IT was in the latter part of June, and the day was so perfect that it seemed like wanton waste to use the hours for study or work. The roses, which were always plentiful in the Fisher garden, had probably passed their prime, but their perfume was still in the air, and there were enough lingering buds on the thorny stalks to tempt Polly into their midst. She had gathered quite a bouquet, and was turning toward the house when she heard her name called. Blushing delightfully, she stopped.

Young Unwin was leaning over the wall that separated the two gardens.

“Polly, Polly!” he called. “Come here, dear, I have something of real importance to say to you.”

His tone was graver than usual, and her gay spirits were dashed, yet the dimples remained in her cheeks and the saucy gleam in her eye, as drawing near, she paused, with a mock curtsey, just out of his arm’s reach on her side of the wall.

“Well, what is it, Mr. Persistency?” said she, a delicious smile robbing her words of any sting they might otherwise have contained. “This is the third time to-day you have summoned me to this wall.”

“Once to give you a rare flower, which had just opened in the conservatory. Once to see if you appreciated this lovely day, and once,—O Polly, my father is anything but well to-day.”

Her face, which had been brimming with mirth sobered instantly.

“Is he going to die?” she inquired, with alarm.

“I fear so, dear, and so it becomes our duty to tell him our wishes and expectations. Are you willing to go with me to his bedside? We should love each other more dearly for his blessing.”

“Do you think”—the words came with difficulty,—“that he will give us his blessing?”

“I think so; he has always seemed to like you, has he not?”

“Yes, but——”

“I know what you mean, Polly; and it would be sheer hypocrisy for me not to acknowledge what every one knows, that my father is a very proud man and that he is likely to have ambitious hopes for his son. But are they not likely to be realized by our marriage? When you have taken up your abode in the old Izard mansion, you will be quite an eligible match even for Squire Unwin’s son.” A tender, yet half-sarcastic smile took the edge off these words, and showed the little maiden how dearly she was loved. Whereupon she shook her pretty head.

“But I am so lacking in accomplishments, Clarke, and he so admires an accomplished woman. Why, I barely know one language well, and your stepmother, I hear, speaks three.”

“All of which she will teach you, dear. Accomplishments are easily acquired. In five years you will be a model of learning and culture.”

She laughed. “I look like it, do I not? See. I have not even bought myself a new dress. I have had other things to think of.”

“I like you in that rose pink gingham, but my father has a great fondness for white. Haven’t you a white dress, Polly?”

“You know I have,” she pouted. “Didn’t you tell me last Sunday that——”

“Ah, I remember. Yes, yes, put that dress on and come round by the front gate; I will be there to meet you.”

“But Mrs. Unwin? You have not told me whether she is likely to approve. I should not want her to greet me coldly.”

“My mother? My darling mother? I never think of her as a stepmother, Polly dear. Oh, she knows all about it and is ready to welcome you as a daughter.”

The young girl, with a sudden lift of her head, smiled joyously and seemed to gather courage at once.

“I will go,” she frankly declared. “And yet I dread to meet him. Is he so very sick, and will his looks frighten me?”

“It may be,” answered Clarke, “but I shall be there to make it as easy for you as possible. Do not think of my father, but of me and my love.”

She sighed with joy and ran off, as free a thing as the sun shone upon; and he watching her felt his heart soften more and more to her womanly sweetness.

“My father will feel her charm,” he murmured, and hastened up the garden walk to the gate where he had promised to wait for her.

Clarke Unwin was no ordinary man. He was the thoughtful son of a proud reserved father, and he had an aim in life quite apart from the accumulation of wealth, which had so distinguished the elder man. He was ambitious of becoming a famous electrician and had already shown sufficient talent in this direction for his friends to anticipate great results from his efforts. He had a scheme now on hand which only needed the small capital which his father had promised him to become, as he believed, a practical reality. Indeed, negotiations had already been entered into for his entrance into a firm of enterprising men in Cleveland, where his energy would have full scope. All that he needed was the money which they required as a guaranty against failure, and this money, some five thousand dollars or so, had, as I have said, been promised to him, though not yet advanced, by his indulgent parent.

To sound that father’s mind on this and on the still dearer subject of his marriage, young Unwin had prevailed upon Polly to enter this house of sickness. At the door they were met by a sweet-faced lady, who took Polly in her arms before seating her in a little ante-room.

“I must ask you to remain here for just a few minutes,” said she. “It would be a shock to Mr. Unwin to see you without any preparation. Clarke will have a talk with his father first, and then come back for you. Let me hope it will be with a welcome that will make amends to you for your long years of orphanage among us.”

“You are very good,” came from the trembling lips of the young girl. Mrs. Unwin’s grace and unconscious dignity always abashed her.

“Clarke informs me that you are not lacking in that same desirable quality,” whispered the other lady, and with a smile which gave an air of pathos to her faded yet beautiful face, she turned away and followed her son out into the hall. As they passed along she impetuously stopped and faced him. Grace Unwin had been a mother to Clarke for thirteen years, and she loved him devotedly.

“Clarke,” said she, “I dread this ordeal most unaccountably. Your father has had something on his mind of late. Do you know of any trouble weighing upon him besides this dreadful one of leaving us?”

“No,” rejoined the wondering youth. “He has never confided in me, mother, as much as he has in you. If you know nothing—”

“And I do not,” she murmured.

“You must have been deceived by your affection. He is not the man to brood over petty troubles, or to be cast down by matters he could regulate with a word.”

“I know it, yet he has not appeared natural to me for some time. Long before the physician told him that his disease was mortal, his actions betrayed a melancholy which has always been foreign to his nature, and for the very reason that he has succeeded in hiding it from you, I feel that it has its seat in something vital.”

“And have you never asked him what it was, dear mother? You who are such a tender nurse and so adored a wife must have moments when even his reserve would yield to such gentle importunities as yours.”

“It would seem so, but I have never dared to broach the subject. When your father chooses to be silent, it is difficult for any one to question him.”

“Yes, mother; and yet I must dare his displeasure to-day. I must know his mind about Polly.”

“Yes, that is right, and Heaven’s blessing go with you. I shall be outside here in the hall. If you strike the bell once I will fetch in Polly; if you strike it twice, I will come in alone; if you do not strike it at all, I will remain where I am, praying God to give you patience to meet the disappointment of your life.”

The man whose reticent nature had aroused this conversation was just waking from a fretful sleep when his son entered. He was a tall, spare man with an aristocratic air and a fine head, who was wont to walk the streets as if the whole town belonged to him, and who had been spoken of as “the Squire” from his earliest manhood. Now his proud head lay low, and his once self-satisfied countenance wore a look that caused a pang to strike the heart of his son, before the unrest visible in his whole figure could find vent in words.

“What is it, father? You look distressed; cannot something be done to relieve you?”

The man who had never been known to drop his eyes before anyone slowly turned his face to the wall.

“There is no help,” he murmured; “my hour has come.” And he was silent. Clarke moved uneasily; he hardly knew what to do. It seemed cruel to disturb his father at this moment, and yet his conscience told him he would be wrong to delay a communication that would set him right in his own eyes. The father settled the matter by saying abruptly: “Sit down, I have something to say to you.”

Clarke complied, drawing a chair close up to the bedside. He knew that one of his father’s peculiarities was a dislike to raising his voice. For a moment he waited, but the father seemed loath to speak. Clarke therefore remarked, after a certain time had passed:

“Nothing you can say to me will fail of having my respectful attention. If I can do anything to relieve your cares—” The look which his father here turned upon him startled him from continuing. Never had he seen such an expression in those eyes before.

“Can you go so far as to forgive?” the old man asked.

“Forgive?” echoed Clarke, hardly believing his ears. “What is there I have to forgive in you? The benefits you have bestowed upon me, the education I have received and your fatherly care?”

“Hush!” the half-lifted hand seemed to entreat and a shadow of the old commanding aspect revisited the ashy countenance before him. “You do not know all that has happened this last year. I have ruined you, Clarke, ruined your mother; and now I must die without having the opportunity of retrieving myself.”

Surprised out of his usual bearing of profound respect, Clarke sprang to his feet.

“Do you mean,” he asked, “that your money is gone; that you are dying a bankrupt?”

The old man—for Frederick Unwin was twenty years older than his wife—grew so pale that his son became seriously alarmed.

“You are sick—fainting,” he cried; “let me call someone.” But a glance from his father’s commanding eye held him where he stood.

“No, no; it is from shame, Clarke, possibly from grief. You have been on the whole a good boy, and I have taken pride in you. To leave you with your hopes dashed, and the care of a mother on your hands, is a humiliation I never expected. I—I have lost all, Clarke, and am, besides, in debt. I have not five hundred dollars to give you, let alone five thousand. You will have to take up with some lesser position, some clerkship with a salary, reserving to yourself the right to curse a father who was so shortsighted as to invest his whole fortune in a mine that petered out before the machinery was paid for.”

Clarke, to whom the prospect thus opened meant the demolition of more than one dream, sat dazed for a moment in a state of despair, not noticing that his arm had struck the bell on the small table beside which he was sitting, making it ring out in one clear, low note.

“There is even a mortgage on this house,” the wretched father went on. “I thought the amount so raised might bridge me over my present difficulties, but it is gone like the rest, and now it only remains for me to be gone, too, for you to understand into what a position I have put you by my folly and ignorance.”

“Father I would not let any one else speak of you so in my hearing. You meant to better your position, and if you made mistakes, we—that is, my mother and myself, must try and retrieve them.”

“But your chances with Stevens and Wright? Your excellent plan for—” The son suppressed the sigh that rose to his lips and resolutely lifted his head.

“That dream is over,” he said. “I shall think no more of my own advancement, but only of supporting my mother by any humble means that offers.”

“You have not confidence enough in your schemes to borrow the money you want?”

“I will never borrow.”

The old man, weakened by illness and shaken by the break he had just made in an almost life-long reserve, uttered a deep sigh. Clarke, whose thoughts were with Polly as much as they were with his surrendered hopes, re-echoed this sound of despair before saying:

“I have always cherished a certain sort of pride, too. I could not feel free under a burden of debt incurred for something whose value is yet to be tested. I cannot be beholden to any one for a start which is as likely to lead to failure as to success.”

“Not if that person is your promised wife?” burst from trembling and eager lips behind him, and Polly, accompanied by Mrs. Unwin, who had mistaken the ring of the bell for the signal which had been established between herself and Clarke, stepped into the room, and advanced with timid steps but glowing cheeks into the presence of the equally astonished son and father.

“Polly!” sprang involuntarily from the lover’s lips, as he rose and cast a doubtful glance toward his father. But the latter, roused by the fresh young face turned so eagerly toward him, had lost his white look, and was staring forward with surprised but by no means repelling glances.

“What does she say?” he murmured. “This should be Polly Earle, to whom some kindly friend has just left twenty thousand dollars. Does she love you, Clarke, and was the word she just used ‘wife’? I’m getting so dull of hearing with this ceaseless pain, that I do not always understand what is said in my presence.”

Clarke, delighted with the eagerness apparent in his suffering father’s look and manner, took the young girl by the hand and brought her forward. “This is the woman whom I chose for my wife when I thought my prospects warranted me in doing so. But now that I have little else than debts to offer her, I have scruples in accepting her affection, dear as it is and disinterested as she shows herself. I would not seem to take advantage of her youth.”

“But it is I,” she broke in gayly, “who am likely to take advantage of your disappointments! I heard by mistake, I think, something of what your father has had to say to you, and my only feeling, you see, is one of delight that I can do something to show my gratitude for all that you and others have done for me in the years when I was a penniless orphan. Is that a wrong feeling, Mr. Unwin, and will you deny me the privilege of—” She could say no more, but her eyes, her lips, her face were one appeal, and that of the most glowing kind. Clarke’s eyes dropped lest they should betray his feelings too vividly, and Mrs. Unwin, who had thrown her arm around Polly, turned her face toward her husband with such an expression of thankfulness that he did not know which caused him the greater surprise, his wife’s sudden beauty or the frank yet timorous aspect of this hitherto scarcely noted young girl in the presence of the two great masters of the world, Love and Death.

“Come here!” he finally entreated, holding out one shaking hand toward Polly. She tossed her hat aside like a wild creature who recoils from any sort of restraint, and coming up close to the bed, fell on her knees by his side.

“So you love Clarke?” he queried.

Her eyes and cheeks spoke for her.

“Love him well enough to marry him even now, with all his debts and disabilities?”

Still her looks spoke; and he went calmly on: “Then, my little girl, you shall marry him, and when you see him prosperous and on the high road to success in his chosen field of labor,—think that his father blesses you and that by your loyalty and devotion you took away the sting from an old man’s death.”

A sob and a smile answered him, and Clarke, to whom this scene was the crowing glory of his love, turned and took his mother in his arms, before stooping to raise his young betrothed. It was the happiest hour in this family’s history, but it was the precursor of sorrow. That night Mr. Unwin died.