THE OGILVIES. CHAPTER I. She, like the hazel twig Is straight and slender; and as brown in hue "KATHARINE, Katharine-where is Katharine Ogilvie ?" resounded from the entrance-hall of an old family mansion, in which, between the twilight and moonlight of a December evening, a group of young people were assembled. "Where is she? why, staying to adorn herself, of course," said "a young lady," the very type, par excellence, of that numerous class, being pretty-faced, pretty-spoken, and pretty-mannered. Was there ever a girl of sixteen, who did not spend two hours at the least, in dressing for her first evening party? I know I did." "Very likely," muttered a rather fine-looking young man, who stood at the door. "I dare say you do the same now, Bella. But Katharine is not one of your sort." The first speaker tossed her head. "That is a double-edged compliment. Pray, Mr. Hugh Ogilvie, for which of your cousins do you mean it?" And Miss Isabella Worsley, shaking her multitudinous ringlets, looked up in his face, with what she doubtless thought, a most bewitching air of espièglerie. But the young man turned away, quite unmoved. Her fascinations, so apparently displayed, only vexed him. "I wish some of you children would go and fetch your cousin. Uncle and aunt Ogilvie are quite ready; and Katharine knows her father will not endure to be kept waiting, even by herself." "Not if she were like my cousin Bella," thought Hugh; but he made no audible answer, except beginning a long, low whistle-sportsman-fashion. "I declare, he is calling for Katharine as he does for Juno-how very flattering!" cried Isabella, laughing. "Really, Hugh, this sort of behavior does not at all match with that elegant, evening costume, which, by-the-by, I have not yet sufficiently admired." "I wish to goodness I were out of it," muttered Hugh. "I had rather, a great deal, put on my shooting-jacket, and go rabbit-hunting, than start for this dull party at Mrs. Lancaster's. Nothing should have persuaded me to it, except "Except Katharine," persisted Miss Worsley. "But here she comes." At this moment, a young girl descended the stairs. Now, whatever the poets may say, there is not a more uncomfortable and unprepossessing age than "sweet sixteen." The character and manners are usually alike unformed-the graceful frankness of childhood is lost, and the calm dignity of womanhood is not yet gained. Katharine Ogilvie was exactly in this transition state, with regard to both mind and person. She had outgrown the roundness of early youth, and her tall, thin figure, without being positively awkward, bore a ludicrous resemblance—as the short, plump Miss Worsley often remarked—to a lettuce run to seed, or a hyacinth that will stretch out its long, lanky leaves with an obstinate determination not to flower. This attenuated appearance was increased, by the airy evening dress she wore-a half-mourning robe, exhibit"It is all your fault, cousin Hugh," inter- ing her thin neck and long arms, whose slenderposed one of the smaller fry, which composed the ness caused her otherwise well-formed hands to Christmas family-party, assembled at Summer- seem somewhat disproportionate. Her features wood Park. "I feel quite sure that Katharine were regular and pleasing—but her dark, almost is staying to tie up the flowers you sent her. I sallow complexion, prevented their attracting told her how scarce they were, and how you the notice which their classical form deserved. rode over the country, all this morning, in search But the girl had one beauty, which, when she of them," continued the wicked, long-tongued did chance to lift up her long lashes-a circumlittle imp of a boy, causing Hugh to turn very stance by no means frequent-was almost startred, and walk angrily away; and consequently ling in its effect. Katharine's eyes were magwinning an approving glance from the elder sis-nificent, of the darkest, and yet most limpid ter of all the juvenile brood-Isabella Worsley. hazel-with an iris of that clear, bluish white, Really, Hugh, what a blessing such a cousin which gives a look of such pure brightness, as as yourself must be," sneeringly observed the if the deep, unfathomable orbs were floating in latter, following him to the foot of the staircase, their own light. Therein lay the chief expreswhere he stood restlessly beating his heel upon sion of her face; and often, when the rest of the the stone steps. "One quite envies Katharine, features seemed perfectly in repose, these strange in having you so constantly at Summerwood. eyes were suddenly lifted up, revealing such a Why, it is better for her than possessing half-a- world of feeling, enthusiasm, passion, and tendozen brothers, isn't it now? And I dare say derness, that her whole form seemed lighted up you have never wanted your sister Eleanor at into beauty. all!" 66 "Come here, Katharine, and let us all have a look at you," said Isabella, drawing her shrinking cousin under the light of the hall lamp. Well, you are dressed tolerably to-night; your hair is neat, and pretty enough." It was, indeed, very lovely, of a rich purple-black hue, its silken, wavy masses being most gracefully folded round her small head. "But, Katharine, child, what makes you so pale? You ought to be delighted at going to this grand soirée; I only wish I had been invited in your stead." "So do I too. Indeed, Bella, it would have been much pleasanter for me to stay at home," said Katharine, in a low, timid voice, whose music was at least equal to the beauty of her eyes. "You little simpletom to say so! But I don't believe a word," cried Isabella. "You may believe her or not, just as you like, Miss Bella, nobody minds," answered Hugh, rather angrily, as he drew his young cousin's arm through his own, "Come, Katharine, don't be frightened, I'll take care of you; and we will manage to get through this formidable literary soirée together." She clung to him with a grateful and affectionate look; which would certainly have once more roused Isabella's acrid tongue, had not Mr. and Mrs. Ogilvie appeared. After them followed a light-footed graceful girl in deep mourning. She carried a warm shawl, which she wrapped closely round Katharine. name, and when the time came for the full heart of womanhood to respond to the mystic, universal touch, there was no answer. The one holy feeling had been frittered away into a number of small fancies, until Isabella, now fully emerged from her boarding-school romance, believed what her brother told her, that "a girl should wait till she is asked to marry, and then make the best match she can.' And until this desirable event happened, which, at five-andtwenty, seemed farther than ever from her earnest longings, Miss Worsley amused herself by carrying on passing flirtations with every agreeable young man she met. But while Isabella's vain and worldly mind was thus judging by its own baser motives, the pure, unsuspicious nature of Katharine Ogilvie, the latter sat calmly by Hugh's side, enjoying the dreamy motion of the carriage, and not disposed to murmur at the silence of its occupants, which gave her full liberty to indulge in thought. "It is very cold," at last observed Mrs. Ogilvie, trying to make the most original observation she could, in order to rouse her husband, who was always exceedingly cross after his sleep-a circumstance which she naturally wished to prevent if possible. A grunt answered her observation. "Don't you think you will get colder than ever if you go to sleep, Mr. Ogilvie ?" pursued the lady. "There's a good thoughtful little Nelly," "Pray suffer me to decide that," answered said Hugh, admiringly, while Katharine turned he. "It was very foolish of us to go to this round with a quick impulse and kissed her. party, all the way to London, on such a wintry But she did not say a word, except, "Good-night. night, dear Eleanor," for her young heart had fluttered strangely throughout all this evening. However, there was no time to pause over doubts and trepidations, since her father was already calling from the carriage, and thither she was herself hurried by Hugh, with an anxious care and tenderness that still further excited Isabella's envious indignation. "It is a fine thing to be an only daughter, and an heiress," thought she. "But one can easily see how the case will end. Hugh thinks, of course, that he may as well get the estate with the title, and uncle Ogilvie will be glad enough to keep both in the family, even if Hugh is not quite so rich as Croesus. I wonder how much money old Sir James will leave him, though. Any how, it is a good match for a little ugly thing like Katharine. But the husband she gets will make matters even, for Hugh Ogilvie is a common-place, stupid bore. would not have married him for the world." I Miss Worsley's anger had probably affected her memory, since she came to pay this visit to her maternal grand-father, with the firm determination so to "play her cards" as regarded Hugh, that on her departure she might have the certainty of one day revisiting Summerwood as its future mistress. Let us thinking of the fearful number of her class which slur and degrade the pure ideal of womanhood-look mournfully on this girl. She had grown wise too soon-wise in the world's evil sense. With her, love had been regarded alternately as a light jest and a sentimental pretense, at an age when she could not understand its character, and ought scarcely to have heard its But, my dear, you know Katharine must be brought out some time or other, and Mrs. Lancaster's soirée was such an excellent opportunity for her, since we can not have a ball at home on account of Sir James. Mrs. Lancaster knows all the scientific and literary world-her parties are most brilliant—it is a first-rate introduction for a girl." Poor Katharine felt her timidity come over her with added painfulness, and she heartily wished herself on the ottoman at her grandfather's feet, instead of on her way to this ter rible ordeal. But Hugh gave her hand an encouraging pressure, and she felt comforted. Se she listened patiently to her mother's enumera. tion of all the celebrated people she would be sure to meet. After which the good lady, op. pressed by her somnolent husband's example, leaned her head back, so as not to disarrange her elegant tiara, and fell asleep in a few min utes. The carriage rolled through the unfrequented reads which mark the environs of the metropolis. Katharine sat watching the light which the carriage-lamps threw as they passed, illumining for a moment the formal, leafless hedges, until every trace of rurality was lost in the purely suburban character of the villa-studded road. The young girl's vision, and the most outward fold of her thoughts, received all these things, but her inner mind was all the while revolving widely different matters, and chiefly, this unseen world of society, about which she had formed various romantic ideas, the predominant one being, that it was a brilliant dazzling compound of the scenes described in Bul wer's "Godolphin," and Mrs. Gore's novels, passim. real world, of which she knew nothing. No wonder that she was silent and disposed to muse. "Wake up, little cousin of mine; what are you thinking about ?" said Hugh, suddenly, after an interval of patience-waiting. Katharine started, and her reverie was broken. The painful consciousness that Hugh might smile at her for having been "in the clouds," as he called these fits of abstraction, made the color rise rapidly in her cheek. "What made you imagine I was thinking at all ?" she answered. "Merely because we have been perfectly silent for the last hour," answered Hugh, in a tone far gentler than he ever used to Isabella, "so that your papa and mamma have had time to fall comfortably asleep, and I have grown quite weary and cross, through not having the pleasant talk that we promised ourselves this morning." "Dear Hugh! it was very stupid of me." "Not at all, dear Katharine," Hugh answered, echoing the adjective with an emphasis that deepened its meaning considerably. "Not at all-if you will tell me now what occupied your thoughts so much." cases. "I was thinking of several things; among others, of Mrs. Lancaster's party." It is hardly possible to imagine a girl more utterly ignorant of the realities of life than was Katharine Ogilvie at sixteen. Delicate health had made her childhood solitary, and though fortune had bestowed on her such troops of cousin-playfellows, she had known little of any of them except Hugh and his sister. She had seen nothing of society, or of the amusements of life, for her quiet, retired parents rarely mingled in the world. Mr. and Mrs. Ogilvie were a pattern couple for individual excellence and mutual observance of matrimonial proprieties. United in middle life, their existence flowed on in a placid stream-deep, silent, untroubled; their affection toward each other, and toward their only child, being rather passive than active, and though steady, very undemonstrative. So Katharine, whom nature had cast in a different mold, became, as the confiding and clinging helplessness of childhood departed, more and more shut up within herself-looking to herself alone for amusement, seeking no sharer either in her pleasures or in her cares. A life like this sometimes educes strength and originality of character, but more often causes a morbidness of feeling which contents itself But Katharine, sincere as was her affection throughout existence with dreaming, not acting. for her cousin, felt conscious that he would not Or if, indeed, the soul's long-restrained and understand one-half of the fanciful ideas which passionate emotions do break out, it is with a ter- had passed through her brain during that long rible flood that sweeps away all before it. Kath-interval of silence. So her reply was the usual arine was by no means sentimental, for the term compromise-one which people adopt in such implies affectation, of which no trace had ever marred her pure nature. But her whole charaoter was imbued with the wildest, deepest romance-the romance which comes instinctively to a finely-constituted mind, left to form its own ideal of what is good and true. Her solitary childhood had created an imaginary world, in which she lived and moved, side by side with its inhabitants. These were the heroes and heroines of the books she had read-a most heterogeneous mass of literature, and of her own fanciful dreams. One thing only was wanting to crown her romance. Though she had actually wasted sixteen years, the full time "Was this what made you so timid then ?" allowed for its ultimation in girlhood, Katharine "Perhaps so I hardly know. I enjoyed the had never even fancied herself "in love"-ex-anticipation very much until, from thinking of cept with Zanoni. A few vague day-dreams all the wonderful people I should meet, I began and nightly fancies had of late floated over her spirit, causing her to yearn for some companion higher and nobler than any she had yet known; one on whom she might expend, not merely her warm home-affections, already fully bestowed on her parents and Hugh, but the love of her soul, the worship of heart and intellect combined. And she had of late tried to fulfill this longing, by changing her ideal hero for a real human being, that young poet, whose life was itself a poem-Keats. His likeness, which Katharine had hung up in her room, haunted her perpetually, and many a time she sat watching that face with its dreamy eyes, passionquivering lips, and wavy hair, until she felt for this embodiment of the beautiful poet-soul, now gone from earth, a sensation very like that love of which she had read, that strange, delicious secret which was to her as yet only a name. And thus, half a woman and half a child, Katharine Ogilvie was about to pass out of her ideal world, so familiar and so dear, into the Hugh looked rather annoyed. "I thought you did not wish to go, and would much rather have been left at home." "Yes, at the last, and yet all this fortnight I have been longing for the day. Hugh, did you ever feel what it is to wish for any thing, and dream of it, and wonder about it, until when the time came you grew positively frightened, and almost wished that something would happen to frustrate your first desire ?" to think about myself. It is a bad thing to think too much about oneself, Hugh-is it not?" Hugh assented abstractedly. It always gave him much more pleasure to hear Katharine talk than to talk himself; and besides his conversation was rarely either rapid or brilliant. Katharine went on. "It was, after all, very vain and foolish of me, to fancy that any one I should meet to-night would notice me in the least. And so I have now come to the determination not to think about myself or my imperfections, but to enjoy this evening as much as possible. Tell me, Hugh, what great people are we likely to see?" "There is the Countess of A-, and Lord William B- and Sir Vivian C. -," said Hugh, naming a few of the minor lights of the aristocracy, who lend their feeble radiance to middle-class réunions. an "I do not call these 'great people,' swered Katharine, in a tone of disappointment. "They are not my heroes and heroines. I want "Well, well, my little enthusiast, you will see plenty of that sort of people too." to see great writers, great poets, great paint-tainly not pretty, nor young, except in her attire; ers," she continued, with an energy that made but, nevertheless, graceful, from her extreme Hugh open his great blue eyes to their utmost smallness and delicacy of figure; nor was there width. any thing outré in her appearance, except a peculiar style of head-dress, which set off the shape of her face to much advantage. This face was not remarkable for an intellectual expression, though the features evidently perpetually strugled to attain one. Still in spite of her semi-wild glances, compressed lips, and fixed attitudes, Mrs. Lancaster never could succeed in appearing a genius, but was merely an agreeable-looking, stylish little lady. "That sort of people," repeated Katharine, in a low tone, and she shrank into herself, and was silent for five minutes. A feeling of passing vexation, even toward Hugh, oppressed her, until a chance movement wafted toward her the perfume of her flowers-the flowers to procure which, he had ridden for miles over the country-that rainy morning. A trifle sways one's feelings sometimes: and Katharine's at once turned toward Hugh, with an almost contrite acknowledgment of his kind nature. She sought an opportunity to remove any painful impression her sudden silence might have given him. Well, here we are, almost at our journey's end, and papa and mamma are still asleep. We shall have very little more time for our talk, Hugh- -so make haste, and tell me what occupied your thoughts, during that long hour of silence ?" "Not now, dear Katharine, not now!" said her cousin, in a tone so low and hurried, that Katharine would have been compelled to repeat the question, had not the carriage stopped, and the sudden waking of the elders produced a change in the state of affairs. CHAPTER II. ..... Meanwhile the day sinks fast, the sun is set. In that character, Katharine was not in the least afraid of her. Infinitely relieved, she felt the light touch of the jeweled fingers, and listened to the blandest and best-modulated welcome that female lips could utter, until the girl's prevailing sentiments were those of intense relief, deep admiration, and undying gratitude, toward Mrs. Lancaster. Immediately afterward, a tall, thin, pale young man, who stood behind the lady, timidly and silently shook hands with Katharine's parents, and then, to her infinite surprise, with her self. "Who is that gentleman? I don't know him," said Katharine, in a whisper, to Hugh. "Why did not mamma introduce me-and why did he not speak?" "Oh! it is only Mr. Lancaster, Mrs. Lancaster's husband," answered Hugh, with a scarcely perceptible smile. "He rarely speaks to any body, and nobody minds him at all." "How very odd," thought Katharine, whose idea of a husband-when the subject did occupy her mind-was some noble being, to whom the wife could look up with reverent admiration, who was always to take the lead in society, she following after like a loving shadow-but still only a shadow-of himself. Katharine watched Mrs. Lancaster, as she flitted about here and there, all smiles and conversation, while the silent husband retreated to a corner; and she thought once more, how very strange it was. She expressed BEFORE Katharine had time once more to as much to Hugh, when, after great difficulty, grow terrified at the sudden realization of her they at last found a seat, and talked together in ideal of the world, she found herself in the brill- that deep quietude which is nowhere greater iant drawing-rooms of Mrs. Lancaster, follow-than in a crowded assembly of strangers. ing in the wake of her stately parents, and clinging, with desperate energy, to the arm of her cousin Hugh. Her eyes, dazzled and pained by the sudden transition from darkness to light, saw only a moving mass of gay attire, which she was utterly unable to individualize. Her ear was bewildered by that scarcely suppressed din of many voices, which makes literary conversazioni in general a sort of polite Babel. Indeed, the young girl's outward organs of observation were for the time, quite dazzled; and she only awoke to life on hearing her mother say "Mrs. Lancaster, allow me to introduce to you my daughter, Katharine." Now, ever since Mrs. Ogilvie had discovered an old schoolfellow in the celebrated Mrs. Lancaster, Katharine had heard continually of the lady in question. Every one talked of her as a "clever woman,' ,"—"a blue,”—an extraordinary creature-a woman of mind; and, somehow, the girl had pictured to herself a tall, masculine, loud-voiced dame. Therefore, she was agreeably surprised, at seeing before her a lady-cer But Hugh did not seem at all surprised; he had not known the Lancasters long, he said; but he believed they were a very happy couple. Mrs. Lancaster was a very superior woman, and perhaps that was the reason she took the lead, rather than her husband. "My husband shall never be a man inferior to myself; he shall be one whom I can worship, reverence, look up to, in every thing," said Katharine, while her eye dilated, and her cheek glowed with earnestness. But when she caught Hugh's look fixed upon her with intense astonishment, deepened by an expression then quite inexplicable to her, Katharine suddenly felt conscious that she had said something wrong, and shrank abashed into her corner. She was not disturbed, for Hugh did not answer a word, but once or twice she fancied she heard him sigh · heavily. "Ah, poor Hugh!" thought Katharine, "he imagines his wild cousin will never amend. And yet, I only spoke what I thought. I must not do that any more. Perhaps my thoughts |