The Queen of Hearts Read online

  CHAPTER II. OUR DILEMMA.

  WHO is the young lady? And how did she find her way into The Glen Tower?

  Her name (in relation to which I shall have something more to say alittle further on) is Jessie Yelverton. She is an orphan and an onlychild. Her mother died while she was an infant; her father was my dearand valued friend, Major Yelverton. He lived long enough to celebratehis darling's seventh birthday. When he died he intrusted his authorityover her and his responsibility toward her to his brother and to me.

  When I was summoned to the reading of the major's will, I knew perfectlywell that I should hear myself appointed guardian and executor withhis brother; and I had been also made acquainted with my lost friend'swishes as to his daughter's education, and with his intentions as to thedisposal of all his property in her favor. My own idea, therefore, was,that the reading of the will would inform me of nothing which I hadnot known in the testator's lifetime. When the day came for hearingit, however, I found that I had been over hasty in arriving at thisconclusion. Toward the end of the document there was a clause insertedwhich took me entirely by surprise.

  After providing for the education of Miss Yelverton under the directionof her guardians, and for her residence, under ordinary circumstances,with the major's sister, Lady Westwick, the clause concluded by saddlingthe child's future inheritance with this curious condition:

  From the period of her leaving school to the period of her reaching theage of twenty-one years, Miss Yelverton was to pass not less than sixconsecutive weeks out of every year under the roof of one of her twoguardians. During the lives of both of them, it was left to her ownchoice to say which of the two she would prefer to live with. In allother respects the condition was imperative. If she forfeited it,excepting, of course, the case of the deaths of both her guardians, shewas only to have a life-interest in the property; if she obeyed it,the money itself was to become her own possession on the day when shecompleted her twenty-first year.

  This clause in the will, as I have said, took me at first by surprise.I remembered how devotedly Lady Westwick had soothed her sister-in-law'sdeath-bed sufferings, and how tenderly she had afterward watched overthe welfare of the little motherless child--I remembered the innumerableclaims she had established in this way on her brother's confidence inher affection for his orphan daughter, and I was, therefore, naturallyamazed at the appearance of a condition in his will which seemed toshow a positive distrust of Lady Westwick's undivided influence over thecharacter and conduct of her niece.

  A few words from my fellow-guardian, Mr. Richard Yelverton, and a littleafter-consideration of some of my deceased friend's peculiarities ofdisposition and feeling, to which I had not hitherto attached sufficientimportance, were enough to make me understand the motives by which hehad been influenced in providing for the future of his child.

  Major Yelverton had raised himself to a position of affluence andeminence from a very humble origin. He was the son of a small farmer,and it was his pride never to forget this circumstance, never to beashamed of it, and never to allow the prejudices of society to influencehis own settled opinions on social questions in general.

  Acting, in all that related to his intercourse with the world, on suchprinciples as these, the major, it is hardly necessary to say, held somestrangely heterodox opinions on the modern education of girls, and onthe evil influence of society over the characters of women in general.Out of the strength of those opinions, and out of the certainty of hisconviction that his sister did not share them, had grown that conditionin his will which removed his daughter from the influence of her auntfor six consecutive weeks in every year. Lady Westwick was the mostlight-hearted, the most generous, the most impulsive of women; capable,when any serious occasion called it forth, of all that was devoted andself-sacrificing, but, at other and ordinary times, constitutionallyrestless, frivolous, and eager for perpetual gayety. Distrusting thesort of life which he knew his daughter would lead under her aunt'sroof, and at the same time gratefully remembering his sister'saffectionate devotion toward his dying wife and her helpless infant,Major Yelverton had attempted to make a compromise, which, while itallowed Lady Westwick the close domestic intercourse with her niece thatshe had earned by innumerable kind offices, should, at the same time,place the young girl for a fixed period of every year of her minorityunder the corrective care of two such quiet old-fashioned guardians ashis brother and myself. Such is the history of the clause in the will.My friend little thought, when he dictated it, of the extraordinaryresult to which it was one day to lead.

  For some years, however, events ran on smoothly enough. Little Jessiewas sent to an excellent school, with strict instructions to themistress to make a good girl of her, and not a fashionable young lady.Although she was reported to be anything but a pattern pupil in respectof attention to her lessons, she became from the first the chosenfavorite of every one about her. The very offenses which she committedagainst the discipline of the school were of the sort which provoke asmile even on the stern countenance of authority itself. One of thesequaint freaks of mischief may not inappropriately be mentioned here,inasmuch as it gained her the pretty nickname under which she will befound to appear occasionally in these pages.

  On a certain autumn night shortly after the Midsummer vacation, themistress of the school fancied she saw a light under the door of thebedroom occupied by Jessie and three other girls. It was then closeon midnight; and, fearing that some case of sudden illness mighthave happened, she hastened into the room. On opening the door, shediscovered, to her horror and amazement, that all four girls were outof bed--were dressed in brilliantly-fantastic costumes, representing thefour grotesque "Queens" of Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, and Clubs, familiarto us all on the pack of cards--and were dancing a quadrille, inwhich Jessie sustained the character of The Queen of Hearts. The nextmorning's investigation disclosed that Miss Yelverton had smuggled thedresses into the school, and had amused herself by giving an impromptufancy ball to her companions, in imitation of an entertainment of thesame kind at which she had figured in a "court-card" quadrille at heraunt's country house.

  The dresses were instantly confiscated and the necessary punishmentpromptly administered; but the remembrance of Jessie's extraordinaryoutrage on bedroom discipline lasted long enough to become one ofthe traditions of the school, and she and her sister-culprits werethenceforth hailed as the "queens" of the four "suites" by theirclass-companions whenever the mistress's back was turned, Whatever mighthave become of the nicknames thus employed in relation to theother three girls, such a mock title as The Queen of Hearts was tooappropriately descriptive of the natural charm of Jessie's character,as well as of the adventure in which she had taken the lead, not to risenaturally to the lips of every one who knew her. It followed her to heraunt's house--it came to be as habitually and familiarly connected withher, among her friends of all ages, as if it had been formally inscribedon her baptismal register; and it has stolen its way into these pagesbecause it falls from my pen naturally and inevitably, exactly as itoften falls from my lips in real life.

  When Jessie left school the first difficulty presented itself--in otherwords, the necessity arose of fulfilling the conditions of the will. Atthat time I was already settled at The Glen Tower, and her living sixweeks in our dismal solitude and our humdrum society was, as she herselffrankly wrote me word, quite out of the question. Fortunately, she hadalways got on well with her uncle and his family; so she exerted herliberty of choice, and, much to her own relief and to mine also, passedher regular six weeks of probation, year after year, under Mr. RichardYelverton's roof.

  During this period I heard of her regularly, sometimes from myfellow-guardian, sometimes from my son George, who, whenever hismilitary duties allowed him the opportunity, contrived to see her, nowat her aunt's house, and now at Mr. Yelverton's. The particulars of hercharacter and conduct, which I gleaned in this way, more than sufficedto convince me that the poor major's plan for the careful trainingof his daughter's disposition, though plausi
ble enough in theory, waslittle better than a total failure in practice. Miss Jessie, to use theexpressive common phrase, took after her aunt. She was as generous, asimpulsive, as light-hearted, as fond of change, and gayety, and fineclothes--in short, as complete and genuine a woman as Lady Westwickherself. It was impossible to reform the "Queen of Hearts," and equallyimpossible not to love her. Such, in few words, was my fellow-guardian'sreport of his experience of our handsome young ward.

  So the time passed till the year came of which I am now writing--theever-memorable year, to England, of the Russian war. It happened thatI had heard less than usual at this period, and indeed for many monthsbefore it, of Jessie and her proceedings. My son had been ordered outwith his regiment to the Crimea in 1854, and had other work in handnow than recording the sayings and doings of a young lady. Mr. RichardYelverton, who had been hitherto used to write to me with tolerableregularity, seemed now, for some reason that I could not conjecture, tohave forgotten my existence. Ultimately I was reminded of my ward by oneof George's own letters, in which he asked for news of her; and I wroteat once to Mr. Yelverton. The answer that reached me was written by hiswife: he was dangerously ill. The next letter that came informed me ofhis death. This happened early in the spring of the year 1855.

  I am ashamed to confess it, but the change in my own position was thefirst idea that crossed my mind when I read the news of Mr. Yelverton'sdeath. I was now left sole guardian, and Jessie Yelverton wanted a yearstill of coming of age.

  By the next day's post I wrote to her about the altered state of therelations between us. She was then on the Continent with her aunt,having gone abroad at the very beginning of the year. Consequently,so far as eighteen hundred and fifty-five was concerned, the conditionexacted by the will yet remained to be performed. She had still sixweeks to pass--her last six weeks, seeing that she was now twenty yearsold--under the roof of one of her guardians, and I was now the onlyguardian left.

  In due course of time I received my answer, written on rose-coloredpaper, and expressed throughout in a tone of light, easy, femininebanter, which amused me in spite of myself. Miss Jessie, according toher own account, was hesitating, on receipt of my letter, between twoalternatives--the one, of allowing herself to be buried six weeks in TheGlen Tower; the other, of breaking the condition, giving up the money,and remaining magnanimously contented with nothing but a life-interestin her father's property. At present she inclined decidedly towardgiving up the money and escaping the clutches of "the three horrid oldmen;" but she would let me know again if she happened to changeher mind. And so, with best love, she would beg to remain alwaysaffectionately mine, as long as she was well out of my reach.

  The summer passed, the autumn came, and I never heard from her again.Under ordinary circumstances, this long silence might have made me feela little uneasy. But news reached me about this time from the Crimeathat my son was wounded--not dangerously, thank God, but still severelyenough to be la id up--and all my anxieties were now centered in thatdirection. By the beginning of September, however, I got better accountsof him, and my mind was made easy enough to let me think of Jessieagain. Just as I was considering the necessity of writing once more tomy refractory ward, a second letter arrived from her. She had returnedat last from abroad, had suddenly changed her mind, suddenly grown sickof society, suddenly become enamored of the pleasures of retirement,and suddenly found out that the three horrid old men were three dear oldmen, and that six weeks' solitude at The Glen Tower was the luxury, ofall others, that she languished for most. As a necessary result of thisaltered state of things, she would therefore now propose to spend herallotted six weeks with her guardian. We might certainly expect her onthe twentieth of September, and she would take the greatest care to fitherself for our society by arriving in the lowest possible spirits, andbringing her own sackcloth and ashes along with her.

  The first ordeal to which this alarming letter forced me to submit wasthe breaking of the news it contained to my two brothers. The disclosureaffected them very differently. Poor dear Owen merely turned pale,lifted his weak, thin hands in a panic-stricken manner, and then satstaring at me in speechless and motionless bewilderment. Morgan stoodup straight before me, plunged both his hands into his pockets, burstsuddenly into the harshest laugh I ever heard from his lips, and toldme, with an air of triumph, that it was exactly what he expected.

  "What you expected?" I repeated, in astonishment.

  "Yes," returned Morgan, with his bitterest emphasis. "It doesn'tsurprise me in the least. It's the way things go in this world--it's theregular moral see-saw of good and evil--the old story with the old endto it. They were too happy in the garden of Eden--down comes the serpentand turns them out. Solomon was too wise--down comes the Queen ofSheba, and makes a fool of him. We've been too comfortable at The GlenTower--down comes a woman, and sets us all three by the ears together.All I wonder at is that it hasn't happened before." With those wordsMorgan resignedly took out his pipe, put on his old felt hat and turnedto the door.

  "You're not going away before she comes?" exclaimed Owen, piteously."Don't leave us--please don't leave us!"

  "Going!" cried Morgan, with great contempt. "What should I gain by that?When destiny has found a man out, and heated his gridiron for him, hehas nothing left to do, that I know of, but to get up and sit on it."

  I opened my lips to protest against the implied comparison between ayoung lady and a hot gridiron, but, before I could speak, Morgan wasgone.

  "Well," I said to Owen, "we must make the best of it. We must brush upour manners, and set the house tidy, and amuse her as well as we can.The difficulty is where to put her; and, when that is settled, the nextpuzzle will be, what to order in to make her comfortable. It's a hardthing, brother, to say what will or what will not please a young lady'staste."

  Owen looked absently at me, in greater bewilderment than ever--openedhis eyes in perplexed consideration--repeated to himself slowly the word"tastes"--and then helped me with this suggestion:

  "Hadn't we better begin, Griffith, by getting her a plum-cake?"

  "My dear Owen," I remonstrated, "it is a grown young woman who is comingto see us, not a little girl from school."

  "Oh!" said Owen, more confused than before. "Yes--I see; we couldn't dowrong, I suppose--could we?--if we got her a little dog, and a lot ofnew gowns."

  There was, evidently, no more help in the way of advice to be expectedfrom Owen than from Morgan himself. As I came to that conclusion, I sawthrough the window our old housekeeper on her way, with her basket, tothe kitchen-garden, and left the room to ascertain if she could assistus.

  To my great dismay, the housekeeper took even a more gloomy viewthan Morgan of the approaching event. When I had explained all thecircumstances to her, she carefully put down her basket, crossed herarms, and said to me in slow, deliberate, mysterious tones:

  "You want my advice about what's to be done with this young woman? Well,sir, here's my advice: Don't you trouble your head about her. It won'tbe no use. Mind, I tell you, it won't be no use."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You look at this place, sir--it's more like a prison than a house,isn't it? You, look at us as lives in it. We've got (saving yourpresence) a foot apiece in our graves, haven't we? When you was youngyourself, sir, what would you have done if they had shut you up for sixweeks in such a place as this, among your grandfathers and grandmothers,with their feet in the grave?"

  "I really can't say."

  "I can, sir. You'd have run away. _She'll_ run away. Don't you worryyour head about her--she'll save you the trouble. I tell you again,she'll run away."

  With those ominous words the housekeeper took up her basket, sighedheavily, and left me.

  I sat down under a tree quite helpless. Here was the wholeresponsibility shifted upon my miserable shoulders. Not a lady in theneighborhood to whom I could apply for assistance, and the nearest shopeight miles distant from us. The toughest case I ever had to conduct,when I was at the Bar, was plain sailing compar
ed with the difficulty ofreceiving our fair guest.

  It was absolutely necessary, however, to decide at once where she was tosleep. All the rooms in the tower were of stone--dark, gloomy, and coldeven in the summer-time. Impossible to put her in any one of them. Theonly other alternative was to lodge her in the little modern lean-to,which I have already described as being tacked on to the side of theold building. It contained three cottage-rooms, and they might be madebarely habitable for a young lady. But then those rooms were occupiedby Morgan. His books were in one, his bed was in another, his pipes andgeneral lumber were in the third. Could I expect him, after the soursimilitudes he had used in reference to our expected visitor, to turnout of his habitation and disarrange all his habits for her convenience?The bare idea of proposing the thing to him seemed ridiculous; andyet inexorable necessity left me no choice but to make the hopelessexperiment. I walked back to the tower hastily and desperately, to facethe worst that might happen before my courage cooled altogether.

  On crossing the threshold of the hall door I was stopped, to my greatamazement, by a procession of three of the farm-servants, followed byMorgan, all walking after each other, in Indian file, toward the spiralstaircase that led to the top of the tower. The first of the servantscarried the materials for making a fire; the second bore an invertedarm-chair on his head; the third tottered under a heavy load of books;while Morgan came last, with his canister of tobacco in his hand, hisdressing-gown over his shoulders, and his whole collection of pipeshugged up together in a bundle under his arm.

  "What on earth does this mean?" I inquired.

  "It means taking Time by the forelock," answered Morgan, looking at mewith a smile of sour satisfaction. "I've got the start of your youngwoman, Griffith, and I'm making the most of it."

  "But where, in Heaven's name, are you going?" I asked, as the head manof the procession disappeared with his firing up the staircase.

  "How high is this tower?" retorted Morgan.

  "Seven stories, to be sure," I replied.

  "Very good," said my eccentric brother, setting his foot on the firststair, "I'm going up to the seventh."

  "You can't," I shouted.

  "_She_ can't, you mean," said Morgan, "and that's exactly why I'm goingthere."

  "But the room is not furnished."

  "It's out of her reach."

  "One of the windows has fallen to pieces."

  "It's out of her reach."

  "There's a crow's nest in the corner."

  "It's out of her reach."

  By the time this unanswerable argument had attained its thirdrepetition, Morgan, in his turn, had disappeared up the winding stairs.I knew him too well to attempt any further protest.

  Here was my first difficulty smoothed away most unexpectedly; for herewere the rooms in the lean-to placed by their owner's free act anddeed at my disposal. I wrote on the spot to the one upholsterer of ourdistant county town to come immediately and survey the premises,and sent off a mounted messenger with the letter. This done, and thenecessary order also dispatched to the carpenter and glazier to set themat work on Morgan's sky-parlor in the seventh story, I began to feel,for the first time, as if my scattered wits were coming back to me.By the time the evening had closed in I had hit on no less than threeexcellent ideas, all providing for the future comfort and amusement ofour fair guest. The first idea was to get her a Welsh pony; the secondwas to hire a piano from the county town; the third was to send for aboxful of novels from London. I must confess I thought these projectsfor pleasing her very happily conceived, and Owen agreed with me.Morgan, as usual, took the opposite view. He said she would yawn overthe novels, turn up her nose at the piano, and fracture her skull withthe pony. As for the housekeeper, she stuck to her text as stoutlyin the evening as she had stuck to it in the morning. "Pianner or nopianner, story-book or no story-book, pony or no pony, you mark mywords, sir--that young woman will run away."

  Such were the housekeeper's parting words when she wished me good-night.

  When the next morning came, and brought with it that terrible wakingtime which sets a man's hopes and projects before him, the great as wellas the small, stripped bare of every illusion, it is not to be concealedthat I felt less sanguine of our success in entertaining the comingguest. So far as external preparations were concerned, there seemed,indeed, but little to improve; but apart from these, what had we tooffer, in ourselves and our society, to attract her? There lay theknotty point of the question, and there the grand difficulty of findingan answer.

  I fall into serious reflection while I am dressing on the pursuits andoccupations with which we three brothers have been accustomed, for yearspast, to beguile the time. Are they at all likely, in the case of anyone of us, to interest or amuse her?

  My chief occupation, to begin with the youngest, consists, in acting assteward on Owen's property. The routine of my duties has never lost itssober attraction to my tastes, for it has always employed me in watchingthe best interests of my brother, and of my son also, who is one dayto be his heir. But can I expect our fair guest to sympathize with suchfamily concerns as these? Clearly not.

  Morgan's pursuit comes next in order of review--a pursuit of a far moreambitious nature than mine. It was always part of my second brother'swhimsical, self-contradictory character to view with the profoundestcontempt the learned profession by which he gained his livelihood, andhe is now occupying the long leisure hours of his old age in composinga voluminous treatise, intended, one of these days, to eject the wholebody corporate of doctors from the position which they have usurped inthe estimation of their fellow-creatures. This daring work is entitled"An Examination of the Claims of Medicine on the Gratitude of Mankind.Decided in the Negative by a Retired Physician." So far as I can tell,the book is likely to extend to the dimensions of an Encyclopedia; forit is Morgan's plan to treat his comprehensive subject principallyfrom the historical point of view, and to run down all the doctors ofantiquity, one after another, in regular succession, from the first ofthe tribe. When I last heard of his progress he was hard on the heels ofHippocrates, but had no immediate prospect of tripping up his successor,Is this the sort of occupation (I ask myself) in which a modern younglady is likely to feel the slightest interest? Once again, clearly not.

  Owen's favorite employment is, in its way, quite as characteristic asMorgan's, and it has the great additional advantage of appealing to amuch larger variety of tastes. My eldest brother--great at drawing andpainting when he was a lad, always interested in artists and theirworks in after life--has resumed, in his declining years, the holidayoccupation of his schoolboy days. As an amateur landscape-painter, heworks with more satisfaction to himself, uses more color, wears outmore brushes, and makes a greater smell of paint in his studio than anyartist by profession, native or foreign, whom I ever met with. In look,in manner, and in disposition, the gentlest of mankind, Owen, by somesingular anomaly in his character, which he seems to have caught fromMorgan, glories placidly in the wildest and most frightful range ofsubjects which his art is capable of representing. Immeasurable ruins,in howling wildernesses, with blood-red sunsets gleaming over them;thunder-clouds rent with lightning, hovering over splitting trees onthe verges of awful precipices; hurricanes, shipwrecks, waves, andwhirlpools follow each other on his canvas, without an interveningglimpse of quiet everyday nature to relieve the succession of pictorialhorrors. When I see him at his easel, so neat and quiet, so unpretendingand modest in himself, with such a composed expression on his attentiveface, with such a weak white hand to guide such bold, big brushes, andwhen I look at the frightful canvasful of terrors which he is serenelyaggravating in fierceness and intensity with every successive touch, Ifind it difficult to realize the connection between my brother and hiswork, though I see them before me not six inches apart. Will this quaintspectacle possess any humorous attractions for Miss Jessie? Perhaps itmay. There is some slight chance that Owen's employment will be luckyenough to interest her.

  Thus far my morning cogitations advance
doubtfully enough, but theyaltogether fail in carrying me beyond the narrow circle of The GlenTower. I try hard, in our visitor's interest, to look into the resourcesof the little world around us, and I find my efforts rewarded by theprospect of a total blank.

  Is there any presentable living soul in the neighborhood whom we caninvite to meet her? Not one. There are, as I have already said, nocountry seats near us; and society in the county town has long sincelearned to regard us as three misanthropes, strongly suspected, fromour monastic way of life and our dismal black costume, of being popishpriests in disguise. In other parts of England the clergyman of theparish might help us out of our difficulty; but here in South Wales,and in this latter half of the nineteenth century, we have the old typeparson of the days of Fielding still in a state of perfect preservation.Our local clergyman receives a stipend which is too paltry to bearcomparison with the wages of an ordinary mechanic. In dress, manners,and tastes he is about on a level with the upper class of agriculturallaborer. When attempts have been made by well-meaning gentlefolks torecognize the claims of his profession by asking him to their houses, hehas been known, on more than one occasion, to leave his plowman's pairof shoes in the hall, and enter the drawing-room respectfully in hisstockings. Where he preaches, miles and miles away from us and from thepoor cottage in which he lives, if he sees any of the company in thesquire's pew yawn or fidget in their places, he takes it as a hint thatthey are tired of listening, and closes his sermon instantly at the endof the sentence. Can we ask this most irreverend and unclerical of mento meet a young lady? I doubt, even if we made the attempt, whether weshould succeed, by fair means, in getting him beyond the servants' hall.

  Dismissing, therefore, all idea of inviting visitors to entertain ourguest, and feeling, at the same time, more than doubtful of her chanceof discovering any attraction in the sober society of the inmates of thehouse, I finish my dressing and go down to breakfast, secretly veeringround to the housekeeper's opinion that Miss Jessie will really bringmatters to an abrupt conclusion by running away. I find Morgan asbitterly resigned to his destiny as ever, and Owen so affectionatelyanxious to make himself of some use, and so lamentably ignorant of howto begin, that I am driven to disembarrass myself of him at the outsetby a stratagem.

  I suggest to him that our visitor is sure to be interested in pictures,and that it would be a pretty attention, on his part, to paint her alandscape to hang up in her room. Owen brightens directly, informs me inhis softest tones that he is then at work on the Earthquake at Lisbon,and inquires whether I think she would like that subject. I preservemy gravity sufficiently to answer in the affirmative, and my brotherretires meekly to his studio, to depict the engulfing of a city and thedestruction of a population. Morgan withdraws in his turn to the top ofthe tower, threatening, when our guest comes, to draw all his meals upto his new residence by means of a basket and string. I am left alonefor an hour, and then the upholsterer arrives from the county town.

  This worthy man, on being informed of our emergency, sees his way,apparently, to a good stroke of business, and thereupon wins my lastinggratitude by taking, in opposition to every one else, a bright andhopeful view of existing circumstances.

  "You'll excuse me, sir," he says, confidentially, when I show him therooms in the lean-to, "but this is a matter of experience. I'm a familyman myself, with grown-up daughters of my own, and the natures of youngwomen are well known to me. Make their rooms comfortable, and you make'em happy. Surround their lives, sir, with a suitable atmosphere offurniture, and you never hear a word of complaint drop from their lips.Now, with regard to these rooms, for example, sir--you put a neat Frenchbedstead in that corner, with curtains conformable--say a tasty chintz;you put on that bedstead what I will term a sufficiency of bedding; andyou top up with a sweet little eider-down quilt, as light as roses, andsimilar the same in color. You do that, and what follows? You please hereye when she lies down at night, and you please her eye when she gets upin the morning--and you're all right so far, and so is she. I will notdwell, sir, on the toilet-table, nor will I seek to detain you about theglass to show her figure, and the other glass to show her face, becauseI have the articles in stock, and will be myself answerable for theireffect on a lady's mind and person."

  He led the way into the next room as he spoke, and arranged its futurefittings, and decorations, as he had already planned out the bedroom,with the strictest reference to the connection which experience hadshown him to exist between comfortable furniture and female happiness.

  Thus far, in my helpless state of mind, the man's confidence hadimpressed me in spite of myself, and I had listened to him insuperstitious silence. But as he continued to rise, by regulargradations, from one climax of upholstery to another, warning visions ofhis bill disclosed themselves in the remote background of the scene ofluxury and magnificence which my friend was conjuring up. Certain sharpprofessional instincts of bygone times resumed their influence overme; I began to start doubts and ask questions; and as a necessaryconsequence the interview between us soon assumed something like apractical form.

  Having ascertained what the probable expense of furnishing would amountto and having discovered that the process of transforming the lean-to(allowing for the time required to procure certain articles ofrarity from Bristol) would occupy nearly a fortnight, I dismissed theupholsterer with the understanding that I should take a day or two forconsideration, and let him know the result. It was then the fifth ofSeptember, and our Queen of Hearts was to arrive on the twentieth. Thework, therefore, if it was begun on the seventh or eighth, would bebegun in time.

  In making all my calculations with a reference to the twentieth ofSeptember, I relied implicitly, it will be observed, on a young lady'spunctuality in keeping an appointment which she had herself made. Ican only account for such extraordinary simplicity on my part on thesupposition that my wits had become sadly rusted by long seclusion fromsociety. Whether it was referable to this cause or not, my innocenttrustfulness was at any rate destined to be practically rebuked beforelong in the most surprising manner. Little did I suspect, when I partedfrom the upholsterer on the fifth of the month, what the tenth of themonth had in store for me.

  On the seventh I made up my mind to have the bedroom furnished at once,and to postpone the question of the sitting-room for a few days longer.Having dispatched the necessary order to that effect, I next wroteto hire the piano and to order the box of novels. This done, Icongratulated myself on the forward state of the preparations, and satdown to repose in the atmosphere of my own happy delusions.

  On the ninth the wagon arrived with the furniture, and the men set towork on the bedroom. From this moment Morgan retired definitely tothe top of the tower, and Owen became too nervous to lay the necessaryamount of paint on the Earthquake at Lisbon.

  On the tenth the work was proceeding bravely. Toward noon Owen and Istrolled to the door to enjoy the fine autumn sunshine. We were sittinglazily on our favorite bench in front of the tower when we were startledby a shout from above us. Looking up directly, we saw Morgan half inand half out of his narrow window in the seventh story, gesticulatingviolently with the stem of his long meerschaum pipe in the direction ofthe road below us.

  We gazed eagerly in the quarter thus indicated, but our low positionprevented us for some time from seeing anything. At last we bothdiscerned an old yellow post-chaise distinctly and indisputablyapproaching us.

  Owen and I looked at one another in panic-stricken silence. It wascoming to us--and what did it contain? Do pianos travel in chaises?Are boxes of novels conveyed to their destination by a postilion?We expected the piano and expected the novels, but nothingelse--unquestionably nothing else.

  The chaise took the turn in the road, passed through the gateless gapin our rough inclosure-wall of loose stone, and rapidly approached us.A bonnet appeared at the window and a hand gayly waved a whitehandkerchief.

  Powers of caprice, confusion, and dismay! It was Jessie Yelvertonherself--arriving, without a word of warning, exactly te
n days beforeher time.