Chapter XXVII

"And now the question is--what am I to do?" It was Marion who asked herself this, after the departure of the lawyer, who, with some remonstrance, had taken her instructions for drawing up the necessary papers to transfer to George Singleton his father's fortune. It was not with regard to the act itself that the lawyer remonstrated--_that_ he thought just and wise enough,--but with regard to the sum which the heiress of the whole announced her intention of retaining.

"You might just as well keep fifty or a hundred thousand dollars," he declared. "Mr. Singleton is willing to relinquish even so much as half of the fortune; and it is absolute folly--if you will excuse me--for you to throw away a comfortable independence, and retain only a sum which is paltry in comparison to the amount of the fortune, and to your needs of life."

"You must allow me to be the best judge of that," Marion replied, firmly.

And, as she held inflexibly to her resolution, the lawyer finally went away with the same baffled feeling that the Singleton cousins had experienced. "What fools women are when it comes to the practical concerns of life!" he said, from the depths of his masculine scorn. "They are always in one extreme or the other. Here is this girl, who, from what I hear, must have been willing to do anything to secure the fortune, now throws it away for a whim without reason!"

Meanwhile Marion, left face to face, as it were, with her accomplished resolve, said to herself, "What am I to do now?"

It was certainly a necessary question. To remain where she was, living with the state of Mr. Singleton's heiress, was impossible; to go to her uncle, who would be incensed against her on account of the step she had taken, was equally impossible; to stay with Helen, however much Helen in her kindness might desire it, was out of the question. Where, then, could she go?--where should she turn to find a friend?

Marion was pacing up and down the long drawing-room as she revolved these thoughts in her mind, when her attention was attracted by her own reflection in a mirror which hung at the end of the apartment. She paused and stood looking at it, while a faint, bitter smile gathered on her lip. Her beauty was as striking, as indisputable as ever; but what had it gained for her--this talisman by which she had confidently hoped to win from the world all that she desired? "I have been a fool!" she said, with sudden humility. "And now--what remains to me now?"

It almost seemed as if it was in answer to the question that a servant at this moment entered, bringing the morning mail. Marion turned over carelessly two or three papers and letters, and then suddenly felt a thrill of pleasure when she saw a foreign stamp and Claire's familiar handwriting. She threw herself into a chair and opened the letter.

It was dated from Rome. "I am at last in the city of my dreams and of my heart," wrote Claire; "pleasantly settled in an apartment with my kind friend Mrs. Kerr, who knows Rome so well that she proves invaluable as a _cicerone_. Already I, too, feel familiar with this wonderful, this Eternal City; and its spell grows upon me day by day. Now that you have gained your fairy fortune, dear Marion, why should you not come and join me here? I have thought of it so much of late that it seems to me like an inspiration, and I can perceive no possible reason why you should not come. Pray do. It would make me so happy to see you, and I am sure you would enjoy many things which form part of our life here. Having lived abroad many years with her husband (who was an artist), Mrs. Kerr has a large cosmopolitan acquaintance, and her _salon_ is constantly filled with pleasant and interesting people. Come,--Marion, come! I find every reason why you should, and none why you should not. Have I not heard you say a thousand times that you wanted to see this world, and do not I want to see you and hear all about the magical change that so short a time has made in your fortunes? Write, then, and tell me that you will come. Helen has had you for months, and it is my turn now."

"Ah, how little she knows!" Marion thought with a pang as she read the last words. The letter dropped from her hand into her lap; she felt as if she hardly cared to read further. Would Claire desire to see her if she knew the story of all that had happened since they parted? There was no one else in the world from whose judgment Marion shrank so much, and yet this summons seemed to her more of a command than an invitation. It came as an answer to her doubts and indecision. "What shall I do?--where shall I go?" she had asked herself. "Come to me," Claire answered from across the sea; and it seemed to her that she had no alternative but to obey--to go, even though it were to meet Claire's condemnation.

That condemnation would be gentle, she knew, though perhaps unsparing. Helen's affection had indeed returned to her in a degree she could never have expected; but it is impossible that the stronger nature can depend upon the weaker, and she knew it was for Claire's unswerving standards and Claire's clear judgments her heart most strongly yearned.

So the way opened before her, and when she saw Helen next she announced her intention of going abroad to join Claire. "It seems the best--in fact, it is the only thing I can do," she said. "And Claire is good enough to want me. She fancies me still in possession of what she calls my fairy fortune--not knowing how fairy-like indeed it has proved,--and writes as if expense would be no consideration with me. But a mode of life which is not too expensive for her surely will not be too expensive for me with my ten thousand dollars. So I shall go."

"I suppose it is best," said Helen, wistfully; "and if it were not for mamma I would go with you."

The tone was a revelation to Marion of all that the tender, submissive heart was suffering still. "Why should your mother object?" she asked, quickly. "Come, Helen--come with me; and when we find Claire, let us try to forget everything but the pleasure of being together again."

"I should like it," replied Helen, "but it is not possible. I know how long mamma has looked forward to the pleasure of having me with her, and I can not go away now for my own selfish satisfaction, leaving her alone. Besides, I doubt if running away from painful things does much good. It is better to face them and grow resigned to them, with the help of God."

"I am sure that God must help _you_," cried Marion, "else you could never learn so many wise and hard things."

Helen looked at her with a little surprise in her clear blue eyes. "Of course He helps me," she answered. "When does He not help those who ask Him?"

"O Helen! if I only had your faith!" exclaimed Marion, with positive pain in her voice. "How easy it would make things!"

"Yes," replied Helen, with her sweet smile, "it does make things easy."

But before Marion could complete her preparations for departure, she was obliged to see Mr. George Singleton again and yet again. He came in the first place to remonstrate forcibly against her intentions with regard to the fortune, and found her society sufficiently attractive to induce him to pay inordinately long visits after he had discovered that his remonstrances were vain. "He is certainly very unconventional," Marion observed after one of these visits. "He does not strike one so much as violating social usage, as being ignorant of and holding it in contempt. In essential things he is a gentleman; but that his father--one of the most refined and fastidious of men--should have had a son who is half a savage, strikes me as very strange."

Young Singleton did not hesitate to speak of himself as altogether a savage, and to declare that the strain of wild lawlessness in his nature had brought about the estrangement between his father and himself. "Of course I am sorry for it all now," he said frankly to Marion; "but I don't see how it could have been avoided, we were so radically different in disposition and tastes. My father was a man to whom the conventionalties of life were of first importance, who held social laws and usages as more binding than the Decalogue; while I--well, a gypsy has as much regard for either as I had. I irritated and outraged _him_ even when I had least intention of doing so; and he, in turn, roused all the spirit of opposition in _me_. I do not defend my conduct, but I think I may honestly say that he had something for which to blame himself. We were miserable together, and it ended as you know. He said when we parted that he had no longer a son, and I took him at his word--perhaps too literally. And that being so, Miss Lynde--his renunciation of me having been complete, and my acceptance of it complete also,--I really do not think that I have a right to come and take all his fortune."

"I am sorry if you have scruples on the subject, Mr. Singleton," Marion answered, quietly. "They ought to have occurred to you before you moved in the matter; now they are too late. I can not possibly accept the odium of holding a man's fortune when his own son is alive and has claimed it."

"But you know that I have always said I should be satisfied with part--"

Marion lifted her hand with a silencing gesture. "I know," she said, "that the affair is finally settled, and not to be discussed anymore. I am satisfied, and that ought to satisfy you. Now let us talk of something else. Are you aware that I am going abroad?"

"No," he replied, quickly, with a startled look. "Where are you going?"

"To Rome. I have a friend who is at present living there, and I am going to join her."

"But why?"

The point-blank question was so much in character with the speaker that Marion smiled.

"Why?" she repeated. "Well, I have nothing to keep me in this country, I am fond of my friend, and I wish to see the world--are not those reasons enough?"

"Perhaps so," he answered. He was silent for a moment, staring at her with his large, dark, brilliant eyes in a manner which tried even her self-possession. Then he asked, abruptly: "When are you going?"

"As soon as I can arrange my affairs. That sounds like a jest, but it is not: I really have some affairs to arrange. They will not occupy me very long, however. I shall probably leave in a week or ten days."

"Oh--I thought you might be going to-morrow!" said Mr. Singleton, with an air of relief.

After that he was a daily visitor,--such an open, persistent, long-staying visitor, that all Scarborough was soon on tiptoe of expectation. What did it mean? What would be the end of this sensational affair? Would the legitimate heir of the fortune marry the girl who had given it up without a contest? People began to say that Miss Lynde had been shrewd, and had known very well all the time what she was about.

Miss Lynde, on her part, felt as if she would never reach the end of the difficulties which seemed to evolve out of one another, according to a process of evolution with which we are all familiar. Had her passionate desire for wealth created a sort of moral Frankenstein, which would continue to pursue her? When, after a struggle known only to herself, she had decided to resign the fortune, she had thought that she cast away all perplexities arising out of it; but now it appeared that she had resigned only the money, and that the difficulties and perplexities remained. For, as clearly as any one else, she perceived--what indeed George Singleton made no effort to conceal--the object of his constant and assiduous attentions. The fortune she had given up was to be offered her again: she would again be forced to make a difficult choice.

For all that has been written of Marion Lynde has been written to little purpose if any one imagines that wealth had lost its glamour in her eyes, or that her old ambitions were dead within her. They had been for a time subdued,--for a time she had realized that one might be crushed by the weight of a granted prayer; but the old desires and the old attraction still remained strong enough to prove a potent force in the hour of temptation.

And she began to feel that it might be a temptation to regain in the most entire manner the fortune she had resigned; to cast one glance of triumphant scorn at Rathborne, who had fancied himself scheming for her downfall; to receive Mrs. Singleton's cousinly congratulations; and, above all, to prove to Brian Earle how easily she could console herself for his desertion--how readily another man offered the homage he had withdrawn. Yes, all these things were temptations; for the sway of the world, of natural inclinations and passions, was still strong in this soul, which had leaned toward higher things without embracing them.