after his established routine had begun, in a letter to the lady to whom he had the good fortune to be engaged. "I never could feel settled so far from you," he went on gallantly; "and I want only so much home at hand as will keep me from daily discontent. So it is exceedingly convenient to have my cousin Julia next door. I feel as one might who lived over a grocery-shop: there would be no fear of starving, at all events. When my supply of family feeling runs low, I drop in upon Julia and lay in enough to last a few days. Her friend, who makes a home with her, of whom I wrote in my last, does not greatly interest me. She says very little; but I am willing to grant that she is uncommonly pretty. I don't know why I say this in such grudging fashion. If some one else be fair to me, what care I how fair this 't other one be? Julia admires her greatly; but I suspect she is one of the kind whom one needs to marry ever to get at. Julia is as much married to her as one woman can be to another; and that explains why she sees so much in her. She sometimes reports scraps of conversations which she has held with this Miss Lillie Vila. Unless Julia makes up both sides of the conversation, her friend certainly is intelligent, and, I am afraid, witty. I say this last because it piques me that I have never extracted any witty remark from her.

"As for John, he is imperturbably good-natured. His profession keeps him away a good deal; but when he is at home he seems to do nothing but read a book by the fireside and chuckle to himself. Julia and Miss Vila both admire him greatly; but I suspect it is necessary to reconstruct him out of imaginary material before one can get to think very highly of him. Women do this naturally. I can always make myself humble by thinking that you do it with me.

"Buckingham is decidedly more interesting. I have not seen him since the evening I called upon him; but as I recall him, his air, his conversation, and the shell of a room which he has been forming about him, I constantly find something new to enjoy. He has a good deal of insight. I am not uncomfortable when I remember how steadily he looked at me; for he is not cynical. Indeed, I should say that he had managed to preserve an unusual amount of sentiment,—more than is generally found in one at his time of life. I am convinced that he ought to marry; and if he ever does, I am sure that he will give up writing stories. He is just one of those men who will find such satisfaction in domestic life as to become indifferent to imaginative experiences. I notice that in his stories he always seems to be groping about for some agreeable domestic conclusion. His room shows it. It looks as if a woman had been in it, but had left before she had put the final touch to it. She ought to come back."

VII.

MR. BUCKINGHAM MAKES A MOVE.

A week after Henry Wilding had called on Austin Buckingham, that gentleman tried to return his call. It must be confessed that his motive was not so much a commendable desire to get even socially with his new acquaintance, nor to give him good advice, as it was to get a nearer view of the heroine of his story. Candor compels me to say that every evening for the week past Buckingham had taken an airing, and always in the same direction. He had always found the shade drawn at No. 17, and often he had caught a glimpse, as he sauntered past, of the figure which he now knew so well. It is true that he had never again seen Miss Vila in so dramatic a character as upon the first evening when he had discovered her en famille; but he had seen her, not as one sees a portrait, which always looks in the same direction. In the horse-car she had been such a portrait to him,—the "Portrait of a Lady Reading." Behind the window of Mr. Martindale's house she had been a figure in a tableau vivant, often animated, always disclosing some new grace of attitude, some new charm of manner. He faintly told himself that these views enabled him to form a more distinct impression of the character of his heroine: whenever he should have his plot ready, his heroine would in the various situations instantly appear to him with the vividness and richness of reality.

He bethought himself that it was high time to see a little more of his hero; and so he persuaded himself that in going to call upon him he was engaged in a strictly professional occupation. If by any chance he should hear the rustle of the heroine's dress, why, that could not possibly injure any impressions which he might receive of his hero's individuality. These two people had become important factors in his story. He had not yet succeeded in sketching his plot. He felt it all the more necessary that they should sketch it for him. He was sure that he should readily catch at any hint which they might drop. He would therefore go into the society of his hero—and heroine.

For, somehow or other, whenever he essayed to call up the image of his hero and make it yield some distinct personality, the heroine would gently come to the fore. It was like going to a party and finding the eye glancing off from every black-coated figure to the richly-draped presence which made the party different from a town-meeting.

He was so much under the influence of all this reflex sentiment that he dressed himself with care before he went out, and so presented himself at the door of Mr. Martindale's house. It did not occur to him that Wilding lived anywhere else. He had taken it for granted that the young man was still at his cousin's. So when the door was opened for him he asked if Mr. Wilding were in, at the same time presenting his card. It chanced that the maid-servant had that day entered Mr. Martindale's service,—not a very rare chance in any household,—and, never having heard Mr. Wilding's name, indeed, not now hearing it, but hearing instead the name Miss Vila, cordially welcomed the distinguished-looking visitor, and marched before him into the little parlor, where she presented the card, on a salver which she had snatched on the way, to Miss Vila, who was sitting with Mrs. Martindale. The two ladies were playing backgammon.

VIII.

THE INTERRUPTED GAME.

"For me!" exclaimed Miss Vila, in a dismayed undertone. "Julia!"

Mrs. Martindale glanced at the card. She rose at once, just as Mr. Buckingham entered the room with a little hesitation in his step. As the two ladies held the backgammon-board in their laps, one effect of the sudden movement was to send the men rolling in every direction about the room. It was weeks before one of the men—a black one—was found.

Mr. Buckingham saw his card in Miss Vila's hands. He addressed himself to her:

"Possibly your servant misunderstood me. I asked for Mr. Wilding."

"She is a new servant," said Mrs. Martindale, and then added, with alacrity, as she seized the accident by its nearest horn, "her mistake was probably one of the ear. She thought you asked for Miss Vila." Mrs. Martindale had it in her to wave her hand toward the young lady, as if showing off wax-works, and to explain, "This is Miss Vila," but Mr. Buckingham was quick enough not to need the line upon line.

"I must beg Miss Vila's pardon. There certainly is a likeness in the names, if you spell it with a we."

"I will speak to Mr. Wilding," said Mrs. Martindale, jerking an eyeful of mysterious intelligence at Miss Vila and whisking out of the room.

"I hope you were just about to be beaten, Miss Vila," said Buckingham, "for I see I have spoiled the game."

"It is nothing," said she.

She had said nothing, but she had said it with a singularly musical voice, and, after all, it is not the significant words but the significant tones which touch one.

"No. It is nothing," he repeated. "A game may always be interrupted, because it is not the conclusion but the playing which gives it any value. I suspect it is like the stories we read,—somebody comes in, and we lay the book down before we come to the end. It is no great matter if we never take it up again. We got our pleasure, not from knowing how things turned out, but from knowing things." He blushed a little as he said this. In fact, his own inchoate story came to his mind. Besides, Miss Vila had his card. Since she read so constantly, it was odds but she knew of him. He blushed a little more as this thought crossed his mind.

"Do you think so?" she asked, and her downcast eyes were suddenly up-turned in full, the look which he had often patiently watched for as he had seen her in the horse-car. "I find the end necessary. If I stop half-way I think I have done the story-teller an injustice. I have not given him the chance to tell me all he intended to tell me. He lets out the secret of his characters by degrees. He could justly say to me, 'You do not know the heroine; you have not seen her in that scene which is going to test her.'"

"You are quite right," said Buckingham, "if you really think you are under any obligation to the story-teller."

"Why, of course I am," she exclaimed, with wide-open surprise. Then she blushed in turn,—first a little color of half-indignant rebuke, then a warm hue as she thought of her unnecessary earnestness, then a deep crimson as there rushed over her the sudden recollection of the hours she had spent in Buckingham's company, and the silent admiration which she had bestowed from the shelter of ignorance upon this gentleman who now sat composedly before her. It was by an effort of self-control that she did not spring from her seat and leave the room. The effort blanched her face. It was as she sat thus, her eyes cast down, her lips set, her countenance pale, that Mrs. Martindale returned.

IX.

THE UNNECESSARY HERO.

"My cousin will be here presently," she said, as she entered the room. And then her eye fell on Miss Vila and glanced quickly at Mr. Buckingham, who was nervously fingering his stick. "Meanwhile," she added, with a mischievous look, "I will ask you to remain with us, as Mr. Wilding will be obliged to see you here. Lillie, you have the gentleman's card. It seems awkward to wait for the formality of Henry's introduction. Will you have the kindness to make us acquainted?"

Miss Vila gravely performed the ceremony.

"Your cousin is fortunate in finding friends in town, Mrs. Martindale," said Buckingham; "for a collegian coming here freshly, especially one in a special course, is apt to be slow in breaking through the hedge which divides the college from the town."

"Yes, he is quite fortunate," said his cousin. "I exercise an influence over him. You know we exercise an influence over students, don't you?"

Buckingham laughed.

"I supposed that was what the town was for."

"When they are away from home and parents and all those refining influences, we serve as substitutes. Henry is away, not so much from his parents, who are dead, as from the lady to whom he is engaged. That is why I feel bound to exercise an influence over him." Mrs. Martindale made this explanation with a serious air, but Buckingham, whose eye never stayed far from Miss Vila, detected that young lady casting a reproachful, not to say indignant, glance at the speaker. Miss Vila, indeed, made a motion as if to leave, but, with another quick blush, as if she had betrayed a secret thought, settled again into her chair. To tell the secret, she had a sudden misgiving that her reckless friend might take it into her head to make ingenuous revelations concerning her.

"I hope he finds his work agreeable," said Buckingham; not that he cared a straw, but by way of keeping up his end of the conversation.

"Oh, I have no doubt he does, or he would come to see us oftener. I mean," she explained hurriedly, "he would stay in his room less."

"He certainly takes his time now in coming down," thought the visitor. There was, however, a movement in the passage, and Mrs. Martindale darted out. She came back immediately, looking somewhat embarrassed.

"I am sorry," she faltered, "but I find I am mistaken. He is not in."

"I am afraid you are not exerting enough influence, Mrs. Martindale," said Buckingham pleasantly, but somewhat perplexed in his mind at the length of time it had taken to make this discovery, and at the hallucination which had seemed to possess his cousin's mind when she announced him as about to appear. As for Miss Vila, she persistently refused to look up. She scarcely looked up, indeed, when Mr. Buckingham bowed himself out, though he looked eagerly at her, in hopes once more of catching the full light of her eyes.

She did look up, however, when the door closed behind the visitor, and she looked straight at Mrs. Martindale. That lady answered her look with one tear and a good many words:

"Well, Lillie, if you knew how I felt at getting into such a scrape, you wouldn't look at me as if you were an Avenging Conscience, or a Nemesis, or any of those horrid furies. No; and you wouldn't look speechlessly sorrowful, either. Of course I ought to have told him at once that Henry did not live here, and I ought to have sent him next door instead of sending Kate, and I ought not to have pretended that he was coming the next moment; but of course I thought he was at home, and then when he came I could have laughed it off; but he didn't come, and I was too frightened to laugh it off. Oh, yes, I am a criminal of the deepest dye; but he's introduced, Lillie, and you've introduced him to me, and we're all—we're all introduced."

X.

THE REAL HERO.

When a pile of wood has been laid upon smouldering embers, a thin curl of smoke crawls lazily up the chimney, another follows with like indolence, and it looks after a while as if the wood would not burn at all. Suddenly a little whiff of air enters the pile, when, presto! up blazes the fire, and soon there is a famous glow.

It was somewhat thus with Mr. Austin Buckingham. He had been toying with the fancy of his story, and especially of this maiden to whom his eyes had become so wonted, and had allowed himself to look at her in so many lights, that she had gradually come to be always before him. The figure of the hero had as gradually disappeared: it was only by an effort that he could revive it. Suddenly he had sat a long quarter of an hour with the girl, he had heard her voice, he had seen her smile, he had felt the graciousness of her near presence when he was not merely at hand, but the direct object of her thought. What a world of difference there was between sitting by her side in a crowded horse-car and sitting even half a room-breadth's away, when they two were the only ones in the room!

By all this experience, as much perhaps by what had gone before as by what had followed suddenly after, Buckingham now stood revealed to himself. He was ablaze with this new, tingling, searching ardor. When he had entered the room and shut the door, he saw lying upon his table his note-book, open as he had left it. He had been amusing himself, just before he went out, with further suggestions for his story. He dipped his pen into the ink and drew a bold, straight line across the page. He stood looking at the leaf,—idle fancy above the line, a blank below it.

A knock at the door, and Henry Wilding entered. Buckingham greeted him with a sudden excess of fervor which puzzled the young man.

"I was sorry to miss finding you," he began, and then checked himself. "Not so very sorry either, since fortune made me acquainted with—your cousin—and with Miss Vila," he added, after an embarrassed pause.

"I don't understand," said Wilding. "Have I missed a call from you?"

"Yes. I just came from your house. Your cousin at first thought you were at home. Now I think of it, she—"

"But I don't live at my cousin's," said Wilding.

"Where do you live, then?"

"Next door to her house."

"Oh! then she sent out for you. That explains it." And so Mr. Buckingham, intent on his own affairs, brushed away the duplicity of the fair hostess. "But I was very glad to hear a piece of news about you from her. Let me congratulate you. I did not know you were engaged." And he shook Wilding's hand warmly. He was not so generous at the moment as he appeared. In reality, he was shaking his own hand in anticipation. Wilding responded with a good-natured laugh.

"I have sometimes wondered, Mr. Buckingham," he said, "how you, who write stories of love and marriage, should remain unmarried."

"Let us put it the other way. How can I who am unmarried write such stories? In truth, I have a dim sense that persons like you, who know the matter by experience, must laugh inwardly at my innocent attempts at realistic treatment."

"Why not, then, have the experience first?" said Wilding lightly.

"God forbid!" said Buckingham, with a somewhat unintelligible seriousness. "If I were ever in love, it seems to me I should stop writing love-stories."

Now, this was just what happened, for a time at least. To any one so dead in love as Buckingham was at this time, all circumstances are favorable. It needs but a given moment, and the hero is on hand ready to seize it. The next night he could not ride out from the city; he must walk. When he got beyond the bridge, he wondered that he saw no horse-cars coming toward him. He remembered that he had seen none for some time, but now he noticed a long line of them standing before him, pointed outward. He heard the puff of a steam fire-engine, and saw that travel by rail was stopped by a fire. The hose crossed the track, and the incoming horse-cars were in a long line beyond it. He looked at the cars which he had over-taken. Midway in the line stood the one he had been accustomed to take. He caught sight of a familiar head bent over a book. He stepped into the car and stood before Miss Vila. He bent forward, and she looked up as he spoke:

"The cars are stopped by a fire. We may be delayed a long while. Why not walk home from here? It is a fine night."

He spoke somewhat hurriedly. He did not know how appealingly he looked. She did, however, and she closed her book and followed him.

The story, then, never was written, even though the heroine had been found. Everything else had disappeared,—the hero, the mystery, the plot. Nothing was left but the heroine and—love.

Horace E. Scudder.