"Want to make him promise to be a good boy while he's away?" said he with a smile.

"Something like it," she answered, laughingly. "But Harry's not a bad fellow, at all."

"Well, then, let's start for home to-morrow;" and they made their arrangements to that effect, though he was disappointed, for in an unwonted moment of confidence she had told him of the pictures of travel to be taken, the glories to be first seen together, never apart, both in Europe and America, that had been among the happiest dreams and made up a large part of the talks between herself and her lost friend, Esther Hooper. He felt that her indifference to seeing the glories of Niagara and the sublimities of the White Mountains was caused by his companionship not being her heart's choice (which was all he knew about it!), and the idea gave him angry pain and a pa.s.sionate desire to win her in spite of all.

As they stood the next morning ready equipped for their journey, he put his arm around her, saying, "I've been very happy, little wife, here with you. Are you glad you happened to be here that August day, and that I saw you?"

"I have had no cause to regret it," she said quietly.

"But you are not glad," he said, taking his arm away.

"As glad, Ross, as I can be for anything--more glad than I am for most things."

He looked at her with a sigh. "My father--and I am like him--loved only once." Her words came constantly into his mind. "I came too late," he thought; and it seemed to him this little plain woman, looking wan and pale in the early morning light, was better worth winning than any other earthly thing he had ever known. He had left her side, and was standing looking with a frown out of the window as they awaited the summons to breakfast. After a while she came and stood beside him, leaning her head against his arm. He turned slightly toward her, but took no further notice of the action. She stayed so for a while, then said, softly stealing her hand in his as it lay upon the window-ledge, "Dear Ross, I _am_ glad: I am happier than I ever dreamed it possible for me to be. I would not undo the deed we have done so long as you are content. I like being with you dearly, and I like to think that so long as I live I shall be your wife--your little girl to whom you are so very tender and good."

"My Preciosa"--and he drew her into his arms--"so long as we both shall live, you mean. I want no life without you now." Then turning her, face up, he scanned it hastily: "You are so white, my pet, so deathly pale! Are you ill, my Percy?"

"No, no," she said quickly. "I think I need my breakfast: I have been up a couple of hours, and I did not sleep very much all night."

"My poor little girl; when I get you safely home in those famous rooms of ours, perhaps you'll get some rest. But you talk in this strange way of dying: just now you did, and once before in your letter. What makes you do it? Is there anything the matter of which you have not told me?"

"Nothing--only my life seemed ended, Ross, as if all my places were filled and I was no more needed, so that I had got in the way of hoping for death as a boon which G.o.d would send me soon."

"But you do not now?--you don't want to die and leave me desolate?"

"No, dear! indeed, no! though I don't think you'd care really." He clasped her in a closer embrace and kissed her reproachfully. "Well, yes, just at first, perhaps. Yet so long as you want me, I want to stay and be your willing, working wife. I've got a new reason and aim now: I have you, dear old Ross."

"Oh, Percy, I _do_ care. G.o.d knows even the thought of it gives me a bitter agony, I know you cannot trust me yet, because I married you so carelessly, and because you think I can't be true to one woman with my battered old heart. But that's because you judge me by what my long, unloved life has made me. No good woman ever made me love her before. I never knew how beautiful a pure life was, my darling, until I knew it through watching yours. When I think of all you have saved me from, which would have caused my undying grat.i.tude had I learned to hate you--as if I ever could!" and he paused to kiss her--"when I think of all the new and better hopes you have awakened in my heart, I feel--G.o.d knows I do--as if He had sent my angel, and let her drag me out of a h.e.l.l into which I was plunged, and year after year sinking deeper. Stay with me, dear: I will be true. I never cared for any woman in the way--in the deep, absorbing way--I do for you. I wish you would believe me."

"I do, Ross--you are so good to me, so good! Oh, Ross, Ross!" and she held up her face to his, "you are so good to me!" She clung to him one moment, then suddenly, as soon as she could trust her voice, said gayly, "But it's breakfast-time, and your wife is so unromantically hungry;" and with a sigh that nothing more ever came of their talks he took her down.

When they reached New York the next afternoon, they drove at once to the rooms they had engaged. Percy's cousin, Harry Barton, was there to welcome them, having come round from his hotel for the purpose.

"Why, Norval," said he--they were old acquaintances--"you've won our bone of contention, after all. I wonder what we shall do, now that Percy's safely landed out of our reach? You're a brave man to dare our rage."

"Don't, Harry!" said Percy, putting her hand on his arm.

"I won't, dear, if you say not;" and he covered her hand with his own. "I always did do your lightest bidding, little girl, didn't I?"

"Yes, you're a dear old cousin. Ross knows how much I appreciate your kindness to me always. Why, I gave up what he calls my 'bridal tour,'

partly because I wanted to come back and say 'good-bye' to you."

His face flushed crimson at her words, and, all his careless, fashionable manner gone, he said, "Did you, Percy? You always were good."

"That, and because--because I shall be so sorry if you join this African expedition."

"Don't ask me not to, Percy--don't ask me to stay now you have broken my hope for ever. I shall go to the dogs, dear, if I stay here now."

"I don't want you to, Harry. Only your mother is so delicate and getting old, and she loves you beyond all the rest of the world, though you think she don't because she has been cruel to me. It will break her heart if you join this dangerous enterprise. Stay in Europe, go to Heidelberg and finish the course you so foolishly broke up. They'll blame me, Harry, for all the evil that comes to you."

"Well, I'll think about it, dear." Then to Ross; "Does she kiss you, Norval?"

"Well, I can't say she does," said that gentleman, who had been a surprised listener to their talk, and it annoyed him to have to confess she did not.

"Nor let you kiss her, either?"

"Well, yes," with a laugh. "She can't very well help that, you know."

"Don't you believe it: if she didn't want you to, you'd never kiss her, I know. Why, we three cousins, Sheldon, Mac and I, have tried every way to get her to kiss us for years, and never succeeded. You're a lucky dog!"

"He's my husband, Harry;" and she laid her head down on Ross's arm.

"Don't, Percy!" said her cousin with a quick motion of his hand: "I'll be gone soon;" then hurriedly and gayly: "Let me do the honors of your new domains. And, Norval, I have a great favor to ask of you. My little cousin's _amour propre_ won't be touched, or herself involved now she's a married woman, by taking an honest gift from me, and all brides take bridal gifts, you know. I want you to let me give her all the traps I've left in the rooms. It isn't much grace to ask, old fellow, seeing you're to have her always and I not at all."

"Why, certainly, Barton, I have no objections if she has none."

"Percy, you've never let me give you anything all these years, you proud little soul, nor any of the rest of us: you've come scot-free from all our endeavors to snare you through all your hard-working life. You won't go quite empty-handed to your husband's arms, just to plague me, will you?"

"No, indeed! I'm delighted to have all your pretty things. I saw them once, you know, when you gave your mother her birth-night party;" and they began their round of inspection. "But, Harry, you've refurnished the whole suite!"

"You didn't think I was going to make you and Norval (I can't call you Cousin Ross yet, old fellow--I hate you too bad, you know) cast your lines among my smoke-and-wine-scented traps, did you?"

As she saw how exquisitely he had chosen everything, how delicately he had regarded every one of her tastes in his selection, and thought how little reason he had to be good to her, she turned quickly and put her arms about him. With a shuddering sob he held his own out as if to clasp her, saying, "May I, Ross?" The answering nod was scarcely given ere he had gathered her to his breast, murmuring, "Percy! Percy! my lost darling!"

As he held her thus, she said softly, "Promise me, Harry--dear old Hal--promise me this!"

"Anything, everything, Percy," he said.

"That you will give up Africa and go to Heidelberg."

"I will, I will, since you wish it."

She drew his face down and kissed him on his mouth, two long, sweet kisses, saying, "Good-bye, and G.o.d bless you, cousin!"

He stood like a blind man as she gently drew herself from his embrace, then wringing Ross's hand in a grasp that made him wince, he strode out of the house without a word.

Percy, going to where her husband sat, said humbly, "I was so sorry for him, I could not help it. You do not care--very much?"

"Harry Barton loved you and wanted to marry you?"

"Yes, Ross. I've been very unhappy about it for years, he's wasted his life so, and angered his family. Indeed, it was not my fault: I never gave him reason."

"Yet you married me without a pretence of love, and he's richer and handsomer and a better man than I, every way? I don't understand it, child."

"Yes, I married you, knowing you did not love me." His arms almost crushed her at that truth. "He may be richer: he is no better, I think, and"--holding his face between her hands with a quizzical survey for an instant--"it's barefaced scandal to a.s.sert that he is as handsome, by one half. Poor, handsome Ross, to think that all your manifold charms should have purchased you only ugly little me!" and she laughed a merry, mocking laugh at his protesting hug. "It's true, though--it's the very climax of opposites, a perfection of contrasts." Then, her light manner gone, she added: "You are very, very good to me, Ross. He would never have been so patient of my old griefs and lost loves. I told you my masculine cousins were always crying for the grapes that hung out of their reach, you know."

Then suddenly growing grave: "Oh, Ross, it was not my fault: I could not help it. I think the boys got to pitying me because they thought my life was hard, and because their sisters treated me very cruelly sometimes.

Then my uncles very foolishly ordained that I should teach their sons their Latin and help them with their studies. So out of school-hours my time was mostly spent with one or the other, or all of them. Sheldon Wilber and I are of the same age, and having been my father's constant companion, I was better up in all his studies than he was himself; so I used to do his college lessons with him, until he got to thinking, as he used to say, I was his very breath. Then afterward I gave the other two the benefit of what we had studied, got them out of sc.r.a.pes, and indeed, being with them so much, kept them out. Don't let's talk about them any more, Ross: I have 'fessed' all now."

"Not all, my sweet: you have not told me who it is that has shut your heart from us all."