Mademoiselle Bourdon promised readily.

"Though I don't write very good letters," she remarked deprecatingly.

"I get the spelling wrong, and the grammar dreadfully mixed when I write in English, but I want to improve. If you'll promise to tell me of all my mistakes, I'll write with pleasure."

So what were to be the most precious love letters on earth to the gentleman, were to be regarded as "English composition," by the lady.

Truly, the French proverb saith: "There is always one who loves, and one who is loved."

Mr. Gilbert returned to New York, and found that populous city a blank and howling wilderness. The exercises in English composition began, and though both grammar and spelling might get themselves into hopeless snarls, to him they were the most eloquent and precious epistles ever woman penned. He had read the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, but what were those vapid epistles to Miss Bourdon's? He watched for the coming of the Eastern mail; he tore open the little white envelope; he read and re-read, and smiled over the contents.

And time went on. August, September, October passed. The letters from Miss Norine Bourdon came like clock work, and were the bright spots in Richard Gilbert's hard-working, drab-colored life. He wrote her back; he sent her books and music, and pictures and albums, and pretty things without end, and was happy. And then the Ides of dark November came, and all this pastoral bliss was ended and over.

The letters with the Down-east post mark ceased abruptly, and without any reason; his last two remained unanswered. He wrote a third, and fell into a fever while he waited. Was she sick, was she dead, was she----.

No, not faithless, surely, he turned cold at the bare thought. But what was it? The last week of November brought him his answer. Very short, very unsatisfactory.

"KENT FARM, Nov. 28, 1860.

"DEAR MR. GILBERT--You must pardon me for not replying to your last letters. I have been so busy. A gentleman met with an accident nearly three weeks ago, close by our house, broke his left arm, and sprained his right ankle. I have had to take care of him. Aunt Hetty has so much to do all the time that she could not. We are all very well, and send you our best wishes. I am very much obliged for the pretty work-box, and the magazines, etc. And I am, dear Mr.

Gilbert, with the most affectionate sentiments,

"NORINE K. BOURDON.

"P. S.--The gentleman is greatly better. He is with us still. He is very nice. He is from your city.

"N."

In the solitude of his legal sanctum, Richard Gilbert, with frowning brow and gloomy eyes, read this blighting epistle. His worst fears were realized, more than realized.

There was a gentleman in the case. A gentleman who absorbed so much of Miss Norine Bourdon's time that she could not answer his letters. And he was "greatly better" and he was from your city. Confound the puppy! He was young and good-looking, no doubt; and he must meet with his accident, at her very door; precisely as though he were enacting a chapter out of a novel. Of course, too, it was his arm and his ankle that were smashed, not his villainous face. And Norine sat by his bedside, and bathed his forehead, and held cooling draughts to his parched lips, and listened to his romantic, imbecile delirium, etc., etc., etc. She sat up with him nights; she read to him; she talked to him; she sang for him. He could see it all.

Mr. Gilbert was a Christian gentleman, so he did not swear. But I am bound to say he felt like swearing. He jumped up; he crushed that poor little letter into a ball; he strode up and down his office like a caged (legal) tiger. The green-eyed monster put forth its obnoxious claws, and never left him for many a dreary year. It was that atrocious postscript, so innocently written, so diabolical to read. "He is greatly better. He is with us still. He is very nice." Oh, confound him! what a pity it had not been his neck.

Suddenly he paused in his walk, his brows knit, his eyes flashing, his mouth set. Yes, that was it, he would do it, his resolution was taken.

He would go straight to Kent Farm, and see for himself. And next morning at 8 o'clock the express train for Boston bore among its passengers Mr.

R. Gilbert, of New York.

The train whirled him away, and as the chill, murky December landscape flew by, he awoke all at once to a sense of what he was about. Why was he going? what did he mean? to ask Norine Bourdon to be his wife?

certainly not. To play dog in the manger, and keep some more fortunate man from loving and marrying her? most certainly not. Then why had he come? At this juncture he set his teeth, took up the _Herald_ and scowled moodily at its printed pages all day long.

He slept that night in Boston, and next morning resumed his journey. He reached Portland before noon, dined at his usual hotel, and then, as the afternoon sun began to drop low in the wintry sky, set out on foot for Kent Farm.

How familiar it all was; how often, when the fields were green, the trees waving, and the birds singing, he had walked this road beside Norine. But the fields were white with snow to-day, the trees black, gaunt skeletons, and the July birds dead or gone. All things had changed in four months--why not Norine as well?

It was four by the lawyer's watch as he raised the latch of the garden gate, and walked up the snow-shrouded path. There stood the gnarled old apple tree, with its rustic chair, but the tree was leafless, and the chair empty. Doors and windows had stood wide when he saw them last, with sunshine and summer floating in; now all were closed, and the December blasts howled around the gables. There was no one to be seen, but the red light of a fire streamed brightly out through the curtains of the keeping-room.

He went slowly up the steps, opened the front door, and entered the hall. The door of that best apartment stood half open, light and warmth, voices and laughter came through. Mr. Gilbert paused on the threshold an instant, and looked at the picture within.

A very pretty picture.

The room was lit by the leaping fire alone. Seated on a low stool, before the fire and beside the sofa, he saw Norine. She was reading aloud the lovely story of _Lalla Rookh_. He had sent her the green and gilt volume himself. She wore a crimson merino dress, over which her black hair fell, and in the fantastic firelight how fair the dark, piquant face looked, the dark eyes were bent upon her book, and the soft voice was the only sound in the room.

On the sofa, perilously near, lay the "gentleman" of her letter--the hero of the broken arm and sprained ankle, who was "very nice." And Richard Gilbert looking, gave a great start.

He knew him.

His worst fears were realized. He saw a man both young and good-looking--something more, indeed, than good-looking. The face was thin and pale, but when was that a fault in the eyes of a girl!--a tall figure in a dark suit, brown hair, and silken blonde mustache artistically curled. Surely a charming picture of youth and beauty on both sides, and yet if Mr. Gilbert had seen a cobra di capella coiled up beside the girl he loved, he could hardly have turned sicker with jealous fear.

"Laurence Thorndyke," he thought blankly "of all the men in the wide world, what evil fortune has sent Laurence Thorndyke here!"

CHAPTER III.

MR. LAURENCE THORNDYKE.

The little dog Frollo, curled up beside his mistress, was the first to see and greet the newcomer. He rushed forward, barking a friendly greeting, and the young lady looked up from the book she was reading, the young gentleman from the face he was reading at the same moment, and beheld the dark figure in the doorway.

Norine Bourdon sprang to her feet, blushing violently, and came forward with outstretched hand. It was the first time he had ever seen her blush--like that--the first time her eyes had fallen, the first time her voice had faltered. She might be glad to see him, as she said, but all the old, frank, childish gladness was gone.

"I have taken you by surprise," he said, gazing into her flushed face and shrinking eyes, "as I did once before. I get tired of New York and business very suddenly sometimes, and you know I have a standing invitation here."

"We are very glad--_I_ am very glad to see you, Mr. Gilbert," Norine answered, but with an embarrassment, a restraint altogether new in his experience of her. "We missed you very much after you went away."

The young man on the sofa, who all this time had been calmly looking and listening, now took an easier position, and spoke:

"Six-and-twenty-years experience of this wicked world has taught me the folly of being surprised at anything under the sun. But if I had not outlived the power of wondering, centuries ago, I should wonder at seeing Mr. Richard Gilbert out of the classic precincts of Wall street the first week of December. I suppose now you wouldn't have looked to see _me_ here?"

He held out a shapely, languid hand, with a diamond ablaze on it. The lawyer touched it about as cordially as though it had been an extended toad.

"I certainly would not, Mr. Thorndyke. I imagined, and so did Mr. Darcy, when I saw him last, that you were in Boston, practicing your profession."

"Ah! no doubt! So I was until a month ago. I suppose it never entered your--I mean his venerable noddle, to conceive the possibility of my growing tired practicing my profession. Such is the fact, however. Even the hub of the universe may pall on the frivolous mind of youth, and I've 'thrown physic to the dogs, I'll none of it,' for the present at least. My patients--few and far between, I'm happy to say, will get on much more comfortably, and stand a much better chance of recovery without me."

"Indeed! I don't doubt it at all. But your uncle?"

"My uncle can't hope to escape the crosses of life any more than poorer and better men. All work and no play makes, what's his name, a dull boy.

There will be a row very likely, the sooner my venerated relative is convinced that my talents don't lie in the bleeding and blistering, the senna and salts line, the better. They don't."

"Don't they? It would be difficult to say, from what I know of Mr.

Laurence Thorndyke, in what line they _do_ lie. May I ask what you mean to do?"

"I shall go in for sculpture," responded Mr. Laurence Thorndyke, with the calm consciousness of superior genius. "Other men have made fame and fortune by art, and why not I? If my hypocondriacal adopted uncle would only shell out, send me to Rome, and enable me to study the old masters, I have the strongest internal conviction that--"

"That you would set the world on fire with your genius. That you would eclipse the Greek Slave. No doubt--I have known others to think so before, and I know the sort of 'fame and fortune' they made. How do you come to be here?" Very curtly and abruptly, this.

"Ah!--thereby hangs a tale," with a long tender glance at Norine. "I am the debtor of a most happy accident. My horse threw me, and Miss Bourdon, happening along at the moment, turned Good Samaritan and took me in."

"I don't mean that," Mr. Gilbert said, stiffly; "how do you come to be in Maine at all?"