XIII DEAREST LADDY,—I am writing in much haste and some perturbation of mind for your advice. Last night, at the Desmonds', Nick van Rensselaer came to me after dinner for a chat. I knew he had something upon his mind when he wasted his time talking to a woman. And what do you think it was? The most astounding, impossible, quixotic, unlanguageable thing in the world! He wants to send Katrine Dulany abroad to study. He wants it to be done in my name, however, so that it will in nowise compromise her, and wishes to have all the credit of the kindness given to me. He says he does not want to be known in the matter at all; that the girl can regard the money as a loan, and return it to him if she becomes a great singer, of which resulting he seems to have no doubt. You see the part I shall be forced to take in the affair. I have asked him for a few days to consider the proposition, and am writing you for advice. When are you coming? Every one is asking about you. Lovingly always, MOTHER. Lying on his back watching the crooked blue spots of the sky through the tree-tops of a Canadian forest, Francis read this letter over and over, and as he did so it seemed strange to him that he had not thought to help Katrine in this way himself. If she ever found out that he had done so she would probably never forgive him, but there were ways, he reasoned, to arrange it so that she could never find out. His decision being made, he acted upon it immediately, and that night two letters, one addressed: MONSIEUR PAUL ROGALLE, de Rogalle, Dupont et Cie, Paris, France, and another: M. JOSEF, Faubourg Saint Honoré, were mailed by him at the neighboring posting-place of Pont du Coeur. The morning after the writing of these letters Frank started farther north, and heard nothing of the outside world for more than a month. At North Point he found a bundle of letters, two from his mother, and another from Doctor Johnston, enclosing the note which Katrine had written him after her father's death. He opened the doctor's first, and at sight of the enclosure his heart, in the homely old phrase, came to his throat. It was a sad letter, thanking the doctor for all he had tried to do, speaking of her father's suffering at some length, parsimonious of detail concerning her own life or future plans. It was ten o'clock in the hunting-hutch. The night outside was starless, the lamps flickered irregularly, the guides lay heavily asleep in their blankets on beds of pine boughs in the corner. It was a strange place for the birth of a man's soul, but as Frank Ravenel read the letter a tenderness, a selfless tenderness, for the sad little writer of it came to him. He had already protected her from himself—"somewhat late," he confessed, with bitterness, and there had been some effort "not to do the worst." But the feel ing that held him as he read was different from any he had had before. He dwelt on her lonesomeness in the world: the long nights she must have passed alone watching the coming of death. Unspeakable tenderness brought a sob to his throat and a pain over his heart, as though suffering from a blow. The remembrance of her on the wind-blown hill came back to him; the scarlet handkerchief waved against the blue of the sky, and the brave call over the brown grass: " Don't think of me! Good-bye!" It seemed in some way to have been a cry of victory. He went to the door of the tent straining his eyes into the blackness. Alone in the great woods with the night noises, under the silent stars, things took on a different value. What was he compared to her? Stripped of family and wealth, how would each measure before a judging world. "She was so"—he hesitated in his mind for a word—"she was so square ," he said to himself. Wave after wave of pity swept over him as memory brought back to him her vividness, the fervid speech, the humor, the touch of her. He closed his eyes for a moment, she was in his arms, there came the odor of her dusky hair, and for the first time in his life he was a man. " Grègoire!" he called to the sleeping guide. "Oui, monsieur." "The distance to the nearest railroad?" "By land—it is sixty miles, m'sieu." "By the lakes?" "It is much shorter, but of an extreme dangerousness." "We will go by the lakes." "When, m'sieur?" "To-night, Grègoire!" XIII DERMOTT'S INTERVIEW WITH FRANK AT THE TREVOY In three days Frank reached New York, where he found mail at the club: from the South; from the Western mines; from women inviting him; as well as five or six messages by wire or mail from one Philip de Peyster, soliciting an immediate interview. Even in his perturbed and planless state these repeated demands made an impression on Frank, and in the morning he telephoned that he was at the Trevoy for the day, and would be pleased to see Mr. de Peyster at his convenience, suggesting the luncheon-hour as a time when both might be free. Having received no response to his message, at two o'clock he entered the dining-room of the Trevoy alone. After ordering, he sat looking indifferently from one group to another, and noted, with surprise, that Dermott McDermott, with his back toward him, was at the next table lunching with a number of men, who seemed, to Frank's quick eye, bent on conciliation. There was nothing in the Irishman's appearance to suggest the man of fashion whom Frank had known in Carolina. His clothes were of rough tweed, he wore an unpicturesque derby hat, and he had the unconsciousness of self which comes from intense occupation with great affairs. Francis listened to the jolly laugh, the quick evasion, the masterful voice, leading, cajoling; he knew the men were wanting something from McDermott, and realized, as they did not, that it was something the Irishman had determined not to give. It was of Frank's own home they were speaking, disconnectedly, and in a strange jargon: of Loon Mountain, Way-Home River, road-beds, cost of production, capitalization, bridges. As he sat wondering at them, their concentration, their unity of thought, their enthusiasm, by one of those throws of fate, which go far toward the making of our lives, Dermott's voice came to him clear and scornful. "I have heard much, I might say overmuch, recently, of family and ancestors, and have sometimes wondered what those boasted an cestors might think were they permitted to see the ineffective descendants who bear their names with neither achievement nor distinction. Now take my own case. My family was well and bitterly known in Ireland as far back as the ninth century. And at the end it availed only enough money to get me through college and over to America. But I've done some things, and with the conceit of the self-made man I'm fond of mentioning them. Directly or indirectly, five thousand people depend on me for daily bread. It's helped the world that I've lived. It's not what a man is born to, I ask. Family? To hell with family! The question is: What have you done?" If the words had been spoken directly to him, they could not have stung Frank more than they did. What had he done? It was Katrine's question, and he recalled the lovable, vibrant little figure on the lodge steps demanding of him if he had no desire to work, no wish to take part in the great constructive affairs of men. The group at the next table rose with an approval of Dermott's final words, and, cigars lighted, were going their several ways, when the Irishman turned and, apparently seeing Frank for the first time, came toward him with a smile, hand outstretched. " It's good to see you again, Ravenel!" he cried. "If you're alone I'll smoke at your table for a minute or two." He waved a farewell to the men who awaited him. It was a farewell as well as a dismissal. "You've heard the news of Dulany, I suppose?" "Only a few days ago. I have been fishing in the Canadian woods. I can scarcely say how sorry I am." "Ah, well! Ah, well! Ye did all ye could for him," said McDermott, genially, "and it's probably for the best. Everything is, you know," he added. "But I thought you might be interested to hear something of the little girl. She has just sailed for France. I saw her off. Transatlantique —yesterday. She has gone to Paris to study with Josef." Both men scrutinized each other steadily for a short time, but at the game they were now playing Francis was by far the keener. "Mother wrote me nearly six weeks ago about somebody's suggesting such a plan for Miss Dulany. Wait a minute," he continued, feeling in his pockets, "here's her letter now." He gave his mother's screed to McDermott, determined that the Irishman should not suspect the part which he had taken in Katrine's affairs, and was rewarded by seeing McDermott return the letter apparently convinced. "Nick van Rensselaer! So that's the way of it," he remarked. "Josef simply wrote her to come, that everything had been arranged by some great lady. There were no conditions save that she should write to her unknown benefactor once a month. The money is to be repaid when Katrine becomes a great singer. "It's just as well—just as well!" Dermott said, after a silence, peering into the cloud of smoke he had blown ceilingward, as though to foretell the future. "Ye see, Mr. Ravenel, if she will so far honor me, I'm intending some day to marry Katrine Dulany." There was again the challenge of the eyes, but Frank's training stood him well as he raised his brows with genuine surprise. "So?" he said. "I think no one suspected in Carolina." "I hope not," McDermott returned. "You see, she's but a child; eighteen years! And a man protects that age from mistakes, as you, of course, know." The lids came down over his inscrutable gray-blue eyes as McDermott spoke. "And, besides, I have had so little to offer her." There was real humility in the tone now. "When the Almighty gives special attention to the making of such a person as Katrine Dulany, it behooves the rest of us mortals to respect His handiwork, doesn't it? I've some poor gifts, some money, a nine-century-old name. There's a title, too, been lying loose in the family since sixteen hundred and I forget what year. But I want her to be sure of herself. As for the study with Josef, it will be good for her, but the idea of Katrine on the stage is an absurdity. I've a cousin in Paris—the Countess de Nemours, a very great lady, though I say it as shouldn't," he said, with a laugh, "whom I am hoping to interest in the little girl. She's no longer young. By-the-way, perhaps you've met her! Her miniature hangs in the hail of Ravenel House." "In the hall at Ravenel?" Francis repeated, in genuine surprise. Dermott nodded. "Under the sconces on the left of the mantel-shelf." "Ah!" Frank cried. "I remember, a beautiful girl in green. It was found among my father's papers only last year. It was a relic of his life abroad." "Yes," Dermott answered, with a curious smile, "that's just what it was. A relic of his life abroad. Well, good-bye and good luck to you," he said, rising, and Francis noted anew the grace of movement, the distinctive pallor, the humor of the great gray eyes as McDermott turned suddenly to come back to him. "Forgive me, Ravenel," he said, taking his hat and stick from a self-abasing waiter, "for dragging you into my private affairs in the way I have done, but somehow I thought it might interest you to know of my love for Katrine," and, humming an old song, he went his devious Celtic way. "Three seventeen! Three seventeen! Mr. Ravenel! Three seventeen!" Dreaming over McDermott's story, Frank realized that a call-boy was charging around the dining-room screaming his name and room number. "Mr. Philip de Peyster." "Hello, old man!" Frank cried, with genuine pleasure, as Mr. de Peyster came forward. "I found so many messages from you, I fear the worst. You're wanting me to stand up with you, I take it." De Peyster shook his head. "Nothing so bad as that. I have rather overwhelmed you with messages and things, haven't I? It's only business, however, not matrimony. I'm sorry, Frank," he added, laughing, "to let you in for a business talk this way. I know how you hate it. Therefore, I hurry. Ravenel Plantation lies between two large railroads. To get from one to another it is necessary to make triangles. There were a half-dozen of us here last spring who conceived the idea of building a direct road along the south bank of the Silver Fork, joining the two roads, like the middle line of the letter H. We believed that the growth in that region of cotton mills, tanneries, and wood manufacture warranted it. You know Dermott McDermott?" he asked, abruptly. "Know him!" Frank answered. "The Almighty alone does that, I fancy. I am acquainted with him." "Whether he got word of the scheme, or whether by pure accident he went South about the time the plans were maturing, no one knows; but he bought a mica-mine, started a tannery, and secured, on the south side of the Silver Fork, a tract of land which lies almost in the centre of our proposed line. It's but ten or fifteen acres, but it goes from the river's edge to Owl Mountain, and we are forced to buy from him, at his own price, tunnel the mountain or go around it, a distance of twenty-two miles, with two streams to bridge. A cheerful prospect! He is holding the piece of land for which he paid ten or twelve hundred dollars, probably, at forty-five thousand! About a week ago I discovered, through O'Grady, that the title was in your name until quite recently." "It was," Francis answered, with a queer smile, "it was; but, with unusual business foresight, I sold it to Mr. McDermott myself for eleven hundred dollars. He said he was going to raise eagles on it," he explained, with a laugh. The flowers, the lights, and the music of the night he had dined at the lodge came back to him. He recalled a touch on his arm, an upturned face with wistful gray eyes, and remembered Katrine's warning. As he did so a great anger came to him at the way he had been used, and his newly awakened manhood called to him for action. There should be another side to the matter, he determined. McDermott's overheard misprisement of the South! His statement of his intentions toward Katrine! The cut of the words, " She is but eighteen, and one protects that age ," came back to him. There had never come a time in his life before when he would have been in the mood to do the thing he now offered. "Phil," he said, "there is another bank to the Silver Fork River." " But it is in your own plantation, and we knew the hopelessness of any proposition to you, Southerner that you are!" "It would be at least nine miles from Ravenel House," Frank answered, determinedly. "I find I have changed a great deal in my views of things lately," and here he leaned forward on the table toward his friend. "De Peyster," he said, "let us build the railroad together!" XIV DERMOTT DISCOVERS A NEW SIDE TO FRANK'S CHARACTER The next morning news came to McDermott that his land on the Silver Fork was no longer desired by the newly formed company. It was nearly a fortnight, however, before he learned the railroad was to be built on the Ravenel side of the river. The information came with abruptness from John Marix, a gaminlike broker, who encountered McDermott in the elevator to their mutual offices. "Say, McDermott," he cried, with a cheerful laugh, "Ravenel didn't do a thing to you, did he? He didn't do a thing to you! " he repeated, with a lively chuckle. McDermott's eyes were bland on the instant. He did not understand the little man's meaning. What he did understand, always understood, however, was that he must never be taken off guard in the game of life. " I am the football of the Street," he said, with a kind of cheerful despondency. "Everybody does me!" "Yes they do!" the other responded, derisively. "It's because you've done everybody that we're glad somebody's got even for a minute! But"—dropping the bantering tone—"this Ravenel is something of a wonder. I was at the meeting of the new company to-day. He's full of the scheme, knows every foot of the land, and is willing to put a whole bunch of money into it. We've elected him president of the concern." By the same afternoon the facts of the case were in McDermott's possession, and the following morning, upon seeing Frank about to enter the De Peyster offices, he advanced toward him, hand outstretched. He was entirely unprepared for the manner in which he was received. Frank nodded to him slightingly, with the scant courtesy he might have accorded a domestic whom he disliked, and said, with directness, looking him squarely in the eyes, "I don't care to shake hands with you, McDermott." Dermott regarded him steadily in return, the gray gleam in his eyes a bit brighter, the lines of his mouth harder. Whatever the grave faults of these two men may have been, there was not a whit of cowardice between them as they stood facing each other. "So!" said Dermott. "So!" And yet a third time he repeated "so!"—his tone one of grave consideration. "Had another done what ye have just done, Mr. Ravenel," he said, at length, "this little episode might not have ended so gayly. But for you I have so slight a respect that there's nothing you could do to me that would make me call ye to account for it." And, raising his hat high and jauntily, he said, with a laugh: "Good-morning, Ravenel!" Frank turned white at the words, but the Irishman had disappeared in an elevator, and any immediate action seemed impossible and theatric. In the short time he had spent in New York he had learned many things, and the narrow, tiled halls of an office building twenty-three stories high, in Wall Street, did not seem the fitting background for a personal encounter to which the hills of North Carolina might have lent themselves with picturesqueness. He sat thinking the matter over in the club that night with two things fixed in his mind. First, that he would go to see Katrine in Paris immediately; of the outcome of such a meeting he took no thought whatever. Second, that he would put this railroad scheme through; already the feeling of power, of the consciousness of unsystematized ability, was stirring within him. The affair with McDermott rankled, however, and it was with drawn brows and tightened lips that he answered a telephone call—a call which changed both of the plans which he had so carefully arranged. His mother's doctor at Bar Harbor had rung him up to say Mrs. Ravenel was seriously ill and wanted him to come to her at once. He started at midnight, to find his mother in a high fever, unconscious of his arrival, and facing an operation, as the only chance to save her life. He had been to her always, as she herself put it, "a perfect son," and for the next three months, which made the time well into December, he proved the words true, living by her bedside, and allowing himself scant sleep from the watching and service. It was when she was far toward the recovery of her health and her old-time beauty that he spoke to her of his newly formed intentions with characteristic unwordiness. "I am going into business, mother," he said, "with Philip de Peyster." She was knitting at the time, counting stitches on large needles, and she went placidly on with the counting until the set was finished, when she looked up pleasantly. "You think it will amuse you?" she asked, with the kind interest which she might have shown concerning a polo game in which he was to play. "I am beginning to think a man should have some fixed duties in life," Frank explained. "Yes, certainly," Mrs. Ravenel answered. "The Bible says something like that, I believe. What are you thinking of doing?" "Buying and selling things, like railroads and mines," he answered, smiling at her indifference. "I'm glad it's Phil de Peyster you are going to buy and sell things with," Mrs. Ravenel said. "His mother was maid of honor at my wedding, and a charming girl, Patty Beauregarde, of Charleston. And I am delighted at anything you do to make you happy, Frank. I have thought you have not been very gay of late. There is, perhaps, a trouble—" "What an idea!" he answered. "Will you have offices and things?" Mrs. Ravenel inquired, vaguely. "I have always had ideas for office furnishings, you know." "If you could see Phil's office, mother, I think you would weep. It's very dirty, and he likes it. It's the dust of his great-grandfathers." "Well, dearest," Mrs. Ravenel said, "if it amuses you, I'm glad you thought of doing it," and she folded up her work and put it into her bag. "Life's a rather dreary affair at best," she concluded, "and anything that interests one is a positive boon." XV JOSEF There is in the Faubourg St. Honoré, not far from the Hotel of the Silver Scissors, an old house set far back in a court-yard of its own. A gray stone wall, the height of the first two stories, protects both garden and house from the eyes of the passer-by; and, save for the sound of singing, the place seems uninhabited most of the time. On a misty morning in late November Katrine clapped the knocker of this old house with fear in her heart, for her future hung on the word of the great teacher who lived here, Josef, whose genius, generosity, and brutal frankness were the talk of the musical world. A Brittany peasant woman opened the door with no salutation whatever, for the huge Brigitte, in her white coiffe and blue flannel frock, spoke in awed whispers only, when the master was at home. "Mademoiselle Dulany?" she asked. Katrine nodded an affirmative. "The master is expecting you," Brigitte said, leading the way up a wide oak staircase to the second floor, which had been made into one great room. It was a bare place, with no draperies and little furniture. Two grand pianos stood at one end near a small platform, like a model-stand. There were photographs of some great singers on the walls, and a few chairs huddled together. In the corner at a desk a woman was writing from the dictation of a man who stood gazing out of the window. He turned at Katrine's entrance. She has seen his picture frequently, and knew on the instant that it was Josef, the greatest teacher in Europe—in the world. "You may go, Zelie," he said to the woman. "I shall not need you till to-morrow." And the dismissal over, he came forward toward Katrine as she stood by the entrance, uncertain what to do. He was a man about fifty years of age, below the medium height, heavily built, and dressed in black, with a waistcoat buttoned to the collar like a priest's. His hair was iron-gray, his eyes brown, and the pupils of them widened and contracted when he spoke. He had a clean-shaven face of ivory paleness, a sensuous mouth and chin, and when he looked at Katrine she understood his power, for it seemed to her as though he could see backward to her past and forward to all of her future. Being alone with her, he motioned her to a seat by the window, near which he remained standing. "I have been hearing that you have a voice. I have heard great things concerning it. I hope they are true." His tone implied that he had small belief that they were. "You have a serious drawback. You are too rich." She started at this. "The management of your income, however, is given to me, as I suppose you know. Will you be so good as to remove your jacket and hat, and walk up and down the room several times?" Katrine obeyed. "Good!" he said, at the first turn; and at the last, " Very good! Sing," he said, as abruptly as he had issued his former order. In the after years she was given to making light of her choice, but the command was scarcely spoken before she began, in her lovely, sonorous voice, the song which it was her heritage to sing well: "'Tis the most distressful country that ever I have seen, They're hanging men and women there for wearing of the green." As she sang the three great stanzas, Josef stood motionless, his lips drawn, his eyes half shut, his face like a wooden man's; but his hands trembled, and as she ended her singing he opened the piano and seated himself in front of it. "Take the notes I strike," he said, "little—very little—so—so—so!" he sang. Up and down, over and over, listening with his head turned to one side like a dog, he had her sing the tones, saying only, "Once more!" and "yet again!" and "over—over—over!" At last, with a sigh, he closed the instrument. "I am not one given to extravagance in language," he said, "but you have the greatest natural voice I have ever heard. It is almost placed. Sit down a minute, I want to talk to you. Two kinds of pupils I have had in my life: those with voice and no temperament, and those with temperament and no voice. God seldom gives both; if He does, it is the great artist that may be made. To be great one must have both. But even with both given, one must have the ability to work, to work like a galley-slave, to work when all the world is resting, at the dead of night, in the small hours of the morning. When all the others have let go, you must hold on, till your head is tired and your body aches and you faint by the wayside; but you must never let go, you must learn to endure to the end. You will understand me. It is the mental part of which I speak. I do not mean that you are to wear your voice or your body out practising. It's something far harder. You must learn to surrender yourself, to lose your life to have it!" He looked at her keenly. She was drinking his words in, as it were, and the expression on her face assured even him. "Do you want me," he said, suddenly coming nearer, "to tell you about yourself; what I see in you?" She bent her head, quivering from head to foot, before the power of this man, who seemed uncanny in his knowledge. "You have had some great sorrow. It is an unhappy love-affair. I understand." Here he smiled his critical, unfathomable, remote smile. "You are not yet eighteen, and have been capable of a great sorrow! Child," he said, "thank God for it! You have a voice of gold. We will make of that sorrow diamonds and rubies and pearls to set in the voice, so that the world will stand at gaze before you. When you have real insight you will know that nothing was ever taken from us that more was not put in its place." "Master," she said, with something of his own abruptness, "may I talk to you a little, a very little, about myself?" Already Josef realized the charm of her companionship as well as the adoring humility with which her eyes shone into his and the unquestioning way she placed herself under his direction. He nodded his permission with a smile. "I want to be taught in everything . I know so little. It is not book studies I mean. I want to learn to be bigger, to think great thoughts. I want, most of all, to develop the power to be happy, to make the people around me happy. Most , I want"—she drew up her chest and made an outward gesture with her arms, a gesture significant of her whole nature in its indication of courage and generosity—"I want," she repeated, "to grow soul!" Josef laughed aloud. "Ah," he cried, "you funny, little, unusual thing! I'm glad you've come to me. We will study, study, and grow soul together , you and I. We will not accumulate facts to be laid on shelves, like mental lumber, but grow bigger thoughts: see ourselves and people clearer that the work may be broadened. And we will find our ideals changing, changing, getting bigger, higher. And the little people will fall away from us, like Punch-and-Judy shows, painlessly, with kind thoughts, because we will have no further use for them. Wait! Trust the master! Nothing makes one forget like a great art! In three—four years, you will meet the man, and say: 'Ach, Heaven! is it for this I suffered? Stupid me! Praise God things are as they are, and that I still have Josef.'" "I have thought sometimes," Katrine went on, "that men have many fine traits, which, without becoming masculine, women might study to acquire. I remember once I went to spend the day with a boy and a girl whose mother punished them both for some slight misdemeanor. Afterward the girl cried all the rest of the morning, but the boy went out and made a swing, and in a little while was quite happy. I was only five, but I saw then, and later, that women bear their sorrows differently from men. I don't want to cry; I want to make swings." "Very well. It is very well," said the great man, and there was a mist in his eyes as he looked at the valiant little creature. "It's a great gospel—that! I wish I could teach it to every woman on earth. Don't cry! Make swings !" She had resumed her hat and jacket, and, with the lesson-day slip in her hand, was at the farther door, when she turned with sweetest pleading in her eyes. "Illustrious One!" she said, "I've not told you all. I've not asked you what I really want to know." Already there was between them that quick comprehension of each other which exists for those people who have special gift. "Well?" he said, waiting with a smile. "You remember a pupil of yours named Charlotte Hopkins?" "Very well, indeed." "You changed her greatly." "It is to be hoped so," he answered, with a laugh. "She told me much of you: of your power, of your ability to make people over. And she said you had studied in the East, and had learned how to make people do your will, even when they were far away from you. Is it true?" "Some say so," he answered. "It is not hypnotism?" she questioned. "I'm no Svengali, if that's what you mean," he responded, grimly. "I'll watch you, Katrine Dulany, and, if I find you worthy, some day I may tell you more." More moved by her personality than he had been by any other in the twenty-five years of his teaching, he stood by the window and watched her cross the court-yard below and disappear through the great iron gates. "Poor little girl!" he thought. "Beauty and gift and a divine despair. Everything ready to make the great artist. And then the heart of a woman, which is like quicksilver, to reckon with. I spoke bravely about her forgetting, but I have doubts. Sometimes I wonder if it be possible for a person with a fine and generous nature to become a really great artist. Perhaps it is necessary to have great egotism and selfishness for the arts' development. I wonder," he said, aloud; repeating, after a minute's silence, "I wonder—" XVI MRS. RAVENEL UNWITTINGLY BECOMES AN ALLY OF KATRINE After his mother's recovery Frank went back to New York immediately, keen to arrange the railroad matters and get the actual work started. In the first interview with De Peyster, however, he found that Dermott McDermott was far from being out of the reckoning. "It is rumored," said De Peyster, "that he is trying to elect himself president of N.C. & T. road. If he succeeds he can control the traffic in Carolina to such an extent that our line would be a failure, even if built." "Then," returned Frank, and any one who loved him would have gloried at the set of his mouth and chin as he spoke, "he mustn't be allowed to be president of the N.C. & T. We must buy up the proxies." Before the end of the week, however, they were surprised again by the news that McDermott had refused to consider the presidency of the N.C. & T. road, even if tendered him, and had given out that he would sail for Europe within a fortnight for an indefinite stay. "But," De Peyster ended, as he repeated the news to Frank, "if you think he's whipped you don't know him! I'm more anxious over this last move than if he stayed right here and fought us openly. There is more to it than we know." In silence Frank held the same belief, though he reasoned that McDermott's European trip could be well explained by his affection for Katrine; and so the thought of Dermott away from New York disturbed him far more than it did Philip de Peyster, but for very different reasons. It was at Bar Harbor that he received the first letter from Katrine, in accordance with the compact that she should write her benefactor once a month. The letter had been forwarded from his Paris bankers, enclosed with business letters in a great envelope. With a throbbing heart he opened it. She had touched it; it had been near her; one of those small, soft hands, with the dimples at the base of the fingers, had penned the strange, small writing: DEAR UNKNOWN ONE,—There is little to tell. I go every day to Josef. He thinks it possible I may become a great singer. I wonder about you, and feel something like Pip in "Great Expectations," only I know how good and great you must be. Isn't it fine to be like a fairy princess, who can do anything for people she chooses? And to have the heart to help—ah, that is the best of all! In my mind, for we Irish imagine always, I have made you a stately lady, perhaps not very strong, who is much alone and has had a great sorrow, who helps the world because it is good to help. So every month I will send you letters of what I do and dream to do. If you are alone much, it may amuse you to read of my queer life here in Paris. If my letters bore you, you will not have to read them. I want only to show that I appreciate your help and your interest in me. To know Josef is the greatest thing, save one, that has come to my life. He gives me little slips of writing to pin up in my room to learn by heart. The last one read: "What is it that enables one to live through the dead calm which succeeds a passionate desolation? Good work and hard work. The way to live well is to work well." Ever gratefully yours, KATRINE DULANY. Another letter came in the same mail, which Frank read with a distaste for the writer of it, for the affair that made such a letter possible. It was from another woman, but something in the fervent little soul beyond the seas called to him, to the best in him, and he tore the other note to pieces and wrote a line or two in answer which closed an affair before it was well begun. For two months he had carried a letter which he had written to Katrine during the first week of his mother's illness. He took it from his pocket and read it over now, wondering if it were wise to send it: "I heard of your great sorrow sixty miles from a railroad in the Canadian woods. I started that night to see if I could help you. To speak truth, Katrine, I don't know why I started to come to you, except that I could not stay away. "In New York I met McDermott, who told me you had sailed to study with Josef. This did not change my plans in the least. But there came the question of that land on the other side of the river which detained me for several days, and then my mother's dangerous illness. "I have been with her constantly since—the crisis is past, but she is still too ill for me to leave her. I am coming to you just as soon as I can. And I am going to ask you to forgive me, to take me and make whatever you can out of my worthless self. Whatever of good there is in me has come through you. You have given me belief in purity and selflessness and hope of achievement. "Don't remember me as I was; don't do that, Little One; only as I hope to be; as I hope you will help me to be. I am coming for your answer the first minute I can get away. "FRANCIS RAVENEL." There had been many reasons for not sending this letter: his mother's illness; his sudden plunge into business; but underneath all was the fear, which grew larger day by day, that he might receive from Katrine the rebuff which his conduct toward her so richly merited. Uncertainly he held the letter, reviewing one of the curious turns that life had taken in giving Katrine an ally in his mother. On one of his week-end visits to Bar Harbor, where Mrs. Ravenel was still staying, her old gayety had led her one evening to the teasing subject of his marrying. He was standing by the open casement, looking into the twilight over the sea, when he answered her, and he could not hide the break in his voice as he spoke. "I have the misfortune to love the wrong woman, mother!" "Frank!" The cry of alarm and tenderness and protest touched him strangely. " Yes," he went on, "and it's a hard fight." She came near, putting her hand tenderly on his cheek. "Ah," she said, "my boy, my boy!" He drew her to him, and for the minute he seemed, indeed, a boy again, coming to this sure haven of comfort, to the place where he had never been criticised or told that he was wrong. "Yes, lady mother, I'm hard hit. I fell in love with one whom I didn't think it square to the family to marry. We have never made mis-alliances, in this country or the other. I believed, and I believe still, that a man owes it to his descendants, to the furthest generation, to marry for them. I believed, and I believe still, that marriage is far less a matter of personal inclination than most people consider it to be. I believe that when a man marries a woman he does not marry her alone, but all of her ancestors, and that he may expect to see the maternal grandfathers appearing again in his own grandchildren." "Certainly, dear," Mrs. Ravenel acquiesced, in a tone which indicated there could be but one opinion on such a subject. "You know how firmly I have believed this always, mother!" She pressed his hand for reply. " I told her that I could never marry her. But the thing was too strong for me—I went away from the place where she was. Oh," he cried, in a heat of self-abasing, "I grow cold when I think what a cad I was! I hurt her so! But I did, too late, what I thought was right, what I had been trained to do." Far into the night, lying sleepless, with his hands folded under his head, there came a light tap at his door, and he knew his mother had come to him. She wore a rose-colored dressing-gown, and at sight of it he remembered, with tenderness, how she had always longed "to be beautiful to him." Kneeling by the bed, she put her gentle arms around his neck, laying her soft cheek against his own. And the way everything in life falls down before mother-love could surely never be shown better than in her talk with him, in which she renounced almost every inherited belief to try to make life happier for him. "Onliest One!" she said. It was her baby name for him. "Yes, Miss Cora," he answered. They were the first words, learned from the negroes, that his childhood lips had ever formed. "I couldn't sleep. You remember how I never could bear to see you suffer. I seem to go mad, to lose all self-control if you are not happy. And I came to tell you that it isn't true, that talk about marriage. I know it. I knew it when I taught you all the foolishness about family and position, and helped you to have the pride of Lucifer. Ah," she cried, "I suffered enough to know it isn't true! There is just one thing on earth that makes marriage endurable: a great and overmastering love. Marriage is the one thing about which for the good of the race, for the good of the race," she repeated, "we have a right to be divinely selfish." "Perhaps it's true, mother mine, but the knowledge comes too late." "No, it hasn't, boy!" she answered. "It hasn't. If I were a man and wanted a woman, I wouldn't let her wishes interfere in the matter. I would carry her off, if necessary. It was a good, old-time way—that!" she cried, earnestly. "Mother! Mother! Mother!" Frank remonstrated, with a laugh, though with tears in his eyes. "And you will have her if you want her; for you are so beautiful and dear and sweet, no woman could help loving you." And with this biased assurance he fell asleep, as she sat by his bedside with her hand on his cheek. XVII MCDERMOTT VISITS HIS FRENCH COUSIN It was true that Dermott's sudden departure for Europe had troubled Frank. But it would have disturbed him more had he known the truth, for McDermott was not only bent upon seeing Katrine, but was stirring another trouble for Frank, a trouble which McDermott felt had already slept too long. The week before the Irishman sailed (it was the very day upon which he decided, with a laugh to himself, to give up the railroad fight and allow the new company to build the road on the Ravenel land) he wrote his French cousin, the Countess de Nemours, thus: BEAUTIFUL LADY WITHOUT MERCY,—I am writing in a perturbed state of mind, for I think I shall get for you a great fortune. You do not answer my letters, though I have written at the lowest estimate ten thousand times. I want the date of your first marriage securely stated in written evidence; also the dates of the birth and death of the child. I want every scrap of paper which you have, concerning that sad affair of thirty years ago, ready for me when I arrive in Paris two weeks from to-day. There is a little girl over there studying music in whom I want you to interest yourself. Her name is Katrine Dulany. She is with Josef. Yours of the Shamrock, DERMOTT MCDERMOTT. The Countess de Nemours' house in Paris stood in the centre of the street of the Two Repentant Magdalens. An iron door in a griffoned arch opened into a sunny court-yard, where peacocks strutted by an old fountain, and a black poodle, who was both a thief and a miser, snarled at the passers-by. On the right of the entrance, in a kind of sentry-box, Quantrelle the Red acted as concierge . He was a man above the peasant class, ridiculously long and spare, with an unbroken record for thirty years of drunkenness and quarrelling. His narrow head was covered with irregular tufts of scarlet hair, and in his forehead were heavy furrows which curved down over the nose and waved upward and back to the temple. His eyebrows were red tufts standing fiercely out over his little red-brown eyes, and his nose, long, lean, and absurdly pointed, seemed peering at his great teeth, yellowed by much smoking of cigarettes. He added to his charms an attire intentionally bizarre, for he dressed himself, so to speak, in character. And with these natural and achieved drawbacks to his appearance he had the temper of a wasp, so that it was small wonder that questionings were rife as to the reason of his retention, his overpaid retention, in the De Nemours' household. He had a wit of his own, had Quantrelle. Frequently his pleasing fancy led him to admit visitors when he knew Madame de Nemours to be absent, and, after conducting them by some circuitous route to unexpected rooms, he would leave them waiting until discovered by any chance domestic who happened by. And when they were ushered forth to the street he would follow them with a torrent of shrill apology, retiring, in a paroxysm of silent laughter, behind the shutters of his little box. Why Madame de Nemours endured his vagaries was indeed strange, for she was one who demanded of every other domestic something of an over-obsequiousness in service. It was a well-known fact, however, that he held an assured position in the household, and that the Countess only smiled at his grimaces and drinking, rewarding him with frequent gifts and holidays in the country. On the morning of Dermott's coming, Quantrelle the Red sat in his little house peering out, monkeylike, expectantly, at the passers-by, and craning his long neck to keep a constant eye on the corner around which the Irishman was to arrive. As the brougham drew up to the curb the Red One sprang to his feet, threw the iron doors wide apart, and stood bowing double as McDermott entered. "Ah, my Quantrelle!" he cried, gayly, at sight of the thin grotesqueness. "Still in your old place; still taking care of madame!" "Till the end," was the answer, with a serious note in the voice. "You have not changed much in the three years since I saw you last," Dermott said, inspecting him closely. "Nor you, monsieur," Quantrelle answered. "In fact, you have changed little since twelve years ago, when I hid you and young Monsieur de Chevanne on top of my box here, after some escapade, to keep you both from the police." He scrutinized McDermott closely as he spoke. "And it's not the money (which I know well you will give me anyhow) which makes me say you are more beautiful than ever, monsieur. The same elegant pallor; the same pursuit in the eye! Had I had your looks"; he made a clucking sound in his cheek with his tongue; "and your clothes! Always the blacks and grays and very elegant! They are not my colors," he drew himself to his straightest to exhibit his maroon coat and trousers and wide green cravat with an assumed satisfaction; "but each has his own style," he finished. McDermott laughed. "You are sober, Quantrelle!" "Distressingly so, monsieur!" "And if I give you money you would use it for—" McDermott paused. "Charity, monsieur," the Red One answered, his eyes drooped religiously. He took the gold coin which Dermott gave him, tossed it into the sunshine, and slipped it into his pocket with a bow. "You will notice, I honor your integrity by not biting it to see if it be counterfeit." "Knowing your character, it is indeed a compliment," McDermott said. "Au revoir, my Quantrelle!" "Au revoir, Monsieur l'Irlandais!" And Dermott passed. Inside he found the Countess waiting in the drawing-room, and she greeted him with hands outstretched, kissing him on both cheeks in the French fashion. Afterward she stood regarding him with a slow, sweet smile, which came from one of the kindest hearts in the world. "And this," she said, in a beautiful, quiet, warm voice, "is the Irish cousin who has not been to see me for so very long!" Although past fifty, she was tall and slight, with the grace of a girl. Her hair, white and soft and wavy, was worn high in a style quite her own; her skin was pink and white as a child's; her blue eyes shone with tenderness, and they had a merry, dancing light in them continually. Her face was of a delicate oval, with a nose slender, beautifully modelled, and exceptionally high between the eyes. She wore a green-white dress of cloth individual in its cut and very plain, with an old silver belt and brooch to match. Her hands, fragile and beautiful as shells, were ringless. "It seems so perfectly flat to say that I am glad to see you, doesn't it?" she asked, as Dermott smiled down at her. "I like it just the same," he answered. "When did you get in?" she inquired. "I came over from Havre yesterday. I was busy with some English folk about a mine, or I would have tried to see you last evening." "And you will stay—" She paused. "Ten days at most." "Ah!" she said. "That's horrid! You will miss so many pleasant things! A Bernhardt first night for one." "I'm a horny-handed son of toil, beautiful cousin," he answered, "and I have come on business only." There was a pause, which Dermott felt the Countess was waiting for him to break. "Patricia," he said, a beautiful consideration for her in his voice, "I want to spare you in every way I can in reviewing the bitter business of your early marriage. I have written you only what was absolutely necessary for you to know. I discovered by accident that your first husband left quite an estate. If you were his wife and had a living child at the time of his death, and if these facts can be established, this property belongs to you. You have not as much money as you should have. I shall get his estate for you—if I can." "About the records?" she inquired. "If you have them ready I shall go over to Tours to-morrow to make a search for the sister of the priest." "Dermott, dear," the Countess said, putting her hand on his shoulder affectionately, "you are not going to make trouble for any one, are you?" "Am I not?" he answered, with a short laugh. "Am I not?" She took a bundle of papers, which she had evidently prepared for him, from a desk which stood between the windows, but made no motion to give them to him. "It's all so far in the past," she said, "no one can ever know what I suffered. But I want no one else to suffer in order that I may have what you term my rights." "Patricia," Dermott answered, gravely, "the thing is all a bit in the air as yet. Your first marriage will be difficult to establish. The French law requires such absolute proof that I may not be able to obtain it. Now, don't let us discuss the matter further, nor worry that kind heart of yours." He patted her head affectionately as he spoke. In the years past she had known him well enough to remember his moods, and she gave him the papers in silence. " About Mademoiselle Dulany," she continued. "Since your letter, I have made inquiries concerning her. I shall be glad to know her, for her own sake as well as yours." "I'm going to ask a great favor of you for her, Patricia," he answered. "You live in this great house alone. It would be better to have more people about you. I want you to see much of her, for I am hoping that some day she may be my wife." He spoke the last word tenderly, a bit wistfully. "Ah, Dermott," she cried, "I had no idea! I shall be so glad to do anything I can! Why couldn't she come and stay with me?" "That is like you," he answered, gratefully; "but such things can never be arranged happily. They must grow. Wait until you meet her. I am to see her to-night. I will bring her to you to-morrow, if I may." "It is arranged, this marriage?" she asked, delighted at a bit of romance. "Not in the least," he answered, concisely. "But she loves you?" "On the contrary," he said, quietly, "she loves another." "And you are hoping—" The Countess hesitated. " Not hoping," Dermott answered, "determined." "How old is she?" "Nearly nineteen, and Irish." "Irish girls are hard to change." "But you loved your second husband, did you not?" Dermott inquired. "I hope I was a good wife," the Countess answered, evasively, adding, "But you remember our own Tom Moore!" "'The wild freshness of morning—'?" Dermott stood looking into the fire, his eyes drooped, his face saddened. "But there is something else to remember as well," Madame de Nemours said, touching him on the shoulder and looking up at him admiringly. "The half-gods go when the gods arrive. And you have everything in your favor. You are so great a man and such a charming fellow, Dermott!" On the following day Katrine came alone to see Madame de Nemours, Dermott having concluded wisely that his presence would be but a drawback to any quick acquaintance between the two. "I am Katrine," the girl answered, in response to the Countess' query. "Mr. McDermott has been so kind as to send me to you." "It came about in this way," the Countess explained, drawing Katrine to a couch and still keeping her hand. "There was a time when I knew Dermott, my cousin, very well. That was in Ireland, before he became the great man he now is. Since that time we have written to each other always, for he has been kind enough to give me his friendship. He came yesterday. I was sad, and told him of my lonesomeness. It is best, is it not, to be quite frank when two people are meeting as you and I are doing? In spite of all this," and here she made a slight gesture to include her luxurious surroundings, "I am quite a poor woman. And so when I told Dermott that I was lonesome in this great house, with none but servants, no companions, he spoke to me of you. He was quite practical. He said that you spent much money as you were living. He told me of your great beauty and your greater voice. I became very much interested in you, and we arranged for this talk. Now that I have seen you, I want you to come and live with me very much, very much." She was so charming in her kindness, this great lady! "But you may not desire it. The situation is awkward for me." She smiled here, and a humorous light danced in her eyes, for with all her graciousness she was quite certain of her charm. "And so we will leave you to think it over and tell Mr. McDermott, who will in turn tell the decision to me. That will save my vanity from being hurt openly in case you do not come." Impulsively, Katrine clasped both the Countess' hands in hers. "I want to come very much," she said. "There was never any one with whom I would rather be. I know now that you are the lady of whom Monsieur Josef spoke to me once. 'Ach!' he said, you know his way, 'she is the greatest lady in the world! It is not what she does , but what she is so beautifully.'" As Katrine spoke with the earnestness of voice and manner always her own, the Countess leaned forward suddenly with a startled look. "Who is it that you remind me of?" she cried, drawing her, black brows together. "If I could only think! Who is it that you remind me of?" XVIII KATRINE MEETS ANNE LENNOX During McDermott's ten days' stay in Paris, Katrine saw him constantly. The evening after her first visit to the Countess he received with a gay air of irresponsibility the news that she was to take up her residence with Madame de Nemours, and though he personally assisted in the establishing of herself and Nora in the queer old house, it was with the manner of one in no way responsible for what was going forward. Some sunny rooms on the third floor were given her, a great piano was enthroned in a bright corner, gay flowers bloomed against the faded tapestry, and the Countess urged her to choose from many pictures the ones she desired for intimate friends. She knew that McDermott visited Josef to speak of her, and that he returned delighted with the visit; but in all of his attentions there seemed even to the watchful eyes of the Countess more brotherly kindness than the solicitude of a lover. On the night before his return to the States he had a long talk with Madame de Nemours. His visit to Tours had resulted in nothing, and it was with some depression of spirits that he was making his farewells. But the Countess was too much occupied with her new protégé to be downcast over any mythical inheritance in America, and as she stood under the lamps in the doorway bidding him farewell, she said, with girlish enthusiasm: "Don't you think about it any more. I have enough to live on nicely. And as for that glorious Katrine, I'll deave her ears with your name! No praises. Ah, I'm too old and wise for that! It will be this way. 'It's a pity,' I'll say, 'that Dermott is not better-looking,' and she'll answer, 'Sure he's one of the handsomest men in the world.' And the next day, 'How unfortunate he is so niggardly?' 'Niggardly!' she'll cry. 'He gives away everything he has. He's the soul of generosity!' Ah, trust me!" the Countess ended. "She shall persuade herself there's none other like you. And there's not!" she cried, kissing her hand to him as he went down the steps. Within the week after McDermott's leaving Paris there occurred two events, seemingly remote from Katrine's existence, which later wrought the greatest changes in her life. The first of these was the alarming illness of Quantrelle the Red. After a day of peculiarly unbearable conduct on his part, the other domestics in the house had revolted, and late in the evening turned him out to pass the night in his fireless sentry-box. For ten days after this occurrence he hovered between life and death with an inflammation of the lungs, during which period the De Nemours' household learned his real power, for the Countess flew into a paroxysm of rage at his treatment, discharged the cook and one of the upper maids, harangued the others, sent for the best doctors in Paris, and herself assisted in the nursing, taking little sleep or nourishment until the old fellow was well on his way to recovery. During all of this turmoil Katrine went quietly back and forth to her lessons, in no way questioning the conduct of the Countess, for she understood to the full that human hearts form attachments by no rule. One evening during Quantrelle's convalescence, when the Countess was her sunny self again, she offered, unasked, an explanation of her seemingly singular conduct. " Little person," she said, putting her hand on Katrine's shoulder, "you mustn't judge too harshly my Irish temper. It was gratitude to Quantrelle which made me act as I did. There were two years of my life when I should have died but for him." It was an amazing statement, and Katrine's face showed her astonishment. "When I was sixteen," Madame de Nemours continued, "I was sent to a convent school at Tours. Quantrelle's father was gate-keeper there, and let me pass out the night I went to be married. I was only a child." The Countess covered her face with both hands, as though to shut out some horrid sight. "He was an American, a Protestant, and my father cursed me. Two years after the marriage my husband deserted me. Perhaps," she paused in her story, "perhaps Dermott has told you this?" "He has never spoken of it to me," said Katrine. "After my baby came," Madame de Nemours continued, "I was alone with poverty and ill health, and for two years, two years ," she repeated, impressively, "Quantrelle, a long, thin-legged, red-haired boy, kept me alive with the money he could earn and the scant assistance his mother could lend him. It was eleven years later, four years after my baby's death and my father's forgiveness, that I married the Count. Katrine, darling, I gave him a great affection and entire devotion, but my heart died with the first love. To have that first year over! Ah, there was never another like him! You could never know, Katrine, how different he was from others." "It was long ago?" Katrine asked. "Thirty years. Dermott has recently been demanding papers of me. It seems there may be some property in America belonging to my first husband which he can claim for me." A premonition of the truth came to Katrine at the sound of Dermott's name. "And your first husband's name?" she inquired. "Will it pain you to tell it?" "Not at all," the Countess answered, with a sad smile. "It was Francis Ravenel." The sound of the name itself brought no shock to Katrine. She seemed to have heard it before it was spoken, but she made no sign. She knew it was Frank's father of whom Madame de Nemours spoke, and the tales of him in North Carolina had more than prepared her for wild doings in his student days. It seemed strange, however, that Frank had never spoken of an early marriage of his father. But the more she thought of it, the firmer became her belief that he had never known it. It was not until the gray of the following morning that she comprehended to the full the weighty significance of Madame de Nemours' early marriage, and saw clearly the significance of Dermott's stay in Carolina, with the direful resulting that might come to Frank from the Irishman's investigations there. "If Frank's father married in America, with a wife and child living in France—" But here Katrine stopped in her thinking, putting the idea from her mind as one too horrid to entertain. The second apparently disconnected event which led by a circuitous route to the death of Madame de Nemours, as well as to the discovery of that missing witness for whom McDermott long had searched, was announced quietly by the Countess herself one morning of the following May. Looking up from the Paris Herald , she said to Katrine, "I see that Anne Lennox has leased the old Latour Place in the Boulevard Haussmann for an indefinite period." The three months following the coming of Mrs. Lennox made no change in their lives whatever. Katrine was aware that Madame de Nemours and Anne exchanged visits of courtesy, each missing the other, but early in July she went with the Countess and Josef to Brittany and spent the summer in work, the world forgetting and by the world forgot. And the divine days with Josef by the sea! His wisdom, his temper, his splendid intolerance, his prophetic imaginings, as he stormed at the imbecility of his kind! "It's this damned idea of realism that's killing art!" he shrieked one day, on the rocks at Concarneau. "Who wants things natural? If Jones and Smith could be taught by reiterating life as it is, the race of fools would soon become extinct. My neighbor loves his neighbor's wife, and they go off together and there is murder done. Does the reading of this in book or paper stop my going off with the woman I love if I have the chance? Not a whit! Art must raise one's ideals. It's the only thing that helps you, me, any one!" Or, again, and this was at twilight, waiting under the old crucifix for the herring-boats to come in: "Anybody with eyesight can imitate the actual . The real ! What has the creative mind to do with that? It is not one great and innocent-minded girl you are to represent in Marguerite, it is all girlhood in its innocence and surrender." And another time, on the way home from Pont-Aven: "Women of detail, women who indulge themselves in soul-wearying repetition of the little affairs of life, have driven more men to perdition than all the Delilahs ever created." And Katrine and he laughed together at his anathema, and went forward into a dusky French twilight, singing as they went. Around her room she pinned the written slips which he gave at every lesson, Scripture which seemed perverted to uses other than its own: