Scene Fourth THE FINAL ACCOUNTS

I. ÆNEAS AND CAMILLA.

Poor Austin! A boy’s love feeds on the romance of hopelessness, flourishes apace in the shadow of despair; it delights in patient waiting, in faithful fidelity, in lapses of years; but a man’s is peremptory, immediate, uncompromising. Some secret instinct bids a Romeo to contemplate a tragedy with cheerfulness; and ten to one that his years of gloom change, as they fall behind him, to “un joli souvenir.” But a man, middle-aged, knows when he wants his Dulcinea, and he wants her here and now. No glamour of blighted affections can make up for the hard facts of life to him.

When a middle-aged man can’t get the woman he wants, there are three recognized and respectable courses open to him. He works a little harder, plays a good deal harder, or he marries someone else. The last was out of the question for a man so consumed by the fires of passion as Austin May, but the fuel of his heart was transformed into nervous energy of the entire system. He plunged again, like a rocket, into a rapid and circuitous course of travel and adventure; and, after a brilliant career through the remote East, descended, like a burned-out stick, some fifteen months later, in San Francisco. Thence he went home.

The fact was, he wanted rest. His heart was tired of throbbing, his head weary with thinking. And all his mad adventure had only tired the body, had made him sleep at night, nothing more. He had been through the world again, but Gladys Dehon was all of it to him. He thought of her now with a certain dull pain—less madly, more hopelessly, than in England the two years before.

He could not bear to go back to his home. He went to Boston, and he saw his lawyers; but he did not go out to Brookline. This he vowed he would not do until that day when he had promised Gladys he would be there. He did not forget that he had promised the countess, too; but he was no longer so much troubled by the countess. He would kill her, if necessary.

Meantime, he went to pass the winter in New York. He had himself elected a member of two fashionable clubs. He followed the hounds in Long Island and in Jersey. He went to dinners and he danced at Germans, albeit with an aching heart. He renaturalized himself; he made friends with his countrymen, and he studied his countrywomen. He got himself once more désorienté in American society. He observed what respect was everywhere shown to the VanDees, and how little, comparatively, one thought of the McDums. He found that civilization was pitched on a higher scale, financially, than he had supposed. Thirty thousand a year was none too much for a man to marry on. Now, Austin had not over twenty thousand, even if he fulfilled the hard conditions of his uncle’s will.

He took an interest in yachting, and gave orders for a cutter that was to beat the prevailing style of sloop. He also imported a horse or two, and entered one of them at Sheepshead Bay. He had a luxuriously furnished flat, near Madison Square. He went to St. Augustine in the spring, with the VanDees, and while there was introduced to Georgiana Rutherford. He saw her afterward in New York, and early in June he asked her to marry him.

Miss Rutherford was a young lady of supreme social position, great wealth, and beauty. She had for two years been the leading newspaper belle of New York society. Her movements, her looks, her dresses, the state of her health, the probable state of her affections—everything about her, to the very dimples in her white shoulders—had been chronicled with crude precision in the various metropolitan journals having pretensions to haut ton (for high tone is not a good translation), and had thence been eagerly copied throughout the provincial weeklies of the land. Miss Rutherford was absolutely a person to be desired.

It would not be fair to May to say that he was false to Gladys Dehon. His passion for her, too vehement, had fairly burned itself out. In the two years since he had left her, May’s heart had, as it were, banked its volcanic fires. However fissured were its ravined depths, the surface was at rest, and the lava-flood that concealed it was already cool. And a beautiful huntswoman who had ridden out of sight of her first husband, as had Gladys Dehon, was not at all the sort of person for middle-aged Austin May to marry and bring to Boston. These things he felt for some weeks before he proposed to Miss Rutherford, and she was precisely the sort of girl he saw was best. If old Uncle Austin had selected her himself, he could not have made a better choice. And well, thought May, he saw the motives of his kind old uncle’s will, and the wisdom born of much experience, and long consideration and a knowledge of Eclipse claret that had prompted it. A young man, if left to himself, would choose him a different wife for each three years of his life. It is only after he has run the gamut of all impossibilities that he settles down upon the proper thing. And this, at last, May felt assured that he had done.

May did not pretend to himself that he loved Georgiana Rutherford as he had loved Gladys Dehon. Even now, he was not blind to that. But he thought that she was pretty, and well-placed, and good style; and she had a large fortune, and a still larger family connection, all of the very best securities.

In fact, May, at least so far as he admitted to himself, did not do justice to the qualities of Miss Rutherford. Miss Rutherford was a very charming girl; much cleverer and much better educated, to say nothing of her style and beauty, than any embryo Gladys Dehon that May had ever seen. She was perfectly mistress of her own heart, as she was of her own fortune, and it was dangerous to present to her foreigners, lest they afterward shot themselves. They always went wild about her; much to Miss Rutherford’s discomfort. Some would besiege her; others would curse her; others, still, say evil things about her in the true Parisian manner. Miss Rutherford remained “more than usual calm” through it all.

She had the reputation of being a flirt, but it was not so. She tried her adorers, Portia-like, successively; the moment that they failed to reach a certain standard, it was entirely right and fair for her to drop them. Some of them would cry that they were hurt, and these she contemned from her very soul. She did not regard such matters as subjects for tears. Marriage was a step in life, like any other, and only deserved more serious consideration because it was final.

This was the woman whose love was to make heart-haven for Austin May; the serious, sober choice of his manhood, after all his boyish follies were past. He had told her very seriously and politely of his desire to marry her, one Sunday evening, on the piazza of a house at Newport. It was necessary for him to speak in a low tone, as the people of the house were not far off. She was silent for some seconds, and then he had kissed her.

But here came in the first really difficult thing to do in the whole proceeding. Not, indeed, the kissing her. But how was he to tell her of the countess and Gladys Dehon? And yet he must tell her, if only to explain the necessary delay in announcing their engagement. He looked at her in the light that came from the late sunset; how perfectly of the great world she was! He could not bear to lose her now; she was just such a wife as he would invent for himself, had she not existed. She was sitting silently, in a pose that was full of grace and training; much too finely bred to be blushing because he had kissed her. No man had ever kissed her before; and yet, when she deemed that the occasion had come when she could fitly let one do it, she no more blushed because she had so resolved than she would blush at entering a ball-room.

Then he pulled himself together, and told her very calmly the history of his life. She was greatly interested, and listened with attention and sympathy.

“Of course, you must be there—on August 14th, I mean.”

“And keep my word?”

“That,” said Miss Rutherford, “I must leave to you. You can’t keep your word with both of them.”

“After all,” said May, hopefully, “they may not come.”

“You surely do not expect them to cross the Atlantic in person to meet you?”

“Oh, no!” said May. “They won’t do that—but they may write or telegraph.” But May did not feel sure what Mme. Polacca de Valska might or might not do.

“At all events,” said she, “I think our engagement had better not come out until after the 14th of August.” And May felt constrained to admit that this was best.

“And I do not think that you had better see me until then.”

“What?” cried Austin.

But Miss Rutherford was firm. She would not have him with her every day unless she could tell people that they were engaged. What was she to say to the world if, after that 14th of August, he were to be engaged to Mrs. Dehon, for instance? This she delicately hinted; but, moreover, she told him she had promised to visit the Larneds, at Pomfret, and the Charles Mt. Vernons, at Beverly, and to spend three weeks with the Breezes, at Mount Desert, in August. He could not trail about after her; and it was only three months, after all. So May had consented, with an ill grace; and when she left, two days later, he found nothing better than to join VanKnyper on a yachting cruise. Then he had gone up on the Restigouche, salmon-fishing; and on the 12th of August he was in the Maine woods.

II. THE IDYL OF ANTEROS.

In the leisure of the forest, Austin May reflected—for the first time comprehensively—upon his conduct of life. It seemed to him that the only sensible action of many wasted years was his getting engaged to Georgiana Rutherford; and yet, for the moment, it rather added to his perplexities. He felt convinced that Tom Leigh would say it put him in a greater hole than ever. Here was he engaged to three women at once, and all the engagements matured upon the fourteenth day of August proximo. Why is it that there is not such a thing as the making an assignment for the benefit of one’s heart’s creditors? He might then place himself in the hands of some respectable chaperone as assignee, and pay each of the contracting parties thirty-three per cent. Or he might even get a composition, or an extension at long time. Possibly the other two would assign their claims to Georgiana. If she were the sole creditor, he fancied that they might effect an arrangement. She certainly had the only lien on the few remaining assets of his hard-worked ventricles.

Georgiana Rutherford! What a perfectly civilized creature she was. How well she would look at the end of the state dining-table in the Brookline house, with the épergne in front of her. Then how gracefully she would sweep out, at the head of the procession of ladies—Brookline ladies, with a guest or two from Boston or Jamaica Plains—and leave him and his friends to their bachelor-talk and cigars. But first, after being married, he had promised to take her up the Nile. May had already been up the Nile.

May slipped off the rock into the rushing river. He had got to thinking, in the absence of salmon, and forgotten his whereabouts. It was clumsy of him, he reflected, as his boots queaked soddenly campward. He was getting heavy, and slow, and middle-aged. And suddenly he felt a yearning for the wilds, for wilder wilds even than Aroostook County. He had been now for six years in high civilizations—Japan, India, England, or, at worst, the States. There were several dreams of his scheming-time not yet effected. Among others, a trip from Hudson’s Bay, in canoes, through the Great Slave lake to the Pacific. He was almost on the ground, with good guides and an outfit; why not start at once? But there was the fourteenth of August next to come, he reflected.

A strange wagon was in the camp when he got back; a single buckboard from the nearest settlement, and it bore a pretty girl. May had conversation with her. A veritable Lady of the Aroostook was she; not over-idealized, like the heroine of Mr. Howells. Really, she had a certain rudimentary charm. Suppose, thought May, I were to make her my dusky bride? For dusky, read freckled.

By Jove, thought May—an idea indeed. If he gave it out as such? If, in consideration of a trip to Boston, new bonnets, and a junket of quite Merovingian dimensions, she were to consent to go to Brookline and personate his bride, for that day only? How natural that he, at the very end of his eleven years, should have plunged into nature and married la première venue. It was just the thing, he felt assured his friends would say, that he was certain to do. Why, even the heroes of the Lady of Aroostook did as much. And even the Comtesse Polacca dei Cascadegli de Valska could have nothing to reply to such a living argument as this Maine girl would present. My wife—Mrs. Austin May. Gladys Dehon would scorn, but believe. And then, having nobly earned her reward, his salvatress might retire to her primitive forest decked with new fal-lals to astound the rustic breast.

But now, confound it, here as always, the cursed conventions rose in his way. The proprieties were ever his fatality, a very ghost of Banquo at the feast of life. Why had he been born in Boston? True, they had once saved him from the countess; but now they were to offer him a humble sacrifice to her unlovely years. For she came first chronologically, and she was certain to come first in fact.

May had no further ideas; and he had to leave his river at the height of the salmon season.

We have told how, on the 14th of August, he arrived at Brookline, true to his appointment with all three. He got to Boston late in the evening before, went to his club, passed a sleepless night, and took an early morning train for Brookline, as we have seen.

And, perhaps, as we have also seen, a much more awkward thing than this had happened. Austin May was there, ready to meet any one of them. The period of probation required by the will had elapsed.

But as May travelled up to the city in that hot weather, he had been wondering to himself which and how many of them he should see, and it had become very clear to him that he did not feel the least desire to see any one of the three.

His uncle’s will had well been justified. With shocked shamefacedness he thought of the countess, that Trouville heroine that he believed to be little better than an adventuress, a gambler, tracked by the police. And Mrs. Dehon—well, if Mrs. Dehon were to ride madly up that quiet Boston lawn, May felt sure that he should flee in terror. And Georgiana Rutherford—now that it came to the point, and after his three months’ consideration, May did not feel that he wished to marry even Georgiana Rutherford.

He gave little thought to his impending doom, still less thought of escaping it. He was as one who had been released eleven years upon parole, and must now give himself up to be shot. He even gave himself little curiosity as to whose the fatal bullet would prove to be. A man ordered out with a file of soldiers to be executed looks upon the levelled row of muzzles with an absolute impartiality. He was in the position of the celebrated d’Artagnan, who, having three duels in the Pré aux Clercs, and certain of being killed by Athos at 12, gave himself little anxiety about Porthos, who was to follow at 12.15, or Aramis, who was only due at 12.30.

But, as the day wore on, and the reaction followed the artificial strength given by many cigars, his state of mind had approximated to an abject and unreasoning terror. And in this mood he was, late in the afternoon, when he turned and saw, stationary before his front door, that carriage, with its footman in livery.

His one instinct was to conceal himself. Nervously he grabbed the heavy “Burton’s Anatomy;” the secret door swung open; the fountain in the lake began to play, and in a score of seconds May was hiding in its cool and watery depths.

III. THE UNCERTAIN GLORY OF A NEW YORK GIRL.

When May emerged in the little grass island, screened safely by the play of falling waters, he was breathless with the run; and his heart pounded against his ribs with the violence of his emotions. The countess it unquestionably was. None but she would arrive in open carriage and pair and splendid livery. And May reckoned he would have to stay there, in the shelter of the fountain, until the light made his escape safe and possible. As for seeing her, that was out of the question. Had he still cared for Mrs. Dehon, he might have choked off the other one; but he had not pluck for it now. He had mildly hoped that Gladys and the countess might have arrived at the same time and settled it between them; but Allah had willed otherwise. It was damp and uncomfortable upon the little island, however, without even a cigar; and he did not dare go back to the pavilion.

As he stood peering through the falling water the carriage turned about, left the house, and came down the driveway. May was astounded. He tried his best to see who was in it, but the distance was too great. He fancied that he made out a figure upon the back seat, but it was that of a young man. He was surely too young for Serge; but, possibly, Serge had left a son. This, indeed, was extremely probable. And the son was gone to the gate to await more formal introduction to his papa-in-law; and had left the countess in the house.

This was the most terrible possibility that had yet occurred to his fevered imagination, overwrought with suspense and too much tobacco as it was. For a moment the idea of the buggy and the fast horse in the stable presented itself as the only certain means of escape. But at the same instant he saw Fides emerge from the side-door, carrying something white in his mouth. The hound came to the door of the pavilion and scratched there; not finding any response, he took to coursing around the building, in wider and wider distances, until his circle included the whole pond. When he had once more made the circuit of this, without getting trail of his master, he lifted his nose from the ground to give utterance to occasional lugubrious howls.

This was impossible. Something must be done at once, or his chief retreat would be discovered. May rapidly descended through the subterranean passage, and appearing at the door of the pavilion, whistled softly. The dog bounded toward him, and May took the letter from his mouth. It was accompanied with a card of “Mr. Burlington Quincy,” as May hurriedly read. Now, Mr. Burlington Quincy bore a name utterly unknown to Austin May.

He looked at the note. It was certainly not in the handwriting of Madame Polacca de Valska, and May breathed a sigh of relief. He opened it.

“My dear Mr. May: (it began)

“I know you will not misinterpret my action, when I write to tell you that our engagement cannot be made known to-day. The bearer of this, Mr. Burlington Quincy, of Boston, I did not know when our pleasant acquaintance began last year, but I feel sure that he is the only man I have ever——”

“Loved,” added May to himself, mechanically, as the first page came to an end. Without troubling himself to read any further, he merely looked at the signature, which was, “yours ever sincerely, Georgiana Rutherford.”

“Bah!” said Austin to himself again, and he crumpled up the letter and threw it upon the pedestal of the Venus of Milo. A very different sort of girl from Georgy Rutherford, she looked at him with an air of dignity offended by his flippancy. Certainly a great weight was off his mind, even if it did leave behind the faintest conceivable smart of irritation. One, at least, was disposed of satisfactorily, and he threw himself into the great arm-chair with a sigh of relief. He wished Miss Rutherford joy of her bargain, though he could not but think it ill-bred of her to choose the replacing victim as the messenger of his release. The only man she had ever loved, indeed! And who was Mr. Burlington Quincy? Well, it mattered little to him.

May looked at his watch; it was seven o’clock. Only five hours more of this awful day remained! His condition was one of absolute nervous prostration; and he looked in a glass to see if his hair had yet turned gray. Could it be that they would none of them appear? He felt almost hungry, but that eating was out of the question for one in his position. He could, however, take a biscuit and a glass of claret; and this he did.

But May was fated that day to have hard luck with his uncle’s wine. Hardly had he begun to sip the glass, when a loud knocking at the very door of his pavilion made him drop it, and again seek refuge in his fountain hiding-place. From there he looked through the jets of water and saw that the knocker was none other than the faithful Schmidt.

May hastened back again to the pavilion and opened the door.

“What do you mean by this?” said he, angrily. “Did I not tell you not to come out under any circumstances, unless you heard a pistol-shot?”

But, alas! The effect of the solitude, the heat, and the excitement of his master’s strange behavior had been too much, even for the perfect valet. Moreover, he had felt it his duty to finish all his master’s so precipitately abandoned bottles, lest they should fall into the hands of the enemy. If Mr. Schmidt was not tipsy, it was clear that he soon would be. He had been leaning heavily against the door, and as his master opened it suddenly, he fell into the room, head over heels to the floor; and there, without getting up, he endeavored to bow apologetically, and swayed to and fro with the effort, smiling a meaningless smile and holding a visiting-card in his right hand. May took it mechanically. It was edged in deep black; and upon it he read the simple legend:

Mrs. Terwilliger Dehon.

IV. THE KEEPING OF THE TRYST.

May grasped the half-drunken valet by the coat. “And you let her in?” said he.

“I said, m’sieu’,” gasped out poor Schmidt, “that m’sieu’, was here.”

With a groan of mingled rage and terror, May flew to the door and made it fast. Then he took Schmidt by his offending coat and shoved, rather than led, him into the subaqueous passageway. When they emerged upon the island, May said, with a final shake:

“Now, sir, go and tell all the world that I’m not at home—d’ye hear? And come back and tell me; and that you may come back sober, I’ll clear your thick head for you.” And suiting the action to the word, May hurled poor Schmidt through the cool jets of the fountain; and he disappeared with a startling plunge in the waters of the ornamental lake. They were but a few feet deep, however, and Schmidt scrambled to his feet and went wading through the lily-pads to the shore. And in a few moments he came back, still wet, but quite sobered, to the brink nearest the island.

“What does she say?” cried May.

“That she will wait for M’sieur,” came back the answer that May heard; and he sank upon the rustic seat with a feeling that all was over with him. Should he still fly? He could not bring himself to break his word at this late hour. If it could be that the widowed Mrs. Dehon had come all this distance—unwomanly as it was—he could not leave her now. Moreover, it was exactly like her. She was just the woman to take the leap herself, rather than trust herself and her heart-secrets to written words. And as May pulled himself together and went toward the house he wished he could have conjured back one spark of that flame he once felt for her. His crusty old uncle had not foreseen that thus, by the rash heir’s promise, the wise provisions of his will could be evaded. What would his wise uncle have done in a similar situation?—Ordered a monument at Mount Auburn and prepared the remains for it afterward, perhaps. His head was too cloudy to think.

May reached the doors of the house. It was already dark; and he had one last moment of hesitation as he pressed his hand upon the carved-oak door-knob. Then, with a rally of his sense of honor, he turned it and entered the house.

The great hall was quite dark; and Austin had to feel his way to the dining-room, into which, as being the only habitable apartment, Schmidt had had to show the fair Gladys. Here was a single candle burning; and beyond the remains of what was evidently Schmidt’s dinner, just under the Copley portrait of the lady in the lilac dress, sat a solitary figure.

But May started back as he saw it. It certainly was not Gladys. It was—it was a man; and as it rose and came forward to the candle-light there appeared unmistakably the red face and pudgy figure of her elderly husband! For a moment the joyous reaction held May speechless; but then he sprang forward.

“Mr. Terwilliger Dehon, I am delighted to——”

But Terwilliger waved him back with the gesture of an M.P. quelling an assembly of constituents; and in his hand he carried a letter. “May I ask, Mr. May, what is the meaning of this?” And Dehon brought the offending document close beneath May’s nose, lying upon his chubby palm; and then slapped it violently with his other hand.

“Of this?” said May, innocently. “What is it?”

“That, sir, is a letter I found among my wife’s effects.” And beyond all question the letter was in May’s own handwriting. May stared helplessly at Dehon; and Terwilliger glared fixedly at May. And through all the embarrassment of the situation loomed up May’s consciousness, antagonistic as their meeting was, that he was uncommonly glad to see him.

“Is—is Mrs. Dehon with you?” said May, feebly, as the awful possibility occurred to him that they had been divorced.

“My beloved wife is in heaven,” said Dehon, pulling out a large pocket-handkerchief and sinking back into his chair.

“My dear sir,” cried May, grasping both his hands, “I am—unfeignedly sorry to hear it. When did——”

“That, sir,” cried Terwilliger, furiously, “is no answer to my question. Did you, or did you not, write this letter?” And he jumped from his chair and smacked the letter savagely against the dinner-table.

Evasion was impossible. “I am afraid, Mr. Dehon, that I did.” Dehon fumed.

“And now, my dear sir,” said May, his face unconsciously broadening to a smile, “will you not stay and dine with me? I have only——”

But at this the peppery old gentleman positively sailed off the floor in his passion. In vain May told him that he had received nothing from the late Mrs. Dehon but a long course of snubs; in vain May assured him that he himself was more delighted than ever Mr. Dehon could be, that there had never been a possibility of his marrying the lamented Gladys; it was to no purpose that he besought him to stay and dine. He tried to sympathize with Terwilliger in his loss, and Terwilliger grew only the more infuriated. He pointed out to him that his letter had been entirely contingent, to take effect solely upon Mr. Terwilliger’s death; but upon this the old gentleman fairly choked with rage.

Finally poor Austin gave it up. He abandoned all effort to pacify him, and listened submissively to the philippic the indignant Terwilliger poured forth. And, to use the expressive but inelegant phrase of the day, he blew himself off right well. Austin sat and listened with a mind at peace.

A man’s own eloquence is a great relief, and there is no knowing how far Mr. Dehon would have cooled off in time. It is possible that he would have ended by staying to dinner. But, just as he was finishing a most effective exordium, the noise of carriage-wheels was heard outside upon the gravel.

In two strides May was at the window, had thrown open the sash with a crash that shivered all the glass, and hurled himself through it into outer darkness, leaving the astounded Mr. Dehon, one eloquent arm extended in the air, addressing himself most earnestly to the four Copley portraits and the two battle-pieces of indigestible fruit.

V. THE RETURN OF THE COUNTESS.

Beyond all question this was now the Comtesse Polacca de Valska. She was the only one left. All others were present or accounted for. Again May gained his pavilion, with the fleetness of an Exmoor deer; it was quite dark by this time, and he could run about fearlessly. With a trembling hand he adjusted his dark-lantern, lit the lamp, and fixed the focus full upon the house-front door.

He was just in time to see a veiled and much beshawled lady assisted down from the vehicle that stood at the door; and after a word of colloquy with the driver, she entered the house. May could not see her face; but it was just the figure, he fancied, of the Countess de Valska. The carriage drove away, the front door closed, and all again was silent, save the thumping of poor Austin’s strained and shaken heart. Great heavens! he complained to the harmless Venus of Milo. The worst had been realized indeed.

This time there was no indecision. The only safety lay in flight. When it came to the point of marrying the de Valska, he would be damned if he would. No sooner had he gained this conclusion than he sought to put it in practice. With quick and stealthy steps he gained the stable. A drive of fifteen miles to Framingham would put him on the New York train; and the Umbria sailed on the morrow. Little difficulties with countesses were better understood on European shores.

But alas! it was only to find that the stable-door was locked. He could hear inside the noises of a restless horse, but both fast horse and buggy were beyond his reach. The over-cautious Schmidt had locked them in, and taken the key. May’s heart sank. He looked around for an axe, a log, anything to batter down the door with—he would have set fire to his own stable if necessary; then a brilliant thought occurred to him—of the pistol-shot that was to be the signal to Schmidt in cases of emergency.

He ran back to the pavilion. As he passed the house he thought he heard sounds of angry collocation in the entry. But this was no time for idle curiosity; and he ran on to the pavilion, grasped the revolver, ran back before the house, placed himself in the little clump of pines, and fired. The noises in the house ceased. He fired again.

The second report of his revolver was followed by a wild and shrill screaming in the house. A second after, the front door was violently flung open, and Mr. Terwilliger Dehon burst forth with the celerity of a pellet from a pop-gun. He was immediately and closely pursued by a female figure, screaming violently. After her, all in the focus of the dark-lantern, appeared a gaunt and stooping individual with a shot-gun, which he brought to his shoulder and incontinently fired, aiming, as far as May could judge, at the North Star. Then he threw away the shot-gun and joined in the pursuit; and after him came the faithful Schmidt, in obedience to his master’s signal, once more unperturbed.

“What has happened?” cried May, rushing forward. “Where is she?”

But even as he spoke, feminine arms were thrown around his neck, a fainting feminine figure hung about his shoulder, and feminine lips whispered in his ear:

“At last!”

With a gasp of despair, May disengaged her and led her to the front door, where he deposited his precious burden upon the china garden-seat. The countess seemed less graceful than of yore, and she certainty was heavier. But the countess, of course it was.

“Sech a time, Mr. May,” said she. “Me a-comin’ up with the dépôt-man, and findin’ a burglar in the house; an’ the volleys from the ambushes as was outside; an’ Mr. Eastman a-runnin’ for his gun, an’ I chasin’ the burglar; an’ all along of that furriner in the kitchen as left the cellar-door wide open; an’, says I——”

“Mrs. Eastman!” cried May, with a sigh of relief, as if he saw the dawn again. But that heroine’s short-lived valor was exhausted. To chase an elderly burglar out one’s own front door, amid salvoes of musketry, was surely excuse enough for leaning on the shoulder of the first reliable male one met and knew; but the thought of both actions was too much for feminine nerves, and Mrs. Eastman proceeded to get up the best notion of hysterics her Maine training could produce. As for May, he was so glad that it was not the Polacca de Valska that he could have kissed even the elderly housekeeper; but he thought better of it, and consigned her to the tender soothing of her husband.

“Mirandy,” he heard Mr. Eastman say, “don’t ye be a fool!”