"You're as considerate as the Fiji islander was of the missionary, when he asked him if he had rather be cooked _a la maitre d'hotel_ or _en papillote_. What have you been doing?"

"Very little to any purpose. I have written to my publisher, offering to sell my rights in my text-books; to a friend, asking him to learn for what price he can sell my library; and to my bankers, directing them to send me the bonds and a draft for my balance. I received the securities and a bill of exchange yesterday, and am so ignorant of business methods that I came to you this morning to learn how to turn them into cash."

"I'll do better than that," volunteered Mr. Blodgett, touching a b.u.t.ton.

"Give them to me, and I'll have it done." Then, after he had turned the matter over to a clerk, he asked, "What does your publisher offer?"

"Thirty-five hundred."

"And what are your royalties?"

"Last year they were over six hundred dollars."

"Humph! That's equivalent to investing money at eighteen per cent. You ought to get more than that."

"A little more or less is nothing compared with paying so much on my debt."

"What will your library bring?"

"Perhaps four thousand, if I can find some one who wants so technical a collection."

"And you can get along without it?"

"I must," I declared, though wincing a little.

"Rather goes against the grain, eh?" he rejoined kindly.

I tried to laugh, and said, "My books have been such good comrades that I haven't quite accustomed myself yet to thinking of them as merchandise. I feel a little as the bankrupt planter must have felt when he saw his slave children offered for sale."

"And what do you plan to do with yourself?"

"I haven't been able to make up my mind."

We were interrupted at this point by some business matter, and I took my leave. The next morning Mr. Blodgett called at my boarding-place on his way down town.

"I haven't come to talk business," he announced. "I told my wife and daughter, last night, about the fellow from the backwoods of Asia, and made them so curious that Mrs. Blodgett has given me permission to furnish him board and lodgings for a week. I'll promise you a better room than this," he added, glancing at the box I had moved into as soon as I realized how much worse than a pauper I was.

I could hardly express my grat.i.tude as I tried to thank him, but he pretended not to perceive my emotion, and said briskly: "That's settled, then. Send your stuff round any time to-day, and be on deck for a seven-o'clock dinner."

You, who know Mrs. Blodgett so much better than I, can understand my bewilderment during the first day or two of my visit. Her husband had jokingly pictured me as of an Eastern race, which made the meeting rather embarra.s.sing; but the moment she comprehended that I did not habitually sit on the floor, did not carry a scimiter or kris, and was not unwashed and ferine, but only a dark skinned, dark haired, and very silent German scholar, she took possession of me as I have seen her do of others. She preceded me to my room, ringing for a servant on the way, made me open my trunk, and directed the maid where to put each article it contained. She told me what time to be ready for dinner, what to wear for it, and at that meal she had me helped twice to such dishes as she chose, while refusing to let me have more than one cup of coffee.

To a man who had never had any one to look after him in small things it was a novel and rather pleasant if surprising experience, and when I grew accustomed to it I easily understood Mr. Blodgett's chuckles of enjoyment when she told him he shouldn't have a third cigar, when she decided how close he was to sit to the fire, and finally when she made all of us--Agnes, Mr. Blodgett, and myself--go to bed at her own hour for retiring. Best of all I understood Mr. Blodgett's familiar name for her, "the boss." That visit was a perfect revelation to me of affectionate, thoughtful, and persistently minute domineering. I do not believe that the man lives, though he be the veriest woman-hater, who could help loving her after a fortnight of her tyranny. Certainly I could not.

By Mr. Blodgett's aid I secured a "paper" cable transfer of the money realized from the bonds and draft, in order that it might seem to come from Europe, and sent it to you, writing at his suggestion, "The inclosed draft on Foster G. Blodgett & Co. for the sum of thirty-three thousand dollars is part payment of princ.i.p.al and interest due you from estate of William G. Maitland." I wonder what your thoughts were as you read the unsigned and typewritten note?

It was your greeting of me by my alias that led me to accept the incognito. Perhaps it was cowardly to shirk my shame by such a means, but it was not done from cowardice; the thought did not even occur to me until it opened a way to knowing you. And in that hope my very misery became almost happiness, for its possibilities seemed those of the Oriental poet who wrote:--

"My love once offered me a bitter draught From which in cowardice I flinched.

But still she tendered to me; And bowing to her wish, I then no longer shrank, But took the cup and put it to my lips.

Oh, marvel! gazing still at her, The potion turned to sweetness as I drank."

If your old friend, Donald Maitland, were dead to you, your new lover, Rudolph Hartzmann, might fill his place. I never stopped to think if such trickery were right, or rather my love was stronger than my conscience.

Good-night, my dearest.

X

_March 1._ During my visit I heard much about you from Mrs. Blodgett and Agnes, for your name was constantly on their lips. From them I learned that your birth, wealth, and the influence of your uncle had involved you in a fashionable society for which you cared nothing, and that, aside from the gayety which that circle forced upon you, your time was spent in travel, and in reading, music, and charitable work. Except for themselves, they averred, you had no intimate friends, and their explanation of this fact proved to me that you had taken our separation as seriously as had I.

"After Mr. Walton brought her to America she spent the first few months with us," Mrs. Blodgett told me, "and was the loneliest child I ever saw. Her big eyes used to look so wistfully at times that I could hardly bear it, yet not a word did she ever speak of her sorrow. And all on account of that wretch and his son! I think the worse men are, the more a good woman loves them! When Maizie was old enough to understand, and Mr. Walton told her how she had been robbed, she wouldn't believe him till Mr. Blodgett confirmed the story. She used to be always talking of the two, but she has never spoken of them since that night."

Even more cruel to me was something Agnes related. She worshiped you with the love and admiration a girl of eighteen sometimes feels for a girl of twenty-three, and in singing your praises,--to a most willing listener,--one day, she exclaimed, "Oh, I wish I were a man, so that I could be her lover! I'd make her believe in love." Then seeing my questioning look, Agnes continued: "What with her selfish old uncle, and the men who want to marry her for her money, and those hateful Maitlands, she has been made to distrust all love and friendship. She has the idea that she isn't lovable,--that people don't like her for herself; and I really think she will never marry, just because of it."

Better far than this knowledge of you at second-hand was Mr. Blodgett's telling me that you were to dine with them during my visit. It may seem absurd, but not the least part of my eagerness that night was to see you in evening dress. If I had not loved you already, I should have done so from that meeting; and although you are dear to me for many things besides your beauty, I understand why men love you so deeply who know nothing of your nature. That all men should not love you is my only marvel whenever I recall that first glimpse of you as you entered the Blodgetts' drawing-room.

Before we had finished our greetings Mr. Whitely entered, and though I little realized how vital a part he was to be of my life, I yet regarded him with instant interest, for something in his manner towards you suggested to me that he coveted the hand you offered him.

A lover does not view a rival kindly, but I am compelled to own that he is handsome. If I had the right to cavil, I could criticise only his mouth, which it seems to me has slyness with a certain cruel firmness; but I did not notice this until I knew him better, and perhaps it is only my imagination, born of later knowledge. I am not so blinded by my jealousy as to deny his perfect manner, for one feels the polished surface, touch the outside where one will.

Your demeanor towards him was friendly, yet with all its graciousness it seemed to me to have a quality not so much of aloofness as of limit; conveying in an indefinable way the fact that such relations as then existed between you were the only possible ones. It was a shading so imperceptible that I do not think the Blodgetts realized it, and I should have questioned if Mr. Whitely himself were conscious of it, but for one or two things he said in the course of the evening, which had to me, under the veil of a general topic, individual suggestion.

We were discussing that well-worn question of woman's education, Mrs.

Blodgett having introduced the apple of discord by a sweeping disapproval of college education for women, on the ground that it prevented their marrying.

"They get to know too much, eh?" laughed Mr. Blodgett.

"No," cried Mrs. Blodgett, "they get to know too little! While they ought to be out in the world studying life and men, so as to choose wisely, they're shut up in dormitories filling their brains with Greek and mathematics."

"You would limit a woman's arithmetic to the solution of how to make one and one, one?" I asked, smiling.

"Surely, Mrs. Blodgett, you do not mean that an uncultivated woman makes the best wife?" inquired Mr. Whitely.

"I mean," rejoined Mrs. Blodgett, "that women who know much of books know little of men. That's why over-intellectual women always marry fools."

"How many intellectual wives there must be!" you said.

"I shouldn't mind if they only married fools," continued Mrs. Blodgett, "but half the time they don't marry at all."

"Does that prove or disprove their intellect?" you asked.

"It means," replied Mrs. Blodgett, "that they are so puffed up with their imaginary knowledge that they think no man good enough for them."

"I've known one or two college boys graduate with the same large ideas,"

remarked Mr. Blodgett.

"But a man gets over it after a few years," urged Mrs. Blodgett, "and is none the worse off; but by the time a girl overcomes the idea, she's so old that no man worth having will look at her."