The Maid of Maiden Lane

There was still Madame Jacobus to hope for. She was so shrewd and so kindly, that Cornelia felt certain of her sympathy and wise advice. But month after month passed away and madame's house remained empty and forlorn-looking. Now and then there came short fateful letters from Arenta, and Van Ariens--utterly miserable--visited them frequently that he might be comforted with their assurances of his child's ability to manage the very worst circumstances in which she could be placed.

And so the long summer days passed and the winter approached again; but before that time Cornelia had at least attained to the wisest of all the virtues--that calm, hushed contentment, which is only another name for happiness--that contentment which accepts the fact that there is a chain of causes linked to effects by an invincible necessity; and that whatever is, could not have wisely been but so. And if this was fatalism, it was at least a brighter thing than the languid pessimism, which would have led her life among quicksands, to end it in wreck.

One day at the close of October she put down her needlework with a little impatience. "I am tired of sewing, mother," she said, "and I will walk down to the Battery and get a breath of the sea. I shall not stay long."

On her way to the Battery she was thinking of Hyde, and of their frequent walks together there; and for once she passed the house of Madame Jacobus without a glance at its long-closed windows. It was growing dark as she returned, and ere she quite reached it she was aware of a glow of fire light and candle light from the windows. She quickened her steps, and saw a servant well known to her standing at the open door directing two men who were carrying in trunks and packages. She immediately accosted him.

"Has madame returned at last, Ameer?" she asked joyfully.

"Madame has returned home," he answered. "She is weary--she is not alone--she will not receive to-night."

"Surely not. I did not think of such a thing. Tell her only that I am glad, and will call as soon as she can see me."

The man's manner--usually so friendly--was shy and peculiar, and Cornelia felt saddened and disappointed. "And yet why?" she asked herself. "Madame has but reached home--I did not wish to intrude upon her--Ameer need not have thought so--however I am glad she is back again"--and she walked rapidly home to the thoughts which this unexpected arrival induced. They were hopeful thoughts, leaning--however she directed them--towards her absent lover. She felt sure madame would see clearly to the very bottom of what she could not understand. She went into her mother's presence full of renewed expectations, and met her smile with one of unusual brightness.