THE NEW YORK FASHION BAZAR Model Letter-Writer and Lovers’ Oracle.

WITH HANDSOME LITHOGRAPHED COVER.

PRICE 10 CENTS.

This book is a complete guide for both ladies and gentlemen in elegant and fashionable letter-writing: containing perfect examples of every form of correspondence, business letters, love letters, letters to relatives and friends, wedding and reception cards, invitations to entertainments, letters accepting and declining invitations, letters of introduction and recommendation, letters of condolence and duty, widows’ and widowers’ letters, love letters for all occasions, proposals of marriage, letters between betrothed lovers, letters of a young girl to her sweetheart, correspondence relating to household management, letters accompanying gifts, etc. Every form of letter used in affairs of the heart will be found in this little book. It contains simple and full directions for writing a good letter on all occasions. The latest forms used in the best society have been carefully followed. It is an excellent manual of reference for all forms of engraved cards and invitations.

The New York Fashion Bazar Book of the Toilet.

WITH HANDSOME LITHOGRAPHED COVER.

PRICE 10 CENTS.

This is a little book which we can recommend to every lady for the Preservation and Increase of Health and Beauty. It contains full directions for all the arts and mysteries of personal decoration, and for increasing the natural graces of form and expression. All the little affections of the skin, hair, eyes, and body, that detract from appearance and happiness, are made the subjects of precise and excellent recipes. Ladies are instructed how to reduce their weight without injury to health and without producing pallor and weakness. Nothing necessary to a complete toilet book of recipes and valuable advice and information has been overlooked in the compilation of this volume.

The New York Fashion Bazar Book of Etiquette.

WITH HANDSOME LITHOGRAPHED COVER.

PRICE 10 CENTS.

This book is a guide to good manners and the ways of fashionable society, a complete hand-book of behavior, containing all the polite observances of modern life: the etiquette of engagements and marriages; the manners and training of children; the arts of conversation and polite letter-writing; invitations to dinners, evening parties and entertainments of all descriptions; table manners; etiquette of visits and public places; how to serve breakfasts, luncheons, dinners and teas; how to dress, travel, shop, and behave at hotels and watering-places. This book contains all that a lady or gentleman requires for correct behavior on all social occasions.

The foregoing works are for sale by all newsdealers, or will be sent to any address, postage free, on receipt of price, by the publishers.

Address GEORGE MUNRO’S SONS, Munro’s Publishing House, 17 to 27 Vandewater Street, New York.

[Pg 2]

A Skin of Beauty is a Joy Forever

DR. T. FELIX GOURAUD’S

Oriental Cream

OR MAGICAL BEAUTIFIER

For the Skin and Complexion

The only toilet preparation in America that has stood the actual test of public approval for over half a century.

It will purify and beautify the skin and remove Pimples, Blackheads, Moth Patches, Rash, Freckles and Vulgar Redness, Yellow and Muddy Skin, giving a delicately clear and refined complexion. It is highly recommended by leading society and professional ladies, and cannot be surpassed when preparing for evening attire.

Price $1.50 per bottle.

For sale at druggists’ and fancy goods dealers’, or will be sent direct on receipt of price.

Gouraud’s Oriental Velvet Sponge

The most satisfactory article for applying Gouraud’s Oriental Cream. 50 cents each, by mail on receipt of price.

Gouraud’s Oriental Toilet Powder

An ideal antiseptic toilet powder for infants and adults. Exquisitely perfumed. 25 cents a box by mail.

FERD. T. HOPKINS, Proprietor, 37 Great Jones Street, New York

[Pg 3]

Sworn to Silence; or, ALINE RODNEY’S SECRET.

By MRS. ALEX McVEIGH MILLER.

Copyright 1883, by George Munro.

(SWEETHEART)

NEW YORK: GEORGE MUNRO’S SONS, PUBLISHERS, 17 to 27 Vanderwater Street.

[Pg 4]

THE MOTHER’S MISSION.

A great Emperor once asked one of his noble subjects what would secure his country the first place among the nations of the earth. The nobleman’s grand reply was “Good mothers.” Now, what constitutes a good mother? The answer is conclusive. She who, regarding the future welfare of her child, seeks every available means that may offer to promote a sound physical development, to the end that her offspring may not be deficient in any single faculty with which nature has endowed it. In infancy there is no period which is more likely to affect the future disposition of the child than that of teething, producing as it does fretfulness, moroseness of mind, etc., which if not checked will manifest itself in after days.

USE MRS. WINSLOW’S SOOTHING SYRUP.

Guaranteed under the Food and Drugs Act, June 30th, 1906. Serial Number 1098.

FOR OVER SIXTY YEARS

An Old and Well-Tried Remedy

MRS. WINSLOW’S SOOTHING SYRUP has been used for over SIXTY YEARS by MILLIONS of MOTHERS for their CHILDREN WHILE TEETHING, WITH PERFECT SUCCESS. IT SOOTHES the CHILD, SOFTENS the GUMS, ALLAYS all PAIN; CURES WIND COLIC, and is the best remedy for DIARRHOEA. Sold by Druggists in every part of the world. Be sure and ask for MRS. WINSLOW’S SOOTHING SYRUP, and take no other kind.

Twenty-Five Cents a Bottle.

[Pg 5]

CHAPTER I.

The family carriage of the Rodneys stood before the gate, and Mouse and Kitty, the two sleek gray ponies, champed their bits impatiently while the Rodneys, great and small, issued forth in gala attire.

They were going to the picnic in Walnut Grove—mamma, papa, Effie, and little Max—all but Aline, and she was in disgrace and forbidden to go. (Not that the command itself would have been sufficient to detain her, but she was locked into her room, “in durance vile,” and left in charge of the cook for safe-keeping.)

Aline was usually in disgrace with the family. She had the sweetest face and the warmest heart in the world, but with her high spirits and willful ways she had a most lamentable faculty for getting into mischief of some sort daily, and it was for some more flagrant offense than usual that mamma had sternly vetoed the picnic to-day and locked her into her room to meditate on her many and grievous faults.

The culprit, from her upper window, flattened her pretty piquant little nose against the window-pane and gazed after the departing quartet with great sparkling tears in the lovely eyes whose rare and peculiar shade of deep purple-blue had been caught from the far-off strain of Irish blood that flowed in her veins. They were “sweetest eyes were ever seen,” at once arch and tender and shaded by long, black-fringed lashes overarched by—

The Rodneys entered the carriage, and Aline flung them one last despairing kiss from the tips of her slim white fingers, but no one saw except, perhaps, her little brother, who looked up regretfully [Pg 6]and saw the lovely, girlish face smiling at him through its sparkling tears. Then the carriage door was closed, Mouse and Kitty broke into a sedate trot, and the sweet face retired from the window and hid itself in a small square of snowy linen. Aline’s heart was for the moment completely broken.

It was no small trial to be shut up in that hot, stifling little chamber all that lovely, sunny July day. She thought of the beautiful green grove close by the shining river, with the light winds ruffling its cool breast, of the happy gathering of young people, the games, the dancing, the hamper baskets of cold chicken and sweetmeats, indigestible pickles and pies and cakes, prepared for the gay, unceremonious dinner, and her heart sunk heavily. She would not willingly have foregone the delights of that day for anything she possessed. Any other punishment she could have borne with equanimity, but it did seem as if mamma had been actuated by malice prepense in forbidding the picnic to which Aline had looked forward eagerly for two long weeks.

She wept some bitter tears, distinctly tinctured with anger, into her snowy handkerchief, then she wiped her eyes and looked about her for some means of passing the tedious time away. Her mother had brought her up a volume of sermons, by way of profitable reading. Aline vented her spite and disappointment most unjustifiably on the unoffending volume, by tossing it out of the little end window into her neighbor’s garden, and the innocent missile, in its rapid descent, hit her neighbor sharply upon the head.

When she saw what she had done, a little cry of dismay broke from her lips. The great gray stone mansion standing in the beautiful garden next door to Mr. Rodney’s cottage was known throughout the little village of Chester as a haunted house; and its owner, the dark, moody-looking man who had just returned from a protracted sojourn abroad, was generally considered a very mysterious man. He was immensely rich, a bachelor, and handsome in a dark, corsair-like style that the girls of Chester considered very fascinating although it was so inaccessible.

As for the gentleman himself he neither knew nor cared what the good villagers thought of him. He was among them, but not of them. He sought no society and received no guests. He dwelt alone and lonely in the grand old mansion where several generations of his ancestors had lived and died, and which popular imagination peopled with ghosts. Indeed, it was positively asserted that at the dread midnight hour shrieks of woe had been heard to issue from the deserted house, and lights had been seen flashing from window to window as if waved in phantom hands. The Delaneys had been a hard, proud, cruel race, so said Mme. Rumor, that knowing dame, and it was no wonder if some of them returned to earth in spirit to bewail the deeds done in the flesh.

The humbler home of the Rodneys, a simple two-storied cottage, stood next the gloomy gray stone mansion, and the small end window of Aline’s little room overlooked the beautiful garden where the taciturn, grave-browed master strolled at will, and smoked his choice Havanas and switched off the heads of his splendid roses and lilies with his slender ebony cane as if hating all things beautiful and sweet.

[Pg 7]

Many a time and oft Aline had watched this strange, mysterious unknown neighbor of theirs through a crevice in the white curtain, and speculated curiously over his history, while she inwardly deprecated the fact that those splendid flowers belonged to such a monster.

“The cruel wretch! To snap off their heads with his ugly stick! I should like to knock his head off!” Aline often muttered indignantly to herself, and lo! now in her eagerness to place the obnoxious book forever beyond her mother’s reach, she had almost compassed her wish. She saw the tall, straight figure reel a moment under the suddenness of the blow, saw him put his white hand quickly to his head, where a sharp corner of the book had inadvertently struck it. In her terror and dismay she uttered a little cry of alarm and regret. He looked up quickly at the sound—so quickly that she could not retreat.

As he looked up he saw the sweetest girl face he had ever beheld in his life—beautiful even through its frightened pallor—with startled, wide-open blue eyes, the long black lashes curled upward, giving them an expression of almost infantine innocence and purity. The delicate oval of the lovely face was daintily broken by a deep dimple in the rounded chin, the parted red lips disclosed teeth like pearls, and the dark, silken hair, worn in short, babyish rings on the round, white forehead, fell over her shoulders in long, loose, natural ringlets to the slender, rounded waist. Framed in the small, white-draped window, with a vine of his own rare clematis clambering up from his garden and twining luxuriantly about the casement, she looked like some beautiful picture—a picture that Oran Delaney carried in his heart to his dying day, “unforgotten in every charm.”

For her, she looked down into the dark, wondering eyes of her mysterious neighbor, and set her little teeth and held her ground bravely, determined not to fly from his wrath. Some confused, remorseful dread of mamma’s and Effie’s anger at this new scrape flashed into her mind momentarily; poor mamma, who thought that for this one day, at least, she had secured her willful, thoughtless darling from the commission of the smallest bit of mischief—and she determined to make a treaty of peace with this bête noir of hers, in order to secure his silence, little dreaming that with this culminating act of folly the story of her life would begin.

Aline was ordinarily a brave girl, but she was honestly frightened now at what she had done. Oran Delaney was an ogre in her eyes, and her youthful imagination, fired by the descriptions she had heard of him, recoiled in dismay at the thought of his wrath. Of course he would suppose that she had hurled the book at his head on purpose. His anger would be something fearful, she did not doubt. Would he report her conduct to her parents? She resolved frantically that, at all odds, he should not do that. She could not endure it.

CHAPTER II.

She tried to summon a smile to her lips, but they only quivered instead. Spite of her innocent propensity for getting into trouble, Aline was very sensitive. The ludicrous side of her position did [Pg 8]not strike her in her awe of Oran Delaney. She summoned all her fortitude to her aid, and looked down into the dark, handsome face, waiting to hear him speak.

But he did not do so. His upraised eyes stared straight into her own with a gaze full of wonder and perplexity; his dark mustached lips even smiled slightly. He would not speak. He was evidently waiting for her to take the initiative.

Seeing this, Aline made a great effort. She leaned out of the window, and gasped, rather indistinctly:

“I—I beg your pardon, Mr. Delaney. I didn’t mean to throw the book out—that is, I meant to throw it out, but I didn’t mean to hit you! I didn’t know you were there!”

Having mumbled out this comprehensive apology, Aline waited anxiously for his answer.

She saw a smile creeping around his lips, as the ludicrous state of the case dawned on him. The face that looked so cold and stern, as she watched it daily under the shadow of his broad-leaved hat, did not appear so terrible now, as he stood with uncovered head gazing up at her. It even had a beauty of its own, if one fancied straight, even features, an olive skin, dark, magnetic eyes, dark, clustering locks, tossed carelessly back from a broad, intellectual brow, and a smile that, when it curved the mustached lips, lent the charm of fascination to his whole face. That smile, as it shone on Aline now, inspired her with unconscious courage. She continued, pleadingly:

“I hope you will excuse me, sir, and—and—if you please, I hope you will not tell mamma.”

He picked up the book, and, turning the leaves, asked, in a deep, musical, slightly amused voice:

“If you did not intend the missile for me, may I ask why you threw the book out at all?”

“I was mad,” said Aline, flushing a little at the admission.

“Mad—with such a good book as this? Sermons, aren’t they?” inquired Oran Delaney, lightly, as if talking to a child, which, in fact, she appeared to be, as seen at the window. Her face looked very young. He could not judge of the tall, rounded figure as she rested on her elbows, and looked down at him.

“Yes—sermons—but awfully dry, you know,” she returned apologetically; “but, after all, you know, I oughtn’t to have thrown them away; mamma wouldn’t like it. Will you please throw the book back to me, Mr. Delaney?”

He made several attempts to do so, but Aline was not clever at catching. It eluded the white, outstretched hands every time, and fell back into her neighbor’s garden. They both laughed. Aline began to think that her neighbor might not be such an ogre, after all.

“Twice you have let it fall back upon my head,” he said. “You are too clumsy to catch it at all. Come down to the window in the first story, and I will hand it up to you.”

“I—can’t,” replied Aline, flushing very red indeed.

“Why not?” wonderingly.

“I am locked into my room,” flushing deeper with shame.

“Impossible! Who is your jailer?” inquired the gentleman.

[Pg 9]

“Mamma; she has locked the door and gone off, leaving me here to read those dreary sermons that I threw away.”

There is a moment’s silence. Aline reads palpable surprise on her neighbor’s face. The shame-flush deepens on her own.

Presently, with a laugh, he says:

“You must have been a very naughty girl, weren’t you?”

“I didn’t mean to be, but mamma and Effie said I was. So they went off to the picnic, and locked me in here to punish me,” Aline said, growing confidential as her dread of Mr. Delaney grew less. “And oh, if they ever find out that I threw a book and knocked your hat off, I shall never hear the last of it. You won’t tell—will you?” pleadingly.

“What would they do to you?—lock you into your room again?”

“Worse than that, perhaps. I dare say they would devise some new punishment worse than any I have suffered yet,” sighing.

“Are they cruel to you?”

“Oh, no, only when I get into scrapes, as they say I am always doing. I am mischievous, they say, but I never mean to be. The way I get into trouble is like I did just now, you see, without knowing it,” she explains, plaintively.

“A spoiled, willful child,” Oran Delaney says to himself, smiling; then, aloud: “Well, about this book—how am I to return it to you?”

“I don’t know—and mamma will be so vexed with me,” plaintively. “Cannot you think of a plan?”

The sweet entreaty in the blue eyes moved him strangely. He looks around.

“Let me see. There is a step-ladder hereabouts used by the gardener in training vines against the wall. I might climb that.”

“Oh, pray do,” she clasps her hands entreatingly, and he goes away in search of the article.

Returning with a light, convenient step-ladder, he places it against the side of the house beneath the window. Her voice arrests him as he is about to ascend it.

“Oh, if you please, Mr. Delaney, I should like a bunch of your nice roses,” this rather timidly.

“Should you?” he says, surprised; then he looks around him at his beautiful garden glowing with all the lavish wealth of July—roses and lilies, and all the sweet sisterhood of flowers. From the green bowers and blooming beds of the garden, he lifts a keen glance to the upper windows of his stately house. The blinds are tightly closed at every window, an air of gloom and desertion pervades the scene. His glance goes back to that girlish face that is sweeter than all his flowers.

“You love flowers?” he says.

“Oh, so much!” she breathes, clasping her hands in pretty unconscious earnestness. “I wish that your garden were mine!”

“Are you aware that you are transgressing the tenth commandment?” he inquires, dryly.

“Am I? I don’t care. I can’t help envying you that splendid garden. You may have your house, and its ghosts, and welcome, but I do want your flowers.”

“Ghosts,” he says, and a slight frown darkens on his brow.

[Pg 10]

“Yes, there are ghosts in that big, gloomy house, aren’t there? People say so, at least,” she answers.

He makes no answer. The half smile he has worn until now fades from his face. He remains lost in thought a moment, then abruptly turns the subject.

“Since you like flowers so well, you may come down and take all you want.”

“How?” she asks, bewildered.

“Down the ladder,” he replies, carelessly, and Aline catches her breath.