"If you wish to come in, please have the goodness to close the door after you, Charles," said his mother severely. "You are in danger of forgetting everybody else in your sudden and extraordinary infatuation."

The joyous spirit of the young man came down to earth with a thud, and he closed the door and stood looking at his mother blankly, as if to try to fathom the look in her face.

"Your wife left me some minutes ago," his mother answered the question which his eyes repeated. She spoke haughtily, as if the offence had been partly his. "She did not seem to enjoy my company."

"Mother!" said Charles, aghast at his mother's tone even more than at her words.

"Oh, yes, '_Mother_'!" she repeated, angered anew at the reproach in his tone. "I suppose it will be that from now on. She left the room declaring her intention of also leaving my house. I suppose by this time she has seen the impossibility of that, but you will find you have married no angel, I can tell you. Whatever possessed you, I cannot understand. Such a little spitfire! You should have seen her great eyes flash."

"Mother, what had you been saying to her?" Charles tried to speak gently. He saw that here was something that needed careful handling.

He blamed himself inwardly that he had not had more forethought than to prevent a meeting between the two while his mother was still wrought up over his brother Harrington.

"What had _I_ been saying to _her_? Indeed, Charles, you forget yourself! You would better ask what had _she_ been saying to _me_." In her indignation, Madam Winthrop rose on one elbow and faced her son. "I had been most kind and patient and forgiving. I had made up my mind for your sake to put everything by, and I sent for her to tell her so. I told her I would forgive her all she had done to spoil your brother's life and yours--"

"Mother! You never told her that!"

Charles towered above the little woman in the bed, every inch of his manhood roused in honest indignation.

"I certainly did," said the mother, her own anger rising anew. "I explained the whole matter to her, and told her I would forgive her entirely. And then just because I suggested some things she might do to help you who are so young and inexperienced, and who had so generously given up all your own ambitions just to save her from a few hours'

mortification, she got very angry. She turned perfectly white, and her eyes looked like two devils. You wouldn't have known your pretty little angel if you had seen her. I will admit, of course, that she is pretty, but 'handsome is that handsome does' is a very true adage. You will find it out yet. She was most insulting-told me that I was lying, or words to that effect-and then she got off the most extraordinary yarn about not knowing she had married you. I told her she must know I couldn't believe such a story as that, and, now that I think it over, I don't see how she can be quite right in her mind. Perhaps Harrington had suspected as much and took this way of getting out of a most unfortunate union, and you were so blind that you just jumped in head-foremost, without ever waiting to make an inquiry--"

"Mother, stop!" Charles's face was white, and his voice was trembling with suppressed horror. "Remember you are talking about my wife!"

"Yes, your wife!" exclaimed his mother, beginning to cry. "That's the way it goes. A child forgets all his mother has ever done, the minute he sees a pretty, silly face."

Then she sat up with sudden resolution.

"Well, _take_ your wife and go _out of my house_, then, if you and she are going to combine against me, and dictate to me how I shall talk!"

Then with a moan she threw herself back upon her pillows and lost consciousness again.

Charles stood looking down miserably at her for an instant, his mind in such a whirl of emotions that he scarcely knew which was strongest.

Then, with a remembrance of Dawn, he turned, half-distracted, and pulled the bell-cord that hung by the head of his mother's bed. These fainting spells were frequent and not alarming, he knew. Stepping to the head of the stairs, he called:

"Betty, tell Aunt Martha to come to Mother at once. She has fainted again."

He waited only to hear Aunt Martha's quick, excited step upon the stair, and then he went to find Dawn.

Opening the door of the sitting-room, it startled him to feel the emptiness that pervaded the place. He had expected to find Dawn weeping in the big chair, or perhaps huddled upon the bed. That would have been Betty's way. He had often acted as comforter to Betty during her childish woes. Even in his anger and trouble, he was thrilling at the thought of how he would comfort Dawn, his own little girl. He was the only one in all the world now to whom she had a right to look for comfort.

He strode through the rooms hurriedly, looking in every possible place for her, and unwilling to accept the conclusion his mind had instantly jumped to, that she was not there at all.

He even pushed aside the curtains and stepped out upon first the front balcony and then the side one, thinking that she had taken refuge there from intrusion by Betty or the other girls. But there was no sign of her recent step, and in the darkness the tall gra.s.s down below on the terrace told no tales of a little crushed place where her bundle had fallen and where her feet had rested lightly when she dropped. Next morning, before any one would think to look, the gra.s.s would be standing tall as ever, and they would never know how she went.

Stepping back into the room again, Charles at once saw the writing on the sheet of paper lying on the desk. When he had read it, he caught it hastily in his hand as if it could give him some clue to her whereabouts, and started down the stairs and out of the front door to find her. He knew only one thing then, and that was that he must find her and bring her back before any one else discovered her flight. She could not be far away yet. Charles hurried out into the darkness. The family were attending to the mother, who had recovered consciousness.

He could hear her moaning, and a sudden bitterness came over his soul, that her blindness and selfishness should make them all so much trouble.

He had never thought of her in any but a gentle, loving way before, and it shocked his spirit to have to think differently now; but his indignation at her treatment of his young and blameless wife was roused beyond his present control.

He searched the grounds and garden carefully, going over every possible hiding-place twice. As he did so, he reflected that she could not have known where to go to hide, and he felt sure he would find her in a minute or two. The minutes grew into thirty, and he had found no trace of her. He went down the street quite a distance in one direction, only to be sure she would have chosen the other, and to hurry back. An hour pa.s.sed with no trace of her, and then he began systematically to go over the grounds again, calling her name softly; but a screech owl mocked him, and the night wind only echoed back his voice emptily.

Once he drew near the house and under the balcony where Dawn had escaped. He heard his sister calling him, "Charles, Charles! Mother wants you!" and his heart grew bitter. Then Betty's head came out of the window, and she called again:

"Charles, where are you and Dawn? Mother has been moaning and crying for half an hour. She wants you, and nothing else will stop her but the sight of you."

Then, out of the darkness, Charles answered his sister, and the tone of his voice frightened her:

"Betty, I cannot come. There is something more important than even Mother just now. I'm sorry for Mother, but I'm afraid it's all her fault. She has been saying things to Dawn, and Dawn has gone!"

"Gone!" Betty's horrified voice seemed like a fresh recognition of the awful truth that his young wife was beyond his easy reach, and a dreadful foreboding entered his soul.

"Oh, Charles!" Betty gasped. "But she can't be gone. Her things are here, aren't they? Wait-I'll look."

Betty disappeared, and in a moment more her white, scared face reappeared on the balcony, and she was holding a candle high above her head.

"No, they are not there. I've even looked in the closet, thinking she might have hung them up. Her bonnet and mantle were on the bed before supper, but they are gone from the room. I found her gloves, though-one on the bed, and one on the floor. Here they are." She tossed them to him as if they were an important clue, and Charles caught at them as if they were something most precious.

"What shall we do?" she asked. "Hadn't I better call Father? We ought to find her at once, poor little thing! She'll be frightened out in the night all alone. How could Mother! But then she was so upset with Harrington, I don't believe she understood things fully, do you?"

But Charles had no time to listen to Betty's sympathetic chatter. His heart was wrung with the thought of the girl he loved out in the night alone, afraid perhaps of the unknown perils about her. He must hurry to her aid.

"Yes, tell Father to come to the front door, quick! There's no time to lose. And, Betty, don't rouse the neighbors. Let's keep this quiet."

"Of course," said his little sister. "How fortunate they don't know yet that it was you who was married." Then Betty flew to call her father, telling him excitedly all the way to the front door what had happened.

"Poor child! Poor child!" said the father tenderly, as he listened to the tale. "And poor Mother, too; she just didn't understand."

Charles made no response. He did not feel like pitying his mother yet.

"What do you think I had better do, Father?" he asked. "I've gone everywhere about the place; and down the road a good way in each direction."

"She will have started home, I suppose-it is a girl's natural refuge,"

said the old man thoughtfully. "There's only one road if you don't take the train. She wouldn't likely go all that way around."

"But, Father, she doesn't know the way. It was all quite new to her."

"Oh, that's easy. She will ask, and of course anybody will direct her.

She's probably asked somebody quite near the house here. If you only knew whom, you could easily trace her, but, as you say, it's best not to say anything about it, for it would get out to the neighbors. We'll soon trace her. There are only two ways by which she could reach the main stage-road. You go down to the stable and saddle the two sorrel mares. The blacks are tired with the long drive to-day, so you'd better take the sorrels. The men are all gone to bed by this time, so you'll have to do it yourself. You take one horse and go the road by the sawmill, and I'll take the other and go around by Applebee's farm, and then if she should have taken it into her head to go back by the way you came, I couldn't miss her, for she couldn't have gone further than that by this time. Had she any money with her?"

"I don't know," answered Charles miserably.

"Cheer up, lad, we'll find her inside of two hours, never fear. Hurry up, and I'll be with you in half a minute."

Five minutes later, the two horses and their riders parted company at the cross corners, and started on the search.

CHAPTER XVII