written his family that matters which he wished to complete would detain him at the college for a few weeks, and begged his father to make his excuses at the wedding. He had an instinctive feeling that Harrington would not care, as well as an inexplicable aversion to being a witness at the wedding ceremony of his elder brother and the girl who had burst upon his vision that afternoon and seemed to open a new world to him.
He had long ago put by the strange, sweet sense of having discovered in her a familiar friend—one who fitted into his longings and his ideals as though he had always been waiting for her. He called the thought a foolish sentimentality, and, in view of the relation in which she was soon to be placed to him, he tried to be as matter-of-fact as possible with regard to her. He sent several pleasant brotherly messages—which never reached her—through the medium of Harrington. He tried to accept the thought of a new sister as a delightful thing, and always he regarded her beauty and grace with the utmost reverence. The father, while feeling that Charles's absence was almost a discourtesy to his brother, nevertheless gave reluctant consent.
Then, a few days before the wedding, there came over Charles an overwhelming feeling that he must go. All his former arguments in favor of remaining away seemed as water. He felt as if the eyes and the smile of the girl he had seen upon the hillside called him imperatively. Try as he would to tell himself that with his present feelings it was foolish, even dangerous, for him to go near her, and that his brother was already a little jealous owing to the look that had passed between them, it made no difference; he felt that he must go, and go he did. Without waiting to do more than throw a few necessities into a valise, he took the first stage-coach that started from Boston. All through the long journey his heart beat wildly with the thought that he was to meet her. He was ashamed of the feeling. Yet in vain he told himself that it was wrong; that he ought to go back. Once he flung himself out of the coach at a station where they were taking on fresh horses, determined to return to Boston, and then madly climbed up to the seat with the driver just as the coach started again. After that he grimly faced the matter, asking himself if it were not better to go on after all, meet his new sister-in-law on a common, every-day basis, and get this nonsense out of his head forever. Then he tried to sleep and forget, but her face and her smile haunted him, and there seemed to be an appeal in her eyes that called him to her aid.
When he presented himself at his father's door in the early morning of the day before the wedding, his face was gray with combat, yet in his eyes was the light of a noble resolve. In spite of all his reasoning, he could not help the feeling that he had come because he was needed, but he was here, and there was a duty connected with it which he felt strong to do. It was therefore not a surprise to him when his father met him with eager welcome and a grave face.
"My son, you have come just when I needed you most," he said as he drew the young man inside the library door. And then Charles noticed that his father seemed suddenly aged and heavy with sorrow. He knew it was nothing connected with the immediate family of the household, for they had all welcomed him with eager clamor and delight.
"Sit down, Charles."
His father was fastening the door against intrusion, and the young man's heart stood still with apprehension.
Mr. Winthrop turned and looked in his son's face with feverishly bright eyes that showed their lack of sleep. Then he seated himself in the arm-chair before the desk, drawing Charles's chair close, that he might speak in lowered tones.
"Something terrible has occurred, Charles. Your mother does not know yet. The blow has fallen so suddenly that I find myself unable to believe it is true. I am dazed. I can scarcely think. Charles, your only brother, my son——" The old man paused, and with a sudden contraction of his heart Charles noticed that there were tears coursing down his father's wrinkled cheeks. The voice quavered and went on:
"Our first-born has been guilty of a great wrong. It is best to face the truth, my boy. Harrington has committed a crime. I don't see how it can be thought otherwise by any honest person. I am trying to look at the facts, but even as I speak the words I cannot realize that they are true of one of our family."
Charles waited, his eyes fixed upon the old man's face, and a great indignation growing within him toward the brother who could dare bring dishonor upon such a father!
Mr. Winthrop bowed his head upon his hand for a moment, as though he could not bear to reveal the whole truth. Then he roused himself as one who has need of haste.
"Charles, your brother already has a wife and two little children, yet he was proposing to wed another woman. He has dared to court and win an innocent young girl, and to hoodwink her honorable father. And the worst of it is that he meant to carry it out and marry her! Oh the shame of it! We are disgraced, Charles! We are all disgraced!" With a low groan the father buried his face in his hands and bowed himself upon the desk.
The heart of the young man grew hot. A great desire for vengeance was surging over him. He arose excitedly from his chair.
"Harrington has done this, father!"
The words burst from his lips more like a judgment pronounced than like a question or a statement of fact. It was as if the acknowledgment of his brother's sin were a kind of climax in his thought of that brother, whom he had been all these years attempting to idealize, as a boy so often idealizes an elder brother. The words bore with them, too, the recognition of all the pain and disappointment and perplexity of many things throughout the years. Charles's finer nature suddenly revolted in disgust from all that he saw his brother to be.
He stood splendidly indignant, above the bowed head of his father, a picture of fine, strong manhood, ready to avenge the rights of insulted womanhood. There before him arose a vision obscuring the walls of the book-lined library—the vision of a girl, fresh, fair, lovely, with eyes alight, cheeks aglow, floating hair, and fluttering white drapery, garlanded in pink and white blossoms that filled the air with the breath of a spring morning. It blazed upon him with clearness and beauty, and veiled by no hindering sense of wrong. With a great heart throb of joy, he recognized that she no longer belonged to his brother.
The thought had scarcely thrilled his senses before he was ashamed of it. How could he think of joy or anything else in the midst of the shame and trouble that had fallen upon them all? And most of all upon the beautiful girl, who would bear the heaviest burden.
True, there was another side to the matter, a side in which she might be thankful that Harrington's true character had been discovered before things had gone further; but there was mortification, and disgrace inevitable. Then, it was to be presumed that she had loved Harrington, or why should she be about to marry him? Poor child! His heart stood still in pity as he realized what the sin of his brother would mean to her.
These thoughts went swiftly through his mind as he stood beside his father. It seemed to him that in the instant of the elder man's silence he reviewed the whole catastrophe in its various phases and lived through years of experience and knowledge. Then his father's trembling voice took up the story again:
"Yes, Harrington did that!" They were Charles's own words, but somehow, on his father's tongue, they spoke a new pathos, and again the young man saw another side to the whole terrible matter. Harrington was the oldest son, adored of his mother. Though he had been gone from home for years, he had yet remained her idol until it had seemed his every virtue had grown to perfection, while all his faults were utterly forgotten. During his visits, which had been few and far between, the whole family had put itself out of its routine, and hung upon his wishes. His stories had been listened to with the deference due to one older and wiser than any of them could ever hope to be. His wishes had been law, his opinions gospel truth. Charles recalled how his mother had always called together the entire family to listen to the reading to one of Harrington's rare epistles, demanding a solemnity and attention second only to that required at family worship. These letters always ended
