from Philadelphia. Others had been invited from the city, but one after another their regrets had come to Ethelyn, who would gladly have excused the entire set, Aunt Van Buren, Frank and all, though she confessed to herself a great deal of curiosity with regard to Miss Nettie, whom she had never seen; neither had she met Frank since the dissolution of their engagement, for though she had been in Boston, where most of her dresses were made, Mrs. Dr. Van Buren had wisely arranged that Frank should be absent from home. She was herself not willing to risk a meeting between him and Ethelyn until matters were too well adjusted to admit of a change, for Frank had more than once shown signs of rebellion. He was in a more quiescent state now, having made up his mind that what could not be cured must be endured, and as he had sensibility enough to feel very keenly the awkwardness of meeting Ethelyn under present circumstances, and as Miss Nettie was really very fond of him, and he, after a fashion, was fond of her, he was in the best of spirits when he stepped from the train at West Chicopee and handed his mother and Nettie into the spacious carryall of which he had made fun as a country ark, while they rode slowly toward Aunt Barbara Bigelow's. Everything was in readiness for them. The large north chamber was aired and swept and dusted, and only little bars of light came through the closed shutters, and the room looked very cool and nice, with its fresh muslin curtains looped back with blue, its carpet of the same cool shade, its pretty chestnut furniture, its snowbank of a bed, and the tasteful bouquets which Ethelyn had arranged--Ethelyn, who lingered longer in this room than the other one across the hall, the bridal chamber, where the ribbons which held the curtains were white, and the polished marble of the bureau and washstand, sent a shiver through her veins whenever she looked in there. She was in her own cozy chamber now, and the silken hair, which in the early morning had been twisted under her net, was bound in heavy braids about her head, while a pearl comb held it in its place, and a half-opened rose was fastened just behind her ear. She had hesitated some time in her choice of a dress, vacillating between a pale buff, which Frank had always admired, and a delicate blue muslin, in which Judge Markham had once said she looked so pretty. The blue had won the day, for Ethelyn felt that she owed some concession to the man whose kind note she had treated so cavalierly that morning, and so she wore the blue for him, feeling glad of the faint, sick feeling which kept the blood from rushing too hotly to her face, and made her fairer and paler than her wont. She knew that she was very handsome when her toilet was made, and that was one secret of the assurance with which she went forward to meet Nettie Hudson when at last the carryall stopped before the gate.
Mrs. Dr. Van Buren was tired, and hot, and dusty, and as she was always a little cross when in this condition, she merely kissed Ethelyn once, and shaking hands with Aunt Barbara, went directly to the north chamber, asking that a cup of tea might be made for her dinner instead of the coffee whose fragrant odor met her olfactories as she stepped into the house. First, however, she introduced Nettie, who after glancing at Ethelyn, turned her eyes wonderingly upon Frank, thinking his greeting of his cousin rather more demonstrative than was exactly becoming even if they were cousins, and had been, as Mrs. Dr. Van Buren affirmed, just like brother and sister. That was no reason why Frank should have wound his arm around her waist, and kept it there, while he kissed her twice, and brought such a bright color to her cheeks. Miss Nettie cared just enough for Frank Van Buren to be jealous of him. She wanted all his attentions herself, and so the little blonde was in something of a pet as she followed on into the house, and twisted her hat strings into a hard knot, which Frank had to disentangle for her, just as he had to kiss away the wrinkle which had gathered on her forehead. She was a beautiful little creature, scarcely larger than a child of twelve, with a pleading, helpless look in her large, blue eyes which seemed to be saying: "Look at me; speak to me, won't you?--notice me a little."
She was just the one to be made a tool of; and Ethelyn readily saw that she had been as clay in Mrs. Van Buren's skillful hands.
"Pretty, very pretty, but decidedly a nonentity and a baby," was Ethelyn's mental comment, and she felt something like contempt for Frank, who, after loving and leaning on her, could so easily turn to weak little Nettie Hudson.
At the sight of Frank and the sound of his voice, she had felt all the olden feeling rushing back to her heart; but when, after Nettie had followed Mrs. Van Buren to her chamber, and she stood for a moment alone with him, he felt constrained to say something, and stammered out, "It's deuced mean, Ethie, to serve you so, and mother ought to be indicted. I hope you don't care much," all her pride and womanliness was roused and she answered promptly: "Of course, I don't care; do you think I would wish to marry Judge Markham if I were not all over that childish affair? You have not seen him yet. He is a splendid man."
Ethelyn felt better after paying this tribute to Richard Markham, and she liked him better, too, now that she had spoken for him, but Frank's reply, "Yes, mother told me so, but said there was a good deal of your Westernism about him yet," jarred on her feelings as she plucked the roses growing at the end of the piazza and crushed them, thorns and all, in her hands, feeling the smart less than the dull, heavy throbbing at her heart. Frank did not seem to her just as he used to be; he was the same polished dandy as of old, and just as careful to perform every little act of gallantry, but the something lacking which she had always felt to a certain extent was more perceptible now, and to herself she accused him of having degenerated since he had passed from her influence. She never dreamed of charging it to her interviews with Judge Markham, whose topics of conversation were so widely different from Frank's. She was not generous enough to concede anything in his favor, though she felt glad that Frank was not quite the same he had been--it would make the evening bridal before her easier to bear; and Ethelyn's eyes were brighter and her smiles more frequent as she sat down to dinner and answered Mrs. Van Buren's question: "Where is the Judge that he does not dine with us?"
"Sick, is he?" Mrs. Van Buren said, when told of his headache, while Frank remarked, "Sick of his bargain, maybe," laughing loudly at his own joke, while the others laughed in unison; and so the dinner passed off without that stiffness which Ethelyn had so much dreaded.
After it was over, Mrs. Dr. Van Buren felt better, and began to talk of the "Judge," and to ask if Ethelyn knew whether they would board or keep house in Washington the coming winter. Ethelyn did not know. She had never mentioned Washington to Richard Markham, and he had never guessed how much that prospective season at the capital had to do with her decision. That it would be hers to enjoy she had no shadow of doubt, but as she felt then she did not particularly care to keep up a household for the sake of entertaining her aunt, and possibly Frank and his wife, so she replied that she presumed "they should board, as it would be the short session--if he was re-elected they might consider the house."
"There may be a still higher honor in store for him than a re-election," Mrs. Van Buren said, and then proceeded to speak of a letter which she had received from a lady in Camden, who had once lived in Boston, and who had written congratulating her old friend upon her niece's good fortune. "There was no young man more popular in that section of the country than Judge Markham," she said, "and there had been serious talk of nominating him for governor. Some, however, thought him too young, and so they were waiting for a few years when he would undoubtedly be elected to the highest office in the State."
This piece of intelligence had greatly increased Mrs. Van Buren's respect for the lady-elect of Iowa's future governor, and she gave the item of news with a great deal of satisfaction, but did not tell that her correspondent had added, "It is a pity, though, that he does not know more of the usages of good society. Ethelyn is so refined and sensitive that she will be often shocked, no doubt, with the manners of the husband and his family."
This clause had troubled Mrs. Dr. Van Buren. She really liked Ethelyn, and now that she was out of Frank's way she liked her very much, and would do a good deal to serve her. She did not wish her to be unhappy, as she feared she might be from the sundry rumors which had reached her concerning that home out West, whither she was going. So, when, after dinner, they were alone for a few moments, she endeavored to impress upon her niece the importance of having an establishment of her own as soon as possible.
"It is not well for sons' wives to live with the mother," she said. "She
