"What other reason can he have save that he doesn't love me, or thinks I am unfit to be a clergyman's wife?"

"He has another reason,--one that will devolve upon you the necessity of deciding some very important questions. Are you old and mature enough?"

"O uncle!" exclaimed Lottie, impatiently tapping the floor with her foot. "You ought to be made Grand Inquisitor General. You have kept me upon the rack of suspense--it seems an hour."

"Hold on, little firebrand. Questions concerning a lifetime should not be decided in a moment. You had better take a few years--certainly, a few months--to think over what I am going to tell you. Frank worships the ground you tread on. He does not give you the little remnant of a heart that has been left after dozens of flirtations with other girls. You have the whole of his big, unworldly heart, and from what I know of him, or, rather, his mother, you always will; but he is so unselfish--so unlike the rest of us--that he won't ask you to exchange your life of wealth and luxury for his life of toil, poverty, and comparative exile. So, while I believe he will idolize your memory all his days, he is hoping that you won't suffer any, but will soon be able to forget him. Of course I feigned profound ignorance as to your feelings, and left him in a pitiable state of distress. But he finally concluded that, even if you did love him a little, it would be very unmanly to take advantage of your feelings to get you into the awful sc.r.a.pe of a home missionary's life."

As Mr. Dimmerly proceeded in this last speech, joy came into Lottie's face like the dawn of a June morning. Tears gathered slowly in her eyes, but their source was happiness, not sorrow. By the time he concluded, she had buried her burning face in her hands.

"Well," said her uncle, after a moment, "what's to be done I hardly know. He is just like his mother. If he thinks it isn't right to speak, tortures could not wring a word out of him. I don't see but you will have to propose yourself--"

"Propose myself! Never," said she, springing to her feet.

"What will you do, then?--sit and look at each other, and fade away like two dying swans?"

"No, indeed," said Lottie, dancing about the room, and brushing the tears from her face, like spray. "He shall propose to me, and very humbly, too. I have the key to the problem, now. My hand is now on the helm of this big ship of war, and you shall see how I will manage. He shall do just what I want him to, without knowing it. He shall--"

"But, hold on," said Mr. Dimmerly, breathlessly. "You look like a rainbow run wild. Listen to reason. O my good gracious! the idea of her being a home missionary!"

"That is just what I am going to be,--a home missionary, in his home; and all the princ.i.p.alities and powers of earth shall not prevent it. And now, you dear, precious, old meddler, good-by. You shall, one day, sit in the snuggest corner of as cosy a little home in the West as was ever made in the East;" and she vanished, leaving the old gentleman chuckling to himself, "It doesn't look as if it would be 'stopped' after all. Perhaps sister will find out that I know how to meddle a trifle better than she does."

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

A NIGHT IN THE SNOW.

"Where have you been?" exclaimed Addie, as Lottie came down dressed warmly, but plainly. "We are all through lunch, and ready to start."

"I will not detain you, but will wrap up some lunch and take it with me. May I sit with you?" she said to Hemstead, a little later, as she came out where he was standing on the piazza,

"You will be very much exposed to the cold on the driver's seat, Miss Marsden," he said, hesitatingly; but she saw well enough what he wished, though conscience was condemning him all the time.

"So will you," she answered.

"Yes, but I am a man."

"And I am a woman," she said, with something of her old piquant style. "I do not like your implied a.s.sertion of superiority, sir.

I have as good a right to expose myself to the cold as a man."

"I was not disputing your right, Miss Marsden, but--"

"O, I understand. You are of those who think so poorly of women as to regard them merely as men's pets,--the weaker s.e.x, you would call us,--who prefer to wait till everything is made nice and comfortable, and then languidly step forward. In your reading of history, I think you must have skipped several chapters."

"You do me injustice," said Hemstead, warmly, and falling blindly into her trap. "If I had skipped all the chapters which treat of woman's heroism, in doing and suffering, I should, indeed, know little of history. She has proved herself the equal, and at times the superior of man."

"Pardon me," said Lottie, in a hurt and injured tone; "I shall reach the unwelcome truth at last: it is not woman in general who is weak, but Lottie Marsden in particular. I am very sorry that you have so poor an opinion of me, and I shall try to change it somewhat by enduring, on this drive, all the exposure and cold that you can."

As the sleigh just then came up, she settled the question by springing in and taking her place on the driver's seat.

Hemstead was perfectly nonplussed, and Mr. Dimmerly, who had stood in the door and heard what had been said, retreated rapidly, as he broke out into the most irrepressible chuckle in which he had yet indulged.

"Now, Miss Lottie," whined De Forrest, coming out m.u.f.fled to his eyes, "are you going to sit there?"

"Certainly. You have Addie and Bel to talk to. Did you suppose that Mr. Hemstead was to be treated like a coachman because he kindly consented to drive us over?"

"Let me drive, then."

"No, indeed," cried Bel and Addie in chorus; "we won't trust to your driving." So De Forrest, with very poor grace, took his seat with them, and with his back to those whom he would gladly have watched most suspiciously. He had grown desperately jealous of Hemstead, and yet his vanity would not permit him to believe it possible that Lottie Marsden, of all others, could be won to such a life as the predestined missionary would lead. Like the narrow rationalists of this world, he was ever underrating the power of that kind of truth with which Hemstead was identified. To all of his cla.s.s, the apparent self-sacrifice caused by love to G.o.d, and its kindred flame, love (not a pa.s.sion) for some human object, has ever appeared both stupid and irrational. He did not understand Lottie, and could only curse the wretched visit, and wish it over every moment. When she returned to her accustomed life in New York, she would, he believed, soon be her old self.

Since he could not watch Lottie and Hemstead, he tried to use his ears as far as possible, but the noisy bells drowned their voices, so that he could catch but few words. He was somewhat comforted in the fact that at first they did not appear to have very much to say to each other.

Hemstead tried to introduce various topics remote from the thoughts that were weighing upon both their hearts, but Lottie did not sustain his effort. She maintained her hurt and injured air, until at last he could no longer endure her grieved, sad face, and said, in a low tone, "And could you imagine that I regard you, of all others, as weak and un-womanly?"

"What else could I think from your words? I admit I have given you cause to think very poorly of me indeed. Still it's anything but pleasant to be so regarded by those whose esteem we value."

"But I do not think poorly of you, at all," said Hemstead, half desperately. "How little you understand me!"

"I understand you better than you do me. You are a man. You have high aims, and have chosen a n.o.ble calling. But you have virtually said that I am only a woman, and a very ordinary one at that, not capable of emulating the lives of my heroic sisters. I must be shielded from the rough wind, while you, in your superiority, can face it as a matter of Course. And your later words intimate that so, figuratively, it will always be, in MY CASE,--weak, womanly, shrinking, and cowering, ever shielded by something or somebody.

History, to be sure, records what women MAY do, but that is a very different thing from what Miss Marsden WILL do."

"You go to extremes, Miss Marsden, and infer far more than the occasion warrants," Hemstead replied, in great perplexity. "Was it unnatural that I wished you to be shielded from the cold?"

"And was it unnatural," she answered, "that since one of our party must be exposed to the cold, I should be willing to share in the exposure? But it is to your later words that I refer, and not the trifling incident that led to them. They, with your manner, revealed, perhaps, more than you intended. You once said I was 'capable of the n.o.blest things.' I knew that was not true then, and to my lasting regret, and I proved the fact to you. But I think I have changed somewhat since that time. At least, I hope I am no longer capable of the meanest things."

"Miss Marsden," he said, impetuously, "you now give me credit for knowing you better than at that time--"

"Yes; and you have evidently revised your opinion very materially.

But, as I said before, I can scarcely complain, when I remember my own action. But you will never know how bitterly I have repented of my folly. When that terrible charge was made against me last Monday--it came, when I was so happy and hopeful, like a sudden thunderbolt--I thought I should lose my reason. I felt that you had gone away believing I was utterly false and had been insincere in everything from first to last. I was like one who had fallen from a great height, and I scarcely spoke or moved for two days. I was not like some girls, who imagine they can find a remedy for their troubles in wealth and luxury and attention from others. I have had these things all my life, and know how little they are worth--how little they can do for one at such times. No one will ever know what I suffered. At first, when you thought so well of me, I deserved your harshest condemnation. But it did seem cruel, hard, when I was honestly trying to be better--when, at last, my life had become real and true--to be cast aside as a false thing, that must, of necessity, be despised. I dreaded, last night, that you were going away without giving me any chance to explain and correct my folly.

I did mean that Monday to tell you the truth, and should have done so, if you had given me a chance. I should have condemned myself then, and I do now, more severely than even you could, who had such just cause for anger. But, Mr. Hemstead, I have changed. In all sincerity I say it, I wish to become a good, Christian girl, and would do so, if I only knew how. I was not deceiving you when I said last Christmas eve that I hoped I had become a Christian.

I still think I have, though for two days I was in thick darkness.

At any rate, I love my Saviour, and He has helped and comforted me in this greatest trial and sorrow of my life. I was ted to hope that you would forgive me, because He seemed so ready to forgive.

There! I have now done what I have been most anxious to do--I have told you the truth. I have said all that I can, justly, in self-defence. If I have not raised your opinion of me very greatly, I cannot help it, for henceforth I intend to be honest, whatever happens."

Lottie had said the words she so wished to speak in a low tone, but with almost pa.s.sionate earnestness, and no one could have doubted their truth a moment. The horses had been trotting briskly over the level ground at the foot of the steep mountain slope, and the noisy bells that made musical accompaniment to her words, as heard by Hemstead, disguised them from De Forrest and the others. The student received each one as if it were a pearl of great price.

But now the horses, mounting the steep ascent, had come to a walk, and the chime of the bells was not sufficient to drown his words.

If he had answered as his feelings dictated, the attention of the others would have been gained in a most embarra.s.sing way. He could only say in a very low voice, "I believe and trust you fully."

But Lottie heard and welcomed the a.s.surance.

The light of the sun, that had been too brilliant upon the snow, was now becoming softened by an increasing haze. The air was growing milder, and the branches of bowed evergreens by the wayside suddenly lifted themselves as the hold of the fleecy burdens was loosened, and the miniature avalanches dropped away. At times they reached points from which the magnificent and broadening landscape could be seen to the best advantage, and as Hemstead stopped the horses at such places to rest, even Bel and Addie abounded in exclamations of delight. The river had become a vast, white plain, and stretched far away to the north. The scene was one that would have filled Hemstead with delight upon any other occasion, but Lottie was now well pleased to note that he gave to it hurried glances and little thought.