A Knight of the Nineteenth Century. Edward Payson Roe

prejudice you against what I have said. Good-night, dear; I have kept you up too long after your journey."

      Her niece understood her allusion to the cold, unloving man who sat alone every evening in his dim library, thinking rarely of his wife, but often of her wealth, and how it might increase his leverage in his herculean labors. The young girl had the tact to reply only by a warm, lingering embrace. It was an old sorrow, of which she had long been aware; but it seemed without remedy, and was rarely touched upon.

CHAPTER V

       Table of Contents

      PASSION'S CLAMOR

      Laura had a strong affection for her aunt, and would naturally be inclined to gratify any wishes that she might express, even had they involved tasks uncongenial and unattractive. But the proposal that she should become an ally in the effort to lure young Haldane from his evil associations, and awaken within him pure and refined tastes, was decidedly attractive. She was peculiarly romantic in her disposition, and no rude contact with the commonplace, common-sense world had chastened her innocent fancies by harsh and disagreeable experience. Her Christian training and girlish simplicity lifted her above the ordinary romanticism of imagining herself the heroine in every instance, and the object and end of all masculine aspirations. On this occasion she simply desired to act the part of a humble assistant of Mrs. Arnot, whom she regarded as Haldane's good angel; and she was quite as disinterested in her hope for the young man's moral improvement as her aunt herself.

      The task, moreover, was doubly pleasing since she could perform it in a way that was so womanly and agreeable. She could scarcely have given Haldane a plain talk on the evils of fast living to save her life, but if she could keep young men from going to destruction by smiling upon them, by games of backgammon and by music, she felt in the mood to be a missionary all her life, especially if she could have so safe and attractive a field of labor as her aunt's back parlor.

      But the poor child would soon learn that perverse human nature is much the same in a drawing-room and a tenement-house, and that all who seek to improve it are doomed to meet much that is excessively annoying and discouraging.

      The simple-hearted girl no more foresaw what might result from her smiles than an ignorant child would anticipate the consequences of fire falling on grains of harmless-looking black sand. She had never seen passion kindling and flaming till it seemed like a scorching fire, and had not learned by experience that in some circumstances her smiles might be like incendiary sparks to powder.

      In seeking to manage her "difficult case," Mrs. Arnot should have foreseen the danger of employing such a fascinating young creature as her assistant; but in these matters the wisest often err, and only comprehend the evil after it has occurred. Laura was but a child in years, having passed her fifteenth birthday only a few months previous, and Haldane seemed to the lady scarcely more than a boy. She did not intend that her niece should manifest anything more than a little winning kindness and interest, barely enough to keep the young fellow from spending his evenings out she knew not where. He was at just the age when the glitter and tinsel of public amusements are most attractive. She believed that if she could familiarize his mind with the real gold and clear diamond flash of pure home pleasures, and those which are enjoyed in good society, he would eventually become disgusted with gilt, varnish, and paste. If Laura had been a very plain girl, she might have seconded Mrs. Arnot's efforts to the utmost without any unpleasant results, even if no good ones had followed; and it may well be doubted whether any of the latter would have ensued. Haldane's disease was too deeply rooted, and his tastes vitiated to such a degree that he had lost the power to relish long the simple enjoyments of Mrs. Arnot's parlor. He already craved the pleasures which first kindle and excite and then consume.

      Laura, however, was not plain and ordinary, and the smiles which were intended as innocent lures from snares, instead of into them, might make trouble for all concerned. Haldane was naturally combustible, to begin with, and was now at the most inflammable period of his life.

      The profoundest master of human nature portrayed to the world a Romeo and a Juliet, both mastered by a passion which but a few words and glances had kindled. There are many Romeos who do not find their Juliets so sympathetic and responsive, and they usually develop at about the age of Haldane. Indeed, nearly all young men of sanguine temperaments go through the Romeo stage, and they are fortunate if they pass it without doing anything especially ridiculous or disastrous. These sudden attacks are exceedingly absurd to older and cooler friends, but to the victims themselves they are tremendously real and tragic for the time being. More hearts are broken into indefinite fragments before twenty than ever after; but, like the broken bones of the young, they usually knit readily together again, and are just as good for all practical purposes.

      There was nothing unusual in the fact, therefore, that Haldane was soon deeply enamored with his new acquaintance. It was true that Laura had given him the mildest and most innocent kind of encouragement—and the result would probably have been the same if she had given him none at all—but his vanity, and what he chose to regard as his "undying love," interpreted all her actions, and gave volumes of meaning to a kindly glance or a pleasant word. Indeed, before there had been time to carry out, to any extent, the tactics her aunt had proposed, symptoms of his malady appeared. While she was regarding him merely as one of her aunt's "cases," and a very hard one at best, and thought of herself as trying to help a little, as a child might hold a bandage or a medicine phial for experienced hands, he, on the contrary, had begun to mutter to himself that she was "the divinest woman God ever fashioned."

      There was now no trouble about his spending evenings elsewhere, and the maiden was perplexed and annoyed at finding her winning ways far too successful, and that the one she barely hoped to keep from the vague—and to her mind, horrible—places of temptation, was becoming as adhesive as sticking-plaster. If she smiled, he smiled and ogled far too much in return. If she chatted with one and another of the young men who found Mrs. Arnot's parlor the most attractive place open to them in the town, he would assume a manner designed to be darkly tragical, but which to the young girl had more the appearance of sulking.

      She was not so much of a child as to be unable to comprehend Haldane's symptoms, and she was sufficiently a woman not to be excessively angry. And yet she was greatly annoyed and perplexed. At times his action seemed so absurd that she was glad to escape to her room, that she might give way to her merriment; and again he would appear so much in earnest that she was quite as inclined to cry and to think seriously of bringing her visit to an abrupt termination.

      While under Mrs. Arnot's eye Haldane was distant and circumspect, but the moment he was alone with Laura his manner became unmistakably demonstrative.

      At first she was disposed to tell her aunt all about the young man's sentimental manner, but the fact that it seemed so ridiculous deterred her. She still regarded herself as a child, and that any one should be seriously in love with her after but a few days' acquaintance seemed absurdity itself. Her aunt might think her very vain for even imagining such a thing, and, perhaps, after all it was only her own imagination.

      "Mr. Haldane has acted queerly from the first," she concluded, "and the best thing I can do is to think no more about him, and let auntie manage her 'difficult case' without me. If I am to help in these matters, I had better commence with a 'case' that is not so 'difficult.'"

      She therefore sought to avoid the young man, and prove by her manner that she was utterly indifferent to him, hoping that this course would speedily cure him of his folly. She would venture into the parlor only when her aunt or guests were there, and would then try to make herself generally agreeable, without an apparent thought for him.

      While she assured herself that she did not like him, and that he was in no respect a person to be admired and liked, she still found herself thinking about him quite often. He was her first recognized lover. Indeed, few had found opportunity to give more than admiring glances to the little nun, who thus far had been secluded almost continuously in the safest of all cloisters—a country home. It was a decided novelty that a young man, almost six feet in height, should