"For pity's sake, Martha, do stop snivelling! One would think you were going to a funeral instead of to a wedding. I must say I don't think you honor your nephew very much, showing such distrust in him. Do wipe your eyes and sit up. If you go on this way, you won't be able to come to the ceremony to-morrow morning, and you know how that will annoy Harrington. I must say, Mr. Winthrop, you are acting in a very strange manner, for the father of such a son."

She always called him Mr. Winthrop when he had offended her. At other times it was "Father."

Her husband turned in the seat and faced her solemnly. "Janet," he said sadly, "it's no use for you to try to blind yourself to the truth.

You'll only have it harder to bear in the end. You might as well understand the awful truth that our boy Harrington has committed a great sin, and we ought to be thankful that it was discovered before any more harm was done. You don't seem to see what a task we've got before us to tell that father and his innocent young daughter that the man in whom they trusted, our son, has played them false."

"Now, Mr. Winthrop, I don't want to hear another word of such talk. You must be beside yourself!" Madam Winthrop half arose in her seat and cried out shrilly: "Stop it, I say! Don't you dare say such words in my presence again! If you do, I shall get right out of this carriage and walk! _Walk_, I tell you! And what will the servants think of you then? You will find out your mistake in due time, of course, and be ashamed of yourself. Until then I must ask you not to speak to me on the subject. No, Charles, don't you dare to interfere between me and your Father again. I have had enough of your disrespect for one day.

Just keep absolutely quiet until you can speak in a proper way. I simply will not stand such talk."

She sat up with dignity, and spoke to them both as if they were naughty children. Her husband looked into her eyes sadly for a moment, and then turned deliberately back to his horses. He knew by former experience that it was well nigh impossible to convince his wife of anything against her will. Well, she would have to go on and take the consequences of her stubbornness. There was no other way. And perhaps it was as well, for, with her excitable nature, there was no telling what state it might throw her into, once she realized the truth about her idolized son. She might lose consciousness and have to be carried back, and so perhaps delay them. His first duty now was to tell the sad truth to his old friend Van Rensselaer and his poor daughter. Every step that the horses took made him shrink more and more from the task before him. It seemed that his shame and disgrace were being burnt into his soul with a red hot iron. He kept thinking how he should tell his story to his host when he reached his journey's end, and the horses'

hoofs beat out the dirge of a funeral; while keeping pace behind, with decorous bearing, rode the two old servants, pondering what had cast a shadow over the gay party they had hoped to escort.

As the young man in the front seat of the coach sat and frowned at the shining chestnut backs of the horses, he was conning over and over a thought that his sister had put into his heart, and each time it ran like sweet fire along his veins, until it began to seem a possibility, and fairly took his breath away.

The day was wonderful. The air was fine and rare, the sky clear, with not a fleck of cloud to mar the blue-a blue that fairly called attention to itself as being bluer than ever before. But not one of all that little company of wedding-goers saw it.

The foliage everywhere was washed fresh for the occasion by a shower that had pa.s.sed in the night. Diamonds strung themselves from gra.s.s-blade to gra.s.s-blade, and begemmed even the mullein stalks. Late dandelions flared and gleamed, shy sweet-brier smiled here and there by the roadside in delicate pink cups, inviting the bees. The birds in the trees were singing everywhere, and the sweet winds lifted branches and played a subdued accompaniment. To the soul of the young man, their music came in happy harmonies, and, while he was not conscious of it, little by little they began to play him a kind of wedding march, the joyous melody of his thoughts, now glad, now fearful, yet ever growing sweeter and more sure of the victorious climax.

He grew presently unconscious of the inharmony behind him: of Aunt Martha and her efforts not to "sniff"; of his mother's disapproval; and of his father's heavy heart. He thought only of the girl whom he had seen upon the hillside, and the smile her eyes had given him as they met his. Every time he thought upon it now his heart-beats quickened. All the pent-up flood of emotion that she had set going that spring afternoon upon the Hudson hillside, and that he had fought bravely all these weeks, and thought he had conquered, came now upon him with the power of stored-up energy and swept over his being in a flood-tide of gladness.

In vain he shamed himself for such unseemly joy when his only brother was in disgrace. In vain he told himself that the girl-bride would be plunged into grief when her bridegroom turned out to be no bridegroom at all. Still his heart would catch the faint melody of the wedding-march those birds and winds and branches were breathing, and would go singing along with a new gladness.

The morning was a silent one for the whole party. Even the coachman checked Pompey's levity when a robin chased a chipmunk across a distant path, and the old darkey snapped him up sharply when he ventured a question or a wonder about "Marsa" and "Missus."

But while each held to his own thoughts, and the horses sped willingly over the miles, in the heart of the young man in the front seat was growing a steady purpose.

About noon they stopped at an inn to dine, and give the horses a brief respite.

Madam Winthrop would not lie down, as they urged her, nor would she permit her husband or her son to talk with her concerning the forbidden theme. She kept the three girls with her also, that nothing might be said to them to prejudice them against their brother.

Aunt Martha, however, unable to bear up longer under the scornful scrutiny of her sister-in-law, was glad to take refuge on the high four-poster bed that the landlady put at her service, and weep a few consoling tears into the homespun linen pillow-slip. Aunt Martha was by no means sure that all was well with the boy whom she adored, though she acknowledged to herself that he had his weaknesses. Had she not seen those very weaknesses from babyhood upward, and helped many times to hide them from his blind mother and adoring sisters? Her fearful soul accepted the possibility of his sin, yet loved him in spite of it all.

She resented the thought that public opinion would be against Harrington if he had done this thing, and, could she have had her way, would have had public opinion changed to suit his special need. She felt in her secret soul that prodigies like Harrington should not be expected to follow the laws like ordinary mortals.

Madam Winthrop sat bolt upright in a wooden chair, and eyed her three daughters suspiciously. Now and then she made a remark about their conduct at the wedding, and they acquiesced meekly. They had learned never to dispute with their mother when she was in her present mood.

Charles and his father wandered by common consent into the woods near-by. It was the son who spoke first.

"Father, I've been thinking all the morning about what you said of her-Miss Van Rensselaer." He spoke the name shyly, reverently, and his heart throbbed painfully. He felt himself very young and presumptuous.

The bright color glowed in his face. "It will be terrible for her." He breathed the words as if they hurt him.

"Yes," a.s.sented the father; "I cannot get her out of my mind, the poor innocent child! Think of Betty, Charles. Suppose it was Betty."

The young man frowned.

"Father, did you ever see her?"

"No," said the older man, wondering at his son's vehemence. "Did you?"

"Yes, I saw her once, when I met Harrington on my way to Boston. I stopped off with him at the school where she was being educated, and we saw her. She is beautiful, Father, beautiful, and very young. She looked as if she could not stand a thing like this, as if it might crush her. Don't you think we ought to do something for her, to make it easier? Isn't it our place? I mean-say, Father, in the Bible, you know, when the older brother died, or failed in any way, the younger brother had to take up the obligation. Do you understand what I mean, Father? Do you think I could? I mean, do you think she would let me?

It wouldn't be so public and mortifying, you know, and I think girls care a great deal about that. Betty would, I'm sure."

The father looked up in astonishment.

"What do you mean, Charles? Do you mean you would marry her?"

"Why, yes, Father, that's what I meant. What do you think of it?"

The boy in him came to the front for an instant and looked out of his eyes, though he shrank from the blunt way the older man had of stating facts.

His father eyed him keenly.

"But you're only a boy, Charles, and you're not through college yet.

How could you marry?"

"I'm past twenty-one," boasted the boy, and vanished into the man. A graver look came out upon his face.

"I could leave college, if it were necessary, or I could go on and finish. I could work part of the time and take care of her." The last words he breathed gently, reverently, like a benediction.

The father stopped in the wooded path and grasped his son's hand.

"Boy, you've got good stuff in you! I'm proud of you," he said, lifting his head triumphantly. "If only your brother had been like that!" Then he bowed his head in bitter thought.

But the young man's thoughts were not on Harrington now. He grasped his father's hand, and waited impatiently for further words from him.

"Well, Father?"

The old man lifted his head.

"But, Boy, you do not know her. You have seen her only once. You can't spoil your own life that way."

A flood of color went over the younger face, and into his eyes came a depth of earnestness that showed his father that the man had awakened in his son. He was no longer a boy.

"Father, I do not need to know her. I love her already. I have loved her ever since I saw her. That was why I did not want to come to the wedding. I felt that I could not bear it."

The kindly older gaze searched the fine young face tenderly, but the lover's eyes looked back at him and wavered not.

"Is it so, Son?"-the words were grave. "Then G.o.d pity you-and bless you," he added, with an upward look. "I am afraid there is no easy way ahead of you. Yet I am proud to call you my son."

After this they walked on silently through the woods, over a pathway of flecked gold, where the sunlight sifted through the leafy branches. No sound came to interrupt the silence beyond the whisking of a squirrel or the flirt of a bird's wings in the branches.

The dinner-bell pealed forth from the inn, and they turned quietly to retrace their steps. They were almost in sight of the house before either spoke. Then the father said:

"Son, she does not know you. Have you any idea how she will take all this?"

"None at all, Father." It was spoken humbly.

"What is your idea? Have you made any plans?"

"Not yet-only, that I shall tell her at once, if I may, and let her decide. If she is willing, the wedding may go on as planned."