"Physicians do not consider it necessary to ask that question," said Rose, with some little embarra.s.sment in her manner. "I have much to thank you for, doctor, and am none the less grateful for your kind attentions, that I was unconscious of them. But how happened it?" asked she, with surprise. "I thought you had left town with Captain Lucas. How did you find us?"

"No," said the doctor, "I was unexpectedly detained by business. The morning of the day you were taken ill, happening to pa.s.s, I saw you accidentally at the window, and resolved to call that very evening. It happened quite opportunely, you see."

"Yes--thank you; I think I had become overpowered with the heat and fatigue."

"I was apprehensive of brain fever," said the doctor; "you talked so incoherently."

Rose's face instantly became suffused, and the doctor added kindly:

"Whatever I may have heard, is of course, safe with me, Rose."

"No one else heard?" she asked.

"No one. Your landlady is too deaf, and Chloe seemed absorbed in taking care of Charley, and preparing your medicines."

"Rose," said the doctor, "if my possession of your secret distresses you, suppose I give you one in exchange: I had, and have, no business in New Orleans, save to watch over you and yours. Every weary footstep of yours, my eye has tracked; nay, do not be angry with me, for how could love like mine abandon your helplessness in this great strange city? I am not about to weary you by a repet.i.tion of what you have already heard, or distress you by alluding to what you unconsciously revealed. I know that your heart is cold and benumbed; but Rose, it is not dead. You say you are grateful to me for what, after all, was mere selfishness on my part, for my greatest happiness was, though unseen, to be near you. I will be satisfied with that grat.i.tude. Will you not accept _for life_, my services on those terms?" and the doctor drew his chair nearer to Rose, and took her hand in his own.

"You know not what you ask," mournfully replied Rose. "You are deceiving yourself. You think that in time, grat.i.tude will ripen into a warmer feeling. I feel that this can never be. My heart has lost its spring; it is capable only of a calm, sisterly feeling, and the intensity of your love for me would lead you after awhile to weary of, and reject this; you would be a prey to chagrin and disappointment. How can I bring such a misery on the heart to whose kindness I owe so much?"

"Rose, you do not know me," said the doctor, pa.s.sionately. "Do not judge me by other men. As far as my own happiness is concerned, I fearlessly encounter the risk."

"Then," said Rose, thoughtfully, "there would be dark days when even _your_ society would be irksome to me, when solitude alone could restore the tension of my mind."

"I should respect those days," replied her lover; "I would never intrude upon their sacredness; I would never love you the less for their recurrence."

"Then," said the ingenuous Rose, blushing as she spoke, "the sin which the world wrongly imputes to me will never be forgiven of earth. As your _wife_ I must appear in society; how would you bear the whisper of malice? the sneer of envy?--no, no!" said Rose, while tears stole down her face; "I must meet this alone."

"Rose, you shall not choose!" said the doctor, pa.s.sionately. "I must stand between you and all this; I declare to you that I will never leave you. If you refuse me the right to protect you legally, I will still watch over you at a distance;--but oh Rose, dear Rose, do _not_ deny me.

I have no relations whose averted faces you need fear; my parents are dead. I had a sister once; but whether living or dead I know not. There are none to interfere between us; let us be all the world to each other.

"Charley! plead for me," said the doctor, as he raised the beautiful child in his arms; "who shall pilot your little bark safely? _This_ little hand is all too fragile," and he took that of Rose tenderly in his own--"Nay, do not answer me now; I am selfish so to distress you,"

said he, as Rose made an ineffectual attempt to speak;--"think of it, dear Rose, and let your answer be kindly; oh, trust me, Rose."

As he stooped to place Charley on the floor, the locket which the child had around his neck became separated from the chain to which it was attached, and, striking upon the floor, touched a spring which opened the lid; under it was a miniature. The doctor gazed at it as if spell-bound.

"Where did you get this, Rose? Surely it can not be yours," and a deadly paleness overspread his face.

"It belongs to a lady who boards here," said Rose, "and who transferred it from her neck to Charley's this morning. Has it any interest for you?"

"What is her name? let me see her!" said the doctor, still looking at the picture.

"Her name? Gertrude Dean," said Rose.

"Dean?" repeated the doctor, looking disappointed, "Dean? Rose, that is a picture of my own father."

While they were speaking, Gertrude tapped on the door. "My locket, dear Rose; I hope 'tis not lost."

Turning suddenly, her eye fell upon the doctor. With a wild cry of joy she flew into his arms, exclaiming, "My brother! my own long-lost Walter!"

CHAPTER XLII.

"Good morning, missis," and Chloe's turbaned head followed the salutation. "Didn't I tell you dat Ma.s.sa Charley be born wid a silver spoon in his mouf? His dish right side up when it rains, for certain.

"See here, missis," and she handed Rose a small package, containing a pair of coral and gold sleeve-ties for Charley's dimpled shoulders.

"Didn't I tell you dat missis couldn't lose sight of him? and she sent me here for him to come ride in de carriage wid her again to-day, and eat dinner at de big house, and all dat," and Chloe rubbed her hands together, and looked the very incarnation of delight.

"Well," said Rose, "Charley has nothing fine to wear; only a simple white frock, Chloe."

"All de same, missis; he handsome enuff widout any ting. Missis must take powerful liking to give him dese; dey are Ma.s.sa Vincent's gold sleeve-ties _he_ wore when _he_ little piccaninny like Charley dare."

Rose took them in her hand, and was lost in thought.

"Jess as good, for all dat, missis," said Chloe, thinking Rose objected to them because they were secondhand. "Missis wouldn't gib dem away to every body, but she say Charley so like young Ma.s.sa Vincent, dat she couldn't talk of nuffing else de whole bressed time. Hope you won't tink of sending them back, missis," said Chloe, apologetically; "she is old and childish, you know."

"No," said Rose, sadly; "Charley may wear them;" and she looped them up over his little white shoulders, with a prayer that his manhood might better fulfill the promise of _his_ youth.

"Ki!" exclaimed Chloe, as she held him off at arm's length. "Won't ole missis' servants--Betty, and Nancy, and Dolly, and John, and de coachman, and all dat white trash, tink dey nebber see de like of dis before? And won't Ma.s.sa Charley make 'em all step round, one of dese days, wid dem big black eyes of his?"

Chloe's soliloquies were very suggestive, and Rose sat a long while after her departure a.n.a.lyzing Charley's disposition, and wondering if the seeds of _such_ a spirit lay dormant in her child, waiting only the sun of prosperity to quicken them into life. How many mothers, as they rocked their babes, have pondered these things in their hearts; and how many more, alas! have reaped the bitter harvest of those who take no thought for the soul's morrow!

CHAPTER XLIII.

"And so you will not give me the poor satisfaction of punishing and exposing the scoundrel who has treated you so basely?" said John to his sister, as they sat in her little studio.

"No," said Gertrude; "he has taken that trouble off your hands--he has punished himself. He has traveled all over the Union in search of employment, and succeeded in nothing he has undertaken. He has met with losses and disappointments in every shape, and occupies, at present, a most inferior business position, I am told. Now that I have become famous, and it is out of his power to injure me, he quails at the mention of my name in public, and dreads nothing so much as recognition by those who are acquainted with his baseness. He sneaks through life, with the consciousness that he has played the part of a scoundrel--what could even you add to this?"

"But the idea of such a miserable apology for a man getting a divorce from a sister of _mine_," said John, striding impatiently across the room. "Why did you not antic.i.p.ate him, Gertrude? and with right on your side, too."

"Had I been pecuniarily able to do so," replied Gertrude, "I had not the slightest _wish_ to oppose a divorce, especially as I knew it could be obtained on no grounds that would compromise me. For months after Stahle left me, and, indeed, before, he and his spies had been on my track. Had there been a shadow of a charge they could have preferred against my good name, _then_ would have been their hour of triumph! I have a copy of the divorce papers in my possession, and the only allegation there preferred is, that I did not accept Stahle's invitation to join him when he wrote me, in the manner I have related to you."

"But the world, Gertrude, the world," said the irritated John, "will not understand this."

"My dear John," said Gertrude, "they who _desire_ to believe a lie, will do so in the face of the clearest evidence to the contrary. But I have found out that though a person (a woman especially) may suffer much from the bitter persecution of such persons, from the general undeserved suspicion of wrong, and from the pusillanimity of those who _should_ be her defenders, yet even in such a position, a woman can never be injured _essentially_, save by her own acts, for G.o.d is just, and truth and innocence will triumph. I am righted before the world; my untiring industry and uprightness of life are the refutal of his calumnies. Leave him to his kennel obscurity, my dear John. I do not _now_ need the blow that I am sure you would not have been slow to strike for me had you known how your sister was oppressed."

"I don't know but you are right, Gertrude, and yet--if he ever should cross my path, my opinion might undergo a sudden revulsion. Does he still keep up the show of piety?"

"So I have heard," said Gertrude. "The first thing he does, when he goes into a new place is to connect himself with some church. What a pity, John, such men should bring religion into disrepute."

"You think so, do you? And yet you refuse to expose it. It is just because of this that so many hypocrites go unmasked. Sift them out, I say--if there is not a communicant left in the church. I do not believe in throwing a wide mantle over such whited sepulchers."