Two days after her arrival I received a hasty little note from her, in which she insisted upon my going to spend the holidays with her, as she had thousands of topics to discuss with me, and was longing to lay eyes on me again after so protracted an interval of separation.

The prospect was a pleasant one to me; that interval to which she alluded had brought me many a reason for wishing to return to my old home, for a little sojourn among those friends and scenes that had special claims upon my memory and affections. I submitted her kind offer to cousin Bessie for a decision, and was of course, encouraged to accept it, on the grounds that I had never taken a day of real recreation since I had come to live with her.

The day before I left was snowy and windy, and cold; it was my birthday. Cousin Bessie took me by the hand, and leading me into the sitting-room after luncheon, said:

"Sit there, Amey," motioning me to a low rocker that stood on one side of the fire, while she drew up an easy chair for herself on the other, "I want to talk to you."

With wondering surprise I threw myself into my seat and looked at her with eager impatience, waiting for her to begin. She did not lose much time, only while she picked up her knitting from a work-basket on the table beside her. When she had put her needle safely through the first st.i.tch she turned her eyes kindly upon me and began:

"So this is your birthday, Amey? Poor Amey; I remember the day you were born, well. I never thought at that time the world would be such a see-saw as it has since shown itself to be. I never expected I would be called upon to offer you the shelter of my humble roof."

I rocked myself slowly to and fro, and with a sigh answered:

"What would I have done without you, Cousin Bessie?"

This brought a sudden thought into my mind, it was so strange that it should never have crossed my mind before, I looked up quickly into cousin Bessie's face and asked with a puzzled and eager curiosity:

"How did you come to know I wanted a home, Cousin Bessie. Who told you of my father's death?"

She laughed a quiet, suspicious little laugh and then replied:

"I have been waiting for this question ever since you came, and it has been a continual wonder to me that you have not asked it. However, I will tell you all about it to-day, and it is a long, long story from the beginning," said she, laying her knitting down upon her lap and taking off her gla.s.ses, which she wore only while working.

"Your mother and I, as I told you already, were brought up together in her father's house She was as like you, my child, as your image in the gla.s.s, and on this account I have felt that ever since you have been with me, I have been living my young days over again with my poor, dead Amelia, that was as dear as life to my heart. I have told you about our school days and earlier experiences. I will now tell you the strange sequel, for I think it is time you knew it.

"When your mother was in her eighteenth year she went to visit a widowed aunt of hers who was very wealthy, and whose entire fortune was supposed to be acc.u.mulating for your mother's ultimate inheritance. While she was there she met a young student who fell violently in love with her, and whose regard she fully reciprocated.

They were both young, and handsome and ardent; both well educated and highly accomplished, and both devotedly attached to each other. When your mother came back he nearly died of loneliness and grief, and she was little better, moping around the house in quiet corners, brooding over the fire and losing interest in her former occupations. Her father noticed the change and suspecting the truth, discountenanced it from the very first. He did not say much to Amey herself, but I saw that he was resolved to throw impediments in the way of their love's progress. He called it 'stuff' and in his desire to suppress and condemn it, he was warmly supported by his maiden sister, who had long ago decided that Amey's husband should be entirely of her choosing, and should be one whose social position would restore to the Hartney family some of the _prestige_ which they had lost through reverses.

"Amey's mother was dead at this time, which accounts for the domestic reins being altogether in the severe Miss Hartney's hands. For awhile, however, all bade fair to progress favorably between the young people, some letters even had been exchanged between them, when one day Miss Hartney came sailing into the library with a covert light of triumph in her little piercing eyes, with the announcement to your mother, her father and myself, who were seated around the table with our different occupations, that she was 'going off for a few days, to Aunt Liddy's,'

and wanted to know whether we had 'any messages to send?'

"The color rushed into your poor mother's cheeks. She bowed her head very low over her papers and muttered.

"'Oh yes, give Aunt Liddy my fondest love and tell her I am making all haste with the screen I have promised her. I shall send it to her in less than three weeks,' she added, daring now to look up when her agitation had subsided.

"'Perhaps you would rather take it up yourself, eh?'" said her aunt, pinching her ears in malicious playfulness. 'I guess I know something about this screen for Aunt Liddy, it is a screen in more ways than one--ha-ha,' she exclaimed in taunting mockery, but still with an effort to keep up a simpering pretence to good-humor.

"Your mother was afraid to say a word, her father had brought her up to look upon this sister of his as a limb of a jealous law, that would crush or annihilate her if she slighted or disrespected her in any way. But the crimson spots came back into her cheeks, and she fell into a sullen, indignant silence, that lasted long after her contemptible relative had left us with her incisive good-byes. That was a fatal visit for your poor mother's hopes, when her aunt returned she was armed to the teeth for her combat, it began the day after her arrival; she had invited herself to come and sit with us as we busied ourselves around the table in the library, as before; she wheeled her chair towards the window, and leaning back among its cushions, she began artfully.

"'Aunt Liddy was asking me what would make a nice wedding present, girls; she expects to be called upon to make one very soon;' the color crept into your mother's cheeks, and her brown hair almost touched the paper she wrote upon. 'I told her I would ask you,' Miss Hartney added, pointedly, 'as you're likely to know more about modern tastes than I.'"

"'It depends on the sort of person it is intended for,' I said, very indifferently, without looking up from my work; 'no two people appreciate the same gift in exactly the same way.'

"'Well, Aunt Liddy does not know very much about the prospective bride; the groom is her friend, he is a young student of the University there,' your mother paused, but did not raise her eyes.

'His name is--Dalton,' Miss Hartney went on with an insinuation of malicious triumph.

"Cousin Bessie!" I cried, leaning forward with quick eagerness and interrupting her story, "_Dalton_, did you say?"

"Yes, Ernest Dalton," she answered me quietly. "Ernest Dalton whom you now know, and who is the cause of your being with me to-day."

I looked at her vacantly for a moment, and falling back languidly in my seat, muttered faintly, "Go on."

"Where was I?" she resumed, looking wistfully into the s.p.a.ce between us; "Oh, yes--where Miss Hartney p.r.o.nounced Ernest Dalton's name so flourishingly--your mother looked up at her with a blanched face when she said this, and asked:

"'Do you know for certain that what you say is true?'

"'Oh! my dear Amey--really--you frighten me,' her aunt exclaimed, with dilated eyes and recoiling gesture, 'I am sure I can't say whether it is Gospel truth or not, I only know what I heard and what I saw!'

"'What you _saw_?' your mother interrupted, huskily. 'What did you _see_, Aunt Winnie?'

"'I saw this Mr. Dalton paying such attentions to a young lady while I was there as would convince anyone of the truth of the rumours that are afloat about him,' she simpered out, half-defiantly.

"'His sister, perhaps' your mother muttered, knocking her ivory pen-handle nervously against her white teeth.

"'No, indeed--nor his cousin neither,' Miss Hartney retorted, with a covert little sneer. 'What is it to you any way, child, who she is, or what he does?' she then asked with cruel mischief.

"'It is all the world to me, Aunt Winnie,' your mother made answer, rising up in solemn dignity, with a white face and quivering lips, 'It is my life to me, for I love this man.'

"'Whatever are you talking of, child!' her aunt screamed, leaning her thin hands on the arms of her chair, and bending towards her niece in furious consternation. 'Pretty work this is; how will your father like it, I wonder,' she gasped, sinking back again among her cushions in a dry rage.

"'I don't care how anyone likes it,' said your mother quietly and sadly. 'I am old enough now to know my own duty. I shall love, and marry whoever I please.'

"'Well! upon my word--you don't mean to say so--do you, Queen Amelia?'

Miss Hartney returned in cold irony. 'Well then, my dear, you had better be wider awake to your own interests,' she went on, 'for your first attempt is going sadly against you already, poor child. I'm glad your choice pleases you, you are not fastidious--but to all appearances your regard is not reciprocated very warmly. May be, he is only amusing himself during your absence, I can't say. He would be a great fool not to take you when you are so willing, and aunt Liddy is so fond of you, and getting old now--but it is evident that he enjoys the society of the other girl. Aunt Liddy herself, with all her partiality for you, confessed that Ernest Dalton's manner is much more distant and reserved with you, than with this Inez Campuzano, with her Spanish beauty, enough to intoxicate any silly, sentimental youth.'

"'Go on, aunt Winnie, said your suffering mother,' looking up at her tormentor, with a glance of reproachful sarcasm. 'Go on, this is very comforting, and you seem to relish it. What else?'

"'What else?' Miss Hartney repeated, with all the dainty sarcasm of a disappointed old maid. 'Well! since you will know, child, I may as well tell you--the brave Mr. Dalton is not alone in the field; he has a powerful rival; one of those dark, heroic-looking Frenchmen of high birth and fierce tempers. He swears he will have Mlle. Campuzano's hand, or Ernest Dalton's heart-blood--at least this is the story I have heard; she, in all her rich southern foreign loveliness, plays a becomingly pa.s.sive part, and is wooed, they say, first by one and then by the other. If I were you, Amelia, I would never marry any one who was not more faithful to me, than this, there will be little happiness in store for you, if you do; he has plainly slighted you, in giving cause for such vile rumours while I was in the town, and could hear of his unbecoming behaviour--give him up child, he is altogether unworthy of you.' Miss Hartney added, infusing something of a would-be sympathy and solicitude unto her shrill accents.

"Your mother stood for a moment toying nervously with her white, trembling fingers. She was so proud. My poor, dear Amelia, and this taunting intelligence smote her to her heart's core. She swallowed a great choking sob, and drove the blinding tears that lay upon the surface of her large sad eyes back into the deep caverns from whence they had sprung. She then sat quietly down, and resumed her writing.

In a month from that date, my dear Amey," cousin Bessie added in a low hushed voice, "she was married to your father, Alfred Hampden, who had wooed her in the meantime."

The hot tears were rolling down my cheeks during this latter part of my mother's love-story, and when cousin Bessie looked and saw them, she buried her own face in her hands, and wept silently for few moments.

"And how did it end?" I asked through my sobs, impatient to know every detail.

"Sadly enough," said cousin Bessie, wiping her eyes with a little linen handkerchief, and folding her hands on her knees. "The truth came out when it was too late. Young Dalton's actions had been misconstrued by a malicious rumor, as many a good person's are. He had interested himself somewhat in Mlle. Campuzano at the request of the very man who, it was said, had determined to murder him, being a devoted and earnest friend to him all along. He waited patiently for a little while, thinking it would all come right in time; at length, he wrote such a pleading letter to your mother, urging her to renew her old trust in him, and to do him the justice, if not the kindness, of believing his solemn a.s.surances, before the careless gossip of their mutual enemies. This letter reached our house on her wedding-day after she had left for her honey-moon trip.

"Shortly after her return, her aunt Liddy died, and as she was left sole heiress to the money and property, she was obliged to go to the funeral: there, she met Ernest Dalton once again. I believe their interview was heart-rending. She had her dignity as the wife of another man to sustain, and he had that dignity to respect, but he cleared himself in her eyes, and they bade one another a long farewell in the stillness of the death-chamber, with only the peaceful slumberer, who lay with the eternal sleep upon her cold drooped lids, as their witness and their safe-guard.

"Your poor mother was never the same again, and succ.u.mbed to the very first trial that beset her after this. She died, while you were yet struggling into existence. Heaven had pity upon her blighted life, and called her from the world of shadows and sighs that encompa.s.sed her round about. They repented--all of them--when repentance was only remorse, and kissed her dead lips with a pa.s.sionate pleading for pardon, that was terrible to see.

"They christened you, calling you by her name, and Ernest Dalton was asked to be your G.o.d-father: these were the only amends they were ever able to make. I hope Heaven was merciful to them all, for they are dead and gone now," Cousin Bessie added, wiping fresh tears of bitter sadness from her eyes, "but it was a cruel wrong they did her--a cruel, cruel wrong," she repeated, swaying herself to and fro, and looking vacantly into the fire.

"And Ernest Dalton is my guardian, my G.o.d-father?" I said in a husky whisper, leaning towards her.

"Yes dear, did he never tell you? He couldn't speak of your mother, I suppose," she answered when I had shaken my head in a mute reply to her question; "he couldn't, G.o.d help him. I heard he carries her picture and his to this day, in a little locket on his watch-chain, and that he lives in voluntary singleness, determined that no one shall ever replace her in his love."