"You compliment me without knowing it. My face is the lid of a chest full of the most precious secrets; would you have the lid transparent? I am a merchant. Suppose every body could look in through my face and see what I really think of the merchandise I am selling! What profit do you think I should make? No, no, we want no tell-tale faces in South Street."

He said this in a tone that corresponded with the expression which baffled Mrs. Simcoe, and perplexed her only the more. But it did not repel her nor beget distrust. A porcupine hides his flesh in bristling quills; but a magnolia, when its time has not yet come, folds its heart in and in with over-lacing tissues of creamy richness and fragrance.

The flower is not sullen, it is only secret.

"I suppose you are twenty years wiser than you were," said Mrs. Simcoe.

"What is wisdom?" asked Lawrence Newt.

"To give the heart to God," replied she.

"That I have discovered," he said.

"And have you given it?"

"I hope so."

"Yes, but haven't you the assurance?" asked she, earnestly.

"I hope so," responded Lawrence Newt, in the same kindly tone.

"But assurance is a gift," continued she.

"A gift of what?"

"Of Peace," replied Mrs. Simcoe.

"Ah! well, I have that," said the other, quietly, as his eyes rested upon the portrait.

There was moisture in the eyes.

"Her daughter is very like her," he said, musingly; and the two stood together silently for some time looking at the picture.

"Not entirely like her mother," replied Mrs. Simcoe, as if to assert some other resemblance.

"Perhaps not; but I never saw her father."

As Lawrence Newt said this, Mrs. Simcoe raised her hand, opened it, and held the miniature before his eyes. He took it and gazed closely at it.

"And this is Colonel Wayne," said he, slowly. "This is the man who broke another man's heart and murdered a woman."

A mingled expression of pain, indignation, passionate regret, and resignation suddenly glittered on the face of Mrs. Simcoe.

"Mr. Newt, Mr. Newt," said she, hurriedly, in a thick voice, "let us at least respect the dead!"

Lawrence Newt, still holding the miniature in his hand, looked surprised and searchingly at his companion. A lofty pity shot into his eyes.

"Could I speak of her otherwise?"

The sudden change in Mrs. Simcoe's expression conveyed her thought to him before her words:

"No, no! not of _her_, but--"

She stopped, as if wrestling with a fierce inward agony. The veins on her forehead were swollen, and her eyes flashed with singular light. It was not clear whether she were trying to say something to conceal something, or simply to recover her self-command. It was a terrible spectacle, and Lawrence Newt felt as if he must veil his eyes, as if he had no right to look upon this great agony of another.

"But--" said he, mechanically, as if by repeating her last word to help her in her struggle.

The sad, severe woman stood before him in the darkening twilight, erect, and more than erect, drawn back from him, and quivering and defiant. She was silent for an instant; then, leaning forward and reaching toward him, she took the miniature from Lawrence Newt, closed her hand over it convulsively, and gasped in a tone that sounded like a low, wailing cry:

"But of _him_."

Lawrence Newt raised his eyes from the vehement woman to the portrait that hung above her.

In the twilight that lost loveliness glimmered down into his very heart with appealing pathos. Perhaps those parted lips in their red bloom had spoken to him--lips so long ago dust! Perhaps those eyes, in the days forever gone--gone with hopes and dreams, and the soft lustre of youth--had looked into his own, had answered his fond yearning with equal fondness. By all that passionate remembrance, by a lost love, by the early dead, he felt himself conjured to speak, nor suffer his silence even to seem to shield a crime.

"And why not of him?" he began, calmly, and with profound melancholy rather than anger. "Why not of him, who did not hesitate to marry the woman whom he knew loved another, and whom the difference of years should rather have made his daughter than his wife? Why not of him, who brutally confessed, when she was his wife, an earlier and truer love of his own, and so murdered her slowly, slowly--not with blows of the hand, oh no!--not with poison in her food, oh no!" cried Lawrence Newt, warming into bitter vehemence, clenching his hand and shaking it in the air, "but who struck her blows on the heart--who stabbed her with sharp icicles of indifference--who poisoned her soul with the tauntings of his mean suspicions--mean and false--and the meaner because he knew them to be false? Why not of him, who--"

"Stop! in the name of God!" she cried, fiercely, raising her hand as if she appealed to Heaven.

It fell again. The hard voice sank to a tremulous, pitiful tone:

"Oh! stop, if you, are a man!"

They stood opposite each other in utter silence. The light had almost faded. The face in the picture was no longer visible.

Bewildered and awed by the passionate grief of his companion, Lawrence Newt said, gently,

"Why should I stop?"

The form before him had sunk into a chair. Both its hands were clasped over the miniature. He heard the same strange voice like the wailing cry of a child:

"Because I am the woman he loved--because I loved him."

CHAPTER XXVII.

GABRIEL AT HOME.

During all this time Gabriel Bennet is becoming a merchant. Every morning he arrives at the store with the porter or before him. He helps him sweep and dust; and it is Gabriel who puts Lawrence Newt's room in order, laying the papers in place, and taking care of the thousand nameless details that make up comfort. He reads the newspapers before the other clerks arrive, and sits upon chests of tea or bales of matting in the loft, that fill the air with strange, spicy, Oriental odors, and talks with the porter. In the long, warm afternoons, too, when there is no pressure of business, and the heat is overpowering, he sits also alone among those odors, and his mind is busy with all kinds of speculations, and dreams, and hopes.

As he walks up Broadway toward evening, his clear, sweet eyes see every thing that floats by. He does not know the other side of the fine dresses he meets any more than of the fine houses, with the smiling, glittering windows. The sun shines bright in his eyes--the street is gay--he nods to his friends--he admires the pretty faces--he wonders at the fast men driving fast horses--he sees the flowers in the windows, the smiling faces between the muslin curtains--he gazes with a kind of awe at the funerals going by, and marks the white bands of the clergymen and the physicians--the elm-trees in the hospital yard remind him of the woods at Delafield; and here comes Abel Newt, laughing, chatting, smoking, with an arm in the arms of two other young men, who are also smoking. As Gabriel passes Abel their eyes meet. Abel nods airily, and Gabriel quietly; the next moment they are back to back again--one is going up street, the other down.

It is not one of the splendid houses before which Gabriel stops when he has reached the upper part of the city. It is not a palace, nor is it near Broadway. Nor are there curtains at the window, but a pair of smiling faces, of friendly women's faces. One is mild and maternal, with that kind of tender anxiety which softens beauty instead of hardening it.

It has that look which, after she is dead, every affectionate son thinks he remembers to have seen in his mother's face; and the other is younger, brighter--a face of rosy cheeks, and clustering hair, and blue eyes--a beaming, loyal, loving, girlish face.

They both smile welcome to Gabriel, and the younger face, disappearing from the window, reappears at the door. Gabriel naturally kisses those blooming lips, and then goes into the parlor and kisses his mother. Those sympathetic friends ask him what has happened during the day. They see if he looks unusually fatigued; and if so, why so? they ask. Gabriel must tell the story of the unlading the ship _Mary B._, which has just come in--which is Lawrence Newt's favorite ship; but why called _Mary B._ not even Thomas Tray knows, who knows every thing else in the business. Then sitting on each side of him on the sofa, those women wonder and guess why the ship should be called _Mary B._ What Mary B.? Oh! dear, there might be a thousand women with those initials. And what has ever happened to Mr. Newt that he should wish to perpetuate a woman's name? Stop!