Bught BERTRANB 14O Pacffic LONG Bt CALIFC JVIary Lowe Dickinson 7 /^/: And the girl laughed again from sheer merriment. " It wasn't very sentimental, was it, grandmamma ? It wasn't a bit like love-making. He just said, ' I am going your way, always and forever your way.' " "And what did you say, my child." " I am ashamed to tell, grandmamma," and the old face and the young one smiled together, and one was scarcely merrier than the other. For a moment they were two children of nearly the same age. "You needn't be ashamed, dear." " I think I ought to, for I always thought that when anybody made love to me it must be in the moonlight, and over and over again I have planned what I would say and what I would do, if ever my true love came. And when he looked at me and said, * I am going your way,' I just gave the pony a 292 THE TEMPTATION OF little cut and looked up in his face, and said, ' Come on.' ' " And I am coming on," said Theodore's voice, as he stepped from the window opening on the piazza. " It is true, dear little mother," he said, with a strange, tender light in his clear eyes. "We are going through the world whenever you are ready to send us on our little crusade, to seek and rescue and help Margaret first, and then as many more as we can. I believe we have one purpose, we have long had one heart, and we are going one way." " Not yet, not yet," said the old lady, as she reached her trembling hand to each of them. She who rarely gave way to any outward emotion found her lips trembling and her eyes filling with tears. " Not yet, you would not take her away from me ? " " Never," he answered, "so long as you. want her, nor so long as you have need of her. She belongs to you still, and," he added, bending down and touching his lips with reverence to her forehead, " I belong to her, and so of course I belong to you also." "And she has never given you a word except ' Come on ' ? " said Mrs. Maitland, trying to escape from the emotion that overcame her. " She could not have given me a better word. It is like a challenge. I know that into whatever is true and noble and sweet in life she is the woman to lead me, and every day and hour I shall feel her going like an angel before me, guiding me to every- thing that is highest and best. And wherever I am, or whatever I do, I shall hear her saying ' Come KATHARINE GRAY 293 on.' You see that is going even farther than can be expected even of the obedient modern husband. I am really ready to follow." And Katharine, who when she left the room had passed to the veranda and seated herself on the bench just outside the window, had been sitting there like one outside the gate of paradise, seeing the joy of heaven. She had seen their faces, and held spellbound by the sight, had listened to every word. " There is only one shadow on it all," said Mrs. Maitland, trying to recover from the emotion that had nearly overswept her usual calm ; " it will be so hard for Dr. Moore to see and feel your joy." " But I think he has a heart big enough to re- joice in it. He has long known that I loved Gretta. He told me one night, as we were taking a long walk by the river, something about his love for Margaret, and many things about his early life. Among other things he said he had never loved any other woman, and he thought the thing that kept him from loving was a romance that came into his life when he was a little lad. You see we men, when we get together, sometimes talk over our ex- periences as if we were girls. I had a romance in my boyhood too, and I told him my tale, and he told me his." There was a little rustle and movement on the veranda outside. Katharine had moved her chair nearer to the window. " Harold said that his father was a physician, and had found a country practitioner's life a hard one, that gave him little leisure and less money, and he 29-1- THE TEMPTATION OF was rather inclined to check his son's disposition, which showed itself as a very young lad, to study medicine. His father had a brother, a successful business man living in a Western city, and it was rather understood between the two men that Harold should go to his brother at the close of his school life, and be brought up in business. His mother had died in his infancy, and his father died when Harold was about twelve years of age. The maiden aunt arranged for him to go to his uncle's home. He traveled alone. On the train with him was a help- less man, who had in charge a dainty little girl scarce out of babyhood who was restless and fret- ful and refused to be comforted. He said the man put the child on the seat by him, and the little thing went to sleep and he played with it, and it put its hands in his hair and pulled his curls, and alto- gether was a great delight to him and evidently a great relief to the man who had her in charge, quite to the journey's end. He had his uncle's ad- dress and knew his uncle had intended to meet him, but so reluctant was he to lose sight of this little being, that he followed the man who took her into a carriage, and seeing him standing by the door, threw a dollar down on the pavement. He said he had a hole made in it, and that for years he wore it on a string on his neck, although he was so angry that before he picked it up he tried to stamp it into the pavement under his feet. "The door of the carriage closed, and in his rage and bewilderment and unwillingness to be left behind, he sprang up on the trunk-rack at the rear and rode until they turned in at a gate and ap- KATHARINE GRAY 295 preached a beautiful house. He slipped behind the gate-post. He knew that the man left the child there, because he waited until he saw the carriage and the man driving away. " Then he looked in his little pocket-book for his uncle's address, and arrived in due time, to find them very much exercised because he had failed to meet them at the station. After this there fol- lowed his school life, interspersed with such par- tial training in business as could be given to a boy while in the public school, and as he grew older the business claimed him altogether." " But was the desire to study medicine so strong that it overmastered the business career ? " asked Mrs. Maitland. " He seems to be a born physi- cian." " Yes, evidently that was the case. His uncle had many children, and at his death there was nothing left for the boy but to carve out his own future for himself. He had a hard time of it, but the bent toward his present profession was so strong that, in one way or another, he fought his way to college. There is where I found him. We were classmates, and we have been chums ever since. He made a grand record, but there was nothing he did not do meantime to pay his expenses. Proud then as he is now, he would not have help, for I would gladly have divided with him everything I had. But he pinched and coached and wrote for the periodicals, and taught in the vacations, and tutored in and out of the university, and got scholarships and fellowships and came out ahead, and has always kept ahead. 296 THE TEMPTATION OP " But he told me that in all those years when he ran errands in a store, or stood behind the counter, or in the after-life of student struggle, he always called that little baby-girl his sweetheart. And he vowed a vow to himself that when he grew up, and had become very rich and great, he would go back and marry her, and give her that very dollar that the man had thrown to him. And he said he be- lieved that the dream that stayed in his mind of what the girl would be, and how she would look, and what she would say to him, held him back from failure in many an evil day. He often found him- self asking this unknown idol what she would have him do, and he could trace all through his early life the influence of what he called 'his little love.' " I asked him if he knew what became of her, and he said ' No.' For a year or two he used to hang about the house, and see the little thing sent out with dainty frills and lace about her in the little wagon pushed by a maid in a white cap. He used to stop and look at her, and place flowers in the carriage, and in his heart he always called her his little girl. At one time he determined to go to the business house in which the man who had the child was engaged, and ask him for a position. He fan- cied that, as he had read sometimes happened to deserving clerks, he would be invited to the house for Sunday dinner, and little by little he would be- come acquainted with the lady of his heart. But he was retarded from this attempt by learning that the man was old, and was not engaged actively in the business which bore his name. Then his uncle sent him away to school for a time, and when he KATHARINE GRAY 297 came back the house had been sold and the family had moved away, and from that time to this, until he saw Margaret, he says he has never loved any one, girl or woman." " Perhaps he will find that early love yet and marry her, and thus his sad heart will be healed," said Mrs. Maitland, who dearly loved a romance. " But what would become of Margaret then ? " asked Gretta, quickly. "Oh, yes," said Theodore, "the myth must re- main a myth. Margaret is a living reality, and she belongs to Moore." " But I thought you said you had a romance of your own," said Gretta. " Was that about a girl ? " " Yes, that was about a girl," he said, playfully. " Was she beautiful ? " " Most beautiful to me. I hardly know which I adored the more, the girl or her mother." "Was her mother beautiful too ? " " Yes. My mother was a Catholic, and I had been reared to love all the representations of Mary, and to think of her as the ideal mother and ideal woman, and I transferred all my adoration to the mother of my sweetheart." " How long did you love her ? " "All my life," he said. "I have been faithful to her all my life." "You mean to say you love her still ? " asked Gretta, her eyes widening. " I am afraid I love her still." The smile died out from her bright lips for a minute, but there was no mistaking the twinkling in Theodore's clear blue eyes. 298 THE TEMPTATION OK " If you love her still then, how can you have another love ? " " I have no other," he said, playfully. " I think she has possession of my heart. I have only transferred all that was beautiful and loving in my thought of her to another, who seems to me to be just what my early love would have been if she had grown up." " And did you ever tell her that you loved her ? " asked Gretta. " Yes, indeed, over and over again, a hundred times a day." " Well, why haven't you been going after her all these years," said Gretta, her face showing the coming of a little shadow of fear. " I would if she had only told me to < Come on.' " " What did she tell you ? " " She never answered me once a single word." " And you told her over and over that you loved her, and she never said a word ? She must have been a very cruel girl." " No, she gave me other signs of loving me." The pout and the shadow grew more decided. " She put her arms tightly around my neck and kissed me, and snuggled her face close to mine." "Where is Aunt Katharine?" said Gretta, hur- riedly. " I am neglecting her all this morning," and she started to go out of the room. " Here I am," said Katharine, leaning in at the window. " You must excuse me, but I have been hearing this very romantic tale." " But, auntie, did you ever hear of a man's boast- ing in such a very bold way about another girl ? " KATHARINE GRAY 299 " Have you asked him," said Katharine, quietly, " how old was the other girl ? " " Why, no indeed ; of course she was old enough to fall in love with." " Of course," said Theodore, gravely. " Quite old enough, and pretty enough, and dear and sweet enough." " But how old ? " said Gretta, coming back and peering down into his face. " Just one year and a half," he said, rising and drawing her close to his breast, " and if she could have spoken, I am sure she would have said ' Come on.' " And like happy children they went away, leaving these two, for one of whom the light of a true love was gone, and the other to whom it never came, to look into each other's eyes, hardly know- ing whether to smile or weep. CHAPTER XIX WITH Mrs. Maitland's increasing feebleness, Katharine had come to be more and more essential to her in the conduct of the house, in the care of the west wing, and in many details of her affairs. At first only the letters that made constant appeals to her well-known philanthropic sympathies were passed over to Katharine for con- sideration and for action, after the decision was reached as to each appeal. But it came to be, after a while, quite a matter of course for all her mail to be laid upon Katharine's desk in the little parlor that stood between Gretta's room and her own. On leaving Mrs. Maitland, as she retired to her room, an unusual parcel of letters awaited her. As was her custom, those that she knew at a glance were for Mrs. Maitland's personal perusal were laid aside unopened. Among the others, ap- peals for help, household accounts, invitations, and those relating to business, was one from the agency in New York, which she knew at once must contain some news of Margaret. Without hesitation she opened it. Enclosed was a letter sealed and ad- dressed to Mrs. Maitland, which had evidently been forwarded through the agency, showing the writer's wish that no postmark should betray the place whence it came. For some moments she sat and gazed upon it. 300 KATHARINE GRAY 30 1 It was a thick packet, large enough to be half a dozen letters returned, large enough to be the story of a life. Who knew what secrets it might con- tain ? It was a long time since she had done a mean or cowardly thing. Not once, so far as she could remember, since the day when she said " No," to Dr. Moore, in reply to the question as to her knowledge of Mrs. Burke. She shrugged her shoulders. It was the circumstances that were al- ways forcing her into complications. And, while she was hesitating, her fingers twisted one end of the envelope, and it opened, and she read : " MY DEAR MRS. MAITLAND : " When I sat at your feet on that day, which it seems to me was the last day of my life, you re- member I said that I could give no explanation of my action. In these long months that have passed since, I have been convinced that I was wrong ; that I owed it to you, who had been so good to me, and to the noble man who had taken me into his heart, the fullest explanation that it was possible for me to give. But at the time it did not seem to me that I had any right to lay bare to either of you the mistakes and wickedness of another life, espe- cially when I felt that if I had done my duty by that life, the errors might have been overcome and the sins repented and forgiven. In my exagger- ated sense of what was due to one, I failed to have a true conception of what was due to others. " Since coming to this conviction I have felt that I ought to write you fully and freely of all that 3O2 THE TEMPTATION OF concerning which I was silent as I sat at your teet. I have not done so, because it seemed to me like asking you to consider me less wrong than I seemed ; and in reality my errors have been, as you will see by the following letter, greater than my ingratitude toward both you and Harold would lead you to believe. " Again, I felt that your love for me would lead you to persuade me to reconsider my decision, even after you knew all, and to reconsider would only be adding sin to sin. But now that I know this letter will not give you any means of tracing me, now that I have entered upon my duty, and am, as far as possible, undoing the errors of the past, I feel that I must relieve the anxiety and doubt lingering in both your minds, as to whether I claimed to love Harold Moore when a promise bound me to some other life. "Now let me, dear Mrs. Maitland, as if I were sitting there at your feet", tell you what I ought to have told you then, and then try to forgive me for all that I have made you bear. " I am, although you never knew it, the daughter of a man who has wrecked his life by intemper- ance. I never knew my mother, and thought that she was dead, until my father, in a fit of drunken anger, told me that she had deserted me when I was a baby, and left me to the care of an old ser- vant, from whom he had rescued me through a man he had employed to watch this nurse. He told me that she was escaping with me on a train, when an accident deprived her of consciousness, and the man whom he had sent to watch and to re- KATHARINE GRAY 303 capture me, took charge of me and returned me to the home of my grandfather. He told me that my mother was living, was utterly unworthy of my love or thought, and that all my own unworthiness and the faults for which he blamed me were my in- heritance from her. "He was absent during my early years, and I was brought up by his parents. He came home when I was a little girl. There was something wrong about me, for I felt such a repugnance to him. I ought to have loved him, but I not only feared him, but when he tried to fondle me, I almost hated him. I do not want to write about that. He was well, everything that intemperance makes a man. My grandmother was weak and subservient to him. She died clinging to him, and believing that all his vices were largely my mother's fault, She blamed me for my own feeling toward him, and insisted that if I loved him and was tender to him, and gave my life to making him happy as a true daugh- ter should, that I could save him. Sometimes I tried, but oftener I resisted and rebelled. " I hated my home, I hated my life. My grand- father was always at war with his son ; but after he became a helpless paralytic, he came more or less to trust him with his affairs, and in a few years the fortune was utterly dissipated and swept away. " My education was constantly interrupted by these home troubles. My father did not care whether I was taught or not, except in the matter of the training of my voice. He thought it an ex- ceptional voice, and often said to me that I must 304 THE TEMPTATION OF go on with my singing lessons, for he expected, if his father would not take care of him, that he would have a fortune in my voice, and added that he would find ways to make me understand my duty as a child. The pity of it was that I did understand. If he had been like my poor grand- father, I could have loved him and served him with all my heart. Only the thought that grandmother was gone, and that grandfather had no one else to care for him, enabled me to live the life that came after the fortune was gone. The old home and everything in it was taken by creditors. The little apartment in which my grandfather lived out his last days, and where with my own hands I had to do all that was done, was the scene of bitter up- braiding from the father, and bitter, brutal indiffer- ence and neglect on the part of the son. " The old man softened toward his only child before he died, and on the last day of his life he talked about him, and said when he was gone he would have no friend but me in all the wide, wide world. He implored me to stand by him. He made me promise solemnly that I would not for- sake him, that I would make it my life-work to save him. " You have often asked me how I knew what working girls and working women, and the children of the slums, and the daughters of drunkards, had to endure ; how I could work for them as I had done ? The truth is, I had lived it all. I tried in every way to support and care for this man. I sang in church, I gave music lessons, I took in sewing in the evenings, I washed and scrubbed and KATHARINE GRAY 305 kept our poor rooms clean. I cooked the food and he cursed me while he ate, but I kept my vow until the day when he said he had made an engage- ment for me to sing in a concert saloon. That night I forsook him, and left him to his life and to his fate. " I had no refuge except with an old woman who had been my father's nurse. She took me in, but I was not safe from him even there. Some day, if ever I have strength, I can tell you such a story of a girl's struggle to earn support as has never been matched by that of any girl of the many you have helped and cheered. But I found an honest way. Through an employment agency I learned of an aged invalid woman desiring a nurse who would care for her during a long sojourn at German baths and other health resorts. I applied for the situa- tion. The woman, for some reason, seemed to like me. She was paralyzed, and when I told her that I had nursed and cared for a paralytic grandfather for some years, she seemed to feel that I could care for her. " Within a year from the time I broke my vow to live to save my father, we were settled in Flor- ence. One night, when Mrs. Graham was restless, I sang to her. She seemed delighted with my voice. The next day she called me to her and asked me to tell her all about my past life. I told her, and why, with a voice like mine, I had accepted this position. It ended in her insisting that I should continue my musical studies, but I was so bitter and so proud, and had so little trust in God or in any human being, that I refused the lessons as u 306 THE TEMPTATION OP a gift. I stayed with her all the remaining years of her life. And when she died, she left me, in her will, calling me the ' beloved friend and comforter of her declining years,' enough to complete a musi- cal training that would fit me to support myself by my music. I asked her for the privilege of tak- ing her name, for my life was haunted by the fear that my father should find me, though I was never free from self-condemnation because I had not kept my promise to give my life to him. I never deliberately decided not to go back to him, but I did think that if I sang upon the stage, or in any public way, it was better that the old name should not be known. I thought too, that I could more easily find and care for my father if he did not know where or how to find me, and when I came back to this country I did try to find him, but there was no- where to look except among his old haunts, and cer- tainly he was not there. " Then came the comfort and the consolation of your care, dear Mrs. Maitland, and of Gretta's beautiful friendship, and after that the awful temp- tation of Harold's tenderness and love, and I yielded to them all. " Do you remember the first night when Gretta brought me home, and you let me sit at your feet, while Harold played and all the others sang, and they read this passage, ' The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty ' ? Do you know, I hadn't been believing for a long time in any God, or love, or home, or heaven, or in any human kindness. That night was a revelation to me, and I assure you, Mrs. Maitland, I felt like a child that had found a KATHARINE GRAY 307 home. Somehow the atmosphere of Wildholm seemed native air to roe, and I could never begin to tell you how, from that day on, I clung to my thought of you, and my desire to get back to you whenever I was away. " You did not heed it much, because your rjeart was full of Gretta, and though you were very kind to me, you did not know that my heart was always waiting beside yours like a little homesick child. When you looked approvingly at me or smiled upon me, I was always strong to go back to my work, and when you began to show me the ways in which I could carry out my desire to help others who had been as miserable as myself, you really began to put new life into me. Then Gretta's faith and Gretta's sunny, beautiful trust was another teacher for me, and Harold Moore's prayer that Easter evening was the first prayer that 1 had heard for years that had not been answered by a bitter feel- ing in my heart. I felt that God could not be good, and let young women suffer as I had suffered, as others suffered, from the brutal degradation of those who ought to protect them from all harm. "After I began to feel what it was to have God in my heart, I began to feel too, that probably grandmother was right, that it was the utter ab- sence of love in me that made it impossible for me to help or win my father. He was my own, and yet I hated him. You were not my own, and I loved you, and that was pure selfishness of course. I loved you because you were kind to me, and I hated him because he was unkind. If ye love them that love you, what reward have ye ? 308 . THE TEMPTATION OF " You see I gave up the duty that God had given me, and that I had vowed to perform, and tried to atone for my wrong-doing by saying that I would give as much of my life as possible to the helping of others who were unfortunate and sad. You know how I have interested myself in other girls. You do not know how I have always tried to work as much as possible for the daughters of those who had suffered by intemperance. You wonder that my eyes blaze, and that I become excited when men like Shakespeare Potts, and a good many others, laugh at the women who wear the yellow or white ribbon or the little silver cross. It is hard for me to remember that such critics do not know, and cannot know, the blight and wreck that drink is to human lives and homes. Why, Mrs. Maitland, I believe I could become a greater fanatic than has ever been born upon that one question alone, because of my knowledge of its resultant misery and degradation and sin. " There is nothing more to be told. I had been willing to work, but I would not take the concert singer's life, although I knew I could earn more in that way than I could do by teaching. It seemed to me that I could never stand before an audience without searching in it for my father's angry face. But I taught early and late. I lived frugally. I have saved as much money as I ever received at Mrs. Graham's hands, and am ready to pass it over to some one who will do the good with it that it might have done if it had never come to me. Be- sides this, I can earn by my teaching more than enough for one. KATHARINE GRAY 309 " You must not feel that my mental struggle was altogether new, dear friend Ever after I al- lowed myself to be happy in the thought of love and home I was troubled. I had made a dying pillow easy by a vow that I would give my life to saving my father. I knew also, that somewhere in the world was my mother, perhaps an outcast and a sinner too. What right had I to bring the daughter of such parents to any good man's home? " And how could Harold hope to find a helper in me in doing good work for the families of other drunkards, teaching daughters and mothers that their patience and love should last while life lasts, when I turned my back upon my own ? " I was such a coward, Mrs. Maitland, that it took me a long time, after I knew the right, to be willing to go back to my duty, to lay down my sel- fish hopes of happiness and home. And when I had taken my resolve to find my parents, to give myself to them as long as they needed me, I think I comforted myself with a hope that they could not be found, or that if found they might not want me or need me, or might need only the money I could earn. I clung to the hope that I should be able soon to bring back to you, Mrs. Maitland, all my best years and best powers, and offer them to you for the use of the poor and suffering for whom you cared. You see. dear friend, to whom I owe so much of my knowledge and love of the truth, that all this time of my repentance I was 'rebuilding my house of lies.' I constantly gave up my love for Harold, and my joy of being near you all, and as constantly when I saw them escaping, my heart 310 THE TEMPTATION OF went out after them and hugged them to itself once more. And you must tell Harold that, had it not been for what I learned of you, and of him, and of Gretta, of a life that ' seeketh not its own,' a life with God in the midst, I would never have been able to resist the temptation to just stay and love you all, and be happy with you forever. " And do you know, I gave up finally only that night in the church when I stood up and sang for you. My own heart went out with the words, and for the first time I was willing, heart willing, to seek and to save. For the first time it seemed to me better to ' rescue the perishing, care for the dying ' than to live my own life of love and joy. Ever since I have been so grateful that God sent the joy in service before it was forced upon me, for when the music ended, there, in the midst of that throng looking up at me with the old look that I hated when a child, I saw my father's face. When I fled from him I left him a letter telling him that 1 was not unmindful of my promise to his father, that I was willing to work for him in all honest and reputable ways ; that if the time ever came in his life that he was sick and in trouble and needed me, I would come to him and take care of him and try to keep my word. And here he was. I had only to look at his face to see how ill he looked, what a wreck he was, to know that the time of needing me had come. " The next morning he came to me in the garden at Wildholm, and though he did not know it, I sent him away fully intending to follow. " And I have found him. I shall never leave KATHARINE GRAY 311 him while he lives. If this work does not take all the rest of my days, perhaps, dear Mrs. Maitland, some day you will let me come back to watch be- side you after dear Gretta makes a home with Mr. Conrad who, as you know, has long had possession of her heart. " To Harold I can never come back, but some other woman will be to him what I could not have been ; but I believe none will ever love him more than I have loved. " To me the way is clear to give my life to my father, and to my mother, if she may be found. If not, to give it to others who have suffered or sinned, and who are needing the love of God as it can come to them only through the love of one who can give herself for them." It was early afternoon when Katharine began to read. The dusk was falling, and she still sat in her room with the folded sheets held tightly in her hand. Her face was white and drawn. Her eyes had again the same horror stricken look that Gretta had so recently kissed away. From the garden be- low she could hear Gretta's voice, in merry talk with Conrad. What strange Nemesis was this that pur- sued her ? What network was this that was weav- ing itself closer and closer about her life ? Who sent them, one after another, Harold Moore, and Theo- dore and his mother, and Robert, and now this beautiful girl, who had lived day after day under the same roof, whom she never liked because of a haunting something in her face that was familiar, and that always seemed to bear in it a reproach ? 313 THE TEMPTATION OF a girl to whom she had been kind for Gretta's sake, but with an intangible reluctance to receive her whenever she came, and a sense of relief when she was gone. She understood it now. She understood that some subtle inward chord between Margaret's heart and that of Mrs. Maitland had made those two understand and love each other. She under- stood that some unrecognized consciousness of kin- ship had drawn Margaret's heart and Gretta's close together. She understood the warfare between the conscience and the nature that could not, try as she would, feel any throb of natural love for Robert Gray. She understood why old Debby had so many times come to her, saying, "If Miss Gretta jest let ole Debby take care of her and all her things, like Miss Graham do, 'twould 'pear mighty sight more like Miss Gretta was Massa Larry's own child. Miss Graham she's every bit like our own fambly folks ; 'pears like Miss Graham done b'long here jest same's Miss Gretta do." Mrs. Gray understood also why Theodore treated Margaret with the protective brotherly kindness that had always marked his manner ; she thought she knew even why old Biddy, no matter how rest- less she might be, sank into quiet and comfort when she was near. Between Margaret and every one of these was the subtle link of old association. She, alone because in her heart had been kept no tender memory of love she alone felt no throb of this unseen tender tie that bound all the others more or less closely to her sister's child. And even now, no throb of gladness that she lived, and was good and true and brave, as her sister KATHARINE GRAY 313 would have been proud to have her be, softened the pang of fear and annoyance that she should have crossed her path again. She underwent no very extended conflict as to whether she should take the letter to Mrs. Maitland. If Mrs. Maitland read it, Gretta would read it. If Gretta read it Theodore would do so, and if Theo- dore read it he would know at once that the woman who should be at Wildholm in the place of her own child the woman to whom should come the wealth and the position and the love that had blessed, and that ought to continue to bless Gretta' s life the woman whom she had deserted as a child, and who would be able to follow step by step the dark road of deceit that she herself had trod, the woman who, if she came back into their lives, would per- haps bring Robert with her, was waiting some- where to be called to claim her own. Nor was this all. She had sneered at the drawn sword, but she knew too well the sense of justice in the heart of Theodore Burke to believe for a moment that he would take to himself a bride, allowing her to re- tain a name and an inheritance to which she had no claim. A wild thought took possession of her, of taking the letter to him, revealing all the facts, ap- pealing to him to conceal them, and to save her from Gretta's scorn when she knew who she was, and comprehended what her life had been. But only for one brief moment did the impulse run riot in her mind. She watched them, Theodore and Gretta, as out yonder in the garden they moved up and down in the afternoon shadows, and her knees trembled and her whole frame shook with the 314 THE TEMPTATION OF thought of having Gretta know. Then the courage of habit came to her rescue. Surely there was no need of this agitation. Mrs. Maitland was not strong. The girl, Margaret, had chosen her own life. It might be years that Robert would keep her nursing and caring for him, and in those years what might not happen ? Margaret was not the woman to return and bring that man, nor the woman again to forsake him. Mrs. Maitland was old ; Theodore's mother was old. If Margaret got no answer, she would only suppose that the letter widened the breach. To show the letter was folly and madness ; and calmly folding it up, she glanced about her room. There was no place of safety. Gretta was in the habit of going constantly to her closets and her desk. While she hesitated a rap came at the door, and old Debby brought a request from Mr. Conrad that he might see her in the library. Hastily dropping the letter into her pocket, she descended to find him waiting for her, with a face full of such ear- nest and happy hopefulness as reminded her of the boy she had known long ago. She took her hand from the letter she was grasp- ing so tightly in her pocket, and wondered, as she put it in his warm grasp, if he would feel how the very touch of that paper was tingling and stinging to the very ends of her fingers. But he felt noth- ing evidently, except the new happiness that was flooding his life. " Of course you did not think it strange, dear Mrs. Gray," he began, " that I spoke to Mrs. Mait- land first. I could not, as you understand, ask you KATHARINE GRAY . 315 for Gretta when," he added, sadly " she doesn't seem even to remember that she belongs to you. But I do not forget, and I believe you would be willing to share her love with me. As for me I have always loved her, and have never known an hour in my life when my heart turned away from her toward any other woman. She aroused the manly and protective instinct in me when I was only a child and seemed given me to care for and de- fend. I can never think of living the rest of my life without her. Indeed, I never have lived without her. She has been in every purpose since I had a purpose, and in every plan and hope and dream she has always had her place. Surely you are not un- willing?" he asked, having in his own eagerness failed to notice the pallor of her troubled face. " You cannot lose her in giving her to me." " No, not unwilling, only very, very thankful and glad," she said, her lips trembling. "But as for losing her, Teddy," she said, using the old name for the first time and turning to him with more of the old, confiding manner than he had seen before, " I have " and her voice suddenly choked with sobs " I have lost her already. I have reared her to think of herself as belonging to. some one else, un- til I have cheated my heart of its child. And, oh, my God ! " she added, passionately, "there are times when the mother in me is wild for her I feel some- times as if I could take her in my arms and cry out to all the world that she is mine, mine, mine." " She will be none the less yours for belonging to me," said Theodore, soothingly. " I shall find the child heart in her and bring it back to you. Do 316 THE TEMPTATION OF you not remember how I found her for you once before ? " And she suddenly turned upon him, her eyes streaming with tears, and placing both her hands in his, said, with a passionate outbreak of feeling, " You helped me then, dear boy. You stood by me then. I was a weak and foolish, and perhaps a wicked woman. Certainly I was wicked when I married Robert Gray. But it didn't matter to you whether I was weak or strong, evil or good." He winced a little, and his face grew pale. He remembered the shock that came to him when first he saw something in her that made her seem less than noble and true, but he only held her hands more tightly and listened as she went on. " I loved my daughter and it didn't matter to you what I did or what I was, for you loved her too, and we two, out of the wide world, are the ones who love her still. And I have lost her," she repeated, with a look of anguish such as might have been on her face if she gazed into an open grave. " She loves me too, but I never feel that she trusts me. She is never able to bring to me her innermost feeling or thought. There is a barrier always be- tween us. Promise me, oh, my friend, that nothing that you ever do, or that you ever say, shall widen this gulf. Promise me that my mistakes, even the things I have done that are wrong, shall never be made known by you to her ; that she shall be kept by you from learning to despise the mother who has lived for her and who would have died for her." And Theodore, remembering nothing but that in those early days she had been willful and unwise, KATHARINE GRAY 317 soothed and chided her for blaming herself over- much for the misfortunes of her life, and readily promised that if it were in human power to help it, life should bring nothing more to rob the mother of her child. And when she seemed comforted, he added, " I wanted more than your consent to give Gretta to me, Mrs. Gray, this afternoon. I wanted to go on with the little story that I began to tell you in this room so long ago, and that ended with my discov- ery that Gretta was back at the house of your father-in-law. I was thinking about this strange change of names that has come to both of us. When Gretta comes to me she must come, of course, in her own name, unless she was legally adopted by Mrs. Maitland, and given the name of Wild. I sup- pose you provided for that, did you not ? " and Kath- arine, once more feeling the sword of discovery swinging above her head, whispered unhesitatingly, "Yes." " That is all right then. And it is all right also in my own case. I took the Conrad name with the Conrad fortune, which came to me from the man who, after those early years of battling with hard work and temptation and poverty in Chicago, took me into his business and into his home and into his heart as well. I did not tell you anything be- yond the fact that that blessed old nurse, for whom I secured one-half the money due her from Robert Gray, gave me a room in her house, and gave me work among the chickens and the flowers in her yard, and made me her boy of all work until I secured a position in the mercantile house of Conrad & Son. 318 THE TEMPTATION OF I did not tell you how I got that first position. Remember, I had nothing to comfort my soul in those days except my memory of yourself and Gretta. I used to pass that little grocery after my work was done, and actually peer in to see if I could get a look at the baby wagon, which must have tumbled to pieces long ere then. My chief pleas- ure was in sitting on the shady side of the wall of that old stone church where you waited while I wheeled the baby to you. My favorite walk, as I told you, was round and round the square, imagin- ing that I had the little thing before me in the wagon. " One sunny summer afternoon, I fell asleep sit- ting upon the steps of that church. My great de- light was in listening to the throbbing and swelling of the organ music, as it came out through the half- closed doors. I opened my eyes from a heavy slum- ber to see a throng of carriages by the door, and to see a long, black coffin, piled high with flowers and wreaths, borne by the arms of strong, young men down the aisle and placed before the altar. Behind it followed a man with a kind face, who walked with head bowed low, as if crushed with an overwhelm- ing grief. The church filled slowly. I watched from my post at the door and heard the service, and bowed my head, and shrank back into the shadows of the porch as they bore the body forth again. They had placed it in the hearse, which was drawn forward a few steps, and the gentleman was enter- ing his carriage with eyes hardly lifted from the ground, when the sudden dash of a fire-engine around the church corner frightened the horses, KATHARINE GRAY 319 and he was thrown back upon the pavement, with his body between the wheels. The horses reared and plunged, and I, who stood nearest, sprang to their heads, and though I was such a little fellow that they lifted me from the ground and fairly swung me, I kept my hold until the injured man was lifted to the walk. " He insisted upon getting into the carriage, de- claring he was not hurt ; and when a gentleman would have entered with him, he waved him aside, and reaching out his hand to me, said, " Come, my little man, I want you here with me." And all that long, slow, silent ride, while he gazed out at the window and up at the sky, I sat oppressed by the solemn sadness of his face, in the corner of the carriage opposite this sad old man. At the grave he did not beckon me to come, and I waited by the carriage door. When it was all over and he came back and sank into his seat with his face buried in his hands, he seemed to have forgotten me ; but as the carriage started he motioned me to come in, and though he never spoke to me and never looked at me, I felt somehow not afraid of him, only afraid of disturbing the great sorrow that seemed to be breaking his heart. " We stopped at last. It was before the Conrad mansion. I do not know whether he saw the tears in my eyes or not, but he took me in. He ques- tioned me. He offered me money which I could not take, but he found I wanted work. It is a long story. He gave me a place in his counting-room and, after a while he gave me a place in his home. His wife had died years before. The new grave 32O THE TEMPTATION OF held the remains of his only son, a young man just admitted to his father's business. " I never shall forget the joy of that day when my savings had amounted to enough to enable me to pay all that Mr. Gray had left unpaid of that old sum for taking care of our little girl. I was the proudest and happiest lad in Chicago. I remember I lingered on the way and stole into the church we both know, and said my prayers in a shadowy cor- ner behind a pillar. My mother took me to church when I was a wee laddie, and I confess that to this day an open church door tempts me to go in and sit in the dim silence and pray. Of course, the good old woman resisted taking the money ; declared she did not need it. But to me it was a promise to be kept, a debt to be paid. My first debt," he added, " and I have never made another. Mrs. Brown said her luck turned on the day that I came back to her, ragged and hungry and forlorn. Perhaps it did. I only know she is living there still, and still filling her rooms with people for whom she is sorry, and who frequently do not pay. It doesn't matter, though. I shall be able to see that she never knows want again, and the fact that once she protected and cared for Gretta is reason enough for me to care for her. You know all the rest, Mrs. Gray. You have heard how generously Mr. Con- rad gave me a choice of my own career in life, and you know too that before he died he gave me the name and the place in his heart and the place in his fortune that he would have given to the one who died." "And you deserved it all," said Katharine, who KATHARINE GRAY 321 had listened so intently that for the moment she had forgotten her own sorrow and shame. " You have deserved it all." " But I have valued it all," he added, " because it has given me the power to help ' the widow and the fatherless in their affliction,' to undo the heavy bur- dens, and to let the oppressed go free. My mother's early experience, your awful life, the fate of the women who suffer and toil, the degradation in which little children are reared, the pollution by drink of the body that was meant to be the temple of the living God, the self-seeking of human beings, the dishonesty in business, the corruption in poli- tics, the debasement of even our governmental life everything, everything made me feel that, in so far as one human life put between these evils and their victims could save or help, my one life should be given to that end. Beyond that, my one personal purpose and desire was to find and serve the woman and the child who had won my boyish heart. To find you two, to take my place again in your lives as protector and friend, to bring you all I had been able to wrest from life, this was my dream. Even in the long years before I gave up my search for my mother, I think I was unconsciously seeking also for you, and now that I have found her, I " Found her ? " said Katharine, with an involun- tary outward movement of her hands, as if she were striving to break free from some horrible network that was tightening about her. "When did you find her, and where ? " " That night when the doctor took you home from the meeting so ill that we dared not excite v 322 THE TEMPTATION OF you. She was in the carriage with you. You had seen her before, when she was here as Harold's patient ; but she is so greatly changed, so thin and silent that of course you did not know her, or you would have been the first to " Katharine winced. " She, poor dear," he went on, " knew no one of us I think, until that night. That night, though you did not see him, Robert Gray was in Washing- ton. Do not be troubled," he said, seeing that she trembled ; " he is gone, and will never disturb you again. 'He is only a wreck of a man, but I have arranged that he shall not live in hunger and die in want." You see," he added, playfully, "that I have only been forestalling my duties as your son." " How can I thank you ? " she murmured. " Did you say your mother saw him ? " " Yes, and the shock of her sight of him, and of the brutal attack he made upon her, brought the past all back to her." "All?" asked Katharine, feelingly, her white face pitiful in its dread. " Perhaps not all, but she recalls the railway acci- dent. She even arouses in me a hope that after all your sister's child was saved. She knows you perfectly" Katharine shuddered "and the last picture left on her brain as she fell was that of a man staggering up the bank with a child in his arms. I know a man caught the child from my own hands. We are not going to rest, Gretta and I, till we have found Margaret and brought her back to Harold, who has saved and kept my mother alive for me. He is a changed man since he lost Miss KATHARINE GRAY 323 Graham, and a part of our life-work is going to be the bringing of her back to him. If only we might also find your sister's child, and bring her back to you, we should indeed be glad." "It is impossible, impossible," she gasped. "It seems so, but worth all it can cost to try. Do you know, Mrs. Gray, that when Mr. Conrad made me his heir, I felt at first as if I had been deprived of my right to work and earn my bread. And then I just put his fortune all aside and let it grow, and said to myself that I would live as if it were not mine. It should be used for the poor and oppressed. It has been a trust in my hands, a sword with which I have slain the dragons of dis- tress that were threatening many a life. I would use it freely to find your niece for you." " Did you care so much for that child ? I thought Gretta was the one you loved." " And so she is, my love and my life," he answered, fervently; "but you remember in your time of sore trouble you entrusted your sister's little one to me to keep for you, and I want to fulfill that trust." Her head bowed low. She feared her eyes might betray her. Her fingers linked tightly together in her lap, felt that letter. She drew it forth and Theodore saw it, though she clasped her hands around it as if the living, writhing secret were a serpent out of which she would crush all power to coil and sting. It was a moment of . almost mortal anguish ; perhaps the final struggle of the outraged truth and honor in her soul. Slowly, surely her life was com- 324 THE TEMPTATION OF ing to judgment. She was as certain of it as are the condemned toward whom the day of doom and darkness creeps. But here was one more chance of mercy. In the dim twilight to her excited imagination the somber room with its high carved panels was like some old confessional. The faces of the old por- traits of true men and pure women stood out pale against the shadows, and bent sad eyes upon her that seemed to read her secret through and through. Theodore's noble head outlined against the back of the carved oak chair reminded her more than ever of the angel of the lifted sword. He, he only had the power to slay her utterly if he persisted in his purpose to find her sister's child. He only could keep that sword from falling, and he only out of all her world had the heart to pity and protect her if she told him all. Why not give him the letter, tell him the whole story, cast off in one moment the horrible burden of years, be ever after an outcast and alone, a wanderer, a toiler, living only to undo and atone, but once more, once more, caring only to be good. Lower and lower the head dropped upon her breast ; the tense fingers relaxed their clasp, a hot rain of tears fell upon the listless hands. Sud- denly stole into the window Gretta's voice singing by some bedside in the old west wing the anthem arranged for the meeting that seemed so long ago : " The Lord thy God in the midst in the midst of thee is mighty. He will save. He will rejoice over thee with joy. He will rest in his love." Gretta ! Gretta ! At the thought of her the face KATHARINE GRAY 325 hardened to defiance. Was she mad, to do a thing to hasten the day when Gretta should hate and scorn her as she hated and scorned herself ? Not even if the shining wings of those who had waited to bear a joy to heaven drooped never to lift again. Theodore rose, and held out both his hands. She put hers in them, and looked straight into the noble, loving face whose eyes had never changed from their boyish tenderness and truth. One great truth went surging and sweeping through her brain. As ever he was Gretta's and her own. He, by the straight path of justice and right, had brought to Gretta love and wealth and honor and name, all and more than 'she had been able to give her by the devious and dreadful road her burdened soul had trod. She had lost everything for herself, won nothing for her child that would not have been hers in any case. She had gained the whole world, wresting it out of God's hand only to find that He would have given it to her, if she could have trusted him, without one penny of the awful price. Ted took her trembling hands, and gazed down, with his old tender, protective smile. " You have suffered much," he said, " but you have been so faithful and so good. You have taught Gretta everything that is good. The old mother whom I lost long ago is most dear to me still. It is a joy to call her mother. It has cut me to the heart to see your face when Gretta called you by another name. Hereafter you must let me feel that you have some one to call you mother, and re- member no act of mine shall ever separate you either from your daughter or your son." 326 THE TEMPTATION He led her to the door, and as he held the dra- pery aside for her to pass, stooped down and kissed the white, unyielding face. Ten minutes after, Debby, shaking the pillows of the sofa and putting them back in place, and re-ar- ranging the books upon the table, picked up a letter from the floor. Poor old Debby, she could not read, but she waddled away with it and laid it open in Mrs. Maitland's hand. CHAPTER XX KATHARINE walked steadily till she reached her door, then staggering to her couch, she threw herself upon it with a gesture of despair. Fool, fool of a boy, a sentimental, over-conscien- tious boy, to search as he would through the world, and bring to her a woman to betray and blight the work of weary years. She knew him ; he would do it soon or late. Meantime there was the letter. She would destroy it without a moment's delay. She rose, and pushing back her hair, glanced at herself in the mirror. She remembered that Harold Moore was to dine with them, and someway, somehow, she must make of that white, maddened face a counte- nance that could calmly meet them all at dinner ; but first let her destroy the letter. She put her hand in her pocket. It was not there. Remember- ing the hands tightly clasped about it in the library, she flew down the wide staircase. No one was there. Noises sounded from Mrs. Maitland's room. " Come quickly, auntie," called Gretta. " Grand- mamma has such a letter from Madge. Debby picked it up in the library. The man must have dropped it on his way to your room with the mail." They were all much agitated. Mrs. Maitland's old eyes were full of tears. Harold Moore's face was as white as on that night when Margaret took her- self away. 327 328 THE TEMPTATION OF " Go back to the first word, Theodore, read it all out once more, from beginning to end. I want to hear it once more myself, and I want Mrs. Gray to hear." And Katharine had to sit and listen, wondering if the stern look in Theodore's face meant that he had seen that letter in her hand. She could not guess and yet she must sit there if she died, while his voice read over again all the tale that brought relief to their hearts, and added a thou- sand-fold to the burden of her own. It was a singularly subdued and quiet party that gathered around the table at Wildholm later than usual that night. Before the servants no one wished to speak of that which was uppermost in every mind. "To think that I should have doubted her," said Harold to Gretta, taking advantage of a moment when old 'Lijah was out of the room. " But we must not dwell upon that now. The only thing that matters at present is that we find her quickly. How soon can you start, Dr. Moore ? " " I would like to start this minute. I would start to-night, but that I have patients who are crit- ically ill, and whom I cannot leave to others. I sup- pose," he said inquiringly, " Theodore would not wish to leave his mother or " he looked at Gretta and hesitated. "Or me," she said smiling. "You know Dr. Moore, we meant to go and find her, and bring her back to you before that letter came. It was to be " and she smiled up in his face and suddenly dropped her eyes. " What ! your wedding journey ? " KATHARINE GRAY 329 " Yes," she whispered. Theodore had taken Mrs. Gray down to dinner. Mrs. Maitland feeling too fatigued with the excite- ment and emotion of the afternoon, had preferred to remain in her room. To Theodore, Katha- rine's silence and weary white face were no sur- prise. The other two chatted on quietly, and the ladies soon left the table, followed almost imme- diately by the gentlemen. " You are looking so white and weary, Mrs. * Gray," said Dr. Moore, kindly. " You have never seemed like yourself since that night when you fainted in the church." " I am quite well again, nevertheless," said Kath- arine, calmly. "But the night is warm. I was just thinking of asking Theodore to take me into the garden a few moments for the fresh air." As they strolled down the myrtle walk, Theodore halted almost unconsciously, and drew her to a seat under the very tree where Gretta had spurred her horse and bidden him "Come on." " There was something you wanted to say to me ? " he said, gently. " See how Providence has favored us. We wanted to bring back Margaret for Harold. We wanted to bring back your sister's child for you, and God seems to have sent them both to us, and sent them both in one. I heard Harold say he could not go for her. I know you do not wish any time to be lost. I believe I can trace her readily. I shall find her with Robert Gray, and as I send to him every month, I know just where to look for him. I will go for her at once. But look up, dear friend," he said. " I will 330 THE TEMPTATION OF go, but I do not wish to go alone. Why may not Gretta go with me ? " " Gretta," she started as if in horror. " Gretta to meet Robert Gray ? " " No, that need not be, necessarily. I can easily keep her from meeting him ; and surely you know that I would spare her any pain. But if either of these girls is the one to come in contact with this man, it should not be the one who has already borne so much, the one who has so nobly taken up the daughter's hopeless task. We must think of what is just and right to her. He is not Margaret's father. Her heart has always told her that, and yet she has trained her heart, noble girl that she is, to do what she thought to be her duty, and to prac- tise an affection and tenderness that she could not feel. The poor girl has been greatly wronged, and it is for us to make amends and without a moment's delay." " Let Gretta go ? I cannot," she moaned, piti- fully. " I cannot, I cannot be separated from her." " But surely you would not let your love for her stand between you and an act of justice to your sister's child ?" Suddenly she sprang to her feet, and standing in the path, looked down upon him with her eyes blazing with excitement. " Justice to my sister's child does not require it," she said, fiercely. " It is enough that wreck and ruin come upon myself. Why need they touch my child ? Listen to me, Theodore. Mrs. Maitland knows the story of this unfortunate girl's career. She does not know that the man who has cursed her life is the same who KATHARINE GRAY 331 has cursed mine. Why need she know? Her whole heart is bound up in Gretta." " And would you have Gretta keep the name and the fortune and the love that belong to another child ? Would you let her live a life that you know to be false, unjust, and wrong?" "Listen," she said, seizing his arm. "She is utterly innocent and utterly ignorant of any wrong. Let her alone. You and I only know that Mar- garet Graham is Margaret Wild. You and I only know that her place is here, as the daughter in this home, as the heiress of all this wealth. Why dis- turb that state of things ? Mrs. Maitland cannot linger here many years. Bring Margaret if you will. Let her marry Harold Moore, and by-and-by, when Mrs. Maitland is gone, take Gretta away, and leave Harold and Margaret if you like in this home. And since you have means enough to care for Gretta, let Harold and Margaret share as largely as you will in Mrs. Maitland's wealth. Let them spend her means in doing the good that she would wish to have done. Margaret will not be defrauded. All that would have been her own will come back to her, except the one thing, that, if you give to her, you do it at the risk of breaking the hearts of both Gretta and Mrs. Maitland. Gretta would know that I am her mother, and I should know that she did not love me as a child, or want my mother-love. Mrs. Maitland gives the love of kinship to Gretta. She would not transfer it to Margaret, and Mar- garet would know that she was not able to take her own. It would only mean misery for all." " But my friend, my dear friend," said Theodore, 333 THE TEMPTATION OF seizing both her hands, and drawing her close to him, and looking earnestly into her face, "you are excited ; you could never say such things in your senses. Do you not realize, can I not make you understand, that all you plan means nothing when, in order to accomplish it, you must do the thing that is dishonorable and unjust ? What hope have we, Gretta and I, for happiness in a life that held a shameful deceit and wrong like that ? No, no, the way of peace is the way of righteousness and truth, and much as I love you, much as I love Gretta, I can travel with you by no other road. There has been a wrong done, Mrs. Gray. Noth- ing matters to any of us save that we make it right. If, as you say, there is money to be returned, all I have is yours. Let us together undo as speedily as possible all that never should have been done, and then take together whatever is the result. What does it matter to any of us three, where or how we live ? But to be upright, to be just that is vital ; that is imperative." While he talked her head had dropped upon her breast. She had come to the end. Defeated, dis- covered, all her life's labor come to naught. And yet in that hour it was all as nothing to her com- pared to one maddening terror that Gretta, her child, should know she was her mother, and should know that her mother was too vile a thing for her sweet lips ever to touch again with even a good- night kiss. Theodore watched her. There swept over his soul the great anguish of that far-away night when she fled away from him with Gretta in her arms, KATHARINE GRAY 333 and he knew in his inmost soul that she was un- worthy of the worship of his childish heart. He had scorned himself for his own suspicions, he had fought one by one as if they were traitors every thought that had ever risen in his heart against her, and he had loved her, been faithful to her through all. But now, as if with a sudden revelation that could not be gainsaid, he knew her for what she was. With a sudden flash t>f recollection he knew that he had seen that letter in her hands, and that she knew all it contained. And yet this was the woman on whose heart had been cradled the head that was henceforth to find its resting-place upon his breast. But it had not been given to him to mete out justice. His must not be the hand that should strike the light and gladness out of Gretta's heart, for well he knew how straight and true the higher instincts of her soul would lead her to the falseness and shame that had been behind her mother's word and deed. As these feelings stirred him, his face softened, and .Katharine, with that subtle vividness of percep- tion that was able to follow his thoughts as if they had been written in the air, felt and used her advantage. " Theodore Burke," she said, quietly, " you would see righteousness and justice done. Believe me, if you reveal to Mrs. Maitland or to Gretta that you know anything more of Margaret or of me than they already know, you are doing the greatest cruelty that ever was conceived. Three hours ago, with my hands in yours, you promised me on your honor never to permit word or act of yours to hurt me in 334 THE TEMPTATION OF the eyes of my own child. Whatever came you vowed to stand by me in it. You desire to guard my honor. You cannot ; I will take care of what is left of it myself." And her lip took a scornful curve. " Take you care of your own honor. How much of it will be left when you have betrayed a woman who is at your mercy, and been false to your solemn word ? " "Stop, stop," he said. "I will hear no more. I can guard your secret ; I can leave the wrong you are doing to God ; I can free this poor girl from the clutches of that man ; I can see that out of my own fortune comes to her even more than could have come to her from Mrs. Maitland. It is no question of what I shall do, I am only daring to urge you to do the thing that is just and right." "Wait there," she said, huskily. "All that could have come to her from the Wild estate shall surely come ; but in my way and in my time. All that I have ever expended from that which would have come to her from my father, wrong as it was that it should have gone to her, shall come back to Jier. Do you fancy I have spent it for myself ? I have not. I have lived here, it is true, but my service has more than paid for my home, and nearly all of that which would have been Margaret's can be gathered for her again. Besides, I am not old, and what is lacking may yet be won. I swear to you, Theodore, that if God gives me life, she shall not be defrauded of one penny ; but she shall wait a little longer for her inheritance, and you shall not betray me to my child. What right have you ? " she went on angrily. " Is it not a family matter ? KATHARINE GRAY 335 and who has made you the judge and ruler of us all ? " " Stop, stop," he said. " Do you mean that in your family matters I have no right, no place that I may not dare, loving you as I do, loving Gretta as I do, even to protect you from yourself ? " "I mean," she added, fiercely, "that you can betray me if you will, but the day you show my daughter that I am her mother, that day I show you what a mother's influence can be, and no power in earth or heaven shall let you have my child. She will need no word of mine to keep her from taking to any man her heritage of shame." He rose quietly. Heretofore his face had shown a bitter battle with honor and pity and grief and tenderness ; but now he drew himself up to his full height, and his eyes took the steely look that made them gleam like an avenging sword. " It is enough," he said. " You have chosen to threaten. I did not need to listen to your pleading. I did not need that you should call upon the pity and the love my heart has known for you, or the pity I have too, for the child who must yet know what it is to have a mother like this. I said no word ; I had no thought of betrayal. I only urged you to tell the truth yourself. You will not do it, but " and he bent low and looked straight into her face, and went on in a tone so low and intense that it was like a death warrant to her courage and her hope "the truth will be known and justice will be done, though I may never open my lips or look again upon the one face that holds the world's whole joy and hope for me." 336 THE TEMPTATION OF He turned away from her, but she sprang after him. " Oh, stop, Theodore, let me beg of you, let me beseech of you not to betray me." " Did you not understand me ? I have had no thought of betraying you," he said, as he turned bitterly upon her. " But I said justice will be done, and so it will. You will betray yourself. Already you carry in your face that which stirs a question and a doubt. Robert Gray is alive. My mother is alive. You need not fear me. I shall keep my words to you. My lips shall never breathe to any human soul that which could make you to your child less lovely or less beloved ; but I implore you, for her sake, for yours, for my own, to tell the truth yourself, to make the rough places plain, the crooked paths straight, to prepare " and his voice sank to a solemn whisper " the way of the Lord, for verily I believe that he comes to deal with your life and with mine. God help you," he said, with a sudden burst of pitying tenderness ; " God help you. He meant you to be as noble a woman as, in spite of you, he has made of your own child." And as he walked away she turned and threw herself upon the bench, and dropped her head upon her arms. A low, shuddering cry of unutterable anguish broke from her lips. It would have melted any heart to hear it, but the strong man who has- tened swiftly away from her did not hear or heed. Overswept by the tide of his own indignation and distress, he strode forward, almost overthrowing Debby, who, rushing down the steps from the door of the conservatory, staggered straight into his arms. KATHARINE GRAY 337 " Good Lawd, Marse Conrad, go quick ! Fetch Doctor Harold ; he's jest visitin' Miss Marion round de front porch." " Stop ! stop ! What is it ? " " Miss Gretta. She's daid in 'mong de flowers dar. She's all daid." " Go yourself, Debby, and bring Dr. Moore back with you. For your life don't let Mrs. Maitland be excited. Just tell the doctor that I want to speak with him a moment, at once ; " and away she went, her teeth chattering and her eyes shining white against the darkness. She meant to do just as sne was told. What she did do was to steal up softly behind her mistress and beckon frantically to the doctor, who sat in his old place on the steps. He saw Debby and raised a warning finger slowly. "Ah, here's Debby come to carry you off to rest," he said, as he rose slowly to his feet. " It has been an exciting day for all of us," and he kissed Mrs. Maitland's hand reverently, and said " Good-night." One stride and he was inside the window drawing Debby after him by the arm. " Where ? " he whis- pered. " Dar in the conserbatory ; she's daid," she began in a wailing whisper, but he was already gone. Theodore had lifted her from the seat where Debby found her in the swoon that was indeed like death. Katharine's room was nearest. They took her there. Theodore could not have expressed his pain to see her, as like a little, helpless child, with life all to live over again, they put her back into her moth- er's bed. w 338 THE TEMPTATION OF The doctor stayed long, worked hard, and grew very anxious. Once there was a little flutter of life and the eyes opened, and looking past Theodore's face, watching with anxious terror, past the doctor, she saw Katharine, who had entered silently and stood watching in the shadows like a mute statue of despair. " Leave her to me," she said, in a voice that cut the air like an icicle, so cold and low and controlled that one could never have guessed the volcano that burned within. " She has fainted before, and I know what to do for her" ; and she came swiftly forward with a glance that would have swept them both from the room, but a sharp spasm, as of pain, convulsed the poor child's face, and her eyes were* lifted to Theodore with helpless, mute appeal. " Do not agitate her," said the doctor, anxiously ; but he was too late, for Katharine bent with out- stretched hands as if to gather the girl to her breast, when with a shudder of horror, Gretta drew herself back, and turning her face away, sank senseless on the pillows. " Go out of the room, Mrs. Gray, I beg of you," said Harold. " I will not be responsible if she sees you. Leave me with Debby " and both of those who loved her most shrank powerless backward be- yond the drapery of the door, and waited in the hall. " Men talk of sparing and protecting women," said Katharine, in a fierce whisper ; " this is the way they do it. I told you it would kill her to know, and before I could get to her side you have told her." " I have told her nothing," he answered, gently. KATHARINE GRAY 339 " I did not see her till Debby told me she had fallen in a swoon." "Where?" she asked, sharply. " In the conservatory. Dr. Moore was with her when we went out. Mrs. Maitland sent for him. I suppose she went to walk or rest among the flow- ers, and it proved too warm tor her," he added, soothingly, for Katharine's face was so white and anguished, and her hands, which she vainly tried to keep quiet, made the chair tremble by which she held. Indignant as he was, he pitied her. " Do not be frightened," he said, putting his arms about her to lead her to the wide window-seat from which one night she had watched the window of his mother's room; but she drew away from him, and throwing herself upon the couch, burst forth in such a tem- pest of sobs and tears as never once in all his life had it been his fate to see. "Frightened. I am not frightened," she said. " She will not die, but, oh, Theodore," she added, with a pitiful little moan, " did you not see that she turned away from me ? She would not let me touch her. She will never come back to me." She paused suddenly, and then laying her hand on his arm, as if she had forgotten her anger, she whispered, " If I could take her in my arms, and go out into the world alone, and leave home, and name, and friends, and all, and work for her until I died, and she would love me, I would stand up and tell all the world of all," the whisper sank lower, "all that it does not know; but she would turn from me, she would not touch me. Ah, God, I have lost my little child." 340 THE TEMPTATION OF " I think she is conscious again," said Harold, stepping swiftly to Mrs. Gray's side; "but she seems delirious. Do not sob so, Mrs. Gray," he said, pity- ingly. "She will soon be better, and your voice seemed to disturb her. Tell me, has she had any shock, any excitement, more than Miss Graham's letter gave to us all ? " " I know of none," said Katharine, yet gazing at Theodore with suspicious eyes. Could he have told her ? If not, why did she turn away ? Yet she knew he did not tell. If all other things crumbled beneath her feet, her belief in his honor and truth could not be shaken. He might be angry with her, despise her, put out no hand to stay the sword that overhung her, but if he said he had not spoken or would not speak, she knew she could believe him. All this went like a flash through her mind as she repeated, " I know of nothing, nor does Mr. Conrad. Neither of us saw her after dinner until she was unconscious." " It is the beginning of an illness," he said, " and I fear of a serious character. She must have absolute quiet, and only those about her who can control all agitation. Evidently your distress dis- turbed her," he said, turning to Katharine ; " and you must go home to the little mother, Conrad. Poor Debby is shaking with fright and Mrs. Mait- land must not know. "I shall stay here," he went on, "and if Mrs. Gray's distress can be so hidden that Gretta does not perceive it, she shall be with me ; but you should come back and be here just at hand, Theodore, and I think perhaps you would better KATHARINE GRAY 341 bring the little mother with you. There is no pres- ence in the sick-room better than hers. She is so healthy in body, so tender and sympathetic, and yet so unshaken, we can rely upon her if Mrs. Gray's nerves fail us." " I shall not fail," said Katharine, controlling every trace of her recent agitation. " I shall not fail again." Secure in the belief of Gretta's ig- norance of the truth, the mother's love and anxiety reasserted itself, and she begged Harold to let her go back. " I will keep in the shadow, and when she sees me again, if it troubles her I will come away." Then all together they softly stole back to the room where Debby was trying vainly to bathe the burn- ing, restless hands. The girl was conscious, but delirious, and in her incoherent mutterings of that long night talked of Theodore and grandmamma and Debby and Margaret, but never once, though Katharine's strained ears listened for it as the condemned might listen for the news of a reprieve, did the sick girl speak her name. And when she saw her, there was the same shuddering cry, the same shrinking from a touch or kiss that had broken the mother's heart. Little by little she yielded to the girl's evident distress at sight of her, and while she was always present and always watching, it was from behind the curtain or the screen. The "little mother," as they all called her now, had slipped quite naturally into all loving ministry in the sick-room. Gretta yielded to her gentle care like a tired babe trusting to a nurse 342 THE TEMPTATION who could quiet her to sleep when no one else could soothe. The old woman knew perfectly well that the stately pallid lady who always spoke gently to her, was the idol of those early days in Chicago, and quite free from the agitation that Katharine's presence once caused, her old heart rested in sweet content in her kindness, and she was at home and happy in nursing Gretta, as if there had never been an interruption in her care. CHAPTER XXI AS day succeeded day and the first terror settled into the certainty of brain fever, all life for the whole sad household vibrated with hope or fear according to the news that came from the sufferer. Day or night Katharine never left her. Mrs. Mait- land's chair was wheeled to the great hall window, and Deb by, broken-hearted, stayed close at her side or haunted the door of the sick-room, rejoicing when the little mother was forced to rest and she could take her place. Just outside the heavy cur- tains that swung before the door sat Theodore, wait- ing to serve if need arose, and watching constantly from his shadowed place every flitting shade of peace or pain that overswept the precious face. His "little mother," glad as she was to be there, needed much tenderness and rest, and he gave her both, taking her into the garden for fresh air, or to the conservatory, or sitting beside her talking to her of old times till she slept, and then stealing back to watch, and wait and pray. And through it all Katharine went in and out, her face hard and cold as ice, under the strain of her effort to control her grief. But she did control it, never once giving way after that first night, never seeming to know fa- tigue or to need slumber. All life for her had nar- rowed to that one room. To be there, to do with 343 344 TH E TEMPTATION OF her own. hands all that could be done, to let Mrs. Burke or Debby take her place when she saw the dear eyes close as if to shut out the sight of her face, this was all that was left of a world that held so much for her only a week ago. When forced to meet the others, she asked no sympathy, and as far as coldly gentle words could comfort, tried to comfort Mrs. Maitland. As for Theodore she rarely looked his way. She could not bear that one who knew the fierceness of her struggle, and perhaps the greatness of her sin, should see her humiliation and defeat. Besides, there was something in his very presence that seemed to claim a share in Gretta's heart, and now, at last, whether Gretta knew her or loved her or not, she was determined to have her all to herself. And thus they moved on to that awful day when, down in the library, the physicians met once more for Harold, who had never allowed any but most exacting duties to keep him from Gretta, had from the first called to his aid the skill of other specialists and the experience of older practitioners. Katharine had kept behind the curtains while they lingered by the' bedside and watched their faces as they watched her child, and she knew, when they left the room, as well as she would when Harold should creep back after they were gone and whisper their words to her, that they could not save her child. She knew when Mrs. Maitland's chair was wheeled softly nearer the door and Theodore held the curtain aside, that the stricken old heart was taking its last farewell. She saw Theodore creep softly in and stand and gaze as if he would KATHARINE GRAY 345 gather her up and hide her in his inmost heart, and she knew that he came now lest later they would not let him come. She knew all when she felt the wheels of the carriage that took the physi- cians away crunching and grinding her heart, and when Harold stole softly back, had no need to hear him say, " They fear there is nothing more that we can do." She knew it all before. She heard, but it was like a distant voice coming over the sea of beating waves, when Mrs. Maitland answered, " I am not going to rest in their judgment. I am go- ing to hope. You remember the text she always loved, ' The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty ' ; he is in our midst, in her heart, and in each one of our hearts, and he is mighty. He can and I believe will save. It shall be according to his word." "Amen," said Theodore, fervently; but Katharine never moved or spoke, she only wondered vaguely when they would have done and said all they wished and would go and leave her with her child. And as the night moved toward midnight, Theo- dore who knew her heart's desire by the longing in his own, who would have given years of his life to gather Gretta in his arms and alone in the silence and the shadows, hold her till the new dawn broke upon her eyes persuaded Mrs. Maitland to go to her room. Then he took the "little mother" to her rest and sat by her till she slept. Then whis- pering to Katharine that he would be outside and that she had only to speak and he would come, he went out softly and closed the door. She opened it swiftly and taking him by the arm drew him within. 346 THE TEMPTATION OP Gretta was moaning and muttering in her troubled sleep. " Teddy," she said, brokenly, " you remember I said she should never belong to you. I was wrong. She did and she does." "Yes," he answered, softly ; "she does and she will in that other home where God is in the midst of his people, where," he added, very gently, " his servants shall serve him and his name shall be writ- ten on their foreheads, where there shall be no more pain. See how utterly at peace she looks. His name has always been written in her forehead, has it not ? She belongs to God I can wait I shall find her once more. But now," he added, "she belongs to you, you only. One would be cruel to take her from you for one moment," and before she could answer or detain him he was gone. The door was shut, the light burned low, the firelight sent strange flickering shadows over the pallid face. Gretta was going away where not she but Theodore would find her again. He did find her once before, and she took her treasure from him and fled. She did not care whether his little heart broke or not. Now when he found her in that other land, would he bring her to her, or would he keep her for himself ? She could not think. She could only watch the white face and suffer, suffer God only knew how much. God ! Did he care ? They called him pitiful. Why should he care or be pitiful to her ? She had not cared. She had not been pitiful to any one, not even to her sister's lit- tle helpless babe, not even to loving old Debby, who had tried so faithfully to show her that love KATHARINE GRAY 347 could conquer ; not to the "little mother " and never once, even in his childhood, had she been pitiful to Ted. Ah ! if it should be true that God was piti- ful as well as " mighty," might it not be that it was his loving kindness to Gretta, not to herself, he must of course hate and despise her, but his love for Gretta that had held back her own punishment all these years, kept the sword from falling because Gretta was his own, and if the sword fell, must have felt the hurt. If it was true that all this time he had waited to let Gretta have joy and comfort in her life then surely he must be good, so good, so pitiful, so kind. And now if Gretta lived, shame and pain must inevitably come to her. The shadow of her moth- er's sin and the shame of her penalty must fall upon her too. So he had shown loving kindness again in taking her where she could not suffer if her mother were disgraced. He had shown love for Gretta then and that love, greater far than her own, was saving her daughter now from the effects of that mother-love which she, in her mad selfish- ness and vanity, had thought so great. She was dying that he might save her from her mother. As the deep consciousness of this truth stole into her heart, hardened as it was, she bowed her head and through her sobs broke the first genuine prayer her lips had prayed for many and many a year. " Yes, Lord God, in the midst of human lives and hearts thou art mighty. I love thee for sparing to my child the knowledge of my sin. I have not been worthy to keep her ! I will not try any more to hold her thou lovest her. I give it all up the 348 THE TEMPTATION OF mad struggle to keep her for myself ! I give her up to thee, and take from thee the shame and bur- den of my sin. Because thou hast loved her I give her up to thee." And while she waited and prayed with her face buried in Gretta's pillow as close as she could lie and not distress the sick one, a strange thing hap- pened. The tones of her low murmuring voice in words of prayer seemed to quiet the restless head and hands. The girl lay quite still. Then the eyes opened and looked steadily into Katharine's, bright with consciousness, sweet with recollection. Her child, her little child, she knew her, and she did not turn away. She only looked long and searchingly into the eyes that gazed down upon her, heavy with their weight of unshed tears. "Mother, mother," she whispered, "I am your own little girl." " Yes, yes, my own, my own ! " she answered, gathering up the girl so softly that no breath or movement seemed to stir the silence, and, joy of joys, she did not shrink but nestled close and lifted the face a little for the kisses that fell on cheek and brow and lip. " I love you," whispered Gretta. " Mother, mother," she repeated, in a whisper, but with lips that lingered and seemed to love the word. " I have been a wicked mother " for, verily, if this was the lucid interval that comes before the end, she must speak "I have sinned." " I know I went down to the garden to find you and Theodore that night ; I was too frightened to go away I heard every word." KATHARINE GRAY 349 " And you do not hate me ? " " Hate you ? I love you, love you," the voice died away to a sigh, but its utterance was love. " But I did wrong, always, all wrong, always, in everything." As if with one supreme last effort the drooping lids lifted, the fluttering hands, never still these many days and nights, tried to reach the cheeks down which hot tears were falling. " My whole life was all a sin," she repeated, in a passion of confession. " I know, I know, God was not in the midst of it, that was all. But you will make all the wrong right again you and Theodore." Ah, there was Theodore even now at this mo- ment must the thought of him intrude ! Swift and horrible, as if all evil spirits had ral- lied at sight of her relenting, and were maddened at sound of her confession, a fierce jealousy of Theo- dore took possession of her soul. But for him Gretta need not have known, need not have died. If he had kept out of their lives all this anguish would not have come. She heard the door move gently, and there he was, coming softly to her side. Her eyes blazed under her drooped lids, like those of a wild beast about to be robbed of her young, and she pressed the girl closer to her heart. Gretta opened her eyes. One long look into the tender, manly face bending over her, so white and still in its anguish, and she smiled. Her hands that had fluttered like rose leaves in the wind' sought his, and when he held them in his broad, warm palm, the pleading eyes sought her mother's face. 35O THE TEMPTATION OF Did she want to go away ? Did she turn after all from mother-heart to his ? Had she won her back only to give her dying love to him ? The child's eyes pleaded. It was the supreme moment of her life-conflict, and bitter, bitter as death ; but God had been piti- ful to Gretta in the past, and he had been pitiful to her, for he had made her know that wicked as she was, there was yet love in the world for her. Gretta loved her, even if she loved Theodore more. Gretta loved her, and with such a look of triumph over the supreme anguish as Theodore never for- got, she drew herself up and laid the sick girl in his arms. " No, no," he whispered. " Hush," she answered, softly, " I have given her up forever." She turned to the window and left them alone. Outside, the moon was riding serenely in the heavens ; the paths stretched white and shining away into the gloom, and across them the shadows of the swaying branches swung, and the light fall- ing through the trees made the ground an ar- abesque of drifting light and shade ; the sky was mottled with just such white feathery clouds, as yes, she remembered now as she had seen that day when she waited in the shadow of an ivy-covered church for Teddy to give her back her child. With lightning vividness she saw his face as she has- tened away from him. " Poor little Ted," she thought ; yet, late as it was, she had made atone- ment. She had given her back to him now. A little, troubled, murmuring voice broke through her thoughts. In an instant she was by the bed to see the hands upraised to her, to hear the feeble KATHARINE GRAY 351 voice call, "Mother, mother." She bent over her. " Take me, mother, kiss me ; I love you ; I want you to hold me a long, long time." She smiled on Theodore as he laid her in her mother's arms, and almost before he turned away her eyelids drooped. Together they waited and watched for the fluttering breath to cease ; but it only rose and fell more evenly and quietly than before. Over the face crept a look of comfort and repose. The mother's eyes sought Theodore's. Could it be that penitence and love and heart's content had brought the slumber that science and care had not been able to bring ? Theodore had lifted Gretta's hand and placed it in her mother's. Now he took both in his warm clasp and answered the question with a rush of tears that he did not try to hide. In both their souls the dreaded death- angel had given place to the angel of hope. Harold came in on tiptoe Katharine's finger was laid to her lip. Gretta was quietly sleeping. " It is her salvation to sleep on and on," he whis- pered to Theodore, when they had stolen outside the door. " She must not be even moved unless Mrs. Gray can no longer bear the strain." And the night crept on to morning, and the morning dawn changed to the fullness of day. The birds sang, the bees hummed in the honey- suckle, the yellow sunlight flooded all around, and still the sufferer slept. Theodore came softly in now and then, asking with his eyes if he might relieve her, but Katha- rine would not risk a movement. Sometimes her fears grew to anguish lest in her weakness, Gretta 352 THE TEMPTATION OP should sleep her life away. Again hope stirred as she saw the wan, white face look natural and sweet, yet through hope and fear she ran on and on, as if she were reading from a book, leaf after leaf of which was turned by an unseen hand, the story of her life, with all its awful error and its unrequited sin. And when Gretta awoke and knew them all, though too weak for anything but to smile and sleep again, and the doctors came and declared the awful crisis past, the thrill of a great gratitude to God ran from heart to heart throughout the silent house. Katharine left her daughter in Debby's care, with Theodore to watch, and went away to Gretta's room to rest. There was everything just as the girl had left it, and on the table her open Bible and the little book of devotions, "The Words and Mind of Jesus." Involuntarily Katharine looked at the Bible. It was the story of the Prodigal Son, and through blinding tears she read, " When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him . . . and fell on his neck and kissed him." O God! It was such a long way back. After one had retraced all one's steps ; gone over all the way ; undoing, restoring, making the wrong right, the crooked straight, the rough places plain ; she could under- stand that at the end there might be pardon and love; but to be loved while "a great way off," to be held close to the great Father-heart and forgiven and kissed while " a great way off " this was not for such as she had been. For her it ought to be enough that she knew her way back, knew what the "making it right" that she had promised Gretta meant. It looked a long and KATHARINE GRAY 353 weary and lonely journey, but she had taken the first step, she had given Gretta up, and, thank God, there was even for her as she struggled on, a lamp to her feet and a light to her path, in this Book that Gretta loved. To its guidance and in- struction, if not to its promise and its peace, she surely had a claim. This first inward step was all she could take now while Gretta was so ill, but by- and-by she would go back over all the way, atoning and returning everything, four-fold, even as the Book said was right for her to do. So the day wore on toward evening, and Mrs. Maitland began to be troubled about her lest she should be ill. The old lady had had her chair moved for an hour to its old place on the veranda. Harold was beside her, glad of an opportunity to note the effect of the prolonged anxiety. On the other side sat Theodore, and the little mother watched by Gretta, who, like a baby, was fed and sank again to sleep. " Do not go, doctor, till I know if Mrs. Gray needs you. If she does not, then all our knowl- edge as to the limits of human endurance fails. She has taken neither food nor rest and ought to sleep a week." " I reckon she done ben converted, Miss Marion," broke in Debby, her palsied head shaking with em- phasis. " She's up dar in Miss Gretta's room on de sofa huggin' up Miss Gretta's open Bible right in her neck jest like she been huggin' dat sweet chile's hair. Fo' de Lawd, I do b'leve she done got religion." " Stop," said Mrs. Maitland, sharply. " Debby, 354 TH E TEMPTATION OP I wish you and I were half as good as Mrs. Gray." " She's good, sho 'miff, she mighty good ; and so we all orter be when de Lawd sen' down his bressed angels to live right under our noses in de house all day long. Tears like havin' de dear Lawd himself right in de nex' room to have dat sick, patient chile." " Perhaps," said Mrs. Maitland, " that is one of his own ways of dwelling in our midst, by dwelling in the hearts that love him, and showing his love- liness through their own." " He's been here, sho 'nuff. He sees we's old, Miss Marion and me. He couldn't take Gretta away when he see how much we love her. He jest couldn't." " Then you don't think the doctor saved her ? " asked Harold, playfully. " Yes, de doctor and lovin' and prayin'. No, lev- in' and prayin' and de doctor; las', but not leas', de doctor." CHAPTER XXII A BSORBING as Gretta's illness had been, it JL\. did not shut Margaret or her letter out of mind. It kept both Theodore and Harold from seeking her in person, but remonstrance and plead- ing went to her by mail from every one, even from Katharine herself. Mrs. Maitland kindly pointed out her exaggerated and mistaken sense of duty and begged her, if she had found her father, touring him back and allow them all to help her in her care of him, offering him quiet rooms in the west wing. Theodore wrote her, unknown to Harold, and yet in Harold's behalf, and, after the crisis had passed, and they were all assured of Gretta's recovery, Katharine wrote, urging that she come back for Gretta's sake, though neither she nor Theodore told her the story that both knew must soon be told. Harold himself wrote that home and her own place were here, and that he was coming speedily to bring her back. And to all these there came in re- turn only the cry of her heart's sorrow and long- ing to be with Gretta in this time of weakness and pain. And all this time Katharine was making ready for what she called " the first stage of her journey home." During all the slow convalescence, there had been no sign or look or word from Gretta or from Theodore, that showed they remembered the tem- 355 356 THE TEMPTATION OF pest of shame and distress through which they had passed with Katharine. All was the same in their manner except that they daily broke her heart anew with their gentleness, treaiing her, whenever alone with her, like the mother to be trusted and coun- seled with and loved. If they carried a new bur- den they kept it out of sight. Indeed, for Gretta the new attitude seemed to afford an outlet for a natural loving tenderness which showed toward all her friends, but which in her mother's case had always been held back and restrained. They two never talked of the revelations of the sick-room, but lying awake in the still, sad nights, often and often the mother's listening, waiting heart heard Gretta coming softly from her room, and without a word she would take her in her arms and hold and soothe her till she slept. Once Gretta, coming softly in the darkness, surprised her mother kneel- ing in the dark by the bedside, and after that, though neither said a word, the two knelt side by side always in the dark and always silent, save to God, who knew what each endured. Outwardly Katharine was unchanged, save for a sadder, whiter face, a lowered voice, and a more resolute devotion to Mrs. Maitland, and especially to the " friends," as the old lady always called them, who dwelt in the bright west wing. In the old time that seemed so far away, 'she did not love the ministry there ; but if she did not love it now, she performed it so tenderly that the sick and the aged learned to listen for her footsteps and her voice. The "little mother," whose mind re- mained much like the mind of a child, content to KATHARINE GRAY 357 be in the presence of those she loved, seemed to grow feeble, and as Gretta needed her less she clung to Katharine, who made her more and more her special care. Debby, too old to serve much, but free to love Gretta as much as her old heart dictated, finding that Katharine no longer repulsed and chilled her, was ready to out- pour upon her unstinted affection, and Mrs. Mait- land also seemed to recognize the new spirit that was in her, and was even more dependent upon her than she had ever been before. " It grieves me to leave her before Gretta is quite strong," ]^rs. Gray said one day to Theodore as they were arranging for her departure, which he had always accepted as a settled thing. "Why not wait a little longer?" he asked, "or why not let me go for you and represent you in the things you wish to bring to pass ? You promised that I should be to you as a son." " But your own mother surely should not be left now, Theodore, and no one could do my duty for me," she answered, sadly. " If only you could grow happier here when I am gone. I know what you think would make you .happy, Ted." " Yes, and I wish it might be to-morrow," he an- swered, eagerly. "And I also wish it might be soon," said Kath- arine. " Please, mother, dear mother, do not say it," broke in Gretta. " You wish it might be because you are unwilling to leave me alone. I do not think I ought to be left. I want to go where you go, to live as you live." 358 THE TEMPTATION OF " We cannot both leave Mrs. Maitland until Margaret comes, though we have neither of us any right to be here," she added, as if to herself ; " yet her heart would break without you, Gretta." " But by-and-by, when you go permanently, as I know you will, I want to go with you." " And I mean to go also," said Theodore. "The duty is mine," she said, bitterly "If only I could do all and suffer all alone." "The duty is ours," said Gretta, kissing her; " not dear Ted's, but yours and mine, dear mother." "And am I to be left out?" said Theodore. " Am I not to be allowed to help ? " " Not yet, not now," said Katharine. " Wait till I return. It will not be long. I shall see the next step clearer after the first is taken. I can bear anything but the thought that I have wrecked life for you two. Could you not let me go altogether and you be happy in each other ? " "And leave you to bear your life alone ?" said Gretta, earnestly. " We two are happy in each other, and I am happier in you, mother, than I have ever been in all my life ; I love you so," she said, the tears starting to her eyes. " Only one thing hurts me now. I want to take our own little place in the world, to be where I can call you 'mother.' I am almost strong again ; let me work too. As for Theo- dore, he knows I am right. How could he trust or honor me if I went to home and shelter and peace, and let you go out to fight the world alone ? " " We will all go together," said Theodore, gently ; " but not quite yet." "No, not yet," answered Katharine. "Let me KATHARINE GRAY 359 go alone now. Do not make it too hard for me to do my duty ; only promise me, Theodore, that you will take care of Gretta till I come back." " How long ? " said Gretta, clinging to her moth- er's hand. " Not long. I may return at Easter, and you shall hear from me every day." " What shall you say to Mrs. Maitland ? " " The truth, that I have a duty to perform that has waited too long. She will be willing, and you are to summon me at once if she is ill." And two days later, Katharine was gone, not as she would have preferred to go, without a word to any one of them, but in the only way she could go, if she did not wish to leave them all with hearts too sore for endurance. After the date of her departure was fixed, Kath- arine had written to Margaret, sending as usual through the Teachers' Agency in New York. " I am going to Chicago," she wrote ; " I believe you are there. I want to see you, not only for my sake, but far more for your own. I shall not go to a hotel, but have written for rooms at the house of Mrs. Brown, an old pensioner of Mr. Conrad's in Street on the north side. If you are unwilling I should know your residence, you can come to me there. My train arrives on Thursday morning. I shall stay indoors all day for you." It was a sad journey, this of atonement. When last she passed over this road she was young and wretched, fleeing to escape the crosses of her life. Now she was returning to take up the task she hated, in the presence she abhorred. 360 THE TEMPTATION OF It was evening when she arrived in the great bustling city. She had stopped in New York at the Teachers' Agency to try once more for Mar- garet's address ; but beyond the fact that she was in Chicago still, they declined to give her any infor- mation. For the first time, on this journey she had an opportunity to practise the new principle that must henceforth dominate every phase of her personal life. The love of luxury, the delight in pleasant things about her, the ease and comfort to which for years she had been accustomed, these were no longer for her. She took her place in the throng of the great middle-class travelers, instead of in the drawing-room car with the few fastidious ones who, on this particular journey, had it entirely to themselves. With the great debt of a lifetime behind her, necessity only must determine here- after the limit of personal expenditures. She had been greatly interested in hearing Theo- dore's tale of the dear old lodging-house keeper, from whom he stole the baby, and into whose life, during all these years, he had brought a measure of comfort and repose. And when he gave her the address it only occurred to him, that, with the new- born kindliness of her heart, she desired to take to this old woman some news of him. But for the same reason that at night she slept with her cloak for a pillow, she also avoided the hotel, and sought the little lodging house on the north side, with which she had already so many associations. An aged woman, bent and slight, with a few faint streaks of yellowish gray hair straggling from under KATHARINE GRAY 361 her black lace cap, received her, and taking her up two flights of stairs, explained that the second floor rooms were taken by an invalid gentleman and his daughter, who would gladly have gone to the third floor, but for the fact that the gentleman was too feeble to climb the stairs. " It is well for me," she added, " that they did decide to remain on the first floor, for the daughter has gone East, and now the care of her father has fallen upon me, and since she left he has grown very, very ill." " That must make you very weary," said Kath- arine kindly. "No, not over-weary," said the. old woman pa- tiently ; " but I am not as young or as strong as I was once. And the daughter only went away last night." " I thought you would like to know how I chanced to come here," said Katharine, motioning the woman to a seat while she removed her wraps. " Your old friend, Mr. Conrad, is a friend of mine, and he told me that you had taken good care of him when he was a little boy ; and farther back than that he told me what beautiful care you took of a little baby that was left in your charge for a time. So I thought that instead of going to a hotel, I would come and ask you to take care of me." With this introduction, the wrinkled old face brightened, and Katharine knew that hand and heart, and all the little home possessed, were quite at her disposal. As she passed down to the tiny dining room, where these kind old hands had pre- pared some refreshment for her, she noticed among the letters that lay upon the hat-rack, one addressed 362 THE TEMPTATION OF to Margaret Graham. Glancing at it a second time, she saw that it was her own letter, sent to New York and re-addressed to this house. She knew, as she seated herself opposite Mrs. Brown, that the broiled chicken and the toast had been prepared by the trembling old hands, and when she saw that she had put on a fresh print dress and a Sunday cap, that she might sit by her and pour her tea, her heart was touched ; yet she could think of nothing but that letter. Looking her landlady straight in the face, as she passed her cup, she said, "Is there with you a lodger named Margaret Graham ? " " Yes, indeed ; and beautiful she is too, and such a singer. Her voice is as sweet a one as we can ever hope to hear in heaven. It is her father who is so ill upstairs." " And she has gone ? " " Yes, some one she loved very much in the East has been ill, and though they wrote her that she was almost well now, she grew so anxious and so eager to go, that I told her I would take care of her father if she would only be gone a week. I have known the family many, many years. Her father, Mr. Robert Gray " " But I thought her name was Graham," said Katharine. " Yes, many of her friends write to her as Miss Graham, because when she was studying abroad she lived for years with a Mrs. Graham, and many peo- ple think that is her name." "But you were telling me about her father." " Yes, I was his nurse when he was a little tiny 363 lad and I was a young woman. He married un- fortunately, and took to evil ways. His wife de- serted him, and this little daughter of his was in my care. It is a long story, ma'am, and may tire you. The family came from wealth to poverty, and Robert, who is here with me now, went from bad to worse, and the daughter had to take care of her- self. She has been supporting herself teaching music, and now, because his health is so poor, she has come back to nurse and watch over him. She will be back in a week." " She will not be back so soon, Mrs. Brown," said Katharine. " My name is Gray. I am Robert Gray's wife. I have come back to nurse and care for him myself. Margaret will stay for a while in the East." " I do not think you can keep her away from her poor father. She is the most dutiful of daughters," said the old lady, with a little touch of suspicion under her great surprise. " Perhaps we need not say so to her father if he is very ill, but she will not come back again." " And you, you was it you who deserted him and forsook that lovely child ? " " No, Mrs. Brown ; it was he who took the child away from me ; but we need never talk of this. I know he is sick and in trouble. I have come to see if I can minister to him." The old lady gazed at her in astonishment. " Well, if you would do that, then you could never have been so bad ; you never would have forsaken your child." " I never forsook my child," Katharine repeated. 364 THE TEMPTATION OF " I was often hard to Robert. I was impatient and angry with all his wretched ways, but I shall be gentle enough with him now. You need not fear that I will not be kind and good to him." Afterward she went to him, lingering first a mo- ment in her own room, striving to conquer the dis- like and reluctant dread that tempted her almost beyond control to fly without a moment's delay out of the house and away, as fast as she could, to the things and the people that she loved. And be- cause the longer she waited the heavier grew the dread, she went almost at once. He was lying with his face turned toward the window, apparently asleep, his face wasted and sunken far beyond the haggard look it wore when she had seen him last. She bent over him, putting both hands behind her, with the instinctive feeling that no power could ever make her touch him ; and then, remembering her own life, the angels of mercy and pity pleaded for him, and when he looked up at her and knew her, she was able to say, " I am sorry you are suffering so much, Robert. I have come back to see if I cannot take care of you, and help to make you better." And he simply gazed and gazed, looking with a child's wonder in his eyes, at the whitened hair and the pallid face and the pitying eyes, and never said one word. And as she answered his look, the tears filled her eyes, and for the first time for twenty years, she knew in her heart that she forgave, even as she hoped to be forgiven. A frightful fit of coughing racked his frame. She raised his head, and as ten- derly as she would have done it for Gretta. KATHARINE GRAY 365 " Margaret has gone away ? When will she come back ? " he whispered. " Not just at present, Robert. I am going to stay and take her place. I can take care of you. Don't you remember I did it a great many times when we were younger and you were ill ? You have grown more ill since she went away ? " " Yes," he answered, with difficulty, " a hemor- rhage yesterday after she was gone." And then, from very weakness, his mind seemed to let go its wonder and its sense of anything unusual in her presence. That he should be taken care of by some woman if he were ill, this was a matter of course. He had always had this. His surprise would have been greater had no woman appeared to nurse and strive to ease him of his pain. That very night Katharine sent for the phy- sician, and asked him on the following morning to bring another. Could Robert be moved? Could he be taken to some climate that would be more favorable to his condition ? Could his life be saved, or could it be prolonged ? And when she found that there was scarce a chance of either, she set herself to making him not only as comfortable, but as happy as it was possible for him to be. A telegram was sent to Dr. Moore to tell them to keep Margaret when she came, and letters fol- lowed, saying she herself was where she ought to be, and where she wished to be, and where she should remain. Robert's condition of weakness was such that he neither missed nor asked for Mar- garet, who need have no fear that it was her duty to return. As for the story that must be told Mar- 366 THE TEMPTATION OP garet by-and-by, they must do as they thought best, tell her now or wait till she, Katharine, should be back among them again ; it could not be very long. And yet it was longer than they thought. There was time for the ebbing and flowing, again and again, of the poor, wrecked, and wasted life ; there was time for curses and hatred and every evil passion to rage within the sufferer's breast, be- cause of his anger that he must die. There was time for days of maudlin weakness and childish penitence and plenty of tears. Yet through all this, she led him day by day and hour by hour, with such patience and tenderness as won him to be, in her hands, as plastic and as gentle as a child. When he abused her in his hours of rebellion she quieted him by admitting that she had been wrong, in one way as wrong or worse than he or than any one could know. As the weakness grew he clung to her more and more, like a child to its mother, and when at last he fell asleep one peaceful twilight, there was left in her heart all the new pity for his weakness, and there was gone from her all the self- pity for her own great wrongs. She lingered only one day after the simple burial. All of Margaret's belongings and her own, she had packed and sent away. She bade Mrs. Brown good- bye in the late afternoon, and then went over to that ivy-grown church on the corner, and rinding Ted's quiet place behind a column, she listened while the evening service was being held, and the orga*i notes went wandering through the arches, and the shadows came. She was conscious of all, yet really heard nothing save the voices in her own KATHARINE GRAY 367 soul that chided and rebuked and refused to listen to any whisper of peace. The music ceased. The people went out softly. The figures on the stained glass windows of apostle and martyr and saint, grew dimmer and dimmer as the night came on, and then when the old sexton was ready to close the church, with the burden of all her past life upon her, yet with the first stage of her soul's home-journey over, she went forth once more to take the train to the East. Believing that Robert might linger for many months, she had in every letter urged Gretta to consent to Theodore's desire that they should be married with Harold and Margaret, in the dear old library on the evening of Easter Monday. She knew that Robert could not be moved, or sometimes she would have been tempted, her longing to go was such, to take him to Wildholm, and let him know Gretta, and live out his life amid the bene- dictions of that home. Very gently one day, when he was strong enough to bear it, when he was weakly bewailing his own errors, she had opened up to him the iniquity of her own life, and revealed to him that Margaret was not his child. That Gretta was still too feeble to make the journey to see him, he understood ; but if only Katharine stayed with him his heart was quite con- tent. But she knew not how long it might be, and she knew also that after the awful secret that must be told to Mrs. Maitland and to Margaret was once known, she herself, however much they might pity her and urge her, could never remain at Wild- holm. Only Gretta's marriage would deter the 368 THE TEMPTATION OP girl from sharing what she knew must henceforth be a wandering and a bitter life. To be there and see this marriage, and know that her own deceit was as yet unconfessed and unatoned, seemed im- possible ; to be there and see them struggling to be happy, after the truth was known, seemed more impossible still; and yet when Robert was gone she never waited except for that hour of twilight in the church. If she could have hidden in some silent place until the wedding was over, and know that in deed and truth, as well as in word, she had given up her child, she would have been grateful. She thought of the old Shaker home at Loriston, of the little whitewashed room, furnished with the bare necessaries of existence of a silence and solitude in which a soul might wrap its own sorrow or immure its own content and the temptation to hide herself there was very strong. She had not told them at Wildholm of Robert's death. They did not know she was coming, and until it was all over they would never know that she could have come. But while she hesitated, she remembered that for Gretta, her own child, the joy of this wedding-day would not be the same without the sight of her mother's face. And what was she that she should give a pain to save herself a pain ? So she went on, reaching home on Saturday night. It was the time of the even- ing prayer, and she stole in softly, and kneeling in her black dress, buried her white face in her hands. When they arose Gretta sprang to her arms, and Theodore folded his about them both. Unconventional as it might seem for the wed- KATHARINE GRAY 369 dings not to be delayed by Robert's death, the joy of that occasion was a very sacred and sol- emn joy, that had in it more than one element of sacrifice. To Mrs. Maitland, while it was like the gaining of two strong sons, it was in another way the giving up of two lovely daughters of the house. To Katharine it was the final submission and yielding to separation from Gretta's after-life. After this there could be no lingering hope that she would have her with her, come what might, as long as both should live. As she had vowed to do, she gave her up utterly, knowing that however much they might keep her in their hearts, henceforth she was to live her life alone. But perhaps for no one was the renunciation greater than for Margaret, who ought, as she believed, to devote her life utterly to women who suffered and struggled as she had done, and who, for the great love she bore to Harold Moore, laid down this career, accepted his view of duty when he said, " Living for each other, there are two of us to multiply the good that we shall do, because we each shall live and work for that for which the other cares." And for Gretta to give up her unwillingness that any one but herself and her mother should have any share in the work of atonement they meant to do, to yield the pride that would even have shut Theodore out, was a triumph indeed for love. Steadily she held that, even loving him, her first duty until it was per- formed, was not to him and not to the world, but to the redemption of her mother's life from any trace of debt or any shadow of shame. And Theo- dore's heart held a love large enough to take her, Y 370 THE TEMPTATION OF letting these thoughts have dominion over her, knowing that soon or late, the love that would serve Katharine and help her in carrying out her life, would return full freighted to his own. What wonder then that the wedding time was as solemn and sad as it was joyful and sweet. From its sacredness they shut out all people except their very own. Mrs. Maitland and the " little mother," and Katharine and Deborah, and two or three of the old servants in the background, made the group in the library. And after it there was a little feast together, in which they were too peaceful to be merry, too tender to be gay. And later still, in the moonlight on the veranda, in the last hours before the young couples went their way, there gathered a group around Mrs. Maitland, with Har- old and Margaret on one side, and Theodore on the other, and at her feet Katharine with one arm tightly around Gretta, who rested her head upon her breast, while she told in broken words, inter- rupted often by sobs, the tale of her early tempta- tion, and yielding, and sin, and penitence, and her resolve of restoration that should be fourfold, and of the consecration of her after-life to the comforting of those who suffer and the rescue of those who sin. They did not interrupt her as, with low, broken tones, gathering strength as she went on, she made the awful revelation. And when it was over, Gretta only clung closer to her, and Margaret only said, " I knew most of it before. You wrote them to tell me or not, as they thought best, auntie, and of course Harold had to tell me something, or he KATHARINE GRAY 371 never could have kept me away from that sick-room in Chicago. And we are both agreed, Harold and I, that perhaps there has been wrought for me less harm than good, for without the hard life that came in my youth, how could I ever have helped, as I mean to do, the other working girls ? " " Why should you separate yourself from us now, aunt," he asked, smiling as he used the new name, " when everything is past and forgiven ? You must think that you have four children now where you had but one. Why shouldn't everything be- tween us be just forever the same ? " " Not the same," said Mrs. Maitland, her voice trembling with tears. " Not the same ; it ought to be infinitely better. The old life dead, the old hard hearts softened and filled with love, and a new life that means, for every one of us, blessing to all who suffer, uplifting for all who sin a life that has at last God at its very heart, that must be mighty for good because he is mighty and because he is in the midst." CHAPTER XXIII THE wedding journey, taken in different direc- tions, ended for both young couples at the old parsonage, which had stood for some time va- cant. The old man of business had gone, and to his son had come the care of all. When they ar- rived they found that Katharine had been there, and had brought old Deborah, lingering herself only long enough to arrange that everything should be put in order for the others. The man who had charge of the business had been instructed to bring all the books and accounts for all the years to Harold, and he said that Mrs. Gray had taken from him minute record of all that had been spent, and all that had ever passed through her hands for the support of herself and the child. How Katharine's heart ached for one more in- dulgence, just to linger and see them when they .came ; but no, their pleasure must not be marred by the haunting shadow of her presence. They were to come at night. Old Job took her and her trunk to the afternoon train, but she waited till he was gone and then walked back by a quiet road to the churchyard, and lingered there by the graves of her parents and her sister till she heard the rumble of the wheels and the bark of Job's dog, and saw the lights flash out from the windows of the chambers 372 KATHARINE GRAY 373 and the old south room. What voices whispered to her in the silence ! What forgiving faces shone upon her out of the shadows ; what she suffered as she stole back in the darkness to the station to take the evening train, no one but God could know ! Perhaps each step that took her farther and farther away from her loved ones took her one step nearer to him. She went straight to Loriston, and while they were at the parsonage, she had her two or three days of silence and solitude in the bare little cell, and there, sitting by the bed of the aged man who had begged her to rear Gretta in the love and fear of God, she told him, as she might have done had he been a monk of mediaeval time and she the penitent in the confessional, the story of defeat and shame by which she had learned at last that which he had tried to teach her long ago, that life without God was not life, but anguish and humiliation and shame. After a time the four went back to Wildholm, Harold and Margaret into the house where it was the hope of all that Gretta would return. Mrs. Maitland's old heart pined for her. Her welcome for Margaret was full of sincerity and affection, yet her nature was broad enough to receive the new love without any sacrifice of the old, and Gretta was simply in her old place, the child of her lovely old age. To be near her, where she could see her every day and help in the west wing ministry, they took a cottage just outside the grounds, where she lived with Theodore and the "little mother" a life of such simplicity as made everybody wonder if the tide of fortune had turned, against the handsome 374 TH E TEMPTATION OF young senator, whose advent in Washington society had made a flutter in the breast of more than one mother of marriageable daughters. Theodore plunged steadily into work, and with his usual insight and sympathy, encouraged and united with Gretta in every economy. The desire to go into the world with her mother, and to share the working woman's life, had been her one objec- tion to the early marriage. She had been eager to apply for a teacher's position at Castleton, and her heart had no stronger proof that she and her hus- band were truly one than her yielding to his plead- ing that he might share the son's privilege of toil- ing and saving for their mutual end. Neither one of them would rest any more than would Katharine until the uttermost farthing went back to the Wild estate. Though she gave up the teaching, she did not swerve from her purpose to add her earning forces to those of the other two. Her sensitiveness and lack of self-confidence would have inclined her to hide her experiments and failures and partial suc- cesses ; but she never forgot a warning word of Mrs. Maitland's, or the resolve that followed it, never to have unnecessary secrets, to avoid the habit of concealment or even the shadow of deceit. She could not sit opposite Theodore at table, or in her old seat at Mrs. Maitland's feet, and let them suppose they knew and shared her life, when she was spending hours of her absence from them in thoughts and work of which they never dreamed. So she took to both her bits of verse and her sketches and little stories, and showed the returned KATHARINE GRAY 375 manuscripts to them, in spite of her mortification and shame, and carried to them with all the glee of a child the few little checks that, now and then, at rare intervals, gave her courage to try again. In the little cottage the room she had taken for her study and work was one that was always held in readiness for her mother's use ; but Katharine, entered already upon her duty of restitution, very rarely came except for a night. She was making no child's play at penitence. When it was known that she would accept a position that would bring remuneration, Castleton opened its doors both to her and to Gretta, and a prominent philanthropic association offered her a high position in the man- agement of its work. Both were declined, because to hold either implied a character above reproach. She could not publish her unworthiness in the market place, or cry out from the housetops, but she could keep herself from seeming to be what she was not. She might work harder, bear this part of her punishment longer, but it must be honest money this time and earned by honest toil. She found it at first in the care of a children's hospital supported by private funds. There came mother-work with- out the coveted mother-joy. From this center her life radiated to even wider fields in the homes of the very poor. The physical condition of the little ones under her care was such a revelation of the ignorance of the mothers in such homes as those from which they had come, that she began a work of teaching these mothers in their homes, that could not possibly bring her any credit, but which became the nucleus of a great work resulting ultimately 376 THE TEMPTATION OF in the redemption of many homes. Her passion for motherhood took the form of helping other women to be good mothers, and no home was too squalid, no task too menial, for her with her own hands to show the mothers how their wretched rooms might be transformed to homes. From tasks like these she gave herself, as long as the old Elder of the Shaker Community lived, now and then a few days' rest in the little white-walled chamber, which was to her like the cell of a convent in which a world- weary penitent hides for the time of "retreat." To Wildholm she could never freely go back, though only forgiving tenderness met her there, and no one, not even old Deborah, was told the story of her shame. The old creature's heart vi- brated between the two young wives, feeling it rea- sonable enough that Mrs. Maitland, now very infirm, should need to have the doctor in the house, and reasonable that Judge Conrad should want Gretta all to himself. Sometimes when Katharine came to the cottage for a night, she came up through the garden in the dark, and alone in Mrs. Maitland's chamber the soul that had always been true met in solemn converse the other soul that had always been false, and they drew in such times very near to each other and very near to God. Mrs. Maitland had long ago ceased to urge Katharine to abandon her work of restitution, felt that she did right to re- sign from every position in philanthropic circles that implied worthiness of trust, but held her to her promise to help to develop the work to which Wildholm was consecrated, when her other task was done. KATHARINE GRAY 377 And there came a day when, notwithstanding Mrs. Maitland's unwillingness, shared fully by Harold and Margaret, everything spent in all those years for Gretta and her mother, was brought back in money earned and fourfold measure to the Wild estate, and was promptly passed over to the funds that were to develop the future plans that had their beginning in the old west wing. The young people could not find it in their hearts to give up Wild- holm, but the west wing was separated from the main building and extended and developed into an ideal house of rest for the aged and weary, after Mrs. Maitland's own heart and plan, and bearing the name, Marion Wild. It included also a train- ing school for domestic and other service, for girls as poor as Margaret had been, who had no saving gift like hers. And there came a later day when old Mr. Conrad's fortune, which Theodore had always treated as a trust, went far toward founding the home for boys and men, where reading rooms, recreation and instruction for hand, head, and heart, united to supply whatever was not put into their lives by work or home. And still later there came a day when the lands in California and Australia, left by Robert, enabled Gretta to make a beginning of that school of philanthropy and social econom- ics on which her heart was set. It had always been a theory of Mrs. Maitland, a theory which Gretta had absorbed, that opportunity and privilege and a share in all good work for the world, come faster to women than they are ready for it ; that their problem is how to grow and learn fast enough to keep pace with the responsi- 378 THE TEMPTATION OF bilities of their lives. She would have all those whose hearts would serve any good cause or enter upon any helpful work, whether missions, or tem- perance, or education, or social, or economic prob- lems, avoid the spasmodic, misguided, ineffective waste of energy, by placing study and thought be- fore action. To provide place and time and wise instruction in order to open up to those whose hearts were ready to help humanity, the true needs, true conditions, the work already accomplished along all lines, and true and wise methods for fu- ture development this was the purpose and hope. The plan might in time cover the world's work along all lines and in all times, but at first it aimed only to gather a few of the best and most thought- ful women, to give them knowledge in the hope that each in turn would impart it to those who could not be otherwise taught. It was an effort against ignorance and conceit and wasteful enthusiasm, and in behalf of sincerity in purpose and sound prin- ciples in action. And Mrs. Maitland lived to see the first group gather, eager before dabbling in all the world's re- forms, moral, social, and governmental to learn the true significance and relation of reform, and how best to develop the woman thought and the woman heart, that it might become a powerful and genuine factor in the salvation of the race. And in all these new homes, a^nd in all these lines of work and study, there came and went a quiet woman who gave her life to practical experi- ment of others' plans and methods ; who knew the best thought of the student as well as the saddest KATHARINE GRAY 379 experience of the slums ; whose days were a bene- diction by bedsides of pain ; who never spared her- self anywhere ; but with almost infinite pity and tenderness, helped everything that was wicked and spared everything that was weak, and, keeping her personality always in the background, brought into these various institutions the results of her expe- rience and her work. To her unceasing, labors they owed more, perhaps, than to any other one person. There were many influential helpers, a fine Board of trustees and managers for each branch of Wildholm work, but this woman, who spoke in no meetings, served on no committees, held no position in societies, was the one who never faltered in her insistence that all the work should be built upon the one foundation, having God as the center and source of its life. And when the day came that other women would have done her honor, she bowed her head and went back to the rooms in the heart of the most degraded section of the city, that had of late been her home, and sitting in the twilight opened her Bible and read, as if to strengthen herself against tempta- tion, these lines, written on the fly-leaf on the night when God gave Gretta back to life : Therefore O friend, I would not, if I might, Rebuild my house of lies wherein I joyed One time to dwell. My soul shall walk in white, Cast down but not destroyed Therefore in patience I possess my soul, Yea, therefore as a flint I set my face To cast down to build up again the whole But in a distant place. 380 THE TEMPTATION These thorns are sharp, but I can tread on them ; This cup is bitter, but he makes it sweet ; My face is steadfast toward Jerusalem, My heart remembers it. THE END University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 Box 951388 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. 7 2 05D* A 000 089 447 7