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Ralstons

<h2>CHAPTER XXXV.</h2> “People don’t often really go mad from grief,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, as she and Katharine walked slowly homeward in the bright spring afternoon. “I shouldn’t be surprised if Hester married again in a few years. Not very soon, of course—but in time. She’s very young yet. She’ll be very young still in five years—for a widow.” “I don’t think she can ever get over it,” answered Katharine, rather coldly, being displeased at her mother’s careless way of speaking. “It’s a mistake to take things too hard,” said the elder woman. “And it’s a great mistake to underrate time. A great many curious things can happen to one in five years.” Katharine was not in search of unbelief, nor of encouragement in not believing that human nature could really feel. Her faith in it had been terribly undermined during the past winter, and she had just been with two persons, Hester Crowdie and Paul Griggs, whose behaviour had at least tended to restore it. She did not wish the recuperative effort of her charity towards mankind to be checked. So she did not argue the point, but walked on in silence. She had not recovered, and could not recover for many days, from the impression produced upon her by the ghastly scene in the studio. Her young vitality abhorred death, and its contrary and hostile principle, and when she thought of what she had seen, she felt the same sickening, shrinking horror which had led her to hold back her skirt from any possible contact with the carpet on which Crowdie’s body had been lying. She might have been willing to admit that her mother, who had seen nothing, but had sat downstairs talking with the comfortable, fat and refined aunt Maggie, was not called upon to feel what she herself felt after going through such a strange experience. But since her mother felt nothing, her mother could not understand; and if she could not understand, it was better to walk on in silence and to make her hasten her indolent, graceful steps. In reality, Mrs. Lauderdale was much more preoccupied about the possibilities of the second will turning out to be favourable to her husband or the contrary, and her preoccupation was not at all sordid, though it was by no means unselfish. She was anxious about him, in her unobtrusive, calm way. He talked of money in his sleep, as she had told Katharine, and he was growing nervous. She had even noticed once or twice of late that his hand shook a little as he held the morning paper after breakfast, during the ten minutes which he devoted to its perusal. That was a bad sign, she thought, for a man who had been famous for his good nerve, and who had been known all his life as an unerring shot. She did not like to think what consequences a great disappointment might have upon his temper, which had shown itself so frequently of late, after nearly a quarter of a century of comparative quiescence. Nor was it pleasant to contemplate the new means of economy which he would certainly introduce into his household if by any evil chance he got no share of the Lauderdale fortune. But that, she told herself, was impossible, as indeed it seemed to be. It was of no use to be in a hurry, she told Katharine, as they had at least an hour to get rid of before the time at which Mr. Allen was to be expected. The Ralstons and Hamilton Bright would only come a few minutes earlier. Every one would understand how unpleasant it might be to be shut up together in such suspense for half an hour before the truth could be known—each hoping to get the other’s money, as Mrs. Lauderdale observed with a little laugh that had hardly any cruelty in it. But, of course, nobody would be late on such an occasion. There was no fear of that. And she laughed again, and stepped gracefully aside on the pavement to let a boy with a big bundle go by. She had not been deceived in her calculations, for there was still plenty of time to spare when they reached the house in Clinton Place. Katharine disappeared to her room, glad to be alone at last. There was a hushed expectation in the air of the house, which reminded her of the place she had just left, but she herself felt not the smallest interest in the will. So far as she was concerned, she was perfectly well satisfied with the course taken by the law, independently of any will at all. The Ralstons and Hamilton Bright came almost at the same moment, though not together, and Katharine had no chance of exchanging a word with John out of hearing of the rest. They all met in the library. The old philanthropist was there, and every one was secretly surprised to discover what a very fine-looking old man he was in a perfectly new frock coat with a great deal of silk in front. But his heavy, shapeless shoes betrayed his lingering attachment to the little Italian shoemaker in South Fifth Avenue, whose conscientiously durable works promised to outlast old Alexander’s need for them. Alexander Junior stood before the empty fireplace, coldly nervous. He could not have sat still for five minutes just then. When he spoke of Crowdie’s death to Hamilton Bright, and immediately afterwards of the weather, his steel-trap mouth opened and closed mechanically, emitting metallic sounds—it could not be called speaking—and his glittering grey eyes went restlessly from the window to the door and back again, without even resting on Bright’s face. Bright himself was grave, manly, quiet, as he generally was. He was eminently the man who could be reckoned with and counted upon. He would make no attempt to conceal his disappointment if he were disappointed, nor his satisfaction if he were pleased, but the expression of either would be simple, quiet and manly, with few words, if any. Mrs. Ralston watched the two as they stood side by side. From her position on the sofa she could see Alexander Junior’s hands twitching nervously behind him. But she was talking with Mrs. Lauderdale at the same time. She made no pretence of being very sorry to hear of Crowdie’s sudden death. She rarely saw him and she had never liked him. To her, he was merely the husband of a very distant cousin—of a descendant of her great-grandfather through a female branch. It was too much to expect that she should be profoundly affected by what had happened. But her dark, clearly cut features were grave, and there was a certain expectancy in her look, which showed that she was not really indifferent to the nature of the events momentarily expected. She admitted frankly to herself that it would make an enormous difference in her future happiness to be very rich instead of being almost poor, and she had told her son so as they came to the house. John was trying to talk to Katharine near the window, but he found it impossible to shake off Alexander Senior, whose fondness for his favourite granddaughter was proverbial in the family. The old gentleman stood by, approvingly, and insisted upon leading the conversation which, with old-fashioned grandfatherly wit—or what passed for wit in the families of our grandfathers—he constantly directed upon the subject of matrimony, with an elephantine sprightliness most irritating to John Ralston, though Katharine bore it with indifferent serenity, and smiled when the old man looked at her, her features growing grave again as soon as he turned to John. She could not shake off the terrible impression she had brought with her, and yet she longed to explain to John why she felt and looked so sad. She, also, glanced often at the door. The arrival of the family lawyer would put a stop to her grandfather’s playful persecution of her, and give her a chance to say three words to John without being overheard. Ralston stood ready, knowing that she wished to speak to him alone, and he paid little attention to Alexander Senior’s jokes. He glanced about the room and said to himself that the members of the Lauderdale tribe were a very good-looking set, from first to last. He was proud of his family just then, for he had rarely seen so many of them assembled together without the presence of any stranger, and he was most proud of Katharine’s beauty. Pallor was becoming to her, for hers was fresh and clear and youthful. It ruined her mother’s looks to be pale, especially of late, since the imperceptible lines had been drawn into very fine but clearly discernible wrinkles. Mrs. Lauderdale had told herself with tears that they were really wrinkles, but she would have been sorry to know that John, or any one else, called them by that name. At last the lawyer came, and there was a dead silence as he entered—a tall, lantern-jawed man, clean shaven, almost bald, with prominent yellow teeth, over which his mobile lips fitted as though they had been made of shrivelled pink indiarubber. He had very light blue eyes and bushy brows that stood out in contrast to his bald scalp and beardless face like a few shaggy firs that have survived the destruction of a forest. He spoke in an impressive manner, for he was deaf, emphasizing almost every word in every sentence. He was a New Englander by birth, as keen and provincial in New York as ever was a Scotchman in London. Having been duly welcomed, and provided with a seat in the midst of the assembled tribe, he leisurely produced a pair of gold-rimmed glasses and a handkerchief, and proceeded to the operation of polishing the one with the other. He was provokingly slow. His chair was placed so that he sat with his back to the window, facing Mrs. Lauderdale and Mrs. Ralston, who occupied the sofa on the right of the fireplace. The two Alexanders and Bright completed the circle, while Katharine and John placed themselves behind the lawyer. John could see over his shoulder. Not a word was spoken while Mr. Allen made his careful preparations. It could hardly be supposed that he had any traditional remnant of the old-fashioned attorney’s vanity, which made him anxious to produce an effect by taking as long as possible in settling himself to his work. He was simply a leisurely man, who had been born before the days of hurry, and was living to see hurry considered as an obsolete affectation, no longer necessary, and no longer the fashion. There is haste in some things, still, in New York, but not the haste that we of the generation in middle age remember when we were young men. Mr. Allen, however, had never been hasty; and he found himself fashionable in his old age, as he had been in his youth, long before the civil war. When his glasses were fairly pinching the lower part of his thin grey nose, he thrust one bony hand into his breast-pocket, leaning forward as he did so, and quietly scanning the faces of his audience, one after the other. He was so very slow that John and Katharine looked at one another and smiled. From his pocket he brought out a great bundle of papers and letters, and calmly proceeded to look through them from the beginning, in search of what he wanted. Of course, the big blue envelope was the last of a number of big blue envelopes, and the last but one of all the papers. “This is it, I think,” said Mr. Allen, with dignity and caution. The two elder women drew two short little breaths of expectation, sat forward a little, and then thoughtfully smoothed their frocks over their knees. Alexander Junior’s knuckles cracked audibly, as he silently twined his fingers round one another, and pulled at them in his anxiety. Hamilton Bright uncrossed his legs, and recrossed them in the opposite way. Katharine sighed. She was tired of it all, before it had begun. “Yes,” said Mr. Allen, with even more dignity, but with less caution in making the assertion, “I believe this is it.” “Thank the Lord!” exclaimed John Ralston from behind the lawyer, who was deaf. Mrs. Ralston smiled a little, and avoided her son’s eyes. Hamilton Bright looked absolutely impassive. “You all see what it is,” said Mr. Allen. “It is a large blue envelope, gummed without a seal, marked ‘Will,’ in a handwriting which may be that of the late Mr. Lauderdale, though I should not be prepared to swear to it, and dated ‘March’ of this year. It is reasonable to suppose that it contains a will made in that month, and therefore prior to the one of which we have knowledge. Mr. Lauderdale”—he turned to Alexander Senior—“and you, Mrs. Ralston—with your consent, I will open this document in your presence.” “By all means—open it,” said Alexander Junior, with evident impatience. “Certainly, certainly, Mr. Allen,” said his father. “That’s what we expect.” Mrs. Ralston contented herself with nodding her assent, when the lawyer looked at her. He searched for a penknife in his pocket, found it, opened it, and with infinite care slit the envelope from end to end. After carefully shutting the knife, and returning it to his pocket again, he withdrew a thick, folded sheet of heavy foolscap. As he did so, a smaller piece of paper, folded only once, fluttered to the ground at his feet. It might have been a note of old Robert Lauderdale’s, expressing some particular last wish of such a nature as not to have found its proper place in a document of such importance as the will itself. The eyes of every one being intent upon the latter, as Mr. Allen opened it, no one paid any attention to the bit of paper. Mr. Allen was old and formal, and he had no intention of bestowing a preliminary glance at the contents of the paper before reading it. He began at the beginning, for the first words proved it to be a will, and nothing else. It began, as many American wills do, with the words, “In the name of God. Amen.” Then followed the clause revoking all previous wills, each and every one of them; and then the other, relating to the payment of just debts and funeral expenses. Then Mr. Allen paused, and drew breath. The tension in the atmosphere of the room was high, at that moment of supreme anxiety. “ ‘It is my purpose,’ ” Mr. Allen read, “ ‘to so distribute the wealth which has accumulated in my hands as to distribute it amongst those of my fellow creatures who stand most directly in need of such help—’ ” There was a general movement in the circle. Everybody started. Alexander Junior’s hands dropped by his sides, and his steel-trap mouth relaxed and opened. “Go on!” he said, breathlessly. Mr. Allen went on, shaking his head from time to time, as his only expression of overwhelming stupefaction. It was by far the most extraordinary will he had ever seen; but it was legally and properly worded, with endlessly long, unpunctuated sentences, all of which tended to elucidate the already sufficiently clear meaning. In half-a-dozen words, it is sufficient to say that the will constituted the whole fortune, without legacies, and without mention of heirs or relatives, into a gigantic trust, to be managed, for the final extinction of poverty in the city of New York, by a board of trustees, to exist in perpetuity. Many conditions were imposed, and many possible cases foreseen. There were elaborate rules for filling vacancies in the trusteeship, and many other clauses necessary for the administration of such a vast charitable foundation, all carefully thought out and clearly stated. The perspiration stood upon the old lawyer’s astonished head, as he continued to read. Alexander Junior seemed to be absolutely paralyzed, and stared like a man distracted, who sees nothing, with wide-open eyes. Even Mrs. Ralston bent her dark brows, and bit her even lips, in disappointment. Hamilton Bright bent down, leaning his elbows upon his knees, and looked at the fourth page of the vast sheet of closely written foolscap. “We’re a pack of fools!” he exclaimed, suddenly. “The will isn’t signed.” Alexander Junior uttered a loud exclamation, sprang to his feet, and snatched the will from the lawyer’s hand so roughly as to brush the gold-rimmed glasses from his thin nose, on which they had pinched their unsteady hold, and they fell to the ground. “Eh? What?” he asked, very much disturbed by such rude interruption. Alexander had turned to the end, and had seen that it was a blank, without signatures either of testator or witnesses. “Thank God!” he exclaimed, fervently, as he dropped back into his chair. “That almost killed me,” he added in a low voice, regardless of the others. But no one paid much attention to him. Hamilton Bright remained impassive. Each of the others uttered an exclamation, or breathed a sigh of relief. For some minutes afterwards there was a dead silence. Mr. Allen was fumbling on the floor for his gold-rimmed glasses, still very much confused. They had managed to get under the low chair in which he sat, and which had a long fringe on it, reaching almost to the ground, so that he took some time in finding them. “Of course he would never have signed such a thing!” said Hamilton Bright, with emphasis. “He had too much sense.” “I should think so!” exclaimed Mrs. Lauderdale. “The only thing I can’t understand is how it ever was kept and marked ‘Will.’ ” “Uncle Robert once told me that he had often made sketches of wills leaving all his money in trust to the poor,” said Katharine. “He never meant to sign one, though. This must be one of them—of course—it can’t be anything else!” “His secretary probably put it away, supposing he wanted to keep it,” said Ralston, from behind Mr. Allen. “Then he forgot all about it, and so it turned up among the papers. It’s simple enough.” “Oh, quite simple!” assented Alexander Junior, with a half-hysterical laugh. Mrs. Ralston was watching the lawyer as he felt for his glasses on the carpet. He paused, wiped his brow—for it was a warm afternoon, and he had been nervously excited himself in reading the document. Then he continued his search. “There’s a bit of paper there on the floor, beside your hand,” said Mrs. Ralston. “I saw it drop when you opened the envelope. Perhaps it’s something more important.” Mr. Allen recovered his glasses at that moment, and with the other hand took up the little folded sheet. With the utmost care and precision he went through the same preparations for reading which had been indispensable on the first occasion. “Let us see, let us see,” he said. “This is something. ‘I hereby certify,’—oh, an old marriage certificate of yours, Mrs. Ralston. John Ralston and Katharine Lauderdale—married—dear me! I don’t understand! This year, too! This is very strange.” Again every one present started, but with very different expressions. Hamilton Bright grew slowly red. There was a short pause. Then John Ralston rose to his feet and bent over Mr. Allen’s shoulder. “It’s our certificate,” he said, quietly. “Katharine’s and mine. We were married last winter.” And he took the paper from the hands of the wondering lawyer, and held it in his own. “Katharine!” cried Mrs. Lauderdale, when she had realized the meaning of Ralston’s words. “Katharine!” cried Alexander Junior, almost at the same moment. At any other time some one of all those present might have smiled at the difference in intonation between Mrs. Lauderdale’s cry of unmixed astonishment, and her husband’s deprecatory but forgiving utterance of his daughter’s name. Both conveyed, in widely differing ways, as much as whole phrases could have told, namely, that Mrs. Lauderdale was sincerely pleased, in spite of all her former opposition to the marriage, and that her husband, while he would much rather have his daughter married to Ralston secretly than not at all, felt that his dignity and parental authority had been outraged, and that he would be glad to have an apology, if any were to be had, of which condition his voice also expressed a doubt. “I’ll tell you all about it, from the beginning,” said John Ralston. He told the story in as few words as he could, omitting, as he had done in telling his mother, to give Katharine her full share of responsibility. She bent far forward in her seat while he was speaking, and leaned upon the back of Mr. Allen’s chair, never taking her eyes from her husband’s face. More than once her eyes brightened with a sort of affectionate indignation, and her lips parted as though she would speak. But she did not interrupt him. When he had finished he stood still in his place, looking at his father-in-law, and still holding the certificate of his marriage in his hand. Alexander Junior would have found it hard to be angry just at that moment. He had his desire. In the course of five minutes he had been cast down from a position of enormous wealth and power, since there could be no question but that the half of the great estate would really be in his control if there were no will; he had been plunged into such a depth of despair as only the real miser can understand when his hundreds or his millions, as the case may be, are swept out of sight and out of reach by a breath; and he had been restored to the pinnacle of happiness again, almost before there had been time to make his suffering seem more than the passing vision of a hideous dream. Moreover, the marriage being already accomplished and a matter of fact, made it a positive certainty that all that part of the fortune which belonged to the Ralstons would return to his own grandchildren. His outraged sense of parental importance was virtuously, but silently, indignant, and he admitted that, on the whole, the causes of satisfaction outnumbered any reasons there might be for displeasure. Something, however, must be done to propitiate the prejudices of the world, which had much force with him. “I think we’d better all go into the country as soon as possible,” he observed, thinking aloud. But no one heard him, for Katharine had risen and come forward and stood beside her husband, slipping her arm through his, and invisibly pressing him to her—unconsciously, too, perhaps—whenever she wished to emphasize a word in what she said. “I want to say something,” she began, raising her voice. “It’s all my fault, you know. I did it. I persuaded Jack one evening, here in this very room—and it was awfully hard to persuade him, I assure you! He didn’t like it in the least. He said it wasn’t a perfectly fair and honest thing to do. But I made him see it differently. I’m not sure that I was right. You see, we should have been married, anyway, as it’s turned out, because papa’s been so nice about it in the end. That’s all I wanted to say.” There was probably no malice in her diplomatic allusion to her father. The only person who smiled at it was Mrs. Ralston. “Except,” added Katharine, by an afterthought, “that the reason why we did it was because we wanted to be sure of getting each other in the end.” “Well,” said Hamilton Bright, who was very red, “I suppose the next thing to do is to congratulate you, isn’t it? Here goes. Jack, I’m sorry I slated secret marriages the other day. You see, one doesn’t always know.” “No,” observed Mrs. Lauderdale, who had her arms around her daughter’s neck. “One doesn’t—as Ham says.” “That’s all right, Ham,” said John Ralston. “I didn’t mind a bit.” But Hamilton Bright minded very much, in his quiet way, for he had played a losing game of late, and the same hour had deprived him of all hope of marrying Katharine, faint as it had been since she had so definitely refused him, and of all prospect of ever getting a share of the Lauderdale fortune. But he was a very brave man, and better able than most of those present to bear such misfortunes as fell to his lot. As for marrying, he put it out of his thoughts; and so far as fortune was concerned, he was prosperous and successful in all that he undertook to do himself, unaided, which is, after all, the most satisfactory success a man can have in the long run. The right to say ‘I did it alone’ compensates for many fancied and real wrongs. And that was something which Hamilton Bright had very often been able to say with truth. But his love for Katharine Lauderdale had been honest, enduring and generally silent. Never had he spoken to her of love until he had fancied that his friend John Ralston had no intention, nor she, either, of anything serious. It was with the consent and approval of all her family that Katharine entered upon her married life at last, after having been secretly and in name the wedded wife of John Ralston for more than five months. The world thought it not extraordinary that there should be no public ceremony, considering the recent decease of Robert Lauderdale and the shockingly sudden death of Walter Crowdie. The Lauderdales, said the world, had shown good taste, for many reasons, in having a private wedding. Having always lived quietly, it would have been unbecoming in them to invite society to a marriage of royal splendour, when he who had left them their wealth had not been dead two months. On the other hand, the union of forty millions with twenty could hardly have been decently accomplished by means of two carriages from the livery stable and a man from the greengrocer’s. The world, therefore, said that the Lauderdales and the Ralstons had done perfectly right, a fact which pleased some members of the tribe and was indifferent to others. The only connections who were heard to complain at all were the three Miss Miners, whose old-maidenly souls delighted in weddings and found refreshment in funerals. And the only person whom Katharine missed, and cared to miss, amongst all those who congratulated her was Paul Griggs. She did not see him, after they had met on the stairs of the house in Lafayette Place, for a long time. During the summer which followed the announcement of her marriage, she heard that he was in the East again—a vague term applied to Cairo, Constantinople and Calcutta. At all events, he was not in New York, but had taken his weary eyes and weather-beaten face to some remote region of the earth, and gave no further sign of life for some time, though a book which he had written before Crowdie’s death appeared soon after his departure. Katharine received one letter from him during the summer—a rather formal letter of congratulation upon her marriage, and bearing a postmark in Cyrillic characters, though the stamp was not Russian, but one she had never seen. <hr /> Here ends an act of Katharine’s life-comedy, and the chronicler leaves her with her beauty, her virtues and her imperfections to the judgment of that one reader, if perchance there be even one, who has had the patience to follow her so far, with little entertainment and no advantage to himself. And to that one reader—an ideal creation of the chronicler’s mind, having no foundation in his experience of humanity—the said chronicler makes apology for all that has been amiss in the telling of the events recorded, conscious that a better man could have done it better, and that better men are plentiful, but stout in asserting that the events were not, in themselves and in reality, without interest, however poorly they have been narrated. Moral, there is none, nor purpose, save to please; and if any one be pleased, the writer has his reward. But besides moral and purpose in things done with ink and paper, there is consequence to be considered, or at least to be taken into account. In real life we take more thought of that than of anything else; for, consciously or unconsciously, man hardly performs any action, however insignificant, without intention—and intention is the hope of consequence. All that happened to Katharine Lauderdale, and all that she caused to happen by her own will, had an effect upon her existence afterwards. She was entering upon married life with a much more varied experience than most young women of her age. She had been brought into direct and close relation with people influenced by some of the strongest passions that can rouse the heart. She had been hated by those who had loved her, and for little or no fault of hers. She had seen envy standing in the high place of a mother’s love, and she had seen the friendship of her girlhood destroyed by unreasoning jealousy. Above all, she had known the base hardness and the revolting cruelty which the love of money could implant in an otherwise upright nature. The persons with whom she had to do were not of the kind to commit crimes, but in her view there was something worse, if possible, than crime in some of the things they had done. So much for the evil by which she had passed. For the good, she had love, good love, pure love, honest love—the sort of love that may last a lifetime. And if love can weather life it need not fear the whirlpool of death, nor the quicksands of the uncertain shore beyond. It is life that kills love—not death. Therefore, as the chronicler closes his book and offers it to his single long-suffering reader, he says that more remains to be told of Katharine and of the men and women among whom she lived; namely, the consequences of her girlhood in her married life. THE END. <hr /> KATHARINE LAUDERDALE. By F. MARION CRAWFORD, Author of “Saracinesca,” “Pietro Ghisleri,” etc. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. Two Volumes, Bound in Polished Buckram, in Box, $2.00. The first of a series of novels dealing with New York life. “Katharine Lauderdale is essentially a dramatic novel, possessing the unity of time and place and of action.... It is a love story, pure and simple, with no straining after the moral that Mr. Crawford so denounces.... Katharine Lauderdale is a thoroughly artistic novel. The characters are boldly drawn; even those of minor importance are vivid and real.”—Louisville Evening Post. “While it is a love story, it is much more. It is an accurate picture of certain circles of New York society to-day, and in the analyses of character and motive Mr. Crawford has done nothing better than this book gives us.... Mr. Crawford is always happy in his sense of locality, and the familiar scenes of Washington Park, Clinton Place, and Lafayette Place are brought distinctly before the reader.”—Living Church. “It is exceedingly interesting.”—Congregationalist. “Mr. Crawford at his best is a great novelist, and in Katharine Lauderdale we have him at his best.”—Boston Daily Advertiser. “A most admirable novel, excellent in style, flashing with humor, and full of the ripest and wisest reflections upon men and women.”—The Westminster Gazette. “It is the first time, we think, in American fiction that any such breadth of view has shown itself in the study of our social framework.”—Life. “Admirable in its simple pathos, its enforced humor, and, above all, in its truths to human nature.... There is not a tedious page or paragraph in it.”—Punch. “It need scarcely be said that the story is skilfully and picturesquely written, portraying sharply individual characters in well-defined surroundings.”—New York Commercial Advertiser. “Katharine Lauderdale is a tale of New York, and is up to the highest level of his work. In some respects it will probably be regarded as his best. None of his works, with the exception of Mr. Isaacs, show so clearly his skill as a literary artist.”—San Francisco Evening Bulletin. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. <hr /> F. Marion Crawford’s Novels. NEW UNIFORM EDITION. 12mo. Cloth. $1.00 each. SARACINESCA. “The work has two distinct merits, either of which would serve to make it great,—that of telling a perfect story in a perfect way, and of giving a graphic picture of Roman society in the last days of the Pope’s temporal power.... The story is exquisitely told.”—Boston Traveller. SANT’ ILARIO. A Sequel to SARACINESCA. “A singularly powerful and beautiful story.... It fulfils every requirement of artistic fiction. It brings out what is most impressive in human action, without owing any of its effectiveness to sensationalism or artifice. It is natural, fluent in evolution, accordant with experience, graphic in description, penetrating in analysis, and absorbing in interest.”—New York Tribune. DON ORSINO. A Sequel to SARACINESCA and SANT’ ILARIO. “Perhaps the cleverest novel of the year.... There is not a dull paragraph in the book, and the reader may be assured that once begun, the story of Don Orsino will fascinate him until its close.”—The Critic. PIETRO CHISLERI. “The imaginative richness, the marvellous ingenuity of plot, the power and subtlety of the portrayal of character, the charm of the romantic environment,—the entire atmosphere, indeed,—rank this novel at once among the great creations.”—The Boston Budget. A TALE OF A LONELY PARISH. “It is a pleasure to have anything so perfect of its kind as this brief and vivid story.... It is doubly a success, being full of human sympathy, as well as thoroughly artistic in its nice balancing of the unusual with the commonplace, the clever juxtaposition of innocence and guilt, comedy and tragedy, simplicity and intrigue.”—Critic. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. <hr /> MR. ISAACS. A Tale of Modern India. “Under an unpretentious title we have here the most brilliant novel, or rather romance, that has been given to the world for a very long time.”—The American. DR. CLAUDIUS. A True Story. “It by no means belies the promises of its predecessor. The story, an exceedingly improbable and romantic one, is told with much skill; the characters are strongly marked without any suspicion of caricature, and the author’s ideas on social and political subjects are often brilliant and always striking. It is no exaggeration to say that there is not a dull page in the book, which is peculiarly adapted for the recreation of student or thinker.”—Living Church. TO LEEWARD. “A story of remarkable power.”—The Review of Reviews. “The four characters with whose fortunes this novel deals, are, perhaps, the most brilliantly executed portraits in the whole of Mr. Crawford’s long picture gallery, while for subtle insight into the springs of human passion and for swift dramatic action none of the novels surpasses this one.”—The News and Courier. THE THREE FATES. “Mr. Crawford has manifestly brought his best qualities as a student of human nature and his finest resources as a master of an original and picturesque style to bear upon this story. Taken for all in all it is one of the most pleasing of all his productions in fiction, and it affords a view of certain phases of American, or perhaps we should say of New York, life that have not hitherto been treated with anything like the same adequacy and felicity.”—Boston Beacon. A CIGARETTE-MAKER’S ROMANCE. “The interest is unflagging throughout. Never has Mr. Crawford done more brilliant realistic work than here. But his realism is only the case and cover for those intense feelings which, placed under no matter what humble conditions, produce the most dramatic and the most tragic situations.... This is a secret of genius, to take the most coarse and common material, the meanest surroundings, the most sordid material prospects, and out of the vehement passions which sometimes dominate all human beings to build up with these poor elements, scenes, and passages, the dramatic and emotional power of which at once enforce attention and awaken the profoundest interest.”—New York Tribune. AN AMERICAN POLITICIAN. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. <hr /> THE WITCH OF PRAGUE. A Fantastic Tale. Illustrated by W. J. Hennessy. “The artistic skill with which this extraordinary story is constructed and carried out is admirable and delightful.... Mr. Crawford has scored a decided triumph, for the interest of the tale is sustained throughout.... A very remarkable, powerful, and interesting story.”—New York Tribune. GREIFENSTEIN. “ ...Another notable contribution to the literature of the day. It possesses originality in its conception and is a work of unusual ability. Its interest is sustained to the close, and it is an advance even on the previous work of this talented author. Like all Mr. Crawford’s work this novel is crisp, clear, and vigorous, and will be read with a great deal of interest.”—New York Evening Telegram. WITH THE IMMORTALS. “The strange central idea of the story could have occurred only to a writer whose mind was very sensitive to the current of modern thought and progress, while its execution, the setting it forth in proper literary clothing, could be successfully attempted only by one whose active literary ability should be fully equalled by his power of assimilative knowledge both literary and scientific, and no less by his courage and capacity for hard work. The book will be found to have a fascination entirely new for the habitual reader of novels. Indeed, Mr. Crawford has succeeded in taking his readers quite above the ordinary plane of novel interest.”—Boston Advertiser. ZOROASTER. “It is a drama in the force of its situations and in the poetry and dignity of its language; but its men and women are not men and women of a play. By the naturalness of their conversation and behavior they seem to live and lay hold of our human sympathy more than the same characters on a stage could possibly do.”—The New York Times. A ROMAN SINGER. “One of the earliest and best works of this famous novelist.... None but a genuine artist could have made so true a picture of human life, crossed by human passions and interwoven with human weakness. It is a perfect specimen of literary art.”—The Newark Advertiser. PAUL PATOFF. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. <hr /> KHALED. A Story of Arabia. “Throughout the fascinating story runs the subtlest analysis, suggested rather than elaborately worked out, of human passion and motive, the building out and development of the character of the woman who becomes the hero’s wife and whose love he finally wins being an especially acute and highly finished example of the story-teller’s art.... That it is beautifully written and holds the interest of the reader, fanciful as it all is, to the very end, none who know the depth and artistic finish of Mr. Crawford’s work need be told.”—The Chicago Times. CHILDREN OF THE KING. “One of the most artistic and exquisitely finished pieces of work that Crawford has produced. The picturesque setting, Calabria and its surroundings, the beautiful Sorrento and the Gulf of Salermo, with the bewitching accessories that climate, sea, and sky afford, give Mr. Crawford rich opportunities to show his rare descriptive powers. As a whole the book is strong and beautiful through its simplicity, and ranks among the choicest of the author’s many fine productions.”—Public Opinion. MARZIO’S CRUCIFIX. “This work belongs to the highest department of character-painting in words.”—The Churchman. “We have repeatedly had occasion to say that Mr. Crawford possesses in an extraordinary degree the art of constructing a story. His sense of proportion is just, and his narrative flows along with ease and perspicuity. It is as if it could not have been written otherwise, so naturally does the story unfold itself, and so logical and consistent is the sequence of incident after incident. As a story Marzio’s Crucifix is perfectly constructed.”—New York Commercial Advertiser. MARION DARCHE. “Full enough of incident to have furnished material for three or four stories.... A most interesting and engrossing book. Every page unfolds new possibilities, and the incidents multiply rapidly.”—Detroit Free Press. “We are disposed to rank Marion Darche as the best of Mr. Crawford’s American stories.”—The Literary World. THE NOVEL: What It Is. 18mo. Cloth. 75 cents. “When a master of his craft speaks, the public may well listen with careful attention, and since no fiction-writer of the day enjoys in this country a broader or more enlightened popularity than Marion Crawford, his explanation of The Novel: What It Is, will be received with flattering interest.”—The Boston Beacon. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" style="padding:2%;border:3px dotted gray;"> <tr><th align="center">Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:</th></tr> <tr><td align="center">Her mother had been Margarate Lauderdale=> Her mother had been Margaret Lauderdale {pg 21}</td></tr> <tr><td align="center">clap you in jug=> clap you in the jug {pg 53}</td></tr> </table> <hr class="full" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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