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"Yes; oh, not any, thank you," cried Tom, stepping on the widow's dress, dancing off it and dealing Elizabeth a blow with his hat. Mrs. Mellen felt herself grow sick at heart; she glanced at Elsie; the girl was laughing gaily, and chatting away with young Hawkins, regardless of Tom's presence.
Mellen might possibly be on board, and he was sure of a good round sum, in that case, for bringing this gentleman on shore, while his superior, the pilot, took the steamer into port. North heard all these muttered regrets as he sat gloomily in the bar-room, and they seemed to affect him more than so unimportant a subject should have done.
What will happen?" "Happy Tom" stared at her uncomprehendingly. Her voice was shrill and insistent. "Suppose the water rises higher. Won't the ice sweep down on the bridge itself? Won't it wreck everything if it goes out suddenly? Tell me " "It can't hold. Mellen says so."
Mellen, kindly, rousing herself from the abstraction into which she had fallen while Elsie and her brother had been chatting together. "Are you glad to get back?"
Mellen turned uneasily, unhappily, and looked again into the still and placid face. That meeting was on a glaring day in June. This was a clouded afternoon in late October and nearly five months had slipped away. Yet he had heard the solemn story of murder and had never, up to now, imagined there could be a doubt.
Mellen?" cried a third voice; "make haste, or they will be upon us before we know a word about it." "His sister, Miss Elsie Mellen, was a pupil in the school. Her love for Miss Fuller was perfect infatuation. The brother worshiped her sweet creature, who could help it? and so the acquaintance began in the parlor of a boarding school, and ends Hush, hush!"
"Oh," Weldon said slowly. "I begin to see. Miss Mellen had never met Carew, so she had no idea we were friends. What a curious snarl it all is!" "The hand of Fate is in it," Ethel assented idly. "Do you believe in Fate, too?" "Surely. Why not?" "Nothing, only your cousin said you didn't." The girl frowned. "Alice doesn't know all my mental processes," she said a little severely.
"They are stupid people to be sure," Elsie observed, "but then it's a little change from our own special dullness, and we have been alone for three days." "You are such a foolish child!" returned Mellen. "Oh, that's all very well," laughed Elsie; "but I don't wish to make a female Robinson Crusoe of myself, I do assure you. Bessie, old Mrs.
Elsie says he never changes. That woman's memory must always lie between his heart and mine." So she turned to her dull weary path of duty, and gave no sign. October comes, and scarcely four months after his marriage, Mellen was compelled to leave his wife and home, it might be for a year.
Henceforth life would be but one long waiting just for revenge, then to be free from the dull pressure of this existence. "How white you are!" Elsie said suddenly. "I don't believe you have slept at all." It was true. For nights Mellen had not closed his eyes, but he felt no approach towards drowsiness even now. "You will fall sick!" cried Elsie. "What shall I do then?"
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