an Englishman who had bought a
grape-ranch some twenty miles from Menlo. Tiny was prettier and more
bored than usual. Rose wrote that she certainly could not stand another
summer of Menlo and should go East in the autumn. Ila wrote from Paris,
London, and Homburg that life was quite perfect. It was so interesting
to be named Washington,--everybody stared so; as the English had never
read a line of United States history, they thought her George was a
lineal descendant of the immortal head of his house; and she had
thirty-two trunks of Paris clothes and ever so many men in love with
her.

And Magdalena lived this life for three years. Its monotony was broken
by one event only.

XXVII

During the winter following Mr. Polk's death, Colonel Belmont was
driving his coach along the beach beyond the Park one afternoon when
Helena, who sat beside him, saw him give a long shudder, then huddle.
She grasped the reins of the four swiftly trotting horses and spoke over
her shoulder to Alan Rush.

"Pull my father up to the top," she said.

Rush did as he was bid, and the body of Colonel Belmont was laid out
between the two rows of young people, whose gaiety had frozen to horror.

"Now take the reins," said Helena.

Rush took the reins. Helena followed her father swiftly and stooped to
take his head in her arms. But she dropped her ear to his lips instead,
then to his heart. For a moment longer she stared at him, while the
others waited for the outburst. But she returned to the front seat, and
caught the reins from Rush's hands.

"I must do something," she said; and he knew better than to answer her,
or even to look at her.

It was some time before she could turn the horses, and then she was
several miles from home. She drove with steady hands; but when they had
reached the house and Rush lifted her down, she was trembling violently.
She pushed him aside.

"Go and get Magdalena," she said.

Magdalena remained with her a week. This was Helena's first real grief,
and there was nothing cyclonic about it. "I'll never get over it," she
said. "Never! And I'll never be quite the same again. Of course I don't
mean that I'll have this awful sense of bereavement and keep on crying
all my life: I know better than that; but I could never forget him, nor
forget to wish I still had him, if I lived to be a hundred. If I had
anything to reproach myself for--anything serious--I believe I'd go off
my head; but I _was_ good to him;