When he was gone, the friends looked for an instant at each other, and then Frank rose.
"I am going out," said he. "If you have friends to see or business to look after, don't think you must come with me. I always take a walk before retiring."
"Very well," replied Edgar, with unusual cheeriness. "Then if you will excuse me I'll not accompany you. Going to walk for pleasure? You'd better take the road north; the walk in that direction is the best in town."
"All right," returned Frank; "I'll not be gone more than an hour. See you again in the morning if not to-night." And with a careless nod he disappeared, leaving Edgar sitting alone in the room.
On the walk in front of the house he paused.
"To the north," he repeated, looking up and down the street, with a curious shake of the head; "good advice, no doubt, and one that I will follow some time, but not to-night. The attractions in an opposite direction are too great." And with an odd smile, which was at once full of manly confidence and dreamy anticipation, he turned his face southward and strode away through the warm and perfumed darkness of the summer night.
He took the road by which he had come from the depot, and passing rapidly by the few shops that clustered about the hotel, entered at once upon the street whose picturesque appearance had attracted his attention earlier in the evening.
What is he seeking? Exercise – the exhilaration of motion – the refreshment of change? If so, why does he look behind and before him with an almost guilty air as he advances towards a dimly lighted house, guarded by the dense branches of a double row of poplars? Is it here the attraction lies which has drawn him from the hotel and the companionship of his friend? Yes, for he stops as he reaches it and gazes first along the dim shadowy vista made by those clustered trunks and upright boughs, and then up the side and across the front of the silent house itself, while an expression of strange wistfulness softens the eager brightness of his face, and his smile becomes one of mingled pride and tenderness, for which the peaceful scene, with all its picturesque features, can scarcely account.
Can it be that his imagination has been roused and his affections stirred by the instantaneous vision of an almost unknown woman? that this swelling of the heart and this sudden turning of his whole nature towards what is sweetest, holiest, and most endearing in life means that his hitherto free spirit has met its mate, and that here in the lonely darkness, before a strange portal and in the midst of new and untried scenes, he has found the fate that comes once to every man, making him a changed being for ever after?
The month is June and the air is full of the scent of roses. He can see their fairy forms shining from amid the vines clambering over the walls and porches before him. They suggest all that is richest and spiciest and most exquisite in nature, as does her face as he remembered it. What if a thorn has rent a petal here and there, in the luxurious flowers before him, are they not roses still? So to him her face is all the lovelier for the blemish which might speak to others of imperfection, but which to him is only a call for profounder tenderness and more ardent devotion. And if in her nature there lies a fault also, is not a man's first love potent enough to overlook even that? He begins to think so, and allows his glances to roam from window to window of the nearly darkened house, as if half expecting her sweet and melancholy head to look forth in quest of the stars – or him.
The living rooms are mainly on the side that overlooks the garden, and scarcely understanding by what impulse he is swayed, he passes around the wall to a second gate, which he perceives opening at right angles to the poplar walk. Here he pauses a moment, looking up at the window which for some reason he has determined to be hers, and while he stands there, the moonlight shows the figure of another man coming from the highway and making towards the self-same spot. But before this second person reaches Frank he pauses, falters, and finally withdraws. Who is it? The shadow is on his face and we cannot see, but one thing is apparent, Frank Etheridge is not the only man who worships at this especial shrine to-night.
VI.
YOUNG MEN'S FANCIES
The next morning at about nine o'clock Frank burst impetuously into Edgar's presence. They had not met for a good-night the evening before and they had taken breakfast separately.
"Edgar, what is this I hear about Hermione Cavanagh? Is it true she lives alone in that house with her sister, and that they neither of them ever go out, not even for a half-hour's stroll in the streets?"
Edgar, flushed at the other's excitement, turned and busied himself a moment with his books and papers before replying.
"Frank, you have been among the gossips."
"And what if I have! You would tell me nothing, and I knew there was a tragedy in her face; I saw it at the first glance."
"Is it a tragedy, this not going out?"
"It is the result of a tragedy; must be. They say nothing and nobody could draw from her beyond the boundary of that brick wall we rode by so carelessly. And she so young, so beautiful!"
"Frank, you exaggerate," was all the answer he received.
Frank bit his lip; the phrase he had used had been a trifle strong for the occasion. But in another moment he was ready to continue the conversation.
"Perhaps I do speak of an experiment that has never been tried; but you know what I mean. She has received some shock which has terrified her and made her afraid of the streets, and no one can subdue this fear or induce her to step through her own gate. Is not that sad and interesting enough to move a man who recognizes her beauty?"
"It is certainly very sad," quoth the other, "if it is quite true, which I doubt."
"Go talk to your neighbors then; they have not been absent like yourself for a good long year."
"I am not interested enough," the other began.
"But you ought to be," interpolated Frank. "As a physician you ought to recognize the peculiarities of such a prejudice. Why, if I had such a case – "
"But the case is not mine. I am not and never have been Miss Cavanagh's physician."
"Well, well, her friend then."
"Who told you I was her friend?"
"I don't remember; I understood from some one that you used to visit her."
"My neighbors, as you call them, have good memories."
"Did you use to visit her?"
"Frank, Frank, subdue your curiosity. If I did, I do not now. The old gentleman is dead, and it was he upon whom I was accustomed to call when I went to their house."
"The old gentleman?"
"Miss Cavanagh's father."
"And you called upon him?"
"Sometimes."
"Edgar, how short you are."
"Frank, how impatient you are."
"But I have reason."
"How's that?"
"I want to hear about her, and you mock me with the most evasive replies."
Edgar turned towards his friend; the flush had departed from his features, but his manner certainly was not natural. Yet he did not look unkindly at the ardent young lawyer. On the contrary, there was a gleam of compassion in his eye, as he remarked, with more emphasis than he had before used:
"I am sorry if I seem to be evading any question you choose to put. But the truth is you seem to know more about the young lady than I do myself. I did not know that she was the victim of any such caprice."
"Yet it has lasted a year."
"A year?"
"Just the time you have been away."
"Just – " Edgar paused in the repetition. Evidently his attention had been caught at last. But he soon recovered himself. "A strange coincidence," he laughed. "Happily it is nothing more."
Frank surveyed