Edith H. Allen - "Home Missions In Action"

Edward Lasker - "Chess and Checkers: The Way to Mastership"

E. M. Forster - "Howards End"

John Lothrop Motley - "The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1568"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The Fallen Leaves

W >> Wilkie Collins >> The Fallen Leaves




Amelius glanced at Mrs. Payson. Sally tried to drag him to the door. He
did his best to reassure her by a smile; he spoke confusedly some
composing words. But his honest face, always accustomed to tell the
truth, told the truth now. The poor lost creature, whose feeble
intelligence was so slow to discern, so inapt to reflect, looked at him
with the heart's instantaneous perception, and saw her doom. She let go
of his hand. Her head sank. Without word or cry, she dropped on the
floor at his feet.

The attendant instantly raised her, and placed her on a sofa. Mrs.
Payson saw how resolutely Amelius struggled to control himself, and
felt for him with all her heart. Turning aside for a moment, she
hastily wrote a few lines, and returned to him. "Go, before we revive
her," she whispered; "and give what I have written to the coachman. You
shall suffer no anxiety that I can spare you," said the excellent
woman; "I will stay here myself to-night, and reconcile her to the new
life."

She held out her hand; Amelius kissed it in silence. Rufus led him out.
Not a word dropped from his lips on the long drive back to London.

His mind was disturbed by other subjects besides the subject of Sally.
He thought of his future, darkened by the doubtful marriage-engagement
that was before him. Alone with Rufus, for the rest of the evening, he
petulantly misunderstood the sympathy with which the kindly American
regarded him. Their bedrooms were next to each other. Rufus heard him
walking restlessly to and fro, and now and then talking to himself.
After a while, these sounds ceased. He was evidently worn out, and was
getting the rest that he needed, at last.

The next morning he received a few lines from Mrs. Payson, giving a
favourable account of Sally, and promising further particulars in a day
or two.

Encouraged by this good news, revived by a long night's sleep, he went
towards noon to pay his postponed visit to Regina. At that early hour,
he could feel sure that his interview with her would not be interrupted
by visitors. She received him quietly and seriously, pressing his hand
with a warmer fondness than usual. He had anticipated some complaint of
his absence on the previous day, and some severe allusion to his
appearance in the capacity of a Socialist lecturer. Regina's
indulgence, or Regina's interest in circumstances of more pressing
importance, preserved a merciful silence on both subjects.

"It is a comfort to me to see you, Amelius," she said; "I am in trouble
about my uncle, and I am weary of my own anxious thoughts. Something
unpleasant has happened in Mr. Farnaby's business. He goes to the City
earlier, and he returns much later, than usual. When he does come back,
he doesn't speak to me--he locks himself into his room; and he looks
worn and haggard when I make his breakfast for him in the morning. You
know that he is one of the directors of the new bank? There was
something about the bank in the newspaper yesterday which upset him
dreadfully; he put down his cup of coffee--and went away to the City,
without eating his breakfast. I don't like to worry you about it,
Amelius. But my aunt seems to take no interest in her husband's
affairs--and it is really a relief to me to talk of my troubles to you.
I have kept the newspaper; do look at what it says about the bank, and
tell me if you understand it!"

Amelius read the passage pointed out to him. He knew as little of
banking business as Regina. "So far as I can make it out," he said,
"they're paying away money to their shareholders which they haven't
earned. How do they do that, I wonder?"

Regina changed the subject in despair. She asked Amelius if he had
found new lodgings. Hearing that he had not yet succeeded in the search
for a residence, she opened a drawer of her work-table, and took out a
card.

"The brother of one of my schoolfellows is going to be married," she
said. "He has a pretty bachelor cottage in the neighbourhood of the
Regent's Park--and he wants to sell it, with the furniture, just as it
is. I don't know whether you care to encumber yourself with a little
house of your own. His sister has asked me to distribute some of his
cards, with the address and the particulars. It might be worth your
while, perhaps, to look at the cottage when you pass that way."

Amelius took the card. The small feminine restraints and gentlenesses
of Regina, her quiet even voice, her serene grace of movement, had a
pleasantly soothing effect on his mind after the anxieties of the last
four and twenty hours. He looked at her bending over her embroidery,
deftly and gracefully industrious--and drew his chair closer to her.
She smiled softly over her work, conscious that he was admiring her,
and placidly pleased to receive the tribute.

"I would buy the cottage at once," said Amelius, "if I thought you
would come and live in it with me."

She looked up gravely, with her needle suspended in her hand.

"Don't let us return to that," she answered, and went on again with her
embroidery.

"Why not?" Amelius asked.

She persisted in working, as industriously as if she had been a poor
needlewoman, with serious reasons for being eager to get her money. "It
is useless," she replied, "to speak of what cannot be for some time to
come."

Amelius stopped the progress of the embroidery by taking her hand. Her
devotion to her work irritated him.

"Look at me, Regina," he said, steadily controlling himself. "I want to
propose that we shall give way a little on both sides. I won't hurry
you; I will wait a reasonable time. If I promise that, surely you may
yield a little in return. Money seems to be a hard taskmaster, my
darling, after what you have told me about your uncle. See how he
suffers because he is bent on being rich; and ask yourself if it isn't
a warning to us not to follow his example! Would you like to see _me_
too wretched to speak to you, or to eat my breakfast--and all for the
sake of a little outward show? Come, come! let us think of ourselves.
Why should we waste the best days of our life apart, when we are both
free to be happy together? I have another good friend besides
Rufus--the good friend of my father before me. He knows all sorts of
great people, and he will help me to some employment. In six months'
time I might have a little salary to add to my income. Say the sweetest
words, my darling, that ever fell from your lips--say you will marry me
in six months!"

It was not in a woman's nature to be insensible to such pleading as
this. She all but yielded. "I should like to say it, dear!" she
answered, with a little fluttering sigh.

"Say it, then!" Amelius suggested tenderly.

She took refuge again in her embroidery. "If you would only give me a
little time," she suggested, "I might say it."

"Time for what, my own love?"

"Time to wait, dear, till my uncle is not quite so anxious as he is
now."

"Don't talk of your uncle, Regina! You know as well as I do what he
would say. Good heavens! why can't you decide for yourself? No! I don't
want to hear over again about what you owe to Mr. Farnaby--I heard
enough of it on that day in the shrubbery. Oh, my dear girl, do have
some feeling for me! do for once have a will of your own!"

Those last words were an offence to her self-esteem. "I think it's very
rude to tell me I have no will of my own," she said, "and very hard to
press in this way when you know I am in trouble." The inevitable
handkerchief appeared, adding emphasis to the protest--and the becoming
tears showed themselves modestly in Regina's magnificent eyes.

Amelius started out of his chair, and walked away to the window. That
last reference to Mr. Farnaby's pecuniary cares was more than he had
patience to endure. "She can't even forget her uncle and his bank," he
thought, "when I am speaking to her of our marriage!"

He kept his face hidden from her, at the window. By some subtle process
of association which he was unable to trace, the image of Simple Sally
rose in his mind. An irresistible influence forced him to think of
her--not as the poor, starved, degraded, half-witted creature of the
streets, but as the grateful girl who had asked for no happier future
than to be his servant, who had dropped senseless at his feet at the
bare prospect of parting with him. His sense of self-respect, his
loyalty to his betrothed wife, resolutely resisted the unworthy
conclusion to which his own thoughts were leading him. He turned back
again to Regina; he spoke so loudly and so vehemently that the
gathering flow of her tears was suspended in surprise. "You're right,
you're quite right, my dear! I ought to give you time, of course. I try
to control my hasty temper, but I don't always succeed--just at first.
Pray forgive me; it shall be exactly as you wish."

Regina forgave him, with a gentle and ladylike astonishment at the
excitable manner in which he made his excuses. She even neglected her
embroidery, and put her face up to him to be kissed. "You are so nice,
dear," she said, "when you are not violent and unreasonable. It is such
a pity you were brought up in America. Won't you stay to lunch?"

Happily for Amelius, the footman appeared at this critical moment with
a message: "My mistress wishes particularly to see you, sir, before you
go."

This was the first occasion, in the experience of the lovers, on which
Mrs. Farnaby had expressed her wishes through the medium of a servant,
instead of appearing personally. The curiosity of Regina was mildly
excited. "What a very odd message!" she said; "what does it mean? My
aunt went out earlier than usual this morning, and I have not seen her
since. I wonder whether she is going to consult you about my uncle's
affairs?"

"I'll go and see," said Amelius.

"And stay to lunch?" Regina reiterated.

"Not to-day, my dear."

"To-morrow, then?"

"Yes, to-morrow." So he escaped. As he opened the door, he looked back,
and kissed his hand. Regina raised her head for a moment, and smiled
charmingly. She was hard at work again over her embroidery.



CHAPTER 5

The door of Mrs. Farnaby's ground-floor room, at the back of the house,
was partially open. She was on the watch for Amelius.

"Come in!" she cried, the moment he appeared in the hall. She pulled
him into the room, and shut the door with a bang. Her face was flushed,
her eyes were wild. "I have something to tell you, you dear good
fellow," she burst out excitedly--"Something in confidence, between you
and me!" She paused, and looked at him with sudden anxiety and alarm.
"What's the matter with you?" she asked.

The sight of the room, the reference to a secret, the prospect of
another private conference, forced back the mind of Amelius, in one
breathless instant, to his first memorable interview with Mrs. Farnaby.
The mother's piteously hopeful words, in speaking of her lost daughter,
rang in his ears again as if they had just fallen from her lips. "She
may be lost in the labyrinth of London. . . . To-morrow, or ten years
hence, you _might_ meet with her." There were a hundred chances against
it--a thousand, ten thousand chances against it. The startling
possibility flashed across his brain, nevertheless, like a sudden flow
of daylight across the dark. _"Have_ I met with her, at the first
chance?"

"Wait," he cried; "I have something to say before you speak to me. Don't
deceive yourself with vain hopes. Promise me that, before I begin."

She waved her hand derisively. "Hopes?" she repeated; "I have done with
hopes, I have done with fears--I have got to certainties, at last!"

He was too eager to heed anything that she said to him; his whole soul
was absorbed in the coming disclosure. "Two nights since," he went on,
"I was wandering about London, and I met--"

She burst out laughing. "Go on!" she cried, with a wild derisive
gaiety.

Amelius stopped, perplexed and startled. "What are you laughing at?" he
asked.

"Go on!" she repeated. "I defy you to surprise me. Out with it! Whom
did you meet?"

Amelius proceeded doubtfully, by a word at a time. "I met a poor girl
in the streets," he said, steadily watching her.

She changed completely at those words; she looked at him with an aspect
of stern reproach. "No more of it," she interposed; "I have not waited
all these miserable years for such a horrible end as that." Her face
suddenly brightened; a radiant effusion of tenderness and triumph
flowed over it, and made it young and happy again. "Amelius!" she said,
"listen to this. My dream has come true--my girl is found! Thanks to
you, though you don't know it."

Amelius looked at her. Was she speaking of something that had really
happened? or had she been dreaming again?

Absorbed in her own happiness, she made no remark on his silence. "I
have seen the woman," she went on. "This bright blessed morning I have
seen the woman who took her away in the first days of her poor little
life. The wretch swears she was not to blame. I tried to forgive her.
Perhaps I almost did forgive her, in the joy of hearing what she had to
tell me. I should never have heard it, Amelius, if you had not given
that glorious lecture. The woman was one of your audience. She would
never have spoken of those past days; she would never have thought of
me--"

At those words, Mrs. Farnaby abruptly stopped, and turned her face away
from Amelius. After waiting a little, finding her still silent, still
immovable, he ventured on putting a question.

"Are you sure you are not deceived?" he asked. "I remember you told me
that rogues had tried to impose on you, in past times when you employed
people to find her."

"I have proof that I am not being imposed upon," Mrs. Farnaby answered,
still keeping her face hidden from him. "One of them knows of the fault
in her foot."

"One of them?" Amelius repeated. "How many of them are there?"

"Two. The old woman, and a young man."

"What are their names?"

"They won't tell me their names yet."

"Isn't that a little suspicious?"

"One of them knows," Mrs. Farnaby reiterated, "of the fault in her
foot."

"May I ask which of them knows? The old woman, I suppose?"

"No, the young man."

"That's strange, isn't it? Have you seen the young man?"

"I know nothing of him, except the little that the woman told me. He
has written me a letter."

"May I look at it?"

"I daren't let you look at it!"

Amelius said no more. If he had felt the smallest suspicion that the
disclosure volunteered by Mrs. Farnaby, at their first interview, had
been overheard by the unknown person who had opened the swinging window
in the kitchen, he might have recalled Phoebe's vindictive language at
his lodgings, and the doubts suggested to him by his discovery of the
vagabond waiting for her in the street. As it was, he was simply
puzzled. The one plain conclusion to his mind was, unhappily, the
natural conclusion after what he had heard--that Mrs. Farnaby had no
sort of interest in the discovery of Simple Sally, and that he need
trouble himself with no further anxiety in that matter. Strange as Mrs.
Farnaby's mysterious revelation seemed, her correspondent's knowledge
of the fault in the foot was circumstance in his favour, beyond
dispute. Amelius still wondered inwardly how it was that the woman who
had taken charge of the child had failed to discover what appeared to
be known to another person. If he had been aware that Mrs. Sowler's
occupation at the time was the occupation of a "baby-farmer," and that
she had many other deserted children pining under her charge, he might
have easily understood that she was the last person in the world to
trouble herself with a minute examination of any one of the unfortunate
little creatures abandoned to her drunken and merciless neglect. Jervy
had satisfied himself, before he trusted her with his instructions,
that she knew no more than the veriest stranger of any peculiarity in
one or the other of the child's feet.

Interpreting Mrs. Farnaby's last reply to him as an intimation that
their interview was at an end, Amelius took up his hat to go.

"I hope with all my heart," he said, "that what has begun so well will
end well. If there is any service that I can do for you--"

She drew nearer to him, and put her hand gently on his shoulder. "Don't
think that I distrust you," she said very earnestly; "I am unwilling to
shock you--that is all. Even this great joy has a dark side to it; my
miserable married life casts its shadow on everything that happens to
me. Keep secret from everybody the little that I have told you--you
will ruin me if you say one word of it to any living creature. I ought
not to have opened my heart to you--but how could I help it, when the
happiness that is coming to me has come through you? When you say
good-bye to me to-day, Amelius, you say good-bye to me for the last
time in this house. I am going away. Don't ask me why--that is one more
among the things which I daren't tell you! You shall hear from me, or
see me--I promise that. Give me some safe address to write to; some
place where there are no inquisitive women who may open my letter in
your absence."

She handed him her pocket-book. Amelius wrote down in it the address of
his club.

She took his hand. "Think of me kindly," she said. "And, once more,
don't be afraid of my being deceived. There is a hard part of me still
left which keeps me on my guard. The old woman tried, this morning, to
make me talk to her about that little fault we know of in my child's
foot. But I thought to myself, 'If you had taken a proper interest in
my poor baby while she was with you, you must sooner or later have
found it out.' Not a word passed my lips. No, no, don't be anxious when
you think of me. I am as sharp as they are; I mean to find out how the
man who wrote to me discovered what he knows; he shall satisfy me, I
promise you, when I see him or hear from him next. All this is between
ourselves strictly, sacredly between ourselves. Say nothing--I know I
can trust you. Good-bye, and forgive me for having been so often in
your way with Regina. I shall never be in your way again. Marry her, if
you think she is good enough for you; I have no more interest now in
your being a roving bachelor, meeting with girls here, there, and
everywhere. You shall know how it goes on. Oh, I am so happy!"

She burst into tears, and signed to Amelius with a wild gesture of
treaty to leave her.

He pressed her hand in silence, and went out.

Almost as the door closed on him, the variable woman changed again. For
a while she walked rapidly to and fro, talking to herself. The course
of her tears ceased. Her lips closed firmly; her eyes assumed an
expression of savage resolve. She sat down at the table and opened her
desk. "I'll read it once more," she said to herself, "before I seal it
up."

She took from her desk a letter of her own writing, and spread it out
before her. With her elbows on the table, and her hands clasped
fiercely in her hair, she read these lines addressed to her husband:--


JOHN FARNABY,--I have always suspected that you had something to do
with the disappearance of our child. I know for certain now that you
deliberately cast your infant daughter on the mercy of the world, and
condemned your wife to a life of wretchedness.

"Don't suppose that I have been deceived! I have spoken with the woman
who waited by the garden-paling at Ramsgate, and who took the child
from your hands. She saw you with me at the lecture; and she is
absolutely sure that you are the man.

"Thanks to the meeting at the lecture-hall, I am at last on the trace
of my lost daughter. This morning I heard the woman's story. She kept
the child, on the chance of its being reclaimed, until she could afford
to keep it no longer. She met with a person who was willing to adopt
it, and who took it away with her to a foreign country, not mentioned
to me yet. In that country my daughter is still living, and will be
restored to me on conditions which will be communicated in a few days'
time.

"Some of this story may be true, and some of it may be false; the woman
may be lying to serve her own interests with me. Of one thing I am
sure--my girl is identified, by means known to me of which there can be
no doubt. And she must be still living, because the interest of the
persons treating with me is an interest in her life.

"When you receive this letter, on your return from business to-night, I
shall have left you, and left you for ever. The bare thought of even
looking at you again fills me with horror. I have my own income, and I
mean to take my own way. In your best interests I warn you, make no
attempt to trace me. I declare solemnly that, rather than let your
deserted daughter be polluted by the sight of you, I would kill you
with my own hand, and die for it on the scaffold. If she ever asks for
her father, I will do you one service. For the honour of human nature,
I will tell her that her father is dead. It will not be all a
falsehood. I repudiate you and your name--you are dead to me from this
time forth.

"I sign myself by my father's name--

"EMMA RONALD."


She had said herself that she was unwilling to shock Amelius. This was
the reason.

After thinking a little, she sealed and directed the letter. This done,
she unlocked the wooden press which had once contained the baby's frock
and cap, and those other memorials of the past which she called her
"dead consolations." After satisfying herself that the press was empty,
she wrote on a card, "To be called for by a messenger from my
bankers"--and tied the card to a tin box in a corner, secured by a
padlock. She lifted the box, and placed it in front of the press, so
that it might be easily visible to any one entering the room. The safe
keeping of her treasures provided for, she took the sealed letter, and,
ascending the stairs, placed it on the table in her husband's
dressing-room. She hurried out again, the instant after, as if the
sight of the place were intolerable to her.

Passing to the other end of the corridor, she entered her own
bedchamber, and put on her bonnet and cloak. A leather handbag was on
the bed. She took it up, and looked round the large luxurious room with
a shudder of disgust. What she had suffered, within those four walls,
no human creature knew but herself. She hurried out, as she had hurried
out of her husband's dressing-room.

Her niece was still in the drawing-room. As she reached the door, she
hesitated, and stopped. The girl was a good girl, in her own dull
placid way--and her sister's daughter, too. A last little act of
kindness would perhaps be a welcome act to remember. She opened the
door so suddenly that Regina started, with a small cry of alarm. "Oh,
aunt, how you frighten one! Are you going out?" "Yes; I'm going out,"
was the short answer. "Come here. Give me a kiss." Regina looked up in
wide-eyed astonishment. Mrs. Farnaby stamped impatiently on the floor.
Regina rose, gracefully bewildered. "My dear aunt, how very odd!" she
said--and gave the kiss demanded, with a serenely surprised elevation
of her finely shaped eyebrows. "Yes," said Mrs. Farnaby; "that's
it--one of my oddities. Go back to your work. Good-bye."

She left the room, as abruptly as she had entered it. With her firm
heavy step she descended to the hall, passed out at the house door, and
closed it behind her--never to return to it again.



CHAPTER 6

Amelius left Mrs. Farnaby, troubled by emotions of confusion and alarm,
which he was the last man living to endure patiently. Her extraordinary
story of the discovered daughter, the still more startling assertion of
her solution to leave the house, the absence of any plain explanation,
the burden of secrecy imposed on him--all combined together to irritate
his sensitive nerves. "I hate mysteries," he thought; "and ever since I
landed in England, I seem fated to be mixed up in them. Does she really
mean to leave her husband and her niece? What will Farnaby do? What
will become of Regina?"

To think of Regina was to think of the new repulse of which he had been
made the subject. Again he had appealed to her love for him, and again
she had refused to marry him at his own time.

He was especially perplexed and angry, when he reflected on the
unassailably strong influence which her uncle appeared to have over
her. All Regina's sympathy was with Mr. Farnaby and his troubles.
Amelius might have understood her a little better, if she had told him
what had passed between her uncle and herself on the night of Mr.
Farnaby's return, in a state of indignation, from the lecture. In
terror of the engagement being broken off, she had been forced to
confess that she was too fond of Amelius to prevail on herself to part
with him. If he attempted a second exposition of his Socialist
principles on the platform, she owned that it might be impossible to
receive him again as a suitor. But she pleaded hard for the granting of
a pardon to the first offence, in the interests of her own
tranquillity, if not in mercy to Amelius. Mr. Farnaby, already troubled
by his commercial anxieties, had listened more amiably, and also more
absently, than usual; and had granted her petition with the ready
indulgence of a preoccupied man. It had been decided between them that
the offence of the lecture should be passed over in discreet silence.
Regina's gratitude for this concession inspired her sympathy with her
uncle in his present state of suspense. She had been sorely tempted to
tell Amelius what had happened. But the natural reserve of her
character--fortified, in this instance, by the defensive pride which
makes a woman unwilling, before marriage, to confess her weakness
unreservedly to the man who has caused it--had sealed her lips. "When
he is a little less violent and a little more humble," she thought,
"perhaps I may tell him."