Months passed away months of dreary, monotonous despondency, through which ran a vein of anxiety that banished peace. During all this time matters went on pretty much as they had done before, with one exception, I held no further intercourse with Mr. Basil Bainrothe. Claude was absent most of this time on business, for a firm with which he had lately connected himself, and on the few occasions of his presence at Monfort Hall treated me with marked formality.

Evelyn had affected to make light of Mr. Bainrothe’s outrage toward me, though far from defending him. “Men of his years do these things sometimes,” she said, “under the mask of playfulness and fatherly feeling, and, however unpleasant it may be to bear them, one has to pass them over. You are right, of course, to be reserved with him henceforth, Miriam. By-the-by, dear child, your prudery is excessive, I fear, and it makes a young girl, especially if she is not beautiful, so ridiculous! But, of course, that even is far better than the opposite extreme. Now, I flatter myself, I know how to steer the juste milieu, always so desirable.”

“But, Evelyn,” I had rejoined, “his manner was atrocious! I could not I would not if I could give you any idea of its animality; yes, that is the very word! it makes my blood creep to think of it, even!”

And I hid my face in my hands, crimson as it was from the retrospection.

“Then don’t think of it at all. That will be the best way, decidedly,” she had said, tapping me playfully with her fan, then whispering: “This lover of yours may be useful to us, you know; let us not goad him to rebellion. You can be as cool as you please, Miriam, but be civil all the same.”

I surveyed her with flashing eyes. “Such advice,” I retorted, “falls but poorly from your lips, Evelyn Erle, whom my mistaken father dubbed ‘propriety personified.’ One woman should feel for another’s wounded delicacy, even if a stranger; but, when it comes to sisters, O Evelyn!”

“And such insolence falls very absurdly from you, Miriam Monfort, under the circumstances. Sisters, indeed!” she sneered. “It was a claim you repudiated once!” and, with a sweeping bow, she left me, to repeat “sisters, indeed!” in my bitter solitude.

What were these circumstances to which she so haughtily referred? With my heavy head resting on my weary hands, I sat and contemplated them ay, looked them fully in the face! Outwardly, matters stood just as they had ever done.

The same circle of servants of acquaintances revolved around us. The house was unchanged, the living identically the same, even to the one bottle of fine wine per day, carefully withdrawn from the cobwebbed cellar by Morton, and as carefully decanted for our table.

But this alone, of all the viands set before us, was furnished at my expense. My own small hoard of silverpieces had, it is true, from the time of our ruin, more than sufficed for my absolute wants and Mabel’s, confined, as they were, to mere externals of necessary dress; but all other outlay, even to the payment of Mabel’s masters (I taught her chiefly myself, however), was met by Evelyn.

We, the children of a proud man, were dependent on strangers. Look upon it as I would, the revolting fact stared me out of countenance. Charity, the chambermaid, had more right to lift an opposing front to Evelyn than I had; for she earned the bread she ate, while I there was no use concealing the mortifying truth any longer served the apprenticeship of pauperdom!

True, the house was legally mine the furniture I used, the plate I was served from, the carriage I occasionally drove out in, were all my own possessions though, with a slow and moth-like process, I was gradually consuming these. For, at my majority, it was my determination to pay for my support in the intervening years, even if I sacrificed every thing in order to wipe out obligations. Ay, the very corn my horses were eating (what mockery to keep them at all!) was now furnished by another, and must eventually be paid for, with interest.

Then, how would it fare with me, beggared indeed? I would take time by the forelock; I would begin at once.

“Evelyn,” I had said, not long after the conversation reverted to, “is there no way in which my property may be fixed, so as to leave the principal untouched, and still yield an income sufficient for my support, and that of Mabel? The bread of dependence is very bitter to me.”

“I ate it long,” she said, “and found it passing sweet. You are only receiving back the payment for an old debt, Miriam. Your father’s lavish generosity can never be repaid, even to his children, by me, who was so long its happy recipient.”

The words seemed unanswerable at the time, inconsistent as they were with her past reproaches. Again she said when the same murmur left my lips upon a later occasion looking at me sorrowfully as she spoke, and with something incomprehensible to me in her expression that affected me strangely: “Wait until you are of age, Miriam: all can be arranged definitely then; but now, the waves might as well chafe against the rocks that bind them in their bed, as you against your condition;” adding with a tragic look and tone, half playful, of course, “Vôtre sort, c’est moi. You remember what Louis XIV. said, ‘L’Etat, c’est moi;’ now be pacified, I implore you all will still be well,” and she patted my shoulder kindly, and kissed my forehead.

Her forbearance touched me; but the time came when all this was thrown aside. It was the old fable again of the bee and the bee-moth. Having failed in her first efforts, she was now very gradually gluing me against the hive.

Evelyn, as I have said, had always been at the head of my father’s house and mine, and, by his will, was still to remain so until my marriage, or majority one, usually, in the eyes of the law, in most respects. So it pained me infinitely less than it must have done had a different order of things ever existed, to see her supreme at Monfort Hall, and to feel that every thing emanated from her hand.

Of all the servants, old Morton alone seemed to feel the difference. Mrs. Austin had always openly preferred Evelyn to me, and Mabel to either so that matters worked very well between those three. For, though I do not think Evelyn loved Mabel, nor Mabel Evelyn, yet, with this link between them of servile affection, they managed very well, without much feeling on either side.

Mrs. Austin certainly spoiled Mabel, yet she only rendered her self-indulged, not selfish for this difference arises out of temperament and disposition and no mother could have been more tender or vigilant of her comfort or welfare, than was this ancient and attached nurse and servitor. I mention this here, for it reconciled me later, somewhat, to an inevitable separation, that must have been else thrice bitter. But the culmination approaches!

I was lying, one evening, on a deep velvet couch in the library, now rarely used except for business purposes for, again, fires and lights sparkled, in their respective seasons, in the several receiving-rooms of Monfort Hall, maintained by Evelyn’s bounty when, overpowered by the influence of the hour, and the weariness of my own unprofitable thoughts, and perhaps the dreary play of Racine’s that I was reading, I dropped asleep.

The sofa was placed in a deep embrasure, surrounded with sweeping curtains, for the convenience of reading in a reclining posture, by the light of the window, and quite shut away, by such means, from the remainder of the room.

To-night, a chilly one in August, very unusual for that season, the window was down, and the drawn curtains kept off the light of the dim lamp that swung from the centre of the apartment immediately above the octagon centre-table.

I was roused to full consciousness by the sound of voices, which I had heard indistinctly mingling with my dreams for some time before.

Mr. Bainrothe and Evelyn were conversing or discussing some subject, somewhat angrily.

“You had the lion’s share,” I heard him say; “you have no reason to complain. The rest came in afterward, and was all merged in that sinking ship, and went down with it into the deep waters. It would not have been as much as you received, had it been saved, which it was not.”

“That is not my concern,” she rejoined, dryly; “but for my communication, Miriam would have secured all next morning. She was bent upon it. You ought never to forget this.”

“Nor do I; but, after all, you are the chief beneficiary, Evelyn.”

“And your son do you count his welfare as nothing? Will he not share with me? Nay, was it not for his sake, chiefly, I warned you, knowing how implacable else you might be toward us both, and how ’gold would gild every thing’ in your estimation.”

“True, true; but still something is due to me. Undertake this office succeed and command me, eternally. I love that girl, as you know, as Claude could never love any one, and it will go hard with me if I do not still inspire her with somewhat of the same sentiment that is, with your coincidence.”

“Never, never!” she exclaimed with asperity; “her hatred is too implacable the Judaic principle is too firmly grafted in her life. Truly, she is one of a stiff-necked generation. Her heart is especially hard toward you, Basil Bainrothe and, I confess, you were precipitate.”

“I know, I know but that error can be repaired. I did not think of marriage then, I confess; after her bankruptcy and scorn to me, things had not gone so far; her own severity has made me consider the subject seriously. She is not one to be treated lightly, Evelyn!”

“Your son found that out to his cost!” was the bitter rejoinder, and I heard her draw in her breath hard between her closed teeth, with the hissing sound so familiar to me, and peculiar to her when she labored under excitement a sound like that of a roused serpent.

“Yes, to his cost; but there is no question of that now. Though, I must say, I think he erred. He, like the base Judean, cast away a pearl richer than all his tribe!”

“Thank you!” was Evelyn’s curt, ungracious reply.

I rose from the couch, my hand was on the curtain; painful as it was to me, I would go forth and confront them both with the acknowledgment of their conspiracy, their fraud. I would not again listen to bitter truths as I had done before, involuntarily, when bound hand and foot by the weakness of my condition. I was strong and courageous now. I had no excuse for hearing another syllable I would defy them, utterly!

All this passed like a flash through my mind.

On what slight pivots our fate turns sometimes! How small are the guiding-points of destiny! A momentary entanglement of my bracelet, with one of the tassels of the curtain, delayed me an instant, inevitably, in my impulsive endeavor to extricate myself from its meshes, and what I then heard, determined me to remain where I was, at any cost to my own sense of pride and honor.

Fear, abject fear, obtained complete ascendency over every sense, and personal safety became my sole consideration. I, who had boasted so lately of my courage, felt the cold dew of cowardice bathe my brow, its tremor shake my frame.

They were plotting deliberately plotting, as the price of secrecy on one part to shut me up in a lunatic asylum until my consent could be obtained to that ill-starred marriage!

“Every thing is favorable to this undertaking,” I heard Mr. Bainrothe say; “her own moody and excitable condition of late the absence of her physician (meddlesome people, those conscientious medical men sometimes prove, even when not asked for an opinion!) Mrs. Austin’s testimony as to those lethargies, which would be conclusive of itself our own disinterestedness, so fully proved by our devotion to her and Mabel, under difficulties her mother’s mysterious malady all these things will make it easy to carry out this plan in which your cheerful coincidence, and perhaps Claude’s even, will be essential.”

“I doubt whether you succeed in gaining him over,” she remarked, coldly; “and, as to me, I shall act as you desire, perhaps, but any thing but ‘cheerfully,’ I assure you. I consider it a mighty price to pay for ” she hesitated.

“A fortune and a husband?” he queried. “Claude has his suspicions, I well know, but they rest on me alone so far. Could he be convinced of your part in distracting Miriam’s gold from its legitimate channel, believe me, he would turn his back on you forever! I know the man.”

“Yet he saw me he must have seen me alter that word in the codocil to my aunt’s legacy asking no explanation at the time, receiving none thereafter.”

“That was different; he thought it a piece of vainglory on your part alone, amounting to nothing, if, indeed, he observed it at all. No, no, Evelyn Erle! if you expect to carry out your views, you must aid me in executing mine. I shall keep your secret from my son on no other conditions. We are confederates or nothing in this matter, you see.”

“And suppose, in return, I publish yours to the world,” she suggested, coolly; “brand you with baseness? What then, Basil Bainrothe what then?”

“You dare not!” was the prompt reply. “I hold written propositions of yours on the subject you have not a scratch of a pen of mine to show. I should declare simply that you were a frustrated rogue, that is all. Who could prove otherwise?” He laughed in his derisive way. There was a bitter pause.

“What is it you want me to do?” she asked, hoarsely, at its expiration. “State definitely what you exact from me in return for your forbearance your honorable secrecy?” There was exquisite irony in her tone.

“Simply this,” he said, calmly, taking no notice of her emphasis “you are to accompany Miriam to the asylum and act as her nurse and guardian until my point is gained. You shall be present at every interview, and you shall both be made perfectly comfortable treated like ladies; in short, every propriety shall be sacredly observed, and, on the day on which her marriage with me is solemnized, you may both return to Monfort Hall you as its head, and Claude as its master; Miriam will go home with me, her husband, of course, and all will be settled. Now, I give you twenty-four hours wherein to consider this proposition. At the end of that time, if you still hesitate, Claude shall know every thing. You can then take your chances with him he may be ready to take a felon for a wife, for aught I know, after all!”

“Come, then, to-morrow evening,” she acceded, after a second pause, and in low, angry accents, “and I will acquaint you with my determination my necessity rather.” They parted thus and there.