Novelist.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XX, Issue 2084, 24 June 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

Novelist.

mmisß.

A Tale tali fcj aa Uncle

"1 think you might look after Will a little, aa yoa premised. Mamie came to ■ea me today. She haa jut come from year dreadful eity, and ahe tella me he ia tbonoghly entangled with a Mrs. Robert Tbiton, and that the whole town ia ringing with H," Thna my sister's letter from New York, •boat the nmily’a favorite nephew, a quiet preooeiou boy of twenty, who had been tranquilly studying law here fora rear peat, needing, aa I supposed, no looking after from any one. Our family of seven boya and girla all grew np and. rare mvself, married, but nofM enriched the world with deecendanta except my brother Albert, Will'a father, and be, haring perpetuated the name, promptly died,like a moth, which he farther resembled in hia inextinguishable pearion for candle light. We aix remaining Fannings were pretty well distributed through the country, and watched orer Will as education, business, or pleasure took him from city to city—thcee uncles and aunts at the greatest distance from the boy's abiding place always being the moat vigilant in “digging op” facts about him, and most strenuous in inching the nearest presiding relative to do hie or her duty by him. While I recognised the usual coarse of things in ay sister Minerva's letter, I thought her language uncommonly vigorous. Jfydm idful eity indeed 1 I should like to know what made it mine any more than Will’s own, and wherein it was more dreadful than her city, renowned Gotham. Bntl was resigned to hearing that the town was ringing with scandal, even about my own nephew, of which I waa in perfect ignorance.

Some imperfection of fate always keeps me from hearing any good racy story about ■y friends until it is as moss-grown as a carp in a grand-ducal pond. I have mastered Cleopatra's flirtation with Antony ; I now feel that there is no longer a doubt that all wss not as it should hare been between Guinevere and Lannoelot; but as for the present—my lovely neighbor next door nay be entertaining angels unaware, and ay window may “give” upon the balcony where ahe strolls whole days with the youth qf her affections unknown to her pus, yet when the elopement takes place I aa ready to give my evidence that ahe never could hare seen the man until the ceremony, while the people living miles away know accurately erery visit he has paid, and most of the details of their con venation. My circle of friends may have sat in judgement on some woman and condemned her to ostracism without benefit of clergy, yet I never hear of her downfall till yean afterward, when a smile or shrug brings forth my horror-stricken inquiry ; the usual response, “ Didn’t you know (Act f" follows, and then the story, awful in eueumstaniiality. I wiah to be on «omoat; it ia not from any superiority of intellect, or devotion to business, but from para, consistent ill-lack that I am alwaya the laet to hear all about it” Therefore whan my deter wrote that the town was ringing with an affair of Will's, I never thought of doubting it, but set abcintfl dueling n portion of QnQniiabalatkm my way. I aaked a man who knows everything, something about the Vic tons. “I suppose Bob Vinton waa about the faded man hate, at one time, not to be anfair to the red,” said the man who knows everything. “Clergyman’s son yon know. People wouldn't receive him —bed aa that He married eomebody, jud a girl, very much in love; people thought It waa a good sign, and relaxed towers him a little; but they’ll never climb very high, I faaov. Mrs. Bob’s a clever woman; writes Quags, I believe. No; no children; no, not very pretty. Yes; Fva been there once or twice; easy enough to know her. 11l take yon there.” Baay to know her! Will’s entanglement wouldn’t last long, then, I argued in my inferential wisdom. I fait that it waa so aaay to know her that in fact I knew her already.

* The man who knows everything made mj wkh to bo received known to Mrs. Vinton. Sbo consented to receive roe, and I want to call

room, pretty well filled with people. In dseontion, the hostess's sky was not high, bat it was boning, like a desert sky; the note was struck not of luxury, but of loioriumsss in the nature that combined the colon, chose the picture*, and ordered tbs teuton It was rather an educated imsgiinlinii too, as far as it went. There was an attempt to carryout an idea. What idea was it?

As my romantic self grappled with the qoestlon, my worldly self said ; “ What a capital room to flirt in. ° My romantic sslf eaoght the remark, and grappled with the qnsstion no more. Mrs. Vinton addrsmed me in the most aasefoQy cultivated voice I ever heard. It was reotekaUy sweet, bat it waned a ■Si that it might be an unusual woman who sand to like that. I wondered how ds’i say “ Please pass the butter,” to hn Robert, at breakfast. . VO road so mach about tawny, fulvid, Ml teford-like fessalw, that I hesitate

to say how like the genus felit she was. Her smile expressed a personal pleasure in Ming warm and comfortable more than conventional civility or genuine amiability, and her eyes, which were rather peculiar, always kept, beneath their human changes ef expression, an uninterrupted look of cold watchfulness and ferocity. I didn't like her circle at all. The guests were just the people to be found round a woman whom it is easy to know, but she shone incomparably superior to them all, and was worthy of better acquaintances. Her husband came in a moment—a handsome but wasted-looking man, prematurely old, horribly bored. They had both evidently reached such complete comprehension of each other Tnat the laugh of the two augnrs when they met alone must have been a gurgle of trustfulness compared with that the Vintons might have indulged in under like circumstances, if the humor of the situation ever could have triumphed over its weariness. Poor Will, in his youthful infatuation, was better to look at, his face spiritualized by the wear and teat of hie love affair. At least, there was illusion, exhaltation. 1 was half glad he could feel so deeply even while I pondered what I could do to break the charm—the terrible charm of the unattainable. For while overmastering respect was not my chief inspiration from Mrs. Vinton and her drawing-room, still I was deeply convinced that she would always be unattainable (or Will. She accepted hts adoration and would play with him and torture him till the poor boy's heart would come out from her paws a very scratched and faint heart indeed. He was in full fever of excited interest. The woman couldn’t stir a finger but he moved a little in his ehair to see if he was wanted. If the smallest inconvenience or opposition occurred to her, his delicate eye-brows puckered to a frown. I lelt quite a dramatic interest about the first time I should bear her speak to him. Of course, she knew I was there to spy ont the land, of course she knew 1 would not approve, and of coarse she regarded me with the cool contempt that a woman who knows the world would feel for the anxious relatives of a lover in Will’s position. I feel that she knew I was waiting to hear them speak, and that she waa patting off addreaeina Will in order to tantalise me, even while she was mentally saying to me, "Be patient, I will show him to you jnst as mad as you hope that he is not. ” What she said to him was:

“ Will, in my scrap-book”—— He waa by her aide, like a spirit, the book in hie hand. He wasn’t holding it when she spoke ; it had to be got out of a drawer; the conversation had not been about it, but about some fugitive poem that aha had preserved in it. He arrived with it as if he had eome np through a trap-door at her aide at a one. He was a little conscious under my observation. The muscles nnder his eyes —the most tell-tale part of the facestirred a little, but the next minute he was utterly under the spell of the wonderful smile of thanks she gave him—a smile with all the tenderness and abandonment of a caress. 1 thought ahe would simply not dare to smile to at a man, and this thought in turn suggested a plan for the deliverance of Will from her clutches—a plan which unfortunately brought about the circumstances that have induced me to call this story my remorse, though, with Will'a rescue at stake, I can not see that I could have done differently. The plan waa the old, old one of bringing this blasde and merciless woman, in her turn, nnder a spell aa strong as the one she was exercising over Will. Of courae, the man would have to be aa experienced and as pitiless as she was, and I thought I knew such a one. If her own interest was aroused by a man clever enough to appeal to her, she would find far more excitement in the pursuit of the new sensation than in cultivating Will’s illusion. If there was s man in the world fitted by the perversion of a brilliant and subtle mind to this curious modern metier of rousing, tantalizing, and dominating a clever, passionate, unscrupulous woman, with Eve’s own cariosity about what might remain unexperienced by her in the scale of feeling, my friend Everett Alexander waa that man.

Will and I left the place together. His first remark when we were in the street waa unexpected, and made in a cool, matter-of-fact tone: “ She’s in a pretty tough crowd, isn't she 7" “She’s pretty tough herself—underneath a very thin veneer,” said I, tartly. He laughed softly.

“Poor little woman! You would be down upon her, of course ; in the nature of things you couldn’t help it; but some time or other the pathos of it will strike yon as it has me time, and time again.” Pathos I Was Will a child of the century after all, self contemplative to the point of calling his own hopeless love pathetic 7 My worldly self smiled complacently, but my more romantic self felt rather dashed. But I bad mistaken him.

“ Of course,” he went on after a little, “ the relations of husbands and wives are scarcely to be guessed from the outside appearances, but that’s a pretty clear case. He leaves her alone constantly ; if he ever was fond of her, it's an old story now ; he never could appeal but to one side of her nature, a woman's craving for affection, and such affection as his ” Will stopped a moment and then went on: “ It’s a queer fancy, but, do you know, by Jove, when I’m with that woman and most interested in her, and striving the best to comprehend her, and, by Jove, when she’s kindest to me, I seem to see her poor little soul standing way off alone somewhere, sobbing and saying, ‘ Ton don’t understand; you’re not coming near. I’m so lonely, I’m so unhappy ; won’t yon please try to understand ?” “ Rubbish I” said I. “ She has her home and her husband. Why doesn’t she make them do, like other women V’ “ Yes, it is rubbish,” said Will, with that exasperating lover’s smile. “ I suppose the wise, and prudent, and balanced really have no needs, no wishes, no thoughts beyond what their immediate God-appointed circle can respond to, or beyond the power of their own will to annihilate, if their mnsings get unruly ; but the poor, unwise, imprudent people, what are they going to do, brought suddenly right up standing before certain facts which enlighten and purify their whole absurd natures ; which make the crooked places, oh, so straight, and the things which were hard to bear just mere plain sailing, and the words which were tiresome to hear a delicious suggestion of other words which they have head; which make slights fall off them harmless ; which wake up thoughts that are almost wise and ambitious, that are almost

prudent I Before these facts, which are indeed but one fact —Love I Thank God that made it—what do you think the unbalanced are going to do? Sink down into the old commonplace fog after bathing in such glory ? No, mine uncle ; they say, like the apostle at the transfiguration ‘ It is good for us to be here. ’ ” "I seem to recall that the sacred historian qualifies the remark with the addition, ‘Not knowing what he said,’” I could not forebear throwing in. Will gave his sweet-tempered laugh. “Ah, truly, but I know what I am going to say now. Just by the light of this experience, which is—well, unspeakable.” He caught his breath like a girl. “ I know one thing, and from your point of view it is a good thing—she doesn’t care an atom for me and never will. ” He choked a little and paused, while I, feeling a little sorry for him, waa also silent, revolving in some wonder this phenomenon of emotional insight in a boy full of healthy self-esteem, in love for the first time, and coming of stock by no means faint-hearted in pursuit. He continued : “ Placed as she is, with uncongenial people and without a ray of unselfish affection to warm her shivering little heart at, she might care for somebody, but she doesn’t. I’ll tell you what, though, if she ever should care for any one, a man that satisfied her mind and her imagination, it would be like a great, beautiful, white dawn to her. If she could feel for any one what I feel to-night, as I stroll along by your side, and coolly pick to pieces these delicate things we’re talking about, I could almost—almost—stand by and look on and be happy in her happiness, for then she would be happv. “ ‘ Prepare thy soul, young Azim,' ” I quoted, mentally, “ for I am going to try to make her happy, then.” Aloud I said ; “ My dear Will, I wish you could hear yourself with my ears, tranquilly wishing for the ruin of the woman you think you love.” “Ruin? Who'sruined? Am I ruined?” he reiterated, brusquely. "You have not promised, by all that humanity has convened to hold sacred, that you would dedicate your life to one person. She has.” "Haven’t I, though ? ” he cried, laughing a little. “ You’re a child,” said I, laughing too, " Ah,” said Will, putting both his hands on my shoulden, “ of such is the kingdom of heaven. I believe it to-night.”

I thought the world of Everett Alexander—l believe that ia the received phrase for friendship with a dash of enthusiasm in it. First, because ho waa such a masterpiece of selfishness, and I am secretly enamored of masterpieces ; and second, because he was a gentleman who made his companionship soothing. We were mentally akin by a liking for the same kind of reading, and certain turns of wording in writing always impressed us in the same way. The chance sympathy was not as satisfactory to him aa it was to me, because his life was manifold and mine was simple. He lived in the world, and I lived in books. I had known him fo 1 years, and it was apparent, even to my limited worldly wisdom, that he was a man whose favourite audience would always be women, or one woman at a time. He was always steadily the fashion—not that supple fool whom no tea-party is complete without; but that enviable individual whose answer to a card of invitation is waited for with anxiety, that delicious “ detrimental ” who always has sixorseven of the clever girls and women of society vowed to his cultc , and to whose brains and civilization his attention give cachet. But, of course, he was that—

Man who loved all womankind,

And never married none.” of the “ Bab Ballads,” and the lovely creatures that, year after year, he daintily bewitched and yet neither compromised nor was compromised by, said of him : “Ho is that rarest of all beings, a man friend.” I’m afraid he was not after the American ideal, for when he left me, after one of his monologues, I was always imbued with the conviction that life is nothing but a spectacle, and that we elevate ourselves most when we attend to its shifting scenes neither as a critic nor actor, but exclusively as a cultured and catholic observer. I confess that Everett had not all the courage of these opinions, and sometimes came to me sad even to death, in fact exceedingly unhappy, with a corroding discontent that was bad to see. At such times I would say to myself, “He has been on the stage.” The next time I saw him he would be smiling and witty, with sparkle in his long, blue eyes, and eagerness in the turn of his head, when I would say to myself, “Ho is back among the audience.”

Of him, more than most men, it waa true that his life waa “ a train of moods like colored beads strung on the iron wire of temperament,” and I have to remark that the iron wire was exceedingly cold, while some of the beads were quite fiery in their tints—misleadingly so. He was very reserved, with compensating lapses into the wildest candor, like most reserved people, and he pursued any new thing that was in his line of appreciation with the avidity of the Scriptural Athenian.

One day I said to him ; “ Do you know Mrs. Robert Vinton ? ” “Yes I know her,” he answered, with his most enigmatical expression. “ She seems to be the reigning sensation just now,” I pursued. “ Isn’t it odd that one can live for years in the same town with a woman and never hear of her, and then at a given hour suddenly hear of no one else ? I own I felt a great interest about meeting Mrs. Vinton when I found my friends talking of nothing besides. I was disappointed in her, though.” “ Why ? ” Everett vouchsafed. “ Because she is discoverably false. That a ‘ demnition fascinator ’ should he false is perfect. No one is more willing than I to concede that it is even part of her charm to a morbid and perverse generation seeking for a sign of the trail of a serpent, but that her falseness should appear on the surface, to the first glance of an eye prepared to admire, takes away from her finish, as it were.”

“ Do you think she's false V ” he asked, with the odd smile of emotional curiosity that he wore sometimes.

“ Yes,” said I, “ I think she is—false in the sense of shame. No woman can bo a regular man-eater and remain absolutely true in her mental and moral vision. Continually afiecting to feel either more or less than she does feel, in order to control her conquests, she has finally put her own emotional thermometer out of kelter. She herself doesn't know whom she cares for. "

Slowly Everett took the bait, surely the hunter's instinct kindled in him, lop cally he burst forth into a warm protest for the sex.

“I think the cool way that we march women to our set-up standard, and then stone them to death if they don preach it, is as barbarous as it is grotesque, he exclaimed. “ What would become of us if they had us in a glass box, as we have them, and were as merciless as we are ? ” “ Wait till your favourite nephew is in the toils, and see how merciful you will be,” said I, smiling. “It an interesting speculation how much initiative the woman takes in a case like that—since you have spoken of it,” he added, gravely. “As for one’s relations, it all depends on the way yon look at the experience. I should regard it as education for a boy. Mrs. Vinton is a woman of the world, and a bright woman. If our first loves are at liberty to be wooed outright we are always trying to marry them, and then there is an excitement in the home government, and for a cause.” “ Everett, you are a worldling,” said I laughing.” “I wish I were,” he answered, sadly. “ I wish I were halt as wise for myself as I could be for some one else. I would give anything for a complete set of nickelplated convictions ; a code edition de luxe, allegorical illustrations by Vedder; — principles—patent combination with interest attachment; an aim—with indestructible magnetic attraction. I haven’t one of them, and desultory reading and love of the beautiful don't seem to be quite their interchangeable substitutes. I’m too stupid to be happy in my reason alone, and too spoiled by civilization to find contentment in mere sun, and sleep, and digestion. Solution of problem : Go and bore your friends with egoistic prosing. Good-night.” I wondered if what I had said about Mrs. Vinton had stimulated his fancy to the point of tempting him to compete for that prize—a blase'e woman’s preference. In a week or two I knew it from the little scraps of gossip that floated to me.

He was very discreet in his flirtations, if that word could be used for his analytic studies in emotional insanity ; but both he and Mrs, Vinton were conspicuous,and were gossiped about, chiefly by her friends. For oven as young women are blind to the charms of babies until they themselves are mothers, so ladies who are themseves admired keep aclose, not to any enlightened eye, upon their attractive sisters.

I had a better barometer than chance rumor in poor Will. He was worn to a shadow, and haggard, and ill. The plot had thickened so that I never ventured to speak Mrs. Vinton’s name to him now, although I saw him oftener than I ever had done, and at hours that showed he had sought his inamorata, and played uncomfortably third until ho could not endure it. Alexander I never saw at all. Finally Will was taken dangerously ill—fever, delirium, and exhaustion. I took some quiet rooms for us both, and nursed him to the best of my knowledge and the doctor’s direction. Mrs. Vinton called two or three times to inquire tor him, and Alexander sent flowers and books, which latter I read with the greatest pleasure, 1 am sure, but poor Will had finished his reading for some time.

He didn’t die. We pulled him through, and by the time ho was convalescent I had almost forgotten Mrs. Vinton’s interesting existence.

The doctor remarked, “We must get him out of this,” meaning out of San Francisco ; so I telegraphed to Minerva about Will's illness, recovery, and need of change, inquiring her views on the South of France. She telegraphed back one of those exquisite word-pictures with re tained “ands” and “ thats ” which characterize her “collect” dispatches, and it was arranged that she should take him through the south of Europe. Life looks sweeter when one comes near losing it, and Will was longing to get his strength back again, like a sane young man, and offered no objections to the plan. One lovely afternoon I accompanied him across the bay, saw him bestowed in his section, with his ticket in his pocket, his tonic within easy reach, and literature like “She Loved Him Madly” at hand for mental pabulum, and retired to San Francisco with greatest inward calm. On the boat I saw a faultlessly dressed man, whom I recognized by a alight stirring of ray heart, even before he turned, as Everett Alexander. I suppressed all expression of pleasure as the guileless instrument 'of fate approached me, and manifested that the lens of the blackest bead was the mood-medium through which he was viewiu the world, and the iron wire was frigid to zero. I gave him a cold nod, but he sat down by me, and after a perceptible silence, vouchsafed ;

“ I’m going away.” “ Are you ? Gone long ?” I asked. “ All my life, I hope. I’m going to India first.”

A facetious observation about the liver occurred to me, but I didn’t make it. Silence again, and then he said :

Isabella’s “To-morrow? oh, that’s sudden!” occurred to me, but I didn’t quote it. His face was like a thundercloud. His beautiful head was as expressive as most people’s faces. When he was happy it was like the lockiyes Haupt of the Meleager ; when he was savage it was it was like the modern prize-fighter's. I don’t know that I ever noticed any other skull so plastic. “ You beauty !” I said, suddenly ; more to myself than to him, as a sea-gull swept near to the ferry in a singularly happy effect of light. Ho followed my look. “I hate sea-gulls.” ho said cordially. The boat touched the. wharf; we walked out among the crowd,shoulder to shoulder, shook hands and said good-bye on a carstep ; ho was with his thoughts in India, doubtless—l with mine fuil of enthusiastic affection that the sight of him never failed to inspire in me, and full, too, of words of friendliest godspeed for his long journey, that if he had been in another mood, 1 should have poured out even chokingly. “The two men are eliminated, I said, tomyself; “ one sick bodily the other psychically. Remains the woman. Chet'che la femme." Accordingly. 1 went to see Mrs. Vinton one evening a week after Alexander s departure. She had asked me to repeat my visit, civily enough ; but I had not done so till now. She was alone, and received me with impenetrable sweetness. 1 couldn't but think of Will’s face and Everett's, and scanned hers closely ; but there were no ravages —the outline of her cheek was as perfect, her eyes as lovingly ferocious. Hut when we began to talk 1 saw where the change came in. She was

bitter and feverish and cynical, though with no vulgar abruptness in these harsh qualities. Qhe let fall little acid drops of wit upon a subject, with a playful little smile, and the subject curled up and died. I wish I could have written down what she said ; it would have lasted a prudent talker a lifetime, and still made him famous. Her claws were unsheathed,and though she spared me, she spared nothing else in heaven or earth. I have never been more entertained. At last our conversation turned upon dreams—waking dreams—and 1 expressed a scepticism about them, saying that much as poets taked about their dreams, if you could detect their mental processes at times when they believed themselves dreaming, it would appear that they were trying to find rhyme words, or pressing a thought into metre, er else waking dreaming was the heaviness of the faculties during digestion.

She was lying back in a low chair, having evidently talked herself out, and allowing me to talk only because she was busy thinking. Who was it said :

“ In female Shakespeare, Desdemonas shine And the Otbellos ‘ seriously incline.’ ”? She came out of her reverie and said, incisively :

“ The dreams that come to us awake are just as much outside of our lives, just as incongruous and just as far beyond our control, as those we have asleep. I have just had a wakening dream. Shall I tell it to you ?” She was in an intense nervous state ; her eyes fairly glowed. I was possessed with the wish to stroke her hair—l know it would have given out sparks. Under such conditions it would have been highly venturesome to tell her I did not care to hear her dream. I begged that she would so far kindly favor me as to impart it. “ You know I used to write when I was young,” she began, “and people used to praise what I wrote. Youth is credulous, and 1 had the belief that it was so that I was to distinguish myself. In my dream this dead old ambition was satisfied. I had written a volume of poems, a ‘ songcyclus. ’ It had been published a few days and the reading world was in a fever about it. I was famous. I seemed to be making a long journey, from my publishers’, where I learned the furor my book was making, to my home, where 1 arrived in the evening, in the midst of a fiery sunset over tame, rounded hills with long, calm slopes. My home was a huge, luxurious, lonely place; there was a beautifully appointed meal prepared for me. 1 seemed to be living alone, in a great wood-finished, vaulted dining-room. The figures on the stained-glass windows showed black ; there were branches and branches of candles on the table. A great many serious servants busied themselves about me, and the silence was almost grateful. I felt almost as if I had forgotten how to speak. At last the servants all went away, and I sat alone thinking. I was soberly happy, for I was to die—the whole thing was over. Mind, it is a dream. It was fate that I was to die! it simply was so, and I knew it, and it seemed a seriously good thing. As 1 sat there, the curtains at the side of the room were pushed aside and a man came in. He was the man I loved—in my dream. You know dreams are strange, and while it is my waking belief that men love a woman, while women only love love, in my dream, I say, I loved this man—the man himself, without any care whether he loved me or not—and it was like the happiness’ of a newly acquired faculty, this consciousness that I could love and did. I’m going to put it in a book some time—l think it would take. There had never been a word of love spoken between us, but he had seen my poems, and something in them made him come to me; and he knew I was to die, and something in that knowledge made him remorseful. I have to put into a great many words what was all one flash of consciousness in the dream. He came and knelt down by me, and his eyep asked me to forgive him, yet he did not speak a word of amends, or of the possibility of any change that could be in the future ; he accepted it as fixed. With my eyes I forgave him—l told you we have new faculties in dreams. We rose and walked to a raised seat in the windows thatshowed black, and he let fall over them a thick, dull curtain that had been looped back ; then he sat down on some cushions at my feet, and then we spoke. I suppose you think that then I dreamed out a warm scene mosaiced from numberless French novels ; but believe me, no. I wish from my heart it had been so, to vulgarize the thing and bring it back to earth. But not a caress would my fancy give me ; the only happiness was that he went slowly and comprehendingly through all the times that we had spent together,'and made all the crooked places straight, explained every misunderstanding, repented of every bitter word that pride had ever prompted. And when that pride was at an end, and we were being as true before each other as out of dreams we cannot be, we found that pride had been answerable for so much. As the moment drew near when he was to leave me, the anguish of that and my lost life was so sweet that the very god of perversity could not have devised a dearer, deeper pang ; and by the intensity with which I felt that his nearness would not have been such happiness unless the parting was at hand, I knew that ray dream was nearly over and I was coming back to reality. It is long, dull endurance of pain that quells us ; the very height of agony is bliss at the supremo moment. Is it not so ? Ho left me ; I watched his lordly form as he walked down the long room. At the door he turned and bowed his head in farewell. I looped back the curtain, opened the window, lay down on the dias, took note of the fact that it was dawn, and was just dying to quick music of a choir of early birds, when you said something about digestion, and I thought that might be accountable for the morbidness of my dream. What do you think I ought to take ?—somebody’s bitters, or less black coffee ?”

“It’s not quite fair, Mrs. Vinton, to change the note in that way, before I have a chance to express myself about the dream,” I deprecated; “but as you evidently did so intentionally, I can only acquiesce. I may‘thank you, though, and I do.”

“ She is too cool a hand, too modern, too selfish to commit suicide,” I found myself saying earnestly to myself as I walked home, and for some reason, woke up at intervals in the night, giving myself good, common sense reason why Mrs. Vinton should not kill herself.

A week or two after, I met a pretty woman, whom I like, coming out of a bank.

” I’ve just heard bad news,” she said, seriously; “Mrs. Vinton is dead.” “Dead?” said I, shaking like a leaf; “ how could she die ? I saw her less than

a fortnight ago, perfectly radiant with health. ”

“ Well, she’s dead,” repeated my pretty friend; “died of heart disease, at five o'clock this morning. The maid found her sitting at the library window, and spoke to her, and discovered that she was dead. They say that Mr. Vinton had not come in, and she was probably there all night." I have remarked how late everything is in coming to my willing ears—years afterwards, literally years, for it was just after Will and Mamie were married, and she waited for him four years, Mrs. Vinton’s name was casually mentioned, and a lady said:

“ Her death was so wretched, too.” “ Heart trouble is generally painless at the end, at least,” said I. " Heart trouble!” echoed the lady scornfully. “Chloral! She was always taking it for neuralgia, and she took too much one fine night. ” When we were alone I said, in a horrorstricken whisper: “ Was there ever any—any suspicion”—

“ Well, where have you been living V burst out my merry lit 1 le friend, in her healthy every day voice. “ The question whether Mrs. Vinton did or didn’t kill herself was debated from one end of this town to the other, but for ray part I simply don’t believe that she did, though Bob Vinton’s performances were enough to drive any wop.an desperate.”

“ A—what ever became of Everett Alexander 1 He used to admire Mrs. Vinton,” said I. “ I should think he did ; she fairly drove him out of town. He was the most completely done for of all her victims, except your nephew.” “ Hush—sh ! Wild-oats ! He's a married man.”

“ Well, so is Everett. He married a Russian lady in Paris last year.”