CONSTANCE COUNTS HER MONEY.

Constance had shut herself up in the little bed-room, which was all the means of privacy she possessed. When the door was locked and bolted, she crushed some paper into the keyhole, and, still with a feeling of unsafety, sat down on the bed, with one hand under her scarlet jacket, afraid to draw out the roll of money it clasped, lest some chink or crevice might still make observation possible. But all was still, and after a moment of breathless hesitation, she drew the roll forth and opened it, with a quick gasp of astonishment. The first bill she saw was one for fifty dollars, and her hand clenched ten of the same denomination.

"Five hundred dollars! Mercy, how rich he must be!"

With this exclamation she dropped the money into her lap, and gazed down upon it, shaken with fear and eager with delight.

"All for me—all for me! I was not to tell father, and I won't. He would take it himself and use it. I never saw a cent of the last. I don't believe he used it to pay for my dancing lessons even."

She folded up the money, after counting it over again and again, each time with a keener sense of possession. Then she replaced it in her bosom, and folding both arms over it, seemed to be embracing herself in a spirit of intense congratulation.

"Five hundred dollars! Five hundred dollars! How can I spend it? How shall I dare to spend it? They will both be watching me. Father might be cheated into thinking anything I wished about dry goods, but William understands himself too well. I cannot wear a thread that he will not notice, and guess the price. Oh! if he would but let me alone. That's him coming in now. It can't be father, for I just heard him going out. Well, I have got to face him again, and may as well do it at once. But with five hundred dollars in my bosom; it seems like witchcraft. I wonder what he would say——"

"Constance! Constance!"

"Yes, William! I just came in here to wash my hands. How good you were to come back so soon."

"I was in haste to thank you again, Constance. My mother is so pleased; she wanted money so much to help Holt reach the West with. I am glad he is going, and never spent money more willingly; but she is broken-hearted at parting with him. It is painful to see any woman love a worthless man so devotedly."

"Why does she stay behind?" asked Constance, assuming deep interest in the subject. "If she loves him so much, a new country ought not to frighten her."

"But she is an old woman."

"What, then, if she loves her husband?"

Sterling's eyes brightened, a sudden flush came over his face, illuminating it with wonderful beauty.

"What, if I went there—would you go with me?" he asked, laying a hand caressingly on each of her shoulders, and reading her face with his hopeful eyes.

"I—I? Yes, of course, when people know that I am your wife," she answered, coloring angrily at the trap she seemed to have laid for herself; "that is, if father would let me."

The young man's countenance fell.

"I see you would not like it," he said.

"How can one say that? I don't know what the West is."

"Well, well, child, we are not likely to try it for many a day, I fear; but sometimes I have my dreams of a pretty home on some prairie, with a yoke of oxen, a couple of cows, and the brightest woman in all the world cooking venison for my supper."

"That means me," said Constance, with a forced laugh. "Well, go on."

"And my mother sitting at the window."

"Oh! your mother—always your mother."

"Of course. She is one of the great objects in my home-pictures, God bless her!"

"And how much would this home cost, William?"

"Very little. The price of a velvet cloak would almost build a comfortable log-house."

Constance thought of the five hundred dollars in her bosom, and wondered if that would be enough. For a moment, she was rather taken with this idea of a home on the prairie, and asked a good many questions about it; more, in fact, to keep up a conversation at variance with her thoughts that she wished to conceal, than from any settled interest in the matter.

Sterling seized upon the idea, and began to work it out in his mind with downright earnestness. With him it was the solution of a question that had troubled him for months. It would take Constance from the city, remove her from all those influences that made her advancement so uncertain, and in the pure air and broad liberty of a new life, bring out all that was truly good and beautiful in her character. Then, indeed, he could present her to his mother and claim her before the whole world. Now his artist-life was a drudgery, his hopes of advancement so limited, that each day made his marriage seem a rash and almost wicked step. Besides all this, he began to see that wedlock had not increased his influence, which at one time had been supreme with Constance. On the contrary, it seemed to have aroused hopes and a species of ambition which startled him. Still she was very beautiful, and sometimes passionately loving, with wonderful capabilities of improvement, if the right influences could only be brought to bear upon her.

Besides all this, Constance had been generous and self-sacrificing in a frank, cordial way regarding his mother, which inspired him with fresh confidence. Yes, that life in the prairie would be a paradise, in which the fine, fresh capacities of that young creature might expand into the perfections of womanhood.

This idea brightened on the young man like an inspiration. But the five hundred dollars that lay close to the heart of his wife, built up a wall between his aspirations and hers. While he thought of a pure, bright home in the West, Constance was planning within herself how she could spend her money undiscovered. She grew impatient at last, said she was tired, had a headache, and besides, wanted some things for the house. There was no use in trying to work with that pain in her temples. She must have fresh air.

Sterling offered to go out with her, but she put him off, having so many places to call at, which would tire him to death. So Constance went out alone, and, for the first time in her life, tasted the pleasure of shopping with plenty of money in her pocket. One advantage she had undoubtedly received from Sterling's companionship, which stood her in great stead now. Her quick intellect had seized upon his artistic taste, and, if a little brilliant in her choice of colors, she was saved from all possibility of a vulgar selection.

Constance went out alone; but on her way home she met Church. The whole thing seemed accidental—but few chance events ever fell into that man's life. He had foreseen that she would be in haste to spend her money, and so lay in wait for her, trusting to his own personal influence much more certainly than to her father's reluctant promises.

Did this man love the woman he was snaring with generous gifts and subtle flattery? I cannot answer. At the bottom even of a depraved heart there may be some pure outgush of feeling, which to us would seem impossible, just as water from a crystaline spring may run through a tangle of poisonous plants, and keep the bright sweetness with which it left the living rock; but it must be a keen searcher of human motives who can decide that the feelings of a man are untainted when his actions are evil continually.

For my part, I doubt if Church would ever have thought of this young creature if she had not been necessary to his grasping avarice; and if it had not been his invariable policy to hold all his instruments under some sort of personal control. On the other hand, her beauty, and a certain free grace of manner, which sometimes shocked Sterling, had a strong fascination for the man of hard, coarse fibre, to whom genuine refinement must have been a reproach. At any rate, Church met Constance in her walk home, and it was dark before she hurried up the stairs, afraid to meet her father while so many exciting thoughts were unfitting her for his scrutiny.