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Mrs. Holmes is a peculiarly pleasant and fascinating writer. Her books are always entertaining, and she has the rare faculty of enlisting the sympathy and affections of her readers, and of holding their attention to her pages with deep and absorbing interest.

CARLETON, Publisher, New York.

MARIAN GREY; OR, THE HEIRESS OF REDSTONE HALL.

MRS. MARY J. HOLMES,

Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1863, BY DANIEL HOLMES, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Northern District of New York.

N. C. MILLER,

OF NEW YORK,

MY MUCH ESTEEMED FRIEND,

AND

FORMER PUBLISHER,

THIS STORY OF MARIAN GREY

IS RESPECTFULLY

DEDICATED,

MARIAN GREY.

The night was dark and the clouds black and heavy which hung over Redstone Hall, whose massive walls loomed up through the darkness like some huge sentinel keeping guard over the spacious grounds by which it was surrounded. Within the house all was still, and without there was no sound to break the midnight silence save the sighing of the autumnal wind through the cedar trees, or the roar of the river, which, swollen by the recent heavy rains, went rushing on to meet its twin sister at a point well known in Kentucky, where our story opens, as "The Forks of the Elkhorn." From one of the lower windows a single light was shining, and its dim rays fell upon the face of a white-haired man, who moaned uneasily in his sleep, as if pursued by some tormenting fear. At last, as the old fashioned clock struck off the hour of twelve, he awoke, and glancing nervously toward the corner, whence the sound proceeded, he whispered, "Have you come again, Ralph Lindsey, to tell me of my sin?"

"What is it, Mr. Raymond?" and a young girl glided to the bedside of the old man, who, taking her hand in his, the better to assure himself of her presence, said, "Marian, is there nothing in that corner yonder--nothing with silvery hair?"

"Nothing," answered Marian, "nothing but the lamplight shining on the face of the old clock. Did you think there was some one here?"

"Yes--no. Marian, do you believe the dead can come back to us again--when we have done them a wrong--the dead who are buried in the sea, I mean?"

Marian shuddered involuntarily, and cast a timid look toward the shadowy corner, then, conquering her weakness, she answered, "No, the dead cannot come back. But why do you talk so strangely to-night?"

The old man hesitated a moment ere he replied.--"The time has come for me to speak, so that your father can rest in peace. He has been with me more than once in this very room, and to-night I fancied he was here again, asking why I had dealt so falsely with his child."

"Falsely!" cried Marian, kissing tenderly the hand of the only parent she had ever known. "Not falsely, I am sure, for you have been most kind to me."

He paused for her reply, and half bewildered, Marian answered, "I don't know what you mean--but if, as you say, a wrong has been done, no matter how great that wrong may be, it is freely forgiven for the sake of what you've been to me."

The sick man wound his arm lovingly around her, and bringing her nearer to him, he said, "Bless you, Marian--bless you for that. It makes my deathbed easier. I will leave it in writing--my confession. I cannot tell it now, for I could not bear to see upon your face that you despised me. You wrote to Frederic, and told him to come quickly?"

"Yes," returned Marian, "I said you were very sick and wished to see him at once."

For a moment there was silence in the room; then, removing his arm from the neck of the young girl, the old man raised himself upon his elbow and looking her steadily in the face, said, "Marian, could you love my son Frederic?"

The question was a strange one, but Marian Lindsey was accustomed to strange modes of speech in her guardian, and with a slightly heightened color she answered quietly, "I do love him as a brother--"

"Yes, but I would have you love him as something nearer," returned her guardian. "Ever since I took you for my child it has been the cherished object of my life that you should be his wife."

There was a nervous start and an increase of color in Marian's face, for the idea, though not altogether disagreeable, was a new one to her, but she made no reply, and her guardian continued, "I am selfish in this wish, though not wholly so. I know you could be happy with him, and in no other way can my good name be saved from disgrace. Promise me, Marian, that you will be his wife very soon after I am dead, and before all Kentucky is talking of my sin. You are not too young. You will be sixteen in a few months, and many marry as early as that."

"Yes he can," answered Marian with childish simplicity. "No man as handsome as Frederic ever loved a girl with an ugly face, and I heard him tell Will Gordon, when he spent a vacation here, that I was a nice little girl, but altogether too freckled, too red-headed, and scrawny, ever to make a handsome woman," and Marian's voice trembled slightly as she recalled a speech which had wrung from her many tears.

To this remark Col. Raymond made no reply--for he too, had cause to doubt Frederic's willingness to marry a girl who boasted so few personal charms as did Marian Lindsey then. Rumors, too, he had heard, of a peerlessly beautiful creature, with raven hair and eyes of deepest black, who at the north kept his son a captive to her will. But this could not be; Frederick must marry Marian, for in no other way could the name of Raymond be saved from a disgrace, or the vast possessions he called his be kept in the family, and he was about to speak again when a heavy tread in the hall announced the approach of some one, and a moment after, Aunt Dinah, the housekeeper, appeared. "She had come to sit up with her marster," she said, "and let Miss Marian go to bed, where children like her ought to be."

At first Marian objected, for though scarcely conscious of it herself, she was well enough pleased to sit where she was and hear her guardian talk of Frederic and of what she had no hope would ever be; but when Aunt Dinah suggested to her that sitting up so much would make her look yellow and old, she yielded, for Frederic was a passionate admirer of beauty, and she well knew that she had none to lose. Kissing her guardian good night, she hurried to her chamber, but not to sleep, for the tumult of thought which her recent conversation had awakened kept her restless and wakeful. Under ordinary circumstances she would have wondered what the wrong could be at which Col. Raymond had hinted, but now she scarcely remembered it, or if it occurred to her at all, she instantly dismissed it from her mind as some trivial thing which the weak state of her guardian's mind magnified into a serious matter.

Thirteen years before our story opens, Marian had embarked with her father on board a ship which sailed from Liverpool to New York. Of that father she remembered little save that he was very poor, and that he talked of his poverty as if it were something of which he was proud. Pleasant memories, though, she had of an American gentleman who used often to take her on his lap, and tell her of the land to which she was going; and when one day her father laid him down in his berth, with the fever as they said, she remembered how the kind man had cared for him, holding his aching head and watching by him till he died;--then, when it was all over, he had taken her upon his knee and told her she was to be his little girl now, and he bade her call him father--telling her how her own dead parent had asked him to care for her, who in all the wide world had no near relative. Something, too, she remembered about an old coarse bag, which had troubled her new father very much, and which he had finally put in the bottom of his trunk, throwing overboard a few articles of clothing to make room for it. The voyage was long and stormy, but they reached New York at last, and he took her to his home--not Redstone Hall, but an humble farm-house on the Hudson, where he had always lived. Frederic was a boy then--a dark-haired handsome boy of eleven, and even now she shuddered as she remembered how he used to tease and worry her. Still he liked her, she was sure--and the first real grief which she remembered was on that rainy day when, with an extra pull at her long curls, he bade her good-by and went off to a distant boarding school.

Col. Raymond, her guardian, was growing rich, and people said he must have entered into some fortunate speculation while abroad, for, since his return, prosperity had attended every movement; and when, six months after Frederic's departure, he went to Kentucky and purchased Redstone Hall, then rather a dilapidated building, Mrs. Burt, his housekeeper, had wondered where all his money came from, when he used to be so poor. They had moved to Kentucky when Marian was five and a half years old--and now, after ten years' improvement, there was not in the whole county so beautiful a spot as Redstone Hall, with its terraced grounds, its graveled walks, its plats of grass, its grand old trees, its creeping vines, its flowering shrubs and handsome park in the rear. And this was Marian's home;--here she had lived a rather secluded life, for only when Frederic was with them did they see much company, and all the knowledge she had of the world was what she gleaned from books or learned from the negress Dinah, who, "having lived with the very first families," frequently entertained her young mistress with stories of "the quality," and the dinner parties at which her presence was once so indispensable. And Marian, listening to these glowing descriptions of satin dresses, diamonds and feathers, sometimes wished that she were rich, and could have a taste of fashion. To be sure, her guardian bought her always more than she needed--but it was not hers, and without any particular reason why she should do so, she felt that she was a dependent and something of an inferior, especially when Frederic came home with his aristocratic manners, his graceful mustache, and the soft scent of perfumery he usually carried with him. He was always polite and kind to Marian, but she felt that there was a gulf between them. He was handsome; she was plain--he was rich; she was poor--he was educated, and she--alas, for Marian's education--she read a great deal, but never yet had she given herself up to a systematic course of study. Governesses she had in plenty, but she usually coaxed them off into the woods, or down by the river, where she left them to do what they pleased, while she learned many a lesson from the great book of nature spread out so beautifully before her. All this had tended to make and keep her a very child, and it was not until her fourteenth year that any thing occurred to develop the genuine womanly qualities which she possessed.

"And this was my mother's," she whispered, smoothing caressingly the silken hair. "I must resemble her more than my father, who my guardian says was dark. I wish I was like her in everything, for I believe she was beautiful," and into the mind of the orphan girl there crept an image of a bright-haired, sweet-faced woman, whose eyes of lustrous blue looked lovingly into her own--and this was her mother. She had seen her thus in fancy many a time, but never so vividly as to-night, and unconsciously she breathed the petition, "Let me look like her some day, and I shall be content."

The gray morning light was by this time stealing through the window, and overcome with weariness and watching, Marian fell asleep, and when, two hours later, old Dinah came in to wake her, she found her sitting before the glass, with the lamp still burning at her side, and her head resting on her arms, which lay upon the low bureau.

"For the dear Lord's sake, what are you doing?" was Dinah's exclamation, which at once roused Marian, who unhesitatingly answered,

"I got up to look in the glass, and see if I was so very homely."

"Humbly! Nonsense, child," returned old Dinah. "You look like a picter lyin' thar with the sun a shinin' on yer har, and makin' it look like a piece of crimson satin."

The compliment was a doubtful one, but Marian knew it was well meant, and, without a word in reply, commenced her morning toilet. That day, somewhat to her disappointment, her guardian did not resume the conversation of the previous night. He was convinced that Marian could be easily won, but he did not think it wise to encourage her until he had talked with his son, whose return he looked for anxiously. But day after day went by, and it was in vain that Alice listened, and Marian watched, for the daily stage. It never stopped at the gate; and each time that the old man heard them say it had gone by, he groaned afresh, fearing Frederic would not come until it was too late.

"I can at least tell him the truth on paper," he said to himself at last, "and it may be he will pay more heed to words, which a dead father wrote, than to words which a living father spoke."

Marian was accordingly bidden to bring him his little writing desk, and then to leave the room, for he would be alone when he wrote that letter of confession. It cost him many a fierce struggle--the telling to his son a secret which none save himself and God had ever known--aye, which none had ever need to know if he would have it so--but he would not. The secret had worn his life away, and he must make reparation now. So, with the perspiration dropping from every pore, he wrote; and, as he wrote, in his disordered imagination, there stood beside his pillow the white-haired Englishman, watching carefully to see that justice was done at last to Marian. Recently several letters had passed between the father and his son concerning the marriage of the latter with Marian--a marriage every way distasteful to the young man, who, in his answer, had said far harsher things of Marian than he really meant, hoping thus to put an end to his father's plan. She was "rough, uncouth, uneducated and ugly," he said, "and if his father did not give up that foolish fancy, he should positively hate the red-headed fright."

All this the old man touched upon--quoting the very words his son had used, and whispering to himself, "Poor--poor Marian, it would break her heart to know that he said that, but she never will--she never will;" and then, with the energy of despair, he wrote the reason why she must be the wife of his son, pleading with him as only a dying man can plead, that he would not disregard the wishes of his father, and begging him to forget the dark-haired Isabel, who, though perhaps more beautiful, was not--could not--be as pure, as gentle and as good as Marian.

The letter was finished, and 'mid burning tears of remorse and shame the old man read it through.

"Yes, that will do," he said. "Frederic will heed what's written here. He'll marry her or else make restitution;" and laying it away, he commenced the last and hardest part of all--the confessing to Marian how he had sinned against her.

When at last he awoke, Marian was sitting by his side, and to her he communicated what he had done, telling her where the letters were, and that if he died ere Frederic's return, she must give the one bearing the words "For my Son" to him.

"You will not read it, of course," he said, "or ever seek to know what its contents are."

Had Marian Lindsey been like many girls, the caution would have insured the reading of the letter at once, but she fortunately shrank from anything dishonorable, and was blessed with but a limited share of woman's curiosity; consequently, the letter was safe in her care, even though no one ever came to claim it. All that afternoon she sat by her guardian, and when as usual the stage thundered down the turnpike, leaving no Frederic at the door, she soothed him with the hope that he would be there to-morrow. But the morrow came and went as did other to-morrows, until Col. Raymond grew so ill that a telegram was despatched to the truant boy, bidding him hasten if he would see his father again alive.

"That will bring him," the old man said, while the big tears rolled down his wrinkled face. "He'll be here in a few days," and he asked that his bed might be moved near the window, where, propped upon pillows, he watched with childish impatience for the coming of his boy.

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