There was silence in the coach while Winthrop pondered the great discovery he had made, and how he should act upon it.

But the elder man was lost in gloomy thoughts. He had a vague feeling that Mary, out there in the moonlight with her bright-haired boy, would hold him to account for the little girl she had loved and lost in life.

A sudden glimpse into the future had been given him, partly by the young man's words, partly by the beauty of Dawn herself. She was blossoming into womanhood, and with that change would come new perplexities. She could not stay always at the school. Where in the world was there a place for his child? More and more he saw that the woman whom in the fierceness of his wrath he had selected to take the place of mother to the girl was both unable and unwilling to do so. He shrank from the time when his daughter would have to come home. As he thought of it, it seemed an impossible situation to have her there; it would be almost like having Mary in the flesh to live with them, with reproachful eyes ever upon their smallest acts. At that moment it came to him that he was enduring the torments of a lost soul, his conscience having sat in judgment and condemned him.

The stage-coach rumbled on, stopping now and again through the night for a change of horses, and the two who sat within its gloomy depths said little to each other, yet slept not, for one was musing on the evil of the past and its results, while the other was plotting evil for the future.

CHAPTER III

Harrington Winthrop kept his promise about the sweets. Five times during the winter that followed his first visit with Mr. Van Rensselaer, he invented some excuse to visit Dawn.

The first time he came, he found her in the maple grove behind the pasture, with a group of other girls, all decked in autumn leaves and playing out some story that Dawn had read.

He persuaded her to walk a little way into the woods with him; and when he came to take his leave asked for a kiss, but Dawn sprang away from him in sudden panic:

"No," she said sharply; "I have never kissed anybody but my mother."

Then, fearing she had been impolite in view of his gift, she added:

"We don't kiss people here at this school. It isn't the custom."

And she knew so little of the customs of the world that the incident pa.s.sed without further apprehension on her part, or understanding of the young man's meaning.

"That's all right, my dear," he said pleasantly. "But don't forget about the house. I'm going to tell you all about it next time I come.

You still want a home of your very own, don't you?"

"Why, of course," said Dawn; "but I can't see how you can know anything about it, or care. What have you to do with it?" And then with sudden alarm, "Has my father been talking to you about any such thing?"

"No, indeed! Your father does not even know I am interested in you. I care for my own sake. Didn't I tell you that I liked you the minute I saw you? And I'm just as interested in this future home of yours as you are."

"I'm sure I can't see why," said Dawn, perplexed, yet trying to be polite.

"Suppose you think about it hard, dear, and see if you can find out why I care. Just think it all over, everything I have said, and then if you are still in doubt go and look in the looking-gla.s.s and keep on thinking, and I'm sure you'll find out by the time I come back. I'm coming soon again, and I want you to be watching for me every day. I'll bring you something nice next time, besides another box of sweets."

Dawn tried to smile, but felt uncomfortable. She murmured her thanks again, and turned uneasily toward the woods and her companions, and he deemed it prudent to leave her without further ado.

Back in the woods, the girls were making merry with her confections, and had nothing but praise for the handsome stranger who had brought them; but all through the eager questions and merry jibes Dawn was silent and thoughtful.

"Where are your thoughts, Dawn?" said Desire Hathaway. "Has the stranger stolen them away to pay for his goodies?"

"She looks as if he had asked her to marry him, and she didn't know whether to say yes or to wait for somebody else," laughed Matilda Hale, a new-comer among them, and older than the rest.

"I guess he kissed her good-by," chimed in silly Polly Phelps, who aspired to be Matilda's shadow. "I peeked through the bushes and saw him bending over her."

Amid the thoughtless laugh that rose, Dawn stood defiant, the crimson leaping into her cheeks, the steel into her eyes. For an instant she looked as if she would turn upon the offending Matilda and tear her to pieces. Then a sudden revelation came to her: this, this was what the handsome stranger had meant!

Instantly the light of anger died out of her face, and a gentle dignity took its place. Her little clenched hands relaxed, the tenseness of the graceful body softened, and she turned toward the offender with a haughty condescension:

"Matilda, we don't talk in that way here," she said, and the laughter died out of the faces of her companions and left instead amazement and admiration. They had seen Dawn angry before, and had not expected the affair to end so amicably. They felt it showed a marvellous self-control, and left her mistress of the situation. Matilda bit her lip in a vexed way and tossed her head. She felt she had lost prestige by the little incident, and Dawn was still the recognized leader of the school. It was not a pleasant thought to the older girl.

Dawn turned and walked slowly away from them all, out of the woods, down through the meadow, where grazed her quiet friends, the sheep. She still carried her gentle dignity, and none of the girls spoke until she was out of sight behind the group of chestnuts at the corner of the meadow.

Then Desire Hathaway voiced the general feeling:

"Isn't she just like a queen?"

"Oh, if you want to look at it that way!" sneered Matilda, with another toss of her head. "There are a good many kinds of queens, you know. I must say, I thought she looked like a pretty wicked one for a minute or two. She would have enjoyed tearing my eyes out if she had dared."

"Dared!" cried Desire. "You don't know her. She will dare anything that she thinks is worth while. I thought it was just splendid, the way she controlled herself."

"Oh, well, just as you think, of course," shrugged Matilda. "Come on, Polly; let's go finish our sewing."

Dawn stumbled on blindly in the pasture, trying to take in the appalling thought that _perhaps_ the young man wanted to marry her!

Tears of indignation welled into her eyes, but she brushed them angrily aside. Why was life so dreadful, she wondered. Why did men exist to break women's hearts?-for she never doubted that the married state was one of heart-break. Such had been the lesson burned deep into her soul by suffering. A home of her own had been a sweet thought, but the serpent had entered her Eden, and she cared no more to stay there.

The next time Winthrop came it was openly, with a message from her father. All through the interview, which lasted for an hour, and was prolonged over the noonday meal, Dawn sat stiffly on the other side of Friend Ruth, watching the fishy eyes of the stranger and listening to his fulsome flatteries of the place, her small hands folded decorously, but her young heart beating painfully under the sheer folds of the 'kerchief.

On his fourth visit he bore a private letter from her father to Friend Ruth, and wore an air of a.s.surance which made the girl's heart sink with nameless foreboding. Not even the praises of the girls for her handsome lover, their open envy of her future lot, or their merry taunts, could rouse her from a gravity which had begun to settle upon her.

This time Friend Ruth seemed to look upon the visitor in a different light. Not only was Dawn allowed to talk with him alone, but she was sent out with him for a walk in the woods.

Reluctantly she obeyed, frightened, she knew not why.

Harrington Winthrop had a winning way with him, and he was determined to win this proud, beautiful girl. Also, he was wise in the ways of the world, he did not force any undue attention upon her, but confined his conversation to telling her about the beautiful home he had seen.

Rightly guessing that there was still much of the child about her, he went on to picture the house in detail, not hesitating to embellish it at will where his memory failed.

There was a garden with a fountain, and there should be flowers, all in profusion. There were clipped hedges, gravel paths, an arbor in a shady place, where she might bring her book or sewing, and where the sunshine would peer through the branches just enough to scatter gold about the leafy way.

In spite of her prejudices, she was interested. She could not help it.

The longing for a real home of her own was great.

Then came the most difficult part of his task, which was to reconcile her to himself.

Skilfully he led the conversation about till he himself was the subject-his life since he had become a man and gone out into the world.

Pathetically he talked of his own loneliness, until he touched the maternal chord in her nature and made her feel sorry for him. He opened up for her gaze depths of sympathy, tenderness, and pathos, which were purely imaginary and wholly impossible to his own nature. He launched into details of his own feelings which were the inspiration of the moment, because he saw they touched her. He told her how he had often been lonely almost to desperation, and how he had many and many a time pictured a home of his own, with a lovely wife at its head. The girl winced at the name "wife," but he went steadily on trying to take the strangeness out of the word, trying to touch her heart and fire her tenderness; for he rightly read the possibilities of love in the beautiful face, and it put him on his mettle to make it bloom for him.

He succeeded so far as to make her conscience sharply reprove her for the dislike she had for him. Of course if he had been lonely, too, and had had a care for her loneliness, it was a different matter. Perhaps, after all, they had something in common, and he would not be such a dreadful addition to the home she had longed for. At least, she had no right to shut him out of a dream that he held in common with her, and she tried to put aside her own feelings and look at him fairly.

So they walked the deeper into the woods, and while she did not say much in reply to his eloquent words, she did not seem actively opposed. He let his voice grow more and more tender, though he did not trouble her with words of love. He let a care for her become apparent: as they walked over the rough growth in the woods, he held the branches aside for her, and helped her over a log, and once across the stones of a little brook, touching her hand and arm deferentially. It did not appeal to Dawn in the way he hoped that it would, nor awaken any tenderness for him, but she let him lead her along a path which, had she been alone, she would have cleared at a bound, and counted an easy thing.

When he parted from her that evening to take the night boat, he gave her shrinking fingers a slight pressure in token of the understanding between them, and Dawn understood it as the sealing of a kind of unspoken contract.

After that Dawn was not surprised to receive a letter from her father in which he spoke of the young man's desire to make her his wife, and formally gave his consent. It never seemed to occur to him that the girl might have any question about the matter. A dull kind of rebellion rose in her breast and smouldered there as she read her father's letter; yet she accepted his arrangements for her life, because it seemed the only way out from a home that could never be a happy one for her; and because it offered a spot that might be called her own, and a possible opportunity to live out some of her childish dreams.

When Harrington Winthrop came again, she no longer yielded to her inward shrinking from him, but took him as she took hard tasks that she did not like but that were inevitable; and he, finding her unresisting, was careful not to do anything to mar the pleasant understanding between them. Meantime, he congratulated himself constantly upon the ease with which he had possessed himself of a promised wife whose private fortune would be no small one.