IN THE JAWS OF THE SERPENT.

Constance went into the room below, where she found Church smoking a segar, with his eyes half closed, and a soft, hazy vapor floating around his head. He was an ugly man, and gray hairs were plentiful in his beard and around his temples; but there was a conscious power about him that had its fascinations for a girl like Constance—and he knew it well.

"Here it is," she said, sitting down on the carpet, like a sultana at his feet, and throwing out the rich folds of the shawl till it floated around her. "Now tell me if she speaks the truth. Is this thing worth all the money she talks about? I don't believe it."

Church took a corner of the shawl between his hands and examined it closely. Then he threw it across a table, and leaning back, smoked luxuriously while he took the pattern, with its slender palm-leaves and delicate bordering, into his mind. Constance sat on the floor close by him, with one foot huddled under her, and both hands locked over the opposite knee—a position that was in great favor with her when she dared to take it, and which the man was coarse enough to like.

"Well, what of it?" she inquired, after a little. "All a sham, I dare say."

"A sham! Why, girl, there isn't another shawl like that in America. It's worth all she says it cost, and more, too."

Constance suddenly loosened her hands and let her knee fall downward.

"You don't say so. Worth three thousand dollars—second-hand, too?"

"Every cent of it, and the more for its antiquity. It is of the purest and richest work; you can hardly find its equal in any market. None of your white serpents and inextricable tangles of color, such as are put together in Paris and pronounced the last style, but a garment which one might be proud to leave to one's grandchildren."

Church gave this opinion in a quiet way, puffing soft gushes of smoke forth with his words; but Constance was instantly thrown into a state of excitement. She had cared nothing about the beauty of the shawl. Its exquisite perfection made no impression upon her; but when its cost was assured, the desire to brave and astonish little Rhoda with a proof of her capacity to own it, was lost in an eager wish for a garment so expensive, which could be got at a third of its real value.

"Dear me, you don't say so; and she only asks a thousand dollars for it."

Church laughed pleasantly through the smoke that enclouded him.

"Only a thousand dollars!" he chuckled. "Why, one would think the creature had been bred in the heart of a gold mine."

"You needn't laugh at me," pouted Constance, rising up from the floor, and putting on an awkward air of dignity. "I didn't ask you to buy it for me, thank goodness!"

"But I offered to buy it, Madam Peacock, and mean to keep my word, that is, providing you keep yours."

"Keep mine! What do you mean?"

"Why, to set a day when you and I are to be married.'"

"But I cannot do it—at least, not yet. Besides, I don't know as I want the shawl; it isn't anything so very stunning."

Constance gave her head a toss, and dashed the hand, which Church extended to draw her toward him, rudely aside. "At any rate, I don't want it enough to take any more money from you, Mr. Church!"

Church gave a prolonged whiff at his segar, took it from his mouth and folded a loose fragment of the tobacco daintily around it, before he made any answer. Then he seemed to have forgotten the direct subject of conversation, for he asked Constance, very abruptly, where young Sterling was just then.

Again Constance gave that beautiful head a toss, which made all the rich masses of her hair shimmer in the light, and answered that she did not know anything about it. "What was William Sterling to her?"

"Perhaps not much now; but he has been something more than I know of," said Church, still busy with his segar, but eyeing her with the sidelong look of a crafty lawyer.

Constance turned coldly white. She shrunk back from the man, and, for the moment, lost all courage. Then Church broke from his cool self-possession and sprang upon her like a tiger, seizing her by the wrist.

"Girl, is this thing true?"

"What—what thing?"

Her lips were white and quivering, and he felt the hand he held growing cold under his grasp.

"That you love that young dandy!"

"Love him? No!"

"Then why are you so pale?"

"You—you frighten me! How can I help it?"

"Have you ever loved him? The truth, girl—I will have the truth!"

She was growing bold, now, and the hot blood came rushing back to her face. He was furiously jealous—she could see that, and triumphed in it; but her secret was safe. She put her head on one side, and lifted a finger to her lips, as if making up her mind.

"Love him? No; I really do not think I ever did," she said, at last, with the apparent innocence of a child. "Like some other people I could mention, it was all on his side."

Church turned from her in genuine anger. The creature had fascinated him; and with such men fascination takes the semblance of love so completely, that it becomes a passion.

"Then you have never loved him, and you do not love me?"

"I said I had never loved him—but the other—Well, that is a subject for consideration. Don't you think so?"

"Constance, tell me."

"I haven't time now, little Rhoda will be getting impatient about the shawl."

"Tell me one thing, and you shall have the shawl."

"Well, what is it?"

"Why does that young man hang about this house so constantly?"

"Who told you that he did hang about the house?"

"I see him go in and out with my own eyes."

"Well, what then? He works here."

"And you are pleased—you like it?"

"No, I don't; sometimes I wish he was in Jericho."

"But your father likes it. He is constantly throwing you into this young man's society."

"Now don't begin to abuse my poor father. He has been good to me; and I won't hear it."

"Still I know that he would drive me from the house, if he dared, and marry you to this young fellow."

"But that he never will; it is beyond his power," answered the girl, while a singular smile crossed her lips.

"Constance, if it could be so arranged, would you be willing that this young man should be sent away?"

"Where to?" She spoke as if the idea gave her a sudden pang.

"West; Montana—the Pacific—the Sandwich Islands—anywhere, so it be far enough!"

Constance stood a moment in dead silence, turning cold and white under the evil gaze of that bad man. He saw that there was a struggle going on in her heart; that some hope which she had cherished was dying hard, for her neck seemed turned to marble, and her eyes were full of sorrowful pain.

"And he would never come back," she whispered to herself. "It would be giving him up forever."

"You cannot answer," said Church, bitterly. "You love the fellow, and have been cheating me."

Constance did not hear him. During those few moments her good angel stood within the door of that heart, and shut out his voice. The cry of a pure, holy love came out from the depths of her nature asking to be saved, striving to save her; but the evil influences soon overwhelmed it. The angel drew back, and the voice of the tempter stole through, poisoning as it went. Her eyes fell upon the shawl; she remembered the cerulean dress, with its cloud of lace which lay concealed in her closet up stairs. All the gorgeous future which had been so adroitly laid before her, day by day, if shared with that man, swept over and overwhelmed the good that was in her.

"Were you speaking to me? Did you ask me anything?" she said, arousing herself as from a dream.

"I asked you to choose between that man and me—his life and that which I can give you. The time has come, Constance; I will be trifled with no longer."

"I have chosen long ago," she answered, laying one hand on his arm, and looking him firmly in the face. "But what are you going to do with him? He is nothing to me, you know; but father likes the young fellow, and I don't want to see him come to grief."

"I will see that he goes out West."

"What, to starve or dig?"

The girl was suspicious, and her voice trembled; but she looked bold as an eagle.

"No. He is a good artist, and understands surveying, I have found out. We must get him a position on the Pacific Railway, or give him an Indian Agency—something to wake up his ambition, or he would come back again."

Once more Constance lost her color and grew cold.

"An Indian Agency? But the savages are at war everywhere. He would be in danger."

"Perhaps; but brave men like that."

"And the frontier is full of ruffians—worse than the Indians. He would never come back alive—and you know it!"

She spoke furiously, and her eyes glittered. The spirit of opposition was strong in that young heart, not because of the goodness there, or the love she was strangling; but I really think, in the abstract, she hated the man before her. It was only when she saw in him the embodiment of a splendid future, out of which came a panorama of palaces, horses, carriages, superb dresses, and jewels, resplendent enough to dazzle her whole being, that she could even fancy herself loving him.

"He would never come back alive, and you know it!" she repeated, grasping the man's arm till he made an effort to shake her off.

"Well, what is that to us?" he answered, seizing her hand with a force that wrenched it from his arm. "Above all, what is that to you?"

"Just this, Mr. Church. Young Sterling has been real good to me when I had no other friends, and I am no viper to sting him for his kindness. Send him off to some safe place where he can prosper, and I will not say a word against it; but I won't see him led into danger. You shan't murder him with your plotting and your hate. I tell you now, if any harm comes to him by your means, there will be thunder and lightning about your head, and no mistake!"

This dash of bravado rather pleased Church, who would have found a really refined woman terribly insipid.

"You are a glorious creature!" he exclaimed, and laid his hand on her shoulder in a sudden transport of coarse admiration. Her natural loathing of the man had been intensified by his evident desire to tempt young Sterling out of his life. In her rage she struck him a sharp blow on the cheek, uttering a little cry of fear the next instant.

For one moment the man stepped back and glared at her like a fiend; then he cast his arm around her again, drew her face close to his, and left a kiss upon her hot, red cheek—the first he had ever dared to offer her.

"Take that for your blow!" he said, as she pushed him fiercely away with both hands.

Constance threw herself into a chair, with both arms extended on the table, and burst into a storm of wrathful crying.

"Come, come!" pleaded Church, approaching her in abject penitence, "there is no harm done; or if there is, my cheek has suffered most. I feel the mark of your hand burning on it yet."

Constance looked up with the tears trembling on her cheeks like dew upon roses, saw the long crimson marks on his sallow face, and burst into a peal of laughter.

Then came a long conversation which we need not repeat; for, after the storm, these two natures came to a better understanding, and in the hush of exasperated feelings, they settled many things which will hereafter be unfolded. Then more bank-notes passed from his hand to hers, and Constance gathered up the India shawl, and cast it upon the bed in her sleeping-room, more carelessly than she would have dared to act if her father had been at home. Then Church took his leave, and Constance crept up stairs, pale and trembling like a guilty thing, with the price of Mrs. Holt's shawl clasped in her hand.