WINNING HIS SPURS.

O you don't love me!" said Digby Foster,

out suffering her eyes to dwell upon his face, and then replied:

"No; I do not love any one else in the way There is no man living that I think

"So you mean.

the room with a certain vehemence of step not so—I mean that I—” usual to him. He spoke bitterly.

"I did not say that, Mr. Foster," answered she, quietly. "Do not pervert my language: I said I would not marry you—"

She blushed vividly, but before her embarrassment could reach its climax he had interrupted her most effectually. He had seated himself upon the sofa alongside of her, he had "But, Nannie! but, Miss Bernard!" cried he, taken her two hands prisoners in his own, and impetuously, and in the tone of one who suffer- leaning close to her, and seeking to read her ed from a great grievance, "you don't consider face with eyes that burned with unusual fire-a -you really don't! I am really serious in this kind of flame hard to endure without contagion matter, and I know you too well to suppose you-he said, with all the hurry and warmth and are a coquette. I love you, that is the truth. I never yet saw the woman, till I met you, who I thought would make me a wife. You have had my first and freshest love. We have known each other a long time, and you have led me to believe that I am not indifferent to you. Why do you treat me thus, then? Why reject me?"

"You do seem to be in earnest, Mr. Foster," said she, in the same quiet tone, yet there was a spice of satire in the way she added, "but can you expect me to give my reasons? Once or twice my hand has been asked by gentlemen before you did me this honor, but they were content with a simple refusal. What would you have me tell you?"

eloquence of passion thoroughly aroused:

"Ah! you love me, Nannie! You love me, and you can not disguise it if you would! You love me! And I!" cried he, in a sort of rapture that kindled up all his face and gave a sort of subtle, touching harmony to his voice-" and I, Nannie!-if I could tell you how I love you the words would set themselves to music! I love you so dearly, with such entire, untiring, unquestioning devotion that to make you mine has become the absolute quest, the sole active interest of my existence. Oh, Nannie! since these two years that I have known you for what you are I have lived in a perpetual sweet land of dreams. You have filled out my being; you have peopled my fancy; you have made all my hours delicious with your constant dear pres

Nannie! Nannie! you will not cast me off! You will be mine-my own-my own precious, cherished wife!"

"See here, Nannie Bernard," said he, taking a chair and sitting opposite to her, and danger-ence. ously close, "I wish to understand this, for I tell you-you know it-you do not need to be told-my happiness, all my hopes, all my prospects in life depend upon your decision. I wish to know why you reject me. I wish you to redeem your character by some explanation-nothing more than what is my just due. I do not know-I am not skilled in woman's ways-perhaps something in my manner has given you offense; perhaps I have inadvertently presumed too far upon our long acquaintance-our old intimacy. If I have, Nannie, I trust you will pardon me. God knows I have no object so dear in life as just to please you and make you think well of me."

Miss Bernard had cast down her beautiful eyes, and the dainty lids seemed to tremble a little in sheathing them. Perhaps her bosom heaved rather more tumultuously than its wont; perhaps her throat was somewhat dry and husky; but, although her voice was low and sweet-oh, very sweet!-in making answer it could not be perceived to tremble nor to falter.

"You must not think that, Digby," she said. "To me you have ever been gentle, courteous all, and more than all, I could ask. You must not go away from here thinking you have of fended me. Far from it-very far from it, my dear friend. But please do not press these questions upon me. Will it not suffice to tell you that I can not marry you?"

"Good God!" cried he, in a shocked and stricken voice, "you love some one else!"

She hesitated a moment, glanced at him with

He talked very sweetly; he was entirely in earnest; the devotedness and the depth of his love for her could not be questioned; and it was doubtless very pleasant to her to listen to such accents. She was a woman too, and it was pleasant to her to be thus imprisoned in a strong man's hands, and to have his eyes bent upon her, glowing with such sincere passion, and to hear his voice fairly melt and grow tremulous with the intensity of his yearning for her. Pleasant it was, also, to feel the woman's yielding mood come over her-that sweet, passive obeisance to the softening suggestions of her own heart; that frank willingness to give herself up to this man at this moment, to reward his love, and to show him not only that she had implicit confidence in his truth and honor and honesty, but also that she could bless him with the love of a nature as warm and abundant as his own. But if Miss Bernard had a woman's weakness, a woman's passivity, she had likewise a woman's nerve, and, even while she yielded physically, and sat there quiet as a mouse in his half-embrace, feeling her every fibre thrill with an inexpressibly delightful consciousness-even then her spirit was all in arms. Not for the present, sweet and blissful though it might be, would she risk his future and hers. His future-ay, that gave her additional strength, if she needed it. Without withdrawing her hands from his, without straightening her figure from the position in which it seemed actually to nestle against his

ask in return is that you will hear me patiently. plying the very gad-fly which will sting you into I have long felt that you loved me, and would action." ask me to be your wife, and I will not conceal from you that it gave me pleasure to perceive that in all the large circle you moved in I was the woman of your choice. More than that, it gives me inexpressible gladness to know that you love me, as it would have caused me many pangs to know that you loved another."

"Why, you are a Platonist, Nannie Bernard," interrupted Foster, impatiently, yet wondering. "Nay, Digby, do not sneer. We two, when we are together, can afford to be ourselves. I am sure you do not wish to pain me."

"And I am sure you are mistaken when you say you love me. Love can not be thus

cold."

Be

"Action! Ah, don't you remember what happened to Io when the gad-fly stung her? But no!" cried he, with a sudden change of tone, and at once freeing his manner from the bitterness with which he had begun to speak. "No! I will not let you think that your generous language has fallen to the ground unappreciated. What you have said to me shall not be unheeded, and has done me no harm. lieve me, dear Nannie, I take your noble words as they were meant. True, your decision is inexpressibly painful to me. True, your opinions clash with those I have fondly cherished and built my dearest hopes upon. Yet I can readi ly see that your views may embody the stern truth I have not had courage to face, while mine may be only the dreamy illusions my fainéant

duties. Woe's me! I've had a rude waking! Nannie, I will bid you good-evening. I shall not return to the subject of this conversation until I feel myself able to controvert your opinions of my unworthiness, or else, to convince you of your fallacy."

"So be it, then!" said she, calmly. "If love can not reason; if love be blind and foolish and suicidal, then I do not love you. But Dig-nature calls up as a cloak and veil for its undone by, I am sure that it is because of my love I refuse to marry you. It is because I love, honor, and respect you so truly, not only you as you are, but you as you ought to be, you as you can and will be, unless I prevent, that I decline the present happiness you offer me. Digby, I want you to do something, to be something to deserve the good gifts that have been lavished upon you, by some creditable achievement. That is why I refuse to marry you."

"I did not

"Ah!” said he, sarcastically. know you had so much pride--such a vaulting ambition! Your husband must have won distinction, eh?"

"No, not that, Digby; and you know that you willfully misconstrue me. You know that I could be happy enough with you as you are, but for one thing: You yourself would not be happy."

"I! not happy with you, Nannie!"

He held out his hand to her.

"We part friends?" said she, eagerly.
Never closer!" he answered, warmly.

66

"But what the deuce am I to do? and how am I to go about it?" thought Digby Foster, several nights afterward, as he slowly sauntered along the streets toward the Opera, pondering with great dissatisfaction upon Nannie Bernard's determination to make a hero or a workman of him against his will. This was a year or two before the war, and the duties of young men in his circumstances were by no means so clearly defined as they have since been by the sharp "Yes. In spite of your wondering and most stress of our sterner times. The amari aliquid flattering emphasis, that is precisely the truth then in every fountain of youth was the lack of the matter. I know you better than you of an appropriate thing to do, and, not having know yourself, Digby Foster. You are idle, that, they generally bestowed themselves either lazy, a do-nothing, a fainéant, and you think to dry-rot in utter idleness or to do the most inyou are content to be so. But you are proud appropriate thing possible. For young gentleas Lucifer, and ambitious. You are fitted for men of leisure and wealth, in those days, there better things, and if you can not grasp them was (on the surface of things) only the alternayour dream of happiness will be a mere bubble. tive of more wealth or of more leisure: more Love is well enough now, and for a time might wealth through the contracting and sordid ways content you as it would content me. But men of trade or of trade-like profession; or more do not live by love, as we poor women do. They leisure, in the shape of inane loiterings from need stronger aliment. Ten years hence my hotel to hotel up and down the world, club-life, love might make me still happy, but yours, and fast horses, with perchance some rural upwithout being diminished a particle, would be holstery that went by the name of farming, or outgrown and left behind by the progressive en- a languid, kid-gloved pursuit of extremely shalergy and exactiveness of your nature as a man. low artistic fancies. These things, with lukeThen, awaking so late, it would be too late for warm novels and drawing-room dawdling, ofyou to begin, and I should start out of my dream fered but slight inducements to the esprits forts, of love to find its fruition in a discontented, un- and so, the esprits forts generally added the branhappy husband, become so through my fault. dy-bottle to their pleasures, and, with this for I should never forgive myself if any selfishness ballast, soon went to the bottom. There was of mine brought ruin to your doors. I will not politics, to be sure, and genuine enough politics marry you, Digby Foster; and perhaps in tell- if one chose. But the form of politics has never ing you so thus plainly, and giving my reasons received a patent of nobility in this country, in so uncomplimentary a fashion, I may be ap-and the only entrance to it has been through

the pot-house and the ward-meeting, things | Sir John Franklin. Besides, I never could enfrom the contact of which our young aristocrats dure cold feet. No; that thought is enough to shrank with natural loathing. depolarize me completely. I really should like In such a state of society earnestness had few to have some insight into her secret thoughts in inducements to offer to its followers, and de- regard to an occupation. I do not fancy Nancidedly no fascinations. Social averages have nie is one to require a man to go to the South no tendency to produce comets, and if young Seas on missionary business in order to win men are disposed to wander from the prescribed credit with her for true manhood. I don't think orbit they generally do not soar but sink. Be- her definition of heroism implies any infraction sides, and to come more nearly to our theme, of sanitary laws or of aesthetic laws. Her not many young ladies were used to view mat- knight-errant needs not to be a Quixote nor to ters in the light in which they struck Miss Ber-wear Mambrino's helmet. She's a genuine wcnard. They might certainly have been quite as man there, and sees as much godliness in the exacting in respect of duties toward themselves, proper as in any thing else. But beyond this I and in respect of those toward convention and can not guess what she means. Heigh-ho! It society, but further than this they were not in- needs more than a thermometer to feel a woclined to go quite probably could not sec. So man's pulse. It has always been so, from the it happened that Mr. Foster's was a case entire days of Adam down to this hour of Digby Fosly without a precedent, and he was proportion- ter, when man's dullness came in contact with ately perplexed. He felt convinced that Miss woman's wit. Well, if I can not get into her Bernard was absolutely right; he admired and good graces, I can at least see her pretty face praised her for the position she had taken, but here at the Opera!" -and here he stopped. The path had turned Yes, she was there, and she had never apinto a squirrel-track and run up a tree. What peared more radiant in his eyes. He had not was her position, exactly? What was the pre-visited her since she had rejected him, and he cise thing she wanted him to do, and what to did not speak to her now nor go near her, but become?

gazed at her with a hungry look, until his whole soul was filled with a miserly longing for her. Poor fellow! He had now fairly begun to have a "realizing sense" of all that she had been to him, and it did not tend to mellow his consciousness of loss that, the longer he looked, the more dissatisfied he was with his position, and the more impossible seemed the height he had to scale before reaching her.

"I must bring her a feather from the Phonix's wing;" said he, bitterly, as he left the house after the performance; "I, who do not believe any such rare bird exists, much less know where she roosts! It's confounded hard fortune, I say!"

She wanted to see him engaged in some kind of knight-errantry, doubtless; and knight-errantry was a noble and laudable pursuit, which he had made up his mind to follow at once and permanently. But what kind of knight-errantry did she expect of him? And what kind could he hope to excel at? Should he enter the actual lists, take corporeal cuts and bruises, and permit himself to be rolled in the tan and saw-dust, like Ivanhoe and the Knight of the Fetterlock? Or should he enroll himself a member of some spiritual brotherhood, to go upon San Greal quests with Galahad and Perceval? It was a complete muddle, thought poor Foster, and there was a ludicrous mixture of humor, sadness, and He did not go home to his boarding-house, naïve self-bantering in his musings as he leisur-but wandered up and down the streets for a long ly sauntered along toward the Academy, debat- while, in a wretched, purposeless fashion that being this highly original problem of IIow to make spoke how unhappy he was much more plainly a Hero of one's self. than any other action could have done. It was a strange feeling for him, this gnawing sense of dissatisfaction and unrest, and the more acute because of its newness. For Digby Foster had notoriously been a man to enjoy himself in a com fortable sort of way-a man who bore the fame of never permitting troubles or bothers to come within arm's-length of him. People had so bepraised him for his lease of the palace Sans Souci that he fancied it was his permanent residence, and, now that Nannie Bernard's negative had shown him how deep his feelings were, and how acute his sensibilities, he found himself defenseless, and stunned with a sort of dismayed bewilderment.

"What does she want me to get at, any how? Something with a shine upon it, or something having a soul within it? And what am I fit for?

What is there that I can go do, any how? My spirit shouts hoc age-but the deuce is in it, I need spectacles to see hoc with. Now I would not object to joining Garibaldi upon a pinch. There would be a nice little adventure, popping off the white-coated Tedeschi in the romantic scenes of Como. But I never was much of a shot with the rifle, and the Italian war hangs fire, any how. I wonder if she would like me to go to the North Pole with Dr. Hayes? I could acquire the Esquimaux lingo there, perhaps, get a taste for raw blubber, and learn something of electric currents and the glacier theory. By George! and I might keep a journal, and write a book, too! But it would be a confounded waste of time to be ice-locked somewhere up there in the Arctic regions, like poor

He passed by the Club-rooms. The windows were brilliantly lighted up, and he could hear the hum of talk, and the click of billiard-balls. He felt tempted to go in to have a game, to take a glass of brandy, to drink a bottle of Champagne, somehow to overlay his sombre mood

with a temporary gilding of mirth, but he passed | read his book and mused upon the impossibilion finally and continued his sentinel-pace, gnaw-ties of modern chivalry. ing his mustache, and being finely gnawed in turn by the young foxes in his bosom.

However, one must go home some time or other, even if that home be a boarding-house; and toward the small hours Foster turned his steps in that direction, his problem all unsolved. Within a few doors of the highly respectable place where he purchased "all the comforts of a home" at an unconscionable price per week, he was accosted under a street-lamp by a woman, a street-walker, who addressed him in the stereotyped fashion. He brushed her aside rather rudely, and was passing on, when the woman staggered, and only saved herself from falling by clinging to the lamp-post. There was something in the action which startled him.

"What is the matter with you? You are not drunk, are you?" he asked, sharply.

When morning came Foster's bad bargain began to show some more of its incommodities. The woman woke in a high fever, delirious, raving. Her flighty purposes expressed themselves in a form decidedly uncongenial to the subdued atmosphere and genteel proprieties of a "first-class" boarding-house. Oaths and obscenity flowed loudly from her lips in a stream as black and engorged as that which a large sewer empties into a river. The doors of Foster's rooms were not quite thick enough to shut in the execrable tide, and remonstrance only had the effect to further exasperate the frantic, fever-stricken woman.

Foster sent for the doctor again; prestissime, and the landlady sent for Foster. She met him with a severely virtuous air that he could not help inwardly smiling at, though its import was tragic enough for him; she said she would not have believed it of him if any one had told her; and gave him notice to vacate his rooms at the expiration of his week as well as to remove

"I am starving!" hoarsely gasped the woman, and from her crouching posture she lifted up a gaunt, haggard, white face that he read the meaning of only too plainly in the lamp-light. "My God! I believe you are!" he cried, put-" that creature" instantaneously, or she would ting his hand in his pocket. "Here, take this, and get yourself something to cat.'

The woman clutched the note in her fingers without a word of thanks, staggered irresolutely to her feet, and started off. But she had not tottered ten steps before, with a deep groan, she sank to the pavement, fainting-dying it might be at any rate there she lay, insensible. To a man like Foster there was no time for hesitation or debate. He picked the poor wretch up in his arms, and, in another minute, he had her in the boarding-house, in his room, lying upon his bed. A glass of brandy revived her slightly, but her condition was so desperate as to require further aid. He rang up a couple of servants-they knew his liberality so well that they were always willing to wait on him-sent off for a doctor, had a hasty cup of tea and some light food got ready, and, after an hour or two, had the satisfaction of seeing a sort of reaction set up, and the woman go quictly to sleep. "One more unfortunate," caught, this time, in the very act of making the fatal plunge.

be under the unpleasant necessity of sending for a policeman. Foster attempted to explain. As well attempt to perform Mohammed's miracle. She cut him short with a still more icy urging of her ultimatum. He remonstrated. The woman was very ill-could not be moved, perhaps. It did not make any difference. What did he bring her there for? He had found her upon the street in a dying condition, he said. Then he should have sent her to the stationhouse or the alms-house. This was certainly no place to bring her. It could not be expected of her to let him keep such women in her house. All her boarders would leave before the day was out. The thing was an imposition and an outrage, and one she would not have suspected a gentleman like Mr. Foster of attempting to practice upon an unprotected widow. Thereupon, to complete his demolition, madam began to sob and shed tears; and the upshot of his discomfiture was that Foster paid his bill, ordered his trunks to be sent to a hotel, and carried off his bad bargain to the nearest hospital, where "Wouldn't it have been better to have let he saw that she was provided with the attendher die?" queried the physician, as, his minis-ance and comforts which her case demanded. trations ended, he pocketed his fee and prepared For several days the woman's life hung upon to retire. a thread; finally, however, she was out of dan"For her, perhaps so," answered Foster; ger and began to mend. Foster looked after "but not for me."

The doctor gone, the woman quietly sleeping, a man-servant in the room as watcher, and Foster seated with a book under his shaded light, he began to think. He had not reflected while the period for action lasted, but now he did reflect, and he began to be conscious that his charitable impulses had served to place him somewhat in the position of the man who bought an elephant at auction. However, as he said to himself, there was nothing now for him to do but to see the adventure out, and, while John snored and dreamed of the knives and forks, he

her sedulously, but, before she was discharged cured, he had had a full taste of the discomforts a man sometimes purchases for himself by stepping out of the beaten path of charity and attempting to do business upon a plan of his own. The boarding-house affair naturally got abroad, and every possible version of it (except the true one) was talked about among his friends and acquaintances. The sly winks, nods, and innuendoes which encountered him at every turn did not disturb our friend's equanimity a great deal; nor was he materially put out by the holy horror his case excited among the