I laughed. "I am not one of the kind of men who get dressing-gowns made for them," said I; "nor slippers, nor any thing of that sort. I don't remember that either of the articles I've mentioned were ever presented to me in my life. I'm too positive a character for that. Mild men, with proper opinions, are the ones to have dressing-gowns. How absurd it would be to think of women making Luther a dressing-gown! Or Thomas Carlyle! Or, perhaps most amusing of all, Henry Ward Beecher -in canary, with blue facings!" Dr. Susan. "I declare your modesty is fascinating! Hear now Mr. Remy's sum of the whole matter: Luther, Carlyle, Henry Ward Beecher, and Mr. Remy; these four, together with other great, but not so great men, look especially ill in dressing-gowns !" Helen Talfourd. "Oh the saucy, saucy fellow! What can we do to punish him for such effrontery! Oh, I know! We'll make him a dressing-gown!" sequence. Neither is my blue flannel blouse. But I have permitted it to occupy such a space here because it really led to some of the most important consequences of my lifetime. Mine and one or two others. Wherefore in my story, as still in my wardrobe, this blouse has a claim to its own nail. About this period I noticed that the manner of Dr. Laurence Medlicott very much changed toward me. His acrid temperament and selfrearing kept him from being at any time a jovial person, but he had always preserved a manner of quiet cheerfulness in my presence. Now he was occasionally absolutely uncivil to me, replying curtly to the politest questions, and never vouchsafing to begin any conversation of his own accord. And one day, in a manner meant to be humorous, but with a smile so dry and hard as to show its difficulty, he accosted Miss Talfourd and myself, who were starting for the rustic seats at the magnesia spring, with— "Well, what goose-chase are you on now?" Miss Talfourd answered hurriedly, to prevent my doing so caustically, that we were going out to study the Flegeljähre of Jean Paul Richter together, at the same time showing him the "Capital!" exclaimed Dr. Susan, chafing her hands together energetically, which was the nearest approach she ever made to the feminine gesture of clapping them. "Capital! We shall see how Luther would have looked in that gar-book. But it just dawns upon me that I really don't know how to make a dressing-gown." ment. Helen. "But I do. I'll cut it out and turn the seams, and you can do as much as you know how to. We'll punish him-won't we, dear?" I. "Permit me to ask a commutation of my sentence to a blouse—a blue flannel blouse, such as they wear in the ateliers of Paris. I have the pattern of one which exactly fitted me there. It will be less time to do that; and be clement -reflect what disgrace the dressing-gown would bring on my family-what a stigma it would affix to one so young, just starting in life! No one would have any malice against me again; the dirtiest ragamuffin or the meanest milksop would like me indiscriminately. In fine, I should be hopelessly popular with all sorts of geese, and my character would be irretrievably good. Compassion, sweet ladies! Spare the morning-gown this once-it is not for me." Dr. Susan. "We let you off this once, of our sovereign mercy. Your sentence is changed to the blouse." This conversation explains how it happened that one morning I came into the bath-room with a resplendent garment of blue flannel upon me, its waist neatly plaited on to a narrow belt below and a broad yoke above; its skirts loose and flowing almost to the knee; its sleeves of the ample, airy manner known as gigot. And when the Senator said, "Eh, Remy; very stylish, upon my word!-where did you get that comfortable, handsome thing?" there was a quiet pleasure in replying, with a view out of my sinister eye to the occupant of the canary faced with blue, "Oh, the ladies made it for me." "Humph!" answered the ascetic Laurence, in a tone more like a growl than human speech. "Better read your Bibles, you fools!" "Sir," said I, fiercely, "if you ever read that book with any other intent than finding equivoques to wrest for the support of your bigotry, you would know that Christianity aims at making you a gentleman, not a beast." "Oh, don't-please don't-don't quarrel with him," said Helen Talfourd, pleadingly, her soft, cool hand gently laid on my quick pulse. But Dr. Laurence strode moodily away before he could hear me reply to her. "Yes, you shall save him from my resentment as you did one ill-mannered brute before. Another Tobin." "Oh, Mr. Remy, dear Sir, please do not be so violent. Bear with him." "Did you hear him say 'fools?' This is only the climax of a rudeness I have put up with a little too long already. But it's the last time. I-" "Mr. Remy, be patient with him-be patient. He has a great deal of trouble to bear. Oh, if you knew what it was you would forgive him, and put up with almost any thing out of the merest generosity. I could tell you-but I talk too much-shall we forget all this and proceed to our Flegeljähre?" "You could tell me, but you will not? Ah, well I am still too much a stranger to be confided in." "I can not tell you now, Mr. Remy-I must not. Sometime I may-perhaps I shall even have to. But now, be patient with me, Mr. Remy." There was a painful earnestness, an excitement in the young girl's mien when she said this, In itself a dressing-gown is not of much con- that went to my very heart. Why was this? Why indeed, and what was she to me except the friend of a water-cure? She looked more beautiful in her embarrassment-her hidden trouble, which must not be uncovered to methan ever before; and the suspense I felt, the longing to know how, why, for whom, she was distressed, fell upon me like the cold shadow of my own calamity. But her eye brightened with an effort, and she threw cheerfulness into her voice again as she said to me, "It was on the thirtieth page we left off, at the end of the second paragraph-shall you or I begin, Meinherr Paul?" fulfillment of my yesterday's waking apprehensions. Helen Talfourd, weeping so bitterly that the tears fell between her fingers as she tightly pressed them over her eyes, knelt in touching girlish helplessness by the side of the settee where I reclined. "My dear Miss Talfourd!" was all that I could say in my surprise; but I raised her up as gently, yet as strongly as my poor nervous arm was able, and set her in the corner of the sofa. Then I smoothed her soft brown hair as gently as if she had been my foster-child-I her nurse ly from her face as if she hardly endured to have her tearful eyes seen, caught the hand that was soothing her and put it quietly down, saying passionately, brokenly, "Do not pet me; do not be brotherly to me; I am not a child, I am a woman whom no one knows, no one cares for-oh, oh!" Long after midnight I lay awake, the night-and as guilelessly. She drew one hand slowafter this interview, torturing my mind with the most painful, for me the most novel questions. Not only what grieved Helen Talfourd, but why that also grieved me. Now I would be as uncivil to myself as Dr. Medlicott, saying, in soliloquy, "Pshaw you fool! Shall you forget your one long-cherished aim? Your resolve to fetter yourself in no way till you were head of the firm Here her heart choked her voice, and I could of Marquette, Consol, and Remy? And you gain no further clew to her distress. Still I are third partner still! Will you hamper your-clasped the hand that had put mine down, pressself at the start? Fool!" After which piece of impertinence to myself I would turn over, shake up the pillow, dispose the quilt, and settle myself in the conclusive style of a man who has arranged every thing unalterably, whom nothing now can possibly prevent from going to sleep. After my coming to this decisive spot one sweet, sad face ever looked sadly at me out of the darkness again, and the bastions of resolution melted away like a phantasm, in the warm, gentle breath of a woman, seeming to say close at my ear, ing its soft, long fingers as they trembled convulsively in my touch, but did not draw themselves away. As I looked on her I could bear the suspense of the last two days no longer. "Oh, my God!" I cried, "I would that you might speak out your whole soul and tell me the worst, Helen!" This last word I could not speak with that fierce pain that spent itself in the rest of the sentence. It seemed like a spell that I was pronouncing-I said it sweetly, tenderly, peacefully. And she must have observed the differ "If you but knew. If I could tell you! But ence herself. For my tone seemed first to surbe patient with me." I passed a miserable night. After two or three hours' disturbed sleep I awoke to pass a miserable day. Nothing seemed to go right with me. I absolutely dreaded a relapse-or rather looked for one-for I hardly dreaded what I felt too nonchalantly miserable to care much for. Dr. Susan was busy as possible upon her rounds --for some reason or other Helen Talfourd was not visible after breakfast-time-and I could hardly have entertained them much had they been with me. prise, then to calm her; and looking at me with her sorrowful blue eyes full on mine, and steadied with a firm resolution, she said, no longer sobbing: "I will tell you, what I could not yesterday. It has become best-it has become necessary— for I now have no other friend in this place whom I can trust-my father is dead, my mother is dead, sister I never had, my nearest brother is in India." She said these things over considerately, as if she were recounting her justifications for coming to me with the burden of her confidence. So thoughtful was she ever-so delicate! She continued-"But I must tell you in a few words; I can't command myself to say much. The reason Dr. Medlicott hates you, the reason he can not bear to have me with you, is because he thinks you have more influence over me than he. And, the day before yesterday, he-he paid me the compliment of proposing to me for a Western cousin of his-Mr. Aristodemus Medlicott-and I refused! Mr. Remy, you have been much in the world; would a gentleman—would a man-speak on that subject again after once hearing the word No?" About three o'clock in the afternoon I began to wonder if the misanthropy that was growing upon me might not be owing to sleeplessness. I could make the experiment of a nap at any rate. There was a secluded room at BeechWold, meant as a quieter sort of parlor for the weaker class of those invalids who still walked, but little frequented on account of its looking upon the court, and being therefore not especially cheerful. In one corner was a comfortable settee: I stretched myself upon it, and began to surrender gracefully to weariness. Of a sudden the door opened hurriedly? I started up, my mind still in the chaotic beginnings of the earliest sleep, and rubbed my eyes to see if I were "I can only say for myself-Never! never!" not dreaming. For the sight that met them "Mr. Remy, he has done so again to-day! He might well have been an exaggerated dream--he found me alone, undefended; almost cor it from the softer to the stronger. So much had illness wasted me that the circlet clasped my arm nearly as high as it did Helen's. Then I fastened my sleeve, and felt safe, though I should fall that instant into a simultaneous conversation with Laurence Medlicott, Sylverie Beames, and Mrs. Hamilcar Hall. I had been keeping up the line of conduct in which this talisman strengthened me for more than a week after the incident just related, and was succeeding admirably well, when one morning, as I sat idle in my chamber, vegetating as was prescribed to all of us water-cure patients, Dr. Susan's peculiar knock came at my door: a short, sharp, authoritative knock-a knock that seemed to think itself a man's, with a right to be as brusque and peremptory as possible, and "Love me!" she repeated, in wonder. "What, then to reconsider itself and apologize by a sebetter than Dr. Susan ?" "Why do you speak in this moment of Dr. Susan? She is nothing to me! You are all things. Helen! may I be such a friend as this to you? If I can, here is the heart that can not leave you come to it! If I can not-but-O God, I thank thee! Give me strength to keep that which thou hast committed unto me, as thou keepest our henceforth one soul!" ries of quieter raps imitating a woman's. "Come!" I cried. Dr. Susan entered. There was a chair close by me vacant. I waved my hand toward it and said, "Good-morning-sit down." Dr. Susan, contrary to her invariable habit of striding in, saying a few quick words of question, encouragement, reprimand, what not, and then striding forth again, actually drew the chair I had offered still closer to my knee and sat down. Then she took me by the hand and said, "Stick out your tongue." I laughed. "No better opening to a con "I thought, from the unusual impressiveness of your manner, you had something more flattering to my intelligence to talk about than how the last pills acted." 66 VII.-BEING THE STORY OF AN ARMLET. For the first time at Beech-Wold did I now become careful, jealous even, of appearances. Be-versation possible than this, certainly," said I. fore I knew that Helen Talfourd loved me, and could be gladdened or saddened through me, there was no one at Beech-Wold whose opinion I would not have laughed at the idea of doing any thing to affect. Now I had another happiness to look after, and I had given my first hostage to fortune. I therefore materially altered my course. The only way in which I could prevent Helen Talfourd from being persecuted, now that this intimate, though on both our parts strictly secret relation had been entered into, was to refrain from in any way becoming conspicuous myself. Helen Talfourd wore a plain gold armlet engraved with her name. As one day we sat in the room where I first discovered that she loved me, enjoying that rare privilege at such a place as Beech-Wold, solitude for two (a much more difficult one to obtain, as lovers living in large families understand, than the same article for one), we talked upon the subject of how to get along among stupid, ignorant, obstinate, dogmatic, and morbid people. "Tongue looks a good deal better-pulse regular." And then, abandoning the professional manner, she said to me, in a voice so womanly and tender that I half started at its unusual sound, "And do you like to have me talk to you?" 66 Why, you know that I do; of course!" "Not quite of course. You have shunned every body for a fortnight, and perhaps it was vanity which made me take so large a share of the slight to myself. But I'm not called vain generally. What is the matter with you? why do you mope so? It isn't the liver-the tongue shows that; you have something on your mind that's what it is! Now don't you love to confide your trouble, when you are in trouble, to some one who will do every thing to comfort you and help you and keep your secret safe? You ought to tell somebody what ails you. It's bad for you to brood so." "My dear Susan, I never felt better in my life. If I had any thing weighing on my mind you should certainly be"-I was going to say "the first," but remembered that would be a lie, though polite, and changed it to- one of the first to know it." A thought struck me-struck us both at the same time. This bright circle should be my amulet. Better than all rules that we could devise for getting along in this world-rules which must bend or break with every change in the angle of circumstances-was this band of delicate, frail gold; for it would remind the arm that must strike, and protect, and work, to Dr. Susan looked at me intensely with those be gentle for the sake of the arm whose woman's great, searching, blue-gray eyes of hers, still work was to bless, to caress, to enfold. And clasping me by the hand tightly, and throwing with only the words, "Let this be a reminder," a dramatic earnestness into the posture of her we both unclasped it together, and transferred | head and shoulders which, in any one else, would have seemed ridiculous, because an affectation, too fast. Then her hold relaxed from my fingers, and resting one elbow on the back of her chair, she leaned her brow on her hand, and rubbed it painfully back and forward on the palm, gazing downward with an abstracted air, while, with the toe of her gaiter, she described arcs upon the carpet; then swept them broadly with the sole, or stamped them resolutely, as if she were tracing in the sand horoscopes which kept ever dissatisfying her, and which she obliterated as fast as they were made. What did you think-what did you say, Dr. Susan ?" Dr. Susan cast upon me a glance of contempt which would have withered Mephistopheles Beau Brummel-a writer for the London Atheneum-or any other synonym of sneering impudence, and then toned it down into one much harder to bear, though not at all withering-a look of such deep pain, such grieved reproach, that every thing like blague left my manner in an instant, and I added: "Forgive me, my dear Susan. I treated the matter lightly, because I was very sure you had." Dr. Susan. "Lightly! That was not the "Susan," said I, gently-"Susan, it is you way to treat it at all-not the way for me to who should tell somebody something." For the first time in my life I saw Dr. Susan blush. Yes, quite perceptibly; and the feeling it gave me to discover I had abashed her was pain-not that half-pleasure which it gives a man to see the rich carnation tingle into the cheek of a modest girl, but the feeling that is awakened on seeing other men blush, who do it so unnaturally. Dr. Susan was quite disconcerted. "What makes you think so?" said she, hurriedly-"what makes you think so? Any one would feel flurried at being looked at as you look at me. That's all; there's nothing to tell -oh, nothing!" "Susan," said I, in a parental manner, "you doubtless have been thinking that all those emotions which you usually keep in such reserve have not peeped out-have gone on in perfect solitude-since you came in here. But you're mistaken-yes, Susan, the room of an intimate friend is an untoward place to go to be alone in. Now, frankly, to imitate your kindness, what troubles you?" Dr. Susan took me by the hand again, and, though her face was still all aglow, she looked through the hot mist that blushing sheds around one resolutely as if she would brave out her shamefacedness right into my eyes; and, with her usually so direct tongue stammering like a little child's, she began: "I'm very, very glad you have forced me to do it. I came here on purpose to tell you something, and after I got here it seemed as if I found I couldn't-I didn't know how to set at work about it. I can trust you; I must trust you; I want to trust you. I feel unable to wait another moment to tell you what I wouldn't tell | any one else in the world—what, perhaps, a woman ought never to tell at all to her dearest friend. You will not feel that I'm doing any thing which will make me mean in your eyes?" "You could not do that thing, Susan." "I will tell you, then. I have just had a proposal of marriage from Sylverie Beames! Don't be ashamed of me because I'm a woman he likes. There! what do you think of that?" "Think of it! Give me time to think-a month or two, for instance. Why, I'm dumbfounded. But hold on. The modern way of thinking of a thing is by its success. I may be treat it. What had I ever done to make that man think I could endure him? Or, at any rate, more than endure him; for I have, perhaps, been civil to him, which turns out to have been too much. And the fellow actually prefaced his proposition with some remarks upon the subject of long-felt congenialities existing between us.' Should I treat that lightly? No. I shouldn't. I didn't. I waited till he had entirely finished, and then, said I, 'Mr. Beames, Dr. Laurence Medlicott is your physician; Mrs. Hamilcar Hall is your nurse; you have, therefore, every body to look after your ease whom you could desire; and that is all you would be likely to seek for or understand in a wife. If I ever have such a thing as a husband, it must be some one who can at least think for himself. And now I must go and call on the feeble people I have to take care of.' With which I cleared out as fast as possible." I. "Pretty hard on him, Susan, pretty hard. You should never feel as if a man were to blame for loving you. He could not help it, I suppose, poor Beames! and then, besides, he might have had some indistinct idea that he was not all he would wish to be, and that he could help himself up to his best state by your assisting strength. You might make a very different man of him, Susan." “Would you like to have me accept Mr. Beames?" "No, Susan, I would not choose him for you, certainly; but then it is none of my business to choose for you at all, you know." "Paul Remy, you are as cold as ice." She said this not angrily, but mournfully, and shivered while she spoke, as if the ice were a physical fact perceived by her. Then, still looking at me earnestly, she began chafing my wrist under the opened sleeve, as if she would warm me in that way, and save me from quite freezing both myself and her to death. With the motion of her hand the talisman slipped gradually down from above. Its smooth gold circle made no noise, of course, no sensation either, so absorbed was I in the strange movings of soul whose outer ripple and furrow I witnessed on that memorable face before me; and before I knew it slid down against Dr. Susan's very hand. For a moment she gave me a blank stare, as one who perceives what may be a strange coincidence without realizing that it can possibly be any thing else. And then Dr. Susan caught my hand with a fierce eagerness like the pouncing of a hawk, and held it up to the window. The light fell full on the chasing of the armlet, and there she read, her lips moving in the inaudible pronunciation of the words, clearly, plainly, "Helen Talfourd." Again the earthquake for one quick moment shook her face, and, with a fire flashing from her eyes that almost burned my own, she uttered only a stifled "Oh!" dashed my hand from her as if it had been a snake, and with two strides was out of the door. VIII-FEARS AND FIGHTINGS. Perhaps I should have gone immediately to Helen Talfourd with the recital of this last interview between Dr. Susan and myself. She would have been able to read to me the riddle which my man-dullness could not make out. I could imagine no reason in the world why Dr. Susan should have acted as she did, unless it was that she was displeased with Helen for loving me-now that the circlet had disclosed to her that secret-instead of accepting Dr. Medlicott's cousin, whose warm friend and advocate she, Dr. Susan, was understood to be. But her behavior certainly seemed very exaggerated, considering that its source. public to all Beech-Wold-before our appointed time. It had been the intention of Helen and myself to wait until I became quite well enough to leave Beech-Wold. We would then go away together-returning to New York-and be married. If Dr. Susan would accompany us, she should go too; but that was all of Beech-Wold that should not be left behind us at once and forever. But this arrangement was destined to be overthrown. I came down stairs one morning. Helen Talfourd was not at the gymnasium when the bell for before - breakfast exercises stopped ringing. At the table her chair was vacantthe chair opposite me, and whose occupancy was much of the time almost my whole reason for coming to that great, uninviting, sterile expanse of soiled table-cloth, brown-bread, and grits, at all. At morning-prayers in the chapel thereafter her clear, sweet, true soprano was unheard in the chorus of voices that sang plaintive "Caswell;" and I could not bear the suspense any longer. I must find what the matter was. In one of the halls I passed the good old Peggy, an indefatigable, kind bath-woman connected with the institution, and slipping a piece of money into her hand bade her go quite on the sly to Miss Talfourd's room, see how she waswithout letting any one else know that I had sent her and return to me as soon as possible Still I did not tell all this to Helen, nor any Peggy shuffled away, and I stood waiting of it, because I knew that if I had guessed right- meanwhile. Much quicker than I expected she ly, her knowledge of Dr. Susan's conduct would came back to me. There was a sympathetic only be an additional useless mortification to gloom overspreading her honest face, and she her, and it would be time enough to relate to fumbled with the corner of her apron, after the her all the particulars of this chapter if any fashion of her class when they would fain dichange in Dr. Susan's bearing toward her ren-vert the attention of their hearts from the disadered such a recital necessary for the better reg- greeable thing which their logic commands them ulation of her own actions. to say. "Very well, Peggy; that's right to come so quick; now, out with it!-how is Miss Talfourd?" "An' it breaks the heart of me, Misther Remy; but I wint to the door of the young leddy, as ye tould me, an' I knocked, an' knocked, an' Day after day went by, and there was no new cloud on Helen's brow-nothing save the tireless persecution of Dr. Medlicott, to trouble her. That person did a thousand of those little, mean things constantly by which very good people annoy those who are so wicked as to differ from them. All this on the part of Laurence was quite bear-knocked three times, an' thin Dr. Laurence able, however, even laughable, in the light of those sweet love-lookings and communings which kind Heaven occasionally gave Helen and me timely solitude for, and which were as patches of blue sky in the sulphurous fog that made perennial gloom at Beech-Wold. As Helen said nothing to me of any difference toward her on the part of her hostess (for it will be remembered that she was a guest of Dr. Susan's, not a patient at the Cure), and as I could perceive no change of conduct myself, I almost let the occurrence in my room slip, traceless, out of my mind. I saw less of Dr. Susan myself-but so I did of every body save Helen; and when I met the former there was no time, had there been will, for more than the short word we exchanged. At last my relation to the woman whom I loved had to be disclosed-had to become came to the door. What d'ye want, Peggy?' says he. 'An' it's afther knowin' how Miss Talfourd is this mornin' that I'm come, Sir,' says I; 'an', if you plase, I'd like to come in an' see the young leddy.' 'You can't do it,' says Dr. Laurence; 'she's sick with the typhus, and hasn't known any body since she was taken ill, eleven o'clock last night."" I dashed past the old woman, and went up the stairs that led to Helen Talfourd's story with as swift a lightness as a wind-blown feather. I seemed more to be carried than to move myself. I was mad with fears. Good God! must she be taken from me now, and after all we had come through for each other? I stood at the door of my beloved, and I could hear within the muffled voices of the nurses and the doctors, Dr. Laurence and Dr. Susan. I broke into their consultation with a rap that was |