"If you please, marm, the man from York State is comin' afoot. Too stingy to ride, I'll warrant," and Janet, the housekeeper, disappeared from the parlor, just as the sound of the gate was heard, and an unusually fine-looking middle-aged man was seen coming up the box-lined walk which led to the cottage door.
The person thus addressed was a lady, whose face, though young and handsome, wore a look which told of early sorrow. Matilda Remington had been a happy, loving wife, but the old churchyard in Vernon contained a grass-grown grave, where rested the noble heart which had won her girlish love. And she was a widow now, a fair-haired, blue-eyed widow, and the stranger who had so excited Janet's wrath by walking from the depot, a distance of three miles, would claim her as his bride ere the morrow's sun was midway in the heavens. How the engagement happened she could not exactly tell, but happened it had, and she was pledged to leave the vine-wreathed cottage which Harry had built for her, and go with one of whom she knew comparatively little.
Six months before our story opens she had spent a few days with him at the house of a mutual friend in an adjoining State, and since that time they had written to each other regularly, the correspondence resulting at last in an engagement, which he had now come to fulfill. He had never visited her before in her own home, consequently she was wholly unacquainted with his disposition or peculiarities. He was intelligent and refined, commanding in appearance, and agreeable in manner whenever he chose to be, and when he wrote to her of his home, which he said would be a second Paradise were she its mistress, when he spoke of the little curly-headed girl who so much needed a mother's care, and when, more than all, he hinted that his was no beggar's fortune, she yielded; for Matilda Remington did not dislike the luxuries which money alone can purchase. Her own fortune was small, and as there was now no hand save her own to provide, she often found it necessary to economize more than she wished to do. But Dr. Kennedy was rich, and if she married him she would escape a multitude of annoyances, so she made herself believe that she loved him; and when she heard, as she more than once did hear, rumors of a sad, white-faced woman to whom the grave was a welcome rest, she said the story was false, and, shaking her pretty head, refused to believe that there was aught in the doctor of evil.
"To be sure, he was not at all like Harry--she could never find one who was--but he was so tall, so dignified, so grand, so particular, that it seemed almost like stooping, for one in his position to think of her, and she liked him all the better for his condescension."
Thus she ever reasoned, and when Janet said that he was coming, and she, too, heard his step upon the piazza, the bright blushes broke over her youthful face, and casting a hurried glance at the mirror, she hastened out to meet him.
"Matty, my dear!" he said, and his thin lips touched her glowing cheek, but in his cold gray eye there shone no love,--no feeling,--no heart.
He was too supremely selfish to esteem another higher than himself, and though it flattered him to know that the young creature was so glad to meet him, it awoke no answering chord, and he merely thought that with her to minister to him he should possibly be happier than he had been with her predecessor.
"You must be very tired," she said, as she led the way into the cozy parlor. Then, seating him in the easy chair near to the open window, she continued: "How warm you are. What made you walk this sultry afternoon?"
"It is a maxim of mine never to ride when I can walk," said he, "for I don't believe in humoring those omnibus drivers by paying their exorbitant prices."
"Two shillings surely is not an exorbitant price," trembled on Mrs.
Remington's lips, but she was prevented from saying so by his asking "if everything were in readiness for the morrow."
"Yes, everything," she replied. "The cottage is sold, and--"
"Ah, indeed, sold!" said he, interrupting her. "If I mistake not you told me, when I met you in Rome, that it was left by will to you.
May I, as your to-morrow's husband, ask how much you received for it?" And he unbent his dignity so far as to wind his arm around her waist.
But the arm was involuntarily withdrawn when, with her usual frankness, Matty replied; "I received a thousand dollars, but there were debts to be paid, so that I had only five hundred left, and this I made over to my daughter to be used for her education."
Dr. Kennedy did not say that he was disappointed, and as Matty was not much of a physiognomist she did not read it in his face, and she continued: "Janet will remain here a while, to arrange matters, before joining me in my new home. She wished me to leave my little girl to come with her, but I can't do that. I must have my child with me. You've never seen her, have you? I'll call her at once."
And stepping to the door she bade Janet bring "Maude" into the parlor.
"Maude!" How Dr. Kennedy started at the mention of a name which drove all thoughts of the five hundred dollars from his mind. There was feeling--passion--everything, now, in his cold gray eye, but quickly recovering his composure, he said calmly: "Maude, Matty--Maude, is that your child's name?"
"Why, yes," she answered laughingly. "Didn't you know it before? "
"How should I," he replied, "when in your letters you have always called her 'daughter'? But has she no other name? She surely was not baptized Maude?"
