Cousin Maude | Page 4

HEIRESS X. THE ENGAGEMENT, REAL AND
PROSPECTIVE XI. MAUD GLENDOWER XII. HOW THE
ENGAGEMENTS PROSPERED XIII. HAMPTON XIV. THE DARK

HOUR XV. THE NEW MISTRESS AT LAUREL HILL XVI. THE
BLIND GIRL XVII. NELLIE°S BRIDAL NIGHT XVIII. COUSIN
MAUDE XIX. A SECOND BRIDAL XX. THE SEXTON XXI.
HOME AGAIN

CHAPTER I.
DR. KENNEDY.
"If you please, marm, the man from York State is comin' afoot. Too
stingy to ride, I'll warrant," and Janet, the housekeeper, disappeared
from the parlor, just as the sound of the gate was heard, and an
unusually fine-looking middle-aged man was seen coming up the
box-lined walk which led to the cottage door.
The person thus addressed was a lady, whose face, though young and
handsome, wore a look which told of early sorrow. Matilda Remington
had been a happy, loving wife, but the old churchyard in Vernon
contained a grass-grown grave, where rested the noble heart which had
won her girlish love. And she was a widow now, a fair-haired,
blue-eyed widow, and the stranger who had so excited Janet's wrath by
walking from the depot, a distance of three miles, would claim her as
his bride ere the morrow's sun was midway in the heavens. How the
engagement happened she could not exactly tell, but happened it had,
and she was pledged to leave the vine-wreathed cottage which Harry
had built for her, and go with one of whom she knew comparatively
little.
Six months before our story opens she had spent a few days with him at
the house of a mutual friend in an adjoining State, and since that time
they had written to each other regularly, the correspondence resulting at
last in an engagement, which he had now come to fulfill. He had never
visited her before in her own home, consequently she was wholly
unacquainted with his disposition or peculiarities. He was intelligent
and refined, commanding in appearance, and agreeable in manner
whenever he chose to be, and when he wrote to her of his home, which

he said would be a second Paradise were she its mistress, when he
spoke of the little curly- headed girl who so much needed a mother's
care, and when, more than all, he hinted that his was no beggar's
fortune, she yielded; for Matilda Remington did not dislike the luxuries
which money alone can purchase. Her own fortune was small, and as
there was now no hand save her own to provide, she often found it
necessary to economize more than she wished to do. But Dr. Kennedy
was rich, and if she married him she would escape a multitude of
annoyances, so she made herself believe that she loved him; and when
she heard, as she more than once did hear, rumors of a sad, white-faced
woman to whom the grave was a welcome rest, she said the story was
false, and, shaking her pretty head, refused to believe that there was
aught in the doctor of evil.
"To be sure, he was not at all like Harry--she could never find one who
was--but he was so tall, so dignified, so grand, so particular, that it
seemed almost like stooping, for one in his position to think of her, and
she liked him all the better for his condescension."
Thus she ever reasoned, and when Janet said that he was coming, and
she, too, heard his step upon the piazza, the bright blushes broke over
her youthful face, and casting a hurried glance at the mirror, she
hastened out to meet him.
"Matty, my dear!" he said, and his thin lips touched her glowing cheek,
but in his cold gray eye there shone no love,--no feeling,-- no heart.
He was too supremely selfish to esteem another higher than himself,
and though it flattered him to know that the young creature was so glad
to meet him, it awoke no answering chord, and he merely thought that
with her to minister to him he should possibly be happier than he had
been with her predecessor.
"You must be very tired," she said, as she led the way into the cozy
parlor. Then, seating him in the easy chair near to the open window,
she continued: "How warm you are. What made you walk this sultry
afternoon?"

"It is a maxim of mine never to ride when I can walk," said he, "for I
don't believe in humoring those omnibus drivers by paying their
exorbitant prices."
"Two shillings surely is not an exorbitant price," trembled on Mrs.
Remington's lips, but she was prevented from saying so by his asking
"if everything were in readiness for the morrow."
"Yes, everything," she replied. "The cottage is sold, and--"
"Ah, indeed, sold!" said he, interrupting her. "If I mistake not you told
me, when I met you in Rome,