saw that he had left a white rose, a little white Scotch rose with which he had been trifling,-upon her open catalogue that lay on the sofa between them. She took up the catalogue, and the rose with it, unaware that Ordronnaux, in approaching, had seen the whole, and she held it, quite sure it was no accident, half wondering, not wholly pleased, and yet somehow vaguely touched. She kept the rose when she took Ordronnaux' arm, partly for its sweetness, partly because she could not churlishly refuse so simple an offering, partly for the grain of sentiment dear to her who felt herself starved for it; he observed it in a glass upon her table by and by; and he was there in the evening when she moved in her slow grace, as she saw a full-blown petal drop, and took the rose and shut it in a book. "I like to come across a dead rose in a book," she said thoughtlessly to the caller who was present, she seldom spoke to Ordronnaux when she could help it, "I fancy some romance shut in with it there." The whole thing was simple enough; but Ordronnaux would not have staid in the city another night, and it was the next day that he took her home by a roundabout Canadian journey that consumed some weeks. The turf had long been green in the city squares, and the sunny slopes purple with violets; that embowered ancestral mansion of his among the hills, with all its flower-set lawns about it, would be putting on its loveliest look, and Ordronnaux wished Emilia to see it first when not one white rose, but a myriad, climbed around the windows!

"Emilia," he said, as they alighted at the porch, while the breath of the honeysuckles floated about them, and turned to look down the velvet swards, with their border of freshly green chestnut wood, to the great cliff whose wall rose between them and the lower earth, "this is your home. I wish," he said fervently, "I wish you may be happy here!"

"I thank you," she said.

It could not have been less to the merest stranger; she felt herself a liar in making it so much.

He led her through the apartments, quaint and low-browed with the old beams and panels of the ceilings, apartments enriched by the gleanings of the foreign travel of many generations of wealth the lovely drawing-rooms, where want of height was compensated by space and the immense crystal openings of the

windows that made them all sunshine, save where the shadows of leaves were dappling the white velvet carpets among their rose and azure hints and phantoms of flowers: there were marble sirens and sylphids shining among the pale silken curtains. there, mellow landscapes now and then upon the walls, now and then a bronze beautiful as when some ancient dreamer first saw its god stand dark against the sunny sky, an ebony escritoire, or easel, with its mosaic, throwing up the splendor here, an oriental trevet, a wonder of gilding and lacquer starting from the shadows there, silken divan and fauteuil and hassock of the same pale perfect tints as curtains and carpets, soft in shade as the fading clouds are, almost as pillowy— rooms too brilliant and beautiful for Emilia's moods. Nor did she like much better the dark library, with its cases carved from black and ancient teak, solid and heavy as the primeval rock, the desk upheld by a bent deity of Farther India with all his dragon-like folds and involutions, the table a huge black lotus itself; the whole place rather full of demoniacal suggestions of learning. There were other rooms no more to her fancy, for the translucent china and the ringing salvers had a covert insult to her excited sensitiveness; and the first exclamation of pleasure that she uttered was over a little parlor at the head of a flight of stairs. Everything seemed to be quite a hundred years old there; the once vermilion velvets of the hangings and the unique upholstery had faded now to a silver grey, with a mere dream of the rose left upon them, a sort of frosty hoariness over all; through the single window, a long balconied window, the sunlit steeps of a distant mountain hung its valleys in mid-air, a magnificent picture full of magical moods and changes. There was but one othera portrait, hanging opposite the window, of a dark and pale lady.

Do you like the room," asked Ordron

naux.

"It is very lovely," said Emilia.

"Make it your sitting-room," he replied then, "where you are never to be disturbed. It opens from your dressing-room, you see; my own rooms are on the other side." And then he led her to the portrait. "It is my mother," he said, as they stood before it. And, in spite of all contradictory feeling, there was something exquisitely pathetic to Emilia in the moment; she pitied Ordronnaux and his dead

mother as she did herself, and the tears dazzled her an instant.

It was one of those well-painted portraits whose eyes follow you. Emilia had not noticed it before. As she looked at it now she could not hinder a sense of guilt, -those eyes were capable of reading her soul; and it was not so she should have met her husband's mother. It seemed all at once impossible to live with those eyes pursuing her; calm, clear eyes-presently they would be avenging eyes.

“If she were but alive! Ordronnaux said. "She would have loved you well." Emilia was only thankful she was dead. And so it happened that in all the oldfashioned house, there was not a single room whose atmosphere Emilia could assimilate with that of her own interior life, and the whole place was only a beautiful prison, a prison that she loathed the first day she crossed its threshold-loathed it because it was her place of bondage, loathed it because all the old Ordronnaux that had once made a part of it seemed to rise in every room and to rebuke her.

There were not many neighbors, nor were those very congenial-a few wealthy families who of late years came for the summer scenery, and had bought some acres from the small farmers; the Ordronnaux owned mountain and forest for miles, still in the original grant which dated back nearly to the days of Captain John Mason. When the first visits were received, and one or two stupid tea-parties given and returned, the social intercourse was almost at an end. The domestic machinery was so perfect that where Emilia was, no murmur of it came. In the long bright mornings, the birds, the bees, the wind in the leaves, made all the sound there was. Ordronnaux was away, perhaps, riding about the farm, whither she had declined to ride with him, selecting the timber that needed felling in the woods, or else writing and reading in the library; and Emilia was very lonely. In the evenings they sat together, as she felt necessary in her sacrifice to outward decency, for they had an unspoken compact of civility-he with his newspapers, she with her fancy-work or book. At first Ordronnaux read aloud whatever was of interest; but Emilia's absent air of revery was often what no gentleman could break in upon; and save the few simple phrases uttered now and then there would be no sound the evening through but the plaintive moaning of the Æolian harp she had strung

in a hall-window, and which nearly drove Ordronnaux wild. Thus the loneliness became something palpable, and out of its intense isolation Emilia divined that she was to be starved into love—and all the rebel in her rose. She knew that she was wrong; she felt herself wicked; the feeling only made her more so. In some inexplicable way she nursed an increasing rancor towards Ordronnaux-to think that the place might have been so dear to her, that the morning rides in the green sun and shadow of the woods might have been so pleasant, the long evenings together might have been so rapturous, his gifts so precious, if she had but loved her husband! That she did not, she held to be his fault, not hers. "He has work before him, if he means to break me in!" she said, and quite aware that she did it viciously, she laid out for herself a course of study that should make the days fly-but it did not. "At any rate," she said, "it will keep me from losing my reason."

Going on with her work of hating Ordronnaux, for indifference towards a lover must needs harden to harshness towards a jailer, Emilia took, of course, no pains to preserve his admiration. She put on the simple garments of the wardrobe she had at her marriage; she knotted her long hair in the easiest fashion. Yet, though Ordronnaux, remembering women in resplendent toilets, might wish Emilia would array herself in the brightness that belonged to the Ordronnaux ladies-through it all he could think only of a goddess in disguise, for she could not change the silver-sweet tones of her voice, she could not change the warmth of carnation on her cheek, the depth of the violet in her eye, and every movement, every outline was only flowing grace.

As for Ordronnaux, the loneliness reacted on him corrosively. Though he loved his home, and had been full of his object of winning her in it, yet he had been ac customed to having his friends about him here, and wide-hearthed hospitality had been the order of the day; now to sit before the statue of a martyr for hours was fast getting to be an ordeal. It was not, however, that mere material loneliness of Emilia's that he felt,-and from which, in some unwhispered way, she yet unconsciously looked for escape, it was the loneliness of the inner soul. He was losing confidence, and his days and his nights were a keen misery. With all his passion he could not choke back a subtle, acrimo

"I met Captain Harriman in town yesterday," said Ordronnaux at dinner one day, after a couple of nights' absence. "He is to be married in March."

"It is settled then," remarked Emilia indifferently, crumbling her bread.

"You are not enthusiastic on the subject," he said with that strange, new smile of his, though she did not lift her eyes to see it.

"On marriage? Oh, no.'

"I thought you might be interested; you were such friends. Though to be sure," lifting his eyebrows, "women's friendships, like their other emotions, are rather inscrutable."

"I am very fond of Alice. But why she should leave so delightful a home-"

"Perhaps a home is not all she thinks of in marrying!" exclaimed Ordronnaux. "Well," he added quickly, as if to cover the outburst, "I asked him to bring Alice and Louise here for Christmas; and I suppose Louise will like to have Colonel Greve invited-a match, I imagine, though I have not seen him yet."

"They have never been in a hill country in winter," answered Emilia, as if to make it evident that she considered it no affair of hers who came or went, in that house. "Nor have you either, Emilia." "No," she said, in a tone as cool as the season she spoke of.

"I chose that time," said Ordronnaux, "because I shall be going and coming a good deal till then, if not afterward also, off and on, with business. I hope you will not be more lonesome than usual."

"Not in the least," said Emilia. And if there were any sarcasm in his hope, there was as much in her assurance.

But in the compassion that so frequently overcame his sternest resolves, and that, when he was a boy, and had trapped any little wild animal, always made him give it one chance for its life,-the next morning, after the servants had left the room, and Ordronnaux and his wife had returned to the perusal of the letters they had opened as usual and laid down again beside their breakfast plates, he glanced up from a long document and said: "I have been thinking that you will find so little to amuse you while I am gone, that really you had better accompany me.

"Do not concern yourself about me," she cried tartly, with a deep flush on her cheek and a sparkle in her eye, and escaped from the room quickly. Perhaps it was

nothing but the April weather of her moods, in which now every day there came storms and showers; perhaps the letter she had just read perplexed her or incensed her. Whatever it was, she had the day for second thoughts.

"By the Lord, this is a happy home!" cried Ordronnaux, stalking from the room himself. "These poles shall be changed for better or worse by spring!" And he did not return till twilight.

When he did come home, though, the air was serene again. A fire of unhewn logs, such as, later in the season, blazed everywhere through the house, rolled its flames in the great chimney-place, and diffused warmth across the premature chill of the stormy night; and Emilia sat beneath the lamp, as beautiful as any dream. No stranger gazing through the pane could have conjectured how hollow a simulacrum of a home was the charming scene.

"By the way," said Ordronnaux, after a while, closing his book, "I neglected to say yesterday,-not, of course, that it matters to me now, but after our guests arrive, it will give me pleasure if you-will He paused. Whether you are careless of giving offense or not, it is difficult to command a person to wear your gifts that have been scorned.

wear

"Oh, certainly," said Emilia, looking up lightly. "All my splendor is at their service.

I should not think of anything else." The graciousness of air and tone might have been disconcerting to Ordronnaux a little while ago.

Yet Emilia could have given you no reason for her graciousness. Only her heart was something lighter than it had been, if her brain was bewildered. When she ran up into her sitting-room that morning, she had opened the letter crumpled in her hand and glanced at it again, as if to make sure it was no fairy paper to turn into withered leaves-perhaps to make sure that any one dared so address her. It was a brief letter, as the eyes of the portrait reading over her shoulder might have

stranger, even though the tie is nothing more than a dead white rose ?"

As Emilia read those concluding lines some sound made her turn her head, and she encountered the eyes of that portrait. She crushed the paper together under the convicting glance, without an idea why she did so, and hurriedly went away. But all day she carried the note about with her, and read it and re-read it; and by nightfall a curious exultation filled her, as she thought there was one person in the world she might call friend. Father and mother had sacrificed her; Alice, Louise, and her companions had but hastened on the sacrifice; here was, perhaps, one friend whom she might really call her own! And as she sat under the lamp that evening, sheltered as her face was with her fan, Ordronnaux or another could but have admired the half smile playing round the lip and the dreamy light in the eye.

Did Emilia, with reflection, if not with instinct, resent this intrusion? Did she feel any outrage upon her as a wife, any insult as a woman? Not after that first bewilderment, the first shrinking, the first blush. All her wrongs she carried over to the account of Ordronnaux; it was owing to his false step that she could be the recipient of such a letter. Should she answer it? Oh, no, of course not. Nor could she, by the way; there was no address-a punctilio that pleased her. Yet, after all, it was not unpleasant to have had it; it was not unpleasant to feel a reserve of strength in that unknown ally. An older woman might have been wroth with the writer; but

Emilia felt the secret of her discontent safe with one who cared to make it less, and valued his commiseration above her pride. She was extremely young; she was at variance with everybody; she knew nothing of the world; she needed a friend sorely. She remembered but very dimly the halfglimpsed face of the hero who had laid the flower on her book-yet not a face, she was sure, ever to wear a stain of dishonor, the possibility not occurring to her, only the impossibility. She was not sorry when, two days later, there came another note, craving forgiveness if the first one had been in error, asking if she could think that her wonderful beauty had impelled him, rather than the beautiful soul behind it, suggesting that, if she valued the writer's friendship, she should wear, as she walked upon the terrace that day, a white rose.

Ordronnaux happened to be in the greenhouse when she came in, for roses had long since done blossoming outside. As she passed him, he himself gathered a flower and some fragrant leaves, and handed them to her, with a mute glance of his dark eyes. She hesitated, but it was the only white rose in the place; and as she took it, though it was without a word, the act of hypocrisy crimsoned her face. Perhaps the romantic consciousness of her new and viewless friend looking at her from some mysterious coign of vantage compensated Emilia. Ordronnaux turned on his heel, flicking off with his stick, to the gardener's round-eyed scandal, the heads of a whole row of Japan lilies as he walked away.