box which was the cause of my horror lay somewhere concealed amid the airy puffs and ruffles that rose and fell so rapidly over her heaving breast. Could her eye rest on mine, even in this cold and perfunctory manner, if the drop which could separate us for ever lay concealed over her heart? She knew that I loved her. From the first hour we met in her aunt's forbidding parlor in Thirty-sixth Street, she had recognized my passion, however perfectly I had succeeded in concealing it from others. Inexperienced as she was in those days, she had noted as quickly as any society belle the effect produced upon me by her chill prettiness and her air of meek reserve under which one felt the heart-break; and though she would never openly acknowledge my homage and frowned down every attempt on my part at lover-like speech or attention, I was as sure that she rated my feelings at their real value, as that she was the dearest, yet most incomprehensible, mortal my narrow world contained. When, therefore, I encountered her eyes at the end of the dance I said to myself:
"She may not love me, but she knows that I love her, and, being a woman of sympathetic instincts, would never meet my eyes with so calm a look if she were meditating an act which must infallibly plunge me into misery." Yet I was not satisfied to go away without a word. So, taking the bull by the horns, I excused myself to my partner, and crossed to Dorothy's side.
"Will you dance the next waltz with me?" I asked.
Her eyes fell from mine directly and she drew back in a way that suggested flight.
"I shall dance no more to-night," said she, her hand rising in its nervous fashion to her hair.
I made no appeal. I just watched that hand, whereupon she flushed vividly and seemed more than ever anxious to escape. At which I spoke again.
"Give me a chance, Dorothy. If you will not dance come out on the veranda and look at the ocean. It is glorious to-night. I will not keep you long. The lights here trouble my eyes; besides, I am most anxious to ask you – "
"No, no," she vehemently objected, very much as if frightened. "I can not leave the drawing-room – do not ask me – seek some other partner – do, to-night."
"You wish it?"
"Very much."
She was panting, eager. I felt my heart sink and dreaded lest I should betray my feelings.
"You do not honor me then with your regard," I retorted, bowing ceremoniously as I became assured that we were attracting more attention than I considered desirable.
She was silent. Her hand went again to her hair.
I changed my tone. Quietly, but with an emphasis which moved her in spite of herself, I whispered: "If I leave you now will you tell me to-morrow why you are so peremptory with me to-night?"
With an eagerness which was anything but encouraging, she answered with suddenly recovered gaiety:
"Yes, yes, after all this excitement is over." And, slipping her hand into that of a friend who was passing, she was soon in the whirl again and dancing – she who had just assured me that she did not mean to dance again that night.
III
A SCREAM IN THE NIGHT
I turned and, hardly conscious of my actions, stumbled from the room. A bevy of young people at once surrounded me. What I said to them I hardly know. I only remember that it was several minutes before I found myself again alone and making for the little room into which Beaton had vanished a half-hour before. It was the one given up to card-playing. Did I expect to find him seated at one of the tables? Possibly; at all events I approached the doorway and was about to enter when a heavy step shook the threshold before me and I found myself confronted by the advancing figure of an elderly lady whose portrait it is now time for me to draw. It is no pleasurable task, but one I can not escape.
Imagine, then, a broad, weighty woman of not much height, with a face whose features were usually forgotten in the impression made by her great cheeks and falling jowls. If the small eyes rested on you, you found them sinister and strange, but if they were turned elsewhere, you asked in what lay the power of the face, and sought in vain amid its long wrinkles and indeterminate lines for the secret of that spiritual and bodily repulsion which the least look into this impassive countenance was calculated to produce. She was a woman of immense means, and an oppressive consciousness of this spoke in every movement of her heavy frame, which always seemed to take up three times as much space as rightfully belonged to any human creature. Add to this that she was seldom seen without a display of diamonds which made her broad bust look like the bejeweled breast of some Eastern idol, and some idea may be formed of this redoubtable woman whom I have hitherto confined myself to speaking of as the gorgon.
The stare she gave me had something venomous and threatening in it. Evidently for the moment I was out of her books, and while I did not understand in what way I had displeased her, for we always had met amicably before, I seized upon this sign of displeasure on her part as explanatory, perhaps, of the curtness and show of contradictory feelings on the part of her dependent niece. Yet why should the old woman frown on me? I had been told more than once that she regarded me with great favor. Had I unwittingly done something to displease her, or had the game of cards she had just left gone against her, ruffling her temper and making it imperative for her to choose some object on which to vent her spite? I entered the room to see. Two men and one woman stood in rather an embarrassed silence about a table on which lay some cards, which had every appearance of having been thrown down by an impatient hand. One of the men was Will Beaton, and it was he who now remarked:
"She has just found out that the young people are enjoying themselves. I wonder upon which of her two unfortunate nieces she will expend her ill-temper to-night?"
"Oh, there's no question about that," remarked the lady who stood near him. "Ever since she has had a reasonable prospect of working Gilbertine off her hands, she has devoted herself quite exclusively to her remaining burden. I hear," she impulsively continued, craning her neck to be sure that the object of her remarks was quite out of earshot, "that the south hall was blue to-day with the talk she gave Dorothy Camerden. No one knows what about, for the girl evidently tries to please her. But some women have more than their own proper share of bile; they must expend it on some one." And she in turn threw down her cards, which up till now she had held in her hand.
I gave Beaton a look and stepped out on the veranda. In a minute he followed me, and in the corner facing the ocean, where the vines cluster the thickest, we held our conversation.
I began it, with a directness born of my desperation.
"Beaton," said I, "we have not known each other long, but I recognize a man when I see him, and I am disposed to be frank with you. I am in trouble. My affections are engaged, deeply engaged, in a quarter where I find some mystery. You have helped make it." (Here a gesture escaped him.) "I allude to the story you related the other morning of the young girl you had seen hanging over the verge of the cliff, with every appearance of intending to throw herself over."
"It was as a dream I related that," he gravely remarked.
"That I am aware of. But it was no dream to me, Beaton. I fear I know that young girl; I also fear that I know what drove her into contemplating so rash an act. The conversation just held in the card-room should enlighten you. Beaton, am I wrong?"
The feeling I could not suppress trembled in my tones. He may have been sensitive to it or he may have been simply good-natured. Whatever the cause, this is what he said in reply:
"It was a dream. Remember that I insist upon its being a dream. But some of its details are very clear in my mind. When I stumbled upon this dream-maiden in the moonlight her face was turned from me toward the ocean, and I
