"I think you deserve a great deal of credit for having pulled through so far on your limited capital," said she. "Some of the business-men I meet, think this will prove the hardest year in our history. It will winnow the chaff from the wheat pretty well."

"If it does not winnow us all into chaff," returned the young fellow, with a touch of grim humor.

"We shall come back to smaller profits and greater industry. The world will not be able to play at being ladies and gentlemen, and perhaps a little wholesome work will not be a bad discipline."

Then she wanted to know what amount would be likely to tide him over for the next six months. He said he did not desire to exceed ten thousand dollars. She would make it twelve, however. After the notes were duly signed, she took him to her bank, and introduced him. As he had some other parties to see, she drove him about in her carriage, and insisted upon taking him home with her presently.

What an elegant old lady she was in her sables and velvets, and her royal air! her eyes bright with spirit and energy, her cheeks a little pink with the crisp air, glad sunshine, and perhaps her own hearty, wholesome mood. Occasionally she leaned out and nodded to some friend; and once her carriage drew up to the sidewalk as she summoned a fine, portly-looking gentleman to her.

"Mr. Throckmorton," she said, with gracious dignity, "I want to introduce my young friend Mr. Darcy, of Hope Mills, Yerbury, to you. If you can serve him in any business-way, I shall be glad to have you."

The gentleman bowed, and held out his hand, with cordial fine breeding.

"Hope Mills! It belonged to my friend Lawrence, did it not,--David Lawrence?"

"Until his death, yes."

"Sad misfortune, that. He ought to have retired years before. There was some villany in his manager, was there not? It is difficult to find a purely honest man nowadays; but I do believe Lawrence was one. We dealt with him a great many years, but toward the last there was some dissatisfaction,--goods not coming quite up to samples."

"We try to do our business on the square, Mr. Throckmorton," returned Jack, with a proud curve of the lips that was almost a smile, and illumined his face. "If any thing is not exactly as represented, we shall make it good; but we try never to have occasion to do that. We should be glad to have you test our honesty and skill."

"Thank you,--I will, I will;" and, touching his hat to Miss McLeod, they parted.

"If men were as generous as you!" cried Jack, with enthusiastic candor, "how splendid a place this world would be for business! Did you ever have a jealous thought in all your life?"

She laughed brightly. "I have had nearly all the things I wanted," she answered, with tender solemnity. "There would have been little excuse.

Mr. Darcy, we do not always realize how hard life is to some; and, where everybody's man's hand is against one, it is natural for him to be against every man."

Their four-o'clock meal was an elegant little dinner. They were quite alone, which pleased Jack. She questioned him about Maverick, his practice, his friends, and wondered if he ever meant to marry. Jack said laughingly no one in Yerbury dared to make fascinating eyes at him.

Did she care so much for Maverick? Surely these two ought to be together, yet what would _he_ do without his trusty comrade?

They veered round to the mills presently, and discussed honesty. Jack admitted that Mr. Throckmorton and other customers had a right to complain. There had been a deal of cheap wool used, and many poor workmen employed, during Eastman's last year or two.

"Mr. Darcy," she began energetically, "why do you not think up something new? We import pretty material for ladies' wear, that could as well be made here, for we women are growing sensible enough to believe something beside silk admissible. And though men may cling to superannuated coats, with an affection most commendable in hard times, I never heard of a woman being attached to an old gown."

"I never thought of it," he admitted frankly.

"That is what you were put in the world for,--to think," and she smiled with quaint humor. "Invent something. I'll take a sample to every store to match, and lift my brows in surprise when clerks confess they have not seen it. Give it a pretty name, of course."

"That is worth considering, surely;" and his eyes sparkled. "Hope Mills ought presently to be the grandest place in the country, you take so much interest in it," and his whole face expressed his admiration.

"I do hope to see you a successful manufacturer, Mr. Darcy; and, woman-like, I want the scheme to succeed. I should like to see even a small party of men trained to honesty and fair play. And, if I lose my money, it is no worse than a downfall in stocks."

"I shall do my best now and ever," he answered heartily.

They parted with much warm grat.i.tude on the honest fellow's side. He took the evening train for home; and his mother had a good cup of tea awaiting him, along with her smile. He related his grand good luck, and there were not two happier people in all Yerbury. When the bank found he had an account at New York, and a good backer, they were extremely affable again.

Jack broached the new idea to Winston and Cameron.

"To be sure," admitted Winston. "Some one will do it presently, and we might get the lead. Darcy, your old lady is a trump, and always carries the honors. There will have to be some new processes: see here, talk to Ben Hay about it; he's made two or three improvements, and has some brains. Gad! It'll be quite jolly to have a new line of goods. Get the ladies on your side, and you're all right!"

He had not a spare moment until after his late supper, when he told his mother he must run over to the Lawrences, and stop a moment at the doctor's, though he had despatched the good news to him in the morning.

He found matters worse than he had feared. There had been an alarming change in Miss Lawrence. Martha ushered him through the hall to the library, where Fred was sitting. The two clasped hands, and then sat down together. A hard, dry sob seemed to tear its way up from Fred's very soul.

"Jack," he cried in a strained, despairing tone, "could I have done any thing to save her? I have been engrossed with my own affairs, my own dreams of advancement. I wanted to have money again, but it was for her sake and my mother's," with a lingering tremulous intonation. "She has been too solitary, she has brooded over every thing. But she would not go out, or see any company; and somehow it was our misfortune to grow up without any warm, vital interest in each other. When I was a boy I used to like it at your house, because your father and mother took such a real delight in you. It is the pith of life. Poor father--he was very proud of me, he gave his life for our pleasure and grandeur and reckless extravagance, yet all the later years we were well-nigh strangers. Why can't people get nearer to each other, Jack, or is it only given to the very few? Does the greedy world swallow up every sentiment, every bit of tenderness, and make a mock of it?"

"No, no! Nothing can quite kill it, thank G.o.d! You and I have proved that. It may be smothered under dust and rubbish, and frozen with neglect, but the germ will revive,--just as the brown woolly ball evolves the fine delicate fern-leaf that it has held in its heart through winter storms, you know. Don't blame yourself. Every soul has to fight its own battle somewhere, with no day's-man between but G.o.d. We get back to the old truth in spite of the new philosophies, and own in our vanquished moments that we cannot _make_ strength, that ours is only a broken reed, and the true upholding force must come from some knowledge higher than our own."

Jack paused, strangely stirred in every fibre. He seldom essayed sentiment: with him the deeds of life had to answer, rather than any eloquence of words. He laid his strong, warm arm over Fred's shoulder, the old boyish caress with which he had often comforted unknowingly.

"I think you have been doing n.o.bly," he went on presently. "I did not look to find you so brave and persevering, so earnest in thinking of others; for, after all, a man's training does throw a great many shackles about him."

Dr. Maverick entered at that moment. He had hurried off his office-patients to come and spend an hour watching this case, which held a fascinating interest for him. Some most unfavorable symptoms had supervened, but he did not despair. The nurse had been regularly trained, he had kept her busy in Yerbury the last year. He could trust her to note the slightest variations.

Just now Miss Lawrence lay in a heavy stupor, so like death that one could not detect it from any motion. Her eyes were half open, her face had a dull purplish tint. The abundant hair had been confined in a thick plait, and brushed straight across her forehead. How distinct and finely clear the brows were pencilled, how haughtily sweet the curve of the pallid, fever-burned lips, how exquisitely round and perfect the chin, the slope of the throat and neck! Jack stole one glance,--they had both gone in with the doctor,--but it seemed almost sacrilegious, now when she was powerless to frown the intruder out of her presence. And he had carried her in his arms!

"O Darcy," Maverick exclaimed presently, "I did not go to Miss Barry's, after all. I have been so desperately busy to-day."

Fred glanced up, and his eye met that of his friend. Both flushed, and both mistook the cause.

It was a curiously auspicious moment. Jack went over to him. "I wonder,"

he began, with a marked persuasiveness in his tone, "if you would like to have Sylvie Barry come over? She and your sister used to be such friends. And, in times like these, animosities and foolish prejudices ought to die out."

Fred gave him a startled look, and half turned, his lids drooping to veil the secret in his eyes. Jack waited with breath that half strangled him. He had marvelled how these two souls were to be brought into friendly contact again; how Sylvie was to have an opportunity of knowing that Fred was redeeming the manliness of manhood, instead of grounding among its trivial shoals, and, if she ever had cared for him, to understand that he was not utterly unworthy. He had spoken--what if the chance should fail!

Fred very naturally misinterpreted the emotion. Jack offered this out of the boundless tenderness of his heart, so confident was he of Sylvie's regard.

"You think--she would come?"

His own voice, under the great stress, sounded miles away to him, quite as if some other person had spoken.

How often the tense strain of feeling is relieved by a tone or an incident quite out of the magnetic current!

"Some one ought to drop in occasionally, for your mother's sake," said Dr. Maverick. "We shall have her in a fever from sympathy," putting the fact more delicately in words than it was in his thought.

"She would be glad to come, I know. She would feel hurt if-- You empower me to ask her?" with an abrupt transition of tone.

Fred Lawrence bowed his head. He could not trust his voice.

The sick girl started, opened wide her eyes, threw up her arms, and began in weird, pa.s.sionate tones, as if it were a stage declamation. Oh the lurid thought that seemed to travel from regions of bliss to the nethermost h.e.l.l; to display a boundless capacity for enjoyment, for pleasure or pain, for tenderness and bitter, brilliant satire, a keen knowledge of the world to the very dregs,--the dust and ashes! She implored her lost idols to come near, and in the next breath she tossed them from her with a mocking laugh. She had no faith in G.o.d or man, and before her was a blank wall of despair.

Jack led him away. He took him out in the keen air of the starry winter night, and began to talk of Hope Mills and the new projects. It was too late afterward to call on Sylvie, so he waited until the next morning.

She was inexpressibly shocked. "Of course she would go," she made answer; and she went that very afternoon, with her aunt for companion.

They found Mrs. Lawrence in a dreadfully disturbed and apprehensive state. She was so weary of solitude that she welcomed them gladly, quite forgetting this girl had insulted her by rejecting her son. In a weak, shuffling manner she excused herself for not having accepted their overtures before. She had been so utterly overwhelmed by the death of Mr. Lawrence, that, in her state of nervous prostration, it had been impossible to see any one. And now she was positive she should take the fever. Her health was so delicate, her nerves so susceptible, and to hear the raving of delirium,--the laughs that were quite like a maniac,--would be sure to shatter her beyond any help. If it were not in the dead of winter, she should go to New York at once, and stay with Mrs. Minor until all danger of infection was over. She did not seem to comprehend the gravity of Irene's case, though she wept over her suffering in a soft self-pity.