.
you."
"My dear fellow, not a word more is needed," replied the other heartily. "You may rely upon my silence."
A minute or two before, Boyd had been on the point of asking Alec whether he was still a bachelor, but it now seemed to him that such a question might savour, if not exactly of impertinence, yet of a desire to pry into a matter which was really no concern of his. It was evident there were incidents in his friend's career which he did not wish to have touched on. He would leave his question unasked.
A few minutes later Boyd's train steamed into the station.
After having parted from his friend, Alec was tempted by the fineness of the evening to go for a solitary ramble into the outskirts of the town, which, in one direction, could almost claim to be termed picturesque. His encounter with Boyd had served to awaken in him thoughts and memories which had long been dormant, but which now for a little while claimed him as their own with a persistency that would not be denied. It was not so much the scenes of his college life that his meeting with Boyd had recalled to visionary existence, but still earlier scenes connected with his life at the Chase. Once more he was a boy by his mother's side, and felt her caressing hand smooth down his ruffled curls; once more he was pacing the dusky coverts with Martin Rigg, flushing now a covey of young partridges, and now some crusty old pheasant that evidently resented being disturbed; or else he was galloping through the park at a break-neck pace on his shaggy Shetland pony. And then, like some grim spectre, the image of his father came gliding in, and all the happy pictures vanished, as when the dark slide of a magic lantern is suddenly shut down.
He came back to the present and its more immediate interests with a sigh.
There were several circumstances in his life since they had last met, of which he had hinted nothing to Boyd, and he was grateful to his friend for having forborne to question him more closely, as many men in like circumstances would not have failed to do.
For instance, he, Alec, had breathed no syllable having reference to his marriage. That, indeed, was with him a subject about which he could bear to speak to no one, for long before this he had discovered, to his bitter cost, that his marriage was a failure, and that in asking Giovanna Rispani to become his wife he had committed one of the greatest mistakes which it is possible for a man to make. He and his wife had scarcely an interest in common. Giovanna had never really cared for him, but had married him for the sake of his money. To her limited experience, six thousand pounds had represented unbounded riches; for her it meant travel, and fine clothes, and sojourning at big hotels in such cities as Milan, or Paris, or London.
Bitter, very bitter was her disappointment when, after their arrival in America, her husband took up his abode in a third-rate town in one of the Eastern States, where he conceived that there was an opening for the profitable investment of a portion of his capital. At that time his dream was to make a fortune, whereas he had only succeeded in losing his money, and in helping to build up the fortunes of others. All Giovanna's foolish dreams had vanished like a wreath of mist at sunrise, and intensely did she resent the fact. There was nothing of the scold about her, nor had she any of those pettish, irritating ways, by means of which so many women make their discontent with their surroundings felt. She was a cold, proud, silent, disappointed woman, who withdrew into herself, and who manifested not the slightest interest in her husband, or any of his concerns. She hated the country to which he had brought her; the climate was atrocious; the people among whom she dwelt, and all their ways, were antipathetic to her; she grew homesick and pined for her own country and her own people. One child had been born of the marriage.
When Alec went West in further search of that fortune which seemed so chary of smiling on him, he left his wife and child behind. At that time he had still a little over two thousand pounds remaining of the six thousand he had received from Mr. Page. This balance had lately been reduced by the sum of fifteen hundred pounds, that being the price he had paid for the privilege of entering into partnership with Mr. Frank Travis.
Good fellow as the latter was, and much as he esteemed him, not even to him had Alec confided the fact that he was a married man. It was not that he had the slightest wish to make a secret of it, but simply from an innate disinclination to speak of his private affairs to any one. Once each week he wrote to Giovanna. In view of the relations now existing between them, he was not weak enough to encumber his letters with any superfluous terms of endearment, which would merely have caused her lip to curl with quiet scorn; his epistles were rather such as a sober business-like brother might have penned to an equally sober and business-like sister. He had kept her informed as to the progress of his negotiations with Travis, and when the matter between them was concluded he did not fail to tell her at what cost the partnership had been secured by him.
All this time he had been living at a boarding-house, but now that his business matters were finally arranged there was no reason why he should not at once look out for a permanent home to which he could remove his wife and child.
In the last letter he had written to Giovanna he had told her that he hoped another month at most would see them together again, by which time the house he had in his mind's eye, a newly built one, would be finished and ready for occupation. In his stroll this evening his footsteps naturally gravitated in the direction of the house in question. His choice of it had in part been determined by reason of its somewhat romantic situation. It was built on a considerable elevation, and from it the eye ranged over a wide extent of wooded undulating country, rising here and there into rocky eminences which owed everything to Nature and nothing to art. A flash of silver on the horizon revealed that the waters of Lake Michigan were no great distance away.
To the eyes of Alec there was something in this landscape that was almost Italian in character, and he flattered himself with the fancy that perchance it would please Giovanna and that she might find in it a charm that would serve in some measure to lessen her regrets for the country he had brought her from.
After he had reached the house and had ascertained what progress the workmen had made since his last visit, and had settled in his mind after what fashion he would like the garden and shrubbery laid out, he sauntered back towards the town. At the boarding-house he found his partner awaiting him. A business telegram had arrived in the course of the afternoon which necessitated that one or the other of them should set out next morning for Milwaukee, on the opposite shore of the lake. After talking matters over, it was decided that Alec should be the one to undertake the journey. It was now Tuesday, and the probability was that he would be back by Saturday evening at the latest.
Next forenoon Travis drove his partner as far as the steamboat wharf at Davisville and there shook hands with him and bade him goodbye. They had no prevision of what the next few days would bring forth.
As it fell out, Alec's business detained him longer than he had thought it would, necessitating, among other things, an up-country journey of two score miles to a place where no railway had yet penetrated. It was not till a late hour on Monday afternoon that he got back to the hotel at Milwaukee, where he had secured a room on his arrival there the previous Wednesday.
"A letter for you, Mr. Alexander," said the hotel clerk to him as he was passing through the hall. "Been here since Saturday."
As Alec took the letter he saw that the address was in his partner's writing. Anticipating nothing of greater moment than an ordinary business communication, he lingered to glance over the latest batch of telegrams, and proceeded leisurely to his own room before opening the envelope. But all his sang-froid vanished the moment his eye lighted on the contents, and in its stead a deadly fear gripped him by the heart. There were two enclosures, one a brief hurried scrawl from Travis, the other a black-edged missive from his wife. Of what fatal news was this last the messenger? Could it be that his child was dead? or--or was it merely that Vanna had had news from home of the death of some one there? It was the former dire possibility that had smitten him with an unspeakable dread.
He steadied himself sufficiently to read what his partner had to tell him before breaking the black-edged envelope.
"Dear Alexander" (wrote Travis), "the enclosed was brought here by a boarding-house messenger a few minutes ago. As it may be of importance that it should reach you with the least possible delay, and as you have wired