CHAPTER II. MARY EASTERBY. "There was but one In whom my heart took pleasure amongst women; You dared to be my rival."-Second Maiden's Tragedy. THE reader has discovered my secret. I had long loved Mary Easterby, and without knowing it. The knowledge came to me at the moment when I ceased to hope. My brother was my rival, and, whatever were the charms he used, my successful rival. This may have given bitterness to the feeling of contempt with which his own feebleness of character had taught me to regard him. It certainly took nothing from the barrier, which circumstances and time had set up as a wall between us. Mary Easterby had grown up beside me. I had known no other companion among her sex. We had played together from infancy, and I had been taught to believe, when I came to know the situation of my own heart, and to inquire into that of hers, that she loved me. If she did not, I deceived myself most wofully; but such self-deception is no uncommon practice with the young of my age, and sanguine temperament. I would not dwell upon her charms could I avoid it; yet though I speak of, I should fail to describe and do not hope to do them justice. She was younger by three years than myself, and no less beautiful than young. Her person was tall, but not slight; it was too finely proportioned to make her seem tall, and grace was the natural result, not less of her physical symmetry, than of her maiden taste, and sweet considerateness of character. Her eye was large and blue, her cheek not so round as full, and its rich rosy color almost vied with that which crimsoned the pulpy outline of her lovely mouth. Her hair was of a dark brown, and she wore it gathered up simply in volume behind, a few stray tresses only being suffered to escape from bondage at the sides, to attest, as it were, the bountiful luxuriance with which nature had endowed her. See these tresses on her round white neck, and let your eye trace them in their progress to the swelling bosom on which they sometimes rested; and you may conceive something of those charms, which I shall not seek further to describe. Though a dweller in the woods all her life, her mind and taste had not been left without due cultivation. Her father had been taught in one of the elder states, one of the old thirteen, and he carried many of the refinements of city life with him into the wilderness. Books she had in abundance, and these taught her everything of those old communities, which she had never yet been permitted to see. Her natural quickness of intellect, her prompt appreciation of what she read, enabled her at an early period duly to estimate those conventional and improved forms of social life to which her books perpetually referred, and which belong only to stationary abodes, where wealth brings leisure, and leisure provokes refinement. With such aid, Mary Easterby soon stood alone among the neighboring damsels. Her air, manner, conversation, even dress, were not only different from, but more becoming, than those of her associates. She spoke with the ease and freedom of one bred up in the most assured society; and thought with a mind filled with standards which are not often to be met with in an insulated and unfrequented community. In short she was one of those beings such as lift the class to which they belong; such as represent rather a future than a present generation; and such as, by superior grasp of judgment or of genius, prepare the way for, and guide the aims of all the rest. It were folly to dwell upon her excellences, but that my narration may depend upon their development. They were powerful enough with me; and my heart felt, ere my mind. could analyze them. A boy's heart, particularly one who is the unsophisticated occupant of the forests, having few other teachers, is no sluggish and selfish creation, and mine was soon filled with Mary Easterby, and all its hopes and desires depended upon hers for their fulfilment. It was the thought of all, that hers was not less dependent upon mine; and when the increasing intimacy of the maiden with my brother, and his confident demeanor toward herself and parents, led us all to regard him as the possessor of those affections which everybody had supposed to be mine, the matter was no less surprising to all than it was, for a season, bitter and overwhelming to me. I could have throttled my more fortunate brother- - brother though he was—in the first moment of my rage at this discovery; and all my love for Mary did not save her from sundry unmanly denunciations which I will not now venture to repeat. I did not utter these denunciations in her ears though I uttered them aloud. They reached her ears, however, and the medium of communication was John Hurdis. This last baseness aroused me to open rage against him. I told him to his teeth he was a scoundrel; and he bore with the imputation, and spoke of our blood connection as the reason for his forbearance to resent an indignity which, agreeably to our modes of thinking, could only be atoned for by blood. "Brother, indeed!" I exclaimed furiously in reply. "No, John Hurdis, you are no brother of mine, though our father and mother be the same. I acknowledge no relationship between us. We are of a different family-of far-removed and foreign natures. My kindred shall never be found among the base; and from this moment I renounce all kindred with you. Henceforth, we know nothing of each other only so far as it may be necessary to keep from giving pain and offence to our parents. But we shall not be long under that restraint. I will shortly leave you to yourself, to your conquests, and the undisturbed enjoyment of that happiness which you have toiled for so basely at the expense of mine." He would have explained and expostulated, but I refused to hear him. He proffered me his hand, but with a violent blow of my own, I struck it down, and turned my shoulder upon him. It was thus, in such relationship, that we stood, when I announced to my mother my intention to leave the family. We barely spoke to one another when speech was absolutely unavoidable, and it was soon known to Mary Easterby, not less than to the persons of my own household, that our hearts were lifted in enmity against each other. She seized an early opportunity and spoke to me on the subject. Either she mistook the nature of our quarrel, or the character of my affections. Yet how she could have mistaken the latter, or misunderstood the former, I can not imagine. Yet she did so. "Richard, they say you have quarrelled with your brother." "Does he say it-does John Hurdis say it, Mary?" was my reply. She paused and hesitated. I pressed the question with more earnestness as I beheld her hesitation. She strove to speak with calmness, but was not altogether successful. Her voice trembled as she replied: : "He does not, Richard—not in words; but I have inferred it from what he does say, and from the fact that he has said so little. He seemed unwilling to tell me anything." "He is wise," I replied bitterly; "he is very wise; but it is late. Better he had been thus taciturn always!" "Why speak you so, Richard?" she continued; "why are you thus violent against your brother? What has he done to vex you to this pass? Let me hear your complaint." "Complaint! I have none. You mistake me, Mary-I complain not. I complain of nobody. If I can not right my own wrongs, at least, I will not complain of them." 66 Oh, be not so proud, Richard! be not so proud!" she replied earnestly; and her long white fingers rested upon my wrist for an instant, and were as instantly withdrawn. But that one touch was enough to thrill to the bone. It was my turn to tremble. She continued—“There is no wisdom in this pride of yours, Richard; it is unbecoming in such frail beings as we are, and it will be fatal to your happiness." 'Happiness!—my happiness! Ah, Mary, if it be my pride only which is to be fatal to my happiness, then I am secure. But I fear not that. My pride is my hope now, my strength. It protects me- it shields my heart from my own weakness." She looked in my face with glances of the most earnest inquiry for a little while, and then spoke as follows: : "Richard, there is something now-a-days about you which I do not exactly understand. You utter yourself in a language which is strange to me, and your manners have become strange? Why is this-what is the matter?" "Nay, Mary; but that should be my question. The change is in you, not me. I am conscious of no change such as you speak of. But a truce to this. I see you are troubled. Let us talk of other things." "I am not troubled, Richard, except on your account. But, as you desire it, let us talk of other things; and, to return, why this hostility between yourself and your brother?" "Let him tell you. Demand it of him, Mary; he will better tell the story than I, as it will probably sound more to his credit than to mine, in your ears!" "I know not that," she replied; "and know not why you. should think so, Richard, unless you are conscious of having done wrong; and, if thus conscious, the cure is in your own hands." “What!” I exclaimed impetuously. "You would have me go on my knees to John Hurdis, and humbly ask his pardon, for denouncing him as a scoundrel "You have not done this, Richard ?" was her sudden inquiry, silencing me in the middle of my hurried and thoughtless speech. The error was committed, and I had only to avow the truth. Gloomily I did so, and with a sort of sullen ferocity that must have savored very much of the expression of a wolf goaded to the verge of his den by the spear of the hunter. "Ay, but I have, Mary Easterby! I have called John Hurdis a scoundrel, and only wonder that he told you not this along with the rest of my misdoings which he has been careful to relate to you. Perhaps, he might have done so, had the story spoken more favorably for his manhood." We had been sitting together by the window while the conversation proceeded; but at this stage of it, she arose, crossed the apartment slowly, lingered for a brief space at an opposite window, then quietly returned to her seat. But her eyes gave proof of the big tears that had been gathering in them. "Richard, I fear that you are doing me, and your brother both injustice. You are too quick, too prompt to imagine wrong, and too ready to act upon your imaginings. You speak to me with the tone of one who has cause of complaint—of anger! Your eyes have an expression of rebuke which is painful to me, and I think unjust. Your words are sharp, and |