"Don't, Ross!" and she shrank away from him as if he had struck her a blow.

"Ah, well, my wife, keep your secret: I'll not touch your sacred past.

I'll try to learn to be content with my little sister, thankful I have so much."

"Oh, Ross, my good, kind Ross!" and she clasped her arms around his neck in pa.s.sionate, longing regret, "if I might tell you all--if I might!"

"Tell me nothing, dear, you would rather keep. I am infinitely content to even have you thus, and know you love me somewhat. Yes, I know, sweet," he said with a sad smile as she kissed his hand in pa.s.sionate regret--"the very best you can, with all the heart you have. I know, I know!"

Quite late in the evening, Sheldon Wilber came. After sitting an hour or so, talking gayly, he rose to go. When they were standing he said, "Percy, I had just left the Flemmings before I came in here."

"Had you? I hope they are all well, especially Miss Lizzie, who is so pretty."

"They're all well enough. She--Miss Lizzie the pretty--is going to be married."

"To be married!--to whom?" she asked.

"To my honorable self: don't you congratulate her?"--with a bitter laugh.

"I asked her to-night if she'd have me, and she said 'Yes.'"

"I am so glad, Sheldon--so very glad!" and she held out her hand.

"Are you? It's more than anyone else is but my mother. Well, no--I suppose the Flemmings are, to get another daughter off their hands, and she to have a safe man to pay her bills. And of course all our cousins and sisters will be glad to have another house to dance the German in; so it is rather a jubilee occasion, taking it all in all."

"Oh, Sheldon, how hard and bitter you are! She loves you, I know, and the rest think you will be happier with a good wife to care for."

"Yes, the wife I cared for would have made me supremely happy, but _vive la bagatelle!_ I want to know when I am to tie this knot?"

"Whenever she wishes, of course," she answered.

"By the Lord, no! If she gets me, she's got to take me when _I_ choose."

Percy went up to him and put her hands in his: "She'll be a good wife, and, dear Sheldon, you'll be a good husband to her."

He looked at her curiously, then answered, "I'll try: I'll begin by letting her set the hanging--no, I mean the wedding--day. Norval, I know you'll be good to our little girl--better, likely as not, than the rest of us would have been had we got possession of her. Only remember, old fellow, the shadows must never come to her through you, or some of us will make a shadow of you. Would you mind my coming around sometimes to see the little woman? If you'll let me come and spend an evening now and then with you both, it will keep me from getting utterly down-hearted, and maybe will make me a better husband to the future Mrs. Sheldon Wilber. I'll never come without sending word to know if I may." And the poor fellow took himself away.

"How they love you, dear! It's strange you took me, and I thought I was conferring a favor on you! I'm ashamed to remember it now, but it was so."

"Yes, I know"--and she laughed--"but it's not strange, Ross. Any woman would have chosen you: I have always heard of your successes with women.

And you know it was take or lose when you gave me my chance. I had but one choice; it was not likely you would drop your handkerchief before me a second time; so I took you quick, before some other woman caught you."

She kept a light, gay tone thus far, standing the other side of the grate from him, but when he came near as if to draw her toward him, she said hurriedly, "These boys have been too much for me, and tried me terribly.

If you will not care, Ross, I think I'll say 'Good-night,' though it's early. Don't stay in, if you would like to go to your club or anywhere, because it is our first evening. You see, I am going to desert you first.

It's part of the compact, you know, that I am never to be in your way."

"Oh, Percy," he said, in a very boyishly aggrieved tone, "I don't want to go anywhere where you are not."

"You will soon get tired of that, Ross. But I'm glad you don't want to go to-night: I doubt your being quite able to walk much in the evening. Yet I feel as if I must say 'Good-night' and get myself in the dark. Why? I'm unstrung. The newness of my life with you, the traveling, this coming home with you to a place where I am to know either joy or woe, and all this talk with Harry and Sheldon, have been almost more than I could bear;" and her lip quivered. "It's all I have been able to do this last hour to keep from crying, and I do hate to cry before people." The long-suppressed emotion of all these weeks had broken bounds and she shook with sobs, while every nerve seemed quivering, and all she said was, "Ross, Ross!

please forgive me! I am so sorry to be so foolish!" And though he strove by every tender method to comfort and soothe her, it was in vain; and at length, really frightened, he carried her to the little room she had appropriated for herself, and as tenderly as a mother, though as shyly as a girl, put his poor little done-out wife in her bed, too weak to resist his kind services, indeed, scarcely noticing them.

The next day, when he returned from what he and his friends, by an agreeable fiction, called an "office," where he generally spent as many hours as served to give him a flavor of business and a figurative t.i.tle as a businessman--where were to be found the best cigars and choicest wines, and generally a pleasant circle of good fellows congregated--he found Percy with the most charming little dinner awaiting him; the table exquisite in the finest, whitest napery, gleaming with silver, sparkling in gla.s.s, and every dish cooked and served in quite Parisian style, and the little lady herself in the brightest toilette, with such a matronly air that he could hardly realize the scene of the last night's misery.

"Tears all gone, Ross, tragedy played out, and the little woman who keeps house for you is herself again, and has been as busy as a nailer. Are nailers busier than other men, I wonder? All your boxes came. Such bliss as it was to us poor women to feast our eyes upon all that heritage of linen and silver, and china and gla.s.s! Your mother must have been a famous manager, Ross, to leave you such a store. I'm so glad we've got that old place on the Harlem stored with all this beautiful array. Do you know, Ross, I think I've discovered my especial calling to-day? It's housekeeping, and I elect myself to go some time to that lovely old mansion and expend myself in hospitality. I'll invite you to come and visit me."

Flying about the room, then making him seat himself in the cozy chair which was placed for him at the table--"the side that's next the fire,"

she said--rattling gayly on of all her day's employment, she caught the look upon his face and came to his side. "What were you thinking of, Ross?" she asked, anxiously.

"What a little tornado you were, for the first thing, and how I liked seeing you busy among our household G.o.ds; also and moreover, that you had not given me a chance to say a word; and worst of all, that you had never given me my kiss of welcome, my rightful perquisite." Instantly she held up her face. "Ah, pet, you are always submissive; but never aggressive: still, this is sweet. And I was wondering what had become of the weeping willow I left."

"Wasn't I a silly goose, Ross?" she said, a little breathlessly.

"Well, no, dear: you were very nervous and worn-out."

"I hate nervous, fidgety women so: they're detestable with their whims."

"I did not find you so, but I'm glad you're over it, all the same."

"And so am I. You could not make me cry like that again, Ross, if you were to pinch me."

"But I did not make you cry."

"Yes you did, though. In truth, I was unstrung, and you were so kind and unlike what any one had ever been to me before, so different from what I had expected when we were married "--and her lips quivered--"that it touched me to the quick."

"Why, darling, did you think I was going to be a brute to you?"

"I thought you would be nothing to me, one way or the other--simply forget me, and be utterly indifferent so long as I kept your clothes made and mended, and did not bother you about my wants or tastes or opinions."

A flush came over his face at the truth of her words. It would have been just so had he found her what he expected her to be; but he said, "I don't think any one could treat you like that, little girl." Then, while they ate their dinner, he told her of his day's doings and of his determination for the future: "I have a good opening--no man better. I mean to attend to my practice hereafter, make a name and fortune for my sweetheart, and in a few years we'll go to Europe and see the sights. Ah, Percy, such a vista, such a new life, such a bright future, as I see opening before me! But, first of all, I am going shopping with you, young lady, to-morrow. I have ordered a carriage at eleven, and we'll buy all those pretty fixings you women doat on. Do you know, little bride, I think all my vanity is going to take the form of having you more prettily dressed than your cousins, mine ancient flames when I was a bad boy?"

"Oh, Ross," with a little laugh, "you can't do it: you can't make a rival specimen out of your bad bargain. Nothing will make me a beauty."

"Don't, Percy! I do like beauty. I have run after and made a fool of myself for years over pretty women, but I like your face, just as it is, better than any other woman's face I ever knew. If I could change you any way, I would not do it. Your face is beautiful to me, though I know it is not a pretty one: you are like sunlight to me." His voice shook, and he strained her slight form to him with a clasp that was positive pain. "I said I would not change you, but I would if I might put that old love out of your heart for ever. Why, in those far-off years when we were childish friends, did I not know my truest life lay in winning you? It is strange!

I have never failed to gain the love I wanted until now, when I want the only one that would complete my life. Dear Percy, love me all you can. If there are things in me--and I know there are many--which turn you from me, tell me of them and I will change them if I can."

"Oh, Ross, don't, don't! I am not worthy of such words."

"Oh, little Preciosa, I am glad to have even a little of your heart: the half of your love has come to be more to me than the love of all the world besides."

Do you think it was not agony for her to hear such words as these and make no response to them, fearing lest with a.s.surance should come satiety? And yet the knowledge of his growing love was very sweet to her, and worth the agony.

They settled down in their new home, and were purposely "out" to all callers during the next month--then returned the cards that had been left for them. As they grew accustomed to their new life, she thought to see his pleasure and interest in it wane as the novelty wore away, but it was not so. That love of home which is, after all, the truest test of a really manly nature, seemed to grow upon him. It was always so bright and cheery by their cozy fire, the glare of public rooms, the noise and glitter of theatres and concert-rooms, struck him with a feeling akin to disgust, after the soft, subdued light of his home, and his wife's merry, breezy voice. He sang and played for her, never giving a thought to her having any musical ability, since she never touched the instrument. He read to her hour after hour, having at last discovered her taste and ability to understand the kind of books he relished, perfectly content if she would favor him by sitting near enough to him to let him pull down that wealth of "tresses brown," a glossy cloud about her.

Of course this Arcadian life could not continue in the very heart of Sodom. Society was not going to lose Ross Norval if he _had_ made a fool of himself and married a little n.o.body. So callers flowed in upon them, and Ross, having in boyish glee arrayed himself in purple and fine linen, took her in state to see his friends.

Of course her cousins and their friends hated her: she had won their _bonne louche_, and the crimson of her plainness and poverty, of the having to "have Percy always around to please Uncle Rufus," was pink to the enormity of her being Ross Norval's wife. And "why he married her,"

and "of course he's dead tired of her by this time," were their politest surmises.

One morning they paid a cousinly visit--a triple call. "And, by Jove!"

thought Ross as he watched her haughty little face and _nonchalant_ manner, "she's no milk-and-water nature, though she's always so sweet-tempered with me. She's got all the temper a true nature ought to have."