Hope Hathaway

“ He had no sister. Then it must be from his sweetheart—and he told her he had no sweetheart. A sudden pain consumed her. [Pg 253]
"I reckon it's from his wife," said the soft-voiced twin.
"He has no wife," said Hope quietly.
"Oh, yes, he has! That's what they say," declared the boy.
"They lie," she replied softly. "I know he has no wife."
"I'll bet you he left her in England," said the boy. "That's what the men say."
"Your repentant Helene," repeated the girl over and over to herself. ”

“ You're the first one Hope ever credited with honesty. You can sit for an hour and tell her a great long story and she'll never give you the satisfaction of knowing for sure whether she believes you or not. ”

“ Take the clear-headed person that can see, an' they ain't a-goin' to run into any matrimonial fire, no more'n I'm goin' to head my horse over a cut-bank. They're goin' straight after the happi [Pg 258] ness they know exists, an' they ain't goin' to make no mistake about it neither, if they've got any judgment, whatever."
"What made my mother marry my father?" asked the girl, lifting up her head and facing old Jim squarely. "That's the worst specimen of ill-assorted marriages I know of."
Jim McCullen looked perplexed for an instant. ”

“ He had his hand reached forward towards the handle as if to close the swinging sash against the intruder, when in an instant he was seized by Paul, tightly locked in a desperate grip, and whirled out on the balcony. Before he could gain breath to utter a cry, Hathaway had passed his right arm around the Mexican's throat, effectively stopping his utterance, and, with a supreme effort of strength, dragged him along the wall, falling with him into the open window of his own room. ”

“ When she met the man who satisfied her ambition and understanding, she would marry, and not before. He did not know what that ambition was; it was something exalted, of course. He could only say, of his own knowledge, that last year, when they were on the Italian lakes, there was a certain prince—Mr. Hathaway would understand why he did not mention names—who was not only attentive to her, but attentive to HIM, sir, by Jove! and most significant in his inquiries. It was the only occasion when he, the colonel, had ever spoken to her on such subjects ”

“ Probably that wretched servant is down on her for some reason. Madeleine Talbot! Why, she's the proudest creature that ever lived."
"She might have the bluest blood of the South in her veins," conceded Mrs. Ballinger handsomely. "I pride myself on my imagination but I simply cannot see her in such a condition."
"If it's true, it's Masters, of course," said Miss Hathaway. "The only reason I didn't fall in love with him was because it was no use. But he's the sort of man—there are not many of them!—who would make a woman love him to desperation if he loved her himself. ”

“ Bob, don't spoil the evening with anything unkind," warned the mother. "Yes, Lizzie, I got you a position. It just happened I had the chance, and I took it, though I don't really b'lieve that anythin' in this world just happens, of course. But it did seem providential. Mrs. Hathaway wanted somebody to look after her little girl. She's only three years old and she is possessed to run away every chance she gets. Course I s'pose she's spoiled. Most rich children are. ”

“ I believed things would reach a climax in the Hathaway case, in this very spot, but I couldn't foresee that your cleverness would ferret out that letter, which the girl Irene intended to keep silent about, nor did I know that the Chief would send me here in person to supervise Hathaway's capture. Mighty queer things happen in this profession of ours, and circumstances lead the best of us by the nose. ”

“ Have you no mercy—no compassion?"
"Plenty," was the quiet reply. "Sit down, sir. This girl is stronger than you think. She will not be made permanently unhappy by knowing the truth, I assure you."
Hathaway regarded him with a look of anguish akin to fear. Then he turned and seated himself, again putting an arm around Mary Louise as if to shield her.
Said Irene, speaking very slowly:
"I am quite sure Mr. O'Gorman is right. Mary Louise is a brave girl, and she loves her grandfather." ”

“ Hathaway's gifts, and it is very possible the fault lies with me.' Her very words, sir."
"Then you believe she is perfectly ignorant of her real mother?" asked Paul, with a steady voice, but a whitening face.
"As an unborn child," said the colonel, emphatically. "The snow on the Sierras is not more spotlessly pure of any trace or contamination of the mud of the mining ditches, than she of her mother and her past. The knowledge of it, the mere breath of suspicion of it, in her presence would be a profanation, sir! Look at her eye—open as the sky and as clear ”

“ To Anne Hathaway, I have little doubt, were addressed, in his early morn of love, three sonnets playing on the author's name, which are hardly good enough to have been his work at any time; certainly none too good to have been the work of his boyhood. And I have met with no conjecture on the point that bears greater likelihoods of truth, than that another three, far different in merit, were addressed, much later in life, to the same object. The prevailing tone and imagery of them are such as he would hardly have used but with a woman in his thoughts ”

“ Woods said, that he should be remanded to their company exclusively. No; Mrs. Woods could not admit that this was owing to the injustice of her own sex! Men are really the ones who make the fuss over those things, just as they, as Mr. Hathaway well knew, made the laws! No; it was a great pity, as she and her husband had just agreed, that Mr. Hathaway, of all the guardians, could not have been always the help and counselor—in fact, the elder brother—of poor Yerba! Paul was conscious that he winced slightly, consistently and conscientiously, at the recollection of certain passages of his youth ”

“ And, by Jove! he proves to be right. You can't do anything here without a uniform. And they tell me he's got everything correct, down to the crest on the buttons."
They walked on in silence for a few moments, Pendleton retaining a certain rigidity of step and bearing which Paul had come to recognize as indicating some uneasiness or mental disturbance on his part. Hathaway had no intention of precipitating the confidence of his companion. ”

“ Penny did not feel at all sure about that, she was rather afraid of Mrs Hathaway, who was a severe old lady, noted for her exquisite needlework; however, it was a treat to go anywhere with mother, even to see Mrs Hathaway.
The embroideries were, indeed, very beautiful, and exhibited with a good deal of pride, while Penny sat in modest silence listening to the conversation. She privately regarded Mrs Hathaway’s handiwork with a shudder, and thought to herself, “How very little time she must have for reading!” ”

“ Hathaway, for Heaven's sake don't YOU begin too! You are going to say that, with my wealth, my accomplishments, my beauty, my friends, what more can I want? What do I care about a secret that can neither add to them nor take them away? Yes, you were! It's the regular thing to say—everybody says it. Why, I should have thought 'the youngest senator' could afford to have been more original."
"I plead guilty to ALL the weaknesses of humanity," said Paul, warmly, again beginning to believe that he had been most unjust to her independence. ”

“ With his kindly serious face within a few inches of Paul's, and sympathizing curiosity beaming from his pince-nez, he obliged the wretched and conscience-stricken Hathaway to respond with a detailed account of Yerba's parentage as projected by herself and indorsed by Colonel Pendleton. He dwelt somewhat particularly on the romantic character of the Trust, hoping to draw the General's attention away from the question of relationship, but he was chagrined to find that the honest warrior evidently confounded the Trust with some eleemosynary institution and sympathetically glossed it over. ”

“ As they walked about, the Williamses and Winthrops, together with Anne and Dorothy, joined them, and Virginia proudly introduced Aunt Nan, who made them all laugh with the tales of her experiences and escapades at St. Helen’s years ago.
Then, the bell on the main building warning them, they hurried in to dress for dinner, which The Hermitage girls and those of Hathaway together with their friends were to have at Hathaway. Each year one cottage was hostess to another. This year Hathaway had bidden The Hermitage, Overlook was entertaining West, and King and Willow were celebrating together. ”

“ Hathaway, who was the daughter of one of the last of the grandees, and whose mother had lived in the Presidio when Rezanov sailed in through the Golden Gate and Concha Arguello had been La Favorita of Alta California.
The little church was very quiet. The rest of the world seemed far away. Madeleine's fervid yielding imagination swept her back to that long-forgotten past when a woman to whom the earlier fates had been as kind as to herself had scaled all but the highest peaks of happiness and descended into the profoundest depths of despair. ”

“ He sat down, and traced figures on the sand with his stick. Chaos had been in him; but the tide had fallen, and his thoughts were shaping themselves coherently. Nina Randolph was the daughter of a madwoman, and the seeds were in her. Her strange moods, her tragic despair, her hints of an approaching fate, her attitude to himself, were legible at last. And Miss Hathaway knew, and had tried to warn him. Doubtless others knew, but the secret had been well kept.
He was filled with bitterness and dull disgust, and his heart and brain were leaden. The mad are loathsome things ”

“ When she went down to breakfast, Hepsey did not seem to hear her cheery greeting, but was twisting her apron and walking about restlessly. “Miss Thorne,” she said, at length, “did you ever get a love letter?”
“Why, yes, of course,” laughed Ruth. “Every girl gets love letters.”
Hepsey brightened visibly, then inquired, with great seriousness: “Can you read writin', Miss Thorne?”
“That depends on the writing.”
“Yes'm, it does so. I can read some writin'—I can read Miss Hathaway's writin', and some of the furrin letters she's had, but I got some this mornin' I can't make out, nohow.” ”

“ Hope had not forgotten her, though she had elected to disappear and leave no sign, the girl knew full well; for had not Hope told Vera Galloway of the marvellous likeness between herself and Jessie Harcourt?
It was a critical moment. That Hope had cared for her Jessie well knew, though she sternly told her heart that it was not to be. Would he recognize her and penetrate her disguise? If the eyes of love are blind in some ways they make up for it in others. Jessie's heart seemed to stand still as Hope raised his crushed hat and came leisurely up the steps of the fountain. ”

“ She had a lot of friends in Chicago, did Mrs. Antoinette Seaver Jones, so it's likely her daughter is looking some of them up."
"I wish you would do all you can to locate her," pleaded Colonel Hathaway. "The young girl was placed in my care by her father and I feel personally responsible for her safety."
"She's safe enough, sir. No sign of a struggle in her room; no report of an accident in the city. Went out of her own volition and will probably come back the same way, when she's ready. ”

“ Hathaway’s death, and before her marriage with you. Mrs. Hyde is not overfond of her niece, and told me this fact herself. This marriage, owing to the meagre fixed income of the pair, was deferred, and finally they conceived the idea that Mrs. Hathaway should contract a wealthy marriage, secure a comfortable jointure, become a widow, and then marry [194] Craven Black. There can be no doubt that your marriage with Mrs. Hathaway was the result of a conspiracy against you by these two villains, male and female—that they had set a trap for you, Sir Harold, and that you fell into it! ”

“ The Shakespearean connection with the cottage at Shottery is thus not altogether so intimate or so continuous as would at first be supposed.
p. 106
p. 107The Hathaways would appear to have executed numerous repairs to the farmhouse which Bartholomew had acquired, and to this day we may see a stone tablet let into one of the chimneys, bearing the initials “I H” (for John Hathaway) and the date 1697; while the same initials and date, together with those of “E H” which doubtless stand for Elizabeth Hathaway, his wife, occur on the bacon-cupboard in the ingle-nook of the living-room. ”

“ Irene, knowing more of the Hathaway family history than Mary Louise did, through the letter she had found and read, was often perplexed how to console her friend and still regard honesty and truth. Any deception, even when practiced through the best of motives, was abhorrent to her nature, so she avoided speaking of the present affliction and led Mary Louise to look to a future life for the motherly companionship she had missed on earth. ”

“ Ballinger tartly. "A more cold-blooded and unattractive man I've never met."
"Langdon Masters is by no means unattractive," announced Miss Hathaway out of her ten years' experience as a belle and an unconscionable flirt. "I have sat in the conservatory with him several times. It may be that Mrs. Abbott stepped in before it was too late. And it may be that she did not."
"Oh, call no woman virtuous until she is dead," said Mrs. McLane lightly. "But I won't hear another insinuation against Madeleine Talbot." ”