21 
Radies’ ST! oral sBiafiinet «ua3 SHetarittl Home S&ompiiiioii, 
[Written specially for the Ladies’ Floral Cabinet.] 
By Augusta Larned. 
CHAPTER V. 
“ Here’s a young maid with travel much oppress’d, 
And faints for succor.” 
In a moment when the south wind blows, or the rays of 
June fall more directly upon it, the green calyx of the rose 
expands, and it becomes a glowing and splendid flower. 
The transition from green and crude girlhood to ripe 
womanhood was equally sudden in Winnifred. For a long 
time she had been loitering on the threshold, full of con¬ 
tradictions, cruel and tender, hard aud affectionate, capri¬ 
cious, self-willed, reluctant, and yielding—by turns impetu¬ 
ous and calculating. But the shock of her father’d death 
had altered everything within her, and unconsciously she 
became self-poised with the power to guide her affairs with 
a firm hand. 
The will-power that had made the old judge a terror to 
those about him, even when crippled and chained to his 
chair, came uppermost in her nature, and reduced all the 
discordant elements to obedience. Physically she gained 
new expressions. Her picturesque, vivid face took on an 
added beauty of outline and coloring. Her eyes, of that 
peculiar changeful gray that ranges in hue from warm 
hazel to blue, assumed new brilliancy and lustre. Her 
form, wondrously lithe and willowy, had rounded out into 
fuller proportions, and lost the meagerness of girlhood. 
Fate had decreed that 'Winnifred’s first great sorrow should 
be her introduction into real life. She had grieved passion¬ 
ately for a few hours over the old man’s death, but being- 
free from all conventional standards of mourning, she 
sprang up like a healthy branch that has been beat out of 
its natural direction. 
After that last fatal interview with his girl, the old man 
never spoke again. He lay upon his bed with the purple 
flush overspreading his face, and the dreadful stertorous 
breathing resounding through the house. His hands 
moved, and vainly clutched the air for relief. It was a 
dreadful sight, that death-bed, but Winnifred hung over 
him in an agony of grief and remorse, praying for one last 
look of forgiveness, which she believed was granted, in a 
moment of returning consciousness, just before death set 
its awful seal upon the grey and shrivelled mask of his 
features. 
Edgar Swayne came to Winnie’s assistance in those first, 
distracting, confused hours when Mrs. Braithwaite was 
only a large, limp bundle of helplessness, and old Hanna 
went about the house wringing her hands. But Winnie 
soon rallied from the stupifaction of her grief. Yirginie’s 
sympathy was like a cordial to her sore heart. She roused 
herself to see that the interment took place in accordance 
with the old man’s wishes. Godless he had lived and died, 
aud without exhortation, or prayer, or psalm, he was laid 
away in earth. 
A moralist might have drawn some pregnant lessons from 
the barrenness of that intellectual power, unvivified by love, 
from a life withered and dried up by avarice and suspicion, 
and selfish lusts, but Winnie, as she stood sole mourner by 
that grave, felt only passionate sorrow for a father who 
had been fond of her alone of all the creatures on earth, 
who had trusted her and believed in her while distrusting 
all others, and whom she had mortally wounded in his last 
hours. There arose within her the determination to act on 
every one of his wishes, though she did not confess it to 
herself, even the implied wish that she should be hard to 
her mother. 
Superabundant health and vitality asserted themselves, 
and in a few days a restless activity took possession, of 
Winnifred. She was a little queen, and must set at once 
about regulating her kingdom. 
Yirginie had timidly suggested that Bradley be tele¬ 
graphed for before the day of the funeral. Winnie was 
then in the first langour of her sadness. 
“ 0, yes,” said she, with half querulous indifference, 
“ perhaps it will be best; he must come soon at any rate.” 
■‘But will it not be proper to inform him immediately ? ” 
Yirginie had ventured; “you surely will wish to consult 
your cousin about many things.” 
“ I never think of what is proper,” said Winnie, with a 
sigh, putting her head back on Yirginie’s shoulder. “ I 
don’t mind about propriety, and I don’t suppose Bradley 
has much of a head for affairs, and there is nothing to con¬ 
sult him about, for Mr. Swayne has made all the arrange¬ 
ments; but if you think he ought to come at once, you can 
ask Mr. Swayne to telegraph him from Deanport, on the 
river, where he is going to-night.” 
It was with a terrible inward protest, almost an execra¬ 
tion, that Edgar dispatched the telegram to Bradley Hal- 
court, whom he disliked with the irrational instinct of a 
rival. Love is a blind and unreasonable passion, and there 
were conflicts going on in the soul of the young clergyman- 
at-large it is impossible to describe. The attractions of his 
sacred calling which he had once relished with ardor, were 
opening to him anew, but they grew pallid and bloodless 
beside this first, great, overmastering, irrational love. He 
saw in Bradley the man who was to come gaily sailing in 
on the tide of fortune, and make shipwreck of his life. He 
eould have wished him hump-backed, bent awry, to revolt 
the eyes of Winnifred, for the hot blood coursing to Edgar’s 
heart had effaced some of those lessons of charity that he 
once believed were a part of his being. 
But days passed, and Bradley did not appear. Edgar 
dared breathe again. As hope and life revived in her, and 
the apathy of grief was shaken off, a new and delightful 
intimacy sprang up between him and Winnifred. She took 
him into her confidence, aud unfolded her pet scheme for 
a school for the poor miner’s children, and a Sunday serv¬ 
ice in the village, which would res<ure him to his true 
vocation. She made him, by subtle means, feel that he was 
necessary to her, and an organic part of her life-scheme. 
Her old teasing, mocking air had passed away, and in her 
presence Edgar breathed the perfume of Paradise. 
Winnifred had plunged into affairs. She was now a 
woman of business, with a clearness of head and sound¬ 
ness of judgment that astonished the Deanport lawyer, her 
nominal guardian and adviser. When the will was opened 
it was found that the old judge had left her practically un¬ 
trammelled, and had shown the utmost confidence in his 
girl’s ability and prudence. 
Half the day she was spurring about on Thunderbolt 
with tireless energy, keenly enjoying the excitement of 
rapid motion, and the novelty of her new life. Sometimes 
Edgfir rode with her as she dashed off on a visit to the 
farms, or over the hills to inspect the mines, or went riding 
into the town, to order a grand, new barouche, or to look 
at carriage horses. A spirit of change was everywhere at 
work about the old hall. Men were busy trimming the 
shrubberies, opening new vistas down to the lake, aud roll¬ 
ing and raking the gravel paths. The rubbish was being- 
cleaned out of the greenhouse to make it ready for rare 
exotics. Carpenters, and decorators, and upholsterers had 
been engaged, and already piles of brick and mortar blocked 
the main entrance. Winnie was determined that the great 
days of the old minister’s time should return. She would 
make her ancestral hall the grand mansion of the country¬ 
side. 
On the morning of the day of Bradley’s arrival, she led 
Virgiuie about through the old rooms, some of which had 
scarcely been opened and aired for years, and were close 
and musty, with dingy and tattered furnishings that still 
bore the signs of former luxury. 
“This was my Lady Betty’s room,” said she, pushing 
open a door and raising a cloud of dust in a large, dark 
chamber, where the spiders had wrought undisturbed for 
years, and had festooned everything with cobwebs. “I 
have told you of Lady Betty, a distant relation of grand¬ 
papa’s, and a great lady in England in her time. I will 
open the shutters, so that you can see her picture over the 
mantelpiece, in the high stays and stomacher, with patches 
and powder. It was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and 
some say I am like her, but I shall never die of love as she 
did. There was a perfidious man in England who broke 
her heart, and she came here and slowly wasted away; 
and after she died, the servants had a superstition that 
they heard her sighing in this room all night long; but of 
course that was mere nonsense. You shall have this 
chamber, Yirginie, if you like. It has a pretty view of 
Glenmere and the hills. I will furnish it with delicious 
blue chintz aud white muslin, aud I will take down. Lady 
Betty and hang the room all round with meek maidens 
playing on heavenly dulcimers.” 
“No, no,” said Yirginie, with a little shudder, as she 
looked about at the moldering things and great state bed; 
“ I could not sleep where I knew that poor lady had suf¬ 
fered ; I should always hear her sigh. Leave me to my 
own little nest with the narrow bed and the one window, 
for I am not used to grandeur, and it would not agree 
with me.” 
“ Well, you shall have your own way, Mousie; but come 
to my room. I have taken papa’s old study for my busi¬ 
ness office. It has the desks and all other conveniences. 
I shall have it refitted with fresh paper hangings, walnut 
and gold, and some fine oak chairs, and a Turkey rug in 
the middle of the polished floor.” 
Virgiuie had never passed that door without a certain 
dread. Next to it was Mrs. Braithwaite’s closed chamber, 
which she had not left but once or twice since her hus¬ 
band’s death ; and though not positively ill, she kept her 
bed from melancholy inertness; there she would lie and 
count her beads by the hour. Winnie, in the lull tide of 
her glowing and exultant life, had almost forgotten this 
flaccid and feeble existence; but there was one heart that 
pitied her, that wondered and saddened over the enigma of 
her strange, colorless, joyless being. 
Yirginie glanced timidly at the shabby old arm-chair 
where the judge had been chained so many years. “ That 
is where papa used to sit.” said Winnie, following her 
glance with a sigh, “ 0, that I could call him back, and see 
him frowning, and smiling, and scolding his wayward girl 
all in the same breath.” 
Yirginie could not echo the wish. It made her shiver 
to think of calling back that dreadful old man, the very 
tones of whose shrill voice had made her heart stand still. 
In a moment Winnie began speaking again. “ See here,” 
said she, taking up a ledger from the table, “ this is my 
bank-book, and I can draw checks for a large amount. 
How would you like, Mousie, to have me give you a little 
bit of paper worth a hundred and fifty dollars to buy a fine 
gown ? ” 
“ No,” said Yirginie, with emphasis; “I have not earned 
it; I do not want fine gowns, I only want your love and 
confidence.” 
“How silly it is of you to make set speeches, and ask 
for what you already have in such abundance 1 But I will 
give you a mark of my confidence such as I have never 
given to any one else. Do you see that great safe in the 
corner yonder ? It is where poor papa kept his papers, his 
bonds, mortgages, and money. It opens by a bit of magic, 
for if you do not know to what numbers to direct the hand 
here on the dial-plate, you could no more open it than you 
could, as mamma believes, get into heaven when St. Peter 
refuses to unlock the gate. I have learned this witchcraft 
with great difficulty, and find myself repeating the num¬ 
bers even in my sleep. I am going to confide them to you, 
for my memory is provokingly treacherous, and at some 
critical moment I might forget. You shall help me to keep 
the secret I should like to share everything with you.” 
“Not this,” said Yirginie, with gentle resistance. “You 
must not intrust this secret to any one, not even to your 
lover. A great deal of mischief is done by carelessness. 
It would be like giving edged tools to a child.” 
“You are not a child; you are a little female Solomon, 
and you must help me to keep the secret,” she repeated, 
with affectionate willfulness. “Now say the numbers 
over slowly after me—24, 36, 48, and see,” she continued, 
bending down, and twirling the index point, “ this is the 
way it opens.” 
